Finally, in June of 1861, a partial payment of thirty dollars came, which was more than Clement or Davis had ever earned in their lives, so they decided to take a walk and see what they could find among the commodities of the local farm wives.
“I saw a boy come back with a big hack of juicy pork tucked between soft bread,” said Davis. “I’d like to find that woman and buy some of that off her.”
“Yeah,” said Clement. “That sounds good.” They smelled the air, warm and fragrant with apples and peaches. They came upon a yellow farmhouse with a big white veranda. Pies sat on a table, cooling. A sign that read PIE, 50 CENTS hung above them. An old Negro man sat shelling peas in the corner of the veranda. He lifted his head and turned his ear toward their footsteps.
“I hears you comin’,” he yelled. “Come on up and buy a pie from my mistress.”
“We’re coming,” Davis shouted back to him. “But we were looking for a bit of pork.”
“Dat all gone now,” said the old man. “You too late. Got pie.”
“He looks a hundred years old,” Davis said to Clement.
“Yes, sonny,” said the man. “I am a century and seven years old. You will like this’m pie.” The man’s eyes were glazed over and his sparse hair was metallic silver. Then a young white woman came to the door.
“Who you talking to, Mose?” she asked.
“Can’t see ’em, but I ’spect some young Yanks,” he said.
She wiped her hands on her apron and waved for Clement and Davis to come up the steps.
“You want a pie?” she asked Clement. She was yellow-haired, with tan skin and freckles on her nose. She spoke with what they called the Virginia croon.
“We’ll each have one,” Clement said. He tried to think of ways to get her to talk more. The long vowels and softness on the consonants pleased him. “If you’re selling.”
“I’ll sell you one,” she said, “but I can’t sell one to him.” She nodded at Davis but didn’t look at him.
“I’ll buy two then,” said Clement. He talked quick, before Davis could question her motivations and ruin their chance at something sweet to eat. He pulled the money out of a small bag. “But you ought to be a little friendlier, especially if you’re charging fifty cents for a pie.”
“I’m friendly enough,” she said. She took the money, looked at it to make sure it wasn’t Confederate, Clement supposed, and put it in her apron pocket. “I’ll sell you two. What you do with the second, I don’t have to know, and you don’t have to tell my husband. And you better mind your manners or the price will go up to three dollars a pie.” She trained her eyes, greenish brown, brightly at him and raised her pale eyebrows.
“Don’ mind her,” said Mose. “She barks but don’ bite hard.”
“I can agree to those terms,” said Clement. He looked at Davis, who nodded. “I’ll take two peach, if you have them.”
“I have them,” she said. She turned away from him and toward the pies. She used her apron to pick them up. “What’s the matter with your eyes, Yankee?”
“Peach pie was a favorite of General Washington,” Mose interrupted. “My mama was a nigger in his house, which is the God’s hones’ truth of the matter.”
“Shush now, Mose, with your stories,” said the woman. “You’ll exhaust yourself talking.” She brought the two pies back to Clement and shrugged her shoulders. “He’s been saying that since I was small. I don’t know. It’s possible, maybe. These’re hot on the bottom.”
“God’s hones’ truth of the matter,” whispered Mose.
“Huh,” said Clement. “I was born with eyes like this.” He took one pie by the rim and handed it to Davis. He took the other for himself.
“They’re pretty, your eyes,” she said. “Unusual. You boys come return my pie tins when you’re done. And come back tomorrow if you want more pie.” She fixed a strand of hair behind her ear. Clement was mesmerized by this simple gesture. He thought about how long it had been since he’d really looked at a woman besides Angel. He wondered if he had ever noticed another woman besides Angel.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll have biscuits and chicken too, and maybe some fried fish, if Mose can catch something instead of talking and scaring them all away.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Clement. He felt brave. He stared at her some more. She looked warm, as if she’d been standing in the sun. She looked full of health. Her yellow hair spun around in curls, softly, wildly, free from the bun she must have twisted up this morning. Clement couldn’t help but compare her to Angel, with her pale skin and dark hair. He’d not thought before that women could be beautiful in different ways, but beautiful still. “What’s your name?”
“Mrs. Milton,” she said. “June.”
“That’s a beautiful name,” said Clement. “Where’s your husband, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“That is none of your business,” she said sharply, but in fun too. She put her fists on her hips.
Mose mumbled.
“Quiet, Mose,” she scolded. “You boys don’t belong here. Get yourselves home as quick as you can. Bad days are ahead, I’ll assure you that. This ain’t going to be no quick war like they say.” Then she told Clement and Davis to get off her porch so she could get back to her cooking.
Clement and Davis stepped down the creaky stairs.
“Bye, now,” Mose cried after them. “’Specially you, young nigger. God bless your work in this world. I hope it turn out all for the bes’.”
“Thank you, Mose,” said Davis. Davis walked with Clement, but he turned around again and again to look at the man on the veranda.
The men walked about a half mile and settled against a fence post to eat their pies. They were afraid that if they brought them back to camp, they’d have to share.
“You believe that old man?” asked Davis. “Over a hundred years old?”
