This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  “What? Picking up a dead man?”

  “No, pushing a pistol down with your bare hand.”

  “Pointing a pistol with empty cylinders? Sort of defeats the purpose. Next.”

  The angry sounds of battle were growing. A nearby shell burst startled them. A volley of musketry sounded, louder than they’d heard that Monday.

  “They better hold that line,” Mays muttered.

  “God help us if they can’t,” Doc agreed, wiping his forehead with a blood-slick hand. Using his sticky apron, he did the best he could to wipe the forceps clean. They had used the last of their water early that morning.

  God, what I’d give for a drink.

  The next young soldier, barely twenty, had sweat-damp and filthy blond hair along with the beginnings of a beard. His side was bare where he’d pulled the bloody cotton shirt up to expose the wound.

  “Am I going to live, Doc?” he asked in a wheezing voice.

  “I’ll do what I can. Where you from?”

  “Biloxi. By the sea.”

  “You peed?”

  “It come out all blood.” He swallowed hard. “Didn’t know a man could hurt like this. Am I gonna live?”

  Doc shifted him, eliciting a yelp of pain. Feeling around the man’s back, he located the lump of bullet under the skin on the far side.

  Doc eased him back down. “I can’t do anything.”

  Impassioned blue eyes searched Doc’s. “What?”

  “The bullet went through your liver and smashed your kidney. If I take it out, most of your guts will come with it.” Doc looked down at his trembling hands and picked anxiously at the clotted blood that coated them. “I’m sorry.”

  The young man’s throat worked, obviously thirsty. “It’s all right. There’s others out there. Help them, Doc.” He blinked his eyes, brow lined. “Damn.”

  Doc reeled under the weight of impotence as the young Mississippian was carried out. He braced himself on the table, the room spinning slightly as he swayed and blinked to clear his vision. This was just thirst and fatigue, that’s all.

  He had nothing to give them. The last of the morphine, ether, and opiates had been exhausted before noon yesterday. The bandages had been used up by early Sunday afternoon. The small well, enough for a family, only recharged with a bucket of water every hour or so. Even his surgical silk, the one thing he’d had an abundance of, was down to a single spool. And what would he use when that was gone? Strip the thread from uniform coats?

  Unbearable impotence gave way to a building rage. “What the hell were they thinking? Didn’t the damn fools understand?” He raised his hands, imploring the plank roof overhead.

  Reeling again, he wondered if the disorientation wasn’t hunger. He hadn’t eaten for two days. And damn, he really, really was thirsty. Somehow he hadn’t been able to make himself drink from the occasional canteens that came through. Not when wounded and dying men needed it more than he did.

  The gut-shot, brain-shot, and spinal injuries were beyond his help. When they looked up at him, pleading, no matter how he hardened his heart the desperation in their eyes was torture. They expected him to make them whole again.

  How, in God’s name?

  He wanted to shut them out, to cover his ears and close his eyes, to sag against the wall and curl into a defensive ball. If he could just let the madness pass.

  It didn’t.

  It wouldn’t.

  They continued to come: shattered, broken, maimed. So many with pieces gone, the missing parts of their bodies spattered somewhere out there in the mud and mire. Others torn, their flesh ripped by jagged pieces of flying metal. So many punctured with deformed lead that expanded and crushed bone, muscle, and artery.

  He had become their last chance. Hope that they’d continue to draw breath, see their homes and families, hug their loved ones, fulfill even the simplest dream, or make love with a beautiful woman. All depended on Doc’s skill, as though he could conjure magic from his blood-thick fingers.

  They have to see that I’m a fraud. That I’m failing them, one after another.

  Something hit the wall with a loud crack, startling him from his near stupor.

  “Bullet,” Mays muttered.

  Doc cocked his head, surprised at the growing sound of the battle, amazed that he’d been able to completely ignore it. Artillery banged loudly. This was the close range of war: men shouting; the clatter of ramrods; gasping breath; the rattle of accoutrements; and the cocking of gun hammers.

  “We might have to leave, Doc,” Clyde said.

