The Sea is a Thief (32 page)

“Where you headed, boy?”  

Moses was friendly.  “Jes' takin' this load where the master said to take it.  You gentlemen fishin'?”  

“What's it look like?”

“Caught much tonight?”

“Why's that matter to you?”

“Nobody'll miss one or two of these.  I know the master would want you to have 'em.”  He stood and heaved two large fish towards the men.  They made a wet sound as they hit the bank.  “Enjoy them fish,” he called, rowing strongly downstream.  

When they were out of earshot he laughed softly.  “Works every time.” he said, speaking in Sam's direction. “When you throw 'em a fish they ain't so interested in askin' questions any more.  Just a Negro with a boat full of fish, that's all I am.  Doin' no harm at all—not me!”

They outpaced the slow current easily.  Moses was tireless at the oars.  For long periods of time he was silent.  Then he would sing very quietly in a high, lilting voice, songs that Sam did not know.  Once, after a long stretch of quiet rowing down a wide, straight section of the river, he spoke directly to Sam.

“Samuel?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Are you a Christian man?”

“Yes, Moses, I am,” Sam replied.  “Not a very good one, I suppose.”

“You do attend services from time to time, don't you?”

“I do.”

“The first Sunday you're in church, back in Pennsylvania, you say prayers for me.  Will you do that, Samuel?”

“I assure you,” he said, “I will.”

“That's good,” Moses said. “You mention me by name, now. It's a name Jesus surely knows.”

Beneath his cover, Sam smiled for the first time in memory.  

 

When the moon was high, Moses let out a quiet whistle.  “You stay still, now,” he said.  Then, silence.  He rowed without a sound, feathering his oars, for a good half hour.  Sam's mind was racing.  
What had he seen?  
 

Suddenly Moses spoke up.  “You couldn't see it from down there where you are, but I believe that had to be the Southern line a little ways back.  Plenty of campfires, not too far off.  Didn't want to tangle with them.  You can rest easy now.  Shouldn't be too much farther.”  

“What shouldn't?” Sam whispered.  

“Why, your own lines, Samuel.  They've set up face to face, I figure.  Always do, don't they?”  Sam felt a weight lift from his heart.  He knew that the Union lines would run just as Moses has described.

“Be careful,” he hissed.  

“Is that so?” Moses replied, mocking Sam's caution to him.  Clearly he had faced this kind of danger many times before.  He knew what he was about.    

In another half hour, Moses ruddered the boat towards the bank with his oars.  Sam felt the soft scraping of the keel on the mud.  They had landed.  Moses leaned down.  He lifted the edge of the tarpaulin that covered Sam and leaned his face down close to his passenger.  

“From the look of those fires I'd say you ain't more than a hundred yards from your people.  This is where we part company, Samuel.  I'm goin' to take these fish where they need to go.  I'll tell you a little secret: it doesn't take nearly as long to get there as I tell 'em it does, but if I'm gone
too
long they start to wonder where I got to, so I can't take any more chances.  Best thing for you to do is wait here till it gets light and be sure you're in the right spot, then join up with your company.  You can lay low under the bank over there.” He waved toward a place where the current had carved away a section of the muddy bank.  The tangled roots of willow trees formed a canopy over the edge of the water.  

“And what if you miscalculated, Moses?”  

“Then you don't have to say a single prayer for me, Samuel.  But don't you worry--I didn't miscalculate.  I know this river.  I know
all
the rivers.  If I went around miscalculatin' I wouldn't have lasted nearly this long.”  

Sam eased himself out from under the canvas.  Straddling the gunwale, he set his good leg softly onto the bank, following with the other, stiffened and sore from his long confinement.  Immediately, Moses began to push the boat back into the current.  Sam stepped forward quickly and laid his hand on the big man's shoulder.  He could barely see the outline of his face in the moonlight.  His eyes glowed dimly under his heavy brows.  Sam had seen his rescuer only under cover of night; he doubted he could recognize him in the light of day.  If they met in heaven each would know the other's face, but likely not until.  

“I'll mention you by name,” he said.  

