Beauty From Ashes (73 page)

Louisa Fletcher greeted the Reverend Benedict at the front door of the cottage where her daughter lived with her year-old son,

Daniel Webster Cole, and her 993 four-year-old daughter, Mary Warren.

“I’m sorry to be a bit late, Mrs. Fletcher,” Benedict said as he entered the well-furnished house, the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer in hand, “but my poor wife is so tired from packing to leave for our exile to Canada, I simply had to help her a bit before I came to baptize the baby. Oh, I see you have my font ready. Good. My time is rather limited. We leave the day after tomorrow, you know.”

“Yes,” Louisa said. “And we’re ever so grateful that you’re taking the time to stop by. Little Webster Cole’s baptism has great meaning for his mother, Georgia, and for me. My daughter will join us with baby Webster any minute now. And I must tell you”—she lowered her voice— “Georgia looks as careworn as she really is. She’s so worried about Henry. He’s now been moved from a Confederate prison in Atlanta to Charleston, South Carolina. Georgia can no longer take him good food or clean clothing. It’s just too far.”

“The war has truly cut us all into pieces, hasn’t it? I do wish I had been able

to influence Mr. Cole toward the South. Such a fine man to be imprisoned when his city needs him so. But, we disagree, so we must, in the face of such catastrophic events, remain true in our spirits—the spirit of love must prevail.”

“There even you and I agree,” Louisa said, “and I do thank you for allowing me a few trips to the Communion table with my fellow Christians at St. James toward the last.”

Benedict cleared his throat, a bit self-consciously, she thought. “Uh, yes, indeed. I accept your gratitude, Mrs. Fletcher.”

At that moment Georgia came down the hall from the rear of the Cole cottage, Daniel Webster in her arms. She and the Reverend Benedict exchanged a few words, and as he spoke, he was finding in his prayer book the ritual for the Holy Baptism of children, which he read in the weary, defeated voice of a man far beyond his forty years. At the proper time he dipped his fingers in the water in Louisa’s china soup tureen, touched little Webster’s head, was joined by the two women in the final prayer of consecration, and it was finished.

There were tears on Georgia’s 995 cheeks, but her face showed understandable pride because her son had smiled throughout, and Louisa couldn’t help asking how many other babies were ever so well behaved.

“Not many,” Benedict said, drying his fingers on a clean linen towel there for that purpose. “In fact, I fail to see how the Stubinger baby could have done anything else but scream and cry throughout his baptism day before yesterday.”

Louisa took a step toward him. “Tell us, please, how are they faring at my friend Anne Fraser’s house? It pains me to say this, but I was visiting when the Yankees first arrived there, and they forced me to leave.”

“But they didn’t harm you in any way, Mother,” Georgia said. “They just brought you here to my house.”

“No doubt,” the Reverend Benedict said scornfully, “because of the arrest of your husband as a Yankee spy, Mrs. Cole.”

“Georgia,” Louisa said firmly, “it’s well known that you and the Reverend Benedict do not agree politically. We all know that. I just need to be sure my friend Anne Fraser and her

girls are doing all right now.”

“As well as could be expected,” he said, “considering the savage conduct of her most unwelcome houseguests from the North. During the few minutes I was there to baptize little John Couper Fraser Stubinger, I could not avoid noticing that they’ve set up their operating tables almost directly beneath Mrs. Fraser’s bedroom windows, and it’s no wonder at all that the Stubinger infant was frightened and unruly. I’d guess they hacked off at least one arm and one leg from wounded Yankee soldiers in the short time I was there! The poor soldiers—one of them, at least—screamed more loudly than the infant!”

“But don’t they administer chloroform first?” Louisa asked in a horrified voice.

“I imagine so, but when that knife and the ordinary carpenter’s saw they were using when I was there cut deeply, it must cause unbearable pain.”

“Did you actually see them amputate an arm and a leg, Reverend Benedict? I find that hard to believe!”

“If you’d stop by this minute—two days later —I would be not at all surprised if the same arm and leg aren’t still leaning up against Mrs.

Fraser’s lovely cedar tree. I 997 did see them—freshly cut and bleeding—stacked beside a dozen or more other extremities. I’m sorry to have such indelicate news to report, ladies, but you asked. And I must be on my way to give my good wife the assistance I’m sure she needs with our final packing. We’ll be leaving this poor, battle-scarred city for good day after tomorrow.”

