Wild, Beautiful, and Free(77)

“Oh!” I couldn’t think to say more. He was alive. Mr. Colchester was alive. I felt caught up in the dual nature of these strange moments. Mr. Colchester had been dead, it seemed, only a few moments before. And now he was resurrected and thriving. The speed at which the range of emotions occurred made me dizzy. I managed to thank the colonel and meant to go back to my tent, but Colonel Eshton stopped me.

“Wait, Miss Bébinn. Now I have a question for you.”

“Yes, sir?”

“In fact, I’m mighty glad to see you. I know this might seem like a strange thing to ask in light of what we went through today and, most likely, tomorrow. But a number of my men, well, they can’t read or write. A lot of them were raised on farms, you know, and never had the reason or opportunity to learn. I think it might help their morale, raise their spirits, if they learned. Would you mind teaching them?”

“I’d be honored, sir. But I have to ask Mother B. Don’t know if she can spare me from the hospital.”

“I know it’s a lot to take with everything else. Tell her it would be for the men recovering and for the other men when they’re waiting.” He paused. “Waiting for the next battle. I think those times of waiting are mighty hard on them.”

I nodded. “That would be fine. Might I ask, sir, if it’s possible for you to have some simple books sent? I won’t need them right away; I’ll start with teaching them their letters and such. But we’ll need books.”

“Absolutely, Miss Bébinn, I’ll get right on it. I’ll have one of the men send for you when they can do a lesson.”

He reached out his hand, and I shook it.

“I appreciate it. I know they will too.”

I left the tent. I was pleased with the chance to teach, but my head was full of Mr. Colchester. He was alive, and he was in Louisiana! He had gone home. And he had defended New Orleans, and now he guarded it. It was a dangerous enterprise—so dangerous I could barely think of him in a hail of musket fire. But I was proud of him too. So very proud.

In my excitement I wrote a letter to Missus Livingston. It shamed me to think I hadn’t done so before. I told her about my service and how she didn’t need to be concerned for me because the nurses were kept safe, well removed from the fighting. I told her how I’d seen Colonel Eshton and the news he’d given me about Mr. Colchester. I hesitated to add the last. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I thought she would have further news about him to offer? I didn’t know if she was in correspondence with him or whether she might tell him where I was. But it seemed to me that even if he knew, he couldn’t come to me, not without deserting his regiment. I was glad to know news of him. And though it felt like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it out to sea, I liked the possibility that he might learn something of me.





Chapter 17


I began teaching in the makeshift camp school about a month later, and I pursued it with the same faithfulness I had demonstrated with the school in Lower Knoll. The work was, surprisingly, quite hard at first. It took a moment for me to understand my students and their occasional impolite behavior and jokes. But I came to see that, being inexperienced with schooling, they were simply embarrassed to learn like children and frightened of me because they thought I would scold them for being dumb. With time, though, we developed trust. Some of them had excellent, if unpolished, minds, and I could see a light in their eyes when they made a connection or could read pages they had always wanted to read, like the psalms. The speed of their progress surprised me. They were more motivated than the restless children who sat in my Lower Knoll schoolroom, who sometimes questioned why they had to be there. These soldiers knew the value of what I taught, and they devoured everything eagerly.

I came to admire and respect them but fear for them, too, because the war still lived over our heads. It was a new pain to lose one of my students in the fighting. Now I knew more than their names and ranks, which was all I knew of the soldiers in the field hospital unless I wrote a letter for them. With my students, if one died, I knew the potential lost, the great things he might have done had he lived. Whenever the school gathered again, we would mourn the lost student, but then the men would throw themselves into their learning with even more vigor. And the material, fortunately, matched their enthusiasm. When I’d asked for simple books, I’d thought Colonel Eshton would provide the types of primers that children learn from. Instead he’d provided the likes of Walden, by Henry David Thoreau; short stories by Edgar Allan Poe; and Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, which fascinated the men to the point that I was asked to read it to them at the end of each lesson. They read too slowly on their own and were excited to know what would happen next. I enjoyed the time with them. All reading had been lost to me since I’d joined the nurses. There was no time for it, and I didn’t have books. So Colonel Eshton’s choice of books benefited me as well as the men. They knew I wasn’t paid for teaching, which went on for more hours and with more students than Colonel Eshton had estimated. (Nor for nursing, really, since I considered having room and board blessing enough and had not asked for my wages.) So many wanted to learn. I knew they appreciated the opportunity and my time. I would find small gifts left in my writing box: a tin of sardines, a fresh roll, or a small doll carved out of wood.

I enjoyed the company of my sister nurses too. There were more of us and much needed after the terrible fighting at Shiloh. We began to share quarters, and I stayed with Carrie and Martha and learned more about them than I’d had the chance to learn before. Carrie was negro and a former slave like me and Silas. Only she had been given her freedom after her master had died. She hadn’t known what to do with herself until a chance encounter with Mother B. had brought her to the hospital.