Moses smiled.  “That's right,” he said. “That's what you ought to do.”  With a single mighty push he was away down the river.  Sam watched him until he was lost into the black night of the Chickahominy, and then found a low spot under the overhanging bank where he might be safe until dawn.  

Sam kept himself well hidden until first light, invisible in the grasses.  At first light, two young boys came down to the river with buckets to draw water. Their uniforms were blue.

The Sergeant in command could scarcely have been more surprised if the two boys who had gone to fetch water had led a ghost into his tent.  The battle at Drewry's Bluff, and the hasty nighttime Union retreat that followed, were several days distant.  The dead had been buried, as well as they could be, and the wounded had been sent to the field hospitals that did their best to undo the bloody work of Minié balls and cannon shot. Most of the seriously wounded would die as well, in a few days or weeks.  

Northern casualties numbered three thousand, or so the estimates ran.  It was still difficult to tell.  Many had fallen behind what were now Confederate lines; no one could say for certain how many, or what fate they might have met.  There was little hope for them in any case. The rest had been thrown back fifteen miles, right to their original position at Bermuda Hundred, where Moses had found them. On the Confederate side, two thousand were thought to have been killed or wounded: not a bad showing for the Union in the midst of a humiliating retreat.  

Now Sam Dreher, emerging like Lazarus from the morning mist, reduced the tally of the dead by one.  

The Sergeant, a bald man with long side whiskers, leapt up from behind his desk with an uncommon urgency.  One look into Sam's exhausted face told him all he needed to know about the young sailor's condition. He wondered silently how a man so drained of strength could still stand.  He barked out a command, and four burly soldiers arrived at a run.  With practiced movements they lifted Sam on a litter and carried him to a hospital tent.  

A tired surgeon, shirtsleeves speckled with blood, used a sharp knife to cut apart the haversack straps that Sam had used to fashion the splint an eternity ago. With the same knife he sliced away Sam's ragged uniform trousers and examined his leg.  The skin was mottled: bruised and colorful here, pale-white there.  The surgeon slipped on strong spectacles and peered at the leg with red-rimmed eyes.  He braced one hand on Sam's hip and wrapped another around his knee.  Leaning forward, he tested the extent of the break.  With a loud cry, Sam raised himself nearly off the table.  He had not felt such pain since he  began his walk to the river.  

All four soldiers who had carried him to the tent held him tightly while the doctor re-set the bone where it belonged.  In long minutes the agony ended.  Sam lay back on the table, his brow drenched in sweat, as his breathing slowed to normal.  

Wiping his glasses, the surgeon pronounced that the leg would heal, with time, and that Sam had done an admirable job under the circumstances in caring for it.  He expressed his concern that the leg would not heal perfectly after the rough treatment it had gotten, but pointed out that things could have gone far worse for him if he had not acted so quickly.  He re-splinted it with two stout boards made for the purpose and wrapped it in what he called Indian leather, which fit very tightly.  Warning Sam not to work and to walk as little as he could, he gave him new trousers, a pair of military-issue crutches and an official medical letter stating that no hard duty was required of him until the month of August.  

The camp commander, a grey-bearded fellow with a great deal of gold embroidery on his coat, wanted nothing to do with an injured sailor.  Reading the surgeon's letter, he frowned and tapped his fingers impatiently on the plank table before him.  He asked how it was that a sailor had ended up in the thick of a land battle in the first place, and listened with raised eyebrows as Sam told his story.  He nodded his head and, finally, seemed to reach a conclusion.  Taking a sheaf of papers from his field desk and unfolding it, he searched its contents for a list.  

“A number of ships move between Hampton Roads and Philadelphia,” he declared.  “I'll send you with orders for duty at the Navy Yard.  No doubt they can use a carpenter, even a crippled one.  When you heal they can determine where to post you.”   He wrote out a set of orders hastily and pushed it across the table to Sam.  “I thank you on behalf of the nation for your contribution to the effort at Drewry's Bluff,” he offered, brows knitted.  “Be at the landing on the James today at noon.  See the cooks for some rations first.”  He waved a finger towards the general direction of the cooks' tent and resumed writing.  Sam tucked the orders into his tunic.  He was desperately hungry.

