I Shall Be Near to You(41)

‘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.’


WE 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—’