The Better Angels of Our Nature (22 page)

While she cleaned the tiny cuts on his cheeks and forehead, he came once more to consciousness. This time he knew her immediately.

“Oh, give me a drink, Corporal—I’m dying of thirst, for God’s sake a drink—I beg of you.” She raised his head and put the canteen to his parched lips. He drank so greedily that the water overflowed his mouth, he coughed, nearly choking, and then abruptly he pushed her hand away, grabbing instead to her blouse. “Cowards—I showed them—stand to it—stand and fight like men—dirty filthy cowards. Load and fire—what are you waiting for?
Fall in Eleventh! Face to the rear and charge cavalry!
Corporal Davis?” he said sharply. “What are you doing here…soldier…why aren’t you fighting?”

“The fighting is over for the day, sir.” She wiped his chin and smiled at him.

“Tell Colonel Wallace—the Eleventh are ready and will follow him onto hell.” He grabbed her blouse again. “
You must
bring me news—of my regiment—do you understand?” His pain-filled eyes clouded over suddenly. “And bring me news of Colonel Wallace—and my Eleventh—”

“Yes sir.” She had decided to say nothing of Captain Carter or General Wallace. “Sir, I have your sword and pistol. I’ll keep them safe for you.”

“How did it go—the battle—did we drive back the Rebels?”

Jesse recalled General Grant’s words to the boy lying on the litter. “Tomorrow for certain, sir.”

His eyes had closed and his head sank to the side of the pillow.

By the time she had emerged from that hellhole, it was dark and the stars were out. Corporal Tucker was right, as she came down the gangway gasping fresh air into her lungs, the “wooden tubs”
Tyler
and
Lexington
were lobbing shells into the Rebel army encampment, where Union soldiers had slept the previous night.

Tonight, only the dead would get any rest, and even that was doubtful.

Back at General Sherman’s makeshift headquarters Don Carlos Buell was just leaving. Jesse caught the conclusion of their exchange.

“With these reinforcements, we will have a numerical advantage over the Rebels and tomorrow we can sweep the field,” Sherman was saying. “General Grant has already talked to me about taking the offensive. He said he recalled that at Donelson there came a moment when either side was ready to give way if the other showed a bold front. He has decided to be the bold one. He believes that the enemy has shot its bolt and with your force available by morning, victory is sure.”

“That wasn’t the impression Grant gave me when I met him on the wharf.”

“Then not only is your conclusion erroneous but also your impressions.” Sherman removed the cigar from his lips, blew out smoke, and stood very straight.

“Sherman”—Buell’s smile was not only sudden, it was greasy—“come now, surely that is a poor way to welcome the savior of the day?”

“General Buell, I’m glad you’ve come, sir, but think victory certain even without you.”

Don Carlos Buell crossed over the rest of his troops. These fresh regiments from the Army of the Ohio marched off the transports past men bathed in blood, and led by brass bands playing patriotic tunes, much to the disgust of the rain-sodden and battle-weary soldiers trying to sleep along the sheltered strip of beach between the riverbank and the water.

The occasional rattle of muskets could be heard in the distance, a sputter and an answering sputter, breaking out and stopping, as though a few stubborn men on both sides were unwilling to give up the fight, now and then accompanied by a solitary shell from a faraway battery. Lethargic and only token, the last word in an argument the reason for which no one could recall.

Meanwhile the skulkers, white-faced harbingers of doom, lank-haired and hollow-eyed, had crawled out of their holes to predict a bloody fate for the new arrivals. But they were drowned out by rousing music, and silenced by Buell’s officers who, afraid that these cowards would infect their own men, treated them none too kindly, and by the men themselves who called them every kind of base creature, even hitting out in rage.

At 11:00
P.M.
Sherman decided to seek out Grant.

“Grant, at last!” the division commander bellowed, plowing his way through the mud toward the huddled figure backed up against a tree trunk, hat pulled down over sorrowful eyes and coat collar pulled up around his ears, a lantern wedged into an overhead branch, the inevitable cigar glowing between his teeth. “I thought you had retired for the night, then one of your staff told me you’d made your headquarters under this tree.”

“I have nowhere to retire to, Sherman, and I couldn’t sleep even if I did, they’re using the
Tigress
for the wounded. They kindly offered me a spot in a cabin, but I confess the shouts of the injured were too much for me, that and the ankle.” He passed his saddened gaze over Sherman’s arm, resting in the sling. “How’s the hand?”

