Harrison tossed the paper back on the desk. “I’ve read enough.”
“Well? What have you to say to these charges?”
“I never saw any such profiteering from the citizens. It could be that this writer, Lorenzo J. Ellis, found a few people demanding compensation, but this is not the norm. On the whole, everyone I came in contact with sacrificed everything they could for the emergency. I suspect many of them will never recover from it.”
Boris lit a cigar, inhaled, sent tangy blue smoke curling into the air. “That’s not a story.”
“Perhaps not a story that will sell, but it’s a story, all right.”
“Well, in this business, Mr. Caldwell, we print stories that make money. I sent you to a battle. I want a battle story. Samuel Wilkeson’s report is the talk of the nation.”
“He had a son in battle.”
“And lucky for the Times, he died there. Apparently had to amputate his own leg with a penknife first!” Boris picked up the Times with a flourish and began reading: “‘How can I write the history of a battle when my eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendently absorbing interest—the dead body of my oldest born son, caused by a shell in a position where the battery he commanded should never been sent, and abandoned to die in a building where surgeons dared not to stay?’” Boris peered over the top of the paper. “Beat that.”
“Beat it!” Harrison was out of his chair now, pacing in the cramped, smoky office. “He lost his son! I can’t ‘beat’ that. I’m not writing about the dead. I’ve had enough dead to last me a lifetime.”
“Then what in the Sam Hill will you write about? What you gave me tonight won’t sell papers.”
“But it’s a story that needs to be told. Not all the glory should go to the dead. So much is required of the living, and so much of that from civilians, women and children!”
Boris leaned back in his chair and threw his feet up on the desktop with a clunk, cigar smoke swirling around his head. “I’ll make you a deal. You write me a Gettysburg battle story that sells papers, and I’ll print your little story about the sacrificing civilians.”
“And then I’m off battles all together. Until I’m ready again. I need a change of pace.”
And scenery. Harrison crossed to the window and looked past the classical façade of Girard’s National Bank across the street, until his gaze rested on the spire of Independence Hall, just two blocks beyond it. Birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and home of the famous Liberty Bell.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Harrison mused aloud. “Both North and South point to our revolutionary founding fathers to justify their points of view. But it was Northern abolitionists who made the State House bell their icon, renaming it the Liberty Bell for its inscription.” Growing up in Philadelphia, Harrison knew it well: PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF. LEVITICUS XXV X.
Boris heaved a sigh. “States rights. Slavery. Either way, it’s all about liberty. But enough about that.” He waved a hand, swirling the smoke above his head. “What kind of story did you have in mind next? After your Gettysburg articles, that is.”
The Liberty Bell Harrison pictured in his mind dissolved as he thought of Liberty Holloway. And Bella.
He was on to something. If he could just connect the pieces of the puzzle… “Fanny Kemble’s journal.”
“A book review?” Boris scoffed. “Too late, already done.”
“No, to follow up what happened next. What happened to the slaves she mentions in the journal? Where are they now?”
Boris chewed on the end of his cigar for a moment. “Do you have a lead?”
“I believe I do. Right here in Pennsylvania.”
“If you can deliver a story like that, Caldwell, you’ll make us both rich.”
Not to mention famous.
Holloway Farm, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Tuesday, July 7, 1863
In his dream, Silas Ford was whole again, riding a horse bareback through the wooded hills of Tennessee, his father on his own horse beside him. Sunshine spilled through towering hemlocks, splashing his skin with warmth, infusing him with joy. Then his father’s horse veered off the trail. Silas chased after him, but found only darkness. A jackal latched on to his right leg and—
“Johnny. Can you hear me? Johnny.”
Silas awoke with a start and sat up on the barn floor, half-expecting to see a wild animal on his leg.
But there was no leg at all. Only pain. He reached past the stump of his right thigh and waved his hand through the air where his leg should have been. Silas grimaced, felt his face pull tight over his teeth as pain bit the leg that wasn’t there, tore at it, chewed on it, stabbed it with a red hot poker. He squeezed his eyes shut, felt the warmth of a hand on his back.
“Do you need morphia?”
He could barely breathe, let alone answer Liberty. He felt her presence, hovering over him, watching his mute agony, his shoulders hunched over his butchered leg. He wanted no audience.
“Breathe, Johnny.”
He had not realized he held his breath. He concentrated on breathing in, breathing out. In. Out.
The invisible jackal clamped down his absent calf again, and Silas gripped the end of his stump, sending fiery darts shooting up the short distance to his hip. It was like having a nail driven into his palm and only being able to hold his wrist instead. Useless! Panic bloomed in his veins, swelled in his chest.
“Where is the pain? At the bottom of the stump, or is it higher? Please, tell me if you can, Johnny, we must know if there is some infection further up.”
“Don’t touch me.” He gasped out the words, tasting their bitterness as they left his mouth.
“I’m trying to help.”
He didn’t look at her. He wished she would not look at him. The muscles in his jaw bunched as he clenched his teeth against the pain.
