Clover Hearts

Clover Hearts

Noel Laflin

9-1-14

 

The young private spit upon the wet stone and slowly drew the blade of his whittling knife back and forth, back and forth. 

He studied the small red chunk of cherry wood sitting beside him and listened to the rhythm of the scraping.  The man closed his eyes and looked for inspiration. And, then, he had it. He envisioned a ring – a lucky ring to bring him home.

It took a year of tramping and camping and fighting in eight ferocious battles and then months of hospital recuperation in order to complete the carving.  But in the end, he had his ring – as well as his life.  He took them both home.

The cherry wood root and its youthful creator went unscathed through the likes of The First Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, Seven Pines, Savage’s Station, Glendale, Malvern Hill, and Second Bull Run – where it had all begun ironically enough.

By then, the ring had taken shape.  Viewed from above it bore the likeness of four connecting hearts, giving the added illusion of a four-leaf clover.  Two additional hearts were carved opposite one another on its sides.  ‘Heart is where the home is,' the man thought.  A four-leaf clover is mighty lucky too, his Irish roots reasoned further.  He was nearly done with the talisman by the time his regiment made camp outside of a creek called Antietam.  They were out to stop Robert E. Lee from making further advancements into Union held land.  It was the morning of September 17, 1862.

A musket ball tore into his upper thigh later that day, taking him out of action.  He was one of the lucky ones.  Twenty-three thousand soldiers were either killed, injured or went missing over a twelve hour span.  It went down in history as the highest number of American casualties in a single battle.  The bodies of the dead and injured were packed so thick in a place called The Cornfield that men could not help but step on their fallen comrades as they rushed into the relentless slaughter.  The Union forces prevailed that day.  But Lee escaped nonetheless and the war would drag on for another two-and-a-half years.

Meanwhile, my great-grandfather and his ring were taken to a hospital in Maryland where both survived and later discharged from the Army of the Potomac on St. Patrick’s Day, 1863.  The ring’s four clover-shaped hearts were graceful, pure of form, and smooth to the touch by then.