I Shall Be Near to You(88)

‘But how’d they get your leg?’ Will asks.

‘Well, I saw our flag waving and that deserter—Levi?—carrying it shot right down and our colors lying there. I knew it was for me to go and raise it. It don’t take long to get shot when you’ve got a flag waving over your head.’ Sully’s smile ain’t a happy one.

‘It hurt something awful,’ he says. ‘Burning and crushing and tearing all at once. It wasn’t good right from the start. I would have laid where I fell, but for the fighting all over the field. I dragged myself off, got in a ditch, and prayed the whole night for it to be over and for someone to find me, praying I wouldn’t die like a dog.’ Sully’s eyes close, tired from talking.

At least I spared Jeremiah that, at least he had me with him ’til the last.

Then Sully looks right at Will. ‘I thought a lot about salvation. I ain’t never asked forgiveness so many times in one night, but I got a clean soul now.’

‘Well, that’s one good thing,’ Will says. ‘There’s more adventures coming for you.’

‘You saying this hospital is an adventure?’ Sully asks. ‘Because I ain’t about to argue on that.’

We laugh even though it ain’t really funny. I reach for Sully’s hand. He holds tight but he is so weary, he don’t say a word or even move. When Will holds out the opium pills, Sully takes them, holding on to my hand until he dozes off, his soul clean and his leg festering.

When the nursing woman comes back through the parlor, making her rounds, she tells us, ‘He only had a cornhusk wrap on that leg before I got here with my supplies. Looks as though that dressing ought to be changed again.’

She sets clean bandages, iodine, and a small cup half full of sugar down next to me. I kneel and peel away Sully’s bandage. The flannel snags against his skin, making the stitches across his stump seep. My eyes swim to think on Sully with Jeremiah, with the O’Malleys. My cheeks burn and I don’t know if I am ashamed or angry. Ashamed I can’t ever bring myself to trust anyone but Jeremiah. Angry at Jeremiah for getting us into this war, for leaving me, for the baby on its way, at our plan that’s smashed to bits and moldering in the ground. I want to wail, thinking on how he tried to protect me. I want to scream at all of it. And then there is a tenderness in my heart for Sully that I ain’t never felt before as I mix a slurry of iodine and sugar and paint over those stitches until my hands are stained a burnt red.


I KEEP VIGIL over Sully. The nursing woman comes to kneel beside the young man on the pallet right next to us, a bandage wrapped around his head. The soldier’s chest barely rises.

‘He hasn’t woken since being found,’ she says, looking me over. ‘Every time I look on him, he’s worse than before.’

I can’t help but think how things would be different if I’d got Jeremiah here in time. I wonder if Sully, still worn out from what that surgeon done to him, will ever be healed.

She steeples her hands and bows her head. Her lips barely move, the words coming in a whisper. So sudden, my tears spill. I bow my head to hide. I ain’t even thought to say those words for Jeremiah. The tears come faster.

She finishes those last rites for the head-bandage boy. It is silent like she has moved to another patient, but she is watching me, finding something in me. I look back at her.

I ask, ‘You got kin fighting here?’

‘Every man fighting here is my brother,’ she says.

‘You ever been a teacher?’

A small smile curves her lips.

‘You’ve got that way about you,’ I say.

‘I suppose we all get marked by what we’ve done,’ she says. She gives me a measured look before moving on to another patient, leaving me thinking how I’ve been marked.


SULLY SLEEPS. I make rounds, change bandages, offer water to the other boys, try to forget everything.

Near dusk Sully twists and curls on his thin bed of blankets, the coming dark making the hurt greater. My sorrow ain’t much different than those boys’ wounds, all of us needing more distraction from our pains.

When I find the woman, I ask, ‘You ain’t got kin here, how’d you get the Army to let you come?’

‘It irritates me to be told how things have always been done,’ she says, ‘so I would not accept their refusal. Or they finally had enough need, they’d take even my aid,’ she smiles. ‘Maybe I shamed them enough. Or they saw I could do what I said.’

‘You got a name?’

‘Miss Clara Barton,’ she says. ‘And you?’

‘Private Ross Stone.’

‘I see,’ she says, and gives me one of those teacher looks.

I go still but my heart don’t go to jumping. I ain’t nervous if she sees what I am.

I say, ‘I don’t have to stay here now, but I ain’t sure what else to do. This Army is the only thing I ever belonged to, but I’ve got other things to think on now. Other people.’

‘Is soldiering the thing you want to do?’ she asks. ‘Is it your best service to offer?’

‘There ain’t a place else I want to go,’ I say, and it is the truth, even now.





CHAPTER

36


The next morning the air has got an Autumn bite to it, but still Captain don’t bring no orders. Those sick boys out in the chill, alone, need nursing and cleaning and water. They can’t all have stayed living through the night.