The Better Angels of Our Nature (27 page)

“You’re still at Pittsburg Landing, sir. You were on a steamer but now you’re in Dr. Cartwright’s field hospital,” she answered, her fingers straying to his hair, to his moist brow, and caressing tenderly.

“Dr. Cartwright? Is
he
my savior?” That broad touchingly boyish smile, ragged around the edges, made a faltering appearance. “Why would he do that, I wonder? I thought he disapproved of me.”

“The doctor’s skills are available to all who need them.”

Ransom’s sad, compassionate gaze traveled over her face for a moment. Then he said humbly, “Forgive me, my young friend, I meant no offense, it was a lame attempt at humor.” He stared up at her as she blotted the threads of sweat running down his neck and rebuttoned his nightshirt, telling him, “You’ll take a chill.” She gave him a little more of the condensed milk and stroked the damp hair off his brow.

Her dedication to his well-being brought tears to his eyes. There were hundreds and hundreds of wounded, all with as much claim on this little boy as he, more so, since his wound seemed minor compared to the horrors he had seen. He squinted at her, blinked tired eyes.

“What day is this, Corporal?”

“Tuesday, sir. Yesterday the battle was renewed and we drove the Rebels from the field. It’s said they’re retreating back to Corinth.”

“Thank
God.
” He closed his eyes. “Not, I would wager, through any great skill of some of our generals,” he added bitterly, turning his head away. Since Jesse couldn’t possibly guess to which generals he might be referring she let that statement pass without comment. “Have you any news of my regiment?”

“Lieutenant Dickey and several other officers came to see you. You were sleeping so they sat with you for a while and said they’d return later. The lieutenant told me to say he had no further news of General Wallace’s condition.”

“Thank you. Cyrus, Lieutenant Dickey, is General Wallace’s brother-in-law and my good friend. He was with the general when he was hit by a Rebel musket ball. Cyrus dismounted and went to the general. It was a terrible wound that had shattered the side of his head and exited through one eye. Cyrus was convinced that the general was dead.” He paused, moistened his lips. “May I have something to drink, Corporal?”

Jesse lifted his head and gave him some water. “You really should sleep, sir.”

“General Wallace is like a father to me,” he explained, because there were tears in his eyes. “Cyrus was determined to save the general’s body from the indignities of a battlefield.” He continued, equally determined to tell the story of the unfortunate general’s fate. “So he enlisted the help of two orderlies and together they carried General Wallace for a quarter of a mile or more before the firing became so hot that the orderlies ran away. Alone poor Cyrus had no alternative, he dragged the body off the road and laid it gently against some ammunition boxes. He escaped just in time. But General Wallace wasn’t dead. Union men found him on Monday morning, encrusted with blood and soaked to the very marrow by the rain, but miraculously still alive. He was taken to Savannah, to the Cherry Mansion. His beloved wife had only that morning arrived with the single desire, to pay her husband a surprise visit. Mrs. Wallace has been by Will’s side ever since.” Tears were now running from the corners of his eyes into his hair. “Poor…Will…” his trembling lips murmured.

His lids drooped closed. She fanned him as he slept.

Outside the stream of wounded was ceaseless, up the hundred-foot yellow clay bluff they came, in wagons, on carts, in blankets, on makeshift litters of doors and fences, over shoulders, moaning, weeping, crying, bleeding men. Many of whom had been lying out in the torrential rain since early Sunday morning, soaked to the skin at night, and during the day parched by the heat of the sun.

The army had run out of coffins. The coffins were for the higher-ranking officers. As quickly as the carpenters knocked them together, they were used up. Now the crude wooden boxes stood side by side with those officers whose final remains had been wrapped in blankets.

“Tomorrow we bury the dead,” Jacob said, surveying the awful scene. “First we attend to the living,
then
we bury the dead.”

“How’s your friend, the colonel?” Cartwright asked Jesse as they stood together at the water basin, washing their hands.

“Resting. Thank you for taking care of him.”

“It’s my job. You’re enjoying all this, ain’t you? You’re
actually
enthralled by all this carnage and chaos.”

“It might seem like chaos to the private soldier, but General Sherman and General Grant know exactly what they’re doing.” The surgeon was wiping his hands and looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “There were moments when I felt excited,” Jesse admitted belatedly, “and inspired. But I didn’t enjoy it—” She fell silent.

“What excited you most, the torn flesh, the rivers of gore, the piles of amputated limbs, the cabin floors awash with blood and sawdust, the smell of fresh blood and stale urine, the agony of men whose insides were torn out, whose limbs were shattered, by hunks of metal—? Why in hell are you so besotted with men like Sherman and Ransom, who romanticize war, who talk about carnage and mutilation as though it were something to be sought after. To have the honor of ‘falling in battle,’ to see your guts spilled out, to be buried in an unmarked grave and have your comrades say so politely what a jolly brave fellow you were, how you went forward and charged the enemy without fear.”

