The Deserter

by Jane Langton

  But then Lieutenant Gobright began talking again, more cheerfully now. “I think your husband is most likely still alive. But—”

  “Alive!”

  “But perhaps he left the battle.”

  “Left the battle?” Ida didn’t understand.

  “You see, it’s where I found the letter.”

  “Where you found it? But where was it?”

  Lieutenant Gobright picked up the lantern. In the brighter light she could see that he had turned his head away. “It was beside the pike, the Baltimore Pike.”

  “Oh,” said Ida with rising excitement. “Then he had been there?”

  “I think so.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  Gobright looked at her again and reached for her hand, not boldly, but kindly. “I’m afraid, Mrs. Morgan, it means he was trying to get away to Baltimore.”

  She stared at him, still uncomprehending.

  “He was on the run.” As she still didn’t seem to understand, he put it more plainly. “He was deserting.”

  “No, no.” With an impassioned motion Ida snatched back her hand.

  Thinking that it would comfort her, Gobright took something else out of his pocket. “This was with the letter.”

  Startled, Ida took the little folded sheet and looked at it wildly. It was a sermon for men going into battle. She could see only the hymn at the end, and then at last she broke down and wept.

  Holy Ghost, the Infinite!

  Shine upon our nature’s night

  With thy blessed inward light,

  Comforter Divine!

  We are sinful: cleanse us, Lord;

  We are faint: thy strength afford;

  Lost—until by thee restored,

  Comforter Divine!

  AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY,

  28 CORNHILL, BOSTON

  MY DEAR DAUGHTER

  Lieutenant Gobright commandeered an ambulance and drove Ida back to town. But when he jumped down to inquire at the Globe Hotel, he came back shaking his head. “They say they’re full up, but it’s the bar that’s full up.”

  A drunken man reeling along on crutches heard Gobright and shouted at him, “They dug it up, didja know that?”

  “Dug what up?”

  “Whiskey, two barrels of whiskey, two gin.” The crippled man laughed so hard, he staggered and nearly fell. “Under the cabbages. They hid it under the cabbages.”

  “The sisters,” said Lieutenant Gobright to Ida, climbing up again. “They’ll take you in.” He shook the reins and headed the horse back down Baltimore Street. “Saint Francis Xavier,” he said. “It’s another hospital.”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Ida. “Forgive me, I’ve been so much trouble.”

  “Not at all, ma’am, not at all.”

  At the church, Gobright jumped down again and went inside. From the street Ida could hear his voice raised in powerful persuasion. Almost at once a woman ran out the door to help Ida down. At first in the dark Ida could see only her enormous white cap. She was a Sister of Charity, she said as she took Ida’s arm. “We came from Emmitsburg with Father Burlando. Oh, we saw such terrible things on the ‘way, dead men being buried in pits beside the road.”

  “Well, good night then, Mrs. Morgan,” said Lieutenant Gobright. He clucked at the horse and the ambulance rolled away. Ida called out her thanks, but Sister Camilla was urging her inside.

  The entry was another operating chamber with a prostrate patient, blood on the floor and a heap of arms and legs tossed to one side, but this surgeon was smoking a cigar and swearing as he flourished his saw.

  Tut-tutting softly, Sister Camilla swept Ida through a door into the church and led her down an aisle, holding a candle high.

  The straw under their feet was blood soaked, and there was the familiar stench. Never afterward would Ida be able to erase the scene from her mind. She trailed after Sister Camilla through a great congregation of wounded men lying on boards across the backs of pews, moaning and calling out, “Sister, Sister.”

  “In here, my dear,” said Sister Camilla, opening a door at one side of the altar.

  Ida whispered her thanks, but Sister Camilla did not stay to hear. As she whirled away, the cries were louder, more desperate, “Sister, please, Sister.”

  Sister Camilla called out to them cheerfully, “I’m coming,” and closed the sanctuary’s door.

  Ida sank down on the floor, sobbing, and fell instantly asleep.

  In the morning she woke early and sat up, listening. The hospital chamber was quiet, as though the men were all asleep, or perhaps they had all died.

  Then she remembered the train. “The track’s been repaired,” the lieutenant had said. “There’ll be a train for Baltimore at the depot at ten, but it won’t be for passengers. They may not take you.”

  But they must take her. Ida stood up with difficulty and smoothed her rumpled skirt with her hands. She was thankful to find the priest’s comfort stool behind a curtain, along with a bowl, a pitcher of water and a slop basin. She brushed her hair, did it up again, tied on her bonnet, wrapped herself in her shawl, picked up her valise and ventured outside by the priest’s private door.

  There was a small child on the street. Ida smiled at her and said, “Can you tell me the way to the depot?”

  Instead of answering, the little girl wrapped her hand in Ida’s skirt and dragged her along. At the intersection she kept a tight hold but pointed up the street with her free hand.

  Ida thanked her, kissed her, unwrapped the small hand and watched her set off reluctantly, walking backward and waving. The children too, thought Ida, must have seen terrible things.

  The approach to the depot was obstructed by loaded wagons. Baskets and boxes were heaped beside a building that had become a storehouse for the Christian Commission. Ida saw sides of beef packed in straw and ice, baskets of eggs, stacks of folded undergarments and piles of blankets. Iron cots leaned against the wall. Men and women were unloading hospital equipment—weights and scales, urinals and mortars, chests of pharmaceuticals. A couple of boys walked by in the direction of the station, trundling a steaming boiler of coffee.

