Let’s hear it for Charles W. Campbell,
a one-time carpenter from Iowa
(late of Custer’s 7th Cavalry, G Company)
who joined a squad fetching water
to wet the lips of the dying wounded
when he took a rifle slug to the shoulder,
told the rest to go on without him
and missed his shot at a Medal of Honor.
Gallantry in action, they called it.
Twenty-four awarded to boys carrying jugs
of dirty river to the mouths
of other boys who got themselves
mangled up and gut-shot by the natives,
a storm of Lakota and Cheyenne
with good rifles and nothing to lose.
Historians go silent after this—
at least so far as Campbell is concerned.
Maybe he went back to driving nails
with his good arm, showing off
that knotty scar to flouncing barmaids.
Until one day, he finds his fists
the color of liver-stained sackcloth,
steadying the ladder his grandson climbs.
It’s autumn. The roof needs mending.
The grandson skips over loose sheathing.
He is tired of being scolded.
So young, he cannot imagine falling
into that wide, fretful embrace.