The pain is in the air near my stump. If he told her the truth, she would think he was crazy. He almost believed it himself.
The pain seeped away now, until he could stand to open his eyes.
Liberty was still there, striped with sunlight that fell through the barn planks. “I came to see if you’d like soft bread and beef tea, compliments of the Christian Commission. But you seem like you need the doctor.” A warm breeze played with the curls that had escaped her snood, and carried with it the smell of fresh bread and chloride of lime. Someone was disinfecting the property.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You must eat.” She sat on her heels next to him on the straw-covered floor.
“I have no appetite.” For anything. Silas turned his head away and stared at a row of abbreviated men, asleep.
“Please, Johnny.”
Why wouldn’t she leave?
“Tell me what you want me to do. I’ll help you however I can. May I see your—bandages?”
“I don’t want your help. You’ve done enough.” He glanced at her face and saw that the words he’d flung at her had hit their mark, embedded themselves like shrapnel in her heart.
Her face hardened as she looked down at the rejected offering in her hands. But still, she would not leave.
Pain sharpened his tongue and he thrust again. “You told me that you’ve always felt so guilty for not seeing your husband after you heard he’d been injured.”
She raised glittering blue eyes to his. Nodded.
“But who asked you to come?”
“The nurse wrote to me and—”
“Exactly. It was the nurse. Not your husband. He didn’t want to see you. He didn’t want you to see him. Did you ever consider that you were doing him a favor by staying away?”
“How do you know that? Why would you say such a thing?” Lines deepened in her forehead. Her chin trembled.
His heart galloped in his chest as he twisted his weapon in her heart. “Because I don’t want to see you. Do me a favor, Liberty, and stay away.” Truly, it was for the best.
His words grew blades, dug into her, slicing away the illusion that he would be grateful for her help, for life itself, and that they could get past this nightmare together. The joy that had surged when she realized he would survive the operation drained away now, with the idea that perhaps he had not wanted to. Or perhaps, it was just her that he no longer wanted.
Tears threatening to spill down her cheeks, Liberty studied his face. His jaw was set, but his eyes glistened, and the end of his nose was pink with emotion. He could not mean what he said, truly, could he?
“I found your letter, Johnny. It was in your clothes.”
He looked up at her, and she read a dozen questions in his eyes. “Then you know,” he said. “You know everything.”
“I do.” Her lips flattened as she watched him, waiting for more of a reaction.
None came. Until, “Then why are you still calling me Johnny?”
That was all he had to say? She cleared her throat. “I know it isn’t your given name, but it’s what you asked me to call you. It seems to fit somehow.”
He laughed through his nose, a single short puff of air. “I thought you’d be upset, considering where your loyalties lie.”
Liberty had been loyal to Levi for long enough. “Do you remember what you said to me when we first met? There’s so much more to life than death.”
“Yes. Like convalescence.” He looked at his stump, and she winced.
“Please don’t be angry.” Her voice hitched. She had not considered, in her rush to save his life, that he might not forgive her for the loss of his leg.
Johnny sighed, rubbed a hand over his face. “Forgive me for not hopping around on one leg, full of joy at my current situation.”
“Miss Liberty.” Bella stood in the barn door.
“Coming!” She turned back to Johnny. “I need to go. Should I bring back some morphia?”
“Don’t come back.” Bitterness sizzled between them. “Send it with someone else. I want another nurse.”
Anger knotted her face. “Who, Johnny? Who? Whether you like it or not, I’m all you’ve got right now, besides Bella cooking and two doctors tending more than five hundred patients. If you want a nurse at all, you’re going to have to get used to the fact that it’s got to be me.”
“I don’t want you.”
“I thought you did.”
He looked away.
Liberty left without another word, Johnny’s silent response still pulsing in her ears.
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Wednesday July 8, 1863
The ride into Gettysburg was perfectly desolate, like a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. Liberty was grateful for Bella’s presence beside her on the buckboard wagon. They made the journey in silence, save for the whinny of Dr. O’Leary’s horse.
Fields once green were trampled brown and turned to marsh by the recent rains. On either side of the miry road, dead horses bloated to twice their size. Bodies began to rise from their shallow graves, uncovered by wind and rain. Fences gone, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens alike freely roamed the countryside, routing in the mounds of freshly turned earth.
The debris of battle mingled among the dead: broken gun carriages, muskets, bayonets, swords, canteens, cartridge boxes, like a strange and terrible crop. Not a single vulture circled overhead, but blankets of green flies had descended like a plague.
The odor in the countryside was nothing compared to the stink of the town. Without freely sweeping wind to clear it, the air in Gettysburg pulsed with stench. Liberty and Bella covered their noses as they rode toward the Sanitary Commission headquarters at the Fahnestock Brothers Store in The Diamond. People walked about with bottles of pennyroyal or peppermint oil beneath their noses, and kept their windows closed despite the sweltering July heat. White picket fences were perforated with balls, wooden shutters were riddled with bullet holes, brick homes spotted with the blue of lead.
