Yet.
We didn’t know his ritual. We didn’t know Moreau held a .44 to his head in the mornings. He didn’t intend to use it. He was pretty sure of that. He was absolutely sure about not showing pain. That’s what he was living for. Not-showing. Not-telling. And morphine. Moreau didn’t question not-showing any more than he questioned cleaning the wound. It was a duty and a deal. Like the child and the .44 under the straw in the stable, it was secret. Rituals needed to be secret. Ro liked the feel of the cold .44. He wasn’t waiting for spring when ice would break and the creek run to the lake. He wasn’t waiting for a sign. He was waiting for the .44.
Something pulled at him. Pulled like the heads in his dreams. I dreamed them one night. He dreamed them many nights. The heads were outside his window. He was back there. Back where Mother couldn’t help, Father didn’t matter, and Helen was invisible. The heads watched.
Mary knew Moreau didn’t sleep the hour before dawn. She knew he tossed in bed, waiting for the stable. Morphine eased the pain of stringing, but if he drank too much, he lost coordination. Then Mother would have to do it. Mary thought that before dawn grief for Merrick and Lyman and Henry Corse and all of them came back.
I asked what he thought about before dawn. He looked at me.
“The Machine.”
The Machine was the war and it was more than the war. The Machine regulated—Moreau’s word—what you brought back and what you didn’t. What you could stand and what you couldn’t. It ground on. Nothing stopped it. Not men. Not guns. Not God.
“You seen it,” he said. “You own it.”
One morphine-deadened morning, I think, he realized it owned him.
We had talked about the woman nursing him after Second Bull Run. That helped, at first. Someone who didn’t have to, had no family there, came. Stayed. Moreau now shrugged when I mentioned her. The wind howled. Chimney smoke blew flat down Railroad Street. People piled snow against their houses to keep warm. The sky was empty. The red-tailed hawks, crows and sparrows disappeared. The earth was numb.
At the end of March, Lorenzo visited for the first time. He couldn’t speak. Uncle and nephew hugged. They were close. No words, but they were close. Death and something beyond death was between them. Touching Moreau helped Lorenzo. He let it. I saw. It didn’t help Moreau. I saw that. I hadn’t lost a brother.
Lorenzo left and Moreau said, “I pity Uncle and you. You never marched all night. Never shivered and prayed, shoulder to shoulder, with bayonets fixed.” His eyes darkened. “I pity you.”
Moreau
Moreau’s Needle
March 7, 1863
65
Five a.m. I rise before the sun. No one is up. I go in the kitchen and light the lantern. Drink morphine. Heat water. Take needle and silk Mother left on table. I pull myself to the stable. Eight paces with the crutch. Path is icy but clear. Cold air on my face and hands.
Set lantern on trunk by the stool. Return to kitchen. Take boiling water to stable. John Brown neighs. Dogs stay in—don’t like eight-foot snow. I set pan on varnished trunk by the needle and silk. Sit on stool. Pull off slipper, then sock. Remove bandage. Dip the cloth in water. Wipe wound.
No one sees. Not father. Especially father. He can’t string. Father is a coward.
No matter.
Morphine numbs the cold. Lantern light dances in the corners, glitters off bridles, a whip, hoes, and rakes. If I scream, no one hears. If I flinch, no one sees.
Tie end of silk to end of needle. Put needle in wound.
Push.
Hurts.
New scar tissue, torn. Fresh blood soaks sock.
Pull silk through ankle. Pull to end. Pull the other way.
Hurts.
John Brown snorts. Opens and shuts an eye. He doesn’t want to watch. Cold covers smell of leather, hay, horse dung, urine. My nostrils freeze. Tiny fine crystals hold membranes together. I like it.
Silk touches raw flesh. Hurts. Like fire.
Wind pushes doors, cuts into the stable. I see John Brown’s breath.
I squeeze my nose. The lantern light is dancing yellow fire. Shadows are warm with cold. Warm with cold? Morphine and words don’t mix.
Pull. Stop. Look. Pull.
My fucking life goes through that hole.
Hurts.
Pull out silk. Bloody. Put on varnished trunk.
Wet cloth—water is cool—sponge each side.
