Widow of Gettysburg (16 page)

“Hettie Shriver. This is my father’s farm.”

“I’ve just arrived from Taneytown, but it appears I missed the battle.”

“I wish I could say the same thing!” she said hotly. “Safest place to be, my foot. Would you believe I brought my daughters, my neighbor’s daughter, and my hired help here to keep them
safe?
”

“What happened?” He pulled out his notebook and readied his pencil to take notes.

“Well! Shortly after we arrived, Union artillery hurried by, right before our very eyes, flying toward the sound of battle. Shouting and lashing their horses, they gave up on the rutted road and took to the fields. Then infantry came, and we all brought them water to speed them on to
victory. And now this—” she pointed with her tray toward the barn. Moaning spilled from the doors and windows. Shrieks shot out like bullets. “They came back to us wounded, defeated. I thought I was bringing everyone to safety, but I brought them to the lion’s den instead.”

Looking toward the barn, Harrison rubbed a hand over his freckled face and sighed. He could imagine what was inside without entering.

“You’ll be wanting to talk to them then, I suppose,” said Mrs. Shriver. “Could you at least come to the kitchen and pick up some beef tea to bring with you on your way? I’d appreciate the help.”

“Yes, of course.” He tied his mount to a tree, hung a bag of oats around his head and let him feed while he entered the kitchen.

The smell of simmering beef tea washed over him, took him back to every makeshift hospital he had ever been in. Different battles, different women sweating over the steaming kettles, but the same smell. Fresh beef. Fresh horror. He had done this before, but these women hadn’t. He could read in their eyes that they had witnessed pain they hadn’t imagined possible, and he could see strength rising up in them that they did not know they possessed.

“This is Bella Jamison, my hired help.” Mrs. Shriver nodded at a colored woman pouring beef tea into glass bottles, then set down her tray and checked on loaves of bread in the oven.

Bella looked up and greeted him, and recognition kindled in his mind. Those velvety brown eyes, skin the color of almond shells, wide cheekbones, full lips, straight nose. He had met her before.
Where? Where?

“Pardon me, but have we met somewhere, Mrs. Jamison?”

She squinted those eyes at him. “I don’t think so.”

“Have you been to Philadelphia perhaps? I’m a reporter for the
Inquirer
.” But he’d been all over the country. He could have met her anywhere.

“I’m from right here, Gettysburg.” She handed him the bottles. They grew warm in his hands. He had never been to Gettysburg before.

“Travel much?”

“Only place I want to go is back across Seminary Ridge.” The words
were barely audible, perhaps not meant for him to hear. Her back was to him as she diced more beef to throw into a kettle of boiling water.

“Across Seminary Ridge? Is that where your home is?” He was unfamiliar with the land here, a fact he hoped to change at first light. He could fairly predict where fighting would take place if he could see the valleys, ridges, forests, and fields.

“No,” Mrs. Shriver said as she sliced hot bread with a butcher knife. Harrison’s stomach clamored for a piece, but his mind was made up. He would not take bread from wounded men. “That’s where another employer of hers is. Where the fighting was today.”

He looked at Bella for an explanation. “You want to go where the action was?”

“Just wanted to make sure Miss Holloway was all right, that’s all.” She slanted a glance at Mrs. Shriver’s back as she exited with a tray of fresh bread. “I don’t see why that’s so unbelievable.”

“You have special bonds with the women you work for, then?”

Bella looked up. “Do you always ask this many questions?”

“Afraid so. Goes with the territory for being a reporter. But—” he tucked his pencil and paper back into the pocket of his linen duster. “Do go on. I won’t print it.”

She turned back to her kettle and stirred the boiling water. “Miss Holloway is special.” She spoke into curling wisps of steam. “An orphan, raised by a spinster aunt who made no secret of the fact she didn’t love her. Helen called her the thorn in her side until she died, although I’d say it was the other way around. Then Liberty married when she was only seventeen, became a widow weeks later.”

Harrison moved so he could watch Bella’s face when she spoke. “The war?”

“First Bull Run.” Her profile glistened in the cloud of steam.

He nodded. He had been there, too.

“And now, this battle—the fighting was so close to her farm today. I worry about her. I don’t know how much more she can stand to lose without breaking.”

“I can certainly understand that.” He had seen some women rise above expectations during this war. He had seen others die from overwork, or a broken heart. Harrison sighed. “I hope you find her well. And now, I best get out to the barn and talk to some soldiers.”

She nodded, then turned back to her kettle and rolled the kinks out of her neck.

His eyes widened as another scene overlaid his vision: one of a mulatto woman rolling the kinks out of her neck. Same skin color, eyes, nose, mouth, everything. But a very, very different setting.

“Georgia!” he blurted out, and she jumped, dropping her spoon.

“Pardon me,” he said, picking it up for her. “But I just remembered where I’d seen you before. Four years ago, Ten Broeck Race Course, near Savannah, Georgia. The Weeping Time.”

He had frightened her, dredged up unwelcome memories, he could see it in her eyes. How selfish of him. “But you’re free now!”
Oh no, does she still think I am pro-slavery?
“Mrs. Jamison, I was there as a reporter for the
New York Tribune.
I had to act like a slave owner so they wouldn’t throw me out—and so they wouldn’t kill me. But I’ve never held a slave.”

She backed away from him. Why was she so afraid? “I’m sure it was you. I never forget a face.” Hers had been twisted in agony at the time. That’s why it had taken him so long to place her.

“I’ve never been near Savannah. You must be mistaken.” Her eyes glimmered before she drew a veil over their spark. He had seen that vacant look before, mostly in slaves on the auction block, or runaway slaves who had just been recaptured. He supposed it was a sign of resignation to their situation. Or perhaps it was an instrument of self-defense, a shielding of their spirit whenever they sensed danger.

