Love and War: The Coltrane Saga, Book 1 (54 page)

Lena lifted bloodshot, swollen eyes. “You don’t understand, child. I ain’t got nobody, not even you. I see it in your eyes, the way you’re lookin’ at me. You don’t understand.”

The bartender approached, but a look from Kitty halted him. He spun on his heel, the drink still in his hand.

“I want you to come with me to the hospital. You’re sick, Momma. You need help.”

She held out her hand, but Lena slapped it away as she lurched to her feet. “How dare you sound so high and mighty? I hear things! I hear how you lived with the Yankees. I hear how Nathan’s bitchy mother told the whole town about it—how you never was good enough for her son and now he wouldn’t have you.”

Kitty was surprised at her own calmness. “Then you knew I was alive. You knew I was back in town.”

“Somebody saw you get off the train. I didn’t believe it.” She lowered her head once again, then raised it to yell, “Damnit, Joe, where’s my drink?”

“And you got my letters, didn’t you? But you wouldn’t answer. You were ashamed for me to know what you’ve become and now you’re going to refuse my offer of help to get you out of all this.”

Lena was holding on to the back of the chair, trying to steady herself. Lips curling back, she snarled, “Yeah, I got your letter and Nathan’s mother got one from him telling how he’s ashamed of you, the way you lived. Where do you get off comin’ in here lookin’ down your nose at me? You’re just like your no-good daddy, always was…thinking you’re better’n everybody else. Both of you walked out on me. Well, I can take care of myself…don’t need you or nobody else. Now get the hell outta here and leave me alone.”

Kitty felt herself swaying. Dear Lord, she thought in anguish, was it possible to experience such heartache without the heart actually breaking? Could she go on living in the face of all that had happened in the past two days? This was her mother, standing there drunk, screaming obscenities in front of all these men as they snickered approval.

And then Nathan had come through the door, seeming to fill the room with his stature, his uniform, his pride. “Katherine, come out of here!” he ordered.

Turning her head slightly, she hissed, “Will you stop following me? I don’t need you, Nathan. Now leave, please!”

“Go with him.” Lena hiccupped. “You ain’t needed here. You ain’t wanted. I got me a room upstairs, get all I want to eat and drink, and make money besides. Leave me alone.”

She waved her hand, turned and started toward the bar. She was halfway there when she stumbled and fell to her knees. Kitty started to move forward, but Nathan grabbed her, holding her back as two men lifted Lena in their arms and carried her up the stairs.

She let him lead her outside, shocked and dazed by what she had just witnessed.

Finally, she came alive again and whirling on Nathan, she hissed, “I told you to leave me alone. I never want to see you again.”

“I love you, Katherine,” he said quietly, his eyes misting. “I know right now you hate me, but I do love you. I’m going back to Richmond right away. I can’t bear to stand by and see what’s happening to you. But one day, we’ll meet again and perhaps by then you’ll realize you love me, too.”

And he had left her standing there in front of the hotel and she moved in the direction of the hospital where she would be needed, where they would accept her eagerly.

As Kitty’s mind came back to the present, she realized she was no longer alone. Turning, she saw that one of the other women who worked as a nurse, Judith Gibson, was standing beside her, concern etched in every line of her face.

“Why don’t you go see about her?” she asked quietly, knowing without being told what Kitty was brooding about. “I hear things and I’ve heard that your mother isn’t well.”

“Not well? Where…”

“Where did I hear it?” The petite dark-haired woman smiled wryly. “Tom goes to the saloon a lot since he came back from the war, Kitty, if he can get there. It isn’t so easy for a man without legs to get around, you know. But he manages and he tells me some of the things he hears—like the way no one has seen your mother for several days now and Joe, the bartender, is grumbling about how she’s not…earning her keep.” Her voice trailed off, embarrassed.

Looking down the street, Kitty said, “I appreciate your telling me, Judith. I worry about her a lot, the way she is, what she’s become. Maybe if I hadn’t been forced to leave, things wouldn’t have happened to her the way they did. If she’s sick, then I’ll go to her, of course.”

Suddenly the door to the hospital banged open, and one of the younger, less-experienced doctors poked his head out, a panicky look on his face. “You.” He pointed to Kitty.

