Day Nine

by Clayton Spann

Friday, May 8

  Anna became aware of rapping. She shot fully awake from fitful sleep. But where was she? Sunlight shone on closed drapes. At home, and at the Hoges, her bedroom faced away from the morning.

  Then she knew. She was at the Chandler house. And Thomas lay dying in the cottage across the yard.

  Her eyes went to the crib. Little Julia still slept. The rapping continued.

  “Yes?” she called.

  “It’s Dr. McGuire. Sorry to wake you.”

  “Is he—?” Her throat tightened. Was he gone?

  “Little change. He did get some sleep. It’s something else. May I come in?”

  Come in? She was in her night clothes.

  “Anna, I must show you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Please, Anna. Let me in. We may be able to save him.”

  She raced into a dress. She didn’t bother to put on shoes. The baby began to stir.

  Anna opened the door. Fatigue mottled the face of the young man with the thick black mustache. Dark crescents lay beneath reddened eyes. His uniform was crumpled and his body sagged.

  Her heart went out to him. They said he had labored almost without pause since Thomas was shot.

  McGuire closed the door behind him.

  “You can save him?” She fought euphoria.

  Bitter as it was, she had resigned herself to losing Thomas. She had tried hard not to hate God, for He gave as He took. But how could the Heavenly Father take this man?

  Puzzlement clouded his face. He raised his left hand, which held something.

  “I don’t know. But—”

  The hand reached toward her and opened. She saw something black. She recoiled, thinking the thing was a baby snake.

  “Take it, Anna. They say it is a watch.”

  She hesitated, then gingerly lifted the black length from his palm. The thing was thicker at the middle than the ends. It felt somewhat like leather, but leather it was not.

  Then she saw what looked like a little window in the rounded middle. Numbers were in the window. She gasped as some of them changed—from forty-three to forty-four, forty-four to forty-five, forty-five to forty-six.

  She dropped the thing. It bounced on the throw rug.

  Behind her the baby began to whine; Julia would need feeding.

  “What is that?” Anna asked as she lifted her child from the crib.

  McGuire picked it up. “A fantastical little machine. Able to tell the date as well as time. They also showed me how use it as an alarm clock.”

  “They? Who?”

  “A man and a woman. They say they can save Thomas. I thought them fools or worse, and would have sent them away. Except for this.”

  Anna sat on the bed. Julia moved her head to cloth over her breast. She bawled on not finding flesh.

  “I have to feed her, doctor.”

  “Yes. But after may I bring the woman up?”

  “She? Where is the man in all of this? Is he a doctor?”

  “He isn’t. He says little, she did most of the talking.”

  “How can they help if he’s not a doctor?”

  “She said they have a special medicine. She showed me a bottle with powder inside.”

  “What if it’s poison?”

  Anna hated the woman already. Who had come to cruelly raise hope before dashing it.

  “He is dying, Anna. There is little they can do beyond hastening his end.”

  “This ‘watch’ has to be a trick. Or a new kind from Europe. They’re using it to get close to Thomas and hurt him.”

  McGuire shook his head. “Not even the Swiss could do this. Look.” He touched the watch.

  He brought it close. She saw three zeros in the little window. He again touched, and the zero on the right changed with blinding speed. The middle zero counted from one to two to three and on. Another touch, and the counting stopped.

  “See, it can be a chronograph too.”

  Anna stared at the black thing. If the man and woman had a timepiece like that, then perhaps they could help Thomas.

  Or perhaps they were just horrible, torturing charlatans.

  “Anna? Can I bring her up?”

  “Let me feed the baby.”

  “Of course. Ten minutes? I am sorry to press, but she says they should begin with the General soon as possible.”

  “I will call to you. But you must promise to send them away if I don’t believe her.”

  McGuire grimly nodded.

  “You had better not be a mountebank, Mrs. Wallis”, the bleary faced doctor warned. “You and your husband will be in irons.”

  Allison Naylor followed him up the broad stairway.

  “I can’t guarantee recovery.” She put a full Southern accent in her voice. It wasn’t hard.

  She grew up in rural Kentucky. The accent had been entirely authentic when she entered Yale. By the time she graduated, second in her class, she had vanquished it. She had agreed with a trusted professor that, however unfair, the sound of the south impaired prospects at the national level. Even in her sophomore year that level was her ultimate goal.

