Homeland (19 page)

So I said I’d stay. Aunt Sally left this afternoon. She took Zed, Ruben the butler, and the nursemaid, leaving us with only Nellie and Cook. The house echoes queerly. I feel very strange, probably from lack of sleep, or not eating enough (there’s no time, at the
hospital). It’s as if the Real Susanna—that little girl sitting on Justin’s porch reading, who forged letters home for my roommate in the Nashville Academy—is sitting in a little room at the back of my brain, watching things and making drawings that I’ll one day be able to put on paper. I don’t think anyone would want to see them, tho’.

At the hospital I take care of Julia more than Tom, who hasn’t really regained his senses since the amputation. I change the dressings on his stumps, and keep him as clean as I can, and give him water or broth if I can get it, and chase the rats away. I think every rat in town knows where the pile of amputated limbs is, and from there they swarm the rooms and the stairways where the men lie. Sometimes at night I’ll hear a man screaming curses if vermin run across him or chew on his bandages. In between all that I help Doc Driscoll in the operating room (which was the dining-room—they had to get rid of the carpet there, too, because of maggots), and take water around to the men. Julia isn’t much good for any of that, but won’t leave Tom’s side, like a sort of demented Mrs. Micawber. With hardly anybody to keep the men clean, I can’t even tell you what it smells like. That’s another reason I haven’t eaten in days. When more men get brought in, Doc says, “Cut the arms and legs first. Head and belly, they won’t live anyway.” Part of my job in the operating room is just to keep the flies away from the open wounds long enough to clean and stitch.

I will confess to you, back when I got your letters, about first being on Deer Isle, and everyone hating you because of Emory, I was angry at Emory, angry that he’d do that to you, by making the choice he did. Cora, Emory has been like a brother to me and Julia, like a brother to poor Tom. He comes to the hospital whenever he’s in town—muddy and tired and powder-burned—to sit beside Tom. You have married a good man, dearest Cora.

[not sent]

Dearest Cora,

Doc sent me home this morning, after I fell asleep in a corner of the operating room (which I don’t remember, just being waked up by one of the orderlies). He said, “You go on home now, honey: that’s not a request, that’s an order. Grant’s going to hit us with everything he’s got, soon as he gets his men up. I’ll need you then and I’ll need you fresh. If you’re not out of this building in five minutes I’ll detail two men to take you home in handcuffs.” I saluted and said, “Yes, sir,” but instead of going home I walked to the top of Sky Parlor. The streets are filled with retreating soldiers, with wagons and ambulances. For a long time I stood at the top looking east and down, where Grant’s men were coming up through the ravines, and the Confederates streaming back into town. It was like looking down on a very bright orange-and-green chessboard. Last night Pemberton ordered all the houses on those hills outside of town burned, to clear the line of fire.

I wondered if Justin were down there, and where he was.

Emory came up beside me, and walked me home.

[sketch]

[not sent]

Dear Cora,

I don’t even know how to write about what’s happened since my last letter to you. I should be sleeping, but I can’t. At least I was able to wash, and rinse my hair. I think about how horrified I was the first time I got a louse in my hair, going down the line in Nashville, and I think, Who was that girl, and did she have nothing greater in her life, to earn her revulsion and alarm?

Grant attached the fortifications along the east of town a week ago yesterday. I think a week ago Monday night was the last time I slept in a bed. I suppose I ought to be glad the Union finally has two good Generals, but I find I’m not.

The land in back of town is all wooded gullies and ravines, where people used to pasture their cows. Gen’l Pemberton had rifle-pits and redoubts dug just beyond the last houses. The Federals had to attack up-hill. You don’t have to be Julius Caesar to know that isn’t a good idea. I was on my way to the Washington Hotel Hospital when the shelling started. I can’t really describe the sound a shell makes. It’s a sort of deafening rushing, like a waterfall or a train close-by. The first one hit a block from me, on Clay Street. Before I got to the hospital I could hear the cannons start up, east of town. While still outside the hospital door I could hear Julia screaming upstairs. I ran up, to find Tom awake for the first time since he’d been brought in, holding Julia in his arms. He looked at me as I came into the room and said, “Them’s mortars.” Something ran across my foot and I looked down and saw every rat in the building, high-tailing it for the cellar.