September, usually a pleasant and warm month, in 1864 crawled by in an agonizingly slow stream of horror, discomfort, noise, and pain-drenched ooze of despair for Anne and her two daughters. By the first of October, the daily ordeal of waking from a fitful night of struggling to sleep a few minutes at a time, between gasps of prayer for the suffering boys lying on the lawn and across the ruined garden of Anne’s once comforting house, was taking its heavy toll. The choking self-pity Anne once felt as she lay alone in her bed asking God again and again why her rock, her loving, sensible, beautiful son, John Couper, had to die, gave way to sheer pity for the horribly wounded Yankee boys lying under her

trees and losing their arms and legs through every day and night to the crude hacking of the Union surgeons, not only poorly trained, but more poorly equipped with surgical instruments, bandages, and makeshift sutures. Much of what they used to amputate legs and arms, even to attempt brain surgery, were improvised instruments, many of them made from Anne’s own tableware.

“Some days, Mama, I honestly don’t think I can live through one more hour of—all this,” Pete said as she tried to swallow nasty gulps of bitter okra brew. “I know I pride myself on not complaining in my struggle to keep up your spirits, because that’s what John Couper would want me to do, but if I’m honest, I know deep down that John Couper and my blessed nephew, Fraser Demere, are the lucky ones. They’re—dead. They’re escaping all this!”

“I know, Pete. I know. But we just have to go on thanking God that we both don’t seem to fall headlong into such black despair at the same time. Have you noticed? On the days you’re ready to give up as you are today, God finds a way to give me a dollop of new courage. It

won’t, it can’t, last forever, child. I’m 999 glad too that John Couper and Fraser are out of it, for their sakes, but God’s mercy isn’t in short supply. It never has been, it isn’t now. Somehow, sometime, this will end.”

“Yes.”

“Is that all you can say—yes?”

Pete only nodded her tousled red head, then without warning and because she couldn’t help it, threw her cup of hot okra brew across Anne’s room, breaking the cherished thin china cup that had been Grandmama Couper’s. “Oh, Mama, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, big tears streaming down her usually composed, strong face. “I—I lost control and I hate not being in control of myself!”

“I know you do, darling. But tally your average. You have a hold on yourself far more often than not. Without your brother, I sometimes feel I have only you to lean on.”

Stooping to gather up the shattered pieces of the china cup, Pete muttered, “Thank you. Oh, thank you for saying that. Even though I no longer think it’s quite true.”

“What do you mean, Pete? Who else is there but you?”

Pete stood in the middle of the floor, still holding the fragments of china. She looked her mother in the eye and said, “There’s Eve, Mama. I grew up as you did, feeling only a kind of affection for some of our slaves—at least, I took them for granted as my right. None of that is true with Eve or June or even Big Boy. Those three are our staunchest friends now.”

“But Pete, they’re not slaves any longer. Lincoln freed them.”

“Yes, but how many owners down here paid one bit of attention to what he did?”

“I did,” Anne said. “I not only paid attention but rejoiced with them. Eve and June and Big Boy all know they’re free to leave anytime.”

“But they’re not. Where would they go? What would they eat? And anyway, Eve feels not only that she belongs to you, but that you belong to her!”

“I know. I’m very blessed, Pete.”

A piteous scream from the yard outside the open window caused Anne to clamp both hands over her ears. “No more! I can’t bear to hear one more boy scream in pain like that!”

“I’m feeling a little braver, Mama, but not like

me yet. So, don’t you fall 1001 to pieces.”

“I won’t. I promise.” Anne tried a little smile. “It’s not my turn to let it show today. It’s yours, Pete.”

“And I’m beginning to be angry, so that means I’m stronger. I just can’t get over their using horsehair to sew up those gaping wounds and jagged slashes the surgeons make with your old carving knife. Horsehair, Mama! Imagine! Have you ever asked your Yankee surgeon friend, Captain David Porter, why they don’t have better implements to work with?”

“He’s your friend too, Pete. We can all count on David. But I don’t ask him anything I don’t absolutely have to,” Anne said. “I don’t want to embarrass him. And I shudder to think where we’d be without him.”

