Gob's Grief (4 page)

The next morning, Tomo woke suddenly to the noise of cannon. He had been having a dream: he was in the house at Homer, sharing a plate of pancakes with Gob, while their mama read aloud from
The Tempest.
There was a big fire built in the hearth, and Tomo was comfortable and very happy because his grandpa Buck was dead—his head was stuffed and mounted above the mantel. Tomo shoveled pancakes into his mouth: they were drenched with butter and tasted very salty. Suddenly there was a noise outside, like thunder, and his mama leaped from her chair, shrieking, “Oh Rosy, there was no hole but the one you made! Yet now truly there’s a hole in our center and Longstreet has seen it!”

Somebody had put Tomo under a tent with Johnny, who slept through the artillery noise, hugging his drum. Tomo rose and poured water over his hot aching head, and drank a cup of coffee. Johnny woke up and hastily scribbled out a note with his parents’ names and address, which he pinned to his coat. “Ought to have done this yesterday,” he said. After a few moments’ reflection, Tomo did it too. He wrote his real name, and then his mother’s name: “Victoria C. Woodhull (The Great), Town of Homer, Licking County, Ohio.”

Tomo and the rest of Company C were two miles north of the hole in the line into which Longstreet poured three divisions later that morning. Just after noon two-thirds of the Army of the Cumberland was in headlong flight up the road to Rossville and Chattanooga. Old Rosy was nobody’s man that day; he fled to Chattanooga. Tomo did not flee there, though he still had in him a hankering to see the place. He stayed with the Ninth, who got called up, just as things were falling apart, to Snodgrass Hill, where Thomas made his famous stand.

Tomo spent the whole day up there. Twice the Rebs crested Tomo’s portion of the hill and planted their colors on it; twice Tomo rushed out with the Ninth to push the colors over and bludgeon the panting Rebs. All pooped out from their run up the hill, the Rebs had very little fight in them by the time they reached the top.

A third time the Ninth charged out. The Rebs had a round of canister and grape ready for them when they rushed out from behind their works. Tomo tripped and fell on his face, and the volley passed over him. Raimund Herrman lost his head to an erroneously loaded cannonball. His big body took a few more steps and then seemed to kneel down before it fell over. A load of shot took the living Weghorst twin in the chest. Aaron Stanz, in the rear of the charge, kept running after Tomo, stranded in the front, after his comrades had turned back or flattened themselves on the ground. The artillery spent itself as Aaron Stanz ran, and did not touch him, but then he came under furious, withering rifle fire, and seemed to disappear before Tomo’s eyes. Little pieces of Aaron Stanz—a finger, a portion of his hat, part of his nose—were suddenly not there, and then he proceeded to disintegrate as butterfly-sized pieces of flesh and bone flew away from him. He ran to within a few yards of Tomo before there was not sufficient body left for his will to propel.

That horror caused Tomo to experience a reversal of feeling. Now all his former battle-mindedness left him, replaced by terror, which rose up in him until he felt he could not breathe because he was drowning in it. It was so much worse than what he’d felt the day before. Now he did want to run away to Homer, to cower under the bed and not ever come out. He and Gob would have a stolen pie and a jug of cider, a candle, and a book. What else did a boy need besides all that and his brother? They could eat and read and scratch each other’s back. They could look out into the darkness beyond the candle and say it together: “I’m afraid. I’m afraid to die.” Overcome by fever and fear, Tomo closed his eyes and rested his head on the ground.

It was night when he woke to the noise of Rebels cheering their victory. The sound was muffled by the dead piled on top of him—one Union and three Rebel, entwined in a heavy confraternity that must have protected him from flying bullets. He emerged from under the bodies. General Thomas was gone, leaving Tomo and the dead behind him.

