The Better Angels of Our Nature (49 page)

“Taking a minié ball out of a man’s skull has nothing to do with understanding what goes on inside his mind.”

“Why did you do it, Jesse?” he asked suddenly as though he had been busting to ask this question since May 22. “Why did you join the assault that day?”

She got that look in her eyes. The one he hated; the one that seemed to cut her off from him, from all humanity, like the blind eyes of a stone angel in a cemetery. Benign and yet detached. The look that made her an outsider, a watcher, a witness, instead of a participant in this crazy business of living. That look made him feel lonely and disappointed. Somehow, since the day he’d met her, he believed she’d hold the answers to all those questions of living.

“Death,” she said softly.

“You wanted to die?” Cartwright was incredulous, horrified.

Jesse turned that introverted gaze onto his face. “No, I don’t think so, I don’t think I wanted to die.”

“You don’t think so?” Cartwright had started the conversation, asked the question, now he was sorry he had. Most times what the girl said made no sense to him, frightened him, even.

She released her breath as a sigh. “You were born, you live, you feel, you’re
allowed
to feel, to grow old and die. For you it’s a natural progression. You take it for granted. Being given life, having a life to do with what you will, is a most wondrous thing.”

Cartwright blinked and stared at her. “Maybe you grew up too quickly,” he said, groping toward some understanding of her words. “With no family that can happen. Looking out for yourself. You’re old before your time.”

She laughed ironically. Then she admitted, “What I did, joining the assault, was dangerous. Not only for me.”

“It didn’t do my nerves much good.”

“Wanting to experience life, love, death—”

“For chrissake, haven’t you experienced enough death in the operating tents?” the surgeon interrupted with venom.

“I envy you, your anger, your vast capacity for love and hate. Your passion. You couldn’t hold back if you tried and you’d never want to try. In a way, Thomas and I are alike. Single-minded. At least I will be from now on.”

“Just once, Jesse, I’d like to figure just what the hell you’re talking about. Just once.”

Jesse drank from the canteen and then rammed home the stopper with such violence that he said, “It’s okay. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life chasing after you like a cat in heat. There’s just so much rejection a boy can take before he howls, enough!”

“That’s not it. I was just informed by the general that Mrs. Sherman and four of his children are coming to stay.” As if this wasn’t bad enough, Sherman had named his family’s temporary home, nestled there in a grove of oaks, “Polliwoggle Retreat” in honor of the horse pond, very convenient to their camp, and, in his words, “full of songster frogs.”

“It’s not forever.” Cartwright was genuinely trying to make her feel better. He grinned suddenly. “Know what I’d wish for now out of everything? A pitcher of cold milk and a plate of my mother’s gingerbread.” He sounded like a child.

Jesse laughed.

“Friends?” the surgeon said with a sad, hesitant smile.

“Friends.” She handed him the canteen.

Three days later, after supper, Jesse turned up at Cartwright’s hospital, with her horse and all her worldly goods. The surgeon was sitting on a tree stump trying to sew a button onto his frock coat. “Ouch! Goddamn it! How come I can sew a man’s guts back into his stomach but can’t sew a goddamn button on a goddamn coat?” He squinted at her and at her saddlebags. “What’s up?”

She saluted and said, “Mrs. Sherman has just arrived, sir. While the general’s family remain I’m transferred to your hospital.” She compressed her full lips and her clefted chin quivered. Her next words came out jerkily, as though there was an obstruction in her throat. “Will you…show me where…I’m to bivouac during my…reassignment, and tell me my duties.”

Cartwright broke the cotton thread and swore roundly. “I’ll tell you your first duty, it’s to stitch this goddamn button on my goddamn coat.”

Jesse looked at the button. “Don’t you have another one, this one’s all twisted.”

“Like everything else in this goddamn army.”

In mid-July, there was a riot in New York, a mostly Irish mob, precipitated by the new Northern draft laws. Any man who could find a substitute to fight in his place for a small bounty or raise $300 to pay to the government as a “commutation fee” was exempt. Jacob’s brother-in-law had written to tell him of a professional bounty jumper who signed up, pocketed his “reward” for enlisting, then deserted his regiment to repeat the process twenty-six times.