“I don’t know,” said Clement. “Doesn’t seem possible.”
“Hmm,” said Davis. “Was he a slave or just working for that woman?”
“Don’t know,” said Clement. “She was a handsome woman, wasn’t she? Hard to believe she’d side with the rebels, but she sounded mighty rebellious to me.”
Davis scratched his ear. “Though they don’t say it, I expect lots of these locals side with the rebels,” said Davis. “General Lee is from just across the river, and he took up with the rebels readily enough.”
“That’s true,” said Clement. “I wish he’d have stayed on our side.”
“Me too,” said Davis. He swatted a moth fluttering near his head. “One thing I like about Maryland over Minnesota is that there aren’t so many mosquitoes here.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” said Clement. “Why do you think we have so many in Minnesota?”
“Don’t know. Probably has to do with all the lakes, the standing water.”
“You’re probably right,” said Clement. “Still waters are good breeding places for all kinds of things. Even mosquitoes.”
“They’re pesky,” said Davis.
“But the frogs like to eat them,” said Clement. “And the fish like to eat the frogs. And I like to eat the fish. So, I’ll stand ’em.”
“You sure got a way with words,” said Davis. “You thinking about talking that woman out of her skirts?”
“No, but I’m sure it’s crossed your wicked mind,” said Clement.
“Nope,” he said. “I didn’t like her disposition. You gonna eat all that pie?”
“No,” said Clement. “My stomach’s a little queasy. You can have the rest.”
“You’re a good friend to have in this war, Clement Piety. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
That night, Clement and Davis both came down with a terrible stomach ailment, which rendered them so weak and dehydrated over the next few days that both were sent to a Union hospital to recover. At first, they wondered whether the blond woman had poisoned them, and then they wondered why. Had she been trying to help the r
ebels, or had she been trying to keep them safe from the big battles? But soon other members of their regiment came down with the same symptoms. There they stayed for weeks, as the healthy members of their regiment prepared and suffered through their first real battle, at Bull Run. Missing out on the first serious action of the war pained them and the others from their company who were sick. Most of them blamed Davis’s cooking, though more than likely the ailment had been picked up from civilians and then spread through the regiment’s tight quarters, where boys from the isolated farmlands of southern and western Minnesota, who’d hardly been exposed to a cold in their lives and so had never had opportunity to grow impervious to the various diseases, now slept mere feet from their sick neighbors.
“I’m gonna cut your balls off, nigger,” said a soldier, a Swede from southern Minnesota who’d been throwing up and shitting for days, to Davis. Between puking and sitting on the pail, Clement could hardly keep from laughing at the man’s lilting accent.
Davis tooted out a couple of notes on his bugle and grinned at Clement.
“You settle down, you big oaf,” Clement said to the complainer. “He can’t help it the Union sends him that tack to prepare. Save your money and buy yourself some of that fiskbullar you’re always blathering about.”
“I got no money!” shouted the soldier. He made heaving noises, but nothing more came up. “I’m gonna make you eat that horn the next time you think to blow on it.”
“You’re healing now,” said Clement. “And Davis’s poisonous food probably saved you from certain death at Bull Run. You’d ruther be one of those boys with a leg or head blown off?” Davis’s horn playing was an assault to anyone with ears, but it was amusing, at least.
All the boys in the hospital ruminated over the slaughter at Bull Run and the terrible casualties among the First Minnesota Regiment. It was hard to believe that after months of random, almost playful fire with the Confederates, that real war had finally befallen them. The guilt of missing the battle while so many others paid with their limbs and lives affected Clement’s sleep, and surely the sleep of the others, and their mood grew sour and caused them to question all things of big purpose: why were they here, why had they been spared, who was to blame, when would the next battle come?
44
Gut-Shot
CLEMENT AND DAVIS LAY among the sick and the wounded. And they’d seen friends die. When the wounded first came in, those who could jumped from their beds and aided the overwhelmed doctor. Among the first was the mustachioed man they both remembered from the train ride east.
He’d taken a minié ball to the gut in the battle where the First Minnesota, led by a confused commander, was ordered to sit and wait to fire while a Virginia company took up position against them and fired upon them. Though the Minnesotans were brave and held for a time, the day’s battle went to the South, as the Minnesotans, along with the other Union regiments, retreated. When the scene calmed down, the mustachioed man was gathered up and carried by horse to the hospital. He had ripped his shirt and pants away from his body already. His whole right side was bloody.
“Oh hellfire, man,” the surgeon said. “Didn’t anyone tell you not to get gut-shot! Goddammit. There’s not a thing I can do for your life.”
“It’s not my gut,” said the mustachioed man, his voice high and unnatural. “It’s my hip, isn’t it?”
“Let me look closer,” said the doctor. He leaned in as the man tried to lie still, pushing his head back into the mattress and gripping the sides of it. “I see your point, but to me this wound looks closer to the gut than the hip. But, yes, there’s a good amount of damage to the hip too. But by my judgment, you are definitely ruined, sir.”
