by Ralph Peters
Where was it? For though I have no love of such instruments in general, that Colt was holstered in sentiment. I distinctly remembered having it with me that night.
The rest of the night returned in a blink.
And more come back to me, too.
My head throbbed. Too small a jug for so many thoughts. Fair clobbered I was by remembering.
I had to go. Had to warn Seward. Had to raise Underwood. Call up the regulars . . .
How many days had I lain there?
The room was ever cold, but now I fair froze at the thought that Kildare might already have launched his invasion, that our beloved country might be rushing toward an ocean-spanning war, and that it might be my fault.
The woman stepped in, just as I attempted to rise. I was got up in somebody else’s unmentionables, far too large for me. Of course, I covered myself again. Unwilling to think of all that she had seen while I slept, or of the shames I doubtless had committed.
“Uniform?” I asked her. “Do you . . . have my uniform?”
She looked at me, unable to understand at first. But her confusion lasted only a moment, for the word is nearly the same in the German tongue, though they will speak it peculiar.
“Ja, we have.”
“Please,” I said. “Bring it to me. Please.”
I know not what I intended, but she saw clearly that it was beyond my capabilities. “Morgen. Tomorrow, I bring.”
I did not argue with her. For all my strength had gone into the request. I lay back.
“How . . . how did I come here?”
“To here?”
“Yes. What happened to me?”
She chewed her lip for a moment. Thinking. She had an openness that was her greatest charm, and gave all without calculation.
“Weiss nit genau was passiert ist. Mein Mann . . . my husband finds you. In much snow. You are dead, he thinks.” A look of frustration come over her. “Ach, wie sagt man? Sie waren grausam mit Blut geschmiert. All blood is on you. He comes late from the wood-selling, mein Mann. Dann hat er dieses komische Mägdlein gesehen. Schockiert, war der Gute. Es war nit richtig bekleidet, das Mägdlein. The girl he sees. Her clothings are not enough. Doch, es hat dich gerettet. Es hat ihn die Stelle gezeigt. Alone, he is never finding you, she is showing him. Dann ist es weg. Without the girl to help, he never finds you. Und you die, I think.” She sighed. “Der Herrgott hat dich lieb.”
Now I was not in my clarities, see. I let the remarks about the girl pass, thinking it a reference to a daughter I had not seen.
That evening, the woman brought me a dinner to fill a right belly. Twas no rich man’s fare, but honest. She sat beside the candle, watching long enough to be sure I could eat by myself.
When she come back for the plate, her husband followed her in. Twas the first time I had seen him.
Tall, with shoulders broad as a yoke, he wore a full beard. But you only saw the true man when he stepped in close and the flame of the candle caught his eyes. Now husband and wife they were, and different in hue and stature. But didn’t they have the same warm eyes? The two of them looked as if life were a constant gift they longed to share with the rest of the world. Overflowing, they seemed to me. Overflowing. Though not with worldly treasures. You would have known them for kindly sorts if you had met them in a prison or a battle.
“Guten Abend,” the fellow said.
Now I knew that much from dear Mrs. Schutzengel.
“Goodenbend to you, sir,” I answered in my finest Dutch.
The woman took up the utensils. “My husband . . . helps you. If you want to sit by the fire and become warm. You are so strong?”
Of a sudden, the room’s cold bit me. Few things in life have sounded as lovely to me as a place by a hearth did then.
Standing remained a trial, and walking was worse. Twas the dizziness that comes with a great crack over the head. I had a great scab on the back of my skull, where my assailants had, no doubt, expected my brains to spill out. But a Welshman is hard to knock down, and harder still to keep there.
The husband smelled of work and winter barns, of hay freshened with a pitchfork and sweat on leather. He helped me into a set of his own clothes, which were twice too big but served for modesty. Then he guided me out of that poor little room as though I were a child taking its first steps.
He placed me in a rocking chair, surprisingly gentle in his doings, then laid a quilt over me. Oh, that fire was a glory. The flames smiled, I tell you. I was close enough to feel the heat on my face. Only the dizziness would not settle at first.
