Wedded to War (Heroines Behind the Lines)

by Jocelyn Green

  “Did you notice that red color in the Potomac River yesterday?” Simmons asked.

  Edward shifted his weight in the rocking chair. “I hadn’t.”

  “That was their blood. Do you know what the soldiers around Washington have been doing since then? What I’d a been doing if it weren’t for this gimpy leg of mine?”

  Edward didn’t know. Part of him didn’t want to know.

  “Fishing. For bodies. Bloated, soggy corpses. Some of them just boys, floated downstream to Washington and washed up on shore like trash. And now their comrades-in-arms are pulling ’em up, trying to pretend they’re giant fish and not human beings fighting for the same cause as them.”

  The taste of bile climbed into Edward’s mouth. “I didn’t know …” he trailed off. He was a chaplain; he was supposed to have answers. But he didn’t.

  “Oh no, they’re trying to keep it real quiet. But word will get out. How do you ’spect the parents and sweethearts and children of those dead men will feel when they hear the truth? There’s no dignity in that kind of death. Every soldier wants to die a hero, if he must die, but it doesn’t work that way, now, does it?”

  Still, no answer came. Edward’s mouth had gone dry, and Simmons nodded in agreement. No answer would suffice.

  “Now I hate to break it to you, chappy, but the task falls to you to write some letters home to folks telling ’em the fate of their loved ones. Can’t hardly recognize most of the corpses. Fish got to their faces before we did, if you know what I mean. It’s a right sick business. I don’t envy you.” With that, Simmons rose, clapped Edward on the shoulder, and limped away.

  Minutes passed by—perhaps longer—while the chaplain sat frozen in his rocking chair, composing in his head what he dreaded to scratch on paper.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. ____,

  You may have heard by now from official sources that your son has given his life for the glorious cause—

  That wouldn’t work. War may be necessary, but it was not glorious. Edward tried again.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. ____,

  You can be proud of your son, who has recently made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

  No. There was no pride in running off a cliff and being shot while trying to swim away. And was it really called a sacrifice if the death did not contribute to any sort of progress? No. In this case, it was just a waste.

  He had to start over.

  Dear Mrs. ___,

  Your husband did not die in vain—

  Maddening! Impossible task! Ball’s Bluff was a complete defeat! Of course the men died in vain! Edward clenched the arms of the rocker with white-knuckled fists.

  There was a reason he could not bring himself to follow in the footsteps of his father’s military career. He hated war. He admired the soldiers and was grateful for their service, but the ugliness and brutality of it all—it was so far from the paradise of Eden and heaven. It was like hell on earth. Nothing in seminary training had prepared him for this. His own faith, which he had felt was so secure, was now in the crucible, where it would either burn up like chaff or be proven as gold.

  Edward leaned forward and put his head in his hands. His only prayer was, Show yourself. For if he could not see God for the fog of war, how could he point others to Him?

  Sanitary Commission Headquarters, Washington City

  Friday, November 1, 1861

  A door slammed from somewhere down the hall, and Frederick Law Olmsted jolted awake. He had fallen asleep in his clothes at his desk, again, last night. It was becoming a habit he could do little to hide. Get some sleep! Go home! some told him. But those who knew what he and the Sanitary Commission were up against didn’t bother.

  Donations were down. Contributions were starting to trickle in, and if what Charlotte Waverly had told him about a New York benefactor was true, they would soon see a tide of generosity pouring in. But in the meantime, he waited. The hospitals waited, and so did the patients.

  Dr. Blackwell had recently sent him a report of the women’s band of nurses, the conclusion of which had been dismal, but not altogether shocking.

  The association does not feel authorized to send on more from the same class of life from which these have come—certainly not until their position and relations are essentially improved. The society is deeply convinced of the wisdom of absolutely withholding all nurses not over thirty years of age, and of sending none but those of settled character with marked sobriety of manners and appearance.

