Authors: Robert Morgan
The wagon jolted but I didn't feel the pain anymore. The wagon veered like the ground was having fits. “How far have we come?” I said.
But the sergeant must have gone on ahead, or dropped behind, for nobody answered.
“You just lay still,” the orderly said.
W
HEN
I
WOKE AGAIN
the wagon bed was tilted so steep I felt I was sliding off. I grabbed the sideboard and raised my head a little. We were on the bank of a wide brown river. I thought it must be the Broad, except water had spread out among the trees and bushes. Water slurped and swerved over the clay banks. Then I remembered that the Broad had been in flood, which was why General Morgan had turned back and fought at Cowpens.
Men were chopping down trees and sawing logs. “Why have we stopped here?” I said. But nobody answered me. All the men except the wounded were chopping and sawing, and sharpening sticks with knives and hatchets.
“Why can't we use the rafts the army used to cross?” I said. Captain Cox's company had crossed here more than two weeks before. And then I remembered those rafts must have washed away in the flood or been used by the army that had crossed earlier that day. The army had left their rafts on the other side, as they hurried away from Cornwallis.
“We don't want to cross over,” I yelled to the sergeant when he walked by carrying an ax. But he ignored me, like my words didn't make any sense except to me. If John was behind us helping to bury the dead, I wanted to stay on the south bank of the river. I wanted to wait right there till his party caught up with us. How long had I slept? Maybe I had just dreamed I'd seen John on the battlefield.
The pain in my leg and in my side began to return. As the men chopped and sawed and grunted, the pain woke in my shin and in my thigh. Was the pain going to reach the baby in my belly?
I could feel the baby there in the middle of me. The baby was like a glowing seed. And I thought: It is an eye at the center of me. The eye of
the future is watching me and seeing all that is happening. All I do is being seen.
I shuddered with the pain. And I put my hands on my belly to protect the baby from the cold, and to keep it from seeing the mess I was in, the mess the world was in.
“Oh!” I said in spite of myself. The pain licked through my bones and over my side. The pain turned my flesh brown and blue, and pulled my thoughts to one side so I couldn't think clearly.
“Oh!” I said again. But the sergeant and the orderly were too busy to come to me. All the men were chopping logs and joining the logs into rafts with ropes and pegs. Men grunted and heaved. They pulled logs with horses and hollered as more trees started falling. All along the riverbank they hurried as they rolled logs together. They wrapped vines and ropes around logs to make bundles. I tried to look at the river and not think of the pain. But I was too weak to hold my head up for long. The river moved fast and had dimples and pockets and snag scars everywhere. The river was so high it broke in pieces and pulled away in eddies. We can't ever get across, I thought. We will be drowned.
“No,” I said, but nobody was listening. The wagon moved, and I watched the orderly drive it up onto a raft. The wagon jerked and tilted. And then I felt the logs beneath grind over mud as they pushed them into the river. I raised my head to see what was going on. The orderly and another man held poles and pushed the raft out into the river. One stood on one side of the wagon and the other stood on the other side. With the poles they held the raft steady and pushed it into the middle of the river.
They leaned on the poles and shoved, and the raft dipped and trembled in the fast water. Water seemed to splash right near my ears and close to the back of my head. I was too weak to move and here I was in the shaky wagon in the middle of the raging river. Lord, you've got to help me, I said. My baby is in your hands.
A duck flew by making an awful noise. The raft jerked and jumped as the men held it steady with the poles. They pushed together and held the
raft against the current. I could smell the ugly water. The river smelled of rotten things, earthworms, mud in sinkholes. I figured we were in the middle of the river, where the current was fastest. I figured we were getting closer to the other bank.
“Whoa!” the man poling with the orderly shouted. I couldn't see what happened, but the raft turned like a big hand had spun it around. “Whoa!” the orderly shouted. The raft turned and pulled away, and I felt it sweep sideways.
