Last Ghost at Gettysburg by Paul Ferrante

step.
    “LouAnne?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Can we dial it down a bit?”
    “Sure thing.”
    They slowed to a brisk walk. “Put your hands
behinds your head and take deep breaths,” she advised. “It’ll open
up your airway.”
    “Don’t know what’s wrong with me,” said T.J.
awkwardly.
    “No big deal. The humidity’s a killer. Plus,
the terrain here slopes up and down so gradually that it deceives
you.” She smiled, trying to ease his embarrassment.
    “One thing I’ve noticed,” he said, breathing
more evenly now. “The monuments are all so different. Some are
just etched blocks of granite, some have a plaque attached, some
are bronze statues of soldiers or cavalry guys on horses, some are
big Greek and Roman-looking things. How come?”
    “Depends. See, they commemorate different
regiments, states, or even generals, some of whom got killed here.
In the end, each particular monument’s as big as the state who
built it could afford. Most went up in the late 1800s, I
think.”
    “It seems like they’re everywhere.”
    “They are, just like all the cannons that
were placed wherever there were artillery units. There’s a cannon
or two on my block, if you noticed. I’ll tell you, though...at
night, when the sun’s going down, the bronze soldiers seem almost
lifelike. It’s spooky.”
    “But you’re not supposed to be in the
Battlefield Park after dark, right?”
    “Technically, yeah,” she said with a wink.
“But that doesn’t mean I’ve never gone for an evening jog. It helps
if your dad’s a ranger. You feeling any better?”
    “I think so.”
    “Okay. We’ve just passed the Peach Orchard.
Tell you what. There’s a little over a mile from here to the
Visitor Center. Let’s make that our goal, and hopefully Dad’ll be
around to give us a lift home when he has a break. I think he’s on
cemetery duty today.”
    “Cemetery duty?”
    “The National Military Cemetery, silly. You
know... Abe Lincoln? Gettysburg Address? Four score and seven
years ago? It’s a fairly short walk from the center, though the
rangers get to use a golf cart to go back and forth. You up for
that?”
    T.J. couldn’t say no. “Sure, let’s do
it.”
    They took off again, T.J. determined to keep
pace with his obviously athletically superior cousin. Woods and
fields alternated until they reached Cemetery Ridge, following the
Union line of defense. They pounded up the blacktop lane, passing
dozens of statues, monuments and cannons laid out in a row, facing
back towards Seminary Ridge.
    “Stop here,” said LouAnne suddenly. T.J.
thankfully slowed to a walk again. “See this little angle in the
line? Where those couple of trees are? That’s the point in the
Union line where the Confederates almost broke through. You’ve
heard of Pickett’s Charge?”
    “Yes,” said T.J. uncertainly.
    “Well, look out that way toward Seminary
Ridge, where we started out from. Picture thousands of Confederate
soldiers, wave after wave, crossing that open space, marching
toward this wall, where the Union guys just waited and waited till
they got within range and then BLAMMO! They opened up with rifles
and cannons and whatnot and just blew them all over the place, but
the Southern guys kept coming. Sorry, but I don’t think I could
show that kind of heroism. Could you?”
    T.J. tried to imagine the fear he’d
experience marching those farmers’ fields, bullets whizzing by his
head with screaming, wounded comrades crumpling all around him.
“No, I don’t think so,” he admitted.
    “Yeah, well, that about ended the battle on
Day Three, and it was also the beginning of the end for the South.
Okay, let’s cut diagonally through the cemetery, and we should be
at the Center in ten minutes.”
    They crossed through the now-vacant parking
lot to the old Center, entered the main gate of the National
Cemetery and kept on the diagonal until they reached the huge new
Visitor Center and Museum, which sat on a knoll above terraced lots
for