When Johnny Came Marching Home (32 page)

Rebecca smiled at me. "Just let me get my bonnet," she said.

Jezebel was hitched up to the buggy and tied outside the store, and when Rebecca came out she stopped and put her hands on her hips. "So you had the buggy all hitched up and ready to go?" She turned to me and cocked her head to one side. "Pretty confident I'd say yes, weren't you?"

I smiled at her. "Let's say I was pretty hopeful, or maybe I thought that if you saw poor Jezebel all hitched up to the buggy it would make it hard to say no."

"That's a very slippery answer, Jubal Foster."

"Yes it is," I said. "Can I help you into the buggy?"

 

* * *

 

We drove west, following the line of the river, crossed over it at one point, and turned into the road that led up the side of Camel's Hump Mountain. There was an apple orchard and sugarbush about a half mile up, owned by a friend of my father's, and I pulled the buggy to the side of the road next to a field dappled with late-blooming flowers. I took a blanket from the buggy and helped Rebecca down and turned her toward the rising vista of the mountain as I slipped my arm around her waist.

"I've always thought this was one of the most beautiful places on earth," I said.

She pointed to the top of the mountain in the distance. "Look, there's snow on top of Camel's Hump."

I spread out the blanket and we sat down facing each other. "I'm going to hate not being in Jerusalem's Landing every day. I missed it so much all the years I was away."

Concern and surprise crossed Rebecca's face. "Are you leaving, Jubal?"

"I'm going to go back to school in Burlington. I want to finish my degree, maybe study medicine after that. Doc Pierce seems to think I have an aptitude for it, and a friend of his, a teacher at the school, said they'd give me a job so I could support myself."

"How . . . when will I see you?"

I reached out and took her left hand in my right. "It won't be much of a life for a time, but you'd make me very happy if you'd go with me."

"Go . . . go with you? I don't understand. What are you saying, Jubal?"

I reached into my pocket and took out the small ruby ring. "This was my mother's," I said. "I'd like you to wear it. And when you're ready . . . soon, I hope . . . I want you to marry me and come with me to Burlington." I slipped the ring on her finger. "Will you?"

She stared at me in disbelief. Then she stared at the ring and her face broke into a wide smile and she threw her arms around my neck and hugged me fiercely. "Oh, yes, Jubal," she said in my ear. "Of course I'll marry you. And I'll go anywhere you want."

 

* * *

 

Chancellorsville, Virginia, 1864

I awoke in a field hospital a few miles east of Chancellorsville. Josiah was sitting beside my cot. My mouth was dry and cracked but I managed one word: "Abel?"

"He dead, Jubal," Josiah said.

I squeezed my eyes shut and passed back into unconsciousness.

When I awoke again Josiah was gone. A nurse came by with a wet cloth and moistened my lips. She was a pretty young woman with brown hair and soft brown eyes that seemed very tired and full of the suffering she had witnessed.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"My arm hurts," I said.

"It will for a bit more," she said.

I glanced down and saw the bandages that swathed the stump that had been my left arm. I tried to raise my head, but couldn't. "Where is it?" I asked, surprised by the horror I heard in my own voice.

"The doctor had to amputate," she told me. "The wound was too severe."

"What did you do with it?" I demanded. My voice was a hoarse croak that I barely recognized.

The nurse wiped my forehead with a damp cloth; it felt cool and soothing. "Try to sleep," she said.

I knew very well what they had done with my severed arm. When on litter-bearer duty I had carried limbs out of our field hospitals and dumped them in the pits that had been dug for them, arms and legs and loose tissue, all piled together as though they were the remnants of some grotesque explosion in a human butcher shop.

I slipped into unconsciousness again, waking hours later with a start. In my dream I had seen my arm lying in a pit filled with limbs, the hands still attached to arms that reached out, the fingers grasping for whatever they could find, the severed legs straining to gain some purchase that would allow them to climb from the pit. Then Abel's body was dropped in and he turned and looked at my arm and I saw tears gather in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Jubal," he whispered. "I'll take yer arm home with me. I'll take it home an' I'll keep it fer ya. I promise, Jubal. I promise."

