1st 5 Pages September Workshop - Guthrie Rev 1

Name: Melissa Guthrie
Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction
Title: The Shadow of Death

Chapter 1
Falmouth, Virginia
June 21, 1863

   

In the beginning, there was a revolver. It was a beautiful piece of American manufacturing, composed of metal and ivory that didn’t show wear. It never misfired, not once, as if it were blessed.

 

Before, Ira sat in bed, his face devoid of color. The revolver nestled into his right hand and made a home there. A perfect fit.

“Confederate,” Ira said.

Jacob Clemmons leaned his good ear towards Ira. One hand rested on the bed to keep his balance, in the place Ira’s legs should have been.

 

His heart beat faster as his mouth went dry. His hands twitched. This was the thick of battle; this was black powder burning his eyes and the ragged voice of the captain screaming orders. His eyes darted into the dark corners of the Army tent. Somewhere in the darkness, a man cried out in agony. Closer, voices just outside the tent whispered to one another. Jacob shivered. 

“I said you musta’ stole it from some Reb,” Ira said. He turned the revolver over in his hands. His thumb, stained with dirt and black powder, caressed the back strap of the gun.

“Burial detail,” Jacob said.

The man Jacob had taken the gun from was older than he. By the time he crossed the field with a spade over his shoulder to separate the Union dead from the Confederates and give his men a decent burial, the man’s fingers were bloated to twice their normal size.

Jacob hadn’t pried the gun from the man’s hands. No, he separated the man’s index finger from his hand with a thrust of his shovel. Bones crunched, satisfying and loud among the moans of the not yet dead.

 

Only a demon would desecrate the dead like this, but that thought didn’t stop Jacob.

He was a demon dressed in blue, same as the man in gray he had stood over, on the blood soaked earth of a town called Chancellorsville. Jacob took the man’s shiny gun. He would take all he could from an enemy that wanted him dead.

The voices outside the tent grew louder. Jacob slapped himself in the head. The pain there, it didn’t go away. When he was in camp and all was quiet, his head hurt. He imagined hornets in his mind, chewing on his brain like it was a rotten apple.

 

But that was just plain crazy. There were no hornets in his mind. He shook his head.

 

“What’d you want it for?” Jacob asked.

“My mama,” Ira said, “it’s for my mama.”

Then he placed the revolver between his lips and pulled the trigger.

 

 
Hewitt Town, Ohio
July 4th, 1863

The ceiling above was made of hand hewn beams. When Henry Clemmons opened his eyes in a bed that wasn’t his own, he wondered, first, if he had fallen asleep in a barn, but no. He knew right where he was.

 

The night before was a blur. There was gin involved.

 

Whiskey, too.

 

And possibly dancing.

 

Henry moaned and covered his eyes.

“Ah,” a voice said. “You’re finally awake.”

On the other side of a doorway, Gabriel Hewitt stood beside a workbench, dressed in the same dark pants Henry saw him in the night before. His feet were stained black, his dark hair brown with sawdust. He held a cigarette between the first fingers of his right hand, the scent of tobacco heavy in the air.

Henry climbed from the bed to find his clothes lying haphazardly on a trunk. He slipped a hand into his jacket. The telegram was still there, hidden in the pocket, out of sight and mind until he was reminded. Then he couldn’t forget.

 

Next to the clothing was a mug, half-full of something- liquor, hard cider, or water. It didn’t matter. He drank the contents down. It was tea made with mint and willow bark, meant to take the edge off an impending hang over.

 

Perhaps Gabriel cared about him, Henry thought. Or, maybe, he just wanted his business partner to be in tip-top condition for the day spent working together.

 

“Did you sleep at all?” Henry asked. He pulled his drawers on, and looked up to see Gabriel watching, a smirk on his lips.  

Gabriel drank from the tin mug that seemed permanently affixed to his right hand, and swayed a bit with exhaustion. He glanced around the workshop, as if shocked to see that the sun had risen.

 

“The Welk baby died late last night,” Gabriel said. “I wanted to get a jump on things. This week might be busy…” He looked away.

 

Henry eyed his jacket again. “So you didn’t sleep?”

 

Gabriel scratched his forehead with the same hand that held the cigarette and shrugged.

 

Henry was long accustomed to the strange hours Gabriel kept. He only slept when there wasn’t something to do.

“Just pull yourself together and eat something for breakfast. The Widow up the way sent biscuits and I found some berries,” Gabriel said.

 

Henry cleared his throat, as if just the thought of the widow’s dry, crumbling biscuits were enough to make swallowing a chore. Gabriel brought the old woman meat and provisions from town. She repaid his efforts with baked goods best suited as doorstops.

“You really want me to eat, don’t you?” Henry asked.

“I can’t have you wasting away.”

“What’s the catch?”

“The Welk baby died last night,” Gabriel said, again, “and we have to go get measurements.”

“We?” Henry asked. He looked around the shop, at the stacks of wood leaned against the wall, all projects half finished.

 

A coffin made of hickory wood leaned against the wall closest to the door, a simple cross carved into the lid. A brass name plaque nailed beneath the cross awaited an engraving. Gabriel had finished the coffin at close to midnight the night before, just as Henry arrived from town.

Henry’s palms went sweaty. He was no stranger to death- it lurked in the shadows of his mother’s home. Death was sudden and unexpected even to people who knew they were on its doorstep. It made hands cold and joints stiff even during the heat of summer. Death changed a human being from the moment it first stole across their eyes.

 

Gabriel drank the last of his coffee and flung the tin cup into the far corner of the workshop. There were the makings of a kitchen there, little more than mismatched cabinets and a woodstove, but it was where Gabriel prepared meals when he cooked inside.

 

“Yes, we,” Gabriel said. The cup rang against the floor, and sent a jolt of pain through Henry’s mind. He crossed the room and bent to retrieve the cup.

 

“You’re certain you need my help with this one?” Henry asked. He poured some black coffee into the same cup Gabriel drank from and added a measure of goat’s milk. There was no sugar; there hadn’t been an abundance of sugar in some time. Gabriel stuck his cigarette between his lips and returned his attention to the workbench and the wood lying there. “It’s just a baby.”

 

“Just a baby, yes,” Gabriel said, without removing the cigarette. Henry blushed. Gabriel’s talent with his lips was undeniable. “Generally, when a baby is dead, it doesn’t come back to life. Of course, there are some cases, in which…”

 

Henry’s eyes widened as the creamy milk floated to the surface of his coffee.