by P. G. Nagle
“Yes, I do, Thompson,” he said, glancing up from his desk. “Sit down a minute.”
She sat, waiting for him to finish a letter. A dispatch pouch sat waiting on the corner of his desk. The general finished writing and sealed his letter, sliding it into the pouch before tying it shut and handing it to Emma.
“Sad news about Jamie,” he said. “He had a brilliant career ahead of him.”
Emma stared at him, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t he tell you? He’s resigned his commission. His letter’s in there, with the others. Has to take his wife back to Scotland. She’s ill, you know.”
Emma felt as if the world had tilted beneath her.
“Yes, I know,” she said faintly.
She managed to get out of the office without disgracing herself, though General Poe looked at her a little oddly. She rode hard for headquarters, only slowing for the sake of the horse. The pouch she carried burned in her heart, and she had wild thoughts of throwing it into the river, then jumping in after it.
She was too much a creature of duty, however. She delivered the dispatches and returned to camp at a more modest pace, too numb to be angry. After tending her horse she went to her tent. Jamie was there, pacing. He turned as she came in.
“Thompson. I—I must tell you—”
“General Poe told me.”
“Oh.”
They stood staring at each other. Emma felt the tears she had held back all day rising. She couldn’t fight them any more.
“Why?” she said. “Why resign? You spoke of taking a furlough—”
“General Poe refused. You were right.”
“But when you explained—”
“He is not in a position to grant them, he told me. I had no choice—I have to go.”
She stood staring, tears running down her face. Jamie came toward her, drew her to him.
“Emma, I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“No!”
She pulled away, gasping, and ran from the tent, wiping at her face as she fled. Wishing to avoid others, she went into the woods and walked there until she was calmer. She remembered being lost in the Chickahominy swamp, and laughed bitterly at herself, the laughter turning to a fit of coughing. She was just as lost now as she had been then, not in flesh, but in her soul.
She came out of the woods, finding herself near the Second’s camp. She thought of seeking Jerome, then the chaplain, but decided neither could help her. In the end, she returned to her tent. Jamie was not there, nor did he return that evening. She lay alone, fevered and unable to sleep, and by morning she felt truly ill.
She saw little of Jamie for the next few days. He spent his nights elsewhere—in the 79th’s camp, she learned from a comment she heard there while delivering mail—though his things remained in their tent.
She went about her duties in a haze of numbness, and lay at night tossing in her bed, unable to rest. Jerome noticed her heavy-eyed appearance and commented upon it. She told him she thought she was suffering a relapse of malaria, and spent her spare hours in her tent.
One day a shell burst in camp just outside her tent, killing and wounding several soldiers nearby, and sending fragments of shell and a cloud of smoke into the tent. A freakish accident, and it broke Emma’s spirit. She wept inconsolably, for hours at a time. For two days she was unable to deliver the mail.
On the third day she dragged herself up and went to headquarters, returning with her mule heavily laden. She sorted all the mail and took the headquarters mail to deliver, placing several letters in the General’s hands.
“Thank you, Thompson.”
He seemed preoccupied, and Emma, feeling unusually sensitive, dared to speak. “Is something troubling you, sir?”
He glanced at her, blinking. “Yes. I am leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“I’ll be announcing it tomorrow. The Senate has declined to approve my promotion to Brigadier. As I resigned my Colonelcy to accept it, I now have no position in the volunteer army. I’m going back to the Engineers.”
“Oh, sir!”
“No one is more sorry than I.” Poe smiled sadly and offered his hand. “Good luck to you, Thompson.”
Emma shook it, numb with despair. Her comfortable world was crumbling around her. The next general—the next colonel of the Second, for that matter—might not be so generous a friend.
She walked slowly back to her tent, trying to imagine a life without Poe, without Jamie. She saw only blackness before her.
Jamie was there, sitting at the table, writing. He put down his pen when Emma came in.
“General Poe is leaving,” she said.
