by Ralph Peters
But now I must tell you what I truly learned of war. Fortuitous inspiration led me to make swift my return to the field surgery, for my untutored eyes had misjudged the loss to our own side. Even before the gunboats reached the bank, we heard the screaming above the shudder of their engines and splash of their wheels. Sailors and soldiers pressed into a waterborne role leaned out of hatches, or stood upon the walks, waving and shouting. All, even those miraculously unwounded, were splashed over with blood.
I leapt aboard the first vessel to approach the shore and entered hell. The armor had not repelled all of the Confederate shells, and others had entered through the opened ports. The darkened gundeck was a vision of slaughter. I could barely keep my balance for the slickness of the blood. I have heard that, in Nelson’s day, the Royal Navy painted the decks and inner walls of its ships red to keep down the appearance of gore in battle. The practice wants revival.
I stood for a shameful moment, riveted. The lull of the great engines made the deck throb beneath my feet, and the screams seemed oddly far away. Boys flailed, untended, made freakish by the loss of limb and queer thrust of bone. All was shattered. Beams smoldered where fires had been imperfectly quenched. Wreckage, material and human, jumbled together. Some of their comrades tried to ease the suffering of the wounded, but most survivors had fled the cauldron of that ship. Speaking of cauldrons, a boiler exploded on another vessel, scalding men to death.
Somehow, I righted my will and went to work. Immediately, a fellow’s artery exploded in my face—the poor man had turned to beg for help and a sharpness of bone cut him. I was nearly blinded and could only thrust my hand into the squash of his thigh until I found the source of the blood. Then I was helpless—I shall never go anywhere without my medical kit again—fixed to a man who would die should I release him. I called to a sailor to help me—the fellow was sitting there droll-eyed and useless—only to realize the man was dead and his stare vacant. Eventually, another sailor responded to my cries and I got him to hold his fellow’s artery—a slippery business, that—while I tried to devise a tourniquet. But leather belts were too gross, nor would they hold in the slop, and rope was worse. The fellow convulsed and died as I struggled to help him.
Timidly, the boy who had crawled over to help asked me to look at his own impairment. In the gloom and slop and din, it was hard to make out exactly what had happened to him. Embarrassedly, and more dazed than pained, he let down the scraps of his trousers. There was a bedazzled expression on his face, I shall never forget it. The boy was nothing but shreds. I remember a ghostly voice, in that flat speech of the Westerner, asking me, “What kin ya see, doc? What kin ya see?” The truth was that I could see nothing but a hopeless stew of gore. And he was a fair young lad, though mere countenance should not move a man of science.
More help arrived, and we began clearing the men to the shore. One old fellow with a broken back babbled on as though he were being jollied home from a drunken evening. An army captain, seconded to the fleet, clutched the arm that had been torn from him, refusing to surrender it, cooing to it as though it were a baby. Those who had lost fingers or hands manning the guns were the lucky members of the crew, and half a dozen men had lost their sight.
When lanterns were brought aboard, I saw that I was in the cave of the man-eating Cyclops. Vital organs were strewn everywhere—one poor devil whose life should have fled instantly, lay stuffing intestines back into the cavity of his stomach. The queerest thing was that they were not his own guts, but those of a mate who had been blown in two beside him. Bones stuck out of the walls like arrows, and brains fell bit by bit from the wood above my head, like water dripping in a cavern. When I emerged to hasten to the surgery, those who saw me thought I was myself a casualty. I tasted other men’s blood upon my lips.
We did our best, though paltry it was. The carnage I witnessed in Hungary, during the revolution there, had not moved the youth I then was to the degree this bloodletting moved the mature man. What was I thinking then, old friend, in life’s April? How hard of heart is youth! I romped through suffering, regarding all as a clinical matter and a benefit to my studies. In truth, I had seen nothing to compare to this horrid day on the river, nothing of such bodily distortions, but never believe those who claim a man’s hide thickens with the years. Wars are fought by young men because only they can bear it.
