The Better Angels of Our Nature (42 page)

“Shall I tie it for you?” Ransom asked.

“I’ll put it on later.”

He looked so disappointed that she said, “Yes, tie it for me.” She lifted her hair, turned her back, and waited. Cartwright noted that Ransom took some time fixing the string. His hands were shaking, and uncharacteristically clumsy. The surgeon didn’t blame him. The girl had tiny red curls on her neck that would have driven any man wild. She looked as if she was being tortured, not loved.

“Here. I’ll do it,” he said, pushing the new brigadier aside. “You can’t beat a surgeon for skillful fingers. There.” He had made a neat little bow with the string.

The girl fingered the shells at her throat. “Thank you,” she said softly, trying to avoid contact with Ransom’s eyes.

“You remember the letter I got from Jack,” Cartwright said, “the one telling about syringes being issued to surgeons in the Army of the Potomac to administer morphine. Well, he sent me this.” He brought a rolled-up medical journal from inside his frock coat and held it up in front of her face. “According to this article, this one here, they’ve discovered the drug works more effectively and quicker injected
subcutaneously
with an endemic syringe directly into the tissue.” He looked at Ransom. “This should interest you, you’re one of our best customers.
Subcutaneously
means
under the skin,
rather than administered orally or dusted into the wound. Jack says they’re gonna issue them to surgeons in the Potomac Army. I wish to hell they’d let us have some out here.” He showed Ransom the illustration. “What do you think? Wood’s syringe. Listen to this: ‘By use of this little instrument, a new and extensive field for doing good is open to the humane military surgeon, and he who is the fortunate possessor of this talisman, will receive daily the thanks and blessings of his suffering patients.’”

“Last time a patient called
you
humane you ran screaming from the tent,” Jesse reminded him tartly.

“You cut me to the quick, Jesse Davis, you know that don’t you?
To the quick.
”

Ransom read the advertisement carefully. “Why don’t you purchase a syringe through the catalog, Doctor? Look, there’s an order form, already printed, all you have to do is fill in your details and send off the money with a return address.”

Cartwright’s finger traced the crude drawing lovingly, as though it were a woman’s curvaceous body. “Yer—but I don’t think the package would ever reach me. The way we move around it might take months,” he said in that ingratiating tone Jesse knew so well, and followed it up with a heartfelt sigh, his expression turning winsome and ingenuous.

“The longer you wait, Doctor, the longer it’ll be before you get the syringe. Why not set the wheels in motion?” Ransom was as determined in this as he was in anything he set his mind to.

“You do it,” Cartwright suggested, “my writing’s like a drunken spider. Order two, one for me, one for Jacob.”

Unhesitatingly, Ransom sat at the desk. He dipped the pen in the inkwell, scraped off the excess ink, and filled in the form. Cartwright stood beside his chair as the sound of the nib scratched across the paper, filling the silence. He glanced across at Jesse, winked, and grinned. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head in disapproval. She knew what was coming. Finished, Ransom announced, “Do you have the money, Doctor?”

“Money?”

“For the syringes. Four dollars and twenty cents plus postage and packing, to be included in the envelope.”

“Ah—” The surgeon looked crestfallen. “Of course, the money.” He turned the pockets of his pants inside out. “That might be a slight problem right now. Unless—?” He looked at the girl, held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. Jesse brought forth all the money she had in the world. Without formality, the surgeon scooped every cent, paper and coin, from the small palms, quickly calculating. “We need six more cents.”

“
Doctor,
” Ransom’s tone was sharp, “must you take all Jesse’s money? Leave her something. Here, I’ve got five dollars and some coins, take that.”

“No, no, I couldn’t possibly, I hardly know you—” Cartwright took the money and placed it with Jesse’s on the table.

“No,” Ransom declared. “Return what you took from Jesse, or you’ll not get a cent from me.”

“Well, since you put it like that—” Reluctantly, he returned two dollar bills to the girl.

“
All of it,
” Ransom insisted, that discomforted expression passing over his features again.