When I raised my head I saw the bank going by and the furrowed river spinning around. I saw the far bank and the other rafts. We hit a snag and jerked to one side. It felt like the wagon would roll off the raft. The men grabbed the wagon and held its wheels. The mules brayed a cry of terror. The other man took the reins and held the mule's head. “Whoa there,” he said.
We veered sideways and turned a little more. It looked like we would be swept away in the flood and washed all the way to the ocean. I held my belly, and hoped I would float. I would hold onto the wagon hoping it would float.
I tried to see what was happening, but fell back and banged my head on the boards. Instead of sinking and turning over, the raft seemed to slow down. I looked out and saw we had come to a bend in the river. The river turned and slowed there. The raft hit a log and almost stopped. The men pushed with poles and we rocked into the still water where leaves and foam and logs circled and backed in the eddy. The men shoved against the poles and we rocked toward the shore.
The men already across the river found us and cut away brush and grapevines and briars so they could drive the mule and wagon up on the bank. I kept my eyes closed and tried not to feel the ache as the wagon lurched and heaved into the woods and we drove back to the road. It was cloudy and darker now.
Before we lined up on the road and started moving again, the sergeant gave me another sip of laudanum. After I drank the medicine I quit
shaking and began to calm down. I was helpless to do a thing to protect myself. I was just the fruit around the seed of the baby, like the flesh of an apple or peach to protect the seed and nourish the seed.
As I dropped off to sleep in the jolting wagon I thought I could see another wagon far behind us. It had crossed the river after us. In the wagon were the men who had performed the burial ceremonies. They were ministers riding in the wagon with the men who had dug the graves. As they rode along they sang, and I heard John's voice. I knew it was John's voice. He was tired from the long day and the many burials, but he sang to refresh himself and the others.
As I listened to the voices in my dream it came to me what forgiveness was. I had felt so guilty and angry and disturbed I had forgotten what forgiveness meant. Whatever I had done I would be forgiven. It was that simple. I had heard forgiveness described a hundred times, by John and by others, but had not thought it applied to me. I had forgotten that forgiveness was a gift, and all I had to do was accept it. I would not be forgiven because I was good or because I had earned it. I would be forgiven because I was human and a sinner, and because I was loved. A new world had come into being, and I saw things in a new way. When I saw John I would tell him all, and he would forgive me.
“M
AMA
,” I
SAID
, and somebody laughed. I opened my eyes and looked around. Tiny raindrops were melting on my face, and a board stuck against my back, jolting and rocking me. I heard a grinding sound, and people talking. I looked around and saw I was still in the wagon, but nobody was driving it.
“Where are we going?” I said, twisting around.
“Lie still, friend,” somebody said.
There was a shadow inside the light that I couldn't blink away. The rain falling was so fine it was almost a mist. Trees dripped and my face was damp with a cold sweat. The rain was clean as forgiveness.
“Where are we?” I said.
“Hold on there,” a man said.
A blanket was wrapped over my legs and I couldn't see anything down there. “Is my foot gone?” I said.
“Be quiet,” the man said. “You're weak; you've lost a lot of blood.”
Trees were going by and men were going by. Nobody was driving the wagon, so they must be leading it up front. Crows called in the trees and I saw one flapping across the low sky.
I must have closed my eyes then, for everything got dark and I sank back into the swamp, washed by waves of warm water. But the pool was cooling off and my feet were getting chilled. Rain splashed the pool. I tried to step forward but my feet and hands were stuck under the water. I couldn't do any good.
“We're going north, following the general,” somebody said.
The water washed over my face and I rocked deeper and deeper into the silt, the way a crawfish will back its way into the mud by scratching and swaying. The mud was warm at first and then started getting colder.
When I woke again it was evening and the rain had stopped. The wagon rocked along same as before and my back was stiff. My joints were cold and my belly was cold. Was the baby cold? I felt my belly, and trees passed overhead, lurching and tilting away.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“North,” was all the man said.
“Whoa,” somebody said, and the wagon creaked to a stop. The trees all around looked like apple trees. And I could smell smoke, cooking smoke. It smelled like tenderloin frying.
