The Storm Before Atlanta (24 page)

“There’s no razor edge on that knife,” Dulcie explained.

Jeremy looked down at the knife blade in his hand. It was true, but … “Hah! I’ve seen him shave.”

“You’ve seen him put soap lather on his face, maybe. And then scrape it off with the back edge of a knife.”

Jeremy remembered his messmates had once laughed at No-Joke shaving, saying he looked the same before and after and that he had as much reason to shave as Jeremy did.

“All right,” he said finally. “Say he’s a woman. Why’d he, she, why’d she do it?”

“Because he was an abolitionist,” said Dulcie. “She, I mean. She wanted to fight for freedom.”

“But why couldn’t she do something else? Like be a nurse or, or a cook or something?”

“Because that wasn’t what she wanted to do,” Dulcie explained patiently. “What does it say on the back of the photograph?”

Jeremy flipped it over. “It’s just the name of a photographer’s shop. In Brooklyn, New York.”

“Well, I guess that’s where we start looking, then.”

“How? Brooklyn’s probably huge. And we’re not in it.”

“Well, we know his sister’s name. Hattie. And his name might have been Eliza. Hers, I mean.”

“And the photographer’s name.” Jeremy thought. He could see that this was going to be an enormous task, but he was already beginning to like the sound of it. He’d never been to Brooklyn. He wasn’t too thrilled about bringing bad news to the dark-clad family in the tintype, but they might have been wondering what had become of him—her—for years. At least they would know. And Jeremy would have a purpose in life besides dying gloriously. The thought of the search interested him as nothing else had since that hour in the Hell-Hole.

“All right, let’s do it,” he said. “After the war.”

“When the war’s over I want to go and find my ma and pa.”

“We’ll find your ma and pa, and then we’ll go to New York.”

“If they want to.”

“Are you just handing the job over to me? You said you promised!”

“But it’s easier for you.”

“But you’re the one who promised!”

“Jeremy, they’re my ma and pa! Wouldn’t you want to find your ma and pa?”

Jeremy thought of his pa, in Auburn Prison, and his ma, who he didn’t know anything about. He should know something about his ma, he thought angrily. His pa should have told him. He would ask him. He would write to him and ask him.

“If I write to my pa, Old Silas will find out.”

“Who?”

Jeremy hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. “Old Silas. He’s my—well, I guess you could call him my master.”

“White people have masters?”

“Well, I do. Did. I was a bound-boy. I was bound to Old Silas until I’m twenty-one, but he didn’t treat me right and I ran away.”

“Can he come after you with dogs?”

“Dogs? I don’t think so, no.”

“Then don’t worry about it,” said Dulcie. “You’re a Union soldier. He can’t take you from the Union Army. If you know where your pa is you should write to him. I would if he was my pa. If I could write.”

“Oh, I know where he is,” said Jeremy. “I know exactly where he is.”

Jeremy was lost.

He had been to the front to deliver a message and was coming back to the rear, or thought he was, but he’d gotten turned around in the woods somehow. He didn’t know where he was or where he should be going. The staccato of gunfire was all around, and he couldn’t tell his direction from it.

He heard a branch snap behind him. He spun around, fists raised.

“Where did you spring from, Yank?”

Jeremy looked at Charlie’s smiling face and saw the flashes of fire in the Hell-Hole and heard the bodies hitting the ground around him. Charlie’s smile was a lie. Charlie was a killer.

“You’ve seen the elephant,” said Charlie, not smiling.

“I’ve seen
you
. I’ve seen you Secesh, what you do.”

“Hey, I thought we were friends.”

“I didn’t know then what you could do,” said Jeremy. He thought of No-Joke and he wanted to punch Charlie.

“What I could do? Pardner, I ain’t never shot a man, and that’s the truth.”

“Sure you haven’t.”

“Fixed fact. Can’t do it.” Charlie sounded proud of it. “I reckon there’s lots of men who can’t. Probably even on your side,” he added generously.

Jeremy remembered realizing, when he first met Charlie, that there was no way he could stick his knife into him. Yes, but shooting someone would be easier, surely. The Drummer Boy of Chickamauga had done it. You didn’t have to touch the person. You only had to look at them.

Not even that, he realized. Crouched behind a log bunker, all you really had to do was shoot. Fire your gun, or better yet your cannon, in the general direction of the enemy and don’t think about the results. He wondered if Charlie had done that. He suspected he had.

“All you have to do is squeeze a trigger,” said Jeremy.

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“And it hits a person. You don’t have to see that part of it.”

“Well, sure you do, buddy. Especially after. And then, you know, in the night. You have to listen.”

Jeremy remembered the night after the Hell-Hole, and the screams and groans in the woods as he and Dulcie had searched for his messmates. Had that been as hard for the Rebs to listen to as it had been for him? Then why had they fired into the First Division so relentlessly? Why had they cheered?

Because we would have killed them otherwise. There are two sides to every story. What was it Nicholas had said? A hundred sides.

“One of my messmates died,” he said.

“Yes,” said Charlie. Jeremy looked at him, wondering what kind of answer that was—Yes?—and saw a very old
look on Charlie’s face that didn’t belong there, and he didn’t like it. Charlie must have had a lot of pardners die since Shiloh.