“Fine. Fine,” Sherman replied honestly, “I can flex my fingers. The boy did a good job.”

“You look all done in, Sherman.”

The Ohioan, not normally known for his sartorial elegance, this evening in the torrential rain, after ten hours of intense pressure in battle, against a formidable, courageous, and determined foe, was encrusted in mud from boots to hat. The brim already hanging off was drooping with the weight of rainwater, his cigar stub was played out, and his black tie, never where it ought to be, was all the way around under his right ear. However, it should be noted for posterity, his eyes were as alert as ever, two penetrating orbs in a face whose wrinkles were edged in grime.

“Well,
you
don’t look as if you could lead the prettiest girl around the floor in a polka!”

The younger man’s thin lips confirmed this fact with a rueful smile. Not that he would have led the prettiest girl around the floor in a polka, even if he could, unless the prettiest girl happened to be his wife. He used his cigar to point into the near distance, and said incredulously, “Isn’t that your orderly coming there, Sherman?”

Jesse was trudging carefully through the muddy potholes, splashing along, up to her ankles in water, past those once beautiful white oaks and red buds, splintered and scarred, toward them, guided, it seemed, by the light from Grant’s lantern, for how else could she have found these two great generals in that crowded, noisy, rain-soaked, despairing darkness? Then, reaching them, from under her dripping oilskin, like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat, she produced two tin cups of steaming coffee. Sherman was beyond astonishment. He merely drank a mouthful of coffee and said with satisfaction, “Hot toddy.”

“Mighty fine.” Grant sipped the liquid, wincing as he shifted his weight from one side of his body to the other. “Touches the spot, huh, Sherman? Thank you, Corporal, very welcome.”

“Get under a blanket somewhere dry and snatch some sleep,” Sherman advised her.

But she had much to do before she saw her blanket. She lingered a moment, sheltering under the tree, turning up the collar of her oilskin. On the other side, the shorter man brought two fresh cigars from his pocket, one of which he gave his companion, saying quietly, “Whichever side takes the initiative in the morning will make the other retire. Beauregard will be mighty smart if he attacks before I do.”

For a moment, Jesse waited as the two men smoked in silence, doubtlessly thinking of what had transpired through that long and bloody day, and what would be the fate of their army on the morrow. Then the red-bearded soldier said with emotion, “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?”

“Yes,” said Grant, with a short sharp puff of the cigar, “lick ’em tomorrow, though.”

10

A blanket for a shroud

Around the rough-hewn log cabin on the bluff, during that first chaotic day, had mushroomed a canvas city.

“What do you think of it?” Jacob asked her proudly. “The ambulances come up from the battlefield, the surgeons work their miracles, and then the wounded are littered away to the recovery area.” He indicated orderlies hastily carrying litters from the operating area inside and around the cabin to the large wall tents. “We are making history. They are calling it the first ‘field hospital.’” Suddenly his smile vanished as he followed the direction of Jesse’s bleak gaze.

The wounded and the dying disgorged by the wagons had been laid out on straw pallets, on blankets, on coats and on the wet ground, as far as the eye could see. For them there was no shelter. There were pitifully few orderlies to organize; like the surgeons, they were swamped.

“God knows,” the Dutchman raised his sorrowful gaze to heaven, “it is not perfect, but you had to see it this morning to understand.”

Jesse looked into the cabin where three surgeons were at work in the cramped interior, Dr. Fitzjohn, the elderly Dr. Lowenfels, and Dr. Cartwright. Cartwright, his apron smeared with blood and every manner of human waste, up to his elbows in blood, his face and spectacles speckled with blood, the bottoms of his trousers soaked in blood, bent over a patient, a bone saw in one hand and a wad of bloody lint in the other. Finishing his gruesome task, and quickly sewing, he looked around and took a deep breath, as two orderlies removed the victim from his table.

“How many more?” His voice was a croak.

“Ain’t no countin’ ’em, Doc,” said the orderly. “How many fleas on a dawg?”

The surgeon went to the door, stared with burning eyes at the row upon row of wounded, trying to gauge how long it might take to fight through this flood of human misery. A week? A year? A lifetime?

“Sir, I’m sorry to bother you—” Jesse began.