When I come to myself proper, the couple were just done with their after-dinner chores. The woman lifted an infant from a low cradle and soothed it in her arms, sitting down in a chair across from me. Twas not so good a chair as mine, for they had given me the place of honor. The husband brought a kitchen chair and placed it close to the flames, then he fetched a big Bible—Die Bibel, they call it—with metal clasps. He sat down and opened the book.
He read to us by the firelight, tracing the lines with his finger.
“Selig sind, die um Gerecbtigkeit willen verfolgt werden; denn das Himmelreich ist ihr . . .”
Even the infant seemed to listen. I knew not their tongue, but got the spirit. What better tonic for the wounded flesh than that tonic of the soul? The fellow could have read those words in Hindoo and would have reached me still.
When it come time to get down and pray, I struggled to join them on their knees. But I was too wobbly and only interrupted their devotions. Together, they tucked me back into the chair.
Then they spoke the Our Father, and no mistaking it. I did not know the words their way, but mumbled along. When they bowed their heads in silence—with the firelight coloring their faces—I said my own prayers, too.
They stayed a long time on their knees, with the woman clutching the infant. And what better attitude of prayer might there be, than a mother holding her child?
Even prayer was not enough to hold me. My mind drifted and I began to doze, only to wake again to a stabbing clarity. For the first time, I noticed the bed of bundled hay. Made up on the floor, behind the cradle. And I understood. The bed they had given me was their own. Twas all the bed they had, and they gave it to me to soil.
Would I have done a thing as fine as that?
Our selfishness resounds in our small lives.
I sat and watched them, husband, wife and child, praying on the splinters. Perhaps such folk will wait for us, on the day we are most in need, to help us limp across the River Jordan.
IN THE MORNING, the husband helped me down to breakfast at their table. The woman had my uniform—the one from Mr. Feinberg’s shop—stitched up and cleaned. She handled it as if it were dangerous.
“How long was I . . . how long did I sleep? How many days?”
They looked at one another, then spoke in quick German. The woman began to count up on her fingers.
She stopped when she reached seven.
I sat up, spoon halfway to my mouth.
“I must go,” I said.
The woman shook her head and looked at the man.
German again.
“Es geht nur bis zur Scheune,” he said. “So ein tiefer Schnee hab’ ich nie gesehen.”
“He says the snow is too deep. Only to go to the barn is possible. He has not seen such a snow.”
“The road . . . how far is it to the road?”
She translated. She knew the distance well, but wanted counsel.
“Die Strasse ist nit zu befabren,” the man said. “Geht nit. Keineswegs.”
“My husband says it is not possible to go. The road is under the snow, too.”
But which road? A main road? Were other roads open? If the snow was still so deep . . . then likely Kildare had not made his move. But I had to be sure. I could not loll about, shying from my duty. I had to be on my way.
I had the senselessness that follows a great, jellying whack on the noggin, see. They tried to reason with me, but I got on
my greatcoat. A madman, I lurched into the yard.
Beyond the barn lay a white sea. We needed a Moses now, to part the snows.
I plunged ahead.
Stubbornness has its place in this life, and it has won not a few battles that rightfully should have been lost, but I fear I went to an extreme that morning. I charged the drifts where the house faced front and a road should have waited.
At first, I thought I would make a go of it, for the snow was crusted hard. I climbed up on the bank and limped along, careful of a slip. But not six paces out I broke through the surface. And found myself engulfed up to my chest.
The husband dug me out and carried me in. At the edge of a swoon, I asked him to put me on the bed of straw and to take his own bedroom to himself again, but he ignored me. Undressed, I slept the day out and the night.
Now the only thing duller than a convalescence is listening to a report of a convalescence. So I will spare you more of such matters for the moment, and let you take a breath.
Later, when I returned to the world of common days, I found a letter waiting from Mick Tyrone. Although I like things kept in proper order, I will share that letter with you now, to lift you from the boredom of my bed. And you will see my little woes were nothing.