“That soldier, the one that developed gangrene in his arm, he’s worse and he’s calling for you.”

“I’ll go to him if you’d rather go see about your mother right now,” Judith said.

Kitty shook her head and started for the door. “We’ve grown rather close. Norman knew all along, I think, that he was going to die from that wound. He asked me to be with him when his time came, and I promised. I’ll go see about my mother later.”

Kitty followed the doctor down the dimly lit corridor, turning into a room at the end. The air was close, smelling thickly of chloroform and turpentine—and death. Beds were shoved so close together they were almost touching. Some patients had to lie on blankets upon the floor. With so many skirmishes going on in Virginia, Tennessee, and even in the western part of the state, all hospitals were filled to overflowing.

Private Norman Herring, a stocky, prematurely bald soldier in his late thirties, was moaning softly and writhing on the stained sheets. Hurrying forward, Kitty took his left hand, frowned at the yellow oozing from the bandage on the stump of the right arm. It mingled with a greenish pus. Gangrene. And it was bad. The surgeon had amputated as high as possible to the shoulder. Day and night the nurses had kept the dressing wet with iodine and tannic acid solutions, as well as camphorated oil when they could get it. Medical supplies were getting so scarce that in the past week three amputations had been performed without the comfort of anesthesia.

“Norman, I’m here,” she whispered gently. “Is it bad?”

He opened swollen, bleary eyes, trying to focus on her face. A wry smile twisted his puffy lips. “Ain’t bad. It’s about time for me to kick the old bucket, though, Kitty. I reckon an old man like me did pretty good to last in the war this long…” He paused, gasping for breath, and Kitty interrupted.

“Who says you’re dying? You just want some attention.” Judith had followed behind and stood squeezed in on the other side of the bed. Their eyes met and held, sending a silent message of agreement that the soldier was almost gone. Kitty could feel the heat of his fever as she held his hand.

“Get me a cloth and a pan of cool water, please,” she said to Judith. “Maybe we can bring his fever down.”

“No use…” he moaned, “almost over. Need to write a letter home, please, to Fayetteville.”

Kitty called to Judith, who was almost out of the door, and asked her to stop by the little room where she lived and bring back the fresh bottle of ink she had made from pokeberries, and a goose quill.

Judith was only gone a moment, and while she bathed Norman’s head with the cloth, repeatedly, wringing it out in a pan of cool water, Kitty tried to write the words as he dictated them: “Dearest Mary, I am going. I love you. Take care of the boys…remember me…remember our cause. I ain’t died for no good reason. If God will have me…I’m ready to go.”

He paused, gasping for breath as he did after every few words, and Kitty waited, pen poised in her hand, body rigid. She was about to look up when Judith whispered, “He’s gone, Kitty.”

She looked at him: his eyes stared upward, his mouth gaped, his head slumped back. Quickly, Kitty pulled his eyelids down, propped his mouth closed with the cloth that she took from Judith’s trembling hand, then pulled the foul-smelling sheet over his head. Kitty’s hand held the unfinished letter as they left the room together.

Judith and Kitty walked out onto the porch. The sun was almost down and gentle darkness spread over the earth. Somewhere, a bird sang his good night lullaby. An owl hooted way off in the distance. Peaceful, it was so peaceful, Kitty thought wearily, even in death.

“I guess I’ll never get used to the dying.” Judith sounded as though she were about to cry. “I’ve been here six months and I’ve seen a hundred soldiers die and it never stops hurting. Even when I don’t know their names or anything about them. Some of them scream for death because they hurt so bad. Others scream in terror because they feel the flames of hell licking at their souls, they say. Some just lie there, like Norman, and wait. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it…ever.”

Her voice broke and Kitty put an arm around her tiny waist. Judith was not meant to be a nurse, she knew, but it occupied her time away from Tom, her husband, who had never been the same since he had been sent home from Fredericksburg with both his legs amputated above his knees.

She’d had three children, but they had died of smallpox. Her work at Way Hospital #3 was all that kept her going.

“Think of the living,” Kitty said, hoping to console her. “Think of the soldiers who come here sick and wounded and leave to go back to their loved ones.”