I shook my head, fighting the image away, and I gasped at the pain that surged through the remnant of my arm. It was dark outside and the odors that filled the tent were overpowering, deep pungent smells of rotting flesh and pus and excrement.

The man beside me moaned deeply and I saw that both of his legs were gone well above the knees and there were heavy bandages on one side of his face.

I felt a hand gently touch my shoulder and I turned my head and saw Josiah staring down at me.

"How ya feelin', Jubal?"

"Like shit," I croaked.

He smiled at me. "Now tha' sounds more like the man I knows."

"What happened to Johnny?" I asked. "Is he back in camp?"

Josiah shook his head. "Las' time I seen him, he was runnin' north, tryin' ta git back cheer, him an' Suggs an' them others too. Up ahead of 'em I could see the Rebs closin' in, but then I din' hear no shots, so I figgered they got 'emselves captured. I axed the lieutenant 'bout 'em an' he said they was prob'ly on the way ta some Reb prison."

"They should be dead, all of them. Johnny too."

"Yeah, they should."

"They killed Abel," I said, hearing the plea for vengeance in my own voice. "He'd be alive if they hadn't forced us out into that field." I closed my eyes. "Or if I hadn't taken us to that goddamn farmhouse."

"Ya did what was right, Jubal. An' ya was tryin' ta help tha' no-account Johnny too."

"I wish we'd never gone there," I said, my voice weak and distant. And a phrase my father had used when I was a small boy, a boy who was always wishing for impossible things, came back to me:
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

 

* * *

 

I awoke the next morning to the sound of singing. It was a rich baritone voice and it was coming from the next bed, the soldier who had lost both his legs.

 

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in Thee;
let the water and the blood,
from Thy wounded side that flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure . . .

 

A nurse rushed over to his bed. "Corporal James, you must be quiet," she whispered. "You're waking the other men."

"I'm practicin'," James said. "I gotta practice if it's gonna work out."

"What are you practicing for?" the nurse asked.

"Fer when I git outta here. Fer when they sits me on that board with the wheels on it, so's I kin move myself aroun' with my hands. Ya see, I'll have ta earn my keep. I was a teamster afore the war, drove wagons at an iron mine way up in New York, near ta Buffalo." He let out a cold laugh. "Can't do that no more, an' singin' is the only other talent I got. So, ya see, I figger I'll sit on my board an' move myself up an' down the street, singin' ta folks, an' they kin drop their pennies in my cup."

He started singing again and the nurse tried to hush him, but he ignored her. She shook her head and left, his voice following her:

 

While I draw this fleeting breath,
when mine eyes shall close in death,
when I soar to worlds unknown,
see Thee on Thy judgment throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.

 

The singing stopped and I turned to him. The barrel of a pistol was pressed under his chin and before I could shout a warning, James squeezed the trigger and the sound of the shot filled the tent.

Blood and bits of bone and brain covered the pillow and the bedsheets and I turned away as doctors and nurses rushed needlessly to his side.

I closed my eyes and thought about my missing arm, wishing I could follow Corporal James on the journey he'd just begun. I bit down and squeezed my jaws together. Not until you make them pay, I told myself. Not until Johnny and Suggs and the others pay for what they did.

As I lay there I could hear the nurse begin to sob and another stanza of the same hymn that I'd known since childhood flowed through my mind:

 

Nothing in my hand I bring,
simply to the cross I cling;
naked, come to Thee for dress;
helpless, look to Thee for grace;
foul, I to the fountain fly;
wash me, Savior, or I die.

 

They had me sitting up three days later. The doctor said it was better for the healing process. By the end of the first week they had me on my feet, claiming I needed to walk to regain my strength and balance, and to keep blood clots from forming. They said pneumonia was the greatest threat, and I needed to move about to keep my lungs clear. I thought about Stonewall Jackson. He had died after his arm had been amputated and pneumonia had set in. I thought he was a lucky man.