  McGuire stopped on the stairs and scowled. “You said you could cure him.”

  Below in the hallway a middle-aged woman carried a basin and towels into the parlor. That was probably Mrs. Chandler. Naylor had glimpsed wounded soldiers in the parlor.

  “His chances will be good.”

  Chances of beating the pneumonia would have been better if not for the delay south of Winchester. Getting across Federal lines had been touch and go. She planned to arrive two days ago.

  “I will not act without her agreement,” said the doctor. “You have to convince her.”

  That had been Naylor’s aim all along. She would make Mary Anna Jackson her staunchest ally. Then neither could this rightfully dubious doctor, nor anyone else, block treatment.

  The doctor knocked on a door halfway down the hallway. “Anna?”

  “Come in.”

  In the sunlit room Anna Jackson sat on a bed. She held an infant. It curiously regarded Allison and the doctor. The baby cooed softly.

  The dark haired woman looked just like her photograph. She had a fine complexion and pleasant features. But her large, bright eyes were hostile.

  “I’m Amanda Wallis, Mrs. Jackson. I will do everything in my power to save your husband.”

  “How, when no one else can?”

  “Because I have an advanced medicine.”

  Anna’s lips curled. “Do you also perform séances?”

  “I perform science. Science of the same sort that made that watch.”

  The cheap sports watch lay on the nightstand. Anna and the doctor eyed it with a mixture of wonder and abhorrence.

  Naylor cleared her throat. “What I say here—and what I do where the General lies—can never become known. On that I must have your oaths sworn to God. Or I will do nothing.”

  The doctor stiffened. “See here—“

  She put up her hand. “Your oaths. Or I leave.”

  For an eternity the only sound in the room was the murmur of the baby. Anna and the doctor exchanged fraught looks.

  “Do you want to save him, Mrs. Jackson?”

  “Of course I do! But how can we believe you? You speak the impossible.”

  The baby smiled at Naylor. She returned the smile. Then Naylor smiled at Anna.

  “As I told Dr. McGuire, I cannot promise to cure Thomas. But the odds are good. With my medicine and your husband’s fighting spirit, he may well live to see Julia grow up.”

  Anna started to cry.

  The exhausted McGuire also looked on the verge of tears. “Damn you, if you are giving us false hope.”

  Hunter McGuire, chief medical officer of Jackson’s corps, was very close to the general. Father-son aptly described their relationship. Naylor knew that McGuire’s impotence in the face of Jackson’s death spiral was now, and
would always be, the most painful experience of his long life.

  “I do not lie,” she said. “With the medicine he has a three in four chance to survive.”

  She hoped there was that much chance. In addition to his pneumonia, he may have sustained organ damage. During battlefield evacuation he had been dumped from his litter when a bearer was shot. He landed hard on his right side. Antibiotics would help little with injury to his liver or kidneys.

  Anna groaned. “I had accepted. I cannot go through having to accept again.”

  Naylor smiled. “Let me apply the treatment, Anna. We will leave it to God to do the rest.”

  Anna turned to the doctor with eyes that said you must decide.

  McGuire sighed. “I do not fully believe her. But at this stage I have never seen recovery. If one chance in a hundred exists, we should take it.”

  The baby began to squirm, and Anna softly bounced Julia on her thigh.

  Naylor yearned to say she had treatment for the daughter. Vaccine she would administer upon return in 1882. Julia was scheduled to fatally contract typhoid in 1889.

  That revelation would wait for another day.

  “We should begin soon,” Naylor prodded.

  Anna cast baleful eyes. “I must let you go to Thomas. But I swear I will harm you myself if you cause him more suffering.”

  “I promise he won’t suffer.” That is, if he didn’t prove allergic to erythromycin. She had Benadryl, but would it halt a full blown anaphylactic reaction? He could die horribly.

  The infant was becoming more agitated.

  “Go with Dr. McGuire then. I will come after I nurse her more.”

  Naylor hid relief—and jubilation. She had accomplished the hardest part, winning the chance to treat this Cromwell of the South. Now one hundred million humans might escape slaughter.