“Back to what? The South is losing the war, Kitty. Why pretend? Our soldiers desert by the hundreds. Governor Vance says there are over twelve hundred in the mountains right now. Ever since that Conscription Act was passed in April of sixty-two, it seems our people are rebelling. All white males between eighteen and thirty-five have to report for duty for three years. My God, they turn and run the other way!”

She paused to take a deep breath, wanting, Kitty figured, to get out everything that she had been holding back. “And they rebel against the tax law, saying they have to tithe one-tenth of all the produce for distribution by the army at Richmond. And now the government has the right to take livestock, slaves, provisions, wagons, anything they want, and they set the price they pay for them. What’s going to happen to us, Kitty? They take our men, our food, our supplies, our homes. We’re losing. And what’s going to happen to us then? Will the Yankees kill us or make us rot in their prisons till we die?”

Her shoulders were shaking and Kitty patted her awkwardly. Everyone had their own despairs, she was reminded. Every single human being in the North and South had his own particular bitterness over the war. For Judith, it meant her husband’s legs and the subsequent collapse of their marriage. For Kitty, it had meant her whole world as she had known it.

“I think I will walk down to the saloon…if you’ll be all right.” She touched her shoulder.

Judith dabbed at her eyes with her bloodstained apron, nodding. “Of course, you go right along. I have to help with the supper tonight—what little there’s going to be. Dried beef and hot cakes. No molasses. No coffee. Those poor men. If we can’t feed our wounded, how can we expect to feed an entire army?” Turning, shoulders slumped, she disappeared inside the hospital building.

Gathering her worn shawl tighter, Kitty started down the steps. She hadn’t reached the bottom before an anxious voice called out from the shadows, “Miss Kitty, may I go with you, pleaser?”

Startled, she whirled about to see Lonnie Carter limping from the shrubbery shroud at the end of the porch. He still stooped with pain from the operation that removed from his side a ball whose impact had crushed several ribs. He wore a ragged, mismatched uniform, and his feet, like so many others these days, were bare.

“Lonnie, you startled me. I didn’t know you were over there. You should be inside, resting, so you can go home soon.”

“Home?” He sounded contemptuous. “Where is home, Miss Kitty, besides the grave? I’m from below New Bern, remember? The Yankees have my home. I’ve no place to go.”

Not knowing what to say, Kitty moved on down the steps, looking at him over her shoulder as he leaned over the porch railing. “I have to go into town now, Lonnie.”

“I know. I heard. And I want to go with you. You have no business walking down the streets unescorted. What if the damn ‘Buffaloes’ are around? It ain’t safe, Miss Kitty.”

She kept on going, looking straight ahead. She didn’t want Lonnie to see her mother. This was something that had to be done alone. From the hospital, there was a distance of only one block to reach Center Street which led to the Griswold Hotel on Walnut—and the saloon just beyond.

Few people were out. Goldsboro had changed so much that decent folk didn’t venture out after dark. The town was crammed with those running from the fighting or recuperating from wounds or seeking refuge from the bushwhackers. The atmosphere over the town was one of desperation and hopelessness, with death and destruction moving closer in an ever-tightening ring.

She thought about Nathan’s furlough of two weeks before. Their meeting on the front porch had been brief. She would not even have met with him had he not sent word to her that he would wait until she came out. Embarrassed, Kitty had no choice.

He had told her that he had been assigned to the Army of Tennessee under the command of General Joseph E. Johnston. His eyes shone with excitement as he spoke and she realized that Nathan had not yet grown weary of the fighting and whatever glory he had found in the war. He told her that President Davis had removed General Bragg from command of the army because of his hash of the Kentucky invasion the summer before, the way he had let victory slip through his grasp at Murfreesboro, and how he’d failed to make good use of his great victory at Chickamauga. And, afterward, Davis removed him, installing him as chief military adviser to himself, as president, and placing Johnston in his place.

“President Davis doesn’t have a lot of confidence in General Johnston,” Nathan had said. “We hear that he dislikes him a great deal personally, but there’s no great love for Davis from General Johnston, either. But one thing is for sure, the Army of Tennessee can fight but it’s never had adequate leadership. The men know Johnston and they trust him. And now they have their morale back. I’m anxious to join them in Georgia.”