I recently picked up The Penguin Book of American Short Stories, edited by James Cochrane, which traces the evolution of the short story form in American literature and is it forcing me out of my twentieth century literature comfort zone, but I’m really enjoying it. Authors I’d probably shy away from with false presumptions – Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Francis Bret Harte are just a few I’ve encountered so far -  are proving to be completely enthralling. Ambrose Bierce, on the other hand, I had read before – The Devil’s Dictionary when I was much more sneeringly cynical – and assumed he wrote solely as a humorist. Turns out Bierce lead quite the fascinating and diverse life. “One of the Missing” – available to read online – published in 1888, is a powerful piece set in the American Civil War.

Jerome Searing is an orderly serving in Georgia in Sherman’s army. An exceptional marksman, he is given the task “to get as near the enemy’s lines as possible and learn all that he [can.]” As he enters the depths of the forest, his comrades predicting they’ll never see Searing again, contemplating that their enemy could potentially get hold of his rifle when he comes to his certain end. Methodically Searing makes his way through the growth, the danger of the task exciting him emotionally, but not physically. Finding the enemy gone, he discovers a plantation house, deserted, desolate, and in a state of great decay.

But it was decreed from the beginning of time that Private Searing was not to murder anybody that bright summer morning, nor was the Confederate retreat to be announced by him. For countless ages events had been so matching themselves together in that wondrous mosaic to some parts of which, dimly discernible, we give the name of history, that the acts which he had in will would have marred the harmony of this pattern.

While aiming his rifle at some distant Confederate soldiers, the plantation house collapses around Searing. Meanwhile, Searing’s brother Lieutenant  Adrian Searing is directed to advance in the same direction as his brother. Jerome regains consciousness, briefly hallucinating that he has been buried and his wife is kneeling on his chest. Caught trapped beneath a number of fallen beams, with only his right arm able to move, he slowly struggles to free himself. Unable to move the debris, he notices his rifle pointing at his forehead, remembering that he had cocked the gun and set the trigger and that the slightest touch could set it off. Continuing to free himself, he realizes that the rubble too could discharge the rifle, leaving him effectively helpless.

Gradually he became sensible of a pain in his forehead – a dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but growing more and more uncomfortable. He opened his eyes and it was gone – closed them and it returned. ‘The devil!’ he said irrelevantly, and stared again at the sky. He heard the singing of birds, the strangely metallic note of the meadow lark, suggesting the clash of vibrant blades.

A severe pain in his head, he floats in and out of consciousness, sinking into a number of reveries. Fear and pain take hold of him, and he attempts to discharge the rifle to end it; only when he successfully uses a board to touch the trigger, the gun doesn’t fire but Jerome Searing dies regardless. He is, twenty two minutes after Lieutenant Adrian Searing has started in the same direction, discovered by the soldier, who pronounces the man dead, at least having been dead a week.

What struck me about “One of the Missing” is how intensely such a short passage of time is described and drawn out. Time is distorted – not only in Adrian’s estimation of the time of Jerome’s death – but in the narrative itself. What occurs within the twenty minutes reads like Jerome is in agony for days. War changes a man so irrevocably that his own brother is unable to recognize him. The suggestion that the stray bullet from the rifle has already penetrated Jerome’s brain is disturbing in his own inability to consider it a possibility, even as he feels a searing pain in his head. Even without having comprehensive knowledge of the historical context, “One of the Missing” is a war story that doesn’t romanticize the damaging effects of war and the split second decisions made under immense pressure.

[image credit: Ambrose Bierce, portrait by J.H.E. Partington.]