“The finest officers do feel that way. If they must fall, they want to die with honor.”

“You’re right, Jesse, they
do
feel that way, and that’s what makes it all the more obscene. They genuinely do feel that it’s glorious to die for one’s country. But, okay, if they’re stupid enough to charge some impregnable enemy breastworks and be blown to pieces that’s
their
decision,
their
life to waste, what bothers me, what keeps me awake nights, is the thought of how many innocent boys they take with them.”

“The enlisted men want to fight for their country too. They volunteered to stop the Rebels’ destroying their country.”

“Horseshit. The truth is they don’t know what they volunteered for, they heard the military bands in their little backwater towns, they saw the officers with their shiny brass buttons and fancy mustaches, and they followed like children, believing they were going on some exciting adventure. Then someone put a musket in their hand and told them to stand in line, fight and not run away even when their friends and brothers were being blown to pieces and they saw that the adventure wasn’t exciting at all, but a nightmare from which most of them will never wake.” He threw his towel into the basin and walked away. Jesse followed.

“That’s unfair,” she accused. “You’re presuming that all enlisted men are too ignorant to understand why they are fighting their own countrymen. They
do
know what this war is about; they might not all have the same reason, for some it’s slavery, for most it’s the survival of the Union, but they’re not all fools who marched blindly to war because of a military band and a brass button! They know their country is being torn apart and they must fight to save it.”

Cartwright halted. “Just listen to yourself,” he said, shook his head disgustedly, and walked on.

There was nothing to compare with what men had witnessed these past two days and nights across the fields and woods near Shiloh Meeting House and on the bluffs of Pittsburg Landing by the Tennessee River.

Dr. Fitzjohn and Dr. Cartwright, both of whom had been operating since early the previous morning, without rest or nourishment, had swollen ankles and stiff swollen fingers. Poor Dr. Lowefels had collapsed, pushing his elderly body too far. Even Jacob, whose strength and energy had appeared infinite, looked all done in.

Little wonder that he and Jesse found Seth Cartwright baying at the waning moon like a crazy, wounded animal and demanding of the heavens in a strange confused voice, “Why bring the wounded here? I’m not a surgeon, I’m a butcher and this”—he swung around to gesture at the cabin with red, swollen hands—“
this is a charnel house.
”

12

The hearts of men

“Doctor,” Thomas Ransom called softly, opening his eyes to see Cartwright at the next cot, “are you able to spare me a moment?”

The surgeon made no reply, but when he’d finished attending his patient he walked to the foot of Ransom’s cot and muttered, “What do you want? You feeling lonely now all your admirers have gone?” The young colonel had been receiving visitors throughout the day. The tallest of the group, a broad-shouldered, strikingly handsome young man, was Lieutenant Cyrus Dickey. The other men were Captain Waddell, a hollow-cheeked individual with black mustaches and a stern manner, commanding the Eleventh while Ransom was indisposed, and Lieutenant Doug Hapeman, who looked like a strong, intelligent farm boy. They had sat around Ransom’s cot analyzing the battle and criticizing the generals who had led them. Including Sherman.

“I wanted to thank you for having me brought off the steamer to your hospital. I don’t know why you acted as you did, I can only—” The Vermonter stopped and looked pained because Cartwright had burst into laughter.

“
I
didn’t take you off the steamer.
I
didn’t bring you here. To me you’re just another puffed-up, swaggering, brass-plated officer. It was Jesse.”

As he turned to leave, Ransom called, “Doctor…wait…wait a moment…please—”

With an exaggerated show of irritation, and a loud sigh, the surgeon waited.

“Do you know
why
the corporal brought me off the steamer?” Ransom said.

“Ask—” He nearly said “her,” he
nearly
said it, just for the sheer bloody-mindedness of it, but deep down a tiny spark of decency stopped him. “Ask the boy.” He was laughing again as he walked off.

When the Vermonter opened his eyes again, the girl was by his cot, her cool hand against his brow.

“How do you feel?” she whispered.

“Light-headed,” he said.

“You have a slight fever.” She held his head and put the cup to his lips. All the while, his eyes were on her face, asking a question. They said,
This is strange.
This is a mystery—the easy informality, a corporal and a lieutenant colonel, a boy and a man, what is this strong bond between us?

“Why do they call you Green?” she asked and he found himself telling her.

“For Greenfield, my mother’s maiden name.”