“Where the hell have you been?” he said with quiet intensity. “I needed you, goddamn it, look around. Where have you been? I ought to put you on a charge.”

She stared at him. It had never even occurred to her that he would expect her to be with him during the battle, attending the wounded, and as for putting her on a charge…

“Get to work,” he ordered. “Find an apron. Then get to work—” He pushed himself off the splintered door frame with an effort and limped slowly across the yard. She didn’t have to ask why he was limping. His feet and ankles were swollen.

She followed. “May I have a brief word with you, sir?”

“No. There’s work to be done.” He gestured toward the line of swaying, jolting vehicles coming along the dirt road to the bluff, a line that never seemed to get any shorter, never seemed to tail off, despite the speed and efficiency which the surgeons brought to their work. He needed a drink. Not whiskey, God help him, water.
Water.
He’d breathed so much chloroform, the lining of his throat was on fire. Jesse watched him snatch up the overflowing ladle and gulp it so fast half the contents went down his chin and onto his blood-soaked apron. He looked like a man possessed. Only one thing kept him going. A searing, perpetuating anger against whatever or whoever it was that had put him and these men in this place. He should have dropped hours ago, his back breaking, but he would not rest, could not rest, until every suffering soldier, Rebel or Yankee, brought to his table, was tended.

Jesse let him walk to the tin washbasin set up on the rain barrel, then she joined him. As he tore off his filthy apron, she told him about Colonel Ransom, lying injured on the
Continental,
and what she had in mind. He stopped trying, with trembling hands, to pick the dried blood spots from his eyeglasses and faced her, eyes wild with anger.

“Let me get this straight, in the midst of all this, you’ve got the goddamn nerve to come here to ask me to authorize the removal of one officer from the transport to the hospital here so you can nurse him personally? Is that right? Is that what you’re asking?”

“The transport stinks; it’s a disease-ridden, floating hell hole. There are no beds; the surgeons are stretched to the limit—”

“And we’re not!” Cartwright laughed maniacally, arms thrown wide to take in the hellish scene.

“The wounded can’t even get a drink of water. They have no blankets, no pillows, no medicines, very few orderlies. The colonel is suffering—”

“Like thousands of others. He’s strong. He survived other wounds without
you.
He knew what he was doing when he enlisted. Save your sympathy for the ignorant deluded farm boys.” Cartwright splashed water over his face and flinging the tiny slither of soap back in with a snort of disgust, shouted, “Orderly! Fresh soap.”

“Ain’t nun.”

“Find some!”

“Told yer, ain’t nun!” Cartwright took a menacing step toward him. “Ah’ll find some.”

“Sir, do I have your permission to—”

Cartwright rounded on the girl. “You have my permission to do one damn thing, and one damn thing only, that’s get to work on the wounded. Stop mooning over one lousy officer when we have a whole damn army to care for.”

“Mooning? I don’t understand.”

“Mooning. You never heard that word? It’s what impressionable young girls do when they see a brass-plated officer. Ransom’s better off in a general hospital in Cincinnati or Saint Louis, and his own people should take care of him anyway.” He started back to the cabin.

Doggedly, Jesse followed. “The Eleventh have been cut to pieces,” she said. “So many were lost they say not much more than a company remains. Doctor,” she gripped his arm, “have I asked you for one single favor since I’ve been here?” Her expression hardened. “You were the one who struck a fellow surgeon because he refused to care for a soldier from another regiment.”

Cartwright stopped abruptly. “Who the hell told you that? Jacob. I never struck him, I pushed him. He fell. And stop wasting my goddamn time. If you think I’m going to let you take an ambulance wagon, an orderly, and a teamster for one man you’re crazy—”

“I never asked for an ambulance wagon, I’ll use that—” She pointed. Cartwright looked at the broken-down go-to-market one-mule cart that soldiers had taken from a local farm to bring their own dying colonel to the hospital that morning. Only now, there were no soldiers. “If you loan me a mule I’ll drive it myself and find someone at the Landing to help me carry the colonel.”

“And if I don’t loan you a mule?”

“I’ll harness the cart to my back with a rope and drag it down to the Landing and up again.” Tears of determination had sprung into her eyes.

“And if I take the cart away?” The surgeon gave a vindictive twist of his mouth.