They spoke in low voices around me, and I couldn't make out what they said. I was so empty and weak the smell of smoke made me sick again. Something rippled and bubbled in my belly, but nothing came up.
“Here you go,” a man said and handed me a canteen. My mouth was so dry it felt like flannel. My lips were cracked and peeling. I put the neck of the canteen to my mouth and cold water rushed over my teeth as I swallowed. And then I swallowed again.
I shivered and jerked and could feel my feet, both my feet. The soles of my feet itched and the right foot ached. It started throbbing.
“Have I got both my feet?” I said.
“You've got a busted bone in your right foot,” the sergeant said.
The throbbing got worse in my foot, like the medicine had worn off. It was an ugly black and purple kind of pain that licked up the bone in my leg and gnawed like fire on a log. I took another sip of water, hoping the water would soothe the pain.
But knowing they had not cut my foot off soothed the pain more than anything else. I didn't care about the pain so much as long as I knew I could walk, as long as I could carry my baby when it was born. My terror had been that I'd be a cripple and couldn't walk into the blue mountains, away from armies, and find a place to live. I had to be able to walk to take care of the baby.
I raised up on my elbows and looked over the edge of the wagon. We were in a camp and fires blazed all along the edge of the woods. There were wagons and carts and men lying on the ground close to the fires. It was a camp for the wounded, for many of the men had their arms in slings and bloodstains on their shirts, or bandages on their heads. Rain fell in a fine drizzle.
An orderly brought me a plate of grits, but my stomach was too weak to eat, and the pain in my foot made me too sick to eat.
“Got to eat to get your strength back, Josie,” the sergeant said.
“How do you know my name?” I said.
“Cause you told us, when you was out of your head,” the sergeant said.
I was surprised, and then relieved, for I wouldn't have to pretend anymore. I was tired of acting, of lying. I just wanted to be myself again.
“Oh!” I said as the pain rushed up my leg.
“We'll have to leave you at the first house we come to,” the sergeant said. “We can't have no girls in this army.”
“Don't leave me out in the cold,” I said, and felt my belly.
A man was lying on a blanket by the closest fire. He lay on a kind of
stretcher made of sticks. He didn't have any legs. All he had was bandages above where his knees would have been, and the bandages were bloody and dirty. A jolt went through my heart and chest, for I thought that could have happened to me. I could be the one lying with only bandages where I once had legs.
The man stretched by the fire appeared to be sleeping. But there was a bruise or swelling on his cheek that made me remember something. In the flickering light I couldn't see too well.
“Who is that man there?” I said to the orderly that had brought the grits. There were several men standing around the campfire.
“Which man?” the driver said. I pointed to the man on the stretcher.
“That be Sergeant Gudger,” the driver said.
I wondered if it was T. R. who had shot him in the knees.
While everybody was eating grits and drinking coffee around the campfire, I must have dozed off a little. Sleep is the mercy when you're weak and in pain. I drifted off dreaming of Gudger with no legs and a horse with no legs. I saw trees in the woods cut down like soldiers. But as I woke up I heard singing. Was I dreaming music, or was there singing in the camp?
“Jesus shall reign wher-e'er the sun,” I heard. It was the sweetest sound. I'd heard that voice at the burial on the battlefield. I turned over under the blanket and listened.
It was the most beautiful sound. I must still be dreaming, I thought. And then I heard a voice pray, and I knew the voice, and I knew it was John Trethman. I had not just dreamed I'd seen him earlier.
I raised up and looked out over the side of the wagon. A tall man was standing by a campfire with a book in his hand. His back was to me, but I was sure it was John. He was speaking to the soldiers and the wounded. Everybody was turned toward him and listening.
“You have fought a terrible battle,” John said. “You have walked through the valley of the shadow of death today. The Lord has spared you and now is the time for healing.”
I tried to get somebody's attention, but there was nobody close by. They were all listening to John, and I was too weak to yell out. John started singing again.