Stillwater

by Nicole Helget

  “Can you find some clean water?” Clement asked him.

  “All the water looks that rosy color. Even the drinking barrels,” said Davis. “We all been drinking the blood of our regiment brothers.” Davis sighed. He reached down and closed the eyes of a dead man. “I’m changed. Something’s changed in me.” He pulled a blanket up over the man’s face; his feet remained exposed. “Can’t they even provide us with blankets long enough? All these men fighting and dying. Really dying, and for what? They must have reasons. Why have I never before had a purpose that I would risk my life for? How have I gone nearly twenty-five years without one?”

  Clement had been asking himself the same questions. If he was going to be here, fighting, what was he going to be fighting for? “Probably some of these men are fighting for personal splendor,” he said. “Maybe some of them to preserve the Union. But not too many are fighting for Negroes, I don’t think. Not the Minnesotans anyway. We don’t have so many raising those issues in our state.”

  Davis came to the bed and sat between Clement and the patient he was tending.

  “You talk like you know something about it,” said Davis. His eyes narrowed to slits, the way they used to when he asked about Angel. A nervous look, but serious too.

  “If our statesmen have abolition on their minds, the wise ones work at it quietly and under the cover of dark,” said Clement. “Just what I read.”

  “Yeah,” said Davis. “Me too. Just what I read.”

  The two men looked at each other. Clement stared in a way that urged Davis to be quiet. His eyes, those strangely colored orbs, looked hard at his friend. Even here, among Yankee comrades, they both had heard disloyal sentiments voiced. Some boys from an Illinois regiment had said that if President Lincoln freed the slaves or armed a free Negro, they’d defect and join the Confederacy. An Irish man from New York had told Davis that if the opportunity presented itself, he’d sell Davis to a Southern plantation owner without a second look. It was not safe to assume that all Northerners were abolitionists. Even the president seemed unsure as to whether he supported emancipation of the slaves. He had said that if he could free all the slaves and preserve the Union, he would do it, and if he could not free one slave and preserve the Union, he would do that too. Most of the soldiers supported the Union. They did not know, personally or publicly, how to feel about the slave question.

  “Well,” said Davis. “I guess some things just remain mysterious.”

  “You got that right,” said Clement.

  “I’m glad I came here with you, Clement. I have learned something about the world and about myself, and I intend to live my life better, for as long as it lasts.”

  “The best thing you can do is live and avoid the fighting,” said Clement. “You’ve got the music talent, which is a gift from God, and you ought to take care of it by not getting your hands shot off.”

  “I don’t think I will,” said Davis. “My eyes have been opened. I feel a larger purpose now. These men dying for honor or Union or emancipation or whatever they’re dying for have moved me. I feel different.”

  Clement felt different too. Though he still missed her and wished she’d write, Clement hadn’t thought of Angel nearly so much while he’d been among the sick, injured, and dying. His hands and mind were doing the good work of healing bodies and preparing souls. Despite all the gore and pain around him, he swelled with a sense of goodness. But he wanted more glory, recognition. He wanted to go home a man and restore faith in family and home.

  “I keep thinking about how you talk to those dying men,” said Davis. “Not everybody has those words of comfort in their head. You got the mouthpiece of a priest. That could be your purpose, if you could stand the lifelong chastity.”

  “Maybe,” said Clement.

  “There’s honor in small everyday goodnesses too,” said Davis. “You don’t have to get killed to be a hero.”

  The company marched toward the Potomac River to protect a landing near Edward’s Ferry along an important supply line. There they found a pleasant pastoral respite, albeit a lot more waiting. Since they now knew how difficult and deadly the battles would be, they couldn’t understand why their army just didn’t get after the rebels. Waiting for the next battle was the hardest part. Though the weather was warm, the winds were sweet, and the victuals were more regular and better tasting, each man was encumbered by what lay ahead. Here at Edward’s Ferry, they could see and even shout to the Confederates across the river, but aside from a small skirmish or two, no one caused any trouble. Once in a while, a Confederate might shoot across the river, but the bullets dropped into the water halfway across.