  She turned to McGuire. “You must get Dr. Morrison out of the cottage.” Morrison, cousin to Anna, was also attending the general.

  “What?”

  “He knows the General is a dead man. There are many wounded here at Guinea Station. Tell him he can better serve the cause among them.”

  “I—”

  “Neither can Dr. Tucker be permitted in the cottage.” The doctor would be shortly arriving from Richmond.

  “Tucker is an authority on pneumonia!”

  “He is just as helpless as you, doctor. Anna’s brother and Captain Smith must go too. And Chaplain Lacy.”

  “That is madness,” said Anna.

  “Only you two and his servant Jim—and later Sandie Pendleton—can witness what will now take place. Everyone else must believe he has died.”

  “That is greater madness,” said McGuire.

  “If his survival becomes known, he will face greater danger than on any battlefield.”

  They both were shaking their heads.

  “It’s true,” said Naylor. “As I have come to save him, my counterparts will come to kill him—if they learn he has escaped his scheduled death at 3:15 this Sunday afternoon.”

  Now they gaped.

  “Who are you?” Anna whispered.

  “I will explain more when we are gathered in the cottage. But now please give me your oaths. For the sake of Thomas—and the Confederacy.”

  Aaron Price made sure he tightly gripped the carpetbag as he and Allison walked with the doctor toward the white washed frame house. Dozens of people stepped out of their path. Most were soldiers. Among the civilians were reporters. Everyone wore deep concern.

  “How goes it this morning for Old Jack?” was the universal question. McGuire said pray, boys, pray. They all knew that meant the great general lay at death’s door.

  “And who are these folks?” a reporter asked with a tinge of jealousy, aware Allison had just gotten access to Anna Jackson.

  Allison piped up with her convincing drawl. “I and my husband are friends of Mrs. Jackson. We are here to give her comfort.”

  Dr. McGuire ordered the soldiers to keep civilians well away from the cottage and house. No exceptions, except for these two. His voice almost broke as he spoke.

  Price wondered if McGuire feigned the grief in his voice. Was he already playacting? Or did he still believe Stonewall Jackson was doomed?

  On the little porch of the cottage stood two men in gray uniform sipping from tin cups. Price recognized them. Both were young, both members of Jackson’s staff. The one with the goatee beard was Anna Jackson’s brother.

  McGuire stepped up. Price and Allison hung back and were unable to hear the doctor; Price knew he imparted unwelcome words. The other two officers shook their heads.

  “That’s an order,” McGuire said with raised voice. “Report to Second Corps headquarters. And make sure you tell Sandie to get here by tomorrow morning.”

  “I demand to stay by my sister’s side,” said Joseph Morrison. He tossed the remnants of his coffee on the lawn. He looked a tad less beat than McGuire.

  “Sorry, Jack. It’s—”

  McGuire paused as a train whistle intruded. A hundred yards away a southbound train rumbled past.

  Probably bringing in more casualties, thought Price. He had seen hundreds of wounded in the fields about the depot when he and Allison arrived this morning.

  McGuire continued. “This is Anna’s wish, too. She wants little disturbance as possible for the General in his last hours.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “No. You both go now. Otherwise I will have you physically removed.”

  The two staff officers glowered, muttered, then reluctantly walked away.

  Price took heart at McGuire’s firmness. The doctor must believe some. Good, for they would need him all in by Sunday.

  They entered the two-story wood building that prior to Chancellorsville had served as the plantation office. The dark plank floor creaked as they stepped into the front hall. Allison removed her bonnet and Price his felt hat.

  On either side of a stairway stood a room. The left room would be the makeshift office for the doctors. On the right, behind a closed door, had to lie the famous general.

  A bushy bearded man stepped from the office. It was Dr. Morrison. He stopped to stare at Allison and Price, then opened his mouth.

  McGuire spoke first. “Stephen, I want you to go to the depot and wait for Dr. Tucker. Tell him his services are not needed. He is welcome to remain and treat the wounded—God knows, we have enough of them. I would like you tend to them also.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You know the General will die by Sunday. A dozen more physicians won’t change that. Jim and I will handle his care.”

  “You’re half asleep on your feet.”

