Wild, Beautiful, and Free(84)
I would inevitably see a familiar face in the hospital. Not from my previous life—no one from the Holloway Plantation or Catalpa Valley or even Fortitude. But even though I knew Mr. Colchester had gone to Louisiana, that didn’t stop me from seeing him. I lost count of the times when I thought I had detected him reaching out for me from a stretcher. Or thought he was a body lying awkward and still after a shell blast. I craved the sight of him, and yet I didn’t want to see him there, sick or wounded or both. I liked thinking about him being in Louisiana and wondered what the conditions were like for him there. In odd moments, like when I was waiting for the first wounded of the day to come in or doing an inventory of our supplies, I would see Mr. Colchester in my mind’s eye strolling down a street in New Orleans or along the waters of the bayou. If I daydreamed long enough, I would be in the image, too, taking his hand and walking with him.
More often than not, though, the familiar faces that I encountered were from earlier battles and connections I’d made teaching the men. One of them was a Lieutenant Walter Stone. He had grown up in upstate New York, where his family owned an apple orchard. I guessed he was probably handsome when cleaned up, but like so many of the men, Walter had long gone unshaven, and his black hair had grown bushy and rough. One day he called to me from his bed and asked me to retrieve a book from the pocket of his uniform coat. It was The Three Musketeers. He had been an eager learner and an even more eager reader. When I first taught him, I remember thinking that, based on our conversations and his questions, he seemed like an intelligent man who probably would be in college if his family situation were different.
I pushed his hair back from his eyes, which were light blue. I smiled at the title. “Where did you get this?”
“I traded for it. Gave a man my ham sandwich.” He laughed. “That sandwich is long gone, but I still got the musketeers!”
He asked me to read to him. I didn’t know the book, but I could tell right away why it was a treasure to him. It was a story a boy would love, with sword fighting and brotherhood and intrigue and adventure.
“Four men traveling together would be suspected. D’Artagnan will give each of us his instructions. I will go by the way of Boulogne to clear the way; Athos will set out two hours after, by that of Amiens; Aramis will follow us by that of Noyon; as to D’Artagnan, he will go by what route he thinks is best, in Planchet’s clothes, while Planchet will follow us like D’Artagnan, in the uniform of the Guards.”
“Gentlemen,” said Athos, “my opinion is that it is not proper to allow lackeys to have anything to do in such an affair. A secret may, by chance, be betrayed by gentlemen; but it is almost always sold by lackeys.”
I smiled as I read. The part about the number of men traveling together looking suspicious reminded me of being with “Lynne” and “Jean” and the Dillinghams and how we’d known Silas couldn’t go with us because too many men would be suspect. The musketeers were even staggering their departure times, as we had with Silas and Mr. Dillingham. It was bittersweet, though, to think of Silas and how I had left him a second time. I tried not to dwell on it.
Walter had been shot through the shoulder and was still in a lot of pain. I noticed that as I read to him, his body relaxed, and his eyes half closed. He had gone into the story and was probably imagining himself as one of the characters. Learning to read must have given him a way to escape the nightmare of all the fighting as the war dragged on. It made me feel like I’d really done something. For all the men I couldn’t help heal, I had taught some of them how to read. And now here was a kind of healing happening because of it. I decided to think of it as another one of those gifts that God surprises you with—another small bauble to help you feel good. It’s like God just goes around and slips these gifts in your pocket. I’m grateful I notice them when they show up.
Come May, the generals decided that the fighting they were doing wasn’t working. The canal turned out to be a failure, too, but not for the reason I had expected. The water level on the river that spring was so low that the canal’s level never rose high enough to float anything.
The Union leaders had to attempt a new tactic on Vicksburg. Only it wasn’t a new military tactic. It was an old one—the siege. I heard the generals even had to study historical sieges so they understood how one worked. When I thought about it, though, the strategy sounded simple, with just two pieces. The Union troops would surround the city and cut off supplies to the inhabitants, Confederate soldiers included. It would be like putting hands around a throat and choking the person to death. That is, if they didn’t die from the second piece of the strategy: relentlessly bombarding the city with shells and artillery fire.
I must have slept during the siege, but it wasn’t restful. No way it could be. Even behind the lines, we were subjected to the same noise—constant cannon fire and thunderous artillery. The Confederates returned the shelling, and many Union soldiers took shelter in caves they built into the hill below the white building called Shirley House that contained the regiment’s headquarters. The citizens of Vicksburg had to do the same, and I was sad thinking of the women and children in those dark holes, hungry and frightened.
Late one afternoon the stretcher-bearers were bringing in another wave of wounded. I was directing them where to put the men. The ones who needed surgery went straight into the hospital building. The ones who could wait or, unfortunately, might not make it went to the cots under the pavilion. Sometimes I just didn’t know and referred them to a doctor under the tent. I saw a young soldier who had taken a minié ball through the eye. I didn’t know how such a wound could be tended, so I sent him to the doctor. Another man whose left leg was nothing but a mass of blood—he went to surgery. I moved as quickly as I could. I was able to be fast because such sights no longer horrified me. I’m sad to say it, but that’s how it was. After a while it became a common thing to see a man’s body mangled—limbs blown off, skulls shattered. But in a war, you don’t look away. You can’t look away. You have to look and look closely; put your hands on what’s torn and broken and bloody and do your best to bind up what you can. Help lessen pain. Offer words of encouragement.