The Tinsmith by Tim Bowling Page B

bloodstains from throat to forehead, another, likely caught in the act of preparing to reload, had the end of a cartridge clamped between his teeth.
    The light came on steadily. Gardner hesitated, one hand on the rough bottom of his long beard. He thought it an odd matter that this same sun, responsible for blotting out all traces of individuality from a man, for staining and corrupting his face, should also be the agent for preserving his last earthly appearance forever. He placed the body carefully between two rebels, building a sort of breastwork of their corpses to hide the civilian from sight. Then he turned to the east and squinted at the wagon’s ponderous approach. A low, broken mist like a ghostly fence wreathed the torn earth. Except for the groans of the wounded, all was still. Then Gardner realized why his assistant moved the wagon so slowly. Even from many rods away, he could hear the faint clinking of the glass bottles of chemicals inside the wagon—it was a shivery, graveyard sort of sound, and for a moment it unnerved him, even more than the piteous complaints of the wounded.
    The moment passed. Gardner deemed it advisable not to remain near these particular dead. In an hour, he and Gibson could begin in earnest. But he knew there were portions of the field that contained more dramatic photographic possibilities. It was, after all, extensive, covering over a square mile from the woods and fields in the north to the fight at the creek bridge in the south. The day before, watching from the hillsides, he had seen that the fighting had been fiercest along the pike, in the vicinity of the little whitewashed church. And early reports had mentioned a great slaughter in a cornfield as well as along a sunken road. Later, should time permit, he would return here to make a study of the mutilated slave owner. Ha! If this day did not mark his break from that popinjay Brady, it would be no fault of Providence! Here was glory worthy of any man’s craft. And yet, when he considered the violations performed on this body, when he regarded the bloody pulp at the groin, all thoughts of glory seemed meaningless. But he who lives by the cruel hand dies the same.
    The shadow of Gardner’s horse fell on the dead man’s face, turning it as black as his Rebel comrades’.
    Jim whispered down. “If you’re quite finished rearranging bodies, Alex, I could use a last cup of coffee before we start.”
    Gardner nodded. By the time Jim had had his coffee, perhaps back at the hospital where the cooks would doubtless have pots on permanent boil, they’d know for certain that the Rebels had retreated. Then it would be time enough, and light enough, for glory.
    After walking a hundred yards south, the two photographers came upon a grim scene. Gardner was thankful for the slow approach of the light, else he might have been duty-bound to record the misery of that foul barnyard. The wounded and the sleeping lay mixed in among the dead, so closely that the bodies formed one large body that groaned, wept, snored, vomited, cried out in agony—no foot of earth was uncovered but for the area around the surgeons’ tables. Large canvas tents greasy with shadows stood in the field outside the barnyard fence. Several wagons were being emptied of supplies—blankets mostly, but also bandages, bottles of pills, and liquids. Apart from the surgeons, the few men who were moving at all were moving slowly, as if fighting through molasses.
    As Gibson hitched their horse to a rail and headed toward a leaden-faced negro cook stirring a pot, Gardner stepped up to one of the operating tables. A ragged, pointy-jawed soldier lay there, his eyes like raisins pushed into lard. His thin lips either trembled or muttered a prayer, Gardner couldn’t tell. A sort of cone was placed over the soldier’s nose and mouth and some liquid dripped into it. Then the surgeon, a bearded man of middle years with a strong nose and