“I heard.”
She sat on her bed, gazing around the tent that had been her home for six months. Some other home, next. Such changes had never bothered her before, but now she felt unwilling to let go.
Jamie rose and quietly came to join her. He sat beside her and took her hand. She wanted to pull it away—her anger rose to choke her—but she sat still.
“Can we not part friends?” he asked softly.
“You are the one who is leaving.”
“I have no choice. You know that.”
“There is always a ch—”
A fit of coughing seized her. Jerome waited in silence, his hand clasping hers tightly. He knew that he could do nothing for her.
Nothing. Nothing was left.
She regained control of her voice. “There is always a choice. It isn’t that you can’t choose. It’s that you won’t.”
She stood up, pulling her hand away. Anger flashed in his eyes, but she no longer feared his anger. She was too full of grief to feel anything else.
She left the tent and stumbled away, dizziness assailing her. She walked on, not daring to admit how truly unwell she felt.
As she drifted toward the Second’s camp, she felt her carefully constructed world coming apart. Her friends and supporters, leaving. Her health abandoning her. She coughed again, and pictured herself lying feverish in her tent, no one there to guard her. If she were to become delirious, and be carried to the hospital, it would mean an ignominious end to her career.
She paid a visit to Chaplain Brown before seeking out Jerome. She said nothing of import to either of them, only that she had been unwell, and was sorry to grieve them with her absence. Chaplain Brown accepted her words at face value, but Jerome was more alert.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked.
She shook her head, smiling. “No, but thank you, Jerome. I’ll always remember your kindness.”
He gave an exasperated laugh. “Well, you’re not dying, anyway!”
“Not quite.”
She left him, and went back to brigade headquarters, to the hospital there. She sought out the Chief Surgeon, whom she found in his office.
“Dr. Bonine.”
“Thompson! Come in, dear boy. Sit down. How are you faring?”
“Not very well, sir. I think it’s the malaria again.”
“Let me give you some quinine.”
“I had rather you gave me a furlough.”
Dr. Bonine looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Are you that ill?”
Emma blinked back sudden tears. “Indeed, I am quite ill. I need time to recover. Please, sir, will you help me?”
“I would, with all the will in the world, but there are no furloughs being issued just now.”
Emma closed her eyes, unsurprised. She’d had to try, though.
“You do look pale. Let me have a look at you.”
Emma stood up hastily. “Thank you, sir, but there’s no need. I know what is the matter.”
Dr. Bonine frowned up at her in concern. “You never would let anyone help you, for all the help you gave others.”
“I’m best on my own, sir.”
“I heard you had injured your leg.”
“It’s better now. Thank you, sir,” she said, and left.
Jamie was not in the tent when she returned to it. She w
as glad; nothing more could be gained by talking with him. She pulled out her cracker box, took her remaining watches, her Bible, and her letters, few as they were. A handful from Miss Daphne, the rest from Jerome. She tucked them into her pocket, and picked up the volume of Burns that Jamie had given her.
It was a handsome book, indeed. Red leather binding with gilt letters. She had spent hours enjoying its contents, all the more because it was a gift.
She pushed the cracker box away, stood up, and walked over to Jamie’s cot. Laying the book in the precise center of it, she stood over it for a moment, then turned and walked out of the tent.
She didn’t stop walking until she reached Cairo.
Washington, D.C., 1883
You shouldn’t have left the book.”
Emma looked up at Jamie, roused from her musings. He had been silent a long time, and she knew he was thinking back also. She gazed at him, marking the changes in him, the lines on his face and the silver in his hair. For all that, he was the same.
“Why not?” she said. “It is customary to return gifts when one ends a connection.”
“But it angered me. If you hadn’t left it I wouldn’t have gone to Robbins.”
Emma felt heat rising into her cheeks. “And told him everything about us.”
“I’m not proud of it.”
She sighed. “Well, it doesn’t matter now.”
“Did he ever forgive you?”