Her lower lip trembled and the clefted chin raised a notch. “Colonel Ransom was kind to me. He’s my friend. I would carry a friend on my back if I had to. I would carry you. I would carry Jakob.”

There was no question in Cartwright’s mind that she would too. “Your friend?” His expression was one of amused disdain. “Colonels don’t make friends with corporals.” After a second’s silence he said, “It means that much to you?”

“Yes sir—” she said intensely, holding his gaze. “It means that much to me.”

He stared at her a moment longer before bellowing “Jacob!” as the Dutchman crossed the yard. “Find someone who can handle a cart without driving it into the Tennessee,” he told the steward. Then to Jesse he said, “Satisfied, damn you?”

“Yes sir, thank you, sir.”

He grabbed hold of her by the collar, pulled her up onto her toes, and thrust his haggard face close to hers.
“Don’t—call—me—sir. Don’t ever call me sir. Is that clear?”

She stared at him with her large eyes brimming tears and smiled.

She eased the unconscious colonel’s head carefully to the center of the stained canvas and covered him to the chin with a clean blanket. She laid his coat over the top of the blanket to keep him warm, then she and the silent young bandsman Jacob had sent with her lifted the litter and made their slow, painstaking way back to the stairs, trying not to step on the wounded, and down the gangplank.

Outside the earlier cold sleet had turned to hail. What had happened to the warm Southern spring?

She sat in the back of the tottering cart as it bounced and jolted over the uneven track, the canvas tarpaulin cover supported by a sturdy tree branch, as she steadied Thomas Ransom’s injured head in her lap. His elegant features looked bony and drawn. She put a little water on a cloth and held it to his cracked lips. He stirred, moaned a little. “You’re safe now,” she whispered, stroking the hair off his pale, moist brow. “We’ll take good care of you.” She rubbed his cold hands, put them inside her jacket, and smiled to herself, a tiny self-satisfied smile.

The good and faithful Jacob came to meet them. He stood in the rain like an oak and stared at the bedraggled girl under the dripping canvas in the rickety old cart and she stared back at him, blinking rainwater, but still smiling, her injured colonel cradled in her lap.

“I have him,” she said, excitedly, as though in possession of a rare species that must be protected. “I have him safe, Jakob.”

“Yes, my child, I see that you have him safe and I rejoice. It’s all right—all right—leave him—” He told a second orderly who had joined the bandsman to remove the litter from the cart. Instead, the Dutchman wrapped the young Vermonter in the blanket and carried him into the cabin in his own strong arms. Yes,
such
an inestimable prize must be nurtured.

Nevertheless, not all agreed.

“What’s this?” Cartwright demanded as Jacob laid the colonel gently on the table and began to clean the wound for the surgeon to examine. “What the hell are you doing? You know the rules, for God’s sake—”

Oh yes, the rules. The rules were ruthlessly followed. There was never
any
exception. The Dutchman had explained them to Jesse. The mortally wounded were carried off to the far end of the yard to die. They usually wanted only water and a comforting word. Those with minor injuries were placed near the trees, in a barn, a stable, a tent if any were available, to shelter them from the rain, the sun, where they nursed their own hurts as best they could until it was their turn to see a surgeon or wound dresser. The third category, the seriously wounded, but with a chance of survival, also waited for treatment, but they were first to see a surgeon.

“Get him off the table and put him with the others.” Cartwright gestured to the orderlies. Jacob the oak barred their way. He spoke to Cartwright. “The rules are important, it is true, without them there is chaos, but once in a while we are permitted to bend them a little for those we care for.”

The surgeon looked from the Dutchman to the girl and frowned his puzzlement. The girl took his hand and placed it against the colonel’s bloody face. “
Please—
” she said.

“Minor wound,” Cartwright stated finally, with his usual display of sympathy, after what had to be admitted was a thorough examination of the colonel’s scalp, the application of a styptic to stop the bleeding, and a lint dressing. “Minié ball, probably, ripped through the scalp. That bright red blood was from small blood vessels in the scalp, no major bleeders and no skull fracture. He’s lucky, inch lower—
fatal.
” He wiped his bloody hands on his bloodstained apron. “You made it sound as if half his damn head was blown away.” Was that regret in his voice?

“He lost a lot of blood,” Jesse explained. “He was dizzy, I saw him fall over on the battlefield.”