Fire by Night

by Lynn Austin

  “We all tell lies and hurt people and do awful things,” she said. “I was never very nice to anybody, and I used to beat kids up at school and treat my brothers mean. Later on I even killed people when I was pretending to be a man. The first one was a young fellow sitting on a rooftop in Yorktown. He was a sniper, and I aimed for his leg, but the fall might’ve killed him. And I killed a lot of others after him. But the worst thing I ever done was to live my life without God. I never once asked Him which way to go or what I should do. I deserve to die for all that. There’s a bullet with my name on it heading toward me, and God is right to kill me. I made myself His enemy. But Jesus came in between that bullet and me. He covered me with His own body when I deserved to die, and He died in my place. I guess He done that for everybody, not just me.”

  Dr. McGrath shook his head. “I’ve seen the worst in mankind, Phoebe. You have, too. Why would Christ do that? Why not just give us the punishment we deserve?”

  “Same reason I saved Ted. Jesus saw someone He loved in trouble, and He just had to do it. I loved Ted, and I never even thought twice about saving him. But the best part is that now God lets me start all over again. It’s like all the things I’ve done don’t matter no more. Sure, there’s still people in Bone Hollow who knew me before and know what I done. But what they think don’t matter. It’s what God says that counts, and He says I’m brand-new, like that little baby we delivered in the shantytown—all fresh and new with a whole life ahead of me.”

  “So you’ve found the atonement you sought by working as a nurse,” the doctor said.

  “I’m not sure I know what that means.”

  “It means you’re getting a chance to make up for all the things you’ve done wrong by working here, going through this hell on earth.”

  “No, that ain’t it. I could work as a nurse for a hundred years and it still wouldn’t make things right in God’s eyes. Jesus already did that for me. I work as a nurse because I want to share His love with others. I never knew anything about love before the war started. Isn’t it funny that it took something this awful, with all the killing and suffering, for me to find out what love is?”

  “What is love, Phoebe?” he asked quietly.

  “It’s a gift. It’s never something you work for. Ted didn’t do a single thing to make me love him. He was just Ted. God loves me the same way, and He says I’m supposed to share that love with others, whether they deserve it or not. It was hard, at first, to help the Rebels. But I know I’m supposed to forgive them the way God forgave me, so I’m trying.”

  “You’ve found forgiveness?” he murmured, almost to himself.

  “Yes.”

  They sat in the darkness for several minutes. Phoebe was aware of how the gentle evening sounds of crickets and frogs blended with the distant crack of a rifle or a man’s moan, how the fresh scents of earth and pine mingled with the bitter smell of smoke and gunpowder. Strangely, she felt at peace, even though she sat in the middle of a horrible battleground.

  Dr. McGrath scooped up a twig and slowly began breaking it into pieces. As he did, he began to talk, his voice hoarse and filled with pain. “Eldon Tyler had been my patient for several years. He was a wealthy financier with everything a man could ask for in this life—except his health. I saw him regularly, at least once a week, and he always shared a glass of his imported Scotch whiskey with me. The cause of his symptoms eluded me for a while until he hinted one night that he had a fondness for …how shall I say this? For a certain type of disreputable woman. I realized then, as he had suspected all along, that he had syphilis. And I immediately knew that the disease was now in the third and final stage.

  “The last night I saw Eldon…” The doctor paused, drawing a breath as if for strength.

  “You don’t need to tell me this,” Phoebe said.

  “I know. But I want to. On that last night, when I listened to Eldon’s heart, I heard valve damage. He was experiencing some loss of sensation in his legs, which meant the disease was already affecting his brain.

  ‘“Will I go insane?’ he asked me. I didn’t want to answer him.

  ‘“There’s no way to tell for sure.’ I hedged.

  ‘“Is there anything you can do?’ He spoke calmly, as if asking me if I thought it would rain.

  ‘“There is no cure, Eldon. I’m sorry.’

