The Better Angels of Our Nature (44 page)

“You saw her fall, but you don’t know if she’s wounded—right?” He searched Sherman’s grizzled features for a sign of encouragement, then looked at Van Allen’s handsome face, swallowed hard and thick. “Am I right?” He looked from Marcus to Sherman to Andy and back again.

“Corporal Davis fell almost upon the enemy lines,” Sherman informed him.

“What does
that
mean, exactly? Almost upon the enemy lines? Explain it to this nonmilitary man.”

Jacob was standing very close to him now as if to catch him when he fell, calm him if he lost his temper.

“If Jesse
is
alive she would have been taken to a Rebel hospital. If she’s closer to our lines, sir,” Sherman continued, “she’ll be brought in to a hospital the same as all the wounded.”

“Is that all?
Is that it?
”

“Doctor—” Jacob began; tears had formed in his eyes. Oh, he had known, God help him, he had known all along—for
nothing
would have kept Jesse from the hospital this terrible day. He tried to take the surgeon’s arm, steady him, preempt the force of one of Cartwright’s often unreasonable outbursts, and perhaps even a trip to the stockade, but the surgeon shook himself free with an angry, “Stop mothering me—
for God’s sake—
I’ve got a goddamn mother, what I need is a steward. Go back in there and help…I don’t need you…I don’t need anyone—leave me alone—goddamn you—”

The Dutchman stood his ground.

“I can’t organize a search party for one single soldier, Doctor,” Sherman was saying, “even if that soldier is…is someone we shall all have cause to miss.”

“
Cause to miss?
” Cartwright’s mouth twisted the words and then spat them out.

“We need you, Doc,” called one of the orderlies, coming to the entrance of the tent.

“Yes…yes—I’m coming—I’ll—” Cartwright drove a trembling hand through hair already standing on end and seemed unable to get the wire hooks of his spectacles around his ears. He turned away from Sherman and then back again. He spoke four words, more a plea than a demand, before his voice broke.
“Find her—I beg—”

While Sherman and Andy returned to the horses, Marcus went after the surgeon. The soldier on the table was bleeding from a chest wound. There was blood everywhere. Marcus had never seen so much blood. How could a human lose that much blood and live? The answer was they didn’t. Small wonder the surgeons drank. Small wonder Dr. Cartwright often appeared quite crazy. He watched as the surgeon cleaned his spectacle lenses with an almost manic energy. There was blood on his begrimed handkerchief and on the lenses. He was merely smearing one lens from the other, until the lens came away in his fingers. Cartwright didn’t seem to notice. He curled the wires over his ears.

“Doctor,” Marcus said anxiously, “you’ve dislodged the lens.”

Cartwright looked down at the circle of glass in the center of his palm. “It’s all right, it happens all the time—Jesse fixes it—Jesse fixes it good as new.”

The New Englander squeezed the surgeon’s arm and went after his commander.

The Dutchman placed the anesthetizing cone over the patient’s nose and mouth, ignoring the tears that were running down his face into his beard.

Cartwright looked at him distractedly, then went to work.

Night had fallen. She was aware of a dull ache in her upper arm and she felt sick. She was hungry and thirsty. She and the other wounded soldier had been left to sit here in the boiling sun without shelter or a drop of water. Beside her the boy with the leg wound was quiet and still, staring into space at a vision only he could see. She knew about the prison camps. Those run by the Federals as well as the Rebels. Hadn’t Thomas’s own young brother been captured at Fort Donelson and exchanged with a hundred others, six months later, a mere shell of the sweet boy he had once been? The bearded guard had been replaced by another, far more dedicated to his duty. The older one had obviously mentioned her as a troublemaker, for this one kept his beady eyes on her even while he ate his evening meal and when she tried to ask for water for the wounded boy and a crust of bread he’d done nothing more than toss his own food aside, clamber to his feet, and point his musket at her stomach, as though he was good and ready for her nonsense.

