Soldier, Come Home

They said he was eighteen.
That’s what the papers said. The ones they made him sign when he arrived, hands still calloused from hauling hay, not from carrying buckets of human fat. That number didn’t matter anymore. Not after what he saw. What he did.

He didn’t train. Didn’t enlist. Just showed up because the preacher’s son got dysentery and someone had to go.

“Help the doctor,” they said.
And when he asked how, they said, “You’ll learn.”

That was two months and four relocations ago. Now he stood under canvas that bled when it rained, his apron crusted stiff, holding a bent basin full of fingers that used to drum on knees or stroke cheeks or grip rifles until the barrel burned.

They called him “Steward.” No one asked his name anymore. Names were for letters, and no one was writing home from here.

The tent reeked. Blood, piss, mud. Gunpowder. Rain on rotting wood.

The surgeon was asleep upright in his stool, chin in chest, hands limp and still dirty. The cook—half a man from Shiloh—stirred bread pudding over a weak fire outside, muttering a hymn while flies danced on the rim of the pot.

The boy walked the rows.

Ten beds. Twenty men. The rest laid on the ground. Some moaned. Some prayed. One had been whispering the same name for an hour.

He moved quiet, checking dressings, wetting lips. Most of them were young. A few were older. None of them looked ready to die, but plenty would.

He paused by a soldier with a torn belly, the skin pulled tight like stretched hide, dark and leaking.

A cold draft touched his neck.

He turned.

She was there.

Not a nurse.
No apron.
No bonnet.

A woman. Mid-thirties, maybe. Dark hair, long and loose. A homespun dress, brown or blue, or something between. She walked between the cots, slow and precise, as if she were moving through church pews. Her hands were clasped. Bare feet. No sound. Not even the floor creaked.

He stared. Blinked. Looked around.

No one else moved.
No one else saw her.

She stopped by a man missing both legs. Bent over him. Whispered. Brushed back his hair.

The soldier shuddered. Opened his eyes. Looked right at her. Smiled.

She didn’t smile back.

She kissed his forehead, and the breath left his body like steam off hot bread.

The boy stepped forward.

“Ma’am?” he whispered.

She turned her head.
Not all the way. Just enough for him to see the side of her face. Eyes grey. Not dull—clouded, like river water full of memory.
He opened his mouth to speak again.

She was gone.

He turned in a circle.
Nothing.
No dress. No shadow. No sound of feet on straw.

Just dying men and the stink of death.

He didn’t sleep that night. Just sat behind the tent, watching the trees.

The next night, he saw another.

An old man this time. Beard to his chest. Wearing a Union coat so old the blue had gone green. He didn’t speak. Just sat beside a young soldier with his eyes closed and hand curled like a claw.

The boy stepped close.

The old man looked up. Nodded. Touched the soldier’s hand.

The boy whispered, “Sir?”

The old man didn’t answer.

Then the soldier opened his eyes. Blinked. Looked toward the old man.

“Grandpa?” he said. “You ain’t here.”

The old man just smiled. The kind of smile that carries years in it.

The soldier died five minutes later.

The boy stood there, shaking. Cold. Not from the weather.

They came every night after that.

Sometimes one.
Sometimes ten.
Not just mothers. Fathers. Brothers. Sisters. Friends. Grandmothers with broken backs and soldiers long buried themselves. Some wept. Some hummed. One played a tune on a mouth harp only the dying boy could hear.

They never spoke to him.

Except once.

A young woman, no older than he was. Blonde hair. A green dress so vivid it hummed in the dark.

“You’re not dying,” she said.

He said nothing.

“Yet.”

Then she turned and vanished into the wall of the tent.

He began to write the names of the dead in a book. Just one line each. Enough to hold something of them. “J. Martin – held a rosary.” “T. Boone – said sorry as he bled out.” “E. Ward – called for Ella. Ella never came.”

Sometimes he drew small marks next to the ones who had visitors.

The doctor didn’t ask. The cook didn’t notice. Or if they did, they didn’t want to know.

Nobody wanted to talk about ghosts in a place already full of them.

They moved the hospital after Fredericksburg. Then again near Chancellorsville. Gettysburg broke them.

Thousands.

Wounded men laid head to foot, lined up in fence rows, under wagons, beside pigpens. One man had a cannonball lodged in his thigh. He lived four days.

The boy didn’t blink anymore.
Didn’t cry.
Didn’t pray.

But he watched.

And every night, they came.

He once saw a woman lift a soldier’s head and hold it to her chest like a babe. He had no jaw, couldn’t speak, but he wept like a child and died in her arms.

He saw a man in a cavalry coat offer a battered comb to a fevered boy. The boy took it. Smiled. Stopped breathing.

The ghosts were never loud.
They didn’t wail.
They didn’t rattle chains.

They just came.

When needed.

When called.

The boy changed.

He walked with the doctor now, handed him blades, held bones, tied ligatures. He could smell infection from ten feet out. Knew when a man would live. Knew when a man wouldn’t.

The doctor trusted him. Called him “son” once.

But the boy just nodded.

He wasn’t anybody’s son anymore.

One night, they came all at once.

A hundred.

Maybe more.

Lined up at the tree line behind the camp. Silent. Watching.

Some wept. Some smiled. One waved.

The boy stood alone, barefoot in the cold dirt, his apron stiff as armor.

He stepped toward them.

“I can’t take them home,” he said.
“They’re already home.”

A woman stepped forward. Wore a gray shawl and held a toy horse carved from wood. Her voice was dry leaves.

“You helped him die kind.”

He swallowed.
“I tried.”

“That’s all any of us can do,” she said.

Then she turned.

And the rest followed her into the trees.

When the war ended, or at least slowed enough to fake it, the boy didn’t go home.

What was there?

Instead, he walked. Found places that needed a hand. Tents. Barns. Fields turned red.

Sometimes he arrived just before the dying started.

Sometimes he came after.

But always, he waited.

And when the sick or wounded asked if someone had come—someone they swore they saw—he never told them otherwise.

“Yeah,” he’d say.
“They were here.”

And sometimes, he’d see the shape, just at the edge of a doorway or in the shimmer of lantern smoke.

A mother.
A father.
A friend.
Someone waiting to make sure they didn’t go alone.

Some ghosts don’t haunt.

They just remember.

They walk the long road.
Not to scare.
But to guide.

And when they find the ones they loved, they whisper them home.

Not with thunder.
Not with tears.

Just with presence.