Ghosts of Graveyards Past by Laura Briggs

was almost twenty when the war that tore the states apart finally made its way to Sylvan Spring.
    It came in the form of a newspaper advertisement. Her brother, Henry, folding back the County Times, showed her where a recruitment meeting was being held two towns over, a call for all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five to pledge their service to God and homeland.
    “You won’t be eighteen ‘til March.” Nell’s voice held a note of panic, her hands buried inside the dough she was kneading for that night’s dinner. The worried remark had earned her a sigh of exasperation from the youth who shared her suntanned complexion and tawny-colored hair.
    “Yes, but they won’t know that,” he said. “All they’re looking for is someone to handle a rifle and pull their weight on the trail.” He spoke matter-of-factly, though neither of them knew anyone from the soldier camps. Until recently, the war had been just a rumor, a story brought by the tradesman passing through from other territories.
    “What will Papa say?” she asked, knowing full well he would tell the boy to do as he wished. That was the luxury of a blacksmith, whose harvest was small and livestock holdings even smaller. Her father could spare a son’s help easier than his neighbors, whose crops and cattle were a livelihood that demanded the strength of youth to run smoothly.
    Later, she had watched as Henry squeezed into a cart with six other boys. Others from the town were riding horses and taking turns with those who traveled on foot for lack of better options. All were laughing as they sang snatches of a war song she had heard played at the last community dance. As if they were going off to a picnic, she thought, heart sinking with the carefree sounds.
    It was her small hands that sewed his uniform a week later, and pieced together a kepi hat in the fashion of Johnny Reb from the newspaper cartoons. She stitched the brass buttons in place with a mixture of pride and nervousness, the idea it might become his burial garb causing her needle to slip more than it normally would, pricking little dots of blood along her fingers.
    She cried when he tried it on for size and then again when he packed it inside a haversack with his other scant belongings. Squeezing her arm reassuringly, he said, “It’s not as if I wouldn’t have gone eventually. This way it will be over and done with. Besides,” he added, “the war can hardly last much longer. Everyone says as much. I want my part of the fuss before it’s over.”
    Glory, excitement, adventure—these were things enrollment in the Confederacy promised to bring. Compared to this, Sylvan Spring was just a sprinkle of homesteads along a wooded stream, gradually expanding to include a church and school, a post office and general store. The blacksmith’s stand and mercantile shop were the last obvious signs of civilization before dirt lanes gave way to fields of cotton and corn, a few farmhouses visible here and there to break apart the acres of crops.
    Planting and gathering the harvest was the main past time of the local youth, even more so than the subjects taught in their one-room schoolhouse. Perhaps this was why so many of them chose to don the uniform of a private. Boys who once used rifles for hunting wild game talked excitedly of driving Yanks from their native territory. Others spoke of marching into places they had only seen on the pages of a school atlas, tracing the battle sites they read about in the newspapers with a sense of awe.
    Wives and sweethearts were left to worry and to send their love in letters to the camp where newly signed soldiers underwent training. Nell had only her brother to write to, her heart unsought by any among their small community. Which wasn’t to say it had no secret admiration of its own—for Nell was hard-pressed to conceal her girlhood crush, now turned to something deeper with the passage of time.
    The object of this quiet affection had not