  Davis and Clement sat under a tree, sharing a cup of good, strong coffee as Clement wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper back home. Clement’s gun lay across his lap, as he was also on guard duty, watching the harmless rebels on the other side of the river.

  “See ’em?” Clement asked. He nodded across the river.

  “Yeah, I see ’em,” said Davis. “They look small.”

  “I read their soldiers are an average of ten pounds lighter and one inch smaller than us Yankees.”

  “I believe it. On average. You’re about that small, though.”

  “That’s just because I was sick in the hospital for so long.”

  “You didn’t lose any inches of height in that illness. You’re as short as you ever were.”

  “Well, you’re as dumb as you ever were,” said Clement.

  “Just let me hold it,” Davis pleaded. He scootched closer to Clement and tugged on the butt of his gun. He kicked his bugle. “I’ll let you toot my horn.”

  “No,” said Clement. “Quit asking.” He bent over his paper and wrote intently.

  “Read it to me,” said Davis. “Read me what you got so far. I wish I could read better, but I didn’t pay very good attention at school.”

  “You were too busy with piano playing and looking at Angel,” said Clement. “All right. Here’s what I got so far.” Clement cleared his throat. “Ladies of the North, heed my request!”

  “Yeah,” said Davis. “I like that. Talking to the ladies. They’s the only ones that think about us from back home.”

  “Your boys wounded while fighting in the South are in desperate need of blankets, pillows, and tin cups. Search your cheery houses high and low for any home comfort that can be spared! Wonder whether your children couldn’t drink from one cup and contribute the others for the parched lips of a First Minnesota boy, another mother’s son, who has lived without a roof over his head for nearly a year, has used his own cupped hands to drink from rivers running red with blood, has endured the knife, bullet, and bayonet of the enemy, and now lies in wait for recovery or death and only desires a cup to drink from!”

  “Things have been sorry around here, but I haven’t seen no rivers running red,” said Davis, “but you surely have a storytelling way about your writing.”

  “Unpack your needles and thread and sew together scraps of coffee sacks, aprons, petticoats, and the baby’s dresses for blankets or little cushions for the weary heads and pained limbs of the injured!”

  “Yes, I surely would like a pillow,” said Davis. “Keep reading.”

  “And do not let one lemon or lime wedge or bit of salt flavor your food until you have considered the festering wounds and hacked stumps of soldiers in desperate need of their sanitizing qualities, which will drive the rebel infection into retreat. Every bit of lemon, lime, and salt you can spare is needed to save lives now!”

  “For what?” asked Davis. “What do we want that stuff for?”

  “Cleaning wounds, I think,” said Clement. “So they don’t get infected. I don’t know. I heard some doctor talking about it.”

  “Tell them to send a lemon cake instead,” said Davis. Clement folded the letter. “Who you gonna send that to?” asked Davis.

  “Probably Mother St. John,” said Clement. “She’ll take it to the newspaper.” He stood. “I’m going to get it mailed.
”

  Davis put his hand on the butt of Clement’s gun. “I’ll hang on to that rifle while you’re gone.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll give you first pick of food.”

  “That tack is beyond mastication. Disgusting. No.”

  “You don’t even use it.”

  “I’m gonna blast a hole in you if you don’t quit asking me.”

  Clement jabbed him with the barrel and smiled. Davis feigned taking a shot in the gut and lolled his tongue and fell over.

  A couple of days later, the captain ordered the men into the river for baths. He said they stunk like hell and that their mothers would die of humiliation if they caught one whiff of the stench. He stood on top of the hill and watched as the First Minnesota and Davis stripped to their underwear, if they had any, and waded in. The water felt good yet wasn’t cold. On the other side, Confederates shouted over at them, “We’d shoot your fishing tackle off but we can’t see it!” and “That ass is as nice a bull’s-eye as any!” They shot a couple of harmless bullets that dropped into the water no harder than a thrown pebble. Clement, a good swimmer, stroked around and dove beneath the surface. He pulled Davis’s feet out from under him. Davis went under, and they emerged at the same time.