The other Yankees in the line had also tried to get water. One had earned a blow to his stomach from the Rebel’s musket stock, and that had discouraged any further attempts to solicit mercy from their captors. There were more guards now, anyway, and more Yankee prisoners. Jesse looked at the boy lying beside her. She passed a hand over his sightless gaze. Felt for a pulse at his throat. He was dead. She closed his eyes. Covered his face with her bloody neckerchief. Her fingers touched the necklace Thomas Ransom had given her. The neckerchief had been covering it. That’s why it was still there. She buttoned her coat and put up her collar. She felt hopeless and, worse, helpless and indescribably stupid. She had to try to get some sleep. If she could sleep, tomorrow she might be able to think straight. The temperature had fallen. Her bare feet were cold. She hunkered down, curled up, and closed her eyes. She couldn’t even pray. She wasn’t worth saving.

The pain in her arm had somehow transferred itself to her ankle. Dawn’s light was trying to squeeze under her aching lids. Then she realized someone was kicking her. She opened her eyes and sat up slowly. Two gray-clad men, one an officer, the other a private, were standing there. The young officer was staring down at her, quizzically, blinking as if the misty morning light hurt his eyes. The dead boy was still lying beside her. For the first time she noticed that he had red hair. His jacket had been removed and the enlisted man was rifling through the inside pockets.

“Ain’t nuthin’ ’ceptin’ this photo,” he said, tossing it aside.

“You, boy,” said the officer to Jesse, “what’s your name?”

“Corporal…Davis,” Jesse managed, moistening her lips.

The private and the officer exchanged glances.

“May I…have some water…please?”

“Po-lite, ain’t he?”

“Shut up,” the officer told the enlisted man. Then to Jesse, “Get to your feet.”

Jesse tried, oh, she tried, and on the fourth attempt the officer ordered the enlisted man to drag her up and there she stood swaying, the earth where the sky should be and the sky beneath her feet. She was stiff as a board. She couldn’t feel her feet. Then, to her surprise, the officer handed her the canteen he was holding. When she’d drunk her fill she went to pass the canteen down the line to those of her companions who were sitting up. The private brought his musket up and used it to strike her hand. The canteen fell to the ground and the water spilled out. Jesse grabbed up the canteen and gave it to the nearest soldier, putting herself between him and the private, who raised his musket.

“No,” the officer told the private.

When the soldier was finished, Jesse passed the canteen along to the next man, and so on, until the canteen was empty. Then she turned to the officer and held it out.

“Sir,” she said, and arched her red brows.

The officer stared at her, small and defiant, with a strange pair of blue eyes. “Fill it,” he told the private, who muttered a string of oaths but obeyed. He filled the canteen from the barrel and then thrust it at Jesse’s chest so hard it drove the breath from her lungs.

“Thank you,” she managed with an ironic smile.

She and the other men helped those too weak to take a drink, while the officer watched with a curious gaze and the private a hostile one. When Jesse had handed the canteen off to one of the men, she turned to face the major.

“Some of these men need medical assistance,” she said. “They
all
need something to eat.”

“We do not have enough food for our own men, Corporal, damned if we are going to feed the enemy.”

“Then you’ll starve them?” Jesse demanded to know.

“It makes very little difference if they starve here or in the prison camp.”

The private looked shocked that his major would deign even to answer this scrawny Yankee boy. He raised his musket, stock toward Jesse as if to club her. Three of the other prisoners got to their feet.

“Goddamn you, I said no!” the major shouted at his subordinate. “Bring the boy,” he said and then walked off.

“Git gon’,” the private told her, using his musket to enforce the order and shoving her forward with his arm.

“Where are you taking me? Why did you want to know my name? What will happen to the others?” She gazed at the prisoners as she was led away.

A glimmer of purple light had begun to creep stealthily under the tent flap when Captain Van Allen raised his commander from the fitful slumber into which he had just fallen at his desk, after spending the previous night walking the camps, even more restless than usual.

“Sir.” Marcus shook him roughly. “General Sherman, wake up, sir, you must come at once, sir, at once.”

Sherman stood below the Federal parapet and aimed Marcus’s field glasses at three figures, two in gray and a third, much smaller, in dust-covered blue, coming slowly toward them under a flag of truce.

When they stopped on the narrow belt of neutral ground between the lines the Ohioan shouted, “
My God!
” Sherman brought forth his grimy handkerchief. Both men looked at it and laughed.

“Damn it, Marcus, give me your handkerchief, sir, quickly!”

The aide shook out an immaculate white linen square and, borrowing a rifle from a nearby soldier, tied it around the bayonet. Sherman snatched it from his hands and mounted to the parapet, followed by the New Englander.

