Kary, Elizabeth (30 page)

There
had been a falling out between this man and her daughter, but Leigh stubbornly
refused to discuss it. Now Mr. Banister had shown up here late in the afternoon,
obviously hoping to find Leigh at home. It was all very interesting, and
suddenly Althea hoped that Hayes Banister had indeed come looking for her
daughter.

Once,
Althea had harbored the hope that the friendship between the two would blossom
into something deeper. There was an air about Banister that spoke of both
strength and tenderness; qualities any man who married her daughter should
possess in infinite quantities. Hayes had hinted at his deeper feelings for
Leigh at the disastrous party they'd attended just after Christmas, but since
then Leigh had hardly mentioned his name. Now Althea was certain that whatever
had caused the estrangement between them was her daughter's doing and not Hayes
Banister's.

If
he had braved coming to the house like this, had made an appearance after so
many months' absence, he must care a great deal more for Leigh than Althea had
suspected. She would see the man at least, she conceded. Without giving away
any of her daughter's secrets, she would listen to what Banister had to say.

Thoughtfully
she turned the card between her fingers. "Show Mr. Banister in,
Lucy," she instructed, wondering what excuse he would make to explain his
call.

A
moment later Hayes Banister's masculine vitality filled the room, and Althea
smiled a greeting, pleased to see him on more than her daughter's behalf.

"How
good it is of you to stop by, Mr. Banister. You've been away from our door far
too long."

There
was unusually high color along Hayes's cheekbones and an expression on his face
that was a combination of determination and chagrin.

"It's
good to see you too, Mrs. Pennington," he answered, as his flush deepened.
"I've come to see about my hat."

April 6, 1862—St. Louis, Missouri

Hayes
Banister had just finished shaving in preparation for a leisurely Sunday
breakfast at the Planters' House Hotel when a message from the president of the
Western Sanitary Commission arrived aboard the
Barbara Dean:

Dear
Hayes,

General
Halleck has received word that a battle has been joined with General Albert
Sidney Johnston's Confederate troops north of Corinth, Mississippi, at
Pittsburg Landing. We are outfitting several steamboats as hospital ships and
would welcome your help.

Yours
truly,

James
Yeatman

The
news of the battle was unexpected, and since Hayes was certain that General
Grant had not considered a Confederate attack on his positions a possibility,
the Rebels must have taken him by surprise. Hastily, Hayes wiped the remaining
lather from his face and pulled on a shirt, wondering when they would receive
more news. The battle was bound to be a confrontation of some magnitude, he
reasoned, simply because of the size of the armies involved. Between them
Johnston and Grant must be able to put close to eighty thousand troops into the
field. As he hastily tied the knot in his cravat, Hayes thought about the inauspicious
landing and the surrounding woodland that at this minute must be echoing with
the sounds of shot and shell. Had Sherman at the landing and Grant farther
upstream at Savannah, Tennessee, had the foresight to prepare for a Confederate
advance? Less than a fortnight before, the Union generals had been unwilling to
even consider the possibility of attack and had refused to heed the warnings
that both he and Nathan Travis had voiced. Surely they had seen evidence of
Confederate troop movements on their positions in the days since he had left
Tennessee for Cairo and St. Louis, and had prepared themselves to hold their
lines. Dear God, he hoped they'd had that much foresight, at least.

Twenty
minutes later, Hayes was fully dressed and striding purposefully toward the far
end of the St. Louis levee, where Western Sanitary Commission volunteers had
already begun to gather. They were milling around on the cobblestones listening
to Yeatman's directions while a couple of heavy delivery drays loaded with
hospital stores were pulling up beside the two large riverboats lolling in the
current.

It
was a few minutes before Yeatman had finished organizing the others, and Hayes
waited impatiently, his mind full of questions. "James, what can I
do?" he asked in greeting when Yeatman was finished.

"Hayes,
I'm so glad you could come. We've made arrangements to use the
Continental
and
the
Crescent City"—he
nodded toward the steamboats tied up at the
edge of the river—"to transport our medical people and supplies to
Pittsburg Landing. The
Imperial
is going to meet us there as soon as she
can. What we need is to turn these boats into floating hospitals and get them
under way as quickly as possible."