Tomo went west, walking, where he had to, over the soft bodies of the dead. Amid the cheers of the Rebels he heard the moans of some wounded, and he was certain his steps would elicit a groan at some point, but they never did. He kept walking towards the ridge, dodging campfires. When he heard a group of Rebs approaching him, he fled into a patch of woods, becoming quite lost there among the pine and scrub oak, where more dead lay scattered amid the smoldering underbrush. Eventually, Tomo lost sight of the ridge, lost all sense of direction, and came at last to a swift cold creek, which he passed over, sliding down one steep bank and clawing his way up the other, grateful for the chance to dunk his whole body. Tomo felt so hot now he thought he must soon burst into flame and draw the Rebs down on him like moths. Not knowing that he was completely turned around, he headed east on the far side of Chickamauga creek. “Gob,” he called out softly as he walked through the dark woods. “Where are you?”

His fever visions kept up. An owl alit on a low branch and said, “Tomo! Tomo!” The moon flipped in the sky like a tossed coin. A little boy brandishing a wooden sword led a troop of headless soldiers towards the creek. And a man in an immaculate white chiton rode out from a shadow on an elephant the size of a pony.

“Thomas Jefferson Woodhull,” he said. “I know you.”

“I don’t know you,” said Tomo, sitting down and rubbing his eyes. He did know him, though. He recognized him from the stories his mama told about her enormous destiny, about all the spirits in whose shadow she walked. He began to cry.

“There,” said the man. “There now. There’s no need to cry. You wanted to see the elephant, didn’t you? Well, here he is!”

Tomo said nothing, but only put his head in his hands and cried harder. The elephant played a friendly tune on its trunk as the man dismounted and came to sit by him. Only then did Tomo notice he’d lost Betty in the creek. The man took Tomo’s hands from his face and held them in his own. His hands were cool and dry and too smooth to be made of real flesh.

“Oh my boy,” he said. “Your troubles are almost over. You are very near the road home. In yonder clearing squats an officer who can send you on your way.” The man in white raised a bare arm and pointed. Tomo got up and ran, not so much because he believed the fever-vision, but because he wanted to get away. Sure enough, there was a figure in the clearing, squatting next to his horse with his pants down.

Tomo’s half-spoken friendly greeting turned to a howl of rage when he saw the man in the clearing was a Rebel, and a general for that matter—his stars shone very clearly in the bright moonlight. Tomo brought his gun up as he ran, but when he fired, he missed. As he neared the General, he flipped the rifle and caught it by the barrel, lifting it above his head, ready to deliver a crushing blow. The General raised his pistol and shot twice before Tomo could reach him. The first bullet went wide, but the second passed into Tomo’s left eye, and killed him dead. Tomo fell down in the cool grass, and his fever began very slowly to depart from him. The General came over on his knees to better see his assailant. Already, there was noise in the trees. The General’s staff was coming to look for him—his camp was not very far away.

When the General saw it was a little boy he had killed, he pounded his hand against his head and tore out a piece of his hair, cursing the Yankees that they should send children against him, and, because he happened also to be a priest and a bishop, he prayed gently and sincerely over the boy’s body, pleading with God to please, please give this little one a home in Heaven.

E
VERY
N
IGHT FOR A
T
HOUSAND
Y
EARS

Sorrow ([illegible]) grieve sad mourn (I use) mourning mournful melancholy dismal heavy-hearted tears black sobs -ing sighing funeral rites wailing lamenting mute grief eloquent silence bewail bemoan deplore regret deeply loud lament-pitiful loud weeping violent lamentation

anguish wept sore depression pain of mind passionate regret afflicted with grief cast down downcast gloomy serious Sympathy moving compassion tenderness tender-hearted full of pity obscurity partial or total darkness (as the gloom of a forest—gloom of midnight) cloudy cloudiness
(cloudiness)
of mind mind sunk in gloom soul ((sunk in gloom)/ dejection dejected

[illegible]) shades of night heavy dull-sombre sombre shades sombre(ness) affliction oppress-oppressive oppression prostration humble—humility suffering-silent suffering burdensome Distress—distressing calamity Extreme anguish (either of mind or body) Misery torture harassed weighed down trouble deep affliction plaintive Calamity disaster something that strikes down—

