Unholy Fire

by Robert J. Mrazek

  It was at exactly five o’clock when I arrived at the door of the third convalescent suite. There were two sentries posted on either side of it. A burly major with the shoulder straps of a general staff officer was smoking a cigar in the hallway in front of the door. He looked up as I approached.

  In all my twenty-one years of life, he was the first human being I had ever taken an active dislike to from the first moment I saw him. Perhaps it was the arrogance in his eyes or the barely controlled hostility in his manner. I had had my fill of staff officers in the first year of the war, but it was more than that.

  “What do you want?” he demanded curtly. The man had a well-sculpted face with wavy black hair. His unnaturally long eyelashes gave his eyes a feminine cast. His lips were shaped in a Cupid’s bow.

  “I was told to be here at five o’clock,” I said.

  He stared at me for several seconds and said, “This corridor is off-limits, Lieutenant. Now turn around and get moving.”

  “I was told to be here at five o’clock,” I repeated.

  The major stepped close enough for me to smell the cigar on his breath. He was three or four inches shorter than me but much broader in the chest and arms. His uniform looked freshly pressed, and the tan leather gauntlets tucked behind his sword belt appeared new.

  Looking over his shoulder, I saw that one of the sentries by the door was staring at me. As I watched his eyes widened as if he was trying to communicate something. The next thing I felt was the major’s hand on my wrist. Like a coiled spring, he spun me around, pinning my right arm behind my back, and then shoving me forward. At the same time, he extended his boot in front of mine, causing me to trip and pitch headlong to the floor.

  “You’re not very good at following orders, are you?” he said.

  I regained my feet and slowly began walking back toward him, only wanting to wipe the arrogance off his face. He must have seen the murderous look in my eyes.

  “You keep coming and I’ll have you arrested, Lieutenant.”

  “I was ordered to be here at five o’clock, Major. That’s how good I am’ at following orders,” I said, halting in front of him.

  I saw the first hint of doubt come into his eyes.

  “Who ordered you to be here?” he said.

  “A blond-headed man on crutches wearing a bathrobe with gold dragons all over it,” I said.

  He stepped backward as if I had pushed him.

  “Wait here,” he said. He went to the door, knocked twice, opened it without acknowledgment, and disappeared inside. The same sentry who had earlier tried to signal me whispered, “Major Bannister’s mean as a scorpion, sir.”

  “Thanks for trying to warn me,” I said.

  Then Major Bannister was back.

  “You can go in,” he said, holding the door open for me. As I passed him, he said, “How do you know General Hooker?”

  “I don’t know him,” I responded, as he closed the door behind me.

  No one was in the first room, which was set like a parlor, with a walnut drop-leaf table, a horsehair leather couch, and numerous side chairs. There was a desk by the window. It was covered with military documents, maps, and newspapers.

  “Come in,” said the voice I remembered from the washroom. The second chamber was smaller than the first and furnished with a walnut bedstead, a chest of drawers, and two comfortable leather chairs.

  He was still wearing the silk pajamas. The Chinese bathrobe lay next to him on the bed. His handsome face was bathed in a warm pool of light from a standing lamp behind the chair in which he was sitting. His bandaged leg lay outstretched in front of him on a small ottoman.

  I came to attention.

  “Major Bannister has informed me that he may have acted somewhat harshly with you,” he said. “It’s entirely my fault. I gave him rather strict orders that I wasn’t to be disturbed this evening.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, wondering why he would bother to apologize, considering the punishment I assumed was coming.

  “Simply put, my only reason for secrecy is that I don’t want official Washington to know I’m here just yet. There will be no peace if they find out, and I haven’t had a night to myself in weeks. I think I’ve earned one.”

  He must have seen the confusion on my face, because he stopped then, smiled, and said, “Do you know who I am, Lieutenant?”

  “I do now, sir.”

  “Well, the provost sent over your records, and I first want to apologize for calling you a clerk.”