“For pity’s sake, sir, be careful.”

“Nonsense…don’t you see…they’re returning her to us…my vagabond…after one night they’re eager to return her to us. I may refuse, sir, I may refuse.”

Nevertheless, since the commander was already walking briskly across the distance to meet them, Van Allen simply shook his head.

The Rebel officer, young, clean-shaven, with arrogant blue eyes, was now gripping Jesse by the arm as if he thought she would make a run for it. The other, the tall, lanky private, was looking around him, wary and scared as if he mistrusted this momentary cease-fire and no longer cared about any Yankee prisoner.

Sherman nodded jerkily at the officer, then looked at Jesse. Her feet were naked and dirty. She was hatless and the leather belt with the shiny U.S. buckle that Grant had given her at Jackson was gone, as was her most treasured possession, the Bowie knife. But she was defiant as ever as she wrenched her arm free of the lieutenant’s grip, demanding of him,

“One of your thieving men stole my Bowie knife. I want it returned.”

“Sir,” said the Rebel officer and saluted Sherman. “Major Ormsby, at your service. We have complied with your request, sir, owing to the special circumstances. But General Pemberton wishes you to know that no further return of prisoners will be considered.”

“Thank you, Major Ormsby, and please convey my compliments to General Pemberton. Tell him General Grant will be suitably grateful, as will be the boy’s widowed mother, General Grant’s sister. You will appreciate the reasons for General Grant not coming in person to thank you?” Ormsby nodded. “Corporal Davis,” Sherman’s voice was abrupt, almost harsh. “Welcome back, welcome back.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jesse said. “They took my knife,” she added viciously. “Tell them to return the Bowie knife that Thomas gave me—”

Ormsby looked uncomfortable “I can assure you, suh, our men are not thieves.”

Jesse laughed contemptuously. “You’re a liar—” she said through clenched teeth. “Ask him if he intends to feed any of those Federal soldiers he has up there?”

“Again, Major, thank you,” Sherman said as if she hadn’t spoken.

“Sir.” Ormsby saluted and turned back toward the Rebel defenses.

The private peered one last time over his shoulder. “See-en that’en weeth the reed hair, hees Ole Shermin his-self.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.
Shut up!
”

“General Grant’s sister, sir?” Van Allen inquired when they were out of earshot.

“So, you have come back to us, Corporal Davis?”

“Sir, they’ve got dozens of our men, they haven’t eaten or drunk for two days. Some of them need a surgeon.”

Suddenly, ahead of them and with no connection whatsoever, regimental brasses had struck up “The Star Spangled Banner” in morning band practice. Jesse raised her eyes to Sherman’s face.

“Did our assault succeed, sir?”

“The men fought bravely and well. Yours was not the only regimental flag placed upon the exterior slope of the fort.” He did not think it necessary to tell her that despite acts of bravery similar to hers all along the Union lines the assault had been a costly, bloody failure. A complete disaster. He did not tell her that theirs had been a fifty percent mortality rate, or repeat what he had written Mrs. Sherman after the battle that the Federal soldiers had been “…swept away as chaff thrown from the hand in a windy day.”

Jesse smiled wanly. “I knew it wouldn’t fail. Please, sir, can we go home now, I’m
so
very tired.”

“First we will show young Cartwright that you are back with us. He’ll want to clean up that wound on your arm.”

Jesse looked at her left arm, at the dried blood. She nodded. Sherman nodded.

It was nearly midnight. Cartwright came out of Jesse’s tent to the rear of Sherman’s headquarters. In the light of the campfire he blinked myopically at the tall, slender officer dismounting in something of a hurry and handing his reins to the orderly. It was Thomas Ransom and he spoke to Cartwright as he approached. “Why didn’t you send word to me? Where’s Jesse? Is she badly injured?” He glanced toward the tent and tried to bypass the surgeon, who gripped the tent flap. “For God’s sake, Cartwright, tell me.”

“It’s not a bad wound. If she keeps it clean it’ll be healed in a few days.”

“Thank God—” The Vermonter removed his hat and seemed to breathe for the first time. “Can I see her?”

“She’s sleeping. She was exhausted.”

Ransom nodded, nodded again, and then stared at the surgeon, his handsome face distorted with anger. “Why didn’t you send me word, as soon as it happened?”