                           
WALT WHITMAN
                           A collection of vocabulary for
                           “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

1

WALT DREAMED HIS BROTHER’S DEATH AT FREDERICKSBURG.
General Burnside, appearing as an angel at the foot of his bed, announced the tragedy: “The army regrets to inform you that your brother, George Washington Whitman, was shot in the head by a lewd fellow from Charleston.” The general alit on the bedpost and drew his dark wings close about him, as if to console himself. Moonlight limned his strange whiskers and his hair. His voice shook as he went on. “Such a beautiful boy. I held him in my arms while his life bled out. See? His blood made this spot.” He pointed at his breast, where a dark stain in the shape of a bird lay on the blue wool. “I am so very sorry,” the General said, choking and weeping. Tears fell in streams from his eyes, ran over the bed and out the window, where they joined the Rappahannock, which had somehow come north to flow through Brooklyn, bearing the bodies of all the late battle’s dead.

In the morning Walt read the wounded list in the
Tribune.
There it was: “First Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore.” He knew from George’s letters that there was nobody named Whitmore in the company. He walked through snow to his mother’s house. “I’ll go and find him,” he told her.

Washington, Walt quickly discovered, had become a city of hospitals. He looked in half of them before a cadaverous-looking clerk told him he’d be better off looking at Falmouth, where most of the Fredericksburg wounded still lay in field hospitals. He got himself on a government boat that ran down to the landing at Aquia Creek, and went by railroad to the neighborhood of Falmouth, seeking Fer-rero’s Brigade and the Fifty-first New York, George’s regiment. Walt stood outside a large brick mansion on the banks of the Rappahan-nock, somebody’s splendid residence converted to a hospital, afraid to go in and find his mangled brother. He took a walk around the building, gathering his courage, and found a pile of amputated limbs, arms and legs of varying lengths, all black and blue and rotten in the chill. A thin layer of snow covered some of them. He circled the heap, thinking he must recognize his brother’s hand if he saw it. He closed his eyes and considered the amputation; his brother screaming when he woke from the ether, his brother’s future contracting to something bitter and small.

But George had only gotten a hole in his cheek. A piece of shell pierced his wispy beard and chipped a tooth. He had spit blood and hot metal into his hand, put the shrapnel in his pocket, and later showed it to his worried brother, who burst into tears and clutched him in a bear hug when they were reunited in Captain Francis’s tent, where George sat with his feet propped on a trunk and a cigar stuck in his bandaged face.

“You shouldn’t fret,” said George. “I couldn’t be any healthier than I am. And I’ve been promoted. Now you may call me
Captain
Whitman.” But Walt could not help fretting, even now that he knew his brother was alive and well. A great, fretting buzz had started up in his head, inspired by the pile of limbs, and the smell of blood in the air, and by ruined Fredericksburg, all broken chimneys and crumbling walls across the river. Walt stayed in George’s tent and, watching him sleep, felt a deep thrilling worry. He wandered around the camp, and as he passed by a fire in an enclosure of evergreen branches piled head high against the wind, he met a soldier. They sat down together by the fire, and the soldier told Walt hideous stories about the death of friends. “He put his head in my lap and whispered goodbye to his mama,” the soldier said. “And then he turned his eyes away from me and he was dead.” Walt put his face in the evergreen wall, smearing his beard with fresh sap, and thought how it smelled like Christmas.

Ten days later, Walt still couldn’t leave. He stood by and watched as George moved out with the healthy troops on Christmas Day, then idled in the deserted campground, watching the interminable caravans of army wagons passing and passing into the distance. Near at hand, some stragglers crossed his line of sight—a large young man leading a mule that pulled a wagon, on top of which perched a fat man cursing in French. When all were gone, and the campground empty, Walt went up to the brick mansion and made himself useful, changing dressings, fetching for the nurses, and just sitting with the wounded boys, with the same excited worry on him as when he watched George sleep. Back in Brooklyn a deep and sinister melancholy had settled over him. For the past six months Walt had wandered the streets with a terrible feeling in him—Hell under his skull bones, death under his breast bones, and a feeling that he would like most of all to lie down under the river and sleep forever. But in the hospital that melancholy was gone, scared off, perhaps, by all the shocking misery around him, and it had been replaced by a different sort of sadness, one that was vital, not still; a feeling that did not diminish his soul, but thrilled it.