“No.”
She stood, walking slowly a few paces to stretch out her aching leg and foot. Jamie stood up as well and she paused. He stepped toward her.
“Let me take you to dinner, for old times’ sake.” A corner of his mouth curved upwards. “I’ll take you to Willard’s.”
Emma sighed. “I am married, Jamie. And so are you.”
His smiled faded. “My wife died in Scotland.”
“Oh.” She could not bring herself to say she was sorry. “You never remarried?”
He shook his head, and the glint in his eye was one she remembered. She repressed a shiver, not entirely of fear.
The door into the congressman’s office opened, and a stream of visitors and secretaries, including Mr. Glass, emerged. Emma watched the majority of them leave, then stepped up to the desk. Mr. Glass glowered at her and pointedly took out his watch.
“It is seven-thirty, ma’am. The congressman is seeing no one else today.”
Jamie came up as well, walking around the desk. “I’ve remembered something I wished to say to him. It will just take a moment.”
He smiled—his most engaging smile—and slipped past the secretary, who allowed it. Emma clenched her teeth in frustration.
“May I make an appointment for tomorrow, then?” she asked. “I can come as early as you like, and will take only a few minutes of the congressman’s time.”
Mr. Glass frowned, and reluctantly turned a page in the appointment book that lay open on his desk. He was still peering at it when footsteps sounded, coming from the office.
Emma looked up to see Jamie returning, his arm through that of an older man. Congressman Cutcheon was tall, with white hair and whiskers and apple-rounded cheeks. She saw in him the shadow of a younger man, a major in the army.
“Here she is,” Jamie said, gesturing to Emma.
She looked at him, wondering what he’d done now. Did his thirst for vengeance live on, even after twenty years?
The congressman stepped up to Emma, peering at her face. She returned his gaze, unsure whether it would be wise to smile.
“By Jove! So it is! Frank Thompson!”
Emma swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“I remember how you rode through a hail of bullets all day at Fredericksburg! You know, we wondered what became of you in Lebanon. Not like Thompson to desert, we all said!”
“No … well. I had my reasons.”
“You should listen to them,” Jamie said. “It’s a fascinating story.”
“Well, and so I shall!” Cutcheon took her hand, patting it. “Come and dine with me, Mrs.—Seelye, was it? And tell me all about it!”
Emma felt hope rising in her. She glanced at Jamie. “Thank you, sir.”
“You come, too, Reid,” said Cutcheon. “We’ll have a good talk about old times!”
Jamie met Emma’s gaze and held it a moment, then his eyelids drooped lazily. “Thank you, sir, but I’m otherwise engaged this evening. I feel certain that Mr. Seelye would like to join you.”
The congressman stepped aside to speak to his secretary. Jamie retrieved his hat from the chair where he’d left it. Emma took a step toward him.
“Thank you, Jamie.”
He smiled, the crooked smile. The heartbroken smile. Emma watched him turn and walk out of the room.
He was like her. He never looked back.
Author’s Note
Anyone who undertakes to write about Emma Edmonds, whether in fiction or non-fiction, must inevitably speculate. For some aspects of her life there are no records; others are documented, but sometimes only in hints, and her own memoir is an inextricable blend of fact and fiction.
What is certain is that she enlisted in the 2nd Michigan Volunteers as Private Franklin Thompson in May of 1861, and served until deserting in April of 1863. She married Linus Seelye on April 27, 1867, and bore him two sons, both of whom died on the days of their birth. The Seelyes then had a daughter and adopted two orphaned boys.
Emma Seelye began pursuing her claim to a pension in 1882. Her campaign consisted mainly of writing to her former colleagues and soliciting their support in the form of letters. She did not visit Congressman Cutcheon in Washington; that is a dramatic device of my own. He did, however, remember Frank Thompson and introduce a bill to strike the charge of desertion from Thompson’s record. In 1884, Emma received her pension: $12 a month.