  ‘“Sit down, James,’ he said. ‘Have a drink with me.’

  “I was upset. I allowed him to fill and refill my glass. I confess that I drank more that night than I usually did, but he kept pouring and pouring, and it seemed to cheer him to see me drink. I wanted to dull my thoughts. My pride couldn’t handle the fact that I couldn’t cure Eldon Tyler.

  ‘“I want to show you something,’ he said after a while. He opened his desk drawer and took out a set of dueling pistols. He offered me one, asked me what I thought of it, and when I stood to take it, I felt the effects of the whiskey. I had to sit again to stop the dizziness. And then he began saying the most terrible things about Ellen—my wife. I won’t repeat them because they were so shocking. And the language he used …I’d never known him to speak so coarsely. I thought he must have already begun losing his mind.

  ‘“Eldon, I must go,’ I said when he wouldn’t stop. He began to shout.

  ‘“What kind of man are you?Won’t you even defend your wife’s honor?’ He started waving the second pistol and calling me terrible names. I realized that he was trying to draw me into a duel— although I couldn’t think why he would do that at the time. I was too shocked by the change in him to think very clearly. And I felt responsible. I was his physician and his friend. I was angry with myself because I couldn’t help him. He would go insane and die very horribly, and there was nothing I could do. I was already grieving his dissolution and was not thinking straight from all the Scotch. I stood again.

  ‘“Would you like some laudanum?’ I asked, hoping it would calm him.

  ‘“No! I want you to help me!’

  ‘“There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.’

  ‘“You can end my suffering and let me die honorably in a duel, before my sons have to chain me up in the basement as a madman. You can put a bullet through my head, James! For God’s sake, help me! Help me!’

  ‘“I can’t do that.’ I laid the pistol down. I needed to take the other gun away from him, to sedate him and get him into bed. He’d drunk a great deal of Scotch, too. I started around the desk toward him. I was tipsy, moving too slowly. Before I could get to him, he suddenly put the pistol to his own head—and fired.”

  James closed his eyes. He grew very still, as if reliving the horror.

  “I wanted the clock to turn back,” he said hoarsely. “I wanted a second chance to get to him in time. I’d been trained to heal, and in my horror and shock I tried to …to gather the pieces of him and put them back together, to fix him. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but the servants found me that way, covered with Eldon’s blood and brain matter, trying futilely to piece him back together and undo the damage that the pistol had done. I was weeping and saying over and over, ‘I’m sorry, Eldon. I’m so sorry.’ The gun that had dropped from his hand was somehow in my own.

  “The servants called the authorities. They’d heard Eldon shouting, arguing with me. I was too incoherent with grief and shock— and too much Scotch—to explain what had happened. They arrested me for murder.

  “I spent a month in prison. The prosecutors felt they had enough evidence against me to go to trial. Everyone believed that I’d murdered him. In fact, most people still believe it—like the fellow you met the other day. But eventually Eldon’s attorney found the suicide note he’d written, detailing his plans, saying that if I couldn’t cure him, he would end his own life. The note had somehow been overlooked for all that time …I’m not sure how. They weren’t expecting to find one, I guess. Eldon told about his incurable disease and his plans to kill himself. Someone finally believed me when I said I hadn’t pulled the trigger.

 
“But Eldon had ordered his attorney to spare no expense in keeping the details out of the newspapers, and the Tyler family has enough wealth and political connections to do just that. To save the family from scandal, Eldon’s true medical condition was never made known, nor was the fact of his suicide. The authorities quietly released me from jail, all charges dropped. Your minister friend will find that out when he investigates. But no public explanation was ever given. Most people believe I’m guilty. My reputation, my medical practice—my life—were ruined over a murder I didn’t commit.”

  He fell silent again. Phoebe could hear the rumble of the returning ambulance in the distance and the sound of the stretcher-bearers coming through the woods behind her with some of the wounded men. She rose to her feet, straightening her cramped legs. “You should fight back, Dr. McGrath. Make it clear to everybody what happened. It ain’t fair.”