Wrap with fresh bandage.
Hurts.
The ritual. Dig under trunk. Take out .44. Father got it in Frederick from Frank Fay, politician. Father thinks it’s with Helen’s letters.
Why give it? What for?
Cold, solid weight. Invisible smell—cold metal. Pain in ankle. Drink morphine.
Gun in my hand.
I put gun in my mouth. Yes and no snap to attention. Clarity. No confusion…no frantic, crazy elephant, but the rigor of the parade ground… no pile of… Pools… Curdling… He looked at us… We watched… Did nothing… Nothing… Where’s Betsey, Miss Bird… boy or girl… Merrick… Merrick… Merrick… in stable… cold… Are pictures thoughts or thoughts pictures? Feelings words or words feelings? Dreams words or pictures? Feelings? Heads? Laugh. Madness?
Like it.
Gun in mouth. The world does the bidding of metal.
Needle and silk can end.
Forever.
Mason
Iron Spring
March 17, 1863
66
Mary watched our son fail as he got stronger. “Disappearing,” she called it. She was worried now. All of us were worried. Mary believed in the Lord and trusted in is His love, but this smacked of Hell. None of us believe in Hell. Why is our son alone with the devil? Was it Mary? It couldn’t be. Helen? Was the woman not the girl he’d dreamt of? Wasn’t her love pure? Mary judged it so. Was it me? The child? Moreau had always seen the devil. He called it the heads. Was home not the place the soldier dreamt of? Had the soldier stopped dreaming? Don’t call it madness.
Moreau lived with silk and morphine. “My companions,” he called them. He didn’t complain. He was nicer, but… going away. Mary felt something apologetic in the distance creeping between Moreau and everyone. This troubled her more than baiting and anger.
One day Helen said, “He doesn’t love me.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He talks about whores.”
They were in the kitchen, faces flushed with the warmth of the stove, freshly stoked with wood to cook dinner. Mary put her hand on Helen’s shoulder. “No, child. No. It’s not you. It’s…”
Helen was sobbing, could barely get the words out. “I tried to be his whore. It didn’t work. He said I didn’t know how.”
Mary hugged her. “It’s not you, child. It’s the wound. It will pass. Those things will take care of themselves.”
“I’m so frightened,” said Helen.
“Men talk like that to push us away. He can’t love right now because he’s hurt, so he takes it out on you. You have to be strong. He’ll come back to us. He will be whole again. You must believe that.”
On the Ides of March, I returned late from Oswego. I was now paymaster and enrolling officer for the Union Army. I couldn’t string my son’s wound, but I would help the Cause. I owed that to Ro and Merrick, to all the boys. It was good to be away from Railroad Street, away from apprehension about stringing, and guilt about not stringing. I was glad to be busy visiting mustering stations and wounded men. I wouldn’t give speeches, but I would help. It was a balance, like morphine and coordination. I would help anyone who wanted to fight, but in God’s name, I wouldn’t talk a man into it. That was my filter, or was it my dodge?
I knew about morphine. I had asked Dr. Letterman, McClelland’s Chief Surgeon, myself. I knew the balance of pain and dexterity. Why did Moreau insist on cleaning the wound? What did it prove? Why did he want pain more than love? Is this madness? I feared for him.
That night, snow piled high along Railroad Street, drifts reaching first-floor windows,
ground frozen, wind cold enough to kill anyone foolish enough to be out, Mary spoke. All winter she had prayed for spring, for earth and creek to thaw, Merrick to be buried, Lorenzo to start planting, and Moreau to marry Helen.
It wasn’t coming.
I returned after dark and stood by the fire a long time. Snow melted on my boots and beard and dripped on the old orange Persian carpet. Mary sat in the battered Cromwellian chair and stared at the fire, waiting for me to speak.
“There are reports,” I said. “Lorenzo sits by the casket and talks to it. No one comes near enough to hear. They say he puts a gun in his mouth.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Mary. “Lorenzo gave us his word he would bury Merrick.”
“They say my brother talks all night,” I said. “They say a woman visits.”
Mary looked me in the eye. “Maybe someone comes to pay her respects to the dead.”
