Ghost Soldier by Elaine Marie Alphin Page A

eyes widened. “Instead of working out the mathematics on paper, or trying to calculate it in your head, this computer figures?”
    â€œBasically.” I wondered how something so simple as turning on my Mac could be so complicated when you tried to explain it.
    Rich turned around and looked back at the buildings with awe. “They make these circuit boards and computers right here?”
    I nodded.
    A grin lit up Rich’s face. “And the Yankees said the South would never have industry! They said we couldn’t build anything here—we could only grow things and we’d never amount to much. Hah! And now the Yankees are buying our circuit boards! At Petersburg we tried to figure the angle and corrections to aim the mortars, and we had to do it all with pencil and paper—half the time we got it wrong. To have a computer that could figure for you! And we’re building them right here in North Carolina!”
    He let loose a whoop of delight and I laughed with him. Then I remembered where we were and hoped the guard wasn’t watching. He’d think I was crazy, laughing all alone in the park. “How about we find this box that Louise left for you?”
    Rich looked around suddenly. “They’ve cleared the land,” he said, his face stricken as if the thought had only just occurred to him.
    I studied the trees around us. “Some of the pine trees are old,” I told him. “Where’s your oak tree? If these trees lasted, it could have, too.”
    He looked at the pines. “They are old,” he said slowly, “much older than the computer buildings. Our house was back there, near where the buildings are, but the oak was over that way from the house, near the creek.” He pointed his musket past the pines and weeping willows, to the far edge of the recreation area. “Come on.”
    I followed Rich, ducking beneath the weeping willows and sweeping aside their drooping branches while he appeared to walk right through them. The sight was kind of creepy. We crossed the street we’d driven up before, then walked along a lawn and went over the paved top of a culvert filled with swampy, stagnant water.
    â€œThere.” Rich pointed to a stand of scrub oaks and pine trees. “It should be around there, just this side of the creek.”
    â€œThat’s Stirrup Iron Creek?” I asked, looking down at the murky water, thick with overgrown weeds.
    â€œWell, the creek used to be much larger,” he said. “But they changed its course as they cleared the land.” He shook his head in amazement. “I saw this powerful machine pushing the dirt—no horses at all, just this big machine! To change the course of a waterway with an axe and a shovel and a mattock is a tremendous undertaking, but that machine made it so easy.”
    â€œI don’t know—it seems a waste to sacrifice the creek and change the lay of the land in exchange for industrial development,” I told him. “I’d hate it if someone dug up my garden back home to widen a street or build another house or something.”
    Rich looked at me, his black eyes unreadable. “I suppose you have to choose whether to move forward or stay where you are. You can grow things on the land, or you can build industry, even if it changes the land. We might have won the War if we had built more industry back then.”
    I shrugged and followed Rich toward the trees.
    But when we got there, there was no sign of his tree with the low-hanging branches. I couldn’t see any old oak trees at all, just some young pin oaks and scrub pines. And beyond those, I could hear a bulldozer digging—that must have been the machine Rich had seen before.
    â€œThe tree must be here!” Rich cried, frantically. “It was here the last time I looked!”
    â€œWhen was that?” I asked. “The time you went through the buildings?”
    He shook his head.