I am a man of science. But the heart will have its due. How hard it is to tell the orderlies, “Bring that one to the table,” thus leaving the next fellow to die. One tries to choose wisely, to assist hope and avoid squandering effort on those who will not be rescued. But it is too much an imitation of the gods for me. I confess I prefer standing at my surgeon’s table, allowing others to choose who will lie beneath my knife. I find I am a coward when I look into those faces blank with injuries yet unreal, or into eyes vast with the freshness of pain.
Last night, I longed for hospitals and order, for time above all. The skills I worked these long years to perfect declined to a fevered hacking and sawing, with a black-fingered assistant left to sew up what could be sewn and irons to cauterize the rest. At first, I tried to rinse my utensils in a bucket. But soon the bucket held nothing but crimson slime. I did my butchering through the night and into the dawn. They tell me I worked upon our enemies, as well, but I could not tell the difference.
What does it mean to the soul of which you speak, Abel, when a man finds himself in the midst of taking off a man’s leg just because it is the easier course? What penalty that a boy will go legless because I was out of temper and grown impatient? Not all the universities in the world prepare a man for this.
An old fellow who served in the war with Mexico tells me that this was nothing but a skirmish and the casualties light. It makes me wish I enjoyed your faith, for I do not know where I will find the strength for a real battle.
I will close soon, for I crave sleep. Tomorrow we will move with the army, and Brinton generously offered to have a letter of mine taken along with the military dispatches back to Washington, so I must seal this. I find, dear friend, that you are not only my most cherished correspondent, but forced to endure my confessions. How odd the needs of a man!
I fear I am jealous of your decency and disposition.
But I am selfish, and have not answered the queries from your welcome letter! Let me offer but a sketch, to be followed by an in-depth report when duty permits.
This “Doctor” Kildare sounds as though he is typical of the skilled mesmerist. Although I will not accord the art the merit of a science, there is something to it. The mind is unexplored, and surprises us. Most of the business is a nonsense, no more than a parlor trick. But I myself have been impressed by some demonstrations conducted under the strictest of conditions, first in Dublin, then in Vienna.
But I have seen the mesmerist’s horrid failures, as well. My own “unexplored mind” read your missive and recalled a tragic circumstance I witnessed during my first years of study. It involved a fellow who sounds like a younger version of your Kildare—the name in the case was actually Kilraine, as I recall, and he was, indeed, a doctor. He had all the passion and conviction of youth, and declared that he could mesmerize a patient about to undergo surgery, eliminating all sensation. This was in poor, old Dublin, in ’46, I believe. Chloroform and ether had not come into common use, and the restraint of a patient during surgery was a challenge. This Dr. Kilraine—a deep-eyed fellow, dark and handsome—finally gained the acquiescence of Dr. Joyce, the head of surgical instruction, to put under a trance a woman who would undergo the removal of a cancered bosom. We students watched avidly from the galleries, some skeptical, others hopeful of all that was newfangled. And Kilraine, who had only left his own student days a year or two behind him, enchanted us with the ease with which he robbed the patient of all sensation. She went into the deepest of sleeps. Here, it seemed, was a great possibility!
But tragedy followed. Thoughtlessly, the sleeper was not subjected to the usual restraint of straps and bindings. Midway through the oper
ation, she awoke, screaming horribly, and sat up into the blade of the surgeon’s knife. It pierced her heart. Dr. Joyce’s reputation was, of course, secure. But Kilraine was forever discredited and dropped from sight. Of course, there is no relation to the fellow you encountered, I am but reminiscing. For you speak of a daughter of twenty, and Kilraine was yet unmarried not sixteen years ago. Thus it could not be the same man, even if the odds allowed.
I remember poor Kilraine, though. His humiliation, and subsequent degradation, was formidable. He was ruined. Yet, looking back, I believe he had the best of intentions.
As to the daughter of whom you write with such feeling, I am sorry. If your descriptions of her symptoms are correct, I see no hope. It is only a question of the speed of her decline. And
do not waste your money upon shop remedies. They are useless. Tuberculosis is fatal. The only reported successes—and they are rare—come from the German-speaking lands, where the ailment is now treated by long residence in alpine retreats. Some claim the effect of the mountains is magic, but I don’t suppose Miss Kildare is in a position to retire to Switzerland.
