I Shall Be Near to You(87)

A shadow moves in the corner, makes me jump out of my skin. A soldier stands up from a wooden chair, moving to a man calling for water. I nod and follow Will into the next room, what was the dining room.

Boys lie on the floor in rows, one along each side of the narrow room and one down the middle, making me think of the Judiciary Square Hospital. Most of these boys are missing something. Feet. Legs. Arms. Hands. Jaws. Or else those parts are shattered so bad, they’ll be missing soon. There’s whimpering and moaning and rasping breaths and praying, all of it calling up things I can’t bear, how there weren’t a thing to be done for Jeremiah.

Down the long side of the room, Will talks to a lady kneeling to pass a hand across a boy’s forehead, her skirts puddling around her. I stop in my tracks when I see who it is.

That thought don’t but last a moment. This woman ain’t Jennie. She might be my Mama’s age. She straightens up and moves to the next soldier with a stiffness, the way she holds herself apart telling me this house ain’t hers.

I march down that row of weeping wounds and dirty bandages, right to Will and that woman, my feet pounding, making the wood floor creak. He is speaking to her. She has a wide face, round cheeks, dark-circled eyes.

‘He’s with the surgeon,’ the woman tells Will, and that is all I need to hear.

‘You’ve got to give me something. Something to do,’ I say right over Will, hoping my stomach will hold for the work.

She looks at me straight on, an eyebrow raising. Then she stoops over the next soldier and says, ‘I’ve been working alone. The surgeons are kept in constant work.’

‘I can work alone,’ I say. ‘Just tell me what needs doing.’

‘There are rooms full of needs here,’ she says. ‘And the barnyard out there.’ She checks the soldier’s bandage. He groans at her touch and she lays the back of her hand to his forehead. She grabs supplies from a basket behind her, her own arm wrapped in gauze below her shoulder. Her sleeve, her deep blue dress, is blood-stiffened, stained to almost black.

‘We’ve only got our canteens,’ I say.

‘We want to help,’ Will says. ‘It’s better than what else we could be doing.’

She looks at us again. Lets out a short breath through her nose, like a sheep before it charges. ‘You.’ She points at Will. ‘You take both canteens and give water to those soldiers in the yard. They must be thirsty and there hasn’t been a spare moment for me to see to them. And you, you stay here. The wounded here need bandage changes and water. There’s water there.’ She points to a side table, pushed against the wall by the doorway. ‘I’ll leave my supplies,’ she adds, holding out the basket of bandages and lint.

From somewhere in the house, there is a sound worse than weeping and shrieking put together, and it keeps getting louder as the woman lifts her skirts and steps past us, grabbing a glass vial from her basket as she passes. ‘Sounds like the surgeon needs my aid,’ she says, whisking out the doorway.

‘You need anything, you come get me,’ Will says to me.

‘I can do this,’ I say, and give over my canteen, Jimmy’s old canteen, and go to work helping the boy in front of me. Anything to drown out the feeling.


WHEN WE ARE let to see Sully, he don’t look like Sully no more. He ain’t got no spark, either from sickness or hurt or his leg already being gone. He lies long and lean on his pallet, his eyes closed, the place where his leg used to be a flat space under the blanket. He won’t be crisscrossing the fields anymore, or flushing birds from bushes, or making side trips on every march.

‘Sully!’ I say. His eyelids flutter open as I sink to my knees.

‘Rosetta?’ he asks, his pupils big from whenever they last gave him laudanum.

‘Yes, but it’s Ross.’ I don’t look at Will. Sully’s forehead feels hot under my hand.

‘I remember,’ he says. ‘Ross now.’

‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘We’re here now. Ross and Will. We’ve been looking for you.’

‘You took a mite too long,’ he says, coming round, a flicker of a smile on his face as his hand sweeps toward his missing leg.

‘Looks to be the truth,’ I say.

‘Got my adventure,’ he says. ‘Had to give the Rebs my leg for it. Still hurts.’

‘I can see,’ I say.

‘Where’s Jeremiah?’ Sully asks.

‘Just us,’ I choke out.

Sully looks at me, his eyes bright all of a sudden.

‘No,’ he says.

I nod, tears spilling.

‘The cornfield?’ he asks.

I nod again and he turns his face away. There is a long silence.

Will finally speaks. ‘You want to tell us what cost you the leg? We’ve been worried about you for days.’

‘You both know about that cornfield,’ Sully says, and we nod. ‘I was coming out of that corn, like everyone was, and all those Rebs were right in front of me. Seeing them made me think about Jimmy and I wanted to bring his revenge on them.’

He stops talking, his Adam’s apple still bobbing. His fingers scrabble across his sheet. He sucks in a breath and then he talks again. ‘I ran out of that corn shooting, but you know how it was. I almost couldn’t see what I was aiming at. But I know I got some Rebs.’