  He slowly rose to stand beside her, shaking his head. “Perhaps it isn’t fair, but it is justice,” he said softly. “I am a murderer, Phoebe. I didn’t kill Eldon Tyler …but I did kill someone else.”

  Philadelphia

  May 1864

  Julia sat at the breakfast table with her father, watching his face as he read the morning newspaper. He usually read articles aloud to her and her mother, sometimes denouncing the secretary of war or various army generals for the decisions they’d made. But this morning he was unusually quiet. Julia feared she knew why—Nathaniel’s regiment must have gone into battle.

  “What’s in the news this morning?” she finally asked.

  “More of the same.” He folded the paper closed. “The fighting has shifted to a place called Spotsylvania Court House.”

  “More casualties?” Julia asked, almost in a whisper. She pictured James bent over a makeshift operating table and wished she was working alongside him.

  “General Grant is getting the job done,” the judge replied. “He isn’t going to retreat like all the other generals before him. Of course, there will be a high price to pay.”

  “How many, Daddy?”

  “I won’t discuss it,” he said, rising. “It’s a morbid way to begin the day. You and I both have work to do.” He left the table, his food barely touched, his coffee cup still full. The judge usually left his newspaper lying on the table when he was finished, but this morning he took it with him.

  “Is that what you’re wearing to the church guild meeting?” Julia’s mother asked as she swept into the room a few minutes later. “Where’s your father? He hasn’t left already, has he? What time is it? Why didn’t he tell me he was leaving early?”

  Julia didn’t know which question to answer first. “Daddy is finished eating. I think there was something in the paper that upset him, but he wouldn’t say what. And yes, this is what I’m wearing to the meeting. Why?”

  “You’re deliberately undermining your natural beauty, Julia. I do hope you’re not going to end up like Nathaniel Greene’s mother, so drab and plain. A minister’s wife needn’t be an ugly old crow, you know.”

  “And what do you suppose the ladies’ guild would say if I flounced into the meeting in silk and jewels?”

  “There is such a thing as a happy medium. And you are still our daughter, not Nathaniel’s wife. There are expectations within our social circle, as well.”

  “I know,” Julia said. “I can scarcely keep track of them all.” And she wondered, on top of everything else, if God was pleased with her.

  Later, as Julia stood in the front hallway, waiting for the coachman to bring the carriage around, she spotted her father’s newspaper, lying on the desk in his study. She went into his room. When she unfolded the paper she saw right away why her father had hidden it from her. A headline on the front page read, More Work Than There Are Hands to Do.

  Wounded soldiers had been evacuated to Fredericksburg, the article explained, but the army had made no hospital preparations there ahead of time. There were stretchers and ambulances at the front, trains and boats at the rear, but no personnel or equipment in the middle, she read, and the delay caused untold suffering. Men lay unattended for days, without proper food or shelter. A handful of surgeons and nurses were unable to cope with the nearly eight thousand casualties that poured in. The need for medical supplies and for volunteer nurses and doctors was enormous. The article ended with a frantic appeal for help; more battles were expected in the coming days as the armies of Grant and Lee clashed. There was “more work than there were hands to do.”

  “Why are you here, Julia?” her mother asked from the doorway.

  Julia remembered the night on board the hospital ship when Sister Irene’s voice had come out of the darkness, asking her the same question.

  “I don’t know. … ” Julia murmured. “I should be in Fredericksburg.”

  “Where? What is the matter with you this morning? You’re supposed to be at a meeting at the church in a few minutes. If you don’t hurry, you’ll be late—and that will make a worse impression on Nathaniel’s congregation than the clothes you wear.”

  “All right, Mother,” she sighed. “I’m going.”