Cartwright gave back the money. “You and your goddamn principles,” he said. He finished counting the money Ransom had given him. “Nearly six dollars. What do they pay a general these days? More than a surgeon, that’s for certain. Doesn’t it strike you as kinda immoral to get paid more for taking life than saving it?” Cartwright went back to the couch.

“Comfortable. Grant likes the good life, they say. Too much of the other kind before the war started, I guess. You commanders live well.”

“My bivouac is a small wall tent, Doctor,” Ransom said. “I’ll get an envelope from reception.”

While he was out of the room, Cartwright said, “Now do you believe me? The necklace, his rank insignia. I don’t know much about these matters. But I’d say a man doesn’t give his shoulder straps to just any passing female.” Cartwright put the pipe stem between his teeth and bared them in a fatuous grin.

The Vermonter came back into the room. “There you are, Doctor.” He held out the stamped, addressed envelope. “All you have to do is mail it.”

The surgeon sniffed, shook his untidy head. “With all my duties, takin’ care of the sick and injured, I’m likely to forget. Would you mind?”

Ransom put the envelope in his pocket. “Of course not.”

“He’s done everything else,” Jesse muttered.

“I have to return to my brigade,” Ransom said, “I just wanted to make sure you were safe and had enough to eat. Some of the commissary wagons have been trapped on the road and the men didn’t get their suppers.”

“I got mine,” Jesse said.

“Yes. I should have realized, you’d not go hungry with Sherman. Walk me to the stable?” the Vermonter added softly.

“You’ve got a new horse.” She stroked the broad, handsome face of the large bay that Ransom had led from the stall to the water trough. “What’s his name?”

“Barney.” Ransom lifted the stirrup over the saddle and tightened the girth strap.

“Barney,” she repeated, laughing. “Hi there, Old Barney boy, how handsome and brave you are, just like your master.” She stopped abruptly and looked at the brigade commander, who was watching her with a gaze so soft it seemed to stroke her freckled cheek.

“He’s three, hardly an
old
boy.”

“He’s
my
old boy, my old Barney boy.” Jesse cuddled up close to the animal’s head and stroked his face. “Next time we meet I’ll have some sugar for my new friend or maybe a juicy carrot. Look, he likes me.”

“
Everyone
likes you, Jesse.”

“You must stop giving me presents. I won’t know what to do with them.”

“Keep them with you forever. If I were wealthy I’d buy you anything you wanted.”

“I don’t want anything. I shall call him
Old
Barney because it makes me think of Old Bob,” Jesse said, stroking the animal’s head.

“Barney here is steady as a rock, aren’t you, boy?” He looked at Jesse. “
Old
boy!”

She laughed as Barney nuzzled up against his master, who was combing the animal’s mane with his long fingers.

“Would you have another photograph taken, just you alone?” Ransom asked her.

Jesse looked up. The surgeon was coming toward the corral. As he reached Ransom, he passed something into his hand.

“Four times a day,” he said quietly. “Regular. We don’t want you caught with your pants around your ankles when you take Vicksburg, do we?”

“Thank you, Doctor,” the other man said, offering his free hand.

Cartwright ignored it. He thought,
I hate him.
The way he hated all men of Ransom’s type, with their easy friendship, their abundance of boyish charm and nobility of spirit. He hated him, for despite all resistance, all protest, all objections, you finally found yourself giving in, and grudgingly admitting you might be in the presence a good man. “Keep yer head down,” he said.

The colonel swung effortlessly into the saddle, his long, slender frame ramrod straight. He gazed down sympathetically at the surgeon. “You look tired, Doctor, you should turn in.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got Jesse to take care of me.”

The next time Jesse saw Thomas Ransom was three days later at Big Black River. There, the Rebels, reeling from their defeat by McPherson’s corps at Champion Hill, four and a half miles southwest of Bolton, the previous day, fought with their backs to the river, only to be beaten again, by Union forces under the Irish general Mike Lawler. Retreating, many of the Rebels had been drowned, and eighteen hundred captured. Last seen, Pemberton and what remained of his army were staggering back to Vicksburg in disarray, after burning the bridge at Big Black. A lack of bridges and vessels would never discourage the men of Grant’s army. They merely built their own.

