Free The Deserter by Jane Langton Page B

of saliva into his mouth.
    But the convulsion passed, and a fit of cold dispassion took its place. Bracing himself, Otis turned back to look carefully at the body on the ground.
    The front of Seth’s coat was drenched with blood, but a white handkerchief was still jaunty in his breast pocket. Otis remembered that Seth had worn a handkerchief every day, whether in bivouack somewhere or in winter quarters.
    The handkerchiefs! The men of Company E had teased their first lieutenant about his pretty handkerchiefs, each with its initial S embroidered in one corner. They had laughed and elbowed each other and called out, “Don’t he cut a swell.” But Otis knew they envied Seth his loving wife at home.
    Now he took the handkerchief out of Seth’s pocket and inspected it, finding only a little blood along one side. He folded it and put it back. Then, ransacking the rest of Seth’s pockets, he found nothing but a small case containing a letter and the photograph of a pretty young woman.
    She was Seth’s wife, the one whose devoted hands had made the handkerchiefs. Otis looked at her hungrily and stroked the glass over her face. It occurred to him that her husband no longer had any rights in the matter. Why shouldn’t Otis Pike be the possesser of this sweet creature? Hastily Otis snapped the case shut, tucked it into his pocket and sat down to get his tangled thoughts in order.
    Before long it was clear what he must do. He would have to obliterate everything that made this piece of mortal flesh recognizable as First Lieutenant Seth Morgan of Tom Robeson’s Company E in Charley Mudge’s Second Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. No enlisted man or officer in that regiment, no friend in another outfit must be able to recognize those mild blue eyes, that generous nose and what was left of that amiable mouth.
    Steeling himself, Otis cocked his revolver and waited for another burst of cannonfire. It did not come. Sobbing again, he took aim and pulled the trigger.
    Oh, Seth, oh, God forgive me, Seth . Blood was erupting in another fountain. Blubbering, Otis backed away, but the crimson gout soon stopped and he could see that he had been successful. No one would ever recognize that butchered carcass now.
    The rest of the task was also brutally distasteful. By the time Otis had unbuttoned and removed Seth’s sack coat and heaved the body back and forth and wrestled it into his own coat, his hands were sticky with Seth’s blood. Then, flinching, he had to thrust his trembling arms into the sleeves of Seth’s blood-drenched coat and pull it close and button it over his own chest.
    The next task was harder still, the exchange of official identities. It was truly fortunate that both of them had invested in metal name tags. Seth’s was pinned to his coat. Otis had his on a fancy chain. Gritting his teeth, he dragged the chain down over the hideous head and settled it around Seth’s grisly neck. Then he unpinned Seth’s star-shaped tag and threw it into a bushy tangle.
    Finished at last, he collapsed a few feet away from the body and wept and cursed the generals, wept and cursed the war, wept and cursed himself. When the fit subsided he lay down exhausted and drained of all feeling, uninterested in the sound that floated toward him on the breeze, threadlike and delicate, the sound of cheering.
    Stay put , he told himself. Wait till it gets dark . No living soul would be out there in that swale after dark. And anyway the presence of a man in a bloodstained coat carrying the body of a fellow soldier would seem perfectly natural.
    The fact that this body was being brought forward rather than away would not be noticed in the dark.
    And the air seemed to promise rain. The fierce moonlight that had poured down over the field of battle yesterday would tonight be lost in clouds. At midnight he would set down in the middle of the swale the remains of that gallant warrior, Otis Mathias Pike, a hero