“I’m sorry,” said Charlie. “About your pardner, I mean.”

Jeremy realized that he couldn’t start hating Charlie now for being a Confederate soldier. He’d been that when they met.

“I lost my drum,” he said.

“Ain’t seen it.” Charlie put his usual breezy, self-assured face back on, and it was a relief to both of them. “Is that what you’re doing over here? Looking for your drum?”

“What do you mean, ‘over here’?”

“You’re inside our lines, pardner.”

“Oh.”

“Lucky you’re in uniform or they might shoot you for a spy.”

“Of course I’m in uniform!” said Jeremy indignantly. His thoughts were catching up with him. They’d have to capture him first, of course. But a Reb soldier was standing right there in front of him. But it was Charlie. And anyway, Charlie didn’t have a gun. But he was bigger than Jeremy. And he probably had a knife. Should Jeremy run? But he didn’t even know which way to run. The multitude of pathways and trenches that had snaked their way through the forest in the last few days was too confusing.

“Oh, I ain’t gonna capture you,” said Charlie, smiling. “I got enough troubles of my own.”

“What are you doing over here, then?”

“I’m in my territory, pard. Just looking around. There’s a wounded Federal over there.” He nodded to his left.

“What? One of ours? Where?”

“I was just going to get help to carry him in.”

“You were going to capture him?”

“Better than leaving him here to die.”

“You can’t capture him! I’ll …”

“How ’bout you help me carry him? If we can shift him. He’s a mighty big fellow.”

It was Lars.

He had been shot in the leg and must have crawled here to take refuge behind a fallen tree. He’d made a tourniquet of his belt on his leg. He was conscious when they got to him, and looked at them blearily. An overpowering smell of rot came from his wounded leg.

“He needs to be operated on right away!” said Jeremy.

“I know. Come on, pardner, help us out here. Can you stand up?” said Charlie.

“He can’t. We need to go for help,” said Jeremy.

“If we go for help they’ll capture you,” Charlie pointed out.

Or maybe kill me
, Jeremy thought, but he didn’t say it aloud, even though he wondered if Charlie was thinking it too.

Charlie crouched down and put one of Lars’s arms around his shoulders. “Here, do like I’m doing.”

They got him upright. Lars let out a moan. His eyes glinted through narrow slits of puffed eyelid but didn’t
seem to focus on anything. Together they stumbled forward. Most of Lars’s weight was going on Charlie’s shoulders, because Charlie was taller, but even so Jeremy found each step a tremendous effort, his whole body braced to keep the huge man upright. Lars swayed and lurched like a drunken man, and his bad leg dragged on the ground. With every step they took Lars let out a moan of pain that hurt Jeremy’s bones.

“Let’s tie his leg up,” said Jeremy.

So they stopped and used Lars’s shirt to make a sling to keep the leg off the ground. Jeremy turned his head away in nausea. Lars’s leg had become a horrible thing, something Jeremy couldn’t even have imagined before he saw it. Maggots were involved.

With the leg tied up they got on more easily, and sometimes Lars even helped them, giving a little hop. But Jeremy’s back ached and he was dizzy from the smell of infection by the time they reached the hospital tent.

“Whush! This is
our
camp!” Jeremy said.

The tent ahead of them, with its yellow hospital flag, had Union soldiers all around it. Charlie seemed unconcerned. “Had to be yours. Our surgeons are out of chloroform. Out of everything, really.”

The soldiers were coming forward now, taking Lars from their arms, carrying him into the tent. Jeremy fell to his knees, exhausted.

“You want a drink of water, is what you want,” said Charlie, going to the bucket beside the tent.

Jeremy took the dipper that Charlie brought him and drank. Why was Charlie still here? If he’d been Charlie he’d have dusted off to the woods as soon as the soldiers came to take Lars. A soldier in an enemy camp risked capture. But then Jeremy looked at Charlie. Charlie didn’t look like an enemy, did he? He was wearing Union trousers and Union shoes and had now acquired a Union blouse.

“Are you deserting?” Jeremy blurted.

Charlie shushed him and then smiled. “Not so loud, pardner. No, of course I ain’t. I’d be much obliged if you don’t draw attention to me.”

Charlie pronounced
I’d
“ah-eed” like a northerner instead of “odd” like a southerner. Maybe he was speaking with a northern accent all of a sudden so nobody would notice him. But nobody was paying any attention to them anyway, of course. They were just boys.

“I need to go tell my messmates that we found Lars,” said Jeremy.

“I’ll tag along.”

TWENTY-ONE

D
ULCIE WAS GLAD THAT NOBODY HAD DECIDED
burying amputated limbs was a suitable job for her. She felt sorry for whoever had to bury Lars’s leg. She hoped it wouldn’t be Jeremy.

When Lars came out of the chloroform-induced sleep, Dulcie was there with a dose of morphine. She’d learned to give this to her patients quickly, and also to smear topical opium on the wound before they awoke. That reduced the pain. Nothing reduced the shock of finding themselves with one less limb (or sometimes two or three less). And they often claimed to still feel pain in the missing limb, and no amount of morphine could make it go away, and there was no way to put opium on a leg that wasn’t there—although if she hadn’t been warned repeatedly not to waste the stuff, she might have tried.