“Without him and his two English friends. I don’t blame you for thinking the English are superior people, Mama.”

“Well, maybe not superior, but certainly, in my experience, kinder. It’s no wonder our old friend Fanny Kemble Butler hated everything about slavery. Most of the English do, and have for a

long time. Your Grandpapa Couper brought me up to be a staunch American patriot, and I surely still am, but in a way I’m rather proud to be a British subject too.”

“You’re a brave woman, Mama.”

“I am?”

“It takes courage to be as strong a Unionist as you are when you were born on a plantation and grew up having everything done for you.”

Anne smiled. “I thank you for bothering to tell me that. You are regaining your Petelike courage. I’m very, very proud of you. And not only because you agree with my Unionist stand. I’m proud of you because you’re—Pete. And my daughter Pete is strong.”

“Mama? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how hard life must be for my sister Fanny, working day after day with such pitifully injured young men. She certainly doesn’t write to us often.”

“I don’t think she has the time, and also, there’s no way to deny that as with other broken families—taking different sides in this ugly war—Fanny has broken from us in a way.”

“I know. But she’s strong too. She just disagrees with you and me.”

“And Selina.” 1003

“Who knows what Selina really thinks? That adorable baby fills all her thoughts, except for her worries about George in prison way up in Rock Island, Illinois.”

“Maybe it’s best that little Johnny does take all Selina’s attention. Believing strongly in a troublesome Cause as we do is hard work, Pete.”

Anne reached for Pete’s hand and gave it a pat. “But we’ll make it somehow, dear girl. God is still in charge.”

“How can God bother to be in charge of anything as stupid as this war that breaks close families apart? He told us to love one another!”

“Yes, and He meant it. We have to believe that one day we will all love one another—again.” She sighed. “That is, those of us still left on this earth.”

Pete looked out the window at the seething, bloody scene in the yard below—a panorama of pain and suffering and gore—to which no one could grow accustomed. “We’ll never forget little Johnny’s baptism day, will we?” she asked with a shudder.

“You, at least, may live long enough so that sometime you can remember it without the background of those awful

screams and the blood.”

“Does your friend Captain David Porter know how many wounded and sick men they have out in our yard and on the front porch?”

“The last time I asked, I think he said about twelve hundred patients.”

“It doesn’t look as though they’re that many from up here.”

“Oh, but David says they have to lie on the ground behind the house under the trees and in your garden —waiting their turn.”

“I hate to tell you this, but David will if you ask, I’m sure. There are at least twenty boys stacked like cordwood out back under the pecan tree. They died in the night.”

“It’s going to be hot out today, too,” Anne said, her voice full of dread. “Will we ever, ever get the stench of gore out of our nostrils? Ever?”

“Papa always told me,” Pete said, “not to worry about something we can do nothing to fix.”

“He did?” Anne asked, almost hopefully.

“The most horrible-looking operating table down there, Mama, is a church Communion table, I’m sure. It’s slimy with gore from who knows

how many amputations! Just yesterday afternoon 1005 and this morning …”

Anne’s sigh sounded old and heavy and her voice trembled. “How many?” she murmured. “Oh, Pete, how many?”

Then suddenly she staggered from her chair, a look of anguish on her beautiful face. When Anne grabbed her reeling head, Pete flew to her side. “Mama! Mama, something’s wrong. Are you sick? Do you have a pain in your head?”

“Not my head, no.” Moaning, she stooped and clutched her lower abdomen with both hands. “My— my stomach! There’s such a pain in there, Pete! I—I haven’t been eating right. Eve’s been telling me there’s been nothing in my chamber pot but wee-wee and—was She laughed a little in embarrassment. “She didn’t have to tell me. I knew it!”

With Pete’s help she lowered herself back into her chair.

“Don’t try to get up out of your rocker. Just sit right there until I get back with Captain David. Promise? Mama, do you promise?”

“I—promise. I couldn’t get up if I had to. The pain is—that bad, Pete. But

don’t take David away from some poor, wounded boy who might need him.”

“I’ll do what I think best!” Pete yelled back from the door. “You need him worse, and you’re my mother!”

Pete found David Porter just as he was finishing the amputation of the arm of a boy who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. His cries had reached Pete as she ran down the stairs and out the back door into the yard, where the Federal surgeons were operating on one wretched fellow after another.