A bridge-building competition was in progress. The southernmost bridge, a strong raft affair, had been erected by the Thirteenth Engineer Corps. Next, about two and a half miles downriver could be found a bridge of cotton bale pontoons, lashed together with rope. No one doubted this would be an excellent effort, since General McPherson, first in the class of ’53 at West Point, graduating with a commission in the elite Corps of Engineers, was supervising, in person. However, it was the most northerly bridge that interested Jesse, the one being built by Thomas Ransom. Beside this bridge sat Sherman and Grant, on a log, smoking segars and talking, like two weatherbeaten old farmers discussing the price of corn.

Jesse hid behind one of the huge oaks that bordered the riverbank. The darkness was falling fast and the men who had been working in the dense tangle of underbrush had lit torches of pitch pine, driven into the earth along the banks, to illuminate the scene. All afternoon gangs of strong, clean-limbed men, stripped to the waist, torsos and necks glistening with sweat, had swung axes and hammers, while their comrades carried timber from the wagons, passing it across to others, up to their waists in the dark, impenetrable waters. Their commander had joined them. Standing naked to the waist in the stagnant water, his chest, shoulders, and face streaked with dirt and sweat, his skin scratched from the branches, Ransom had not only supervised the building but pitched in. Sherman and Grant had called it “an impressive and remarkable construction.”

Ransom had given orders for six trees to be cut down on this side of the river, and six on the other, personally selecting those that grew closest together. He had then explained to his men how only
one
side of the trunks were to be chopped, the side that allowed them to fall toward the water. The trees had to remain attached to the stumps, giving the structure extra support and strength. The branches that protruded from the surface were then cut away to make a smooth surface, while those beneath the water had sunk into the soft riverbed, interlacing and underpinning the eventual roadway across which a portion of the army would pass. Finally Jesse had watched as they laid the lumber across the trunks and fastened it with strong rope, to produce the result she now saw, a bridge that looked as though it would last as long as the river itself.

Many of the exhausted men were making their way back to their bivouacs, thinking, no doubt, of a hot meal, a pipe of tobacco, and their blankets. Only a handful of officers remained, among them, Ransom himself, who fought off several staunch attempts to persuade him to return to his headquarters and rest. He had promised to follow, after one more check of the struts and ropes, and the officers reluctantly departed, leaving only the pickets of the Ninety-fifth Illinois to guard the brigade’s proud handiwork.

Jesse watched him walk the few feet to a large oak tree and sink down, unbuckling his gun belt and placing his holstered Colt by his side, with the safety catch off. He rested his head against the trunk and closed his eyes with a sigh of weariness that tore at her heart.

She started back to the commanders’ camp and then stopped. She waited a moment, staring up into the moonlit sky, and then turned around again.

She moved quietly to the tree and stood there studying Ransom’s sharp, elegant profile, as sweat ran slowly down his neck. The almost identical wound scars on his shoulders looked particularly livid in the unreal light of the pine torches. His damp hair, normally combed severely to the crown of his head, fell forward over his furrowed brow, the features beneath strained with the intensity of a man who has given himself and his brigade over with total commitment to the work they have been assigned. The hot, sultry evening was alive with the sounds of maddened insects. A small gossamer-winged creature landed on his bruised shoulder, and fluttered against his pale skin as he slept. How strange it was to see this always-immaculate young man looking so disheveled, so dirty, a two-day stubble on his strong chin, strange and so
human.
She had almost made up her mind to walk away when his eyes opened. He stared in astonishment at the small uniformed figure standing over him in the shadowy darkness.

“Jesse?” His pleasure at seeing her was so palpable as he jumped to his feet that tears started to her eyes. “What are you doing here?” He reached for his shirt on the grass but Jesse took it from his hand.

“You’re bleeding,” she said, touching one of the grazes with tender fingers.

“I…I was working in the water—”

“Yes, I know. I watched you. It’s a wonderful bridge.”

He smiled. “I’ve tried to be worthy of my engineering degree.”

“Sit down against the tree.”

He obeyed and she knelt beside him, took the stopper from her canteen and held it out. He murmured thank you and drank thirstily, the canteen trembling against his lips. Jesse steadied it as the young general’s deep-set eyes remained on her face.