The Better Angels of Our Nature (9 page)

“We can manage, Doctor.”

“Yer, we can manage.” Cartwright stared into the boy’s eyes a second, then at his soft mouth. Something was not quite right about Private Davis, his features were too masculine for a girl and yet too wholesome for a boy, but then some of the youngest soldiers had that kind of face, emanating an innocence that made you think butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. But it didn’t stop them wanting to kill Rebels and this one had sorrowful eyes with an expression as old as time itself. No.
Something
was not quite right, but damned if he could put his finger on it, as much as it bothered him. “Has Sergeant De Groot shown you how to use a tourniquet? Did he explain that only those with a first-class honors degree in surgery from Harvard School of Medicine and four years at a big city hospital can be trusted to apply one?”

“Yes, Doctor.” Jacob was patience personified. “To both questions.”

Cartwright opened his bag and snatched out a strap tourniquet. He applied it to his own arm, pulling tightly. “Why do you think we use a tourniquet, Private?”

“To control the bleeding by compressing the artery against a bone.”

“In any case,” the surgeon said, “the circular elastic and the middle muscle fiber layer of all arteries contract on injury.”

“Yes sir, but Jacob explained to me that the added pressure helps the laceration to close and seal itself with clotting.”

“Is
that
what Jacob told you? Maybe Jacob ought to be the surgeon. Look at this—” Cartwright thrust his blanched arm under the boy’s puckish nose. It looked pale and lifeless, the arm of a corpse. “See what’s happening?”

The boy frowned his concern and released the tightly wound strap unbidden and the blood began to flow once more. It caused Jacob to sigh with relief.

“A practical lesson beats theory,” Cartwright said. He drank some coffee. “These men,” he looked at Jesse, “they fry everything. Rice, beans, salt pork, potatoes,
everything.
It doesn’t matter a damn how often you tell them, they fry flour and water in bacon grease and they fry their damned beefsteak, then they come to us wondering why they spend the day squatting.” He lifted his head and rubbed his burning eyes. “I wish to hell I could get those sick men some fresh fruit. Don’t eat
anything fried,
you hear me?” he told the boy. “Cut your meat into cubes and toast it on a stick over the fire. Try to get your hands on some fresh fruit and vegetables. I don’t care how you do it, beg, borrow, or steal, and be careful of the water you drink. Stick to coffee or tea. Instead of filling your canteen with water from the stream in the morning, boil it with enough tea to flavor it, that’ll keep it from becoming insipid when the sun starts beating down on your head. It’s healthy and a damn sight more refreshing on a weary march. It’s also the best prevention for dysentery, since you’d have boiled out all the impurities. And don’t use the same sinks the other men use, dig your own if you can, get yourself a shovel and dig a fresh hole, dig deep, dig far away from the camp, downwind.” The surgeon brought his pipe from his pocket, an ordinary briar, not the flamboyant affair that gave Captain Jackson such pleasure. He poked among the cold ashes of the bowl with a small pocketknife. He peered at Jesse over his rimless glasses, at the thick red-gold unruly curls, at the old-young eyes, stopping to dwell somewhat reflectively on the full soft lips and then move down to his slender white throat. Then he frowned deeply, swallowed, and shook his head.
The devil take him
—he must be more lonely or more tired than he thought because for a second there…. “See why we don’t demonstrate how to apply a tourniquet?” he demanded to know. “Those imbeciles would leave it tied round a patient’s limb until the limb turned black and dropped off. That was only a couple of minutes and yet my arm already felt numb. Can you imagine a limb after twenty-four hours? You can do more damage to a patient with a tourniquet than a…a…”

“Twelve-pound howitzer?” Jesse suggested helpfully.

Cartwright got to his feet, tugged his battered kepi over his brow, and demanded of the steward, “Got any money?”

“
I
have, sir,” Jesse volunteered eagerly. The surgeon already owed him three dollars, but who was keeping count?

“I will get a bottle of whiskey from the sutler’s wagon and leave it in your tent,” said the Dutchman patiently. “Please, do not take the boy’s money.”

“If there
is
a heaven, my friend, and you know I vehemently deny its existence, you can be sure of a place on the right hand of God.”

“Then we will be together.” A broad grin appeared in the center of Jacob’s coal-black beard. “All
three of us.
” He gave the boy a hug.

