When the War Is Over (11 page)

“She had three attacks,” Silliman said.

“I had this once before,” Thomas said slowly, dreamily. “About a year ago.”

Catto fidgeted and remembered the good old days, the days of wrath and battle. He was tired now, sodden, red about the eyes, yellow about the teeth, staled by cigars, unbathed. Very different from this boy whose pale skin, unweathered, gleamed smooth and white. The fair hair, disheveled now, fell silky to the blanket; the boy's ears were small, white, almost translucent; his nose was young, without character. Catto—thick-set, mustachioed, hair in his nostrils, a leader of men—grew sadly aware that his own boyhood was gone. Once, and not long ago, his face too had been bland and open and innocent. “Phelan will make you well,” he said gently. “Phelan is one of these professors. He knows everything. Willich will give you a week off.”

“Gen'l Willich.” There was rebuke in the boy's exhausted voice, and Catto rather liked him for it; but in the next few seconds that rebuke drifted between them like a mist upon the waters, curling slowly about an unkempt Catto, licking at a heap of laundry, wisping silently to a whiskey bottle half full, to the officer's unshaven face, perforated sock, dried sweats.

“Gen'l Willich,” Catto conceded. “What did your folks do for it?”

“My mother's dead,” the boy said, “and my pappy was drunk. It just went away after a little.”

“Have you been out in the cold?” Silliman asked. “Had the sniffles or anything?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Just lie still,” Silliman said. “You'll be all right.” But he showed Catto a face of doubt and despair.

Phelan blew up. “Side pleurisy?
Side pleurisy?
Get me a canteen full of cold water. Unless there's ice somewhere. Quick now, Jacob. What damn barber called it side pleurisy?” His mustache and brows danced, his eyes gleamed ferociously.

“It was a little fellow,” Silliman said, “name of Doctor Simon Howard.” He added apologetically, “He was very good with chickens too, and animals generally.”

“For Christ's sake, chickens!” Phelan roared. “A barnyard man, was he?”

“No, no,” Silliman said, placating, “a real doctor. Good with babies too, and broken bones. He used a stethoscope like yours.”

“That's better,” Phelan said. “A surgeon in the Eighty-ninth told me Harvard hasn't even got one of those yet. But your little man is a damn fool anyway. Now you lie still,” he said to Thomas. “I'm going to poke here and there. You tell me what it feels like.”

“Yahaaaow!”

“Is that right.”

“My God,” Catto said. “Look at the sweat on him. In the wink of an eye like that.”

“Don't do it again,” Thomas whispered. “Please.”

“Don't have to,” Phelan said. “We know all we need to know. One thing more: you feel like vomiting?”

“Sometimes. Comes and goes.”

“That's it then. Pain's in the right place, your belly's like a board, you're a little warm. You're going into the hospital.”

Jacob pushed into the cabin waving a canteen. “No more ice. Maybe in the morning with a good frost tonight. Here now, young Thomas. You drink this.”

“Drink hell,” Phelan said. “Lay it on his belly. Give it here. Then fetch an ambulance. That feel cold? Good. Put him aboard and take him into town to the hospital, fast as you can. I'll ride in and meet you there.”

Catto huddled against the wind. He and Jacob wore identical greatcoats and blue wool stocking-caps. A cold sun mocked them. Jacob handled the reins with authority and the mule clopped along briskly as if in a hurry to be stabled. “Be ye not as the horse or the mule, which have no understanding,” Jacob said suddenly. His eyes teared; he blinked away the cold. “That's a wind. You know, I never been sick a day in my life.”

Beside him on the board Catto said, “How long has that been?”

“Don't know for sure. More than forty but not yet forty-five.”

Catto looked him over. A man always showed better doing work he knew well. Jacob seemed taller. “Where you from anyway, Jacob?”

“Tennessee.”

“How'd you get free?”

“When Mister Lincoln's men come by, I just run off and jine with them. You don't remember, do you.”

“Remember?”

“You one of the first soldiers I see. I still remember. You remember that bright red horse you had? Little fellow. Pony, like.”

“The roan. Sure I remember him.” Catto smiled his astonishment, then bowed his head and concentrated. Jacob had said, “You one d'fust sojas ah see. Ah stee memba. You memba dah brah reh hoas you ha? Lil fella. Pony lak.” But Catto had heard speech, all clear and simple. Did he sound as odd to Jacob, and yet as natural? Interesting. Puzzling. Like maybe a trip to China and some little yellow man eating with a pair of wooden sticks, but he was eating beef and rice and chicken and when he was all finished he looked up and said, “Not bad, Marius. Have some,” and in an odd way you might as well be in Illinois. “And you remember me from back then,” said Catto the traveler. “I was a sergeant then.”