  Julia was the last to arrive at the meeting. She was well aware of a few disapproving frowns. She sat quietly, demurely, listening as the president of the ladies’ guild droned through the items on their agenda. There was a long discussion over whether or not they should participate in an interfaith memorial service at a local cemetery, since there were denominational differences between the various churches. The ladies decided they would not attend. Another item concerned the seating at an upcoming tea; two parishioners, locked in a long-standing feud, would both be attending and must be tactfully kept apart. Then there was the question of whether donors’ names should be listed alphabetically or according to the amount of money they contributed to the memorial fund. But the longest and most heated debate concerned which color to paint the vestry—white, ivory, or pale yellow.

  Above the sound of cultured voices and tinkling teacups, Julia thought she could hear the anguished cries and moans of suffering men, the unending wail she sometimes heard in her dreams. Why was she here?

  “What do you think, Julia?”

  She came out of her reverie to find all the ladies watching her.

  “After all,” the guild president said, “your future husband will be using the vestry regularly. Which color do you think your reverend Greene would prefer?”

  Julia stared at her. “What a perfectly ridiculous question,” she replied. She thought of Dr. McGrath, remembering how often he had said the same words to her. Unlike Nathaniel, James had never cared what people thought of him. She set her teacup on the table beside her chair and stood, trembling with emotion.

  “An entire race of people lives in poverty and slavery in this country. Our nation is being swallowed alive in hatred and war and death. And we’re arguing over what color to paint the vestry?”

  She saw shock and surprise on every woman’s face, but Julia couldn’t stop herself. “Satan is the enemy—not the South, not other churches, not each other. We pray the Lord’s Prayer every week, saying ‘Thy kingdom come,’ then we sit around waiting for it to magically float down from heaven on a silver platter. Didn’t you hear what Nathaniel preached in his last sermon? The kingdom is within us. The only way it’s going to come is if we fight for it. And how can we fight Satan if we’re busy with trivial things—or worse still, busy fighting each other?”

  Julia was aware that she was burning her bridges behind her, just as the Rebels had done in Fredericksburg, leaving only the stone piers behind. She knew the enormous effort it had required to rebuild those bridges, the terrible cost. But she also knew that withdrawing from conflict only prolonged it, allowing the enemy to fight another day. The words of the hymn they’d sung on Nathaniel’s last Sunday echoed through her mind: Let goods and kindred go …His kingdom is forever.

  “You know, women are part of His kingdom, too,” she told the astonished ladies. “Every single one of us should get down on our knees
and ask God what He wants us to do for Him. Then maybe we’ll stop building our own comfortable little realms and get about our Father’s business.”

  Julia walked out, knowing she had made her choice and that it was the right one. She told her coachman to take her to the Christian Commission offices, and when she learned that several members of the group were leaving that afternoon to take food and medical supplies to Fredericksburg, she went straight home to pack. Thankfully, her mother wasn’t at home. She wrote a note to her father, explaining that she was leaving to be a nurse again, and left it in his study beside the newspaper article. She ended the note with these words: I’m sorry that I had to disobey your wishes. But “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.”

  The hardest part was letting Nathaniel go. But Julia knew she’d broken her engagement to him the moment she had stood and admonished the women at the guild meeting. She would have to write and tell him about the choice she’d made, but she sat on the train with a blank piece of writing paper in front of her, not knowing what to say.

  She loved him. That hadn’t changed. She wanted to be his wife more than anything …no, not more than anything. She wanted to obey God more, and she felt Him calling her to be a nurse. What good was the congregation’s approval or Nathaniel’s approval if she turned her back on God? Jesus had said that the two greatest commandments were to love God and love her neighbor. He’d told a parable about helping the wounded man lying on the side of the road. He’d said, “Go, and do thou likewise.” But how could she explain that to Nathaniel? She’d tried once before and he’d said the choice was hers to make. He wouldn’t stand in her way if she chose to be a nurse. But in doing so, she would be choosing not to be his wife.