  Davis sputtered. He gasped. “Don’t do that!” he yelled. He splashed at Clement.

  Clement laughed and splashed him back.

  Davis rushed forward and pushed Clement. “I’m serious,” he said. He looked around as if to see whether anyone else was listening. “I can’t swim.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Clement wiped his eyes and tilted his head to get the water out of his ear. “Everyone can swim.”

  Davis began making toward the shore, but the captain yelled for him to get back out there, that he could smell the stink on him from up there, that any Confederate from here to Mississippi would know he was coming by the smell of his dangle. All the men laughed. The water boiled with their feverish cleansing and horseplay. Then the big Swede lunged toward Davis and dunked him. Clement was about to tell the galoot to lay off, that it was enough, when the giant lifted Davis out the water and tossed him out to where the current ran faster, where the river was deeper. Davis splashed in, and never rose.

  Clement swam out to search. He kept expecting to see Davis’s head appear here and then there, this second and then the next. Clement dove deep. He was a good swimmer, but the river was full of downed trees and pieces of sunken pontoon bridge. He meandered among them, but he saw not one sign of his friend. He came up for air. The rest of the company stood where they had been, watching. Clement wondered if they and Davis were playing a trick on him. But he saw no smirks or twinkly eyes. Their faces looked solemn, as though they were holding their breath.

  “Help me!” Clement finally said to them. “He can’t swim!”

  The men looked around, and a few of them dove under the water too. But there was no sign of Davis. Even when the captain ordered the company out of the water, even after they all ran up and down the shore looking for Davis, thinking he might have landed somewhere down the shore, even after the Confederates who had lazily shot at them helped by searching their side of the river for the cook and everyone came up empty, even then Clement couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t grasp how a person could be there one second and gone the next.

  But he was. As though he’d been sucked into a hole, Davis was gone.

  That night, Clement had a dream. In it, Angel was talking to him, crying. She moaned that she couldn’t endure it, wondered when it would end, and prayed for the Lord to take her life.

  “Angel, are you dying?” he’d said.

  A scream. A pant. No. A breath. I’m living.

  Then he heard the squall of an infant and the happy sigh of relief of a new mother.

  “Are you there?” he’d said. But there was no answer.

  45

  Letters from Home

  CLEMENT AND THE REST of his regiment wintered at Camp Stone through the remainder of 1861. He wrote many letters home, to Big Waters and Mother St. John, to the newspaper, to Angel. He told her of Davis’s death. Still, he received nothing from her. In the spring, the regiment moved to Camp Winfield Scott, near Yorktown, and Clement received a package containing a blanket, a warm shirt, socks, a rosary, and applesauce from Big Waters and Mother St. John. Clement felt, sometimes, that packages and letters from the women were the only thing keeping him alive. He wrote them his thanks, telling them of the impending fights the First Minnesota was promised to see.

  In the letters that followed, his words grew morose and pointedly hopeless, a response to both the deteriorating circumstances of the war and the loss of his friend. “I miss him each day,” he wrote, “and often think I would eat opossum meat every day if it was Davis that made it.” His next letter told of the indecently buried bodies on Malvern Hill, how some of the men’s legs, arms, and even heads were left uncovered. Some hadn’t even been buried at all, left with their bellies wide open as their ribs “grinned like mad teeth.” He told of the four bald eagles he’d seen near the Chickahominy River, a scene that reminded him of home until he got closer and saw that they were scavenging the corpse of a white-haired Negro man in Union dress, who reminded Clement of a man they’d helped many years before, though he couldn’t recall the name of that man.

