A Glimp of Heaven
goregrish
The sky was a pale pink arc, slowly sinking beneath a growing blackness. Kimble stared at it and thought it a rarity; much more aesthetically pleasing than most sunts; more vivid, and inten; much more detailed than usual, with an amazing clarity. It made him think of heaven, which he had been taught was somewhere up in the sky, and that made him think about all of the people who had preceded him to that place, many of them under tragic circumstances, or very unexpectedly.
Then, a bizarre image popped into his head, uninvited. There were tombstones in the pinkish sky, dotting it like gross birds clipped of their wings.
"Kimble," a voice called out beside him. "Are you okay?"
Kimble turned around and could barely e the silhouette of a young man beside him. It was Ashton, another private who had somehow survived as long as Kimble had. Ashton always camped with him or near him, but the sunt had taken Kimble away, and for a moment Ashton had appeared as an utter stranger.
"Yes, I'm fine. I was simply admiring that fine view to the west, and thinking about things."
"What kind of things?"
He looked at Ashton more cloly. He was still innocent, despite the carnage and gore he had lived through. His eyes still had a sparkle in them that the war hadn't dulled yet. His face, babyish and pale, almost feminine, betrayed no cret carnal knowledge of the world. Perhaps, Kimble thought, Ashton wasn't smart enough to comprehend what was really happening in the war.
"Not things, Ashton - more like people. I suppo I was thinking about the dead."
Nary a twitch crosd Ashton's face. Kimble couldn't tell if he had even heard at first. Then the young man sighed deeply and nodded his head.
"Many good men have died," Ashton agreed. "I suppo it must be God's will."
Kimble's eyes narrowed. That comment annoyed him - he hated simplifications. They were the cheapest way he knew of to ignore a problem. The conversation was probably a waste of time, but he continued it anyway.
"That's not what I meant. I'm not talking about this puny war, or the immediate future. I'm referring to all people, of all nations. What about people who died thousands of years ago? What about Julius Caesar, or Napoleon - where are people like that now?"
< 2 >
"Heaven or hell, I suppo," Ashton said slowly.
"And where is that?"
Ashton looked up at the sky, where the bright pink was quickly bleeding into dying orange embers. Finally, he confesd, "I don't know."
"You e, Ashton, that sunt made me wonder if all of tho people are somewhere, all together, all of them waiting for the rest of us to join them. That color in the sky a few minutes ago - I've never en a color like that before. That color must be something from heaven, becau you don't e that color naturally occurring down here on earth. All of tho people must be where that color comes from."
This emed to be more than young Ashton could take. He shook his head, then shrugged and clod his eyes, as if meditating.
Kimble took this as free licen to continue.ball valve
惊喜的英文单词"All the men of this war, I agree, they've got to be somewhere, too. But I wonder if they leave right away, or linger somewhere in-between, or if they watch themlves for a while
before they quit this place. Do they still feel pain? I don't mean I mean do they despi the war, and the killing and suffering, and the nless fighting? Do they follow us into battle?"高考英语作文出炉>arthritis
"Stop it!" Ashton jumped up, panting, his eyes squinting with tiny tears. "Just stop it! They're all gone, and we will be, too, tomorrow! They're not up in the sky - they are gone! Forever!" Ashton stumbled away into the night.
Kimble's eyes did not follow him.
To hell with him, anyway, he thought. The young man would be okay after sleeping on it. Kimble couldn't help it if Ashton couldn't face reality. Ashton was still too young. He would fight in the morning and be fine. Maybe they would even find the shoes they were looking for in the nearby village of Gettysburg.
That night Kimble dreamed and saw the faces in the sky instead of the tombstones. He saw his mother, who had died of tuberculosis the spring past. He hadn't been granted leave from his unit, even for such a sad occasion, and he suppod that he should rent
the Colonel for that. But he didn't. He saw Lieutenant Bowles, the twenty-one year old cavalier from Fluvanna County who had ridden into camp standing on his hor. At Antietam, he had been shot off the same hor, torn in half by a screaming Yankee shell. He saw Carter Williams, his original messmate, a fellow philosopher and student of books. Kimble could e his mustached smile as he quoted the lines of Shakespeare that would make young ladies turn red. Williams had died beside him instantly, shot between the eyes at a long forgotten place called Green Hollow. He was the only man in the company hurt there.理财产品英文
< 3 >
Most of all, he saw his young wife, who had pasd away two years before the war even began. He couldn't even say her name anymore. But he saw her face, and he knew that somewhere she was still alive; somewhere she still smiled with lips that had blood flowing through them; somewhere her warm breath still clouded the air with perfume; somewhere her voice still filled someone's ears with melodious tones of joy.
That place was a mystery, though. He had been unable to locate it. He had traveled in the Confederate army from Georgia, now all the way into Pennsylvania, and he had en no sign of it anywhere. Certainly, the hundreds and thousands of dead corps hadn't pointed any definite direction. He had read the Bible, along with every other important spiritual work, and found no clear directions. The place did exist, though, and the sunt made him feel clo to it. He thought of his wife again. He wondered if the grimy, disfigured soldiers were there with her - or Napoleon, or Caesar.
He woke up to the bugle call and the scattered sound of muskets and rifles. The promid battle was beginning.