Hayes
took the measure of the two ships that lay along the levee, pleased by what he
saw. "What is the word from the battle? Will the casualties be
heavy?"

Yeatman
frowned. "News is sketchy at best, but it looks like things are pretty
bad. The Confederates attacked just after dawn while Grant's troops were still
at breakfast. It seems they weren't expected."

Hayes
refrained from commenting on the situation on the Tennessee River and nodded
instead. "What about the
City of Louisiana?"

"She's
been at Pittsburg Landing already with a load of supplies."

"That's
fortunate, at least. Will she stay there or return?"

"She
went to deliver stores and pick up men with pneumonia and chronic problems. She
should be well on her way back with them by now. Besides, we'll need her to
help transport supplies and the volunteer nurses we're mustering," Yeatman
explained.

Hayes
tried unsuccessfully to bite back his next question, already more than sure of
the answer. "Is Leigh Pennington one of those volunteers?"

"Leigh's
already at Pittsburg Landing," Yeatman told him distractedly, watching
some men maneuver another wagon down the steeply sloped levee.

"What?"
A jolt of fear went through Hayes at Yeatman's answer. What the hell was Leigh
doing down at Pittsburg Landing?

"She
went with the
City of Louisiana
a day or two ago," Yeatman
continued. "Since she asked to be removed from the hospital-ship
committee, she's been working with Dr. Phillips on the dispersal of Sanitary
Commission supplies. The two of them went to Tennessee to find out if our
methods are working successfully."

Hayes
ground out a curse between his teeth. So Leigh had been on her way to Pittsburg
Landing the afternoon he had visited with her mother. Why hadn't Althea
Pennington told him where she was instead of letting him sit there for the best
part of an hour, hoping to get a glimpse of her elusive daughter? What
possessed Leigh to go to Pittsburg Landing in the first place? He could only
hope that she was safe on the
City of Louisiana
instead of tending to
the wounded somewhere under fire. With difficulty Hayes turned his thoughts on
the problems at hand.

"While
the boats are being loaded, would you like me to check to make sure they're
mechanically sound?"

"That
would be wonderful," Yeatman agreed enthusiastically. "We want to
leave as soon as possible."

"James,"
Hayes tossed over his shoulder as he moved toward one of the riverboats.
"I'm going with you when you leave, if that's all right."

"Fine,
Hayes, fine," Yeatman agreed, headed in the opposite direction. "I have
a feeling we'll need all the help we can get."

***

April 6, 1862—Pittsburg Landing,
Tennessee

Wounded
men lay in uneven rows on the floor of the Federal troop transport ship
Emerald,
their pleas for
water filling the air. It was midafternoon, and the battle that had begun at
dawn with a Confederate charge on Union positions was going badly. It was
evident by the torrent of wounded that swept across the gangplank, the spent
shot that had begun to patter on the deck like summer rain, and the growing number
of deserters gathered in a bleating mass at the foot of the river bluff. Panic
was in the air, a panic that only the turning tide of battle could dispel. It
could be heard in the increasing intensity of the firing, smelled in the haze
of gunpowder that rose above the trees, measured by the need to station an
armed Medical Corps captain on the gangplank to turn away all but the most
seriously injured men.

Leigh
Pennington paused in the center of the troop ship's main salon long enough to
wipe the sweat from her brow before going back to dippering drinks for the
soldiers awaiting medical attention. Gunshot wounds brought on a consuming
thirst, and it was all that Leigh could do to keep up with the escalating need
for water. The men should be washed, their wounds bandaged and tended, but
already the number of people caring for the injured was totally inadequate for
the many in need.

From
the men's talk, Leigh had begun to piece together an understanding of what had
happened earlier in the day. The first confrontation had come up near the
Shiloh Meeting House, where General Sherman's troops were just cooking Sunday
breakfast. Leaving their skillets on the fire, they had snatched up their arms
and marched into battle when the scope of the Rebel attack became evident. It
had been a futile, sketchy defense, filled with moments
of great valor
against overwhelming odds, but ground had been lost and with it many lives.

