The Better Angels of Our Nature (8 page)

“I didn’t say, sir.”

“If you wannna keep tight-lipped, that’s fine by me. I don’t give a goddamn where you come from. You could come from the moon, for all I care. I was just being friendly. Got any money ’til payday?”

No sooner had Jesse brought three crumpled dollar bills and some loose change from his back pocket than the surgeon had snatched them up.

“Jacob’s right, you’re a good boy. Just stay away from that colonel, he’s a bad influence. I know the type. You can’t trust a man with such highly polished boots.” And just for emphasis he knocked the kepi off the boy’s head and kicked it under the table with a bully’s satisfied chuckle.

The boy went down on his knees to retrieve it. Cartwright narrowed his eyes. It deserved a good kicking, that small backside in the baggy pants, of that there was no doubt, though for the life of him he could not have said why.

4

A little more than mortal

The rain that had started midmorning, gone through the afternoon and into the evening, had finally given way to a cool evening breeze which carried along with it all the scents and sounds of this early spring night.

The Fifth Division commander, despite having been in the saddle most of the day, was still on the move, marching up and down in his wet stockinged feet, a cigar, long since dead, protruding from the left-hand corner of his mouth, as Captain Jackson came into the tent.

“The boy’s still out there, Gen’al, still serenadin’ yer,” the smiling aide said in answer to a mute but expressive inquiry on the part of his commander, who was chewing on his cigar stub the way he did everything, with energy and verve. “Do yer want me to get rid of him, Gen’al?”

“No.” Sherman shook his head. “Let him alone.” Andy’s smile blossomed into a grin. Sherman glared at his aide. “Did I say something amusing, sir?”

“No, Gen’al, only if yer don’t chase him off now, he’ll come back every night ’til you do, ’less the gen’al
wants
him to come back?”

Sherman ignored this question. Instead, he took a small package from his locker and thrust it at Jackson’s broad chest. “Give him this for his trouble, licorice, a favorite of Willy. Children like it because it turns their teeth black.”

Every day, be it in torrential rain, down muddy roads, over swollen creeks, under the heat of the midday sun, in the cold inhospitable hours after midnight, the Ohioan rode out as far as three, often four, miles in every direction on a personal reconnaissance, scouting for hard intelligence concerning enemy strength and positions he could pass along to Grant at Savannah and Halleck in Saint Louis. Diligently, thoroughly, did he question prisoners, deserters, civilians living in the farms and cabins scattered about the area, his analytical mind trying to make sense of their contrary statements, boasts, predictions, lies.

Even as his troops had been disembarking at the Landing, on the evening of March 16, he had been sending out companies from the Fourth Illinois cavalry down the Pittsburg-Corinth Road toward Monterey, urging them to attempt to break up the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.

Although this raid, like the first, had been unsuccessful, he had planned a third, reconnoitering in company with his young friend Lieutenant Colonel James McPherson.

“Andy.” The aide paused at the tent flap. “All these people around here,” Sherman said, “they’re all related to each other through generations of marriage, Jones, Rhea, Seay, Fraley, Duncan, and the rest, did you know that? And they’re a naturally closed-mouth bunch. I spoke to old man Fraley two days ago. Rebels told him that we take everything we can lay our hands on.” Sherman grimaced around his cigar. “Violate all the pretty girls and leave the old ones for the Negroes.”

The father of four beautiful daughters shuddered. “I can’t say I ain’t thought about what would happen if Rebel raiders got into Indiana,” he said.

“Yes, and Fraley really believed it, Andy. I assured him if he stayed at home and minded his own business, I would not permit the soldiers to disturb him. He appeared to take heart, yet when I went to his house today, I found that his wife and children had fled to the woods as though we are savages.”

“The only trouble I’ve heard about, Gen’al, is fence posts ripped out for firewood, and some chickens gone missing from a couple of the farms back a the church. They’re the usual troublemakers, the same ones over and over again, a few rotten apples, not fit to be called soldiers, they infect their entire company.”

