Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15 Later, there was pain. And voices calling to him. Was he dead? No, he was back with Mr. Knox. That must be why his entire body hurt. Because he was back on the farm, working dawn to dusk. He could hear Birdie, feel her little hand gripping his. But who was that other man calling his name? "Thomas!" "Thomas!" Thomas tried to open his eyes, but there was just darkness.

He tried to speak, but his voice was like ashes. He wanted to move, but he felt hands holding him down. Or were they chains? Searing pain ripped across his chest. Mr. Knox! Please don't whip me! He was a slave again. Or was he dead? Two days passed before Thomas realized that he was alive, and that he was not back at Mr. Knox's farm. He was in a hospital tent, still in Gettysburg. He'd been carried off the battlefield along with thousands of others. His pants had been soaked in blood. His eyes were swollen shut. When the ambulance crew was searching the field for wounded, at first they thought Thomas was dead. But then they heard him shout. "Birdie!"

They had put him on a stretcher carefully, wondering how on earth this boy had gotten himself onto this battlefield, assuming he was a servant to one of the officers. Most of his blood had spilled into the grass, from the enormous gash on his leg. The rebel's bullet had bruised his chest. It would have killed him, ripped right through his heart. Except it was stopped by the tin-covered book in his shirt pocket. Mary's book of paintings. That's what saved his life. Not a rifle or a sword. He was saved by a book filled with pretty pictures of a world Thomas had never seen. The doctors stitched him up and left him, caught between life and death, as battles raged all around Gettysburg. They fought for three days in all. They battled in meadows and fields, in orchards and woods, on hilltops and in valleys.

Streams ran red with blood. Twenty-three thousand men were killed or wounded before the rebels finally retreated. The Union troops held their high ground. But Thomas knew none of this. He didn't know that Homer was killed by a shell. And that Captain Campbell was brought down as he tried to protect two of his men from charging rebel soldiers. And that Henry was hit by a bullet, which shattered his leg. Thomas learned all this days later, when his head finally cleared. And in that first moment after he opened his eyes, he thought he was dreaming, or in Heaven. Because there was Birdie, smiling at him through tears. And next to her was the man who'd been calling Thomas's name: Clem.