Kary, Elizabeth (31 page)

Shortly
after 4:00 a.m. the
Emerald
left its mooring, bound for the hospitals
set up near Grant's headquarters nine miles downriver at Savannah, Tennessee.
As the boat ran through the dark on its mission of mercy, it was with the
knowledge of all on board that they must return before daybreak to be ready for
more casualties. It was an overwhelming thought to those who had worked
tirelessly through the day, but in spite of her fatigue, Leigh was pleased to
have found among the people gathered to help with the wounded two old friends:
Delia Dobbins and Mother Bickerdyke.

"Lord,
child, it's good to see you!" Mother Bickerdyke had greeted her with a
crushing hug. "I thought you were safe and happy in your fancy St. Louis
hospital."

"Oh,
Leigh, I've missed you so!" Delia had welcomed her with the same
enthusiasm, but there was little time to talk during the flurry of seeing to
the wounded, and it was not long before the
Emerald
was getting under
way.

"When
the battle's over, promise you'll come to Savannah and work with us!"
Delia had shouted as the boat pulled out.

"I'll
try!" Leigh had called back, waving at her friend through the rain.

Though
Grant's troops carried the second day of the battle, it was far worse than the
first for the women on the
Emerald.
Reinforced by the arrival of Buell's
fresh troops, the Yankees took the offensive and attacked the exhausted
Southern army. Though the Confederates fought bravely, they were driven back
the way they had come. With the Federal advance over the ground that had been
lost the day before, the litter bearer gained access to the wounded who had
lain between the lines all night.

Many
in both armies had not survived the rain and cold, and their corpses lay
huddled close as comrades and enemies had sought warmth together. The living
were little better off. Lying in the mud or half-buried beneath other men, they
had called weakly all night long, their voices pitifully frail against the roar
of the thunder and cannons.

When
these men arrived aboard the
Emerald
their needs were far different from
the men who had come the day before. They were parched with thirst from the
hours of neglect and the raging fevers that had already begun to consume them,
thoroughly chilled and soaked to the skin from lying unprotected in the rain.
The women had to set about seeing to these needs before wounds could be tended
or medicines administered.

Day
turned into night and then to day again before Leigh had a chance to rest.
There had been too many who needed her skill, too many who deserved her comfort
for her to take time for even her most simple needs. And when she awoke after a
few hours' rest, the demand for care, compassion, and comfort was every bit as
overwhelming as before.

***

April 9, 1862—Pittsburg Landing,
Tennessee

Nothing
in Hayes Banister's experience prepared him for the things he witnessed in the
days following the battle at Shiloh Church. When the
Crescent City
pulled
into Pittsburg Landing nearly thirty-six hours after the last shots had been
fired, the scene laid out before them was one of devastation and despair.
Midway up the hill lay endless rows of wounded, some tended and neatly
bandaged, but many still as they were when they had been brought from the
battlefield. The ground around the landing was rutted with the wheels of
countless wagons, scarred and cratered by the explosion of far-reaching shells;
the grass on the slope above it was stained a reddish-brown to mark where the
wounded had lain. There were horses and mules wandering at will along the
lapping water of the Tennessee, boxes of supplies crushed into the sucking
yellow mud or lying half-submerged at the edge of the river. A terrible
desolation lay across the scene, fueled by the heavy silence in the air and the
all-pervasive smell of death.

Almost
as soon as the hospital ship tied up beside the landing, the wounded were
gathered to be brought aboard. Some hobbled across the gangplank of their own
volition, others came leaning heavily on their comrades, but most of the men
had to be carried, too ill or too severely wounded to manage on their own. They
came missing arms and legs, with bandages masking their ruined faces, with
fingers and feet shot away, with raging fevers that robbed them of their
vitality and will. They were men who had seen the worst humanity had to offer
and were marked by it, men who were fighting with fearful tenacity to live or
willing themselves to die.

Even
his experiences at Fort Donelson had not prepared Hayes for the severity of the
wounds or for the enormous number of injured. There were battalions whose
numbers were decreased by half, brigades without men to command them. The scope
of the destruction was devastating, the need for mercy overwhelming. Hayes
worked tirelessly throughout the day and long into the night setting up bunks
on the open deck to augment those in the salon, loading wounded from among the
thousands who waited, but when the hospital ship left for St. Louis at nine
o'clock the following morning with its load of nearly five hundred casualties,
Hayes elected to remain behind. There were still living men lying untended at
the field hospitals, dead to be prepared for burial, and his personal quest for
the woman he loved and had not found. There had been no time to ask after Leigh
Pennington, and he could not leave Shiloh until he saw her and assured himself
of her safety.

Walking
for the first time in the direction of the battle with a group of litter
carriers in search of more wounded, Hayes was stunned by the intensity of the
fighting that had taken place. Trees were denuded of their leaves and branches
by the fierceness of the fire; a farm pond was tinted rusty red by the blood of
the wounded men who had crawled there to drink. In the peach orchard near where
the old meeting house stood, the flying bullets had cut the delicate blossoms
to shreds, covering the ground and the bodies beneath them with a pale pink
dusting of petals. Before the rutted road where Prentiss's men made their
stand, bodies lay so thickly that a man could walk from the Union to the
Confederate line without once stepping on the scarred and bloodstained earth.

There
was a profound stillness in the air, broken only by the sound of soldiers going
about the gruesome business of gathering up the corpses or those, like himself,
who were seeking living men among the dead. The latter lay in rows to await
burial, and beside them were grisly piles of severed limbs awaiting similar
disposition. On the far side of the field greasy gray smoke rose into the sky,
and as Hayes moved closer, he could see the carcasses of the horses that had
fallen being disposed of in the only way possible. On the perimeters of the
field trench graves were being dug: some for the Union soldiers who had fallen
and separate ones for the Confederate dead so that enemies would not lie
together through eternity as they had on the field of battle.