Grant was, as Sherman observed, “the hero whom all worship—” including Mr. Lincoln. He had been rewarded with the rank of major general in the Regular Army. If the war finished tomorrow, he would never again have to sell cordwood on the streets of Saint Louis.

For Sherman there was also a reward. On Grant’s recommendation, he was made a brigadier general in the Regular Army, together with James McPherson. Their country had acknowledged the debt it owed these men who had captured a large army and brought free navigation back to the Mississippi.

Though all praised Sherman and to a lesser degree McPherson, and called Grant “the hero of the hour,” it was “Gettysburg” that Washington spoke with hallowed tones. The Rebels must have seemed too close for comfort, and the Army of the Potomac had saved their bacon, whereas Vicksburg was thousands of miles away, deep in enemy territory. Only those who had fought and commanded in that mosquito-plagued, alligator-infested, mud-encrusted, dust-caked, thirst-inducing, health-destroying, diarrhea-ridden, hot, wet, dry, sun-baked hell that Rebels called home understood just what miracles had been achieved in so short a time. Maybe only the veterans themselves knew that because of their hard-fighting, hard-marching Army of the Tennessee, in Mr. Lincoln’s words, “The Father of Waters now flowed unvexed to the sea—”

One morning in early August, Jesse and Cartwright met the general and his eldest son as they crossed the oak grove. Jesse saluted and Willy responded in kind, a smiling sunburned child with glowing freckles, all decked out in his sergeant’s uniform.

“You haven’t met my son, have you, Doctor,” Sherman said with unconcealed pride, as though this was his only son. “Dr. Cartwright, Sergeant William T. Sherman Jr., of the First Battalion, the Thirteenth United States Regulars.” Nine years old that past June, so much did this redheaded, light-skinned, bright-eyed boy resemble his father that John Rawlins had told Sherman that on the cars coming down to Vicksburg he had been able to identify Mrs. Sherman, simply by looking at Willy. Tall for his age and strong, with an alert intelligent gaze, and a more restrained manner than his younger brother, as if he realized his importance as the oldest male, heir to the name, and, if Sherman had his way, the military mantle. Judging by Willy’s behavior the father had no fears on that score, for no sooner had Willy arrived than he was taking from the corps commander’s locker dress sword, major general’s sash and dress and epaulets, which he placed about his sturdy person like a child who knew he was born to be a soldier. He lunged and parried, cried bloodcurdling warnings to traitorous Rebels, and slipped the sword beneath the sash only to study intently, like a commander receiving his battle orders, the maps spread out upon the trestle table under the tent fly.

“I’m honored to meet you, sir,” Willy said, looking up directly into Cartwright’s amused, bespectacled eyes. His was the manner of a gentle, polite, and reflective little boy, completely at odds with his father’s attempts to portray him as a rough and tumble rascal who had once terrorized his sisters.

“I hope you’re enjoying your stay here in our encampment on the beautiful Big Black River?” Cartwright tried and failed to keep his usual cynicism at bay.

“Very much so, sir, thank you. Yesterday Father and I went for a ride to see the colored pickets out at Bald Ground Creek. There is a very funny-looking Negro with a terrible meat cleaver hanging from his belt and a large ostrich feather in his hat. He sits a horse that is even older than he is.” Willy laughed the same skipping laughter as his father, only his was youthful and ingenuous. Cartwright and Sherman laughed right along with him. “He told Father very seriously that he need not be alarmed for his army while he was on guard duty.” Willy puffed up his chest in imitation of the brave Negro.

“No doubt General Sherman was relieved to hear that?” the surgeon said.

“Oh he was, sir. He was the only one of our group not to laugh at that funny-looking Negro. Last week Father took us all to see his old camps outside Vicksburg. I found some minié balls and pieces of shell.” Willy brought them from his pockets to show Cartwright, who examined them carefully, with interest, not like a man who had been removing them from human flesh for the past thirty-one months. Maybe there was hope for him yet. Maybe he just needed a dose of fatherhood to soften the cynicism. “We went to see General McPherson in Vicksburg so that Father could advise him how to deal with the Rebels of that city.”

