Raiding With Morgan

by Jim R. Woolard

  The hospital’s atmosphere was meaner than Ty had expected. It was a ghoulish nightmare of humans in wretched physical condition, eerie mutterings, and ghastly smells. Flies covered patient faces and hands awash with swollen pustules. Groans and grunts mixed with the ravings of patients bereft of their senses. A black patient begged the wall next to his bunk not to hang him. A brute of a fellow sobbed uncontrollably. A slim patient with red hair like Ty’s was proposing marriage to an invisible sweetheart.

  The rancid smell of infected flesh, unwashed bodies, filthy blankets, untended spit boxes, slop buckets waiting to be emptied, and dried urine and feces on patients too sick to visit the slop buckets made Ty’s stomach turn. He squelched a powerful urge to flee and take his chances in the barracks—no paradise, either, but heavenly quarters compared to where he was standing.

  Ty’s strength was sufficient to undertake a search for Shawn Shannon. If Dr. Craig’s diagnosis was wrong and he was to perish in that god-awful place, it would be next to a friend.

  With a stroke of luck, he found the lieutenant next to the exit door in the last ward at the north end of the hospital. Though the lieutenant’s features were haggard and swollen, he managed a wan smile when he spied Ty. “Come closer, you young pup,” whispered Shawn Shannon, his voice a forced wheeze. His own vigor fading, Ty seated himself on the wooden rail of Shawn Shannon’s cot.

  “Are you here to visit?”

  “No,” Ty answered. “The doctor says I have a light case of the pox.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Shawn Shannon said. “No sense both of us dying in this rotten Yankee armpit.”

  The lieutenant’s assertion that he was anticipating death had Ty shedding tears before he could hold them back. Thoroughly embarrassed, he quickly swiped his cheeks dry with his sleeve and hoped Shawn Shannon, whose own eyes were shut momentarily, hadn’t noticed. Ty did keep his voice from cracking. “What did the doctor say?”

  With monumental effort, Shawn Shannon, voice barely audible, said, “My vaccination didn’t take. I have full-blown pox. The kind that sends you to meet your Maker.”

  Those words shattered Ty’s heart. He and the lieutenant had been wrong in washing and squeezing the vaccine dose out of their arms. To feel better immediately, they had endangered themselves—risky behavior in light of Shawn Shannon’s usual levelheaded approach to things.

  To keep himself together, Ty put his mouth to Shawn Shannon’s ear and said, “I won’t leave you. I promise.”

  Ty wasn’t good at thinking in other men’s shoes and had no way of knowing if his presence meant that much to the grievously ill Shawn Shannon, a strong man capable of dealing with his demise in any circumstance. Maybe he preferred that Ty let him die peacefully without drawing undue attention to his plight.

  Shawn Shannon’s blanket fell away and his hand clasped Ty’s forearm, grip weak but solid with no shaking. His lips moved and Ty lowered his head. “Thank you. That would be the same as having Owen with me. I need to sleep, pup.”

  The lieutenant dozed off with the speed of a rock striking the ground. Ty sat watching him. He had just received the biggest compliment of his life. If everything else he was to experience journeying to the grave went haywire, he would savor Shawn Shannon’s sentiments with each step he took.

  Ty pulled his legs beneath him, preparing to stand, and a hand grabbed his sleeve. A woozy Shawn Shannon wanted to say something else. Ty leaned down again. “A few of the Reb nurses are planning to escape soon.... Jack Stedman’s ugly boy may be one of them.... I overheard them. They thought I was delirious. After dark, take the stiletto hidden in my boot. Keep it out of sight, no matter what. Trust no one, ever.”

  The lieutenant’s warning wasn’t lost on Ty. If he needed a knife handy, Shawn Shannon was telling him acute danger lurked within the hospital. He couldn’t help but wonder if a chance to escape was the reason Jack Stedman’s son had become a volunteer nurse. It was common knowledge in the barracks that the absence of a stockade fence at the hospital had helped Confederate nurses escape in the past.

  Ty remembered Jack Stedman’s son had seen him with his father at the bridge building outside Chester, Ohio, and when he’d ambushed the two of them at Buffington Island. If he didn’t recognize Ty straightaway, but heard the Mattson name aloud, or saw Ty’s name, regiment, and rank on the hospital roll, he would quickly identify him and realize he hadn’t killed both his victims as he’d intended. The question was, would Jack Stedman’s son still want to extract a final measure of revenge from the Mattson family? Given his determined tone months ago at the sinks following Ty’s meeting with General Morgan, Ty was certain he wouldn’t hesitate, given the opportunity.