“That's right,” Jacob said with satisfaction.

“Well I'll be,” Catto said. “Well I'll be. You know, that was the last time I had a horse. I stole him and I only had him three days. He was a frisky little fellow.”

Catto fell into a reverie as they jolted along; he swayed, clung, remembered. Chickamauga. He loved the name itself: Chickamauga! One moment there he would never forget, a moment in the morning, himself high above a valley, above a mountain pass, sitting the roan and bewildered at a distant swell of sound, seeing an advance guard enter the pass, and then the main body, far below, a long line of blue against the greens and yellows and reds and browns of autumn, and soon there were thousands of them, the sun flashing on buckles and bayonets, and the morning air carried that swell of sound, and he understood: they were singing; high above those thousands he heard the chorus, as if they sang for him alone.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
the words unfurled over half of Tennessee, and Catto was happy to be alone because there was no holding back a tear or two. Then he rejoined his unit and a drunken fool named Biddle was singing the same tune but other words, and the men chimed in:

When the war is over we will all enlist again,

When the war is over we will all enlist again,

When the war is over we will all enlist again,

We will, like hell we will!

“Then you've been a free man for quite a while,” he said to Jacob.

“Year and a half,” Jacob said. “That's not long.”

“I see what you mean. But you haven't been with this regiment all that time.”

“No sir. Been with several.”

“By golly,” Catto said. “We're old friends. Old friends from Chickamauga.”

“Yes sir.”

“What's your last name?”

“Courtney.”

“Courtney. That's a fine old name.”

“My pappy's master's name. So they told me. I never see my pappy. Or my mammy.”

“Well, me too, in a way,” Catto said awkwardly. “But it's not the same. I heard things like that, families all scattered.” After a pause he plunged on: “When you ran off, did you—oh hell. Never mind.”

“You ask me anything you like. I never did evil.”

“Well, that's what I wondered. If you'd killed anyone, or fired a house.”

“No, no, no. Just run off. Not but what I would have
liked
to, maybe. But between liking and doing there stands the Lord.”

“You sound like a Bible reader.”

“I am. I am that.” The wagon trundled through ruts, jolting them together.

“Easy,” Catto said. “The boy.”

“Doing as best I can.”

“Where'd you learn to read?”

“Funny thing,” Jacob said. “For about five years, some time back, a crazy little white lady from Connetic set up with Bibles nearby where I live. And about six or seven black folks learn their letters and how to read the Good Book. And then the masters run the lady off, they say some awful things about her, but you know I bet we got twenty, twenty-five niggers can read nearby where I live, from those first six or seven. And the word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”

“Well, that's fine,” Catto said. “I don't believe Thomas can read.”

“Well, the boy a Catholic. He don't have to read. He have the priests read for him.” Jacob's tone was not merely explanatory; it was kind.

“Is that right.” Catto choked back laughter, laughter not at Jacob but at Phelan, at Phelan's face when he heard. Then he thought ruefully, I could have been a colonel. I do believe saying no was stupid.

Gently, silently, he sniffed. Nothing. Stiff breeze, and Jacob in wool. Still, at this range Franklin could kill. And old Catto is not so savory these days either. “What do you know about the boy?”

“He's a good boy.”

“I know he's a good boy. What about his family? His home?”

“Not much of that,” Jacob said. “You know about his father. Drunk all the time. Boy's mother died a long time ago. She had to keep to her bed and she hurt bad, hurt bad for many months. The boy almost cry when he tell me that.”

Catto fell glum. Was the boy lucky to have had a mother even if he had to lose her? A father even if a drunkard? Who was luckier, Thomas or Marius?

“So the boy always pretty much alone,” Jacob went on. “Live off what he hunt, and keep to the woods a lot. He don't even know what this war all about.”

“Neither do I, some days.”

“About slavery, this war is. No doubt about that. About Jacob Courtney and his people.” Jacob's voice lost assurance: “Lieutenant, sir, they going to make the boy all right, ain't they?”

“Don't you fret. Phelan is the best.”

“That's good. I'll send up a prayer.” He pointed: “We almost there now.”