Sherman rubbed a hand over the boy’s red hair. Like Sherman’s hair it was straight and not easily tamed without a lick.

“I don’t believe General McPherson needs my advice, Willy, but thank you, sir, for that vote of confidence. General McPherson has his headquarters on one floor of Dr. Balfour’s house, corner of Cherry and Crawford streets,” Sherman continued conversationally, speaking directly to Cartwright. “There are some very interesting young ladies in the house.”

“Really?” Cartwright made a great fuss of straightening the frayed collar on his shirt. “I don’t suppose you could arrange an introduction to one of them, could you?”

“What could I possibly say to recommend you to
any
young lady, sir?” Sherman tapped the top of the whiskey bottle sticking out of the surgeon’s pocket. “Especially the refined young ladies residing at Dr. Balfour’s house.”

“You could call attention to my profession, that always goes down well with the ladies.” Cartwright raised and lowered his eyebrows.

“Have you heard from General Ransom?” Sherman asked Jesse, bringing up the subject, Cartwright suspected, to annoy him. “He’s in Natchez. General Grant sent him there to capture and bring up to Vicksburg beef cattle that the Rebs had been collecting to feed Joe Johnston’s army. General Grant stopped to see him on his way to New Orleans. He says Natchez was full of bitter Secesh women.”

Females, especially the Southern variety, seemed to be a subject very much on Sherman’s mind that morning, Cartwright reflected. Perhaps it was the proximity of
Mrs.
Sherman. “I don’t mind ’em bitter,” he said with a grin, rubbing his hands together.

Sherman ignored him. “Are you making the most of your free time, as I advised you, reading and broadening your mind?” he asked Jesse.

“I’m teaching the lieutenant to fish,” Cartwright said.

“Fine sturdy rods, sir.” Sherman examined Jesse’s rod, using it as a switch across the palm of his hand.

“There’s nothing to teach,” Jesse wrinkled her pug nose, “you just sit on the edge of the bank and let the string dangle in the water until some poor fish swims along and takes the bait and that’s it. He never catches anything anyway.” She threw a disdainful look in Cartwright’s direction.

“No, because you talk too much,” Cartwright said, “you never stop your yammering. It scares the fish away. They’re not stupid, they know there’s someone up there waiting to catch ’em. The whole point of fishing is to lie there quietly, dozing, not talk the hind legs off a donkey.”

“You can lie there quietly, dozing,
without
a fishing rod,” Jesse pointed out. “I prefer to read.”

“Then read, no one’s stopping you, but you don’t read, you yammer. You read and then you yammer. You have to talk about everything you read, book or newspaper.”

“I can’t help it if you’d rather lie there with a vacant smile on your face than discuss important topics.”

“Important topics—you call politics and poetry important topics?”

“Willy, did you know that Benjamin Franklin organized the first library in America?” Sherman told his son, leaving the girl and surgeon standing there arguing with each other. “Your grandfather Mr. Ewing once walked forty miles as a youth to borrow a book. You, Willy, have only to reach up and take one from the shelf.”

25

Times that try men’s souls

The talk in the camps at Big Black those latter days of September was of the Federal troops in Tennessee. The Army of the Cumberland, bottled up at Chattanooga by Bragg, was literally starving to death. Washington was in a panic. They had sent troops from the east but Grant was ordered to send a division. He sent Sherman’s First Division. The day after they departed Sherman went to see Grant at Vicksburg. On his return, a galvanized Sherman gave the immediate order for his tents to be struck. Grant wanted not only
Sherman’s divisions
in Chattanooga; he wanted
Sherman.

The idyllic days in the grove of oaks, known as “Polliwoggle Retreat,” were over and no one who saw Sherman could doubt that he was elated to be once more a man with a mission.

Jesse dismounted and tied Quicksand’s lead rein to the back of a folding chair that had been brought from Mrs. Sherman’s tents, now spread across the ground in the haste to dismantle the camp and load everything onto the wagons. All was confusion, ordered confusion it was true, but confusion, nonetheless. After being knocked aside several times, abused and scolded and cussed at, Jesse finally managed to get to Major Jackson, who was bad-temperedly supervising the loading of Mrs. Sherman’s baggage into the wagons.