  The battle for better health care did not end there. Surgeon General Finley was a blockhead. After the ruin of Bull Run, he had been given the opportunity to ask Congress for whatever he needed to make sure nothing of the kind would ever happen again. And what had he asked for? Almost nothing! Forty more medical officers for the army, fifty young medical students to serve as wound dressers, and the right to employ some civilian nurses in the general hospitals. Idiot!

  After that, the Sanitary Commission had asked for Finley’s removal or resignation, and for remedial legislation. So far, neither had been accomplished, and still men were suffering for it.

  At Ball’s Bluff, a surgeon had been forced to fire at ambulance attendants to make them function. Why there was still no trained ambulance corps was absolutely beyond Olmsted. It was madness, and it had to stop.

  But for some unknown reason—unknown even to God, Olmsted thought—even the press had turned against the Commission. The New York Times had published a spirited defense of the Medical Department. The imbecile reporter had the gall to charge the Sanitary Commission with “trying to supersede the established authorities, and thus robbing the soldiers of the boon of having their welfare watched over by men of long military experience.” They had called the Commission a group of complaining busybodies sitting safely behind their desks, but not actually doing anything that would put themselves in harm’s way.

  The nerve. Of course they were complainers. That’s what the Commission was designed to do—inspect, recommend, rattle some cages until the authorities decided for themselves to fix what was broken. That’s all he wanted to do. Fix it.

  Olmsted could feel his temperature rising, and pulled at the white linen collar of his rumpled shirt. Maybe he should have stuck with landscape design. Creating green spaces for public enjoyment, remedying the great social ill of urban crowding … that was his specialty. It was so much easier to work with grass and trees and lakes than it was to deal with people. Easier on his eyes, too, he mused, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyelids.

  “Is this—sorry, I’m looking for Charlotte Waverly.”

  Olmsted looked up to find an attractive woman in a calico cotton dress tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. Her accent told him she was Irish. Her eyes told him she was nervous.

  “I’m Frederick Olmsted, Secretary of the Sanitary Commission. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, though, would you?” Bother these rumpled clothes. “And you are?”

  “Mrs. Ruby O’Flannery. I came down to work as a laundress a couple months ago. Dr. Blackwell sent me.”

  “Ah yes! I remember the name. Do sit down.”

  “That’s all right, sir, I just—um …” She looked down at her hands, then slid her gaze over the mess of papers on his desk, his uncombed hair, and wrinkled suit. “Is everything all right sir?”

  “Not perfect, no,” he told her. “You see, my job is to report on what we—the Sanitary Commission—find wrong with the army, and then we tell them how to fix it. But they don’t always listen, even though we’re experts on the things we recommend. Do you have children, Mrs. O’Flannery?”

  Her cheeks turned pink as she shook her head, no.

  “Well just imagine if you did. Imagine that you see your small child walking toward a fire, and you call out to him, ‘Stop! That will burn you!’ But he doesn’t stop, and what’s worse, you are paralyzed to stop him yourself. Or imagine he is poking himself with the end of a stick and wondering why he feels pain. You say, ‘If you poke your leg,
it will hurt. Stop doing that and you’ll be just fine.’ But again, he doesn’t listen to you, and you are not allowed to remove the stick from his hand. No. You just stand by and watch your child get hurt by his own hand.”

  He paused, rubbing the back of the neck with his hand. “That, my dear woman, is what we have going on here. We see the Medical Department doing something—or not doing something—which will cause harm to the army. We say ‘Stop that’ or ‘Do this instead,’ and more often than not, they completely ignore us, and we are left powerless to do anything else about it.”

  The woman before him nodded, but clearly, her mind was elsewhere. He had gotten carried away again.

  “Now then, Mrs. O’Flannery.” Olmsted pushed the Medical Department to the back of his mind and focused on her instead. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I was hoping to—well, I need to find Miss Waverly. Do you know where she is?”

  “I’m afraid she is across the river bringing a few things to the Alexandria hospitals today. May I help you with anything?”