  Movement behind him drew his attention. He looked over his shoulder and a Confederate burial detail was lifting a body from a close-by cot on the same side of the ward as Shawn Shannon’s. Exhausted and emotionally spent, he lurched to his feet. “May I lie down there?”

  Ty couldn’t help but notice the straggly blond hair of the brown-smocked nurse with his back to him. The nurse turned about and Ty had his second up-close look at his archenemy since arriving at Camp Douglas. Bleak gray eyes as cold as wood ashes studied him from brow to heel. A smirk curled the lips of the bear trap jaw. Ty felt in his bones that his would-be assassin had already identified him. Shawn Shannon’s stiletto would be his bedmate as soon as the night lanterns were out.

  Ty kept a straight face and repeated his question. “May I have that cot?”

  The smirk on the bear trap jaw widened. “She’s yours,” the rasping voice forever etched in Ty’s memory said. “I’ll tell Lyle, the ward nurse, and the doctor where you are.”

  The burial crew departed with their burden, followed by Nurse Stedman. The fact he hadn’t been asked his name confirmed Ty’s suspicions. Jack Stedman’s son knew who he was and where he was, making him an inviting, bedridden target, bringing home Shawn Shannon’s warning full bore.

  He limped to the empty cot on wobbly knees. His little remaining strength was fading rapidly. He lifted the cot’s filthy blanket and discovered it was ripe with black scales from the deceased’s body and damp sticky spots he couldn’t identify. He gagged and would have thrown up if he’d eaten breakfast.

  Had Ty not wanted to stay near Shawn Shannon, he would have sought another cot or accommodations in another ward. He removed his tattered winter coat, eased down onto the canvas cot, and pulled the crusty blanket over him. He wrapped the sleeves of the coat around his neck, covering his nose in a vain attempt to distance himself from the gut-wrenching stink, fully appreciating in retrospect the stark cleanliness of Dr. Horatio Gates’s Pomeroy hospital.

  He looked up and saw the sky, courtesy of two holes in the roof big enough for him to crawl through. One of the two ward stoves was missing a flue pipe, indicating cold nights awaited him until the Chicago weather warmed considerably.

  During his walk through the hospital, Ty had spotted a few patients who appeared to have light cases of the pox similar to his. That wasn’t true of the patients on either side of them. Both were desperately ill, pestered by swarms of flies, talked incoherently, and stank like week-old fish. Death was near for them. Ty had been in tight, demanding situations while riding with General Morgan and had survived two gunshot wounds. Nothing had prepared him for this ugly scene.

  He was thirsty as a caravan camel abandoned in the middle of the desert, but he did not ask for water after hearing Nurse Lyle warn other pox victims that they were killing themselves by drinking it. Dinner was served from a small table in the middle of the ward by Reb nurses and a Yankee steward called Croswell. The slim meal consisted of a slice of baker’s bread and weak coffee for those able to sit up and eat from a tray. The nurse assisted the worst cases and provided them a cracker or roasted potato.

  Ty struggled into a sitting position and found he had a decent appetite. He wolfed down his food. Afterward, he made himself as comfortable as he could and tried to sleep.

  He sensed he
was out of sorts. The light-headedness that had beset him earlier returned. He didn’t feel sick, but he feared he was going out of his mind when the rain stains on the walls transformed themselves into armed assassins. He closed his eyes and was jolted by a vision of his own funeral—a freshly dug grave surrounded not by family members and friends, but by a slack-faced Confederate burial detail. A different funeral vision intervened and he was in the graveyard of the Elizabethtown Baptist Church, the crowd composed of church elders and parishioners listening raptly to a solemn, pastoral eulogy beneath a bright sunny sky. The name on the gravestone read, Enoch Wentsell Mattson. Ty popped his eyes open and the would be assassins were gone, replaced on the wall by the outline of a woman dressed in black, with a black mourning veil hiding her face.

  Ty’s body quaked. He kept his eyes open, wanting nothing more to do with visions of funerals and mourners. Was what he’d imagined a portent of the future? Would he die at Camp Douglas and be dumped into a mass grave? Had he lost his grandfather? Was Dana Bainbridge the mourning woman? If so, how had she learned of his death?