It’s funny how quickly you learn to distinguish sounds during
a shelling. I can tell the difference now between mortar-shells and Parrotts (the kind that explode in the air and shower the street with white-hot fragments of metal), and whether the shell is going to land in the next block, or the one where you’re standing. Most people in town have dug some kind of shelter, like the “cave” at Aunt Sally’s, which is where I am now. Zed worked on it on and off for weeks, in between Aunt Sally renting him out to dig other people’s caves. It’s about sixteen feet deep and has two rooms off it, and opens into China Street, which is a sort of deep cut where the land rises on both sides. I think it could not take a direct hit with a Parrott, but it’s plenty of protection against fragments. I don’t know if I’ve quit being scared, or if I’m just too tired to feel anything right now. Sometimes it feels like I was killed that first day, and so got it over with, and I’m fine, now. I wish I could talk to you.

It’s blazing hot here, and worse inside the cave, which is airless and smells like dirt. Gen’l Pemberton pushed Grant back the first day, but the shelling didn’t stop, and hasn’t stopped: mortars from the river, and Parrotts and mortars from the other side of the ravines in the back of town. Doc and I worked for twenty hours straight in the operating theater that first day, with the whole building shaking and plaster fragments falling from the ceilings like snow. It was my job to hold a towel over the open wounds, to keep the plaster out of them. About three days later Grant brought up his whole army and hit the entire defensive line at once, on a three-mile curve. Emory swore nobody had seen anything like it. Just before that, we got Tom back to the house, Emory and Nellie and I carrying him in a litter and listening for when the shelling seemed to be moving our way. Bombs drop all day and entirely through the night, without stopping. They must be bringing them up via the railroad through Jackson, and working three shifts on the guns.

When the second attack was finally over, the Federals kept up firing across the battlefield, so no one could collect the wounded, not theirs nor ours. After two days, in heat like an oven, you could smell the battlefield from anywhere in town. I think fear of pestilence
finally decided Grant. Monday, he silenced the guns long enough to get the wounded and the dead out of there. Doc said Grant didn’t want to show weakness: that he was afraid of what the Northern newspapers would say about him.

I went with the orderlies and nurses, to bring in the wounded. In the silence you could hear them everywhere, lying in the gullies and under bushes, where they’d been for two days and nights without water or care. Their crying hung over the field, directionless, the way the sound of crickets fills a summer night. The flies were like black snow, and there were more ravens than I’ve ever seen in my life, and I could see the underbrush stirring with rats. The dead men were piled up on top of each other like a wall under the redoubt. It was two hundred yards down the hill before you could even see grass between the bodies. And way out on the other side of the field, I could see two dogs, trotting around among the wounded and the dead—not like they were looking for anyone, just out for a stroll the way dogs do—and I knew they were Sulla and Argus, Justin’s dogs.

So he’s here. (I looked at the dogs through Doc’s spyglass, and it’s them, all right.) He lived through the battle, and he’s in the camp outside town. I haven’t told Emory this, and I won’t. Everyone says—Emory, and Tom, and Gaius the last time I saw him, and the men in the hospital—that if you think about anything in the battle, except exactly what you’re doing at that moment, that’s when you’ll make a mistake that’ll get you killed. If Emory learned his father was out there, he’d look for him, and might not pay attention to what he was doing. Yet, it feels so strange to know he’s out there.

