Wilderness Run by Maria Hummel

Pike sang the verses, the muscles of his thin neck rippling, and the others joined in when they knew the words. At “What we might have been, Lorena, had our loving prospered well,” Gilbert Rhodes cupped his crotch and everyone laughed.
    The car’s tiny windows were ringed by a scum of black mildew, making the outside world blur at the edges, as if a shadow were encroaching on all sides. As the men’s voices filled his ears, Laurence looked to the endless south stretching before them. It was like peering through a dozen keyholes at once, each one holding its own version of the same hidden room beyond.

Chapter Six
    â€œWatch this,” said Gilbert. He was sitting at the mouth of the tent he shared with his brother, Laurence, and John Addison. The others were sleeping, except Laurence, who lay on the damp earth, writing in a crack of sunlight. Every few moments, he would have to shift the paper to change the place illumined by the ray, but he was too exhausted to go outside. After a week of marching, camp-raising, and drilling in the hot July sun, most of the recruits could barely move on their free afternoon. Gilbert was eternally awake, however, his undershirt tight around his ribs, the uniform his mother had sewn for him dripping from a tent line. He had already washed it twice. “Watch this,” he said again, and Laurence turned on his aching side to see Gilbert thrust one foot out of the shadow of the tent.
    With a soft grunt, Lyman Woodard fell facedown against the earth, his blond hair streaming over his cheeks. At the sound of the impact, John Addison cracked one blue eye, then let it fall slowly shut. Laurence sighed and stared at his letter. Every day since they had arrived in their camp outside Washington, Gilbert had managed to trip the clumsy soldier.
    â€œWhen you going to learn to watch your feet, Woodard?” Gilbert grinned. “When the secesh start shooting at ’em?”
    â€œThat’s unfair,” Lyman Woodard said, pushing himself onto his knees. “You know that’s unfair.”
    â€œSince when is drill unfair?” Gilbert said. “I just invented a new drill, that’s all.”
    â€œWell, I don’t like it.” Woodard stood up and brushed himself off. He squinted into the shadows of the tent. “Who you writing to, Lindsey? You got a sweetheart?”
    â€œMy cousin,” said Laurence, blushing. They wouldn’t understand his friendship with little Bel.
    â€œGirl cousin,” Pike amended, although the only way he could have guessed this fact was if he had been reading over Laurence’s shoulder.
    â€œHow do you know—” Laurence began.
    â€œKeeping the money in the family, ain’t you?” Gilbert interrupted, grinning. He fingered a limp dark curl. “Just wait till I start courting her.”
    â€œIt’s not like that.” Laurence covered the letter with his arm, glaring at Pike, who scrabbled busily in his haversack and refused to return his gaze.
    â€œSure it ain’t.” Gilbert nodded.
    â€œI’m going over to the contraband camp tonight to hear them sing, Lindsey. Wanna go?” asked Woodard. The former slaves who took refuge with the government army were given the nickname “contrabands” for their status as war bounty. They were treated terribly, given the worst jobs in camp and often made the subject of soldiers’ pranks, but the evenings were their own, and they held rousing prayer meetings a short distance from camp.
    â€œI can’t,” Laurence said. “I’m on picket.”
    â€œWell, some other Sunday, then,” Woodard said hopefully. He continued to brush himself off. “I might not go tonight.”
    Gilbert snorted. “What a bully idea. Learn me some nigger songs, why don’t you, Lindsey. When you go.”
    â€œI will,” said Laurence coldly. He took out the poetry book and propped it over the letter. Silence