I Shall Be Near to You (16 page)

Joseph moans and says, ‘Just like a bonfire.’

‘It was a sight to see. Like a halo over every tree, the way the leaves caught first. Except then the branches started falling.’ Bed Twenty-six takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. ‘You ever heard a hog at slaughter?’

I nod.

‘That ain’t nothing compared to the sound of the wounded burning to a crisp,’ he says.

We sit silent and I curse Mrs. Chalmers for ever bringing me here.

Finally Joseph says, ‘The letter. The letter first. Then the arms.’

It’s a relief to turn away from that other soldier and tell Joseph, ‘It’d be my honor to write that letter. Who do you want it written out to?’

‘My Mama—’ he says, his voice catching. ‘Dear Mama. You tell her … Tell her: This letter isn’t written in my own hand but these words are mine. You write that.’

I use my best penmanship to take down whatever he wants, sitting sideways so he can see. When he knows I am putting what he says, he closes his eyes but they still move beneath his lids like they are reading that letter.

‘Now read it back to me,’ he says when he’s spent, and hearing those words is about as sad as standing round a grave.

April 12, 1862

Judiciary Square Hospital

Dear Mama
,

This letter is not written in my own hand but these words are mine. I have lain in Judiciary Square Hospital in our Fair Capital almost since I have been wounded, as You have reason to know. Only this few days past, the Surgeon here, Willard Bliss, has been obliged to take from me my hands. They were, as he said, not healing as would be hoped. I have had my Surgery now and hope you can Visit me here
.

Should you get this letter in good time, I shall still be here, but do not tarry. I fear I am in Dying Condition. The Surgeon says my wounds Will Heal now the worst of them are gone, but I am afraid there is no hope for me. I do so wish to see you
.

If I cannot live to see your face, do not weep for me. I have died Serving this great Union. I have seen the enemy and know that God must be on Our Side, though He has yet seen fit to Reward us with Victory. I will take my place in Heaven with those who Fought before me and I will Welcome those who come after. If I do not see you before I leave this World, I will look for you on the other side. Give my love to Fannie and tell her her brother will Look Upon her from Heaven
.

Most Affectionately
,

Your Son, Joseph

He nods to me when I am done reading. ‘It’s a fair hand. You’ll take it to post for me?’

‘Of course,’ I say, because it is the only right thing. ‘Have I got an envelope here to suit your fancy?’ I show him the Lady Liberty and Lincoln and McClellan.

‘Oh, the Lady to be sure,’ he says, and then he tells me the address he wants it directed to.

‘Now the arms,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Burning,’ he says, his mouth barely opening for the tightness of his jaw. ‘Hurts something awful. Get me laudanum and some cool air on these arms. And then fresh bandages.’

‘Oh, I ain’t got the touch …’

‘Just get the laudanum,’ he growls.

I
NSIDE THE WOODEN
cabinet by the door are shelves of mostly identical brown bottles. The first one I grab has a paper label saying
Paregoric
. I shove it onto the shelf and the next one says
Ether
and then finally there’s one that says
Laudanum
, with a rubber dropper tip.

Back at Joseph’s bed, he is whimpering with his eyes closed like he don’t even know the sound he’s making.

There is a pitcher in a bowl on the bedside stand, and a cup next to it that I fill with water, only I don’t know how many drops of laudanum he needs.

Joseph says through gritted teeth, ‘The full dropper. Put all of it in.’

The sweet-smelling liquor swirls as the laudanum clouds the water. I help him sit up and drink. As soon as the water crosses his lips he falls back into the pillows.

‘Better soon,’ he says, breathing that starts as a sigh and ends in a moan.

A
CROSS THE AISLE
Mrs. Chalmers is petting a soldier’s hand, singing ‘Home Sweet Home’ quietly, and I should’ve thought to sing to keep that boy easy.

‘I need your help,’ I say when I reach her, my voice quiet but sharp. ‘He’s wanting new bandages. I ain’t got the knack of it.’

