The Deserter

by Jane Langton

  Soon it would be too dark to see. Ida walked faster, keeping her eyes on the road, fearful of stumbling or turning her ankle on a stone. But when she looked up she saw a looming shape off to the left. Surely it was the barn she was looking for.

  How big it was! But all the barns in this part of the country were as big as churches, towering buildings on high foundations. Their size and bulk must mean abundant harvests. Beside them, the barns of her own little town, far away to the north, seemed modest and hardscrabble.

  No cattle grazed around the Bushman barn, although the pasture was dotted with green clumps where last year’s cowpats had nourished the soil. One field was yellow with timothy ripe for the cutting, as though Mr. Bushman’s farm lay nowhere near a battlefield.

  Two boards had been nailed to a fence post. In the darkening shade under the trees Ida could barely make, out the words:

  ← HOSPITAL XII CORPS

  HOSPITAL II CORPS →

  A cart track led off to the right, but Ida obediently went left, and circled around the barn to the rear. Here a couple of horses stood saddled and bridled, their reins secured to a spike. There were ambulances under the trees, their humped white shapes visible in the half-light, their shafts resting on the ground.

  Ida climbed the grassy ramp to the upper floor of the barn and walked through the high open door. At home this level of the barn would house the two horses and the cow. Here there were no horses and no cows. The livestock had been driven away.

  At first, as she looked into the darkness, it was evident that this emergency hospital was in better case than the one in the courthouse. The men lay on cots, and in the darkness she could see their white bedding going back and back in orderly rows. But the smells of putrefying wounds and gangrene were the same, and there was a strange noise like a barking dog.

  For a moment Ida stood in the high doorway, shy of entering without permission, knowing that she made an odd silhouette against the fading light. Pale faces turned to look at her, a few heads lifted and sank back. Someone at the other end was moaning. The yelping came from a bed close by, where a poor man was throwing himself up and down.

  An orderly hurried forward and asked her brusquely, “What do you want, missus?”

  Nothing could stop Ida now. “I’m looking for my husband,” she said calmly. “First Lieutenant Seth Morgan, Second Massachusetts.”

  “Well, fine, ma’am, is his name on the list?”

  “What list?”

  “The muster roll. Every regiment had a roll call. You mean you haven’t looked at the muster roll?”

  “No,” said Ida. “But the Philadelphia paper said he was missing.”

  The orderly was carrying a malodorous vessel. “Well, I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said crossly. “We’re busy here, I should think you could see that.”

  Ida persisted. “I only want to look for him. I just want to walk along here and see.”

  The orderly was almost weeping with exasperation. He gestured to the wide blue square of the door with his utensil. “Go and find yourself a midwife.”

  “It’s all right, Sergeant.” Another man appeared out of the dark. “I’m making my rounds. She can come with me.”

  MR. BUSHMAN’S BARN

  There was a note of home in the doctor’s voice. He introduced himself as Dr. Chapel. Gratefully Ida followed him from bed to bed, looking eagerly as he lifted his lantern over each face in turn. Soon she put out her hand for the lantern and he gave it to her, leaving his own hands free to remove a dressing or examine the stump of a leg.

  He did not tell Ida to look away, nor did she wish to, although the suffering of one man was almost more than she could bear.

  “Sam?” whispered the doctor, bending over the bundled shape on the last bed in the first row of cots.

  The man called Sam stirred. Ida lifted her lamp and saw him blink and try to lift himself. When he was unable to sit up, he dropped back and rolled his head from side to side, staring at his shoulders, his face a mask of horror. “Not both,” he cried. “It’s not both.”

  “It’s all right, Sam,” murmured the doctor, laying a hand on his chest.

  “One arm, they said it was just the right. Oh, Christ, it’s not both.” He was bellowing now, lifting up his two wrapped stumps. The bellow became a scream.

  The doctor spoke softly to Ida and took the lantern. “Get Harry.”

