Widow of Gettysburg (15 page)

“Bella, didn’t you see what happened to those colored people this morning? Even if you aren’t killed outright, you could be captured by the Confederates.”

Bella closed her eyes as dread settled on her like dust on a film of sweat. Hettie was right. And with what her husband had done, or was accused of doing, down South … she shuddered. The cannons now sounded like a continuous roll of thunder. She could not go there.

Once again, choice proved to be an illusion. She had no choices. Only escape routes.

“Mommy?” Sadie called out. “Are you coming?”

“Yes.”

No.
Tears pricked Bella’s eyes. LORD, she prayed,
please keep my daughter safe.

Back and arms aching, Libbie placed her hand on the iron pump handle, numb by now to the pressure on her blisters. Even if she had felt pain, she would have bit her tongue before complaining. There were
men dying inside her house, making straw beneath them sticky with blood, and they did not make any sound.

And there were men who did. She could hear their screams and shrieks from outside the house, a mix of horror and pain. These were the screams that slowed Libbie down, the ones that made her stop and cover her ears.

They were getting louder.

THUD.
She barely heard it. Twisting around, she scanned the house and ground, saw nothing. At least nothing that would have thumped. The ground was becoming littered with injured soldiers.

Ambulances continued to deliver their patients until they overflowed the first floor, and spilled onto the second floor, as well. Miraculously, they allowed Liberty’s room to remain untouched. Amelia had retreated behind that door shortly after their argument, and there she had stayed ever since. Now, men covered the muddy dooryard, with nothing between them and the earth. Some were shielded from the glaring sun by the shade of hickory trees. Others were not so fortunate, and lay sweltering in the heat.

Squinting against the sunshine, Liberty began ferrying water to them until she heard a
thud
once more. This time, she saw it, too.

Her buckets fell from her hands and tipped over in the grass, soaking her feet with cool water.

Against the side of the house, where her purple phlox had stood tall just this morning, was a leg, severed from its owner. And an arm.
THUD.
Another leg.
THUD.
A foot. A hand. Her stomach revolting, Libbie looked up in time to see crimson-streaked arms dropping another load of limbs out the window.

She doubled over and wretched.

Her heart hammered on her ribs as she sank to the ground. “I can’t do this! I cannot!” Her gasped confession was drowned out by the men inside who were coming apart at their seams. She buried her face in her hands and repeated a single word in her mind:
God!
It was prayer, plea, accusation.

“You done cryin’ yet?” A soldier with a flattened arm propped against the side of the house grunted. “I reckon we feel the same way as you, to be honest. I keep praying I’ll just pass out from the pain, but I reckon I’m a mite stronger than I’d like to be.” His attempt at a smile pierced her heart, and shame almost swallowed her whole. These men were in excruciating pain, and fully aware of the fate about to unfold for them. The screams, the sound of saw on bone, the limbs thrown out the window, all of this was simply a preview of what came next for them.

She had no reason to complain, unless it was on behalf of these men.

But they are the enemy.
The fact needled her, even though she had been so sure when she was arguing with Amelia rather than with her own heart. She scooped the remaining water from the bucket and drank it from her hand.
Levi, what would you say if you were here?
Should it matter what he would say? She was no longer his wife. Did she need permission from her past to do something in the present?

Elizabeth Thorn’s words came back to her then, the suggestion to talk to God every time she talked to a dead man.
All right, Lord. What would You say?
He answered with Scriptures she had learned as a child.

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.

Amelia wouldn’t like it. But her heavenly Father would.

Rising, she shook her soiled skirts, apologized to the soldier for her outburst, and ventured back into her house.

Scraping together all the courage she had, she stopped another blood-smeared doctor in the hall. “I need to talk to you.”

“There are one thousand patients here, and counting, and only two surgeons to wait upon them. Do you suppose I have time to chat?”

“It’s about your patients. The ones waiting to be—” She looked at his apron, his arms, his hands, all freckled with blood.
Butchered.
“Operated upon. The pile of limbs outside the window—it’s in plain sight of all these poor men. Isn’t there anything we can do about that?”

“Move them.”

“Yes, that would be fine, move the limbs somewhere else.”

“No, I meant
you
move them. If it concerns you so much.”

Libbie sputtered. She could never do that, not after what happened to Levi. Acid juices from her stomach climbed into her mouth again.

“Or would you rather perform the amputations? One of us has to, you know. I find no pleasure in it either, but it must be done. The minié ball cannot be removed from the body like a round musket ball could. It shatters the bone, tears the tissue, utterly destroys whatever is in its path. If we don’t remove the affected section, infection will certainly kill the patient over time—and painfully, too. So move the limbs, or don’t, but do
something
useful, I beg of you.”

“What else can I do?” Nothing could be as offensive as touching that pile of deadened flesh.

“Feed them. Many of these men suffered through a forced march of more than twenty miles before they even arrived, sleepless, at the battle. Or bind the wounds. Have you ever bandaged before?”