‘It doesn’t take much skill, just steady nerves and a light touch,’ she says.

‘You show me. I’ve never done doctoring except for cows and horses.’

‘You’ll excuse me, Lawrence?’ she says to the man whose hand she’s been stroking, and picks up her basket.

‘Hello there,’ she says when we get to Joseph, but it’s like he don’t even hear her. Mrs. Chalmers looks at me and says, ‘Did you give him laudanum?’ When I nod, she says, ‘Well then, it’s working,’ and throws back the covers.

‘Oh,’ she says, like two half arms ain’t what she was thinking on seeing. ‘Help me hold his arm.’

She unties the spiderweb knot on the left arm, carefully lifting his arm just enough so she can pass the roll of bandage under it.

He gets to whimpering again, but she is calm, unwinding that bandage like he ain’t making a sound. The closer she gets to the end of the stub, the worse it looks with map lines of veins running in red streaks up Joseph’s arm. Once the flannel is unwrapped, there is nothing but the hot red arm and a clump of rust and yellow clotted lint at the end of the stump. Mrs. Chalmers drops the flannel to the floor and picks at the edge of the lint, trying to get it loose, but it sticks fast.

She wets a cloth from her basket, gently running it down Joseph’s arm, the water dripping through the lint pad and onto the floor, making a pale pink stain on the old bandage lying there. Then she wrings that cloth out into the bowl by Joseph’s bed and runs it over his arm again and again. Holding his upper arm, I feel it getting cooler, but the heat still burns from deep inside and it won’t be cool for long.

When the lint is wet through, it peels off easy in Mrs. Chalmers’ hands. This don’t seem any better than those parts by the door outside, only it’s got a body attached to it. At the end of the stump the skin folds over on itself, held with a line of black horsehair stitching, smeared with thick lemon-curd-yellow pus, a sickly sweet smell coming from it.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘that’s the laudable pus. The surgeon says it’s a sign of healing.’

‘Ward-Master says he ain’t long for this world,’ I whisper.

‘Well, only the Good Lord knows for certain.’

Mrs. Chalmers takes the rag again and keeps wiping the end of the stump, only stopping her cleaning to squeeze the bits of softened scab and pus into the bowl. There ain’t a place to look that don’t make me feel something awful.

When she gets that stump cleared off, Mrs. Chalmers takes a ball of lint from her basket and a fresh roll of flannel. She presses the lint against the end of the stump with one hand and begins winding the bandage around and around it. Joseph’s head moves and his eyes start to open when she touches him, but he sighs and then is still.

She catches me watching her tie the bandage knot and smiles. ‘You’ll do the other one.’

‘No—I—’

‘I’m needed elsewhere. You can do this on your own. Unless you’re a coward,’ she says, as she puts a ball of lint and a roll of flannel at the foot of Joseph’s bed.

‘Mrs. Chalmers—please?’

‘Do this one,’ she says, turning her back on me, her basket on her arm. ‘Then you need never do it again.’

I mutter under my breath, ‘Goddamn it all to hell.’

I drag the stool round to the other side of his bed. The noise of it makes Joseph twitch, but he don’t seem near to waking. I do everything just like Mrs. Chalmers did, but it takes me twice as long, flies gathering on the end of his arm each time I rinse out the cloth.

My bandage don’t look so smooth and even, but I’m hoping it will still do the job when Mrs. Chalmers comes back to my side.

‘I’m all out of bandages and I think it’s time we get to camp. We’ve done some good today,’ she says. ‘I knew you had the knack,’ she goes on, nodding at Joseph’s arm.

‘I ain’t got the knack,’ I say too loud, making Joseph shift in his stupor, and then make my voice go quiet. ‘But I can do a thing that needs doing.’

W
E ARE ON
the edge of camp when Mrs. Chalmers looks at me and says, ‘How do you do it?’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

‘Being a soldier,’ she says, her skin going the same sunrise pink as the flowers dotting her dress, and I tell myself she only means about the marching and laboring.