It was between mealtimes; he sat with the cooks by himself as he ate.  They gathered around to hear his story and brought him bowl after bowl of whatever hot food they could spare.  A boy was dispatched to clean his uniform and another to heat water so that he could bathe and shave.  He had three hours to rest before he needed to report to the landing.  He lay on a cot in a shady tent, his mind fully at ease for the first time in days.  He gave silent thanks to God and then drifted into sleep. He dreamed of Moses, and in his dream he saw his face: the eyes widely set, his mouth kind, and smiling.  In his dream they sailed together on the water.

 

Within a day he was on his way to Hampton Roads.  Within two days he was bound for Philadelphia aboard a big war-torn gunship.  She was grand of design and well-equipped, but badly in need of repair, and would see no more fighting until the Navy Yard made her whole again.  He spent two days seated at a rough wooden table, splicing worn line with a marlinspike, the wind in his face as a full set of sails carried the creaking ship speedily northward up the coast, away from Virginia.  The bo'sun's mate brought him a ration of rum.  He drank it before sleep, and it eased the dull pain in his leg.   

Though he asked at every opportunity, he could not find anyone who knew of Ethan Platt, or the ship they had crewed on their way up the James.  

At the navy yard he was stationed at a workbench and issued a set of tools: chisels and mallet, planes, and a brace and bit.  Many jobs could be done by a sailor with a broken leg, and Sam labored sunup to sundown, like the rest of the carpenters stationed at the yard on Philadelphia's Broad Street.  The work was endless and familiar.  Ships of every description rode at anchor side by side, jammed as close together as loaves of bread in a bakery window.   All bore the scars of war: fractured masts, ragged gaps torn by cannon shot, timbers scorched by fire.  In places, blood stained their decking.  A small army of men crawled over them continually, healing their wounds by degrees.  The racket of their saws and mallets filled the air at every daylight hour.

Day by day Sam began to feel his leg healing, the bone knitting together with an itching sensation deep inside.  He could get by with less and less assistance from his crutches.  When the first of August arrived the surgeon removed the Indian leather wrapping and asked him to walk.  There was no pain; still, his gait was unsteady.  At first he thought that his knee was simply unused to bending, so he stretched the stiff muscles at the ship's rail.  Within a day the knee was back to normal, but his walk was not.  It was odd and offbeat, the result of a left leg that was now misshapen.  The bone had healed imperfectly, as the surgeon at Bermuda Hundred had feared.  So it would remain.  

Sam sat on the ship's rail for long hours that night, remembering footraces he had run as a boy in Shoemakersville and the times he had climbed to the tops of mountains that surrounded Port Clinton.  The future would not be the same.  His leg had borne him through the valley of death, but until the end of his life it would remind him of the days between Drewry's Bluff and the Chickahominy.   The war had burdened many a young man with the walk of an old man.  Now he counted himself among them.  

The commandant of the Navy Yard made his orders permanent.  He would serve there until hostilities ended.

 

As the autumn of 1864 turned the elms and poplars of South Philadelphia red and gold, Sam Dreher worked his craft on the vessels of the United States Navy.  On Thanksgiving Day the women of the local churches came to the shipyard, bundled in warm coats, carrying roasted turkeys, sweet potatoes, and mince pies that reminded him of home.  They thanked him and his fellow sailors for his service to the Union, and then departed.  Snow flew in early December, tiny flakes whirling though a windy night that coated the roofs and streets.  Christmas Eve was mild and dry, and Sam attended services at the Old Pine Street Church, where he had gone to pray for Moses the first Sunday he arrived in the city.  The pastor preached on the subject of slavery and expressed with great energy his personal wish for its end.  Sam's thoughts ran back to May in Virginia, and the man who risked his life to carry him to safety.  

 

On April 18, 1865, while he was planing a heavy beam, Sam heard a clangorous pealing of bells that seemed to echo from every church in every corner of Philadelphia.  He set his plane carefully on its side and looked up Broad Street.  Boys were running down the street knocking on the door of every house and shop.  Men and women, black and white, were streaming from the doorways into the wide avenue, tossing hats and ribbons into the air, blowing horns, shouting, and dancing.  He would remember the sight of their joyous faces as long as he lived. The war had ended.