Elias watched.

Elias didn’t laugh. He remembered the winter at Valley Forge. He remembered seeing a man freeze to death sitting up, still holding his rifle. The oak didn’t know about that. But Elias did.

He marched to the North Bridge. When the shot was fired around the world, Elias was there. He came home three weeks later, thinner, quieter, with powder burns on his wrist. The oak had survived a spring hailstorm. So had he.

September 19 – After Antietam, the creek ran red. I saw a boy from Georgia who couldn’t have been fifteen. He asked me for a drink. I gave him mine. He died an hour later. What are we doing?

“One tree,” he whispered.

July 12 – We marched through Virginia. A woman threw a rock at us. Then she gave us water. I don’t understand any of it.