‘You grow up on a farm?’ I ask her, even though anyone can tell by looking she ain’t. She shakes her head.

‘Well, it’s like everything else,’ I say, working to keep my voice low. ‘It just has to be done, is all.’

‘But I’m not doing it,’ she says. ‘I don’t see another soul doing what you are.’

She touches my elbow and that is when I see she ain’t talking about the drilling or working and I wonder how it is she knows the truth about me.

‘I ain’t got another choice in the matter,’ I say to her. Then I grab her wrist and it is so birdbone tiny it might snap in my hand. ‘Don’t you tell a soul. I can’t go back like this, not after leaving like I did.’

Her hazel eyes go big and shimmery like Betsy’s sometimes do. I let her arm go.

‘I won’t say a word,’ she whispers. ‘I was only hoping … I get so lonely.’ She sweeps her hand through the air, toward the tents, the soldiers gathering for their nightly poker games, already loud with drink. And then those tears start spilling.

‘It is a lonely thing sometimes. But you ain’t got the same worries as me.’ I shake my head. ‘You ain’t got to hide—’

‘I won’t tell a soul,’ she says, her voice so firm and serious. I think on the lies she told her own husband. Then I think how gentle she was with the soldiers at the hospital.

‘You’ve got to help me keep it secret,’ I say. ‘There’s people back home but they don’t—that letter—My husband and I, we need the money I’m earning so we can have our own place.’

‘I promise,’ she says, and I don’t dare do a thing but believe her.

‘How’d you know?’

‘I don’t know, little things. I had a hunch about something the day I met you on the road. And then the way you rolled bandages, so nice and neat. That’s what made me stop and take notice. Your voice. And then you almost fainted when you caught sight of the hospital.’

‘Captain—does he know?’

‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laughed at my husband when he can’t find his belt, even if I tell him it’s hanging on the hook in his wardrobe. Or if he’s looking for his knife and it’s right before him, sitting on the table.’

I ain’t had much occasion to see Jeremiah do things like that, but I
remember how my Mama could always find the missing bit-brace in the lean-to or the dropped gate hinge, even after Papa swore he’d looked everywhere.

‘He doesn’t know, that’s what I mean to say. But I wonder—will you consider coming to the hospital with me again?’ Mrs. Chalmers asks.

The feeling comes up in her eyes and maybe there’s things about us that ain’t so different, so I say, ‘You asking or is Captain ordering?’

‘I’m asking,’ she says, her voice small.

‘I can’t be talking to you again. It ain’t safe and I don’t want no more trouble with Captain, so unless he’s ordering it—’

‘I understand,’ she says, but I wonder how she can. ‘I won’t ask it of you again.’

We part ways near the tents, but first she takes my arm and says, ‘My name’s Jennie. And thank you.’

Only when she has left does the relief come, and when it’s gone I feel how tired my whole body is.

I
AM PAST
ready to drop by the time I lay myself down under our tent, but Jeremiah and me ain’t had time for talking yet and he wants it. He wraps his arms, his whole arms, around me. When a shiver goes up my spine, his arms tighten.

‘Rabbits running over my grave,’ I say.

His lips find my neck and plant tiny kisses there, telling me what he has in his mind. I can’t help it though and sink toward sleep like a bucket down the well. But what I see there in the dark makes me want to draw back, and Jeremiah’s kisses are the rope pulling me up.

‘You okay?’ he asks, his finger tracing my jaw.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re real quiet.’

‘Mrs. Chalmers knows what I am,’ I whisper.

Jeremiah starts. ‘What?’

‘She guessed it. And now she knows.’

‘How does she know?’ Jeremiah asks, and even if I can’t see it, I can feel him looking at me.

‘Because I got sick, seeing that hospital, seeing—She just knew, and I couldn’t lie,’ I say in a small voice.

‘You told her?’

‘No, not in so many words. She already knew!’

‘We’ve got to be more careful. You can’t go around—’

‘I know.’ My voice cracks.