“I don’t want my boys ripping out anything, or stealing a single egg. I’ll chase them out of the yards myself if I have to.” The Ohioan’s face got very red as he brought the palm of his hand down on his desk. “I’ll punish them severely, make an example of them. If we do not halt these deprivations now they will poison the minds of these people and the whole state will rise up against our army. We will be fighting not only the Rebels in uniform, but also the civilians in whose name Davis and his ilk profess to demand their freedom and rights. These poor farmers want peace, I tell you, but the wealthier classes hate us Yankees with a pure unadulterated hate.” Sherman tossed his cigar out of the tent and was already feeling in his pockets for another as he said, “If we do not persuade the plain ordinary people whose land we sit upon that we mean them no harm, there will be a citizen with a gun behind every tree and bush.”

Outside, the collar of his sack jacket pulled up to stop the rain running down his neck, Private Davis had just started singing, “When This Cruel War Is Over.”

“Can’t be soon enough for me,” Captain Jackson said bitterly, going out into the rain to give the singer his licorice.

The officers and enlisted men who now inhabited the beautiful Tennessee landscape may well have insisted upon their day of rest, but at the regimental hospitals, on this Sunday morning, it was business as usual.

Since it was said that men appointed to this position in the medical department should be of “honest and upright character and of temperate habits,” Sergeant Jacob De Groot was surely the perfect example of a hospital steward. “Drink this.” He had poured some tea into a tin cup and handed it to Jesse. “Be careful, it is hot.”

“Thank you, sir. You are very kind to me.” It was true, the Dutchman’s body contained within it the strength of twelve men, yet he was as gentle as a nursing mother. When he and Jesse were alone together they talked in his own language, nothing more readily brought a happy smile to that ruddy face. When not seeking sustenance in the scriptures he sat patiently carving beautiful animals out of rough blocks of wood that he gave to the young Negro boys who hung around the camps looking for food or work.

“You must excuse the doctor if he overwhelms you with his enthusiasm.” The surgeon had just given the boy another of his impromptu lectures on how to apply the chloroform, even though Jacob had taken him through the procedure a half-dozen times. “He sees that your natural inclination is to relieve suffering, but
I
think your heart is elsewhere. He is afraid now that we found you the army will make you a cook, or put you in the artillery. From Bull Run to this place I have witnessed the doctor’s frustration. I think this anger is like an…an engine that keeps him going when he is exhausted, this and the whiskey. Also I have come to see it is a safety valve, to release the steam that would otherwise build up and burst.” His long, powerful arms made the shape of an explosion. “Perhaps matters will change when he is promoted, at least in
our
hospital. When you are in command you can say we
will
try something new, we
will
move forward and stop fumbling around in the darkness just because we have been doing it that way for years. How else is progress made?” He drank some tea, and brought a brown-paper package from his knapsack. Inside were his sister’s famous cookies,
Dutch
cookies, baked with
real
butter. Jacob placed one in Jesse’s lap.

“You promised to tell me how you met Dr. Cartwright,” the boy said.