SIXTEEN
Dover, Tennessee
February 26, 1862
My Dear Friend,
I hope my scrawl is legible. My hands shake. They have done too much these last weeks, and little well. I thought I was a man of Science. I’m nothing but a threepenny butcher. I wear more blood on my hands than old Macbeth and his wife together. Far more. My “medicine” is no more than a hacking at flesh and bone. What Rebel bullets left unfinished, my fingers completed. I have bathed in a river of gore and cannot sleep. Man is a beast, and I am but a jackal.
I will tell you of the struggle for Fort Donelson to purge myself of it. But first allow me to venture an answer to the query contained in your last communication. Given what I have seen of Mesmerism over the years, I believe you are correct in assuming that this Kildare may have lulled you and the others present into a trance while pretending to work his will solely upon his daughter. Once he had you in that waking sleep, it would have been an easy thing to suggest to you the presence of a soul dearly remembered and lost—you would have made your own choice of visions, requiring no previous knowledge on the mesmerist’s part.
I do not credit your notions of a life beyond the grave—we are naught but food for worms—but, in the caverns of the mind, we do keep others “alive” in some sense. Kildare asked you to “see” a thing you longed to see, to believe what you wished to believe. It is how the confidence man succeeds, whether he is a mesmerist or not.
As for the girl, I advise you to break all bonds with her. You cannot save her. Nor is she yours to save. Your kindness and attachment leave you vulnerable. Turn away. Such people drain our strength. No doubt, her sort gave rise to the legend of the vampire. It is only a question of whether her sickness or her madness will first overtake her. Turn away!
Doubtless, my counsel seems cruel to you. But a doctor learns some things. Even on the battlefield, we must turn from the cries of the wounded who cannot be rescued in order to save those who retain a chance at survival. You, too, must concentrate upon those who have a chance, and leave the doomed behind. It is life’s stern rule.
Far from heartless, my friend, I find I bear too much emotion to do my job as well as it might be done.
Molloy’s remarks opened an old wound, although your innocent discussion with him had no such intent. It saddens me to read of the old, hard words spoken in a new and hopeful country. Yes, I am an Irish Protestant by birth, though I have left both the religion and the land behind. What of my birth? Why should it mean I cannot like Molloy, nor he old Mick Tyrone? These swift, unreasoned hatreds will forever be the downfall of the Irishman.
Molloy would have me and my forebears no more than tools of the English. Yet, my grandfather died fighting against the English at Ballynahinch, in the rising of 1798. He fought for Ireland’s freedom. His thanks were death and the confiscation of our lands by the Crown. The English hanged his brother, too, although the man was innocent of any involvement with the rebels. The family tie was enough.
My own father, born to wealth, matured in penury. He made himself a doctor through sacrifice and will, determined that our family would rise again. He died in the early years of the Famine, of typhus, while treating the starving and diseased of his county. Yes, he was an “Orangeman.” Indeed—a Protestant who went into dens of affliction a priest would not enter. He died serving those who despised him, and brought home the typhus that killed my sister.
Do you understand now why I will have nothing of their nationalism? Why I believe that universal brotherhood is the only sensible path for mankind? These hatreds must be laid aside forever!
Hatred! It seems I cannot escape it. We exult in slaughter, Abel. Even Darwin cannot explain the extent of our thirst for blood.
I must tell you of the battle.
After the swiftness of Fort Henry’s fall, the soldiers thought they were off on a lark. Even the weather smiled upon our ranks, warming until you would have mistaken February for May. Marching across the neck of land from Henry to Donelson, the troops cast off their blankets and overcoats, as well as not a few haversacks and other impedimenta. When I made the journey myself after concluding my duty at the old field hospital, the countryside looked like a battlefield without bodies. All the litter of war lay beside the roads and trails.