  “There is no need to apologize, General Hooker. I’m no more than that.”

  “Very few lieutenants are mentioned in dispatches by the commanding general. In your case the deed fully warranted it.”

  He tried to move his bandaged leg on the ottoman, and his face suddenly went pale. Smiling wanly, he motioned me to sit down.

  “Never hide your light under a bushel basket,” he said next. “Not after an exploit like that one … Just look at McClellan. He’s never gotten closer to a bullet than Harriet Beecher Stowe, and one would think from the press reports that he is the reincarnation of Achilles.”

  I laughed out loud, and he joined me.

  “Personally, I have a fondness for good whiskey,” he said, when I was settled in the chair facing him. “Perhaps you would care to join me for a glass.… Of course, I also have your bottle of disinfectant here if you would prefer that.”

  “Whiskey is fine, sir,” I said, not choosing to tell him that I had already purchased and consumed a pint of laudanum from the janitor in the hospital wing. Desperation drives one to do things that are usually better left unsaid. He poured an inch of the smoky liquid into two small tumblers.

  “I have a warm spot for officers like you,” he said, taking his first swallow with a satisfied grin. “I’ve fought the enemy at close quarters, too … down in Old Mexico, but I won’t bore you with ancient history. I have a question for you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What was going through your mind just before you led that extraordinary charge … after you already knew all was lost?” he asked.

  I thought back to that moment at Ball’s Bluff. In my mind’s eye, I stood again below the crest, watching the men falling around me.

  “Anger,” I said.

  “Exactly,” he responded.

  “Mindless rage … and something else … It was as if God had just whispered in my ear that I wouldn’t be killed that day.”

  “Yes, just so,” he agreed. “I know the feeling well.”

  Smiling, he took another pull of whiskey.

  “Was it laudanum you were imbibing in the washroom?”

  I looked at him and nodded.

  “One of the dirty secrets of this war,” he said, “but in your case, certainly justified. My surgeon took a look at your hospital records. He says your case is destined for the medical textbooks.”

  “I would rather not have had the honor,” I said, and he chuckled.

  “Don’t worry about my reporting you, son,” he said. “I don’t ride with God’s cavalry.”

  His glass was already empty, and he poured himself another drink. I shook my head when he held out the bottle to me.

  “I am probably the last one who should be dispensing advice on this subject,” he went on, “but I would advise you to try to cut back on the opiates. You should find another interest to replace it.”

  “Yes, sir. That would probably be a good idea.”

  “Are you married?” he asked next.

  “No, sir,” I said, finishing the whiskey.

  “Not a sound idea, at least in my case,” he came back. His cheeks were getting rosier by the minute. “I have learned much in this life about the appetites of the female of the species. Enough to decide not to marry and enough not to let the sanctimonious mob nail me to the cross of so-called respectable behavior. Another short one?”

  “No thank you, sir,” I said, my voice thickening.

  He poured another inch into his glass.

&
nbsp; “So how do you think this war is being fought?” he asked.

  The image of Johnny Harpswell’s face exploding in the rowboat filled my mind, and I started telling him what I had witnessed at Ball’s Bluff.

  “Moronic stupidity,” he said, when I was finished. “And I’m afraid it won’t be the last before we’re through. Did you know that General McClellan was provided with a complete set of Lee’s operational plans just before the battle at Antietam?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, through a remarkable piece of luck, he was. And Mac still wet his pants at the thought of facing that old man, even after learning that Lee had divided his army into four parts. Of course, that’s how much Lee respected the young Napoleon … Lord … if Mac had moved faster than a centipede just that once, the war would be over right now.”

  He took another pull on his whiskey.

  “Forgive me. I have a tendency to be indiscreet,” he said. From the look on his face, he didn’t look all that happy at the thought of the war being over.

  “I’ll say this,” he pronounced, his voice rising again, “Lee … that magnificent old bastard … what balls. Outnumbered three to one and he stood there with his back to the Potomac and just dared us to come against him!”