  McGuire straightened. “You are not to return to this cottage. It is Anna’s wish—and my order. Please, Stephen, be on your way.”

  The man did not glower but he certainly looked confused. Thankfully he collected his medical instruments and went.

  All going to plan, thought Price. Yet this was the easy part. The hard part waited behind that door.

  McGuire opened the door. Only one person was in the stark white room besides Stonewall Jackson. Jim Lewis, the general’s camp servant, sat in a wicker chair beside the patient. The black man’s head swiveled toward them.

  “How has he been?” asked McGuire.

  “Still since you give him the morphia,” said Lewis.

  With closed eyes Jackson lay face up on a four poster bed. His breathing was labored and he looked a fright. Price wondered if they were too late.

  Old Jack’s broad forehead was flushed and shiny with sweat. Purple scratches lined his cheek and jaw; the scratches reached into his thick russet beard. Bandages encased his right hand. And, of course, his left arm was missing.

  The stink of rancid sweat hung in the air. As did fainter odor of human waste, which indicated a recently changed diaper.

  “Who’s these folks?” asked Lewis.


  Allison smiled. “Jim, We have come to help the General.”

  Lewis looked to the doctor.

  McGuire nodded. “Do everything she says.”

  The former president continued to beam the famous smile that combined empathy, kindness, and strength. Since her fall, the mushrooming pack of detractors claimed the smile was only veneer. The smile hid a cunning manipulator. Some even said she was evil.

  Allison Naylor was one of the finest, most genuine individuals Price had ever known. There was not a phony bone in her body, only brave and decent ones. Yes, he loved her, but he had formed that evaluation well in advance of love.

  Lewis studied Allison and Price. The brown skinned man, big and husky, was very devoted to the general. If he proved obstinate, there could be trouble.

  But—as most people did—he succumbed to Allison’s warmth.

  “Well, ma’am, he sure can use help.”

  That was an understatement. Jackson had undergone a very rough time since getting shot in three places Saturday night. In addition to a brutal fall, he almost bled to death on his way to a field hospital. By lamp glow McGuire had amputated Jackson’s arm.

  This Monday Jackson endured a twenty-seven mile journey over rough roads to Guinea Station. The stoic general complained little, but his strength was further drained. By Wednesday the first signs of pneumonia appeared.

  When his wife arrived yesterday, his condition had markedly deteriorated. He was nauseous and in constant pain. Ominously, the pain did not emanate from the stump of his arm, but from his right side—where he landed when thrown from his litter. The general had drifted into delirium. He began to babble orders to his division commanders.

  “Let’s begin,” said Allison. “Jim, let me sit where you are.”

  As Lewis rose, he glanced at Price. No doubt Lewis was wondering why Allison was doing all the talking and directing instead of Price.

  Let Lewis—and McGuire—think whatever they wanted. From the start of their relationship Price never had any trouble with Allison’s bent to take charge. That’s who this extraordinary woman was. Price was secure enough in his own skin to not mind a whit.

  A rap on the door.

  “It’s me. Anna. May I come in?”

  Price cracked the door and checked to make sure she was alone.

  “You’re the husband?” she asked. Her tone did not convey trust. She held a balled fist at her throat.

  “Yes, Mrs. Jackson. I’m Robert Wallis.” He opened the door and she swept in. She went to stand over her unconscious husband.

  For a moment the ticking of the pendulum clock on the fireplace mantle dominated the room. Then Allison’s voice again commanded.

  “Anna, please move aside. Aaron, get me a catheter and wipes. Doctor, I will need you and Jim to keep the General stationary.” She sat and scooted the chair nearer Jackson’s wrist. “Doctor, get behind me and make sure his arm stays still. Jim, same for his shoulders.”

  Everyone moved accept McGuire. His eyes narrowed as he regarded Price.

  “I believe you introduced yourself as Robert.”

  This was the first time Allison had addressed him in public as Aaron. He knew this incredibly disciplined woman had to be mortified at the slip, though her face revealed nothing. The slip indicated a mind totally fixed on the critical medical procedures at hand. Procedures they had intensely studied but never performed.

  “That is my middle name, doctor.” Price feigned gruffness as he pulled the items from the carpetbag.

  “My apologies, sir. I—never mind.”