Lastly, I must confess that even science still has a few limits—I cannot explain the tricks performed by the girl. Yet, I have no doubt that explanations will be forthcoming with the years. We press ever forward!
With that as prelude, my views may surprise you, dear friend. I suspect there is more to such matters than we presently understand. I speak not of the supernatural, but of a few remaining natural phenomena that still resist our understanding (though understanding will come, inevitably). Although most “mediums” and “spiritualists” have been exposed as frauds, a few resist all debunking. I do not think it a matter of spirits, although those afflicted with these “gifts” interpret it as such in their ignorance. Rather, I believe some individuals may possess still-unmeasured talents—not unlike an “ear” for music. Perhaps they “hear” more acutely than others.
I have been struck by the ability of a hound to read its master’s mood—why should not some beings of higher evolution find themselves able to “read” the book of our faces, or to sense more about us than a clod may discover? Even a man of medicine must diagnose matters his eye cannot penetrate—and not all correct judgments are explained by reason. Let us but survive this war, dear friend, and science will unmask all riddles in the next decades. Your Miss Kildare may prove to be but a girl born with a form of “perfect pitch.” Or she may prove devious, after all, and party to a foul hoax, deserving of our scorn. Or simply mad.
But I forget myself, and plead tiredness. For the poor young woman will not prove anything in years to come. She will be gone from us before that. Do I wound you? I would not. For your care comes through the pages of your letter and the fine voice of your lines. I wish I could offer hope for the girl, but you will never hear a lie from
Yr. Obt. Servt.
M. Tyrone
Surg. U.S.V.
AT TIMES I AM LIKE the Irish priest, confusing the words of our Lord with those of Mr. Shakespeare. I think of the Prince of Denmark in the graveyard, forlorn at the knowledge that his intelligence will never fathom the mysteries of the world. This life goes hard, and we are feeble creatures. I ponder mortality and injustice, when I should be thankful for the eternal promise. But let that bide.
TWELVE
THAT WINTER WAS THE HARDEST YOUNG MEN COULD remember, although old men insisted the winters of their youths had been colder still, and the snows deeper, and the cellars less abundantly provisioned. Whatever the truth of those memories, Penn Yan reached for an extra blanket, and woodcutters found generous reward for their labors. Signs that creaked in the wind froze to a stop, and the snow shoveled up higher than the shop windows.
You could walk across the lake, although none would do it by dark, for then you heard the groans of giants from the deep. When the women braved errands, they looked like Pushtoon brides, faces swathed and only eyes exposed. The wind cut. The toughest boys did not last half an hour at play, and when they buried Nolan, the policeman, the gravediggers had to light fires to soften the earth beneath.
A granite angel cracked in two as the navvies were shoveling the grave, and they ran. Old women said a darkness had come upon the land. They did not mean the war, but their own hills. Fort Donelson fell, but that was far away. Our celebrations were pale and brief, and Mick Tyrone had most of my concern, for war is hard on the good. The light lasted a bit longer each day, but the world felt heavy and old. The days grew too bitter for the horses to draw the sleigh over the hills, and I could only sit in my room and read, and think, or meet John Underwood at the jail to calm his fears.
And fears the good man had. He wished to please his people, and to keep them sure and safe. The death of a Federal man had been alarming, but finally the fellow was an outsider. The same went for poor Reilly, the informer, whose Irishness set him apart from the honorable citizenry. The last two had been Irish, as well. But their deaths were different, with one a policeman hung up by the gate of the sheriff’s own property and the other murdered within the walls of the county jail.
Rumors flew of secret societies preparing to slaughter respectable folk in their beds, and the complaints began, and the letters to the newspapers, and the political scheming. When the Irish went door-to-door looking for work, they saw shadows moving behind the frosted glass, but got no answers to their knocks. Ladies glanced down nervously at their Galway seamstresses, and housemaids from Sligo found themselves locked in their rooms at night. Twas all I could do to keep Sheriff Underwood from arresting every Irishman who failed to tip his hat.