That’s all the paper I have for now, my dear Cora. As you can see, I’m tearing the flyleaves and title-pages out of Husband #3’s books, both to draw on, and to write to you. But, I wanted to write to you, wanted to let you know that I’m here, that I’m all right so far. Please don’t let Justin know I’m here, or that Emory’s here, because I don’t want
him
looking for either of
us
. I have all your letters down here with me, and some of Aunt Sally’s sheets and towels, to sleep on. Nellie and Emory made a sort of rough bedstead for Tom, to
keep him off the ground, and one of Aunt Sally’s trunks, with the lid taken off, as a bed for Tommy. When the shelling sounds like it’s moved over a few streets away, Nellie and I run up to the house to get food, and sometimes we’ll bring down things like dishes or even chairs. On the next trip, we’re planning to get the parlor curtains, to close off the two rooms for privacy.

I will sleep now, before going to the hospital again. This is the first afternoon Doc has been able to spare me. Grant hasn’t attacked again. But the shells keep falling.

[sketches]

[not sent]

Dearest Susie,

My apologies for the delay. The moment wheat, corn, and gardens are in the ground, school starts, both here and on Isle au Haut, and though in the end Aunt H got us help with the plowing, Mother and I helped plant the corn. There are four “new babies” in my class this year, and the big boys of last year are out with their fathers in the fleet. As I walk up the hill to the school-house, I see my little scholars taking turns on the great boulder that stands near-by: “watching for pirates”—Confederate raiders—with spyglasses composed of their two curled hands.

Getting the garden in seemed harder this May, for I have formed the uneasy habit of keeping an eye on Mother. Will suggested I start a tally, of those moments of forgetfulness that are so unlike her, or of occasions when she seems clumsy as she was not before. For weeks she will be completely as she used to be before her fall … I
think
. Then last Friday morning I came into her room to wake her—which I never needed to do before—and found her standing in her night-gown, gazing before her at nothing like a revenant in one of Mr. Poe’s tales. I called her name twice before she seemed to wake. I am grateful that Papa is now back for the summer. He is inclined to believe my fears groundless. He has heard of many such cases from members of the medical faculty at Yale, and reassures me that the effects will pass in time.

I
will
write you at least a few lines, before I sleep! I sit in the summer kitchen, last of all this household awake, wearing an old straw hat with cheesecloth veiling sewed around its brim, as protection against mosquitoes. Dishes washed, pots scoured, floor mopped, ashes hauled away, knives cleaned, while the last twilight dies softly in the doorway. Now beyond the glow of my lamp the room is still. The air is laden with the wondrous scent of the meadows and the pond.

Tuesday I had a letter from Justin, the first since March. He is indeed with Grant’s army, camped before Vicksburg, and asks, Are you still in that town? The letter he encloses to you, Susie, is addressed to you there:
Please Forward
. Imagination, and hope, can only go so far, toward loosening the grip of fear.

Like the heroine of
Bleak House
, I try to make each day a bright stepping-stone through a world of dark surmise. Without my daily crossings to Isle au Haut, I would feel imprisoned indeed, like Robinson Crusoe: bounded within the narrow compass of what I
can see. Mother asked me Sunday, with great concern, whether it is true that I am a Copperhead, of the sort they are arresting in New York. I can only surmise that she heard this at church in Northwest Harbor. Yet unlike the intrepid Mr. Crusoe, I am not alone.

[not sent]

Dear Cora,

It’s very strange, not having the slightest idea what’s happening in the rest of the country, or the rest of the world, or even five miles away. Now that there aren’t regiments of wounded coming in every day, I’ve gone around V’brg to see my friends and make sure everyone is all right so far. The Petrie Sisters and Mrs. Bell are sharing a cave over on Adams Street, and there’s a huge cave, sheltering perhaps a hundred people, a few blocks farther on. Every day, there’s somebody going someplace (usually looking for food), when the shells start to move from one block to the next (as they turn the guns, I guess). So there’s always someone taking refuge here with us. Or, I’ll miscalculate how long it will take me to get from one place to another, and have to duck into the nearest cellar or hole in the ground when the shelling moves my way. Some people are still living in their houses, because the caves are like ovens, not to speak of the wildlife that visits. At night we all sleep as close to the cave-mouth as we dare.