  The general’s resolute blue eyes were alive with excitement. At that moment he reminded me of one of those flaxen-haired Norse gods of old that I had only seen in picture books. Then the light in his eyes momentarily faded.

  “Now, McClellan,” he said, “his balls are about the size of bird shot.”

  I heard someone knocking on the outer door.

  “Here, have another,” said the general, refilling my glass. A moment later Major Bannister appeared in the doorway and said, “Will you be having your supper now, General?”

  “Yes, of course … serve it right there in the sitting room, Bannister. And Lieutenant McKittredge will be joining me. He looks like he has been on mean rations for a while.”

  From the look Major Bannister gave me, I could see he wasn’t thrilled that I was still occupying the general’s attention. Staff officers tend to be jealous about such things, particularly if their competition is junior in rank. He supervised the setting of the table with a white cloth, formal silver and china, before going out again.

  That’s when General Hooker said, “So what about the ladies? I’m sure that someone with your Lochinvar looks has had ample opportunities in that department.”

  I found myself telling him that growing up on an island with a population of sixty people did not lend itself to learning some of the important social graces. Although he was staring at me in rapt attention, his eyes were now moving in and out of focus.

  “Are you telling me you have never had a woman?” he asked.

  I felt my face get hot. He laughed out loud.

  “I thought so. Virgo intactis, as the ancients would say.”

  I was about to respond when I again heard voices in the outer room. Major Bannister appeared in the doorway.

  “May I assist you to the table, General?” he said, almost obsequiously; but by then General Hooker was already mounted on his crutches and heading out of the bedroom. When Bannister turned to look at me, there was anger in his eyes.

  The meal had been ordered from Crouchard’s and was served from metal warming ovens. The first course was a wine-based mushroom soup followed by Maryland soft-shell crabs and then a joint of lamb. There was a dark burgundy wine and a dry white wine. At some point I realized that all the dishes had been removed from the table and we were alone again. By then, he was calling me Kit.

  The general began talking about his life out in California before the war. He had resigned from the army and at one point was living in a driftwood shack right on the ocean, he said, enjoying a variety of women of all ages and backgrounds. He even fell in love with a young Mexican girl, he said; but her parents disapproved, and he was forced to leave that part of California. It must have been around one in the morning when he asked, “Have you ever been in love, Kit?”

  “No,” I said, my brain now little more than suet.

  “When you fall in love with a woman, you will know it, my boy. I have fallen in love many times. Each time it happens, you will have the responsibility of a … a Michelangelo setting something magnificent to canvas … or moulding it with clay … the challenge of a …” He stopped at that point to drain the whiskey in his glass. “No time for love now … Just balling … more’s the pity.”

  I could hear a faint knocking on the outer door to the suite. A few moments later the sound came again, this time a bit louder. The general took notice of it, too.

  “Who the hell is it?” he demanded, as I got up and went to the door.

  I opened it to find a young woman standing in the hallway. Not more than twenty, she was dressed in a low-cut emerald green gown that exposed her ample bosom. Although the night was cold, she wore no wrap, and I wondered how she had gotten there without a coat.

  “Well, you look a little young to be a general, honey, but I’m not complaining,” she said, smiling up at me.

  Her hair was tawny blonde, and she was very pretty in a lush-figured way. Even drunk, I knew why she was there.

  The sentries were no longer at their posts by the door, and I leaned past her to look down the hall. They were standing with their backs to us at the entrance of the corridor.

  “Another member of Hooker’s staff,” I heard one of them leer to the other, before they both laughed.

  “My word, I didn’t know they made them like you anymore,” said the young woman. “I just wish I’d met you back in Moline.”

  “Who is it, Kit?” General Hooker called out from the other room.

  “Tell him it is Leonora,” she said, glancing into a pocket mirror she had removed from her small purse.