  In their letters, the women wrote of the Stillwater mayor’s adulterous affair with the wife of Stillwater Prison’s warden, the fish the children had pulled out of the waters, the rainless summer, the poor harvest, the persistent clashes between hungry Indians and new settlers in the southern parts of the state. They wrote of the fear that all the citizens had for the safety of their soldiers and for themselves. The women always reminded him to say his prayers.

  Clement wondered if some of the regiment ought to have stayed home to manage affairs in Minnesota. Finally, in August, the First Minnesota was ordered back toward Bull Run, where Major General Pope was in need of reinforcements. Some of the men were eager to have another shot at Bull Run, to reverse the outcome of the first battle. But by the time the soldiers arrived, Pope was in full, humiliating retreat. The president dismissed him and sent him west, to Minnesota, to manage the conflict between Indians and settlers, which had already killed five hundred. Upon hearing such news, Clement typically would have felt concern for the safety of the orphanage and also Angel, but this time he could only think, “I can go home. If a general is going, I can go too.” He couldn’t explain why, but until now Clement had thought that an impermeable barrier existed between Virginia and Minnesota, between soldier life and civilian life, as though a sky-high brick wall or hell-deep ditch separated them. But with the general’s departure, those ideas fell away. He realized it was physically possible to get from here to there. Clement realized that he too could simply walk away from the war and go home.

  He could just begin heading west. He could do it. He counted up how many miles he had marched since he’d been away. Surely as many as it would take to go home. To return to what was left of the trees he loved, the rivers and lakes he fished, the home he craved, the mothers who tended him best, the warm room, the soft bed, back to Angel, his own sister. He promised himself to fight one more battle. He would volunteer for perilous duties and fight bravely, and if he lived through it, he would earn his right to go home, if only in his own mind.

  One month later, in a cornfield near Antietam, Clement Piety earned his walk.

  PART IV: MYTHS

  46

  The Escapee

  STILLWATER, 1870

  IN THE LATE FEBRUARY afternoon, the inmate Clement Piety stood on the surface of the frozen St. Croix River, staring at a hole in the ice. When the ice first began to break up and the guard fell through, Clement had eased away from the fissure and away from the unfortunate man battling the current to stay afloat in the winter water. The waves coiled around the prison guard like snakes come up from the center of the earth in some apocalyptic event. Clement searched the heavens fo
r horsemen or thundering trumpets or another sign of rapture. Seeing and hearing nothing but the regular ways of winter on the river, he looked again to the guard, holding himself to the unbroken ice with one bare hand, his glove lost to the water. The guard’s wool coat, which only minutes ago the prisoner had coveted in this weather, was now soaked. Its weight tethered the man to the depths of the St. Croix. The guard’s eyes beseeched Clement for help.

  “Oh Jesus,” Clement said. The guard heaved one whole arm atop the ice shelf. Clement heard the slap of soaked cloth. “The ice is breaking up,” he said to the guard. “I knew we shouldn’t have been out here. I told you so.”

  The guard made no indication that he’d heard. Clement stretched out his arms. In his hands, he still held the chipping tools he’d been using to cut blocks of ice. He tried to spread his legs, his weight over the precarious ice.

  “I can’t help you,” he said. In a tentative approach toward the riverbank, he slid his boots along the rime. The drowning guard watched him.

  “No,” Clement said to unasked questions. “I can’t.”

  The guard hung there, heaving and slipping and readjusting his grip.

  Clement shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he offered as explanation.

  From early afternoon until this gray twilight, the hazy sky had showered Stillwater with soft rain and sleet, had alternately thawed and frozen the surface of every tree, animal, and man who chanced to be out of doors. All creation lay still, entombed in ice, swathed in that time near the end of winter when spring fights to break through, with its melting rains, only to be blown back again with the northern gales. Clement told himself there was no way to help the guard. That man was a goner. He turned his back to the guard slowly and eased his boot toward shore again.