I nodded. What Merrick had done in life, what women he had known, what secrets he had kept, should be buried with him.
“It’s the Ides, Mason.” Mary’s tone changed. “‘Oh thou bleeding piece of earth.’ Do you remember?
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream?”
“Yes.”
“I looked up phantasma in the big Webster’s,” said Mary. “It means vision of things not seen. Webster’s used the quote from Julius Caesar as an example. The circularity troubles me.”
“‘Dews of blood, disasters in the sun,’” I said. “Hamlet. I can not drive that from my mind.”
Mary looked up from the fire. “Our son is going away.”
“The wound is better,” I said.
“Do you feel his going?”
“Yes.” I looked at an uneven pattern of moonlight on an ice-covered window.
“We’ve drawn closer, Mason. You and I and Helen. But Moreau is far.”
“I fear his sadness,” I said.
“He speaks of Gib when he thinks we don’t hear. Gib has authority, Mason. Authority we don’t have.”
I sat on the sofa and felt the weight of fear denied. Mary couldn’t say it out loud, but I knew. She was afraid Moreau would kill himself. I almost told her about the child. It would have made her feel better, less helpless—I knew that—but it would have been another betrayal. Was Moreau this close to disaster? I looked at the jagged circle of moon on the iced-over window. I had never felt so wretched. Was I betraying Mary by not telling? Betraying Moreau by not revealing what I knew? If there were another way, any way, I would take it. Could that be Gib? Could the ex-slave complete the soldier’s circle—believe, kill, be hurt, stop believing, believe again? The circle started with a shivering runaway who made Moreau a soldier, gave him the Cause, but being a soldier unmade him. When Moreau’s fever broke, the circle should have been complete. Duty was done. For country, God, father. Gib. Moreau did right, like his letter said. Right as any man. But…the soldier survived; our son had lost Cause, God, and family.
Could Mr. Watkins repair the circle?
“Finding Gib might be impossible,” I said. “It would be looking for straw in a haystack.” I didn’t say needle. I didn’t like saying needle.
“The last straw, Mason.”
“The last straw,” I said, and smiled at Mary’s wit, but Mary wasn’t smiling.
“The wound is not just in his ankle,” she said.
I nodded. The change. His going. It wasn’t personal, and that frightened me. Moreau didn’t blame me, the slaves, or God. What was wrong was beyond words. Beyond meanness and a child. Beyond mother, father, and Intended. Don’t call it madness. Moreau was going to his comrades, Merrick, other dead boys, Why not? More men had died in one day at Antietam than in all the wars America had fought until this one. My son had seen the worst of the worst.
“He needs a different kind of physician,” said Mary.
“It may not be possible.”
“You found Gib once, now find him again.”
I looked at Mary. Her cheeks and mouth were drawn in judgment.
“That day by the Creek,” said Mary. “You took Moreau to rescue Gib. You had a plan.”
“Yes, it was my plan. A design. I told Moreau this. I told him I am a coward and he is not.”
“What does he say?”
“He says ‘No matter.’”
Mary’s face got tighter. Deeper worry.
“I haven’t left Moreau’s side since Keedysville. I have done right, Mary.”
“Do you think you are helping him here?”
I had no answer. Wind beat on the windows. The moon’s image shimmered on an icy pane and candles flickered. Winter was rising.
“You must find Gib, Mason. It may be the only way, and the only way to forgive yourself.”
“Will you forgive me?” I asked. “If…?” I couldn’t say it.
“We are beyond that,” Mary said softy, “and we aren’t there. Yet.”
“It’s a fool’s errand. It’s winter. The man is in Canada.” I rubbed my forehead and eyes.
“You sent Moreau to war, Mason. Now you must bring him back.”
“I saved his leg. I argued with the surgeon. You can’t imagine that day.”
“Moreau is not saved.” Mary trembled. I got no sweet words. No hug. No touch. Her determination made me shiver.
“All right,” I said at last. “I will go to the Underground Railroad office in Rochester. If anyone knows, it will be someone there. If there’s anyone they’ll speak to about Gib Watkins, it will be me.”
“Thank you, Mason. Thank you.”