  “It’s Leonora,” I called out dumbly.

  There was a pause before he said, “Yes, the enchanting Leonora. Well, send her in here,” called back General Hooker.

  “Where are you from?” she whispered, as we headed toward the bedroom, her skirts rustling with each step.

  “Maine,” I said.

  “Well, you can find me at the Carroll Arms,” she said.

  There was one awkward moment when General Hooker looked appraisingly at his new visitor, and then his eyes swung back to mine. For a second I thought he was going to invite me to stay. I’m not sure what I would have done if he had.

  “I will see you in the morning, Lieutenant,” he said, with a parting handshake.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I didn’t see the general the next morning, and I never made it back to Mrs. Warden’s that night. In fact I barely made it down the corridor to my office. After lurching inside the pitch-black room, I found my greatcoat and managed to spread it on the floor before collapsing in a heap. I slept like the dead until a man came through in the morning to light the office gas lamps. I went to my desk and cleared my head with a cup of laudanum.

  Harold Tubshawe came waddling in a half hour later carrying a satchel of legal files he had taken home with him. I saw that he was no longer wearing the heavy pistol at his waist and assumed correctly that he knew the latest military crisis was over.

  “Did you hear the news?” he cried. “Fighting Joe Hooker himself is right down the hall in one of the convalescent suites … the greatest hero of the greatest victory the world has ever seen. Shot off his horse while personally leading his men into the bloody cornfield. The account is right here in the paper. And McClellan reports that Lee had two hundred thousand men with him … yet Mac still whipped him, by God.”

  “Quite astounding,” I said, and headed out into the corridor.

  In spite of the general’s precautions, the whole world seemed to have suddenly discovered his hiding place. Men in tailored suits and women in taffeta gowns were bustling up and down the corridor like a school of sharks. Tubshawe joined me in the hallway.

  “Well, you look a sight,” he said, disapprovingly. �
�You might at least have the discipline to shave and comb your hair before reporting for duty. Why, General Hooker himself might come right by here this morning.”

  “I’d be very surprised,” I said, wondering if Leonora was still in residence. Smiling, I went back into our office.

  “I wonder if we’ll get a glimpse of him,” said Tubshawe. “That would be something to tell my grandchildren about someday.”

  He kept pacing to the doorway and then peering around the corner. By nine o’clock, a seemingly endless stream of admirers filled the corridor. At one point they were backed up all the way down to the entrance to the building on the first floor. Tubshawe squealed with delight each time a famous senator or congressman passed by on his way to General Hooker’s suite.

  “There goes Laird Hawkinshield,” he said, with awe in his voice. “He was my congressman in Ohio. There is talk he will run for president after the gorilla is gone.”

  I arrived the next morning to learn that the general had left the hospital. A hand-written note from him was lying on my desk.

  “There is a place on my staff for you whenever you want it,” was the first line. The postscript read, “As far as your personal tastes, I would strongly urge you to find another mistress.”

  I considered his offer of the new job only long enough to realize that acquiring laudanum in the field was by no means a certain proposition. The thought of working under Major Bannister did not appeal to me either. I destroyed the note.

  The excitement of General Hooker’s visit was quickly supplanted by the arrival of another horde of wounded into the city. Antietam was the greatest slaughter ground of the war up to that point, and another temporary hospital was set up on the grounds of the asylum to treat a small fraction of the bloody host. Every morning for three weeks, I could see orderlies feeding arms and legs into the incinerator behind our wing of the building.

  One unseasonably cold afternoon in October, I returned to Mrs. Warden’s to find two policemen standing on the front porch. Between them stood Mr. Massey, who was gazing down at his hands with a puzzled expression on his face. Passing him on the porch, I saw that his wrists were confined by heavy iron manacles. His shirt and suit coat were heavily spattered with red stains. Inside, Mrs. Warden was sitting on a couch in the front parlor, staring straight ahead and struggling to control her emotions.