Beneath a Yankee Sky
There was an icy edge to the evening air, a sharpness that rustled the leaves and cut across the babbling creek where Brance Brenneman squatted as he rinsed off his tin plate and cup. Winter’s coming touch tinted that breeze—though it was still September, Brance felt the chill in the heavy Pennsylvania air. It cooled his heated skin when it danced through the bushy auburn hair corkscrewed over his scalp, slipped between the buttons of his old Union shirt to tease over his chest, tickled up his bare legs to prickle the sensitive skin beneath the dingy underpants he wore. Somewhere to the east, a godless battle continued to wage between North and South, pitting brothers against one another in a war none of them wanted. It had been a good six months since he’d left the f