  “Can’t.” Doc bent down to his work. The man he worked on was raving through a gargling exhalation of sound. Something large had hit his head side-on, blowing away most of his lower jaw. Doc had cut away the shreds of cheek that would die anyway, had ligated the spurting arteries, and removed the bloodshot remains of the tongue.

  Is this right? Does he even want to live this way?

  Doc hesitated, weaving on his feet, kept blinking as he stared at the facial wreckage. It would only take a slip with the scalpel. Drive it down under the mastoid and sever the carotid artery. He glanced guiltily at Augustus Clyde. The man had fixed horrified eyes on Doc’s as if reading his thoughts.

  Am I acting as an angel of mercy? Or am I some demon from hell, damning him to an endless humiliation and misery?

  Clyde surprised him, however, when he asked, “Can’t leave? But Doc, our lines are folding up like a lady’s fan.”

  Doc swallowed hard, setting his scalpel aside, trying to fill his lungs with the smoky air and find enough resolve to finish his surgery.

  “John, we’ve got that yellow hospital flag out front. I don’t care how you do it, but make sure it’s up on the roof where the Federals can see it. He bent back to scraping clotted blood from the man’s mouth. “God knows, even that might not save us.”

  Doc barely noticed the officer’s arrival in the doorway. A discharge of muskets just west of the house drowned out the man’s words.

  “What was that?” He was finishing—as much as he could—with the jaw-shot patient.

  “I said, sir, that you are ordered to evacuate!”

  “Major, we can’t.” Doc gestured at the door. “Most of those men can’t be moved.”

  “Those are my orders from General Beauregard.”

  Doc stepped back from the table, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and watched as Clyde and Mays removed the hideously wounded man who still uttered his wavering vocalizations. The major’s face blanched, and he stepped back, a hand going to his stomach.

  Doc could only stare dully as he tried to get his head around the problem. “If you have wagons, the superficial wounds and amputees can go.” He glanced at Mays. “Who’s next?”

  “Did you hear me, sir? I ordered you to evacuate. You’re a regimental surgeon. I could order you shot.”

  “Pistol’s on your hip, Major.” Even as he said it, Clyde and Mays were laying another bleeding man, a sergeant, on the table.

  Doc wobbled his way back around the table to inspect the gunshot to the man’s groin. The major remained, as if fixed, his hand resting on the butt of his still-holstered revolver.

  Doc never saw him leave.

  “He was going to shoot you,” Clyde said woodenly, as if past caring. They were all tired enough that death would have been a relief.

  Clyde worked his dry mouth as if to get up enough spit to swallow. “Some of the things you’ve done? Where did you learn to save things like that wounded jaw?”

  “Nowhere.” He snorted his surprise. “It just had to be done. Thank the Lord they had us work on all those cadavers back in Boston. Some people think medicine need only be taught out of a book, you know.”

  The sergeant on the table cried out, bucking, as Doc’s probe located the bullet. Small. A pistol ball. God, he’d learned to tell by the feel. When had that happened?

  Did he dare try and take it out? The bladder had been punctured, hence the urine. Or did he leave it in, located as it was, beside t
he prostate?

  He bent over the wincing sergeant. “It’s a pistol ball. I’m afraid I’ll do more harm removing it. Sergeant, we’re just going to bandage you, and give it some time to see if it heals.”

  “Am I still going to work?” he asked, plaintively. “I mean, you know, with a woman?”

  “I think so.”

  The man’s expression softened, becoming almost beatific as he smiled. “Thank you, God. And I meant everything I told you in that prayer.”

  Wagons and horses rattled their way into the yard, men calling orders. The evacuation.

  And then they were gone, the musketry breaking with a fury. Two more bullets whacked into the log wall behind Doc.

  “Don’t tense your leg, damn it!” he snarled at the young Shelby Gray he worked on. The private nodded, lifted his sleeve to his mouth, and bit down on it to keep from screaming.

  When Doc had removed the bullet, thankfully without rupturing the femoral artery, he tossed it toward the pile in the corner, surprised to see blue-coated Federal soldiers peering in the door.

  Even as he did, two Yankees carried a third, a captain, through the doorway, declaring, “We’ve got a wounded man here!”