His small, sharp eyes glared at her as he was forced to start counting trunks all over again.

Finally he said, “Now what’s so gall-darned important it can’t wait ’til I’m finished?”

“I can’t find the general anywhere, sir.”

“That’s ’cos he
ain’t
here.”

“I need to be reassigned, sir.”

“Reassigned? From where to where?”

“Why, sir, from the medical department
back
to the general’s headquarters. The general said I could return immediately Mrs. Sherman departed, sir.”

“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout that. Now get out from under my feet before I have you horse-whipped.”

Jesse found Major Van Allen. The New Englander told her patiently that General Sherman had taken his family into Vicksburg. He had booked passage for them on the
Atlantic.

“The general and his staff will go with them as far as Memphis, then his family will continue on to the north and we’ll head for Chattanooga.”

“He left without me?” Jesse was horrified.

Van Allen’s smile became laughter. “Well, Lieutenant Davis, I wouldn’t be too offended. He had a lot on his mind. Will you take my advice? Remain with Dr. Cartwright until I have a chance to speak with the general at Memphis. I’m sure that when he recalls having lost one of his most trusted aides he’ll right this terrible wrong and you’ll be back in the bosom of your army family.”

“But sir—why can’t I just stay with you? I have all my belongings in my saddlebags.” She indicated Quicksand, who stopped chewing the canvas chair long enough to lift his handsome head and nod lazily.

“I cannot give the order for you to be reassigned to headquarters. You have to wait for General Sherman. Away you go, before Major Jackson has the both of us marched off by the provost guard.”

Jesse looked across at Jackson, who was watching them with those small, gray, suspicious eyes, the same small, gray, suspicious eyes that had watched her since Pittsburg Landing. She collected her horse before the animal had completely chewed off the canvas seat and hurriedly joined the columns of marching men heading for Vicksburg.

The wharf at Vicksburg was a writhing mass of blue-clad soldiers. The excited men of Sherman’s corps talked and laughed and sang as they waited impatiently to file onto the transports for the first leg of their trip downriver to Memphis. The Army of the Cumberland needed rescuing and these veterans of Shiloh and Vicksburg were the right ones to do the job.

Moving among this noisy gathering was one diminutive lieutenant, hat squashed under her arm, a look of gritty determination on her sunburned face. She pushed past cussing teamsters and their stubborn mules, elbowed cooks and clerks aside, endured the threats of bad-tempered officers, slid between the wheels of the wagons lining the quayside, clambered over artillery pieces and caissons stacked high with ammunition, and ran up the gangway, finally reaching her goal, Major Van Allen on the deck of the
Atlantic.

“Sir, did you manage to speak with General Sherman about having me reassigned?”

“No, Jesse, I’m afraid not.”

“Do you think you will have an opportunity to speak with the general at Memphis, sir?”

“I doubt that—look around you. You know the general; he takes personal responsibility for everything and everybody under his command. He also has to make certain his family is safely on their way back North.”

“Then I might not be reassigned until we reach Chattanooga?” Her voice and expression were becoming ever more desperate.

“That’s possible.”

“And even then, sir, the general will be busy relieving General Rosecrans, I might not get reassigned until after the campaign?”

The kindly New Englander looked at her anxious face. He took a second to think and then against his better judgment suggested that she take passage with them on the
Atlantic.
“We have room for an extra lieutenant. I cannot see why you should not join us for the trip to Memphis. No doubt between here and there we’ll find an opportunity to talk to General Sherman about having you reassigned.”

“Oh thank you, sir!” Jesse called out. She was already running down the gangway.

“But if Major Jackson asks—it
was not
my idea—” the aide murmured under his breath.

Cartwright stared at her. Jesse wanted his permission to travel to Memphis on the
Atlantic
—after all, he was her commanding officer. It wasn’t New Year, but he’d made two resolutions, one of which, it was true, had been thrust upon him; the other made good sense if he didn’t want to end up like his father. But it wasn’t going to be easy—after all these weeks of having her to himself, it was a wrench now to let her go.