  It was too much to grasp at once. To keep from screaming aloud, he concentrated on an entirely different subject—the stiletto in Shawn Shannon’s boot, thrilled he could center his whole attention on something real.

  Mind locked, feelings numbed, he stared at the holes in the ceiling, waiting for lights-out. At midnight, a tall beanpole in a Yankee uniform extinguished the wicks of the two oil lanterns hanging from ceiling beams. Ty scanned the ward and noted that Nurse Lyle and the guards were out of the room.

  Not trusting his legs, he rolled off the cot and came to rest on his knees. Fortunately, the patients between Ty’s bunk and Shawn Shannon’s were either asleep or too sick to care what Ty was about.

  As weak as a newborn calf, the crawling Ty reached the lieutenant’s cot and pulled his boots from beneath it. Ty ran his hands over them and found what felt like a stiff rod inside the right boot. His probing forefinger encountered a hard knob. The stiletto was sheathed in a cloth pouch sewn into the leather. He knew instinctively that locating the stiletto on the outward side of the leg allowed a right-handed person to retrieve it with a quick bend and grab.

  With his thumb and two fingers, he slid the long, thin knife from its sheath. Careful not to cut himself, Ty inspected the stiletto. The narrow blade was razor sharp, its tip pointed as a needle, and the guard an inch wider than the blade. It was a lethal weapon, with which Ty had no experience.

  At that moment, he was resting on his knees, hunched down, facing the wall behind Shawn Shannon’s cot. Without any warning, someone grabbed his shoulder. Certain a guard had discovered him, Ty dropped the stiletto into the lieutenant’s boot, thinking he would act delirious and avoid any stronger charge than stealing from a fellow patient, if that.

  “That you, pup?” the lieutenant asked in his wheezing whisper, tightening his grip on Ty.

  Ty stopped holding his breath before his lungs burst. “Yes, sir,” he whispered in return, raising his head above the rail of Shawn Shannon’s cot.

  The lieutenant tugged on Ty’s sleeve, signaling Ty needed to bring his ear closer to the lieutenant’s mouth. “The stiletto is a wicked blade. Aim for the bottom of the breastbone and thrust upward hard as you can. Hit the heart and your attacker’s a goner. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir, bottom of the breastbone, thrust hard.”

  Shawn Shannon clung to Ty. “I’m poorer every hour. Don’t fret over me . . . and don’t quit on that Bainbridge daughter. She’s got more sand . . . than the two of us together.”

  “I won’t, sir,” Ty responded. “I won’t.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Even with the stiletto at his hip, Ty’s nerves were too frayed for him to rest. On top of that, the ceiling lanterns were relit to accommodate the continual coming and going of the nurses and a burial party between three in the morning and dawn. Ty was too new to the hospital to ignore what was happening around him. Four patients died in that brief span of time. One of the deceased occupied the cot beside Shawn Shannon.

  Ecstatic over his good fortune, Ty didn’t ask anyone’s permission to move. He limped to the empty cot and settled himself on the rough canvas. The blankets he inherited were much cleaner, with minimal scales and stains. The poor fellow hadn’t spent much time in the cot before dying.

  Shawn Shannon was asleep and Ty didn’t wake him. He winced at the severe swelling of the Ranger’s face and the rattle in his throat. Ty was relieved that he hadn’t yet developed the sore throat or back pain affecting the lieutenant. The bumps breaking out on his cheeks were not thick, and those scattered on his hands and the rest of his body were small in number. He did find he had to spit a great deal into the spit boxes, located a mere two feet from the top of his cot, to clear his throat.

  At midmorning, Nurse Lyle, offering no objection to Ty’s new location, gave him two teaspoons of a light liquid that had no notable taste. He left the medicine bottle and spoon with Ty. “Same dose, three times a day. It’s called Number Two. You appear to have a light case, but you need to rest and let the pox run its course. The doctor makes his rounds in the afternoon.”

  The morning meal was the same as the evening before. Ty was still hungry afterward. Nurse Lyle informed him that a woman selling milk and buttermilk for ten cents per quart came within a few yards of the hospital at midmorning. At noon, a different vendor had apples and cakes for sale. Nurses purchased and delivered these items at no charge to patients with coin money. Ty had a genuine craving for milk, but his funds were resting in the commissary bank and he had no one to bring money to him. His nerves finally settled and he dozed off, smacking his lips in his sleep as he dreamed about Miss Lydia’s cinnamon-dusted custard.