  “Put him on the table.” The leg was a mess of blood and broken bone just above the knee.

  “Hope you don’t hold a grudge, Reb,” one of the Federals, a red-haired man with a powder-grimed face, said.

  Doc blinked, almost weaving on his feet. “No grudges.” He looked down. “Captain, you’re going to lose that leg.”

  “Just do it, Reb,” the captain managed through gritted teeth.

  To the two privates, Doc said, “You two, find me some water, bandages, any medical supplies you can. And if you can find me another surgeon, get him here. I don’t give a goddamn whose army he’s in.”

  He was working on his fifth or sixth Federal casualty before another wounded Rebel was brought to the table.

  “Doc?” the young man gasped as he was laid out on his back.

  For a moment, Doc blinked, struggling through his fatigued mind, lost in anatomy and surgical concerns. When he finally found the dormant part of his brain, it still took a moment to place the strained, filthy face, the chestnut hair, and green eyes.

  “James? James Morton?”

  James blinked, his eyes pain glazed. His uniform was covered with dried blood. “I been laying out for two days now. God, I’m thirsty.”

  “We’ll get you water.”

  “Am I gonna die?”

  “Not if I can help it.” Promised your sister I’d look out for you.

  Doc blinked again, almost in tears as he fought to shed the cobwebs in his brain. He had just exposed the sucking chest wound. Then the world turned oddly gray and soft. He felt himself reel, collapse. It hurt when he hit the floor, bringing him awake.

  Hands were lifting him, helping him to one of the chairs, and then he faded off, dropping into an exhausted slumber.

  He wasn’t aware that he’d failed Ann Marie, that fifteen minutes after he’d collapsed, a Federal surgeon, riding atop a wagon filled with supplies, had patched James’s pneumothorax, and done it while the young man was peacefully under the chloroform’s merciful spell.

  24

  May 5, 1862

  Billy felt free as he and Sarah drove the wagon up the Pea Ridge grade toward Elkhorn Tavern. Spring had come. The day was warm, filled with the smell of dogwood, honeysuckle, and redbud. Wildflowers added both color and their delicate perfumes to the air.

  The Federal army had finally packed up and marched back north along Telegraph Wire Road, headed, so the rumors said, for eastern Arkansas where General Van Dorn was supposedly raising hell.

  Or invading Missouri.

  Or both.

  He, Maw, and Sarah had had their fill of Yankees and Confederates, and war, and battles. First had come the Confederates who had hauled off most everything. Then they’d been inundated with wounded and dying men. Then had come the Federals, who, fortunately, had finally evacuated the surviving Confederates from the farm and hauled off the dead for burial.

  Sarah, of course, had saved the wagon—and made a dollar a day for nine days to boot, driving for the Yankees. But that she’d done so was still a burr under Billy’s butt.

  “Unfitting,” Maw had insisted.

  Sarah had stared back with a blue-eyed hardness Billy had never seen before. “Lots of things ain’t the same anymore, Maw.”

  He was chewing on that, jaw clamped, when Sarah asked, “What’s got you riled?”

  “I’m the man. I should have driven the wagon for the Yankees. Maw was right. It ain’t fittin’ for a young woman to be hauling dead men. Let alone by herself out among all them strange men. There’s no telling what they thought of you.”

  But he knew, all right. In their minds they’d been pulling her clothes off, fondling her high round breasts, and slipping between her muscular thighs. That’s what men did when they saw a full-bodied woman like Sarah.

  She eyed him warily. “Captain Stengel treated me with respect and courtesy. Some … well, shucks, a girl’s got to figure out how to deal with them sometime.” She raised her hands, let them fall. “All that matters is that they thought we were loyal Unionists. The ones like the Fosters, that they knew were Rebels, got cleaned out.”

  “So did we,” Billy muttered.

  The Federal occupation meant constant depredations. The Hancock farm was eternally crawling with blue-coated soldiers looking for eggs, silver, grain, cornmeal, or anything edible. Billy had been forced to relocate the remaining chickens, horses, and milk cow ever higher into the hills. Of course a fox got the hens first thing. The cow broke her rope and strayed off where it took Billy three days to track her down. By then, she’d stopped giving milk.

