Songs of the Shenandoah (27 page)

“What do you want? You aren't going to cause no trouble, are you mister?”

“What was your name? William, right? William Walsh.”

The boy shrugged. “Billy.”

“William. Billy. You are supposed to be dead! You died in Fredericksburg. Your name, I read it in the newspaper.”

He seemed to be measuring up Davin. His eyes narrowed, but then his cheeks relaxed and he lowered his weapon. “William Walsh did die in Fredericksburg.”

“What? I don't—”

“James O'Brien survived with a leg wound. I'm Jimmy.”

“You're not making sense of any of this.”

“Are you going turn me in?”

“What, for being a ghost?”

The boy shook his head. “Listen, mister. I've died five times now. And my mother has made a new thousand dollars each time.”

It was starting to become clear to Davin, and he was embarrassed it had taken him so long to solve the mystery. “So . . . you fake your death so you can sell yourself as a substitute again?”

“You gonna tell?”

Davin rubbed his hand through his hair. “No. I'm not going to tell. I'm going to . . .” Suddenly a great weight lifted off of his shoulders. “You have no way . . . of knowing . . . how happy I am. I thought I had killed you.”

“Killed me?” The boy spat on the ground.

“Yes. When I thought you died in battle, I blamed myself.”

Billy shouldered his rifle. “So you aren't going to say anything?”

“Yes . . . yes. I'm going to say, ‘Thank You, God.'” He looked heavenward. “Thank you!”

“Sir?”

“Yes.” Davin suddenly realized the pain in his ankle. That was foolish. But who cared? The boy was alive.

“Well . . . then, if it's fine with you, sir . . . I'm . . .” He pointed back to the camp.

“Yes, Billy. Jimmy. With my blessings. Go be alive.”

The boy gave him a strange look and then turned and walked away, glancing back a couple of times.

Now satisfied he was alone, Davin put his hands over his face and he began to cry first and then sob. It was as if some great poison was draining from his body, making him feel alive again. He didn't know exactly how long he was there, but he heard a noise and quickly wiped his face dry of tears, coughing a couple of times in order to disguise his moment of emotion.

Yet walking toward him was not another soldier, but Muriel, who was not dressed in her white nursing outfit, but simple olive pants and shirt.

“Davin? Is that you?”

How could she have found him here?

“It is you.” She stepped toward him, looking around briefly. He must have seemed surprised to see her because she started to offer an explanation. “I saw you running away back there at camp. Which, of course, with the condition of your ankle was not wise.” She pointed behind her. “Who was that soldier?”

“Won't you get yourself in trouble being out here with me?” That was odd. If she had been following him, Muriel was coming from the wrong direction. Did she see him crying? He wiped his eyes again.

“I am allowed to take walks. In truth, I usually take them at night when I can be alone and stray outside of camp without being noticed. Accompanied only by fireflies. You know, sometimes I just need to get away from all of this.” She pointed to his foot. “How is it?”

“You mean before or after I decided to leap the fence?” Davin reached down and felt his ankle. “Not my most brilliant decision.”

She flipped the red hair back that had fallen down her forehead. “Well . . . we should get you back and I'll take a look at it more closely. But first, I did have a question for you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” She eyed him with curiosity. “I was wondering, how many boots can you buy for fifty dollars?”

He smiled, nodded, and they started to walk back. “I suppose quite a few.”

“And . . . I wonder how much it would cost someone to purchase boots for, say, an entire regiment?”

Davin learned there was no sense being coy around Muriel. She was too smart. The only way to speak to her was plainly. “Probably all a person had.”

“All?”

“Everyone needs to have a cause, right?”

“Davin?” Muriel wrinkled her lip.

What now? Was she going to get deep and mysterious again? Couldn't she just celebrate the boots for a day? “Yes?”

“I like you.”

He started breathing again. “Is that so?”

“Very much.” She lowered her head and spoke in a whisper. “And I know you like me as well.”

Who was being presumptuous now? But she was right.

She stopped and faced him. “But I can't do this. I don't want to do this.”

“We can be careful, so no one will know. For that matter, we shouldn't walk back to camp together.”

“Davin. Davin. You're not hearing me. I don't want to like you.” She raised her arms. “I don't want to like anyone. It's difficult to explain. And I can't explain it. But let's just say I have a serious responsibility out here, in this war, and I can't let anything or anyone allow me to be distracted. Even a charming young man.”

“Don't say that.” He started to reach a hand toward her face, but she pulled back.

“You don't know me. Trust me on that.” She glanced around. “I don't want you to get hurt. You should find someone who . . . who can love you.”

“Why must things be so difficult with you?”

“I can't risk this. Any of this. My work here is too important. Nurse Meldrickson is quite clever. In fact, it's foolish for me to tarry.”

“So what if she catches you? What if you get sent home?”

“You don't understand.” She kicked her foot in the dirt. “What I do here. It matters. I don't want to go home. And there isn't anyone, yourself included, who is worth the chance of this happening.”

The muscles in his face tightened. Was her cause this important? Important enough to live her life alone? “I understand.” Davin glanced up, unable to look directly in her eyes. “I won't bother you anymore.”

“You don't need to say it that way, Davin.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You're right. I am sorry. These soldiers need you. It's selfish of me . . . of both of us, to let our feelings for each other get in the way.”

“Then you'll understand when I tell you that we should not speak again.”

“Yes.”

Muriel surprised him by leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. Then she turned and scampered back toward the camp.