“What will you do to him?” The noontime air nipped, the sky was frosty blue; Catto's cheeks burned. “I ought to be bled. I feel like I had about a gallon too much of the vital juices.”

“It is youth and lust,” Phelan said. “Side pleurisy! There is no such bloody thing as side pleurisy, and even good doctors are fools at times.”

“Then what will you do?”

“Open him up,” Phelan said, “and take out a useless bit as long as your little finger, namely the appendix. Side pleurisy!”

“Open him up,” Catto murmured, and was cold with fear.

“Cheer up,” said Phelan. “Omnia mors aequat.”

“If you must swoon or retch, please leave the operating room,” Phelan said. They were walking a gray corridor, Phelan all brisk and commanding, no lubricious smiles, no elfin wagglings, Catto reluctant, lumbering and lowering. “I don't want you too close, either.”

Catto reflected that he had never broken a bone or lost a limb; he wondered if his fingers and toes counted as limbs. “I could pass this by,” he said, “but it's the boy. Seems like I owe it to him to be there.”

“Well and nobly spoken,” Phelan said, and laughed aloud, eager, paying little mind really to Catto. “I've never done this before.” Left, right, left, right, they marched, and their heels came down hard on the wooden floor; Catto felt, with pleasure, the slight jar along his spine at each pounding step. “But I've seen it done. Nothing to it.”

Catto was silent. He felt a frippery and superfluous fellow, necessary to no one. He repeated to himself that there was no difference between blood spilled on a battlefield and blood spilled on a table; between Garesche's drenching Rosecrans and the boy's oozing into a swab. But he could not believe that. The difference between a clean, accidental wound, even in the belly, and a deliberate incision (in the belly!) mystified him. Then he was ashamed and said, “Anything I can do, you tell me. Carry out the garbage, anything.”

“No, no. We have orderlies for that. Black fellows. Do you know what garbage means in the old country?”

“No.” Nor cared, right now.

“Wheats and straws all chopped fine to feed the horses.”

“Is that right.”

“Cheer up, boy. You won't be able to see much.”

“That's just as well. I thought you didn't like black fellows.”

“No, I don't,” Phelan said. “But they do dirty work with no complaints. And …”

“And what?”

“Well, don't talk about this, but the white orderlies have a tendency to steal morphine and sell it. The blacks don't.”

“Will you use that on Thomas?”

“No. Just chloroform. I tell you, that's the part that scares me. You can kill a man putting him to sleep. I wish I knew more about it.”

They climbed to the second story. In the hall sat the inevitable iron stove and the inevitable clerk, a fat corporal in serious need of a shave, a wash, a trim and a handkerchief. “Af'noon, doc,” said this Gabriel. Phelan nodded and breezed by; the corporal's eyes quizzed Catto, who stared him down and followed Phelan. They paced in single file through a long ward, and Catto, somewhat embarrassed and not sure why, uneasy and flushed, tried not to notice bandages, empty trouser-legs, urinals in use. He passed the recreation table, saw playing cards, a cribbage board, an almanac; its cover caught his eye and he paused, furtive: an opulent milkmaid, spilling out of stockings and bodice, stared boldly out at dear reader with vacant shining eye and pendulous avid lip, the soldier's eternal succubus. Catto blinked, and reached for an open book prone upon the table:
David Copperfield
. He dropped it and hastened after Phelan.

Phelan was surveying a bright room about twenty feet by fifteen. He pointed to a chair and spoke, not to his old comrade Catto but to a fool and potential nuisance who must be made to understand. “You sit there. And stay put unless—like I said. Then get out fast. If you feel all right you can stand up to see better, but don't move about.” Catto nodded and sat down. Phelan puttered about the tables that lined two walls, muttering to his knives and his clamps, his needles and his thread. “Carbolic,” he said once, to no one. Then he stepped through the doorway and abandoned Catto among unfamiliar devices, glittering about him like gew-gaws and baubles, impressive yet frightening. Catto removed his hat, flapped it tentatively at possible resting places, then restored it to its accustomed perch. His mind saw a razory scalpel gashing a livid paunch. Blood welled in drops, then runnels, then rivers. Assorted globular bladders emerged; pink sausages, burgundy livers. Various minute creatures peered up from the incision, indignant: the little people, gods of digestion—Catto blinked. He found a door, then a window, and fresh air. When the fit had passed he went to find Thomas.