The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Soldier at the fall of Mally’s Hope

Grayson Carver is a redheaded stick. He is eighteen and chomps sweet nicotine gum. His wide eyes don’t blink as he surveys the darkened field of earth outside the foxhole’s concrete window. He has a pair of binoculars, and his chewing slows as he raises them to his face.

Behind him, a complex dripping of machinery and wire hung like black lichen from the…