  Ruby shook her head. “Just need to find her, I do.”

  “Is there trouble at the hospital where you work? Perhaps I can be of service.”

  She looked down at her hands. At length, she said, “I need to borrow $5.00.”

  “That’s not a trifling sum.” Olmsted stroked his mustache. “May I ask what it is for? If you need to purchase for the hospital we might have the very thing you need right here, free of charge.”

  “It’s not for the hospital,” she said, still avoiding his gaze. Olmsted waited for more, but she held her tongue. Intriguing.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs. O’Flannery? It’s quite dreary out there today, let’s at least get you warmed up as long as you’re here.” She watched as he put a small teakettle of water over a spirit lamp to boil. “You’re from New York then? How do you know Dr. Blackwell?”

  Ruby bit her lip. “I met her in Five Points.” Humiliation threaded her voice.

  “Five Points?” Astonishing. How could anyone from Five Points have escaped?

  “I’m not a Five Pointer, understand,” she quickly said.

  “Aha. Then, where is home for you?”

  “The Washington Infirmary.”

  “No, no, I mean in New York. I simply wanted to know if you’d ever been to Central Park.”

  She laughed. “Aye. Does living in it count?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My husband and I lived in Seneca Village for several years.” Olmsted was suddenly wide awake. He studied her face as she spoke. “Life was good there, it was. Better than what we knew in Ireland, to be sure. It was a small neighborhood, but good people. Immigrants and free blacks. All of us with something in common.” She lowered her gaze. “We didn’t fit in with the rest of New York. Outcasts, you know. But in our own neighborhood, everyone belonged.”

  Olmsted nodded. And waited.

  “Then someone told us we had to leave. Where should we go? we asked them. They didn’t know. They didn’t care. They just said leave. They were going to build a park for the rich folks, and they wanted to do it right where we lived.”

  “Why, Central Park isn’t just for rich people, though—it’s for everyone, that’s the beauty of it, the entire point!” He didn’t want to sound defensive, but he certainly felt that way. “A place to come and enjoy fresh air, green grass, blue skies unobscured by the tall buildings now crowding the city. Rich or poor, white or black, native or immigrant, it doesn’t matter. That park was made for you.”

  “No, sir, it was made in spite of me.”

  Olmsted cleared his throat. “What I mean to say is, all have equal rights to enjoy the nature and clean spaces of Central Park.”

  A sarcastic laugh escaped Ruby’s lips. “We don’t have equal rights to anything. Out of all of New York City, they needed—needed, mind you—our village. Funny, isn’t it? We’re the people who would have the hardest time getting back on our feet, and we’re the ones they knocked down.”

  “Yes.” Olmsted rubbed a hand over his face. “It is … unfortunate.” It was an understatement and he knew it. He had long dreaded having a conversation like this one, ever since he learned that more than two hundred people had to be evicted from their homes to make way for the grandest park the city had. It wasn’t exactly his fault, but he was not so guiltless that he wanted Ruby to know his part in the matter. “So what did you do?”

  Ruby shrugged. “Found a place in the Fourteenth Ward.”

  “And then?”

  “Then Matthew—my husband—left to fight, never sent a dime, and it was up to me to fend for myself.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Couldn’t make rent, though I worked my fingers to the bone. Had to move again.”

  “To Five Points?”

  “I tried. The place was a horror. Listen,” she said, rising. “I’m not here to talk about myself. Trying to forget most of that and start again here, you know?”

  “Quite.” Olmsted stood as well. Either a pang of guilt for her past or a glimmer of hope for her future—he could not be sure which—compelled him to press a five-dollar note into her hand before she could turn to go. “I wish you all the very best life has to offer, Mrs. O’Flannery I will tell Miss Waverly you were here.”

  With tears just beginning to veil her green eyes, she said, “Thank you. No need to tell Miss Waverly—I’ll be on my way now. I won’t be a bother to you anymore.”