Yet, fate plays hardest with those who take her for granted! No sooner had we invested the lines about Fort Donelson than winter returned with icy ferocity. The Confederates, though besieged, slept snug in their cabins and tents, while our men lay upon the ground, squirming together like worms in a jar as they attempted to gain some warmth from one another. It is a wonder the entire army did not freeze. The human body is, truly, a wonderful mechanism, and full of contradiction. A mass of men will survive freezing nights, and a boy will pull through the amputation of his every limb, yet a light tap on the head will kill the giant. This war makes me feel as though I am constantly learning, yet I can never quite say what it is that I have learned.
We expected a siege and, eventually, a surrender. Our gunboats made a run at Fort Donelson, too, but had not recovered sufficiently from the duel for Fort Henry. Our boats were run off, at a high cost. Yet, Grant appeared untroubled. When I visited our headquarters, which had been established in a country cabin, he seemed the calmest of men, confident that his course was right. All believed we had the Confederates trapped.
Of course, I am learning that warfare is largely the art of dealing with the unexpected. With the snow thick over the earth and the roads coated with ice, the Rebels broke from their entrenchments and attacked. I recall the moment I heard the cannon’s roar and the first snap of the rifles. I was seeing to a boy paved over with boils. He could not sit or lie or even bear the weight of his woolens upon him. The eruptions needed lancing, and such would be painful. He stood there with fear and sadness in his eyes, a child got up as a soldier, and I was just about to call to an orderly to assist me when the ground shook and the lantern swayed from the pole of my tent.
It might have been our own forces attacking, yet, inexplicably, I knew it was the reverse. The sounds arose well forward and to the south, carrying easily through the cold air. After a moment, it became clear that this was more than another skirmish. I shouted to the men to prepare for casualties and to have the ambulance mules put in harness. The fellows went ploddingly about their business, especially the hostlers. Our ambulances had not yet been needed, the few casualties we had suffered being easily managed by those vehicles assigned within the brigades of foot. But the human mind fascinates me endlessly—I do believe I will make the brain the object of my study when this war is over. Somehow, I knew that we had a hard day’s work before us. I tore into all of them, shocking man and beast. They had believed me a cool, meth
odical fellow, chary of speech. But I was in a fury that day.
With sufficient activity underway beneath our tentage, I decided to lead the ambulance train forward myself. The truth is that I wanted to see the battle (Will men never learn?), although I sincerely believed I might be of best initial service at the medical posts closer to the lines. Nor did I trust our teamsters to make their way with much speed unless attended, for we are sent the dregs of the service and the worst of the civilians hired on. Few teamsters wish to serve the medical arm, for there is less profitability than lies in ferrying general supplies.
Our first battle was with the roads. The ice cost us more mules than did hostile fire that day, and I took my poor horse along through the woods beside the track, since he found the going easier there, despite the snow’s depth. We had to change teams and leave a pair of ambulances behind. I did have the presence of mind to order the derelict vehicles pushed off the road so they would not impede military movements.
My impression of battle is that it is, above all, confusing. We passed between regiments at rest, dawdling as if nothing unusual was afoot. Meanwhile, the blasts and crackle of battle had spread until the sound encompassed the entire world before us, although now and again we heard an individual shout distinct against the din. The first stragglers appeared, and the ambulatory wounded. No matter how light their injuries, each of the latter had one or two unscathed companions anxious to help them rearward. A number of them expected me to put them aboard a hospital wagon and turn the vehicle immediately. But I feared we would need those vehicles for men of lesser fortune and I scorched the selfish with language of which you would not have approved. Words were all I had, I fear, for in my anxiety to see that other men did their work properly, I had forgotten myself and rode off without buckling on sword or pistol.
I feared defeat. Healthy men came toward us at a run, their weapons cast away. The eyes of terrified boys swelled horse-like, while grown men wailed that all was lost and that the Rebels were on their heels. We worked our way through a good mile of deserters and debris, and gave way twice to line ambulances heading rearward packed with men who would never again be whole. Closer to the front, mounted troopers chased cowards with the flat of their swords and, sometimes, with the edge. We seemed in the midst of disaster.