 

* * *

 

Josiah had gone off with the army. Grant had continued the fight at Todds Tavern and Spotsylvania Court House, and when he finally disengaged, Lee's forces were on the run, headed south toward Richmond.

Although the newspapers differed on the Battle of the Wilderness, with some calling it inconclusive, and others—the Southern papers mostly—claiming it was a tactical Confederate victory, our officers were elated, insisting that Grant had won a great strategic victory and would now pursue a war of attrition. Lee, they said, had been left with only two choices: fight to the death, or surrender. In either event they claimed the war would be over in less than a year. A year too late for Abel.

My father and Rebecca wrote every week. Everyone was crushed by news of Abel's death and wanted to know anything I could tell them about how he died and where his body had been buried. I did not know what to say, so I said little, other than to tell them that Abel had been buried at a military cemetery outside Chancellorsville, Virginia. They also wrote that Johnny was a prisoner of war at Andersonville, and that a prayer service had been held to thank the Lord for his survival and to ask for his safe return to his family.

 

* * *

 

Two months passed before I was finally strong enough to go to Lieutenant Nettles to bring charges against Johnny and Suggs and the others. I found Nettles seated in his tent; my left arm was missing, just as his right arm was.

He ran his hand through his thick brown beard. "If we were twins we'd have a whole body, Foster." He grimaced at his own comment. "At least you can still salute with the proper hand. I feel like a fool using my left. What can I do for you, sergeant?"

"I'm here to press charges against a number of our men."

"What charges?" he asked, his eyes growing dark.

"Assaulting a superior officer, rape of a civilian woman, murder of two civilians, raiding and pillaging of a civilian home, and the murder of a member of the Union Army."

"Very serious charges, charges that would place these men before a firing squad if they were convicted. Do you have any witnesses?" the lieutenant asked.

"Yes sir. Myself and a litter-bearer named Josiah Flood."

"Is Flood a Negro?"

"Yes sir."

"You know this Flood well?"

"Yes sir. I grew up with him in Vermont, and know him to be an honest and honorable man."

"Tell me what happened."

I took a sheaf of papers from my pocket and laid it on his field desk. "I took the liberty to write it all down. I only know the names of two of the men, but I'm sure they'll reveal others under interrogation. I could also identify the others on sight. Unfortunately, they're all in Andersonville Prison."

"And right in the sights of General Sherman," the lieutenant said. "My bet is they won't be there too much longer." He picked up the sheaf of papers. "Let me read this, and consult my superiors. It may take a bit of time. The senior staff is concentrating on General Lee at the moment, but I assure you this will be read and acted upon."

Chapter Twenty-five

Jerusalem's Landing, Vermont, 1865

We dug up Johnny's body at night, when it was unlikely anyone would be passing by the cemetery. It was the lone condition Virgil Harris made. He did not want people telling his wife that the grave had been violated. He said it was more than the woman would be able to bear.

The cemetery had a stone crypt dug into a hill where those who died during the winter were stored until the ground thawed enough for burial. Josiah, my father, Doc Pierce, and I carried the wooden coffin there and placed it on a stone platform that lay against one wall. Lanterns were hung on the wall above the coffin to give Doc the light he would need.

"I feel like a grave robber," my father said, as he and Josiah fitted pry bars under the coffin lid and forced it up.

Johnny's body lay in the casket with a gold coin covering each eye, making his bloodless face seem even whiter.

"Wha's the money fer?" Josiah asked.

"It's an old custom," Doc said. "It actually started with the ancient Greeks and Romans, but they put the coins under the tongue. The English found that practice unpleasant, so they placed coins on the eyes instead."

"But what's the money fer?" Josiah asked. "It supposed ta keep the eyes closed?"

"It was for Charon," Doc explained. "He was the mythical ferryman who rowed the dead across the River Styx, taking them from the land of the living to the land of the dead. It was his payment for the service, and if he didn't get it the body of the deceased was forced to wander the banks of the river, looking for the pauper's entrance to the afterlife."

"I wonder why a Christian minister like Virgil would do that," my father said.