  Mr. Olmsted watched her leave, then, wondering whether those were tears of joy or of sorrow he had seen in the Irishwoman’s eyes. Suddenly, he wished he had found out more about why she needed that money.

  The teakettle shrieked in his ears, but she was already gone.

  Washington Infirmary, Washington City

  Monday, November 3, 1861

  Everyone else was asleep when Ruby stole down to the linen room in the dark, a sputtering candle in one clammy hand, the burning bottle of Graves Pills for Amenorrhea in the other. “MISCARRIAGE WILL CERTAINLY ENSUE” read the label. It was exactly what she needed.

  Wasn’t it?

  Beads of sweat formed on her forehead as she opened the bottle and held a small round pellet in her hand. Was it a pill or a bullet? Medicine or a murder weapon? She closed her fist around it, slid down to the floor, and tucked her knees under her chin. Eyes squeezed shut, she rocked back and forth in the agony of uncertainty.

  She had been so sure before. It was the only logical thing to do. How could she possibly have a baby? Matthew would be enraged as soon as he found out. Besides, she would not be allowed to work and be seen in public as soon as she grew large, and then what would she do to survive? If the baby survived the pregnancy, how would she afford to feed it? If the baby survived infancy, would it be raised in Five Points to sell apples or hot corn on the streets? Or worse? How could she bring anyone into a world like that? It would be a mercy to the child to snuff it out now.

  Death was a fate more merciful than life.

  Wasn’t it?

  Wet sheets hung up to dry, hovered over and around her like white, silent ghosts of soldiers who had passed from life to death at this very infirmary. Had they thought death was the greater mercy? Some probably did. But she had seen how hard most of them fought for a chance at life, even life without limb, or eye, or jaw.

  We do what we can for them, the nuns had said, but God is the Author of Life. He gives, and He takes away. In the end, it is not up to us whether they live or die.

  The words were meant to give comfort, but they tormented Ruby now. It’s not up to us. God is the Author of Life. A ragged groan tore its way up from somewhere deep within Ruby and filled the room. Life was not up to her. It was not her decision to make.

  She had so much to regret already, so many stains she could not wash out. Part of her said one more would make no difference. It would be better, said the tempting voice in her head, to mak
e her own life easier. She deserved a break. And yet, she could not bring herself to add the bright, angry red stain of murder to her heart.

  At last, sleep overtook her, and she sank, exhausted, into it, helpless against the nightmares that ravaged her peace. The haunting wail of unborn life soared and swelled in her ears until she awoke, her face wet with tears, to hear her own voice weeping as well. She opened her fist to find the pill was still in her hand—and yet the wails from her nightmare did not disappear. They grew louder.

  They were the clanging bells of a fire engine.

  Through the small cracked window, she saw the Sisters flapping in the square outside, their shorn heads gleaming eerily as they screamed for help. Stooped figures of men in uniform—they must be the Metropolitan Police—were flooding in, asking where the patients were, how many could walk, how many would need to be dragged from their rooms.

  The building was on fire. No one would think to look in the linen room. She had to get out.

  Or did she?

  This was her punishment, God’s vengeance for even considering taking the life of an innocent baby. Ruby had thought the only way to keep her terrible secret was to kill it, so she would not be cast out into the streets upon being discovered as a prostitute. And now the building itself was casting her out. This place of healing, infused with the holy Catholic faith, could not bear to contain her sin any longer. She was being purged, as she had almost purged out her own baby, her own flesh and blood.

  Thick cords of smoke writhed and curled around her now, snaking down her throat and choking her.

  Maybe—just maybe—this was not punishment, but mercy. Taking the life of her baby would be unforgiveable sin. But to die by accident, to never have to wonder what will become of her child, or herself again, to just have it all end—no one could blame her for dying in a fire. They may never even find her at all.

  She eyed the stairway across the room, where dense black smoke came pouring down. Her eyes burned, her mouth filled with the taste of ash. The clanging alarm was drowned by the roar of fire, the thunder of falling timber as the infirmary surrendered to its foe.