The gray wool uniform was sticking to Sam's lean frame by the time they broke ranks. The soldiers had stopped in an orchard and it came down the line that they were free to help themselves as they pleased. They had not waited for orders; hundreds of eager hands pulled at the trees. The sounds of gunshot and cannonfire were replaced by the thud of fruit on soft earth.

   Sam flopped under the shade of one twisting gnarled limb, an orange in his sweating fingers. Metal buckles, clips, even bullets clinked with the movement. His rifle was laid aside, momentarily forgotten in the dappled face of the fresh jewel. Unkempt fingernails dug into the soft peel. He began to strip the skin away. Little streamlets of juice ran down his bony knuckles and into his rough-edged sleeves. Its sharp tangy smell pierced the dusty afternoon air.

   Despite the heat, yearn of his tongue for a taste, despite the hollow rumble of his stomach that seemed constant since the day of his enlistment, Sam took his time. The rind came away in one long, curling, cream-colored ribbon.

   It reminded him of Julia's hair, her precious ringlets.

   But he tried to push away thoughts of her, forced himself to think of the orange instead. But that gave way to dreams of marmalade on toast. Fresh, cool tea with a sprig of mint. His mamma's long porch, the brilliant expanse of green lawn. Valleys of cotton tufts in the distance, like snow. Oh, and the pale blue of mountains. And Julia . . . her hair . . .

   He tore at the orange, ripped shreds of pale white and supple flesh. Juice dribbled down his chin, kissed his neck, slipped into his dirty sweat-stained collar. He did not wipe it away.

   Half-way through, spitting seeds and pulling orange strings from his teeth, he paused to gasp. For there, at the center of the fruit, was something quite unexpected. Nestled carefully at the orange's heart was the perfect crescent of a single golden-brown eyelash.

   Before he held it in the sunlight, before he peered at it so closely that he feared to breathe, he knew it belonged to her. That somehow, by some miracle, it was once a part of her beautiful face. The one he thought of each night before sleep, desire choking handfuls of grass in his fists. The one he thought of in the morning as the sun climbed slowly over the misty hills, turning all the dewy meadows to silver.

   Julia.

   Even holding the lash in his orange-sticky palm brought back the smell of her, vanilla and magnolias. He could forget the scratch of the uniform against his skin and the acrid reek of body-strewn fields.

   Julia.

   But how? Had she wandered here beneath the lace of her parasol, the frilly hem of her petticoat just brushing the ground? He looked for a sign of her. There was only the soldier-trampled, fruit-littered earth of the orchard. The ribbon of his orange peel in the grass.

   Sam held the lash between thumb and forefinger and with his other hand rummaged desperately through his pockets and pack. The tinderbox. He could not find even a small paper, wrapping the tiny curl in an orange leaf instead. This he tucked into a corner of the tin box.

   In the peninsula, he would place one hand over the pocket where the box was nestled, remembering its precious treasure. In the entrenchments of Chancellorsville, in the Wilderness, at Antietam, he would close his eyes while lead bullets and mortars whistled around his head. While men screamed and lay dying at his elbows, he would run his fingertips along the cool metal edge of that box.

   Julia, Julia.


--- --- ---


   After surrender, after silence had descended upon stone commemorative markers and, one by one, those who remembered the war died, a little metal box would be tossed into a crate of old things upon the shelf of an antiques and curiosities shop. A child wandering in search of treasure would happen upon it. Unable to resist the secrets promised by a stuck lid, tender young fingers would pry it open.

   And discover dust within.

   "What'd you find, honey?" a mildly interested parent would ask.

   "Nothing," she'd say. "There's nothing at all."