  She ran to the man who was making a bed near the open door, the one who had told her to get a midwife. At once Harry snatched up a can and a wad of cheesecloth. Ida hurried after him as he lumbered back to the bed where Sam was shouting, “Kill me. Oh God, please kill me.”

  There were groans and curses from the other beds. Ida took the lantern again and held it high while the doctor loosened Sam’s shirt and Harry folded the cloth into the right shape. Then the doctor took it, held the can of chloroform up to the light and poured out a few drops. He had to shout at Harry to be heard over Sam’s screams. “Hold his head.”

  It was easier said than done because Sam was rearing up and throwing himself from side to side. At last Harry managed to get him by the ears and thrust his head down.

  At once the doctor held the wad over his face, and soon, to Ida’s intense relief, Sam’s body softened and lay still, and they moved on to the next bed. There were four rows of cots in the great hollow volume of the barn. Ida carried the lantern from cot to cot. Mingled with the medicinal smells was another smell, nearly overpowered by the sickening odor of rotting flesh—the familiar wholesome fragrance of the hay that was piled above the beds in the shadowy loft. Farmer Bushman had cut his fields before the battle. He had stored away his harvest in good time.

  Soon they had made a complete circuit of the beds on both sides. There were only a few more wounded men in the last row. Ida’s hope faded. The third man from the end was not Seth, nor was the second man. The sleeping soldier in the last bed was a stranger.

  Disappointed, she watched the doctor pull back the last sheet, lean down to smell an open shoulder wound then stand back, satisfied.

  He turned to her and said, “Thank you, ma’am.” Then with a smile on his worn face, he added, “We could certainly use you here. I don’t suppose, just for a few days …”

  In spite of her disappointment, Ida was pleased. She smiled and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to look for Seth.”

  “Well, too bad.” The doctor stretched and arched his back.

  “Perhaps you know where I might look?”

  Instead of answering, he led her to a bench and they sat down. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay. Shouldn’t you be at home? May I ask where you live?”

  Ida did not want to seem stubborn, but she was calmly determined. “I’m fine. I’m really just fine. And I’ve got to find Seth. He was in the Second Massachusetts. Do you think—”

  The doctor stood up and began walking away, because there was only one other place for her to look.

  He murmured it over his shoulder. “Speak to Sergeant Woody outside.”

  “Thank you,” said Ida. She rose from the bench and walked firmly to the door.

  Harry was there, a bulky shape against the sky, his teeth showing white in a mocking grin. He said, “Good luck, missus.”

  Someone else appeared in the doorway, an officer, his coat hanging loose over his shoulders. He spoke to Harry, asking for a friend in the artillery reserve.

  Ida stepped past him and walked carefully down the grassy slope. Then she had to walk three-quarters of the way around the barn before she found Sergeant Woody.

  He was keeping watch over the bodies of the dead.

  THE DEAD OF THE

  TWELFTH CORPS

  Alas! how many thousand mothers have been bereft at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, refusing to be comforted, because their children are not!

  —MARY LIVERMORE

  Sergeant Woody looked at Ida’s shape and said, “Oh, ma’am, this ain’t no place for a lady.”

  I�
�m not a lady, Ida wanted to say. Pray God my husband isn’t here.

  This time, the smell was like the gaseous stench from the dead horses, but it rose from the motionless forms lying on the bare ground, the bodies of men from the thirty-three regiments of the Twelfth Corps who had been killed in the recent battle. This time Ida did not take out her handkerchief. She stood still, trying to control her trembling.

  “Looking for somebody, ma’am?” The other man stood up. “What name?”

  Her voice shook as she told him.

  “All right, missus, I’ll show you around.”

  The chimney of his lantern was black with smoke. Ida followed it, steeling herself to look down, trying not to recoil from the sight of wrecked faces with staring eyes or skeletal faces with empty sockets where the eyes had once been. Some of the faces belonged to men who had been dead a day or two longer, and from them the skin itself had deliquesced away, revealing the bone.