  He slept beyond lunch. Dr. Craig awakened him during his rounds and confirmed Nurse Lyle’s diagnosis. “You have a light case and should be out of here in a few weeks. Except for bodily functions, stay in bed and rest.”

  Ty had to ask. He nodded toward Shawn Shannon’s cot. “What about the lieutenant? Will he recover?”

  Dr. Amos Craig sighed. “His chances are slim to none. The pox has a real hold on him. Disease doesn’t fight fair. It ravages as it pleases. Our saving grace is vaccine, when it works. When it doesn’t, we have an ongoing epidemic and the healthiest and strongest of men perish with the famished and the weak. That’s what makes medicine a damnably hard field to pursue, young man. Despite all our training, there’s much we don’t know, and a good physician wants every patient to survive. Believe you me, every patient lost takes its toll on a caring heart.”

  Closing his satchel, Dr. Craig said, “Make sure to take your medicine and comfort your lieutenant the best you can. No man deserves to pass away alone amongst strangers.”

  Over the next week, Ty hovered and prayed over Shawn Shannon like a hawk circling its prey. He sat on the rail of his cot every hour he was awake. Whether it was good for him or not, Ty had water available for him around the clock with the cooperation of Nurse Lyle. On the fourth day of the week, the lieutenant depleted his failing strength extracting a promise for Nurse Lyle that Ty was to inherit his boots. On the fifth day, the lieutenant could eat only little nibbles of cracker and lost the ability to speak. By the seventh day, Ty was certain he was no longer coherent. Not once had Shawn Shannon whined, complained, or shown his pain.

  Ty watched his mentor and best friend waste away for another three days. Toward the end of the lieutenant’s suffering, Ty adopted the notion that a soldier with the deep pride of Shawn Shannon, accustomed to playing a vital role in whatever endeavor he undertook, preferred death to life as a disfigured, chronically weakened shell of himself dependent on others for sustenance. That reconciliation of his feelings kept Ty from breaking down completely the morning he clasped Shawn Shannon’s fingers and discovered they were cold as ice.

  When the burial detail and Nurse Lyle answered his summons, he pleaded with them to let him accompany them to the graveyard. Nurse Lyle denied hi
s request. “It’s for your own good. The weather’s foul and you’re not well. Lad, take my word for it, the pox graveyard isn’t a place for sane people. I was plagued by nightmares for weeks after one visit and I have a strong stomach. I’ll have the guards tie you down, if necessary.”

  After the burial detail removed Shawn Shannon’s body, a dispirited Ty plopped on his cot and stared at those familiar holes in the roof of the ward. Lord, how he wished he had wings to soar through them to freedom, the miseries of Camp Douglas a forgotten chapter of his part in the war.

  It hurt him terribly that he was unable to arrange a proper burial for his best friend, as Shawn Shannon had his father, and he hated that Shawn’s demise and quick removal transpired so quickly that there hadn’t been time to arrange for a man of the cloth to say a few words over him. Ty’s resolve not to cry evaporated and he sobbed with his hands covering his mouth to keep anyone from hearing.

  Would he ever again experience a fortnight of more joy than grief?

  With only himself to worry about, Ty’s prime goal was to secure a release from the ward and return to Barrack Ten, for nursing Shawn Shannon had kept his attention elsewhere and helped him hold the stark reality of his surroundings at bay. With the lieutenant’s passing, however, the horrific everyday events and conditions of the ward attacked his senses with a vengeance.

  The wailing of groaning, dying men, the pleadings of out-of-their-minds patients for forgiveness of sin and a return to the bosoms of their mothers and the arms of their loved ones, and the endless procession of nurses and burial details with their crude coffins, made sleep nearly impossible. Rotting human bodies, unwashed bedclothes, human waste, and the very air of the ward exuded a raw stench that had Ty longing for the outside world with its clean bathing water and glimpses of sunlight. It intrigued him that the religious paper with the stars and stripes on its masthead delivered to each patient was used mainly for keeping flies off their faces and was seldom read, in some curious way confirming the ungodliness of the pox hospital.