When Walt finally left Falmouth, it was to watch over a cargo of wounded as they traveled through the early-morning darkness back to Aquia Creek, where they would be loaded on a steamer bound for Washington. With every jolt and shake of the train, a chorus of horrible groans wafted through the cars. Walt thought it would drive him insane. What saved him was the singing of a boy with a leg wound. The boy’s name was Hank Smith. He’d come all the way from divided Missouri, and said he had a gaggle of cousins fighting under General Beauregard. He sang “Oh, Susannah” over and over again, and no one told him to be quiet.

All the worst cases went to a hospital called Armory Square, because it was closest to the boat landing at the foot of Sixth Street. Walt accompanied them, and kept up the service he’d begun at Fal-mouth—visiting, talking, reading, fetching, and helping.

And he went to other hospitals. There were certainly enough of them to keep him busy. Their names were published in the papers like a list of churches—Finley, Campbell, Carver, Harewood, Mount Pleasant, Judiciary. And then there were the public buildings, also stuffed with wounded. Even the Patent Office held them; boys on cots set up on the marble floor of the Model Room. He brought horehound candy to an eighteen-year-old from Iowa, who lay with a missing arm and a sore throat in front of the glass case which held Ben Franklin’s printing press. Two boys from Brooklyn had cots in front of General Washington’s camp equipment. Walt read to them from Brooklyn papers his mother sent down, every now and then looking up at the General’s tents rolled neatly around their posts, his folded chairs and mess kit, his sword and cane, his washstand, his surveyor’s compass, and a few feet down in a special case all to itself, the Declaration of Independence. Other wounded boys lay in front of pieces of the Atlantic Cable, beside ingenious toys, in sight of rattraps, next to the razor of Captain Cook.

Walt could not visit every place all in a day, though he tried at first. Eventually, he picked a few and stuck with those. But mostly he was at Armory Square, where Hank Smith was.

“I had my daddy’s pistol with me,” said Hank Smith, sprawling in his slender iron-framed bed. “That’s why I got my leg still.” It wasn’t the first time Walt had been told how Hank had saved his own leg from the “chopping butchers” in the field hospital, but he didn’t mind hearing the story again. It was spring. The leg was still bad, though not as bad as it had been. At least that was the impression that Hank gave. He never complained about his wound. He’d come down with typhoid, too, a gift from the hospital. “I want my pistol back,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Walt always said that, but they both knew no one was going to give Hank back the pistol with which he’d threatened to blow out the brains of the surgeon who tried to take his leg. They had left him alone, then, and later another doctor had said there wasn’t any need to amputate.

“Meanwhile, here’s an orange,” said Walt. He pulled the fruit out of his coat pocket and peeled it. Soldiers’ heads began to turn in their beds as the smell drifted over the ward. Some asked if he had any for them.

“’Course he does,” said Hank. In fact, Walt had a coatful of them. He had bought them at Center Market, then walked through the misty, wet morning, over the brackish canal and across the filthy Mall. The lowing of cattle drifted towards him from the unfinished monument to General Washington as he walked along, wanting an orange for himself but afraid to eat one lest he be short when he got to the hospital. He had money for oranges, sweets, books, tobacco, and other good things from sponsors in Brooklyn and New York and elsewhere. And he had a little money for himself from a job, three hours a day as a copyist in the paymaster’s office—he’d given up, for the present, on seeking a fancier appointment, put away in a drawer the letters of introduction to powerful personages from Mr. Emerson. From his desk in the paymaster’s office, he had a spectacular view of Georgetown and the river, and the stones that were said to mark the watery graves of three Indian sisters. The sisters had cursed the spot: anyone who tried to cross there must drown. Walt would sit and stare at the rocks, imagining himself shedding his shirt and shoes by the riverside, trying to swim across. He imagined drowning, too, the great weight of water pressing down on him. (When he was a child, he’d nearly drowned in the sea.) Inevitably, his reverie was broken by the clump-clump of one-legged soldiers on their crutches, coming up the stairs to the office located, perversely, on the fourth floor.