He found Ashton in a much better mood. The young man smiled at him, as he lovingly wiped the stock of his captured Enfield rifle clean with a grea cloth. Nearby, the company was forming up; the Colonel barking at loafers.
"I think I know where that place you're looking for is," Ashton said, smiling devilishly. "It's a few steps beyond that ridge where the cemetery is."
lipoKimble nodded. He was referring to the hill where the Yankees where entrenched, waiting for them.
"That's hell, not heaven," Kimble said.
"I've been thinking about what you said," Ashton continued. "I think all soldiers must go to heaven, becau they all are following orders. It doesn't matter which side you're on, or which side is right. And heaven must be somewhere out of reach, or el people would go there when they weren't suppod to. So heaven must be up there somewhere, in the sky." Ashton pointed his bayonet upward.
Kimble saw a barn swallow swoop down near them, dashing after an invisible inct, then pull back toward the clouds. "It's got to be further than that. Heaven can't be so clo that birds can get there."
< 4 >
"Why not?" Ashton asked.
The Colonel moved clor to them, and shouted in Kimble's face. "Asmble, gentlemen.
I shouldn't have to say it twice! You, Kimble, you cho to be a private, so act like one!"
The Colonel referred to the fact that Kimble was forty, wealthy, and had turned down a commission to lead this same regiment (in which ca the Colonel would have taken his orders). Instead, he had enlisted as a lowly private, with the lukewarm intention of committing a gallant form of suicide. So far, however, the gods of war had not cooperated. They had tried to decorate him twice for bravery, and both times his ungrateful, apathetic reaction had slowed down and eventually killed the paperwork.
As they joined dozens of others in formation beyond a row of apple trees, the bullets whizzing overhead momentarily distracted Kimble. Perhaps today would be the day. That was depressing, but also somewhat appealing.
Ashton was growing nervous, as he always did right before the moment of truth. He could not stand still, and the Colonel curd at him.
"Do they have apples in heaven?" Ashton asked.
Kimble ignored him. He stared at the rotting apples on the ground, and thought about how much they were like soldiers who walked into battle attached to their own living tree,
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only to fall to the ground to slowly decay and shrivel up. But apples were not living, breathing, ntient beings.
欲望都市第四季The charge began before he was ready, and Kimble stumbled. He immediately recovered, and the sounds of battle suddenly rushed over him like an angry storm. He heard the boom of artillery; smelled gunpowder; saw smoke, and watched men already lying on the ground bleeding, moaning, swearing, crying. There was a hor with an empty saddle running around on three legs, it's fourth leg shot off near the hock. It was screaming like a human.
Kimble wondered if hors went to heaven.
Then he began to e the enemy in front of them. They were lined up behind a stone wall. A cannon flashed behind the wall and an entire wave of men to Kimble's left fell. Some of the blue men ran out from the main line and began fighting by hand with the rebel attackers.
Kimble attacked fiercely. For the first time since the charge began, he coolly raid his weapon and leveled it at the clost target. A slap to his shoulder, and the blue soldier sn
热门专业排名apped, falling. He found another blue blur and smashed it viciously with the butt of his rifle. Another ran toward him, tripped and fell, and Kimble ran his bayonet through his arm, and then his stomach. He crouched down and carefully loaded his gun, making sure he placed only one charge in it. Then he cho another target, and watched again as another blue blur fell.
< 5 >
Somehow, in the utter chaos of battle, he heard an officer ordering them to fall back. Kimble reluctantly followed a much smaller mass of men back toward friendly lines, pausing every hundred feet or so to load and fire.
When they reached the comparative safety of the apple trees, he began to look for the rest of his company.
The wounded were everywhere. Their pitiful pleas for water sounded like some sick droning swarm of gigantic incts. He found Ashton among them. Kimble and three other
s standing nearby were the only members of the company unscathed. Ashton was lying on the grass, a bloody bandage wrapped around his head.
"How far did you get?" Ashton asked.
"I got right up to them," Kimble said. "We fought hell out of them."
He gently pulled the bandage back and examined the wound. It was not bleeding any more, but a glossy clear fluid was oozing from the hole above Ashton's ear.
"Doc says I'm lucky," Ashton said. "I could have bled to death." He suddenly winced. "But I do feel right dizzy, and my whole head aches."
"You rest," Kimble said, pushing the bandage back into place.
Ashton would die, he knew, and the doctor was merely being kind not to inform him so. Kimble had en such brain injuries before, and when blood came, they lived. When the clear fluid came forth, they died.
"Guess we won't find heaven today, will we?" Ashton whispered.
Kimble left him.
That night he buried Ashton. He didn't want to leave him in enemy soil, but there was no choice. He formed a crude cross of sticks above the place, then sat and waited for the sunt.
The sunt never arrived. Instead, the evening was overcast, and night came on so subtly that Kimble wondered if he had been sleeping when he saw the moon glimmering behind the clouds.
He tried to be scientific and logical. The moon was obviously in the sky above the earth, probably hundreds of miles away. The stars were probably further than that. If Ashton had been right, and heaven was out of reach for the living, then it had to be beyond even the stars.
Kimble was an avowed atheist since the death of his wife, but he muttered a prayer out of respect for Ashton.