The
women in the camp, wives and mothers come to visit their husbands and sons
bivouacked in southern Tennessee, told Leigh another part of the story when
they came seeking shelter on the troop ships. They told of hasty good-byes to
loved ones, spoke in fear of the artillery roaring overhead and the hail of
bullets falling all around them, and wept with fear for the man they loved.

As
the morning progressed, Leigh had heard that some of the Union forces had
turned and run, spreading panic through the ranks, while Sherman's and
Prentiss's men had held their line until overpowered by attackers. Wounded who
had come in just after noon spoke of a narrow sunken road where the federal
forces had re-formed to make their stand against wave upon wave of Confederate
charges.

Fields
to the south and east of the landing were said to be carpeted with the dead and
wounded of both armies, lying untended with bullets buzzing overhead. Leigh had
already nursed men with numerous wounds, some from the deadly rifle barrages,
others from exchanges of grapeshot or from the fierce hand-to-hand fighting
taking place along the northern perimeter of the field. Her heart reached out
to the wounded still on the battlefield, but there was nothing she could do to
ease their suffering until the men on the ship were bandaged, washed, and fed.

Behind
a screen of army blankets at one end of the room, several doctors operated,
removing bullets and amputating limbs under the most primitive conditions. The
air in the salon was heavy with the smell of chloroform that wafted from beyond
the curtains, of blood and urine, of unwashed bodies and despair. Around Leigh
rose the clamor of a hundred voices raised in pain, in prayer, or in groans so
primitive that their sound belied a human source. Yet the scene before her
filled Leigh not with horror but with boundless compassion, and her heart went
out to those in need.

Moving
with her bucket and dipper in hand, she bent beside a pale young man with a
full set of ginger-colored whiskers. "See to my brother, will you,
miss?" he pleaded, gesturing to the man to his left. "He's been lying
quiet for so long I'm afraid he's slipped away."

Leigh
moved to look down at the corporal sprawled beside him. He was the essence of
the other man, gaunt and solemn, with the same thick, unruly brows. He was
breathing evenly and deeply, and his skin was cool to the touch.

"I
think he's going to be fine," she said, turning back to his brother. But
her words of reassurance came too late. In those few seconds, the first man's
chest wound had taken his life.

News
from the battlefield got no better as the day progressed. Suppertime came and
went with the word that Wallace's troops had fallen back from the sunken road
and that Prentiss's command had been captured by Confederates. The cannon
barrages were closer now, and the rumor that Grant was deploying his men not
half a mile from the river ran through the boat like a shudder.

Leigh
had no time to ponder what this might mean to the wounded on the transports.
She was the only woman on board the
Emerald
who had any
nurse's training and knew what needed to be done. She put some of the women who
had come seeking shelter to work making tea and farina from the Sanitary
Commission supplies, while others washed and removed the soldiers' bloodstained
clothes. Meanwhile Leigh cleansed and bandaged the less serious wounds, dusting
a little powdered morphine into the open flesh to relieve the pain.

In
the confusion on the
Emerald,
Leigh
was hardly aware that the wooden-clad gunboats the
Tyler
and the
Lexington
had begun to
bombard the Confederate positions farther downriver, and it was some time before
she noticed the shells tearing through the darkening sky overhead. The flow of
wounded slowed at nightfall, and when Leigh stepped out on deck for a breath of
air just after midnight, it had begun to rain. In spite of the thunder echoing
the sound of cannons, the lightning forking through the smoky sky, and the
hissing deluge that pelted the ravaged earth, some of the transports had begun
to ferry Buell's reinforcements across the river by the light of torch baskets
set on either side of the steamers' bows. Watching the fire's
golden flames
dancing on the inky water and the red-orange glow reflected in hundreds of
somber faces, Leigh stood for a moment in the pouring rain. Did the arrival of
General Buell's troops mean that there would be a continuation of the battle in
the morning? How many more wounded would she see tomorrow than she had seen
today?