As
the day passed and he went from hospital to hospital moving patients, he
searched fruitlessly for the woman he was desperate to find. The tents and
ramshackle buildings pressed into service to house the wounded were so
inadequate that Hayes could not comprehend how the men were being cared for at
all. Many lay outdoors without even a blanket to cover them, and it was obvious
that if any of these casualties were to survive, they must be taken north as
quickly as possible.

The
end of the day brought him to a hospital near the river where a large number of
Confederates lay among the Union wounded. As Hayes moved through the tents
searching in vain for any sign of Leigh, he heard a reedy voice calling out his
name.

Pausing
beside a man covered with a deep gray film of sweat and gunpowder, Hayes
recognized a face whose lines and angles were very like his own. It was his
cousin, Justin Dean. The insignia on the sleeves of his cousin's jacket
identified him as a lieutenant in the Confederate artillery, just as the blood
on the breast of his gray wool coat confirmed his wound as one that would not
heal.

"My
God, Justin," Hayes whispered, kneeling down beside the man who had been
his playmate and childhood friend. "What on earth has brought you
here?"

"The
Confederate army, Cousin Hayes," the other man drawled as he reached to
take Hayes's hand. Justin's voice was pale and filmy, and his fingers against
Hayes's palm were hot and dry.

"I
didn't know that any of the Deans had signed up to fight for the
Confederacy."

Justin
nodded wearily. "Robert and William are fighting, too. Though they tell me
William's with the cavalry, and that isn't quite the same."

"But
why, Justin? Neither you nor your brothers owned any slaves."

"We
went to war because Tennessee seceded. How could we not support the state we
Deans had helped to found?"

There
was no answer Hayes could give, but he settled down beside his cousin's pallet
determined to make him comfortable. "What do you need, Justin? What can I
do for you while I'm here?"

"You're
not with the army, are you, Hayes?" Justin asked, as if reluctant to
accept help from an enemy.

"No,
I'm with the Sanitary Commission."

"Then
I'd like some water, if you please. I've been thirsty for so long, and there's
not a soul to fetch a drink for a man who marched with Sidney Johnston."

Within
minutes Hayes was back with water, and as he bent above his cousin, Hayes saw
the waxy pallor of his skin and the feverish glow bright in his eyes. Dear God,
how long had Justin been lying here without proper medical attention? How long
had he been lying here alone, waiting to die?

As
if sensing Hayes's thoughts, Justin spoke again, his voice low and resigned.
"There's nothing anyone can do for me, Hayes, nothing to be done at all.
The doctors might better expend their efforts on someone they have a chance of
saving. But I'd be happy if you'd sit with me a while."

"Of
course I'll stay," Hayes answered. "I'll stay with you as long as you
like." The promise seemed to soothe his cousin, and Justin drifted off to
sleep.

As
day faded into night, Justin's fever rose, and though he tossed restlessly on
the bed of straw, he was, for the most part, lucid. They talked as Hayes worked
over the other man, sponging his fevered body with water, loosening the
constricting clothes that bound him. They spoke of childish pranks they'd
played on other members of the family; of the skinny, pigtailed urchin, Sarah,
who had dogged them at their play and who Justin, just a year before, had taken
for his wife. Once they had been the best of friends, but the miles and the
years had separated them.

As
the hours passed, Justin's voice faded to a whisper, and it was Hayes who spoke
and remembered. How much the other man heard or understood, Hayes was never
sure. But while Justin's fever burned away two score years of life, their
friendship was rekindled. When Justin died just after dawn, Hayes ached with
the loss, not only of a man he cared for, but also for an irretrievable part of
his past.

Reluctantly
he took the things from Justin's pockets: a daguerreotype of Sarah and his
baby, a sewing kit, a tin of matches, and some crumpled Confederate bills.
Before he carried his cousin's body outside to see it buried, Hayes took the
signet ring Justin always wore and placed it on his own little finger. One day
Justin's son would treasure the remembrance of his father, and Hayes would keep
the ring safe until the day he could take it to his cousin's widow.

Exhaustion
and sorrow dragged at Hayes as he made his way back toward Pittsburg Landing.
For all his searching the hospitals at Shiloh, he had found misery, not solace,
responsibility, not relief. Nor had he found any sign of Leigh. Had she
returned to St. Louis on one of the hospital ships? Could he be sure she was
safe? Saddened by Justin's death, devastated and disillusioned by all he'd
seen, Hayes wanted to find Leigh and simply hold her close. A ruthless
desperation was building in his blood, a rhythmic, pulsing need to see and be
with Leigh. He was instinctively seeking an island of sweetness, calm, and
serenity in the raging sea of war.

A
troop ship was leaving for Grant's headquarters at Savannah when he reached the
dock, and without even knowing why, Hayes went aboard. Things at the hospital
there were better organized than at Shiloh. The tents were lined up in an
orderly formation, and he moved in the direction of the largest one, determined
to continue his search.

"Pardon
me," Hayes began wearily, approaching an area where several nurses were
cooking over open fires. "I was hoping to locate—"

At
that moment the tallest woman looked up from the pot of soup she was stirring.
"I know you, don't I?" she interrupted almost harshly. "Weren't
you the man that helped me find the wounded the night after Fort Donelson
fell?"

It
took Hayes's numbed brain a moment to realize that the shawl-shrouded figure on
the battlefield and the woman standing before him were one and the same.

"Mother
Bickerdyke?" someone broke in before he could respond. "Where do you
want these crates of shirts and bandages?"

"Mother
Bickerdyke?" Hayes echoed. "Is that who you are?"