Wild, Beautiful, and Free(73)

“Where are we?”

“Not far from Philippi. Fighting been going on here for weeks. We follow the action. We’ll have the wounded here sent to proper hospitals in a few days. Then we’ll move on. Like I said, we follow the action.”

“Silas, can I go with you? I can help.”

He sat back on his heels and rubbed his beard. “That’s up to Mother B. She looks after the nurses.”

“Who is that?”

“Missus Baxter. We call her Mother B.”

I stood, removed my bonnet, and brushed away what I could of the road dust on my dress. “Please, Silas. Take me to her.”

He escorted me to another tent. Inside a woman was seated at a desk writing. She looked up as we entered. She had soft white hair parted in the middle and cut almost as short as a man’s.

“Mother B., this here is Miss Jeannette Bébinn. Rode here with the wagon of supplies that just came in. Wants to be one of your nurses.”

The woman checked the watch she wore fastened to her waist and wrote a few more lines. Then she addressed me and examined me with calm, watery blue eyes. “Do you faint at the sight of blood?”

Her voice had a firm gentleness that reminded me of Missus Livingston. My heart ached to realize she might be worried sick about me. I resolved to write to her when I could.

“She and the elder gentleman who got shot rode through the fight today. He was sitting next to her. She got him here—bound the wound herself.”

Mother B. stood and looked me up and down. “This is true?”

I nodded.

“Take me to him.”

We walked through to the cots under the pavilion. At times she paused to put a hand to a forehead or check a pulse. When we got to Poney, he was asleep. His wound had been cleaned and freshly bandaged. Mother B. went to a nearby table, where she took a cloth and dipped it in a bowl of water. She wrung it out and placed it on Poney’s forehead.

“He’s a good deal bigger than you,” she said. “How did you manage?”

I described how he had fallen—my struggle to get pressure on the wound and to bind him round. Mother B. nodded her approval.

“All right. We can use you. I have an extra cot in my tent. You may stay there tonight. We will make arrangements for you tomorrow.”

Fanny had spoken often of God, and I am certain God brought me to this place, where I would have both shelter and purpose. Poney had been wounded, but he would survive. When he was well enough for the return trip home, I reminded him not to tell the inhabitants of Lower Knoll where I’d gone.

“Are you sure? Mr. Colchester be something frantic by now.”

“He won’t be there. He’s joined the fighting,” I said. “As for anyone else . . .” I paused and thought for a moment. “Tell them I took the train to New York.”





Chapter 16


When Mother B. made me a field nurse, I felt like I had my own part to play in the fighting. I even had a uniform: a white cotton cap that I wore over my hair and a dress with a high neck and long apron, both white. The white didn’t make much sense to me, considering how we worked in such dirty circumstances—dressing bloody wounds, walking through mud. But then I realized our camps were sometimes not too far from the battlefield. Wearing white, we could stand out, especially if we were outside—an enemy shooter wouldn’t aim for us.

I didn’t do much by way of healing care in those early days. The wounded who could survive were taken to schoolhouses, homes, or churches—buildings that were transformed into makeshift hospitals. The ones left in the pavilion tent under the watchful eyes of Dr. Nelson and Mother B. were dying. We kept them as comfortable as we could with whiskey and sometimes laudanum. But it seemed the best thing I could do was sit with them and talk. Some wanted to hear a friendly voice. A few asked questions about my life, how I’d turned up “in this godforsaken place.”

One man, a young lieutenant we called Teddy, asked me that one evening.

“Is it really godforsaken, Teddy?” I said. “You’re here, aren’t you? You’re not lost in that field out there.”

He grimaced and turned away, but I leaned in closer. He had the metallic smell of dried blood, dirt, tobacco, and gunpowder mingled about him. His shirt was yellow with his fevered sweat, his torso bloated with infection.

“I’m not supposed to be here either, Teddy. Look at me.”

He squinted at me. I realized he probably needed glasses to see and had lost them in the fighting.

“I’m colored, Teddy. Had a white papa. My mama was a slave.”

His eyes widened. “You were a slave?”

“I was. I ran away.”

He grasped my hand. His skin felt cold and thin. “What the abolitionists say—it’s true?”

I unbuttoned one of my sleeves and pushed it up. I showed him the dark line on my forearm where I had defended myself from Missus Everett’s whipping. “Here is a scar from being whipped. I can’t show you the rest. Wouldn’t be proper.”

I told him a bit about Fanny and how Aunt Nancy Lynne had lost her children but helped me run away.

“The worst part,” I said, “is the white people making us think we’re not human. That we’re beneath them and this is the way the world is supposed to be.”