1865
My mother hastened toward Washington once the letter I wrote was received. It was deemed incoherent and “frankly worrisome” by my father. They now knew my precise whereabouts. It had been tactical on my part. I had hoped just for this outcome. But on rereading the letter much later, I realized how much of my delirium had seeped into the discourse. It must have worried them terribly. The letter read:
Ah, Mother – the strangest creatures lurk in the battlefield. Out they come in their many hundreds, a separate siege it is, all at once from the tangled stomachs of the dead and dying. The creatures hover and scream their ghastly screams across the field. They are tiny, misted-over men, all sloe-eyed and bewildered, which then feed with ravenous intensity on those bodies which are not fa