Of her relationship with James Reid very little is certain, but Jerome Robbins’s journal confirms that she shared his tent at General Poe’s headquarters, and refers to her as Reid’s “pet.” Her desertion gave rise to speculation about her connection with Reid, and the fact that she left just a few days after Reid tendered his resignation begs the question of whether it was truly illness (as Emma claimed) or despondency over his imminent departure, along with that of General Poe, that drove her to abandon her army career. With her friends and supporters leaving, her position at headquarters became much more dangerous.
James Reid appears to have vanished from the pages of history after leaving the army. While Emma did not, as far as we know, encounter him again, she did see many of her old army friends, including Captain William Morse and her former bunkmate Damon Stewart. She was mustered into the Grand Army of the Republic in 1898, the only woman to receive that honor, and died later that year at the age of fifty-six.
Like her fictional counterpart and inspiration, Fanny the Pirate Captain, Emma Edmonds is a larger-than-life example of a woman who, through the exercise of courage, initiative, and talent, could transcend the social barriers of the nineteenth century to achieve as much as any man.
Suggested Reading
Edmonds, S. Emma E., Nurse and Spy in the Union Army, W. S. Williams & Co., Hartford, 1865.
Gansler, Laura Leedy, The Double Life of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War Soldier, Free Press, New York, 2005.
Burgess, Lauren Cook, An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, The Minerva Center, Pasadena, 1994.
Sample from Glorieta Pass
P. G. Nagle
1
There seems to be no reason to apprehend any immediate disorder in this Territory.
—W. W. Loring, Brevet Colonel, U.S. Army, Commanding Department of New Mexico
Silence fell in the rickety shanty of Dooney’s tavern as O’Brien prepared for the duel. He himself saw no point in such drama—if you didn’t agree with a fellow, best to settle it quick with your fists—but at the grand age of twenty-nine he was older than most of the lads, and they’d turned to him as referee. He ought to be flatt
ered, he guessed. All the miners in Avery had crowded the tavern to watch. O’Brien ignored them, spoke quietly with the seconds to be sure they had done as he’d told them, and kept an eye on the nervous principals.
They were miners, too: Denning, a Georgian, and Peters from New Jersey. Best of friends, they had been, until news of the great conflict to the east had at last found its way into Colorado. “Hurrah for the North” and “Hurrah for the South” had been the first volleys. Others had joined the dispute, ‘til the clear mountain air rang with bullets and violent words. Now these two fine young lads, grave determination in their eyes, faced each other across a rough table to settle on behalf of the infant town of Avery the question of Who Was Right.
The other tables, all three, were pushed back to the walls, with the crates and the stumps that were seats. Men stood atop them the better to see, blocking the light of the greasy candles set where the wallboards met at odd angles, and adding their looming shadows to the already ghoulish atmosphere. The doctor—an infamous grumbler—arrived at long last. O’Brien greeted him with a nod, and stepped forward.
“Shaunessy, Morris,” he said, summoning two men with heavy six-shooters to stand by the table, “if either man fires before I count three, you’re to shoot him down.”
He took out a handkerchief—provided by Mr. Dooney himself—and gave a corner of it to each combatant to hold in his left hand. In the right each held a Colt Navy pistol carefully prepared by the seconds. The distance between the men, marked by table and handkerchief, was no more than four feet. It seemed a short distance indeed, but O’Brien had gotten the seconds to agree to it.
“Make ready,” he said, and the men brought up their pistols, leveling them nearly breast to breast. O’Brien felt an odd pride in them as their eyes met and held, for each must have sensed his own death in the cold tunnel aimed at his heart.
“One,” said O’Brien, as every man in the room held his breath. “Two. Three.”
The guns roared together, a great flash, and the duelists fell shrouded in smoke. The tavern exploded with noise. Men jumped down from their perches, whooping and cursing. O’Brien pulled the table aside while the doctor on his knees sought the pulse of the victims.