“I did, I did. Just after the Rebels fired on Fort Sumter, I wrote my sister, I go to enlist. In the recruitment office, I signed a paper and told the sergeant, I want to help my adopted country. I have heard that the Union needs men to drive wagons and carry the sick and injured. I am your man, I am strong, I can carry a man under each arm, one over each shoulder.” His laughter boomed out. “There must be many places where you can make use of such strength. He said you are a soldier now; we’ll make use of you, all right. I tried to explain to every officer I met, I will do whatever you ask of me if it will help save the Union, but I will not kill another of God’s children. Still they would not listen. Last July they put a musket into my hands, marched me to the outskirts of Washington City and told me with great excitement I would soon be able to kill other Americans. When the fighting started, I put down my gun and I picked up the injured. A very angry infantry captain with impressive mustaches that fluttered like chicken feathers when he talked asked me why a strong, healthy specimen such as me was running away from the fighting. I explained that I was not running away. I was carrying the wounded from the battlefield, but he would not listen. He said if I
wasn’t
a sniveling coward I would stop hiding and fight, and if I
was
a sniveling coward he would see that I paid with my miserable life.” Jacob brought his enormous fist down on what remained of the cookies, reducing them to crumbs. “For the birds,” he said philosophically. “All God’s creatures must eat and Beatrice would not begrudge them her delicious cookies. When the officer saw me again, I was
still
carrying the wounded, so he promised to have me arrested after the battle. He must have had a fine memory that captain for even though there was terrible fighting he did not forget his promise. When he came to the place where the doctor was treating the wounded, he had with him no less than four provost marshals, but the doctor refused to hand me over. If I had not been so afraid that they would shoot me then and there I would have laughed at the sight of the doctor standing up to these four men so that he might protect
me.
But they arrested me anyhow.” Jacob sighed. “I was in the stockade for five days while the doctor tried to find out what would become of me. He was very angry and I think he must have threatened to resign if they did not release me. Two months passed before all the papers that had gone back and forth telling about that bad soldier, that cowardly Jacob De Groot, were finally settled and I was transferred to the doctor’s regiment. I like a story with a happy ending, don’t you?”

“Were you in the stockade all that time, sir?”

“I had a companion.” Jacob held up his Bible. “A man is never lonely with the scriptures to keep him company. In here is everything a man or woman needs to live a decent life. Presidents, kings, and despots come and go, their man-made laws and rules change, but the scriptures remain constant. But I do not force any man to read it, all may read and know its truth for themselves, or not, it is their choice, that is American freedom. I simply ask that I be allowed to live my own life by these commandments.” He placed an enormous hand on the battered cover of his Bible. He looked suddenly at the boy with a smile. “They think I am strange because I never go to church?” Jacob’s smile was tolerant. “Hymn singing is pleasant, men and women raising their voices in praise of our Father, soldiers gathering on a Sunday morning to pray with their comrades is laudable. But after they leave their place of worship until the next time they meet the following Sunday how many keep the Father’s commandments? No.” Jacob shook his massive head solemnly. “What we do from Sunday to Sunday,
this
is the important thing.” He clenched enormous fists, laughed, and shook his head again. “Do they think the Father does not see how badly they have behaved all week and will do so again next week? They ask me, are you Dutch Reform, or Quaker? I say I am me, Jacob De Groot, unique in God’s eyes, as are all men and women.”

“
God!
” said the surgeon contemptuously, coming up behind the boy and slapping his kepi off his head. As Jesse bent to retrieve it, the surgeon pushed his backside off the tree stump with his own, causing him to land with a thump on the ground. “Don’t you two have anything better to talk about?”

“Sit by me, if there is room beside my very large posterior,” Jacob said, helping the boy up.

“Pour me a cup of coffee,” Cartwright instructed.

The boy obeyed immediately, advising gently, “Be careful, sir, the coffee is hot.”

The surgeon took the cup without a word. He removed his spectacles and rested his head in the palms of his hands, his voice rising muffled as he said, “We’ve been out of certain medicines for weeks. There’s only one hospital ship moored at the Landing,
one
for the entire Army of the Tennessee. I heard Grant sent one of the senior surgeons to Saint Louis to request additional transports.
Requesting
ain’t good enough. Someone has to go up there and
demand
more transports if we’re gonna treat the sick like men, not animals. This general, Halleck, ‘Brains’ they call him, he’s charged ‘gross irregularities’ in Grant’s medical department?
I
laughed for an hour when I heard that one. There are more than gross
irregularities,
there’s rank stupidity, and insanity. This Halleck, he demanded to know why the sick were still being sent to Saint Louis when he had ordered they be sent to Cincinnati. Someone oughta ask him, when the hospitals are full at Cincinnati where do we send them then,
Brazil, Africa,
the
moon
?”

Jacob and Jesse exchanged sad smiles. The Dutchman touched the surgeon’s thigh reassuringly.