The priest, though, was the one who would not see the damage done and pending. I did not badger him, but saw him often in the streets, a black bulk bent against the wind as he rushed off to the shanty of a dying infant or descended upon a grocer to settle a fuss about a widow’s debts. He pretended that nothing had changed. But there was a new hatred blowing down the valleys, and fear.
I heard of a rift between the priest and the Irish families that had got up to painted shutters and lace curtains, for such folk worried about the loss of the little respectability their efforts had earned them. What they asked of him I could not learn. But Father McCorkle scorched them. The priest lived to his reading of the Gospels, I will say that for him. For the poor were his, and I believe he would have carried them all in his arms like babes if he could have done so. On Main Street, his ravaged eyes looked past me without seeing. He was a true man of his faith, but should have spared his kind the coming ignominy.
Let that bide.
The winter slowed all things, excepting homeward footsteps. Jimmy Molloy did not contact me. We had agreed he would give his signal only when matters wanted reporting. But I followed him from a distance. The Steuben Courier, a paper from the county south of the lake, reported an epidemic of Irish misbehavior in the village of Bath. The outbreak centered on a transient fellow, one Seamus O’Bannon, whose excesses culminated in a saloon brawl that cracked the heads of two policemen and caused a constable to decline further employment. O’Bannon then enlivened the local jail with songs about Irish liberty, as well as with other tunes inappropriate for the ears of ladies and children, and the effect of his musical gifts upon his keepers was such that they arranged for an expeditious hearing. O’Bannon was offered the choice of enlisting in a Union regiment about to depart from Elmira or being remanded to state custody for grave crimes to be specified. The prisoner gave a brief patriotic declamation, swore he would put the military skills he learned under Her Majesty’s yoke to work for Mr. Lincoln, then promptly slipped away from the two lawmen accompanying him to his muster. The authorities were seeking him in local Irishtowns and offered a small reward.
Jimmy Molloy had made his debut before his Irish brethren.
All I could do was to wait and hope. And I read, which is a lovely thing. I finished a most edifying history, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, in which the author proves that honesty and hard work decide the fate of nat
ions. I also read those pamphlets given me by Kildare. The treatise on Swedenborg was a broth of sense and senselessness, the other sheets worthless. And I read the local weeklies, for I like a newspaper. Mr. Cleveland, the editor who had alarmed me in his quest for an interview, wrote a noble line and did not lack imagination—which, I suppose, is the essence of journalism. He published a piece speculating that America and Britain would go to war, that America would raze Liverpool and occupy London, and that our little Washington would become the greatest capital in the world. Imagine. I fear he does not grasp Britannia’s might and majesty. Though it be rued, London’s glory will last as long as Rome’s.
And the Kildares, father and daughter, were ever on my mind. They were still off on their spiritualist tour, and the brown house in the hills slept dark and smokeless when I had John Brent steer our sleigh past it. Sheriff Underwood sent queries, of course, following the double murder. But Kildare was firmly fixed in Buffalo that day, displaying his daughter to rowdies at twenty-five cents a head.
I thought of her, and of how she had wounded me, only to see the good that she had done by it. For a lie had lain between my wife and me, an abyss of things untold, and long had I dreaded revelation. How great our secret fears become! Yet, my confession had only brought my wife and me closer, a thing I would not have believed possible, and the curve of my Mary Myfanwy’s hand inked love into each word she wrote to me.
My days emptied. I had been everywhere, asking every blockhead the same dull questions, and I burdened Mr. Morris with my moping about the parsonage. I knew not what to do, while the fear of what might come swelled up in me. Twas fear of failure, too, for I would do my duty properly, like those good Dutchmen in the book.
Then one morning, reading the Gospels by a window, with sunlight pouring in to warm my shoulders and the first beads of melt from the roof making great plops on the front steps, I knew I had to stir. For I had let the winter mesmerize me as deeply as the Great Kildare himself might have done. Twas time to shake my bones and lift my feet.