  Sarah added, “Don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t been out in the woods hunting.”

  Unlike so many who were thrown into destitution, Maw and Sarah had had full bellies. The constant supply of squirrels, rabbits, turkeys, and the occasional venison quarter beat starvation all hollow.

  “Tough work having to live in the forest, setting snares and deadfalls. Barking the occasional squirrel. Had to do something to stay away from all them Federal soldiers and scavenging parties.”

  “You ask me, you were just getting away from the drudgery of scrubbing gore off of the floors, burning the bloody rugs and bedding, and having to tackle any of the less-than-manly cleaning up.”

  He gave her a triumphant smile.

  She scowled, adding, “Never had to work so hard in all my life. Maw wouldn’t tolerate so much as a stain.”

  “At least you didn’t marry one of them damn Yankees.” How would he deal with the knowledge that some strange Yankee was driving his pizzle into his only sister?

  But to his immense relief Sarah—though inundated by soldiers—had resolutely ignored them.

  “By all that’s holy, why do you think I’d want to marry one of them Yankees? Have my husband traipse off to get shot and bleed to death in some strange woman’s house?” She shook her head as if at the very ridiculousness of the notion. “Besides, these were all enlisted men and a couple of lieutenants. If this war’s done anything, it’s made me even more committed to marrying a man who wants the same things I do. Someone with prospects.”

  She stopped short, her smooth brow furrowing as a mockingbird’s song trilled in the branches overhead. “I tell you, Billy, I just want this war over. I got a belly full of it—more than I ever bargained for as it is. I’ll be eighteen a’fore Paw can get me to Little Rock.”

  Despite the Confederate defeats, Billy hadn’t heard talk of surrender yet. “You go right ahead and plan on snaring your mystery man. Me? I figure we got us a hard row to hoe yet, sis.”

  The seed corn he’d hidden had survived the snooping Federals. And what the Yankees had confiscated had been paid for in Yankee coin, whereas the Confederates had paid in paper money, or worse, “requisition” forms that needed to be taken t
o the nearest Confederate commander. That being the case, whichever side won, Maw had their kind of money to buy replacement supplies.

  Assuming that freight wagons ever rolled up from Fort Smith or down from Springfield again.

  Meantime, he and Sarah would plant as much acreage as they could. Come fall, prices would be sky-high since so many of the farms in both Benton and Washington Counties had been stripped of their grains.

  The hired men were gone though, enlisted, which meant the cotton and tobacco crops would be severely curtailed. But who knew, maybe they’d be back in time to pitch in if the war was stopped.

  The wagon bucked and banged over the rocks as they continued up the road toward Elkhorn Tavern. Old Fly, Billy’s arthritic yellow dog, rode in the back, his aging bones cushioned by a folded blanket Billy had saved. Once it had been thick with its owner’s blood. Left behind after the man had been evacuated, Billy had taken it down, staked it out in the White River, and left the current to leach it clean. Beside the old dog were the fruits of Billy’s labor: fox, deer, rabbit, and squirrel skins, all dried and pressed.

  In addition, Sarah had nine dollars in gold in her purse to buy whatever staples might be had at either Elkhorn Tavern or down to Pratt’s store.

  The horses seemed to enjoy the warm morning, their ears twitching at flies as they pulled their way up onto Pea Ridge and leveled out.

  “Holy Jehoshaphat!” Billy exclaimed as they broke out of the trees.

  The Clemons’ farm was devastated. “What happened here?”

  “All of the split-rail fencing was torn up by Federal soldiers for firewood. The outbuildings was torn down, too; the planks they used for coffins. The timbers went for other Union repairs on their wagons and gun carriages and such.” Sarah pointed. “The trees? That’s all damage from cannons shooting canister and grape.”

  Billy stared wide-eyed at the once familiar forest lands. In patches, the spring trees looked normal with new leaves on full branches, and then would come a swath of splintered and broken timber. What had once been thick branches ended in chopped-short and frayed chaos. Whole trunks had been shattered to resemble giant overchewed toothpicks. On other boles, sections of bark had been blown away. Gouges marked other trunks.