  Of course Ida did not know that in the first three rows lay the bodies of men of the 123d New York who had been killed on the second day in the battle for the peach orchard and men of the Twentieth Connecticut who had died at the angle in the stone wall on the afternoon of July third. Nor did Sergeant Woody explain that the remains in the fourth and fifth rows were from her husband’s own regiment, the Second Massachusetts, and also from the Twenty-seventh Indiana, casualties of the garbled order at Culp’s Hill on the morning of the third day.

  The drenching rains of July fourth had plastered the dead men’s uniforms to their bodies and washed away the bloodstains as though a regiment of laundresses had scrubbed them on a thousand wooden washboards. The creased and rumpled clothing was still damp from the rain. Damp too were the scraps of paper pinned to their blouses or to the fronts of their coats, the writing half-washed away.

  To Ida it was horrible the way they had been laid out in perfect rows as if ordered to fall in. They were not toy soldiers, they were individual men, lying here so helplessly on their backs, side by side, row upon row. They had been fair and dark-skinned, tall and short, middle-aged and young, bearded and clean-shaven. More terrible still were the looks of suffering on some of the faces.

  Shaken, Ida picked her way among them, afraid of what she might see, fearful of stepping on an outflung arm or a shattered leg with her big feet.

  Sergeant Woody led her along, passing his lantern over each face, looking back at her with shiny inquisitive eyes, not wanting to miss the moment of recognition, the shriek, the swoon. But even in his coarse curiosity the man had enough sense to pause beside one body and drop a rag over what had once been a face.

  But the body was wearing Seth’s boots. Ida uttered a cry and fell to her knees. The boots were unmistakable. They had been specially made for Seth with elastic inserts on the sides by the cobbler on the Milldam. Seth’s coat was gone. His shirt was wet, but some of the blood remained in a cloudy stain, brown like the stains on the apron of the amputating doctor in the town, like the bloody sheets carried out of the schoolhouse, like the apron of Dr. Chapel in the barn.

  Weeping and whispering Seth’s name, Ida stretched out her hand to lift the rag.

  Enjoying this moment of melodrama, the ghoulish sergeant grinned, but then he said quickly, “No, no, missus.” Pushing past her, he reached down and unpinned the paper attached to the cloth of the coat. “This ain’t no Seth,” he told her. “This here’s an Otis.” He showed it to Ida, who closed her eyes and whispered, “Thank God.”

  Gratefully she stood up and finished her tour of the fallen soldiers of the Twelfth Corps. Seth was nowhere among them.

  “He’s not here,” she said eagerly to the guard. “And he’s not on the muster roll. Where can he be?”

  Sergeant Woody made a cruel suggestion. He pointed to a lighted tent across the lane and said, “Why don’t you ask over there, missus?”

  Ida set off at once. Having endured so much, she could endure a little more.

  “You know what really happened to him,” said the other guard, who had witnessed the woman’s pitiful search.

  Sergeant Woody laughed. “Naturally I do. He skedaddled.”

  THE EMBALMING

  SURGEON

  Between the place where the dead men lay and the glowing tent across the way, the smell suffusing the air changed character. From the sickening stench of decaying flesh it became a chemical reek.

  Ready for any horror, Ida walked sturdily forward. Heading for the line of light at the edge of the curtained opening, she stopped when she saw a burning ember among the trees at one side. It was a lighted cigar.

  The cheroot made a bright arc as it was thrown away. A big man with an apron over his coat stepped forward into the light.

  “Name?” he said to Ida.

  She guessed at once that he didn’t mean her own. “Seth Morgan,” she said at once, struggling to speak above a whisper. “First Lieutenant, Second Massachusetts.”

  “I’ll get my list,” he said. “Excuse me.” He lifted the tent flap and went inside.

  For a moment Ida caught a glimpse of a naked man stretched on a plank. A rubber tube arched obscenely out of his chest and descended into a bucket.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, emerging from the tent with a paper in his hand. “That name isn’t here. When was the order sent?”

  “The order?”

  “By telegraph. Didn’t someone send an order?”

  Ida shook her head. Was it something she should have done? She was confused and ashamed.