67
That next day at dawn I stood at the station, waiting for the train. Without delays, mean weather, mechanical failure, track obstructions, or other unseen problems, the trip should take twelve hours. I would get to Rochester at six p.m., stay in a hotel, and visit the Underground Railroad office the next morning. Snow blew around my boots. My nose and cheeks stung with cold. My beard caked with snow. I couldn’t smell the wood smoke from the building. Wind tore it away.
My destination was 25 Buffalo Street, the office of Frederick Douglass’ North Star, the Abolitionist newspaper. I would go in person. The information I sought wouldn’t be committed to paper or telegraph or given a stranger. I wanted to know the whereabouts of an escaped slave. As of January 1, 1863, the man was free, but the Underground Railroad’s habit of protecting its network and human cargo was still in practice. I knew men in Rochester. And I was known. If they’d give this information to anyone, it would be me.
The day was bitter when I boarded the train, and the car was brutally hot, heated by an over-active stove. I removed my coat, spoke to no one, and looked out a sooty window at snowy woods. Mary knew I denied the perhaps fatal sorrow in our son. It may be the only way to forgive yourself. Like the daily cleaning, I wanted it to pass. I didn’t know what to do. The poet says: I am the man. I suffered. I was there. I am here. My son suffers. I am afraid.
I doubted I would be able to find Gib.
I waited three hours in Rome for the next train, which the stationmaster informed me had been delayed by the storm. I walked out of the station to check the weather. Snow whirled, tumbled, and made a white circus. We were in for a good one. I stood in a rising wind and remembered the day the boys left, when right here, this very spot, I came to a makeshift podium, the last speaker, an afterthought as the families left. All day we had heard talk of sacrifice but there had been no sacrifice. Just bands, pies and speeches. I could have harangued—I was unflinching then—but instead recited the Twenty-third Psalm.
That had been the beginning of honesty. I didn’t know it. The honesty of valley and shadow. The honesty of sorrow. If genius ever visited me, it was then.
It was noon before I finally got on a train going west. There was no rail line from Sandy Creek to Syracuse, so to get to Rochester I had to go east to go west. I was only partway there and already the journey was long. I
kept looking at my watch, a handsome piece with “New York State Assembly 1860” engraved on its back in robust lettering.
The snow was thick, the woods outside the window a looming presence, the Erie Canal a dark parallel suggestion. The harder it snowed, the fewer telegraph poles were visible in the driving swirl. A thing too dreadful to speak of haunted me. I felt it like the steady, strained pounding of the train. A vicious and fatal circle. Send your son to war. He survives. You rejoice. You are proud, you love him, you want to help him. He has survived, but something is not right. You didn’t know war comes back with the warrior. He is in a circle of Hell. I didn’t recognize the valley or see the shadow cross his face, didn’t know what killing kills. I had made sure Moreau met Gib, and Gib had enflamed Moreau’s conscience. Now I needed Gib again. Gib was part of the circle. Somewhere out there, blown from our sinful nation into a Canadian wind. If I found him, would he be able to break the circle? By now Gib was probably in Western Canada with a job, maybe a wife, a family. A new life. What did Gib Watkins owe America?
I watched red signal lights in the snow, closed my eyes, and thought of Salisbury heads on stakes. I had always discounted the story of the heads—discounted any connection between my ancestors and me. Let the dead bury the dead. I discounted nothing now. The country was full of ghosts and those who were turning into ghosts. Snow pelted the sooty window and melted in black rivulets.
I told Moreau he used the heads to make himself feel important. A mirror to see an inflated, tragic image. Now it was my turn to see the devil. The heads were back. They were waiting. Moreau might be dead when I returned.
When I was a boy, my father used to threaten me with the old story, though in calmer moments acknowledged Salisburys had little to fear from Indians. Even as a child, I thought killing an unarmed man and dying for it was brutal, but just—and far removed from the optimistic, booming America I knew. Those were dreadful times with dreadful justice. King Philip’s head was put on a pole and his severed hand shown for a shilling. Little Moreau told us the Salisbury heads watched him. “Someone’s always watching,” I told him. “That’s why we try to behave honorably.”
No Common War Page 19
