Free Abner & Me by Dan Gutman

you never know.” I scanned the distant woods to see if anyone was hiding up in the trees.
    Soldiers were going from corpse to corpse, removing weapons, ammunition, canteens, blankets, and supplies. Anything that might be useful. The dead would not be needing any of it.
    Another group of soldiers was picking up bodies and carrying them off the battlefield to be sent home to their families. If a body couldn’t be identified, it was buried right where the man had fallen. In some cases, bodies were being stacked in mass graves.
    It occurred to me that all these men had died right next to a cemetery. It seemed kind of…convenient.
    I was surprised to see some Confederate soldiers out there on the field picking up their dead right alongside the Union soldiers. It was so weird . Halfan hour ago the soldiers on both sides had been trying their best to kill each other. Now they were chatting with each other as they did their morbid work, sometimes stopping to swap food, tobacco, or news with the other side.
    It kind of made sense, in a way. They were all Americans. They spoke the same language. Most of them had the same religion, the same heroes, the same history. Some of them came from the same families. What was harder to understand was why these Americans were fighting each other in the first place.
    â€œAnybody see General Doubleday?” we asked as we stepped gingerly around the bodies. Nobody seemed to know where he could be found.
    One guy said he thought he saw Doubleday back behind Cemetery Ridge, so we circled away from the battlefield and up the hill. Union soldiers were building barricades at the top of the hill out of stone and logs to defend against tomorrow’s Rebel charge. We asked if they had seen Doubleday, but they just shook their heads.
    There was a sign at the gate of the cemetery that read: “All persons found using firearms in these grounds will be prosecuted with the utmost vigor of”—I couldn’t read the rest of the words. They were filled with bullet holes.
    In the cemetery itself, some soldiers were sitting against tombstones, asleep. Or maybe they were dead. It was hard to tell. Every so often I’d see someone just sitting there sobbing over a grave he had dug. We didn’t bother those people with questions.
    Behind the Union line, it was like a small city. There were little white tents as far as you could see, and just about as many campfires. Soldiers were everywhere, and everybody looked busy. They were cooking and eating their dinner. Some were cleaning their guns, chopping wood, or grooming their horses. Guys sat against trees, writing letters or reading letters from home. Some were shaving or brushing their teeth. Some played checkers, cards, or dominos. It all looked very…normal.
    â€œSeen Doubleday?” we asked everyone.
    Rumors were flying around. I heard a soldier say the Union had lost ten thousand men today, and the Rebels as nearly as many. The 24th Michigan regiment supposedly lost five hundred out of its six hundred men.
    We passed by a big tent filled with guys playing with some little machines and listening intently while they scribbled in notebooks. I realized they were telegraph operators, sending home news about the war. These guys must be the nineteenth-century equivalent to computer geeks, it occurred to me. They didn’t know where Doubleday was either.
    A soldier limped by with a cannonball chained to his leg. I asked Willie about it, and he said the guy was probably caught sitting down on guard duty. Another guy had a big letter C branded into his forehead.
    â€œCoward,” Willie explained.
    â€œHave you seen General Doubleday?” I asked a man rushing by us.
    â€œNo, and I don’t reckon to,” he replied. “I’m going home.”
    â€œIf they catch you, you could be shot for desertion,” Willie warned the guy.
    â€œIf I stay, I could be shot by Rebs,” the guy said, and he continued on