Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry by Susan Vaught Page B

mouth shut. “His fraternity brothers went halfway to the graves with him,” Ms. Manchester said. “But they stayed back, respectful and scared.”
    â€œMore like smart,” Indri whispered.
    I nodded.
    Ms. Manchester’s eyes narrowed.
    We both got very still.
    â€œAfter a time, the night moved on, and the fraternity brothers fell asleep.” Ms. Manchester let us imagine that, then leaned into the flashlight’s beam again. Her voice dropped. “The first brother woke hollering and ducking, saying he heard rifles shooting right over his head. The second woke running away from the ear-bursting boom of cannon fire. As for the third—”
    She shifted away from the light, so far back I could only see her mouth moving.
    â€œThe third brother said he heard something screaming . . . but it wasn’t human. More like a war horse, maddened from battle, bellowing as it charged. He heard hoof beats, then theyall heard hoof beats, hammering the ground, coming straight for them, thundering down the unmarked graves, and they ran, and they ran, and they didn’t look back.”
    Ms. Manchester moved.
    I couldn’t see her face at all, just the flashlight beam blaring in a column all the way to the ceiling. When she spoke again, she was nearly whispering. We had to lean toward her to make out the words.
    â€œCome the morning, when Brave John didn’t show up at the fraternity house, his friends went looking for him, and what do you think they found?”
    She waited.
    Nobody said a word.
    â€œBONES!” she cried, and we all yelped and shrieked. “BLOOD AND BONES!”
    The flashlight clicked off, pitching us into total darkness. Up turned to down and down turned to up, and I almost fell backward because I couldn’t figure out where I was. Indri started giggling like a psycho nutjob in a bad horror movie.
    â€œMight have been sharp hooves that did him in,” Ms. Manchester said, each syllable slow and quiet in the cavelike nothingness. “Might have been splintering wagon wheels. And maybe, just maybe, it was the rough heels of seven hundred pairs of war boots.”
    Pictures flickered to life on the cinder block walls around us. A black-and-white photo of a stone monument. An oil painting of a Civil War battle scene, complete withblood-stained grass and a sky blackened with smoke. A surreal digital picture of a Confederate officer riding a huge black stallion with devil-red eyes, its mouth wide and steaming. A graying, grainy shot of Oxford’s town square and its courthouse, surrounded by dozens of white tents and covered wagons. The pictures faded, until only the last one remained.
    â€œIs that real or Photoshop?” Indri whispered to me too loudly.
    â€œReal, I think,” I told her.
    The classroom lights clicked back on, blinding me as Ms. Manchester said, “This is the only known photo of General Grant’s occupation of Oxford, Mississippi, during the Civil War.” She stood by the picture, and the gray light covered half her face. “So yes, Indri, this picture is real, and not Photoshopped. What’s also real is the cemetery with seven hundred unmarked graves, and the fact that the campus closed for the Civil War because almost all the students were fighting as the University Grays—and those boys never came home.”
    â€œWhat happened to them?” Mavis Simpson asked.
    Ms. Manchester favored her with a smile. “On the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the University Grays reached the farthest point in Pickett’s Charge up Cemetery Ridge and established what became known as the high water mark of the Confederacy. That achievement came at the cost of one hundred percent casualties. Every single soldier was either killed or wounded.”
    My mouth came open. Indri squeezed my hand, and herbrows pulled together. She really didn’t like to hear about military men getting killed in battles. I