Here's a bit from that work. (It's near the beginning. It was originally the start of chapter one, but it isn't any more.)
Kevin Mulcahey was carrying a torch in his hand when he found the dead Rebel, even though it was broad daylight.
He was alone on a road in Belmont, Missouri, the rest of his squad being likewise engaged in burning the Rebel camp; a waste of perfectly good food, thought Kevin.
But in the manner of the Army the General had told the Colonel to burn everything, the Colonel had told the Major, the Major had told the Captain, and so on until the Sergeant told Private Mulcahey, and, there being no one further to tell, the deed must be done by himself and his mates.
The Rebel wore an officer's uniform: a Major in the 11th Louisiana. He had a bullet hole in his left breast and another in his left temple. He was dead and no mistake.
This wasn't the first dead man that Kevin had ever seen and he knew exactly what to do. He approached the dead Major and made a cross on what was left of his forehead, saying "Into Thy hands I commend thy spirit."
Kevin had studied for the priesthood in Ireland before he decided that if he was going to sleep with a woman he wanted to marry her and that he was of a mind to someday sleep with a woman, and so had shipped on a packet, jumped ship in New York, and made his way to Chicago, where he made a living carving tombstones.
At the commencement of hostilities he joined the 27th Illinois Infantry for lack of better to do, which brought him eventually to this dusty road on the seventh of November of 1861.
Having given a benediction, Kevin looked more closely at the Rebel. The dead man had a sword in his right hand, the blade smeared with blood.
"Gave as good as ye got, did ye?" Kevin said, and pulled the sword from the man's grip. Then he unbuckled the swordbelt to take the scabbard and patted down the Major's pockets for tobacco or gold; either would serve.
Neither were present -- only a fistful of letters, some Confederate scrip, and naught else. Mulcahey was standing there still when Sergeant Dusselman, a Pennsylvania Dutchman who had worked in a butcher shop in Cicero until the war came along, shouted, "Mulcahey, you damned Mick! Quitcher gawkin', man, and look lively. We're pulling out. Back to the assembly, damn your eyes," then passed on along the line, shouting curses and imprecations to the others in the squad as he went. "We're on the boat out of here in jig time, damn you all, or you'll be left behind and no sorrow to me."
With that Private Mulcahey trotted off the road, put his torch to a hayrick, then headed north toward the rest of his regiment. To the south the rattle of musketry told him that the Rebels were coming again. Across the river the booming of the water battery at Columbus increased in tempo.
This is first draft. At the time I wrote that I only knew in general terms what would happen in the book. Who eventually turned out to be the main character was a complete surprise to me.