“I’ve got a recently published pamphlet on miasmic diseases you’ll find interesting,” Cartwright told the boy. “Some new theories regarding the differences between the effluvia given off by decomposing vegetable matter, mess waste, swamp air, that sort of thing, compared to the effluvia given off by the human and animal excrement lying all over the place.”

“Yes sir, thank you,” the boy said uncertainly with a frown. “I’m sure I’ll enjoy reading it.”

“Good. Your friend Lieutenant Bennett was asking about you. No doubt he wants to bore you with stories of the unselfish heroism of his commanding officer.”

Lieutenant Bennett’s arm was almost healed. This young warrior of the Second Brigade of McClernand’s First Division was not the same sickly creature that had been littered in three nights before. “I can’t be laid up here if there’s to be an almighty fight, I must be in, doing my share,” said he, in what was a variation on the same theme uttered since he had been feeling well enough to talk. Moreover, what he talked about mostly as Jesse changed his dressing was his sweetheart, Lydia Burlingham, and his commanding officer, the Vermont-born Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edwin Greenfield Ransom, who was at that moment coming down the aisle toward them.

“Sir!” Lieutenant Bennett cried as Jesse returned to his cot with some fresh water.

The boy immediately put down the bowl and saluted very smartly. He had been practicing for just such an opportunity. As the officer returned the salute, his fine, deep-set eyes shining with amused pleasure, the boy saw Dr. Cartwright sitting at the table, pencil in hand, notebook open. He turned to watch, like a sharp-eyed bird perched on a branch.

“Sir,” said Bennett, “you remember Private Davis?”

“Of course. How are you, young fellow?”

“I am very well, sir, thank you.” The boy felt his cheeks burn and grow red, even more so when Ransom laughed, so pleasurable was the sound. It was a youthful laughter, fresh and clear as a newly struck bell, animating his rather stiff demeanor and softening those chiseled features. The boy and the man held each other’s gaze until Lieutenant Bennett broke the strange spell.

“Sir, Dr. Cartwright says I am to be allowed to return to my company tomorrow and may be put back on the duty roster by Tuesday.”

“Why that’s wonderful news, James, and you have Private Davis to thank.”

“Dr. Cartwright made his arm well again, sir, I merely changed the dressing.”

“I’m sure the good doctor will have no objection to sharing the praise with you,” Ransom said, looking across at the surgeon seated at the table, watching.

Cartwright “Humphed—!” loudly and went back to his prodigious scribbling.

“Lieutenant Bennett told me how you singlehandedly captured a Rebel horseman in Charleston, Missouri,” the boy said excitedly, looking up at the tall officer and forgetting to address him as sir. “You shouted we must take the courthouse or bust!”

“I think it such a grand story,” said the lieutenant defensively because Ransom was looking at him in a disapproving way. “Sir, I refuse to apologize for telling it to this admiring boy.”

“The Rebel shouted at you in the darkness that he was for ‘
Jeff Davis!
’—and you barked back”—Jesse raised an imaginary pistol above his head—“‘
Then you are the man I’m after!
’ Then you shot him dead in the saddle, though not before
he
had shot you in the shoulder. You were wounded again at Fort Donelson. A bullet smashed into your right shoulder. Your coat was ripped by six Rebel bullets and your hat pierced by another. You left the field only for a moment to get your shoulder dressed before you returned once more to take command,” the boy concluded breathlessly, his bright blue eyes glistening with admiration.

The Vermonter mussed Jesse’s hair and spoke to the officer in the cot. He was laughing as he said, “James, it is my biggest regret that you were with me that night and at Fort Donelson. There were
others
present; if I recall, General Grant was in command.”

Bennett laughed. “Sir, you must admit this boy is marvelous, he has remembered every word I told him, line for line.”

“Fort Donelson was a savage fight, not one I would care to relive,” Ransom said, his smile fading. “The Eleventh lost some good men.”

“Evening.” Cartwright chose that moment to join them. “Is this for invited members of the Ransom Admiration Society or can anyone attend? We had a fully fledged prayer meeting this morning, you should have been here, they were all prayin’ over the recently deceased.” He slapped Jesse around the head lightly. “I told this boy, no time to pray for the dead, too many of ’em.” To Cartwright’s stunned amazement the colonel stepped between him and the boy.