  “Why does he need to be held?” asked Anna Jackson. “What are you going to do to him?”

  “Nothing painful. But he must remain still, especially his arm.”

  Allison tore open an alcohol wipe and rubbed it over the general’s wrist. She then unsheathed the catheter. She bent close, seeking a well defined vein. She hunted and hunted.

  She sat back. She put the cap back on the catheter needle. She took a deep breath, then spoke with calmness Price knew she did not feel. “Aaron, the tie please.”

  Price removed a length of thin brown rubber from the bag. Allison wrapped it tightly around Jackson’s forearm. Then she hunted again. This time she liked what she saw and inserted the needle. She released the tie.

  That was step one. A simple task for 21st Century medical personnel. But he bet their hands would have shaken if they knew millions of lives depended on getting insertion right.

  Price handed Allison an IV bag. Everyone stared at the clear plastic filled with liquid.

  “My God, what is that?” McGuire asked.

  “It is called saline solution,” said Allison. “The General has lost a lot of blood and other fluids. The solution will help him recover.”

  Price began to assemble the IV stand. Their audience gaped at that, too.

  When stand was set up he hung the bag. He attached one end of an infusion line to the bag. When fluid began to drip from the other end, Allison attached it to the catheter. With tape she secured the line to Jackson’s forearm.

  Price and Allison now prepared the antibiotic. With a hypodermic they injected distilled water into a vial of powered erythromycin. After mixing, she drew the antibiotic into the hypo. She inserted the hypo into a port on the catheter and slowly pushed in the plunger.

  Jackson stirred and softly spoke nonsense. Fortunately he did not thrash. No one else in the room said a word. Price and Allison were too focused on the procedure, and those born in the 1800’s too astounded at what they watched.

  When Allison at last withdrew the hypo, Price noticed a new expression on the face of Anna Jackson. It was hope.

  Naylor stepped from the cottage porch into evening twilight. She needed fresh air. She needed sleep more, but that would have to wait. Long hours of vigilance lay ahead.

  She should pardon the expression, but it still could all go south. Jackson had shown little improvement. He continued to slip in and out of delirium. At least she had not brought on immediate disaster. No sign of allergic reaction.

  Nor of hemorrhage. That had been a prime worry, that the dose of heparin would cause bleeding internally or from his stump. She had agonized about the heparin. There was no certainty he had a pulmonary embolism, but if one existed it must be destroyed.

  But she had come out here for a break from that. She should enjoy the evening, it was a balmy one. The sky still held enough light for her to appreciate the wildflowers that ran all the way to the railroad. The crickets were—

  “Beg pardon, ma’am,” called a voice.

  A pair of tattered soldiers, forage caps in hand, stood just beyond the white picket fence that ran from the cottage to the main house. Fading light and long beards failed to disguise their age. Both soldiers were so young. Both were so gravely concerned.

  “Yes, boys?”

  “Any word ‘bout the General, ma’am?”

  “Dr. McGuire says he is sinking.” She let her voice catch.

  Their shaggy heads slumped to their chests.

  How these boys loved their general. How all his men did. Stonewall Jackson marched them half to death, then fought them to the death. Yet any soldier in his corps would gladly replace their leader on that deathbed.

  “Any hope at all?” asked the boy with a white scar across the cheekbone of his deeply tanned face.

  “It is in God’s hands, boys.”

  The soldiers would believe that. The whole Army of Northern Virginia would, from Lee on down. God, not Jackson’s immune system, would determine his fate.

  Naylor believed in a Supreme Being, but she believed Him or Whoever quite deaf to human entreaty. Long ago she concluded Homo sapiens would determine its own fate. Which suited her just fine.

  The soldiers nodded, then excused themselves.

  None of the other score of soldiers nearby approached her. They had obviously seen the reaction of their two comrades
. They merely tipped their caps as she strolled about the side yard.

  Her heart ached for these young men. Half of them would either die or be maimed. The South, with its much smaller population, truly would lose the flower of its youth in this abominable conflict.

  Death, death, death. It feasted mercilessly on both sides. In two years a quarter of a million men had fallen. In the two years remaining—unless she and Aaron could short circuit it—the war would kill another four hundred thousand.