After he’d distributed the oranges, Walt wrote letters on behalf of various boys until his hand ached.
Dear Sister
, he wrote for Hank,
I have been brave but wicked. Pray for me.

*     *     *

Armory Square was under the command of a brilliant drunk named Canning Woodhull. Over whiskey, he explained to Walt his radical policies, which included washing hands and instruments, throwing out used sponges, and swabbing everything in sight with bitter-smelling Labarraque’s solution. He had an absolute lack of faith in laudable pus.

“Nothing laudable about it,” he said. “White or green, pus is pus, and either way it’s bad for the boys. There are creatures in the wounds—elements of evil. They are the emissaries of Hell, sent earthward to increase our suffering, to increase death and increase grief. You can’t see them except by their actions.” The two men knocked glasses and drank, and Walt made a face because the whiskey was medicinal, laced with quinine. It did not seem to bother Woodhull.

“I have the information from my wife,” Woodhull said, “who has great and secret knowledge. She talks to spirits. Much of what she hears is nonsense—do not tell her I said so. But this bit about the creatures in the pus—that’s true.”

Maybe it was. Woodhull’s hospital got the worst cases and kept them alive better than any other hospital in the city, even ones that got casualties only half as severe. The doctor stayed in charge despite a reputation as a wastrel and a drunk and a nascent lunatic. A year earlier he had been removed by a coalition of his colleagues, only to be reinstated by Dr. Letterman, the medical director of the Army of the Potomac, who had been personally impressed by many visits to Armory Square. “They say General Grant is a drunk, too,” Letterman said in response to the charges against Dr. Woodhull.

“The creatures are vulnerable to prayer and bromine, and whiskey and Labarraque’s. Lucky for us.” Woodhull downed another glass. “Ah, sir—there is the matter of the nurses. Some of them are complaining. Just last Tuesday I was in Ward E with the redoubtable Mrs. Hawley. We saw you come in at the end of the aisle and she said, ‘Here comes that odious Walt Whitman to talk evil and unbelief to my boys. I think I would rather see the evil one himself—at least if he had horns and hoofs—in my ward. I shall get him out as soon as possible!’ And she rushed off to do just that. And you know how she failed to eject you, how she always fails to eject you.” He poured again.

“Shall I stop coming, then?”

“Heavens no. As long as old Hawley is complaining, I’ll know you’re doing good. God bless her pointy little head.”

Two surgeons came into Woodhull’s makeshift office, a corner of Ward F sectioned off by three regimental flags.

“
Assistant
Surgeon Walker is determined to kill Captain Carter,” said Dr. Bliss, a dour black-eyed man from Baltimore. “She has given him opium for his diarrhea, and, very foolishly, in my opinion, withheld ipecac and calomel.” Dr. Mary Walker stood next to him, looking calm, her arms folded across her chest. Her blue uniform was immaculate, a studied contrast to Woodhull’s stained and threadbare greatcoat, which he wore in winter and summer alike.

“Dr. Walker is doing as I have asked her,” said Woodhull. “Ipecac and calomel are to be withheld in all cases of flux and diarrhea.”

“For God’s sake, why?” asked Dr. Bliss, his face reddening. He was new in Armory Square. Earlier that same day Woodhull had castigated him for not cleaning a suppurating chest wound.

“Because it is for the best,” said Woodhull. “Because if you do it that way, a boy will not die. Because if you do it that way, some mother’s heart will not be broken.”

Dr. Bliss turned redder, then paled, as if his rage had broken and ebbed. He scowled at Dr. Walker, turned sharply on his heel, and left. Dr. Walker sat down.