What was that? What did it mean? Did she speak and act in code? What a strange woman. Maybe she was right. He needed to leave her alone to her cause and he could be alone on his own journey of redemption.

The war was no place for love.

A shout rang out in the distance, and he sought to find its source somewhere in the woods. Probably just some sentries.

Then he thought of Seamus. Where was his brother? Would they face each other soon, at the point of a musket?

The banks of the Rappahannock were not far away from where he was standing. And on the other side were rebel forces. Probably tens of thousands. A breeze stirred up and he shuddered.

For some reason he knew it.

Seamus was on the other side of the river.

Chapter 30

The Passage

Chancellorsville, Virginia

Confederate Camp

April 1863

“How do you do it, Seamus?” Chaplain Scripps was sitting in a chair outside the hospital tent, a metal flask in his hands.

His tired and unshaven friend startled Seamus who was on his patient visitation rounds and had his head down and his hands in his black wool coat pockets to protect against the chill.

“I tried going in there. A few times.” Scripps lifted the container to his lips and tilted it all of the way up, then wiped his gray whiskered chin with the back of his hand.

At first Seamus was irritated by the interruption. It was already dark and he had many more of the injured to visit. But he took a deep breath, exhaled, and then sat in the empty chair beside his friend. He had learned in his service as chaplain that his most important responsibility was availability. God did the most amazing things through him when he allowed himself to be interrupted.

“And look at you, my friend.” Scripps voice drawled with both the South and the booze. “The master comes to the student for advice.” He looked down at the tin in his hand. “And look at me.”

“Have you seen about getting some leave?” For several months, Seamus had noted a deterioration in Scripps's ability to serve as minister, and now he was of little use to any of the men. In fact, he was becoming a detriment to the faith of those who listened to his rambling.

“Leave this? How could I ever leave any of this? This paradise?”

Seamus refrained from responding. He had learned not to fill in the silence of conversations he had with men, as it got in the way of his most important assignment, which was listening.

Scripps crossed his arms and leaned back. “I mean, you see it all. The gore. The piles of limbs. The desperate gaggle of breath fighting through pools of blood in the lungs. Looking into the faces of these boys . . . telling them everything is going to be all right when we know none of it will be. None of it.” He shook his head and flung his flask onto the ground.

They sat quietly for a while, though from where they were sitting, they could hear the groans from inside the tent. Scripps covered his ears with his hands. “Can't get away, from any of this. So . . . hopeless.”

“There is always hope.”

“Where? Where Seamus?”

“General Lee has been—”

“What? We lose five thousand; they lose five thousand. We step onto new blood-moistened grass and we declare victory. What for?”

Seamus wished an answer would come to mind, but he couldn't find the proper words to respond. He had long given up on determining who was right and who was wrong in this war. Seamus had seen enough atrocities on both sides to know that few would survive this war without deep scarring on their consciences. The mission had long since been buried by the pride and ambition of men.

He also knew he was fighting for the wrong side. So why was he here? These questions were too painful to ask. But again, he had a strong sense of purpose, one that was beyond explanation. In all of the horror, he had seen the hand of God at work.

“Robert.”

“What?” Scripps spat on the ground.

“You asked how I do it.”

“Yes. Please. Tell me why you've endeared yourself to all of the soldiers. The officers. The horses. If they are going to die, they all want to meet with the great Reverend Seamus Hanley. When they see me coming. I see the disappointment in their eyes.”

“That's not true at all,” Seamus said, though the words stunk as lies as soon as they left his mouth. He scurried to come up with something to defuse the obvious. “Perhaps, I carry with me a spirit of forgiveness . . . only because I'm in such desperate need of it myself.”

“Forgiveness? Ha! What is possible to forgive with all of this? Don't you know what this is all about? We're getting to experience hell, right here on earth. To escape it? Or to prepare us for it?”

The statement was so dark and onerous, Seamus didn't know how to defuse it. Was there some truth in it as well? “It is all so difficult. Confusing.” He thought of something. “I do have a secret. One I use. Maybe it will help you. I think of all of these boys as my own sons.”

Scripps's brow wrinkled. “You have your own family.” He leaned forward. “What about that, Seamus? Your wife. Your daughter. When is the last time you've seen them? Wrote to them?”

This caught him off of his flank. Seamus was used to asking the questions. He went to protest but paused. “Yes. You're right.” He looked around and saw the flickering of many fires in the campground. “I don't know why. Why I haven't corresponded.”

Scripps wagged his finger. “I tell you, son. It's because they wouldn't understand. You can either tell them the truth about all of this, and frighten them. Or you can mislead them. So what you do instead is you make a new family. Your brothers. And all of you preparing the way for the furnaces that lie ahead. There is no good in any of this, Seamus. Is there anything clearer than this?”

Was this true? Had Seamus been fooling himself all of the while? That he was serving some type of divine purpose? Perhaps he was lost again, just drifting in a new wilderness of his own making. Why had he stopped writing to Ashlyn? Had he abandoned his own family while on some new quest of his own imagination?

He wanted to help his friend, but Seamus didn't have the right words to say, and others were expecting to see him. He patted Scripps on the shoulder. “I best be going . . .”

“Yes. Nice talking to you, Preacher.”

Seamus stood. “We'll talk. Later.” He entered the hospital tent, almost relieved to escape the darkness of his friend's demeanor, but this brief reprieve was instantly met with the foulness of the odor. Eight beds were in the lantern-lit tent, and each was filled with soldiers who had been injured in a skirmish today at the outskirts of camp.