Clement and Davis went to him and watched. The wound was the size of a hand and shaped that way too, as though there were a palm and then fingers spreading out on the flank of the man. The ball had clipped the hipbone, which stuck out of the wound, and other pieces of the man that ought to be inside the torso were spilling out.
“Damn!” said the doctor. He arranged his spectacles closer to his eyes. He pointed with a metal instrument at the slimy innards. “This is part of your intestines, son. And this looks to be your pancreas or liver, maybe. You can’t live without either of those! Oh damn you. You’re a goner.”
“Can’t you put it back in?” said the man in high desperation. “Can’t you try?”
“Oh son. My heart hurts every night over ones like you. Kinds like you have impaired my Christian beliefs and doomed me to hell, I’m afraid.”
The doctor pulled a blanket up over the mustachioed man’s torso. Then he pulled a brown bottle and cloth from his pocket. He dabbed the cloth with the liquid in the bottle and put the cloth over the man’s mouth and nose. The man stopped pressing into the mattress and calmed.
The doctor turned to Clement and Davis.
“You friends of him?” he asked. He looked at them over his spectacles. His eyebrows were like wild weeds.
“Yes, sir,” they said. “We rode over with him on the train.”
“Talk to him. Keep him comfortable. He’s got an hour or so.”
The mustachioed man moaned a deep but soft noise. “I wish I’da stayed on the farm,” he whispered. “Write my ma I’m sorry.”
Davis went to a corner and puked in a pail.
Clement held the man’s hand and talked to him. “I’ll tell her,” said Clement.
The man squeezed Clement’s hand.
“I always like Minnesota the best of all the states there is,” Clement went on. He remembered how Mother St. John talked soothingly to sick children or the impaired or the injured or the old. He spoke that way now to the man as his breath slowed. “It’s got the prettiest sky and blackest soil where all good things can grow. The trees are the straightest and sturdiest and make the best wood for strong houses and rocking chairs.”
“Keep talking, friend,” the man whispered.
“On Saturdays, all the mothers wash the children’s nappies and hang them on strings swung between trees to dry in the breeze, which smells like lilacs in spring and fried walleye in summer.”
“Yes, walleye,” said the man. He laughed a bit, but fierce coughing overtook him. When the man calmed, Clement said, “In fall, the giant trees turn the colors of all the metals you can imagine and drop onto the surface of the shimmering lakes.”
The man licked his lips. Clement signaled for Davis to get a ladle of water. Davis did, and they both helped the man have a drink.
“Talk some of the ladies,” the man said after he’d been quenched.
Clement thought for a few seconds. First, Angel came to mind, of course. Followed by Mother St. John, and then, strangely, he thought of Big Waters.
Davis pointed to the man’s wound, where the water he had drunk now came out in a dark pink gush. Clement pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and sopped it up.
“They got the freshest breath because the Minnesota air is the healthiest there is in the world. The winter freeze kills everything bad which could ever hurt a body. In the spring, the ladies emerge from their winter cocoons with bright and clear eyes, wearing dresses like flower petals.” Clement thought some more. “All of them tend their little babies in the way the loveliest mother, the Virgin Mary who sits now in heaven waiting to draw all children to her bosom, taught them to do with her example. The Minnesota ladies got the virtue of saints and voices like angels when they sing.”
The man’s eyes were closed, and he was very still. Clement wondered if he was dead already. But then the mustachioed man said, “That’s right. I think I can go now. I can hear them already.” He paused. “I hear singing.” Then his muscles relaxed; the strain was over.
“God bless you,” Clement said. He extended his hand and made the sign of the cross over the man’s chest. “Mother Mary, lead him to your Son.” Then Clement crossed himself and sat quietly with the dead man for a few minutes. He felt Davis’s hand on his shoulder.
“Where’d you learn to
talk like that?” Davis said softly. “You spoke real nice to that man and sent him to his death happy.”
Davis and Clement spent several more weeks tending the sick and the dying and the recovering. Often, Davis would remark that he felt like a coward now, seeing what the men had endured while he’d been on a hospital bed with a stomachache.
“Some of these men are fighting on my behalf,” he told Clement.
Clement dabbed the forehead of a soldier who’d lost his hand to amputation and would have to endure another, to at least his elbow, the way the gangrene looked to be spreading. “What do you mean, ‘on your behalf’?”
“For my people,” said Davis. “The Negro race.”
“Your people?” asked Clement. “Since when? I never heard you talk about being a Negro before.” Clement dipped a washcloth into a bucket of water and twisted it. The water ran pink. He didn’t feel angry toward Davis. Clement was only curious at his friend’s new perspective. In the past, Davis’s indifferent attitude toward his own race had bothered Clement some, though he wasn’t proud of that fact and now knew that he had often held Davis’s race as a wedge between Angel and him. But since they’d first boarded that train, Davis had become dearer to him than practically anyone else on earth. Though Clement had written dozens of letters to Angel, he hadn’t received a single one in return. Though she’d sent small trinkets to Big Waters to include in packages to Clement, she had not penned one kind or encouraging word to him. Now he turned to the people he could depend upon. Here, that person was Davis, his true friend. Clement would have laid down his own life for Davis, as a brother might do.
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