  Why did men make war? They said they hated it, but they kept coming back for more. Heroin addiction would be easier for men to break.

  If women were the heads of state, wars would not happen. Men liked to jest about women’s fights—the cat fights—but women would never send their husbands and sons to the battlefield. Her sex would talk it out, find a way to keep swords in scabbards.

  She had committed her presidency to permanently sheathing the swords. Last month she had come within a hair of success. It was men who had sabotaged that effort, while women worked with her to break the swords in half. Women were the life givers, men the life takers. Men were the curse—though she had loved and did love individual men.

  She did not love Abraham Lincoln. It was a travesty history honored him. His self-righteous obstinacy had killed two-thirds of a million Americans. In addition he had trampled on the Constitution, sanctioned scorched earth warfare, and in actuality left blacks worse off. She had never said it to anyone, but Lincoln richly deserved the bullet Booth put in his brain.

  If she had been president in 1861, she would have prevented this carnage and destruction. It was so simple, really. Keep Virginia in the Union. Lincoln had been advised that, and still he went ahead with provoking war.

  Virginia was the most populous and prestigious state of the South. It contained the bulk of Southern industry. Perhaps most importantly, the state possessed two especially devoted sons. If Virginia had not seceded, Robert E. Lee would have remained a loyal Army officer and Thomas J. Jackson a professor at VMI.

  In the days before the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, Virginia delegates had voted two to one to reject secession. Lincoln still refused to evacuate the fort. By that act he knowingly guaranteed that Virginia—along with Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina—would join the seven states already gone. He guaranteed all-out war to the death.

  If she had been president, she would have abandoned Fort Sumter. She would have not called for 75,000 volunteers to “suppress combinations”. Not a single Federal soldier would have set foot on the soil of the truncated Confederacy. She would instead have relied on naval blockade to restore the Union.

  The seven departed states would soon find their cotton worthless. Planter after planter would find their slaves no longer the engine of prosperity but rather an insupportable burden. With no threat of invasion to rally the populace, the threat of impoverishment would cool Southern pride and passion.

  As president she would pick off the seven recalcitrants one by one. She would concentrate first on Texas. If the underdeveloped state rejoined the Union, it would receive vast funds for roads, railroads and canals. She would also make good all economic loss incurred by the blockade. And if Texas so wished, she would fast track its division into five states, which would give it eight more senators.

  With Texas gone and their livelihood withering, the remaining six states would return to the fold. All at once or one by one, it did not matter. They would come. And loss of life would be trifling.

  Yes, slavery would still exist. But she would ensure that the “peculiar institution” also withered. She would pay owners double, even triple, market value to give a slave his freedom. By turn of the century emancipation should be nearly complete. All again, with little bloodshed.

  Oh, why couldn’t Lincoln have taken this path? Why hurl vast armies at the Confederacy when a blockade and gold could have done the same job? Why make the nation bleed and suffer so grievously, so unnecessarily?

  She groaned.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  She turned to see another soldier. Another underfed boy in ragged homespun. Full of concern and goodwill, and fresh from shooting and clubbing and bayoneting other boys. Another of the Killer Angels.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

  The soldier lingered. Behind him rose the red brick walls and chimneys of the Chandler house. In the twilight the brick took on the color of dried blood.

  This adolescent sported long, bushy sideburns. “If you would, ma’am, tell Old Jack the boys of his brigade want back him in the saddle. Tell him we still need him to whip the Yanks.”

  “You are with the Stonewall Brigade?”

  Jackson had commanded his namesake brigade at the first battle of Bull Run. The brigade began the counterattack that eventually routed the Federal forces. When Jackson reluctantly left the brigade to assume higher command, he gave an impassioned farewell speech. He promised the men they would always rank first in his heart.

  “Yes, ma’am. 33rd Virginia.”

  “I will pass along your encouragement. Though I must tell you, I fear he will not command again.”

  Another head hung. She heard a muffled sob. Maternal instinct swept, and she nearly embraced the boy. Instead she patted his shoulder.

  It was not until the second repetition of “Amanda” that Naylor realized she was being addressed. She turned to see Aaron leaning out the window of Jackson’s room. He urgently waved for her to come.

  What was wrong?