“We are all entitled to have a few words of scripture spoken over us, Doctor, even if they are shared with a dozen other souls in a burial trench. If I fall in this war I hope there will be someone as compassionate as Private Davis to speak a few Christian words over
my
mortal remains, and I must say, sir, I think it unworthy of you to ridicule the boy for caring about the soul of a fellow human being.”

Cartwright put away his ironically amused smile and brought out his disdainful one. “I wasn’t ridiculing the boy, I was making a point. In the next week there’ll be more dead around here than you can shake a stick at. If we stop to mumble scripture over every one of ’em, how we gonna get ’em planted before they start stinking up the place?” As always, he was brutally matter-of-fact.

“I can’t believe you would wish us to become the kind of men who view death with no more feeling than the swatting of a troublesome fly?”

“Spare me your pious zeal, Colonel, if I want a sermon I’ll see a chaplain.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor, if you think I was preaching. But is it pious zeal to maintain and nurture the principles that separate us from the beasts?”

“And just what the hell do you think we do in here all day and all night, Colonel, fiddle while Rome burns?”

“No sir.”
Ransom drew himself up to his full six feet. “I have only to look at Lieutenant Bennett to know that you are the most dedicated of men. That was the very reason why I said your criticism of this private was unworthy of you. You are one of those who keep these sick and injured men from cursing God and turning their faces to the wall.” Silence followed Ransom’s impassioned speech. A
V
-shaped blue vein was beating prominently in the center of his otherwise pale brow.

Cartwright blinked. Then he tore the spectacles from his nose and started to clean them on his stained apron with a violence that inevitably dislodged the left lens. He replaced the spectacles and put the lens in his apron pocket. Then he screwed up his left eye out of which Ransom’s long, lean body was now somewhat blurred and made a funny sound in the back of his throat. Lieutenant Bennett finally broke the embarrassing silence.

“Sir, some of the men saw Rebel campfires lighting up the sky to the south of us. They say the woods are crawling with Reb cavalry.” He looked significantly at Cartwright. “Will I be discharged in time to fight, Doctor?”

“Your lieutenant here is real eager to get back to the killing,” Cartwright spat out. “I’ll discharge this officer, to go out and get wounded again, to kill or be killed, when I’m goddamn good and ready and not one damn second before.” He was really angry now, and when he spoke it was with a sweeping gesture of his trembling hand that took them all in. “If I had my way I’d mark your papers unfit for combat and send you the hell home. If I had my way I’d mark everyone’s papers unfit for combat, including my own, and send us
all
the hell home.” There was another heavy silence as Cartwright took out his empty pipe, made a whistling sound through the stem, and then chewed on it like it was a piece of Sherman’s licorice. Then he nodded abruptly and left.

“Thank you again for attending my officer, Doctor,” Ransom called out.

Cartwright waved his hand dismissively and kept right on going.

“I was just giving Old Bob some fresh water,” Jesse said as Thomas Ransom arrived at the roped-off area where his horse was tethered alongside others in the corral. The attractive, well-groomed roan was slurping from a wooden bucket.

“He’s a good old boy, aren’t you, Bob?” He stroked the animal’s neck affectionately. Then he looked at the redheaded private with a frown. “How did you know he was
my
horse, come to think of it, how did you know his name?”

“He told me.”

Ransom laughed. “He’s my horse, all right. Old Bob is my good friend, aren’t you, boy?” He used his long fingers to brush the mane. “We’ve been together since I enlisted and know each other’s foibles. We have a very one-sided agreement. If I am seriously wounded in battle he will carry me to safety. Unfortunately I cannot promise to perform the same selfless act for you, can I, old boy?”

Jesse’s laughter made the large honey-colored freckles dance across his puckish nose. The Vermonter’s expression turned hard, a steely quality in his eyes, as he said fervently, “Bob has always done his part, and more. We must
all
do our part.” There was an unmistakable determination in those eyes that looked out at the world in the direct gaze and in the firm set of the slightly raised jaw. A kind of inescapable sense of his own heroic destiny, a destiny he would rush headlong to embrace, even if it brought him face to face with the same fate as his father, who had perished in the Mexican War. “Perhaps one day I shall even be given the opportunity to show the courage and selflessness that animated my father, his strong leadership—”
And his heroic death.
The words hung there, unspoken. “I’ve no doubt that you too will do your part when the time comes,” he added.