Wild, Beautiful, and Free(78)

“I’d told her I used to help birth the babies,” she said. We were getting ready for bed, and she was braiding her coarse brown hair. “I didn’t see how that had anything to do with men gettin’ all shot up, but here I am anyway!”

She was smart in practical ways that I wasn’t. When the icy winter winds blew, Carrie knew to take one of the mess pans from which we usually ate dinners of stew and vegetables. She’d clean it out and put some dirt in the bottom. Then she’d take it to one of the fires outside and put a few burning coals in it. She’d cover it with another pan and bring it into our tent. It heated the whole space, and we were comfortable and grateful for it.

Martha was white and had attended college in Oberlin, Ohio. She’d gone to one of Mother B.’s lectures before the war and joined up with her to nurse when she’d found out Mother B. would be running some field hospitals. But even though she’d been educated, she seemed more shocked and scared than we were by what we saw and heard during the fighting. I can only guess it was because Carrie and I, having been slaves, already knew the extremes of the world. Though the battlefield horrified us, it didn’t necessarily surprise us. She held one fascination for me: she knew French and offered to help me fill in the missing pieces of the language I’d studied only briefly.

Carrie and Martha were the first female friends I’d had since Fanny. I enjoyed a different conversation than I would have had sitting with Missus Livingston or Founder when I’d lived at Fortitude. Carrie and Martha talked about which soldiers were handsome, which were the most gentlemanlike, which were the strongest. They laughed while doing chores, and we talked idly about nothing before falling asleep.

Eventually I noticed Carrie always seemed to be looking at me and Silas when we were together talking. I suspected she had taken a liking to him. But she would have to work hard to get his attention. I don’t mean I was jealous or wanted Silas to myself. It’s just that in the days after Shiloh, Silas and I took to looking after each other in a different way.

One day after a summer battle in northern Mississippi, I found him praying over a Confederate soldier whose leg Dr. Nelson and he had sawed off earlier in the day. The man was unconscious, but Silas held his hand and, with head bowed, fervently spoke words I couldn’t hear. Later I asked him about it.

“Praying for his life. Praying for my pardon.” He paused, and I could see he was fighting back tears. “I almost didn’t bring him in.”

“Oh no. Silas . . .”

“He the other side, right? He want us in chains, would take you and me right back down to Holloway’s. Probably wouldn’t lift a finger to save my life.”

I went to him and put my arms around him. “But you did bring him in.”

“That’s because I realized”—Silas swallowed and pulled away—“under the uniform his body was the same as all the other wounded. He a man, somebody’s baby. Like we all one.

“My soul felt sick, Jeannette. Like I could feel all the wrongs—them to us, us to them—coming back at me. Like a hell opening up, about to swallow me. That’s when I picked him up and got him on a stretcher and ran us both out of there. All I can think to do now is pray, like I need to be praying for the rest of my life.”

And he was true to that. When he wasn’t working, he was in his tent, on his knees. Or he sat deciphering a copy of the Bible. Dr. Nelson had taught Silas to read some, but he needed help from me sometimes with words or understanding. I wasn’t sure how Carrie could fit in unless she picked up a Bible and started studying with him. That didn’t seem to be her thing. Instead, she sat next to him when we ate. Hoped her jokes would make him laugh. I made it a point to stay out of the way. I thought her high energy would be good for him.

But she didn’t follow him to the battlefield, still smoking, at night, where he had taken to joining me and Mother B. as we searched for the wounded who hadn’t been found during the day. It was important work, but for Silas it became his mission and his penance. We went out no matter the weather, and he often stayed out long after Mother B. and I made our way back to the field hospital. If Carrie could have shared this with him, she would have learned more about the man.

He became very particular about his hours when we weren’t tending the sick and wounded. In the morning he woke early and did his praying and Bible reading. When he was done, he’d take a walk around to soldiers’ camps. He’d offer to pray with whomever he found, but really he wanted the men to know him, to recognize what he looked like. That way they would have, if they got hurt, a familiar face in the surgery area. The soldiers did have their own chaplain, but I’d never met him. His name was March. The men seemed to prefer talking to Silas even though he was colored. Silas wore his faith all over him. It wasn’t words that promised or threatened. He talked about love. He talked about salvation.

Because of this schedule, Silas didn’t spend a lot of free time in the field hospital. When he was around, he was quieter, doing more watching than talking. Maybe he was listening, but I don’t know what for. Sometimes he’d be sitting in front of his tent, his hand on his chin, staring at nothing. I think he was contemplating preaching—what he would say, how he would do it. Next thing I knew, that was what he was doing. He didn’t preach on Sundays, like the chaplain. He would let the men know that he’d be talking one evening during the week. He’d build a campfire, and they’d gather round.