“I prefer Thomas,” she said softly, with a smile, stroking his brow.

He stared at her. His eyes flickered, and in a hushed whisper, he said, “Now I remember…it was you…in Jones Field…you were there…and in the wagon…the jolting…you were cradling me in your arms…the rain was falling. I heard the good sergeant’s voice…he was lifting me—” He closed his eyes. His lips trembled; he could not finish the sentence. His excited voice had woken the youthful officer in the next cot, who started to weep. “What is it?” Ransom asked anxiously, sadly. “What’s wrong with him?”

“It’s his sixteenth birthday,” Jesse said. “Dr. Cartwright amputated his left leg this morning.”

“Here, please, give him this package.” He reached under his pillow. “Fruit jellies.” One of his officers had brought them. “Say it’s a birthday gift from you. Please, it’s the least I can do.”

Jesse opened the package for the boy. He sucked a jelly and grinned. When she returned to Ransom, he said, “Will Wallace is dying.”

“Yes, I know.” At dawn a handsome, middle-aged cavalry colonel name of T. Lyle Dickey, father of Cyrus, had come to Sherman’s tent with tears in his eyes. He had begged leave of the Ohioan to visit his son-in-law, Will Wallace, lying near death in Savannah, and attended by his daughter, the general’s wife. It had indeed been a moving story, but if Sherman was moved, he didn’t show it. Duty came first, he had told the colonel, and since
this
colonel commanded the Fourth Illinois cavalry, Sherman’s only cavalry, he was required to command them. Only after they had seen the Rebels on their way had Sherman given Colonel Dickey permission to go upriver to Savannah to see his dying son-in-law. She lifted Ransom’s hand from the blanket and gently stroked the bruised knuckles. “I’m so sorry. But love does not end with death.”

He stared intently into her face. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a young soldier hovering close by, trying to catch her attention.

“I’m mighty sorry—I don’t wanna bother you,” the soldier said, squeezing his kepi between his small hands, tears running down his freckled cheeks. “My brother says—for you to come. He says it’s time.”

Jesse got to her feet. She drew the cover to Ransom’s shoulders, but he struggled to sit up, watching her follow the boy to a cot opposite.

“I brung him, Orrin, I brung him just like you said.
Orrin?
” The boy’s voice turned panicky as he shook his brother.

“I’m still here,” said Orrin, opening his eyes.

On the first day of battle in the Peach Orchard Corporal Orrin Flagg had received a dreadful wound in the abdomen. To Jesse both brothers were special. They were from the surgeon’s hometown. Orrin beckoned Jesse to come closer and then whispered in her ear, “I’m fixin’ to die, Jess, stay with me now like you promised. Lyle ain’t never seen none a his kin die before, he’s just a boy. He’s real scared. If’in he sees I ain’t scared he’ll feel better ’bout ma goin’. Stay with me and read somethin’ from ma Bible, but I don’t want nuthin’ sad. I marked the place. Hey, Lyle, you stop that blubberin’ now, yer hear?”

Lyle wiped at his child’s tears and stared at Jesse like she alone knew the reasons for being born and for dying and for all the good and evil that went on in between.

“Sit on the edge of the cot and hold your brother’s hand,” she told him.

The boy did as he was told. He could not stop crying. He was making loud sobbing noises, the kind a child makes when crying so much he cannot breathe and the crying has gone beyond the point where he can recall the reason for his agony. Jesse took Orrin’s well-thumbed Bible from his night table and opened to the page he had marked for her, to the last words he wished to hear. She began to read in her wondrous voice, a voice that was neither feminine nor masculine but something strong in between, which could lift the lowest of spirits and transport the most downhearted, to a place of optimism and light.

“‘Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.’”

Orrin’s mouth, so twisted with pain, twitched now with a smile. “That’s it, Jess,” he said weakly, “that’s just what I wanna hear. Read it good and loud—let the whole darn world know—where I’m goin’—ain’t I the luckiest son of a gun?”

“‘And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also.’”

A small group had gathered around the dying man’s cot. Young Olly, the fifer, was standing by her side, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder, his head bowed respectfully. Three orderlies, ministering to the sick and dying every moment of the day and night, themselves in need of some comforting words, now pushed in close to listen. A few of the more mobile patients, on makeshift crutches, another with his head swathed in bandages, had left their own sickbeds to give support to a comrade in his last moments on earth. At the rear of this small impromptu congregation was the young colonel.

“—‘I will not leave you comfortless’”; Orrin took over in a suddenly strong voice, quoting from memory. “‘I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye shall see me: because I live, ye shall live also.’” With that he sighed deeply and was silent.