  The surgeon pitied the young woman. She should never have come. She looked far gone with child. “Forgive me,” he said. “You mean you want to order it now? He was an officer? That’ll be eighty dollars.” He waved his hand in the direction of the rows of the dead. “I guess your husband’s over there?”

  “No, no, he’s not. I can’t find him.”

  “Well,” said the embalming surgeon, embarrassed, “a lot of the deceased have already been interred.” He pointed another way. “If you make out a requisition, Dr. Chapel will have your husband exhumed and sent home. You say he was Second Massachusetts? Good, because there’s no list for the buried rebs.” He chuckled. “Their kinfolk are out of luck.”

  Ida thanked him and turned away, heading vaguely in the direction of his pointing finger. But her courage and strength had given out. She reached out a hand to the dark ground and sank down.

  LIEUTENANT

  GOBRIGHT

  NOAH GOBRIGHT

  Class of 1860

  First Lieutenant, Artillery Reserve, Captain John Bigelow’s 9th Battery, Massachusetts Light, Lt. Col. McGilvery’s Brigade

  The moon that had shone so full and round over the entire battlefield from Culp’s Hill to the Round Tops on the second of July would not rise this evening until midnight, reduced to its last quarter.

  But it was midsummer, and the air was warm. There was a faraway rumble of thunder. Ida lay back and pillowed her head on her valise and covered herself with her shawl. Her child tumbled for a while and then was quiet. It had been a long and terrible day. Dozing, Ida dreamt about Seth’s boots.

  When a harsh light shone in her eyes, she blinked and sat up.

  It was a man with a lantern. He withdrew it from her face and lifted it so that she could see him. At once Ida recognized the soldier who had come into the barn just as she was leaving it.

  “Ma’am?” he said. “Mrs. Morgan?”

  Laboriously Ida stood up, her bonnet awry.

  “I came to find you.” Bowing slightly, the officer introduced himself. “My name is Gobright, Lieutenant Noah Gobright.” He nodded at the great pale side of the barn across the way. “I was there just now, visiting a friend, and Doctor Chapel told me you were looking for your husband.” Gobright turned up the flame and set the lantern down on the ground. Then he said, “I know your husband, Mrs. Morgan.”

  Ida pulled her bonnet straight, her heart beating. Lieutenant Gobright was not crude like the sergeant guarding the dead across the way, nor
awkward like the surgeon in the embalming tent. Oh, what was he going to tell her?

  Hurriedly she explained. “The list in the newspaper, it said he was missing. I’ve come to find him. I’ve looked everywhere.”

  Instead of speaking, he reached inside his coat and drew out a bundle wrapped in a handkerchief. “I’ve been carrying this around,” he said, handing it to her. “I meant to send it.”

  Ida quailed as she unwrapped the handkerchief, whispering, “But this is Seth’s.” Then she uttered a small cry, because one corner of the cambric square was red. She had hemmed and embroidered the handkerchief herself, but she had used no crimson thread. Fumbling with the things inside it, she murmured, “Oh, my letter, my last letter. Oh, please …” Ida’s voice failed her, and she had to start again. “Please, Lieutenant Gobright, tell me where you found them.”

  Instead of answering, he began talking about his part in the battle, the struggle between Captain Bigelow’s artillery and the Mississippians of General Barksdale’s brigade, the way General Barksdale, with his white hair streaming behind him, had driven his men forward until he was brought down, there in the orchard of green peaches on the second afternoon.

  But the story had nothing to do with the strange absence from duty the next morning of First Lieutenant Seth Morgan of the Second Massachusetts. Lieutenant Gobright stopped, and then with hesitating pauses, he spoke about comrades killed in action.

  Ida waited. Why wasn’t he answering her question? Her heart sank, but she vowed to maintain her dignity no matter what Lieutenant Gobright said.

  His voice died away. For a moment there was nothing but the murmur of the hosts of summer insects, and then a scream from the direction of the barn. Poor Sam, thought Ida, waking up again to the knowledge of his plight.