The beef tea bubbled over, sizzled on the cast iron stovetop. Bella went back to skim off the fat. She did not turn around this time when he took his leave.

She was hiding something. And he would find out what it was.

I
need help.”

“Please, please I’ll do anything else.” Liberty hooked a curl of hair behind her ear and bit her trembling lip.

“This is the help I need.” Dr. Stephens’ eyes gleamed in the moonlight, unblinking. A kerosene lantern swung from his hand.

“You don’t understand. My husband—late husband—had both legs amputated and I wasn’t even brave enough to go visit him afterward …”

“What does that have to do with right now?”

She blanched. “Isn’t it obvious? If I wasn’t strong enough to visit a recovering amputee—my own husband—how could I be strong enough to assist in the carving of a man?”

“Selfish.” He spat the word upon her. “What a selfish excuse. You want only to protect yourself from a sliver of emotional pain, when you have in your power the ability to prevent physical suffering you cannot
imagine. Look around.” He waved his arm in a wide-swinging arc. “There are now exactly fifteen hundred forty-two patients here, and only three surgeons. The patients upon whom we do not amputate within twenty-fours get no anesthesia, for if they do, they will not wake up. Darkness is already upon us, which means we have roughly fourteen to sixteen hours to perform these operations in the most humane way possible. We three surgeons must all amputate through the night. I need you to hold the light.”

In her moment of hesitation, he jumped in again. “You don’t know what you can do until you are required to do it.”

“I am only a young widow!”

“And I was only a father!” He dropped his eyelids. “Required to amputate the leg off my own son at Antietam. To save his life, you see. He begged me not to, but I had no choice. It had to come off, there was no other way.” His voice wavered. “When he was a child, he fractured his leg, and I set it right again and it healed. To be required to then cut off that leg …”

How perfectly barbarous.
Eyes filling with tears, Liberty held her tongue and waited.

“I killed him.” He brought his gaze to hers, as if measuring her response.

She offered none.

A lump shifted in his throat. “I gave him too much chloroform. I didn’t want him to feel any amount of pain at all.” He sniffed. “He didn’t. He was dead before I finished. Because I was afraid of his pain, and of my own part in it. That is why he died.”

Liberty’s breath seized in her throat.

“So don’t tell me you can’t hold a lantern. Don’t tell me it’s too much.” His words, edged with pain, stripped her. She felt exposed. Selfish.

No more.

When Dr. Stephens held out a kerosene lantern, she took it with shaky hand.

“Hold it close.”

Her stomach threatened to rebel, and she was glad it was completely empty as she turned her attention to the improvised operating table. It was her barn door, ripped from its hinges and laid atop empty barrels. The other door was in use for the same purpose on the other side of the barn.

They are only doors
, Liberty had told herself when they had first been torn out, when the smell of blood overpowered the smell of hay.
It is only a barn.

“Closer.” His tone was impatient. He had been amputating for more than fourteen hours in the wet flannel heat of summer, with no break at all.

Libbie held it over the body, moving it a little this way, a little that way, as instructed, for she did not trust herself to lay her own eyes on the mangled body without flinging down the light and running.
I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Lord, strengthen me.

Dr. Stephens lifted the patient’s head and tipped some brandy into his mouth, then gently laid him back on the door. Next, he took an eight-ounce tin canister of chloroform and a small metal flattened cylinder, less than three inches long and one inch wide. Two small tubes protruded from one end. “We used to fold a cloth napkin into a cone and drip one or two ounces into it before holding it over the patient’s nose and mouth. This is much more efficient.”

Whether he thought she was truly interested or just trying to distract her from the wound, she was grateful for something to hold her interest. “You need only drop one-eighth of an ounce into this perforated disc, like this—and it goes onto a small sponge inside. Now we insert the tubes in his nose—there we are. Now breathe in, my good man.”

The patient inhaled, and all three of them waited for the anesthesia to take hold. The patient began muttering something, then cried out, and tried to rise from the barn door. Dr. Stephens did not look alarmed, and Libbie guessed this excitement was the first stage of the drug’s effect. Every amputation she had heard today had begun with the
patient’s wild flailing before succumbing to unconsciousness.

“It is all right, my good man,” Dr. Stephens murmured a few times until the man relaxed fully. He touched his eyelids, and they did not contract. “Ready. Watch his coloring, Miss Holloway, and monitor his pulse.”

Her eyes darted between doctor and patient.

“If his tongue slips back into the glottis, he will suffocate on the table and die. He will turn grey if there is danger. If that happens, seize his tongue immediately and pull it out.”

“But—how often does that happen?” Libbie sputtered.

“Once is too often. Just watch.”

Swallowing hard, she pinned her gaze to the patient’s face, and held the lantern as steady as she could while the doctor turned the screw on the tourniquet, tightening the strap high on the arm. Light glimmered dimly on the knife’s stained blade before it met the man’s flesh.

Her heartbeat sounded in her ears. Dr. Stephens swore, and Liberty jerked, exposing her tattered nerves.

“Hold still, woman!” The doctor yelled at her, bent over the table with his knife, and cursed again.

“What is it?” Libbie wondered if the patient could hear anything while he slept, and when he might wake up.

“The blades are dull.”

Dull blades didn’t slice. They tore. She gritted her teeth and while Dr. Stephens labored to divide muscles, veins and nerves, she prayed in short bursts.
Strengthen me. Strengthen him. Help. Help them, help us. Please, please.

“Now the retractor.” The doctor’s voice was tired. Liberty flicked a glance at him and watched great beads of sweat roll down into his eyes. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, and she averted her gaze again.