“We’ll meet up at Memphis, right?” he said at last.

“I hope I shall have been reassigned to the general’s headquarters by then,” the girl said, smiling at him and saluting. “But we’ll certainly see each other in Chattanooga. Thank you, sir.”

He returned her salute uncertainly, not a real salute, a kind of limp flick of his wrist, but then he’d had very little practice. He stood there as the girl took her affectionate leave of Jacob. She led her horse up the gangway onto the side-wheel steamer. He looked at the Dutchman, who was watching him with a sympathetic, indulgent smile.

“I’m trying,” he said. He held out his hands that were trembling ever so slightly. “Rock steady.”

The older man embraced him. “You are a paragon, an example to us all.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” the surgeon murmured.

Ten minutes after the steamer was due to depart, it was still at the quayside, the gangway still in place. Jesse stood on the deck, out of sight, but within earshot of the general and his wife as they made the discovery that Willy was missing. The general sent an officer of the Thirteenth Regulars to the Balfour House. In a little while he returned with Willy in tow, a little sergeant, red-faced and sheepish, aware that he deserved a good drubbing for being absent without leave. No doubt relieved at having him returned safely, Sherman thanked the captain for his diligence and teased the boy about the small double-barreled shotgun he was toting.

“What do you have there, Sergeant? Carrying off captured property, sir?”

“No, Father,” the boy replied in an unusually subdued tone. “Uncle James gave it to me as a gift.”

“Very well.” Sherman tenderly smoothed the child’s disheveled hair.

The whistle blew for a second time. The waters were churned up by the paddle wheel. Jesse waved to Cartwright and Jacob from the deck and they waved back.

By midafternoon, the steamer had made up lost time. Sherman and his family returned from their after-dinner sojourn to stand by the guardrail. Jesse hung about on deck, biding her time, and when Sherman moved some way from his family to light his cigar Jesse saw her chance.

“Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you, but may I remind you that I’ve not yet been reassigned to your headquarters?”

Sherman looked at her over the top of the match flame as he puffed. “Not now,” he said dismissively. “I have my family.” He turned back to Willy, careful to keep the cigar smoke from the boy’s eyes.

Sherman showed his son the places of interest on the great river and received what was for Willy an uncharacteristically lethargic response. When they reached Young’s Point, the Ohioan became particularly excited. As he explained in great detail how his men had spent months digging canals, fighting Mississippi mud and all manner of diseases, as well as the Rebels, the boy leaned against his father’s leg as though he did not have the energy to stand on his own two feet. For the first time Sherman, up until that moment lost in the enthusiasm of relating his story, appeared to notice that the child was not himself. The father questioned his son, and then took him below.

It was late afternoon before Jesse could speak with Major Van Allen to ask him, “Sir, what’s wrong with Willy?” There had been much commotion outside the child’s cabin, and Dr. Roler of the Fifty-fifth Illinois, who happened to be onboard, had been called. He had remained with the child for several hours.

The New Englander looked distraught. He knew what Sherman’s eldest son meant to him.

“Dr. Roler believes it may be typhoid. He wants to get Willy to Memphis as soon as possible.”

The
Atlantic
finally arrived in Memphis on October 2.

Jesse stood at the guardrail as Sherman carried his sick child carefully down the gangway wrapped in a blanket, the beloved red head just visible against the father’s arm. She could not take her eyes off the Ohioan’s face, half-hidden by his slouch hat. The hard-bitten features looked to have been set in gray molding clay, which, in a moment of fury, the sculptor had slashed with a knife.

Behind him came a weeping Mrs. Sherman and the other children.

Jesse rode directly to the Gayoso Hotel. She made it as far as the second floor, where she’d heard Willy was being examined by all the best physicians in Memphis, before Major Jackson spotted her.

“Stop yer sneekin’ around and get back to camp,” he told her. “There’s nothing you can do here.”

Jesse went down to the foyer and found a space in a corner behind some potted plants. Perhaps they would need someone to run an errand; she was quick and bright, the general always said that about her.