“Orrin?”
said the boy in an anguished voice. He could not stop sobbing, his breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, as though he had hiccups and could not properly catch his breath. “Orrin? Please, Orrin. Oh, Orrin. For the Lord’s sake, Orrin. Orrin. Oh Lord—Orrin.”

Orrin’s eyes had closed, his hand in Lyle’s had grown limp. On his face that had lately been distorted with pain and suffering was a contented, almost wise smile.

Jesse put the dead soldier’s Bible in his hand. She took Lyle into her arms, stroked his soft brown hair, and spoke gently to him, like a brother. All who stood there touched the boy’s head, his shoulder, sought somehow to share a portion of his grief.

Jacob De Groot scolded Thomas Ransom for leaving his bed. He held the younger man’s elbow to steady him as he faltered and in a moment had lifted him like a baby and returned him safely to his cot.

“I’ve never seen anything like that, Sergeant,” Ransom said as the Dutchman covered him with the blanket. “I’ve never seen a man give up life with such noble resignation, have you? Did you see him, he smiled as though he’s seen the secrets that await us beyond the grave and was no longer afraid.”

Jacob perched his bulky rear on the edge of the cot. He squeezed the moisture from the cloth and laid it across the colonel’s brow, holding it there with his enormous hand.

“Do you know what I hope, Sergeant, I hope that when I meet death I can embrace it with as much dignity as that man. How often since my father’s death have I wondered what lies in the hereafter for us. But I cannot picture myself knowing such a peaceful death, or dying anywhere but on a battlefield.” He moved his head on the pillow that the Dutchman puffed gently beneath his dark blond head so that he could watch Jesse pass between the cots. “That boy—Jesse.”

“You must try to rest. Sleep is the best restorative.”

“Who is he—? Where does he come from? If you know, Sergeant, please tell me—”

“If you cannot sleep, then you must take some nourishment. I shall bring you some condensed milk. Jesse told me you like condensed milk.”

“No, wait, please, listen to me—I’ve watched him quieting the suffering with a gesture, listened to him easing pain with a word—shall I tell you what I think?” He gripped Jacob’s hand, which sought to ease him back on the pillow. “I think he is one of those through whom God works his miracles on earth. You’re silent, Sergeant, but your eyes are filled with sadness; you of all people must believe in such creatures?” Jacob stroked the hand that held his as though it were the hand of a small child.

“God must have his mysteries, my gentle colonel,” he said, his full lips pulling back in an encouraging smile. “How about some rice pudding with a little jam to tempt you?”

“Jesse,” Ransom called her as she passed, “would you mind, I forgot to ask Lieutenant Dickey to mail my letters.” He held out two envelopes, neatly addressed and stamped.

“Yes sir.”

As she went to walk away he said, “There’s a letter to my mother—and to my friend, Dodge, he’s just made brigadier general. I thought I’d be the first to congratulate him. His wife calls me Ned. Ned, for Edwin. One of my middle names. We’ve been friends since university days. Thomas Edwin Greenfield—Ransom.” He was staring at her. Suddenly he brought a trembling hand to his brow. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, aware he was talking for the sake of it. “If you would just mail my letters, I’d be very grateful.”

“Yes sir.” She saluted and left.

Jacob had prepared a veritable feast for his companions. Rice, a morsel of rabbit, shot by an orderly, and some mashed potato, followed by two Dutch cookies, somewhat crushed but still edible. He gave one to the doctor and one to the girl. Cartwright broke the cookie in two and offered it to the generous donor.

The Dutchman grinned and nodded. He looked at his two friends with a munificent grin.

“We shall recall this meal in years to come as a feast, not because of the food we shared, but because of the companionship.”

“Yer—” Cartwright said with a twist of his mouth, and his usual vigorous contempt for sentimentality. “By the way, I forgot to ask, do we know who won the battle?”

“
We did,
” said Jesse and Jacob at the same time.

“
We?
We, meaning the Federal army?
I
certainly didn’t win any battles.” Cartwright looked from one to the other.

Jesse bit lustily into the apple Sherman had given her from his mess table and then passed it to Jacob, who did the same, and offered it to Cartwright, who shook his head. “Too much excitement for one day.” He puffed on his pipe for a few seconds and then said casually, “Is it true your
friend
the brave colonel killed some of his own men?”

Jesse’s expression said it all. She looked at Jacob and spoke directly to him, as though fearing his judgment upon a man he had helped to bring back to health would count far more against him than the surgeon’s, who detested anything military anyway and would condemn whatever words she put forth in the colonel’s defense. “There was just one. I saw it happen. The soldier had plunged his bayonet into Old Bob.”