Ashokan Farewell by Jeffrey Allen White (read this if .txt) 📕

Ashoken Farewell



by Jeffrey Allen White


Chapter 1

The biting cold passed through his body. Slivers of ice cold steel penetrated his chest and lungs. The harsh winter wind tore through him, making him gasp for every breath. His throat stung as he gasped, his insides burning with a pain he had never known before, as if a knife passed through his chest, slicing him in half.

The storm had raged on for the past two days. Many men had died hideous deaths of the severe exposure along with festering wounds they had collected in battle. Bodies were frozen where they fell, in macabre, haunting positions and poses. A sterile wasteland of frozen men and boys and their stilled lives were everywhere. A man could not walk without tripping or bumping into one. Their flesh frozen solid and their faces wearing their last expression, one of great pain, despair and pain.

John sat motionless in the snow-laden trench. His feet and legs buried beneath the continuous falling of snow. Ice forming a blanket of death around him. Both of his legs had stopped hurting and now throbbed with a slow even beat. The sounds of war and the anguish and agony turned to a distant roar but still menacingly close like a buzzard circling the dying animal.

The stinging had left his body and in return, a dull throb pulsated with every beat of his heart. His head pounded with his iced blood. His bleeding had slowed but the life was slowly leaving him.

It had been a week, no, two weeks since he last felt any kind of warmth. John tried to remember the last hot meal he had eaten. The battalion of men, the forty-third regiment had traveled through most of Virginia in freezing rain and blinding snow. The battalion had split up and took two different routes planning to meet in Lexington. The weather had turned to rain and then to snow. There were only a few men left and they had been making their way to a rendezvous with the other men when the storm hit. John was the only one still alive now.

The first Lieutenant, Avery Johnson, had died the second day of the storm. He was educated and from a prosperous and well-known family back home. Too delicate a nature to serve in the army, John thought. Avery’s stature and demeanor was not suited for war. Avery had been an educator, a teacher in a private academy for other prosperous young men of wealthy families like himself. He had fallen and broken his leg badly. The bones had pierced his thigh and he lost a great deal of blood. The cold just was too much and he died the next night as they all huddled together for warmth.

John brushed his hand against his face, clearing the snow and ice from his beard with his hand John noticed he had lost two fingers from frostbite. Their angry black stumps swollen and putrefied. His woolen cap pulled low onto his brow had also frozen solid, making his forehead jut out over his eyes. All he could do now was to keep what vision he had left clear. Across from John in the trench were his two friends, Graham Matthews and William O’Neill.

He had known them both from before the war. Graham was a farmer. Tall, well muscled but not too bright. He had left school early to take on the responsibility of his families’ farm when his father died. He never married, as his work took up all of his time caring for the farm and his five younger siblings.

William was a bookkeeper. He had worked for John’s family in their business. Both John and William worked for his father keeping the books for his mercantile business. William was almost like John’s brother, he only had two sisters and they were older. They had known each other since they were children. John was William’s best man when he married Melinda. They had two small children, both boys, Zachary John and Brent Andrew. William gave his first-born John as his middle name in honor of their friendship.

John had always looked out for William and even saved his life one day by pulling him down to the floor during a robbery. Three men had entered his father’s back offices and demanded money. Before anyone could react, one of the gunmen fired a shot out of nervousness hitting a wooden box of buttons. The other men followed suit as they were forced into believing they were being fired upon. William was closest to them with John just sitting beside him. The first shot passed through the wooden box and buttons spilled onto the desk and floor and then hit the wall behind John’s head. The second shot hit John in the shoulder as his tackled William to the floor among the strewn buttons. It all happened so fast.

The men fled without even taking any money. They had bungled up somehow and just retreated as fast as they came in. Men were shouting everywhere. John could hear his father as he grabbed a gun from his desk and followed the fleeing men out into the street. John’s father stepped over him and William, not knowing his son had been shot.

William held John’s wound by pressing his hand firmly against it. As John lay there, he could see his father standing in the open doorway taking aim with his gun. More shots were fired and John saw his father go down as his own consciousness left him.

John awoke with William standing beside him. He was in his own bed. He cried out as he tried to move. His wound was dressed and tended. William placed a wet rag against John’s forehead. Wiping his dried lips with the rag, he offered a smile.

“I knew you were in there.” William had stayed by his friend’s side for almost three days. Watching John burn with fever and causing his body to shake and tremble. There was a great deal of blood loss and the Doctor Higgins said he did not know if John would make it. The convulsions John had worried him even more. Men that took to convulsions rarely would live, as their body would give up. He had seen this before.

“William”, John whispered. “MY... my... father.” It took every ounce of his strength to pass these words from his dried, parched lips. He looked up at William. “... Father...” John whispered again.

Tears rolled down William’s eyes. He had to tell his friend that his father had been killed in the attempted robbery. A single shot through the heart. “I am sorry, John, your father... your father is gone.” William grabbed John’s reaching hand.

“No!” John screamed and he tried to raise himself up. The pain throwing him back onto the bed causing his stitches to open and bleed a little. Fresh blood stained through the bandages. John held tightly onto William’s hand and then he was asleep again.

William stayed by John’s bed until he was out of danger and he had started to eat. “A good sign of his returning health.” Doctor Higgins said. A servant had brought in a bowl of mashed vegetables. William hand fed his friend slowly making sure he swallowed his food before giving him another and wiping his chin with any that may have run out of his mouth.

“William,” John had been in and out of it for days with the fever but today he felt himself present. “William... thank you.” John tried a smile and grimaced with pain.

“It should be I, thanking you. After all, you saved my life.” William smiled again. John returned the smile and squeezed his hand. He though of his father as he fell back to sleep.

The next three months were spent selling his father’s inventory and they both entered the army to serve as the country divided by a civil war. The north and the south fighting each other, man against man.

John tried to remember when he last saw William alive. Was it a day ago? Two? Or was it merely minutes? John had lost track of time and space and much feeling in his body. He wiped his brow again and pulled his collar higher up onto his face.

He looked over at Graham and William again; both were covered with snow. What life they had was now gone. Only a faint silhouette of their bodies was visible. Soon they would be completely buried in the snow along with John.

The wind picked up and more ice and snow blew onto him from outside the trench. John tried to move his legs. He could not feel them anymore. He was dying; he knew it. He tried to pull himself away from the wall of the trench. His back pulled away and he could feel snowfall around his shoulders and down along his back.

Reaching out in front of him, John grabbed what he could within his reach. He could feel very little. It was William’s hand. His frozen dead hand. John pulled himself towards his fallen friend. Slowly he fell forward against William knocking the snow