Women on hands and knees scrubbed the pavement in front of their doors while others threw chloride of lime in the streets. Liberty lost track of how many yellow flags were thrust out of windows of private homes and public buildings, signaling they had been turned into hospitals. The white cornettes of visiting Sisters of Charity flapped like angels wings about their heads as they carried supplies through the streets. Regimental bands played lively tunes outside buildings crammed with wounded to drown out the cries from within.
It didn’t work.
Embalming parlors, never before seen in Gettysburg, sprouted suddenly along the main roads. One sign advertised full-service rates: $15 for embalming, $5 for a coffin, $24 for express shipment to home state. A preserved corpse stood upright in a coffin outside one parlor as proof of what the embalmer could accomplish. Ghastly.
The Sanitary Commission headquarters was an oasis of supplies for a town in grave need. Liberty recognized many of the citizens waiting in line, and imagined they were just as hungry and desperate as she was. After waiting their turn, Liberty and Bella told a Commission agent their names and location of their hospital. A round-faced young woman, blonde hair misbehaving in its disheveled bun, sat on a barrel next to the brick wall of the store, and watched. A worn carpet bag slouched at her feet, half-hidden by her green and tan gingham work dress.
“And how many Union patients have you?” A bald man with kind eyes and a white goatee asked Liberty.
She looked at Bella. She should have known the Sanitary Commission, an organization composed of Northern women, would exist to relieve the suffering of Northern men.
“How many, my dear?” he asked again.
“One.” Her heart sank at the look of surprise on his face.
“And five hundred fourteen Southern wounded,” Bella added.
His eyebrows raised. “Who is caring for these men?”
“We are,” said Liberty. “Plus a Confederate surgeon and a volunteer from the Christian Commission, a doctor from Philadelphia who has been perfectly wonderful.”
“Hey!” A man three spaces back in line came up to the front. “You’re caring for Rebels? Liberty Holloway is caring for Rebels? How could you?”
“Let’s leave the battles to the armies, not the civilians. The wounded on my farm are not my personal enemy.”
“Says who?” the man snarled. “Don’t you know what they’ve done around here? Seven families in the country have lost their barns or houses, or both. A few civilian men have been marched off as prisoners. A Rebel bullet put Jennie Wade in the ground. They looted houses, broke furniture, smashed dishes, used the parlors as privies, stole food and horses. In one house on my street, they mixed a half barrel of flour with water to make a thin paste, threw feathers into it, and threw the whole mess over everything in the house. Don’t tell me they don’t fight against civilians. Don’t give her anything! Liberty Holloway, you traitor! You copperhead! For shame!”
Liberty’s eyes narrowed in self-defense while Bella gave the man a tongue lashing. She was hungry. She was tired. And for the love of all that was holy, she needed these supplies. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of yellow as the blonde woman slid off her barrel and approached their wagon, clutching her bag.
The Commission agent guided the man back to his place in line, assuring him there was enough for everyone.
“If you’ll not give us anything, sir, we’ll just go to the Christian Commission headquarters on the other side of the square. Their line is longer, but perhaps that’s because they care deeply about relieving the suffering of the wounded, no matter from which section of the country they hail.”
“That is all very well and good, but the Sanitary Commission was formed first, and are every bit as generous, if not more so, than our sister commission.”
“Even for Confederates?”
He paused. “The women who donate their money and goods to the Sanitary Commission do so with the understanding that they will benefit the Union.”
Liberty’s face fell. The blonde woman with the carpetbag frowned, too.
; “However, we believe that we are still the United States of America.” The man’s narrow chest puffed up. “Every man is part of the Union, in that sense, whether they like it or not. You shall have what you need.” He ordered another volunteer to load into their wagon barrels and crates of items more precious than gold: bread, beef, condensed milk, sponges, combs, tooth powder, eye shades, fans, eggs, jellies, bandages, stockings, mosquito netting, drawers, shirts, and small bags of camphor to sweeten the air around one’s person.
As he loaded a crate of slippers into the wagon, he instructed her to give them to one-legged patients, first. “They’ll go twice as far that way.”
She nodded, relief flooding her. “Yes, of course. Would it be possible for us to bring supplies to the Lutheran Seminary hospital as well?” She still harbored guilt for using their medical supplies on her own Rebel patients. “It’s on the way back to our farm, and would be no trouble for us to stop.”
The agent consulted a checklist. “They’re on the list for distribution. If you’d like to take some items to them, we’d be most grateful. As long as you promise prompt delivery—no keeping these for yourself, now.”
She smiled. “You can trust me.”
He loaded more supplies in the wagon, wished them good day, and patted their horse before moving to the next in line.
“Excuse me, Miss.” The woman who’d been watching the transaction shoved a strand of blonde hair off her flushed face. “My name is Myrtle Henderson, and I’ve come from Baltimore to help, which was no easy task mind you, with the railroad still being out. Slept nary a wink all night.”
Widow of Gettysburg (Heroines Behind the Lines) Page 19