She had torn yards of fabric into bandages. Rolled the strips into neat coils, two inches wide, one inch wide, and sent them on their way with the rest of the supplies from the Ladies Union Relief Society. But the unrolling and wrapping around an arm or leg to staunch the flow of blood—that was someone else’s job. A nurse’s job.

In her hesitation, men clamored for the doctor’s attention, and she could tell he was growing impatient. “I’ll show you, if you walk with me.”

In the next thirty minutes, as he cared for the patients, she absorbed three ways to wrap a bandage and how to pack lint into a wound and keep it moist. Thirty minutes. Charlotte Waverly, the Sanitary Commission worker who had nursed Levi, had told her she’d trained for a full month at a hospital in New York City before nursing any of her own patients.

“Ready.” His tone told her it was not a question. “Take these bandages with you, but start with food.” She could read in his face
that they needed far more than a single farm girl could give. “The most severe cases must have sustenance if they will survive the shock of the operations.”

With bandages and lint bulging her apron pockets, she fetched peach preserves and applesauce from the summer kitchen. There wasn’t much else left after Amos and Wade had been there, but there would have been nothing if not for Johnny’s intervention. In the span of a single breath, she wondered where he was, blamed her boldness for his abrupt departure yesterday, and suspected she had scared him off for good, even if he survived this battle.

Back outside she hurried, and surveyed her dooryard. It was covered with men lying side by side. In that instant, her world shrunk down to the size of her own property, and still it was so big it threatened to overwhelm her.
How will I ever do this?
One patient at a time.

She would start here, at the porch, by her yellow roses, and move her way out toward the road. Liberty squatted in the mud next to her first patient, her skirts billowing around her. “Will you eat?”

A weathered face looked up at her. “Could you write a letter for me first?”

She blinked. “Yes, of course.” She should have expected that in addition to water, food, and medical care, one of the most pressing needs was to notify family. It should not surprise her in the least, not after receiving such a letter from Charlotte. How very strange to now be the one writing the note.

Relief passed over his face and he sighed, clutching his chest. “I’m not long for this world, you see, and I just want to send a last message to my wife. I hate to think of her never hearing from me, never knowing what became of me. That would be worse, don’t you think? At least if she knows, she can get on with her life. Wouldn’t that be better?”

She nodded. It would be better. After she took down his message and the address of where to send it, he said, “Now I don’t suppose y’all would let her come get my body until the war is over. But it would be a comfort for her to know where you bury it. And tell my wife where I am
laid to rest. It would be a comfort for her to know. Promise.”

Liberty promised, and her heart squeezed as she realized that no letter she would write for a Rebel would ever contain the words, “Come quickly.” For Southerners would not be allowed to come bring their loved ones home, dead or alive. Unless, of course, the Confederates won the battle.

“But you might be fine,” Libbie said, keeping her emotions in check. “You could pull through and be well in the end. Don’t give up.” But she could tell that he had. “Won’t you please try some applesauce?”

He nodded, and she spooned the applesauce into his mouth, slowly, so as not to choke him. Her blood pumped faster as she looked around at all the mouths still waiting.

This was taking far too long. Spoon-feeding one man when there were hundreds waiting? What she needed, but did not have, was bread, to tear off pieces of it and hand them out. Let the men who can, eat at their own pace, on their own.
What I need is two of me!

She looked up at the window of her bedroom just in time to see the curtain fall back into place.

Harrison Caldwell was on the right path, all right. He was just a little too late.

Taneytown Road was so cut up with wheel ruts and hoof prints, his horse sank more than a foot deep in the churned up mud before Harrison pulled him off to the side of the road for the rest of the journey.
The army has been here. And they were in a hurry.
Chest heaving from the gallop all the way from Taneytown, about fourteen miles south of Gettysburg, Harrison cursed himself for not being here first to see it all unfold.

Twilight dimmed the sky, and quiet pulsed in his ears. On his left
was a large hill, covered with trees. Beyond that, a smaller hill, with steep, rocky slopes.
A perfect spot to defend, impossible to take from below
, Harrison mused as he approached it.

Finally he heard something. A mewling, perhaps. Like kittens hungry for their mother’s milk.
Where was it coming from?

Ahead, on the eastern slope of the smaller hill, a farmhouse and barn glowed, and women in aprons carried trays between them.
Of course.
The mewling came not from kittens, but from wounded men, most likely filling that barn. The same scene replayed in his mind from Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville. The women the men had been fighting to protect were the ones picking up the pieces in the aftermath of battle.

Harrison pressed his heels into his tired horse and quickened his pace until he came to the farm.

“Hello there!” he called to the nearest woman.

She rushed over, a tin cup tied around her waist with string. “Have you news?”

A wry smile curled his lips, but the question burned his ears. He should have the news. But he had been too late. He dismounted to speak to her on eye level. His legs felt shaky after the hard ride. “Harrison Caldwell,
Philadelphia Inquirer.
” He extended his hand out of habit, then put it in his pocket. Her hands were full with a tray.