  The fragrance of the coffee was delicious, and so was the aroma of baking bread. Ida had eaten nothing since yesterday morning, but she did not want to bother the women who stood beside one of the wagons, heaving down baskets of crockery. They looked at her curiously, but she only nodded and walked on. It’s all right, I won’t be any trouble.

  The blockage on the street grew thicker. Horse-drawn ambulances and crates of supplies were everywhere. When Ida worked her way past them to the depot, she found the platform lined with a long row of wounded men. Nurses were moving among them, both men and women, and so were town ladies, handing out slabs of buttered bread. Boldly Ida reached for one as the tray went by. From somewhere a brass band was playing “Home, Sweet Home.”

  The train had already come in, but it was not about to depart. Roustabouts were shouting and running around with crowbars. Officers bawled orders and a steam whistle shrieked. Ida could see a deep cut off to the left of the depot, but it was empty of track because Gettysburg was the end of the line. Since there was no way for the locomotive to turn around, it would have to push the cars all the way back to Baltimore.

  Someone was shouting, a postboy with a mail pouch. All the heads looked up. Some of the men sat up and looked at him eagerly as he began calling out names in a shrill, nervous voice. Most of the names went unanswered, but a few letters were passed into outstretched hands. “Perley Wheeler? Here, give it to him, he’s way in the back. Albertus Strong, you got a couple. Mrs. Ida Morgan?”

  Everyone stared. Ida gasped, then went forward clumsily and took her letter while the postboy went on calling out names. “Private Schuetz? Private Doobey?”

  Ida’s letter was from her mother, who had addressed it in care of Ida’s cousin Cornelia in Philadelphia, and then Cornelia must have put her baby aside long enough to forward it, vaguely addressing it to:

&nb
sp; Mrs. Ida Morgan

  Gettysburg Penna.

  Reading the letter, Ida could almost hear her mother’s firm confident voice:

  My dear daughter,

  Cornelia’s letter shocked us all. When Eben finishes the cultivating that he promised to Mr. Hosmer I will send him to bring you back. How could you be so foolish. Poor Mother Morgan has taken to her bed.

  Mrs. Weston of Lincoln has heard from George who was at G’sbg in 18th Mass reg’t and is well. I hope you will inquire about Edward Chapin with 15th Mass. They have not heard from him and live in dread of the newspaper as do we all. Mrs. Ripley fears for Ezra who was at Vicksburg. Mother Morgan joins me in praying you will come home at once. Think of the health of your firstborn so soon to see the light if not your own. Please telegraph about Seth and self.

  Yr devoted mother,

  Eudocia Flint

  Ida smiled. Cornelia must have written her Aunt Eudocia about her newborn baby and also about Ida, and then Ida’s mother had snatched up pen and paper, and then the mail train carrying her letter to Philadelphia had made a record run, its whistle blasting all the way, and Cornelia had sent the letter on.

  Of course Ida would not go home. And it was not possible to telegraph. She would write from Baltimore.

  TO

  BALTIMORE

  But first she must get there. Ida found her way to the ticket window, but it was shut. She turned to a large woman in a mighty apron. “Please, ma’am, may I travel to Baltimore on this train? I have money. I can pay my way.”

  “Good heavens, girl,” said the woman, looking her up and down, “what on earth are you doing here?”

  Ida did her best to sound sensible. “But I’m really very well. I’ve been looking for my husband, Lieutenant Seth Morgan of the Second Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. I’m told I may find him in Baltimore.”

  “Well, my girl,” said the woman crisply, “you’re not going to Baltimore on this train. There’s no room for the likes of you.”

  “But I can help,” pleaded Ida. “I can spoon-feed. I can change dressings.”

  “Oh, is that so?” said the nurse. “What about bedpans?”

  Her question was sarcastic, but it did not seem so to Ida, who had been raised on a farm. She was acquainted with all that fell from the bowels of livestock, and she had performed this kind office for her dying father when he was crushed by a falling tree. She answered at once, “Oh yes, I can do that.”

  The big woman in the apron studied her, then scribbled out a chit. “Here,” she said, “they need water. The dipper and butt’s over there.”

  In the freight car Ida had not a minute to herself. Kneeling in the straw, crawling from one man to another, following the orders of the woman in the apron, she changed dressings and handed around slices of bread. When one patient handed her his Old Testament she found his favorite Bible story and began reading it aloud, but he already knew it by heart. “Oh, that’s good,” he said, laughing, “the way Goliath says, ‘Am I a dog?’”

  At Hanover Junction there was a rest stop where the Christian Commission had set up tables. They were serving out beefsteak and pastry. Ida stepped down from the baggage car into the fresh air, found a bench, took pencil and paper from her valise and began a letter to her mother.

  Dear Mother and Dear Mother Morgan,

  As Seth is now in Baltimore, I have taken the cars to find him. If Eben has not started, tell him he need not come, because I am very well.

  I am sorry I could not telegraph, as the instrument in G’sbg was only for official use. I could not find Seth, but I believe him to be in Baltimore. I am told it is half-Secesh.

  Most sincerely, y’r loving Ida

  P. S. I am really very well.

  P. P. S. I am told there is a railroad hotel. I will write again from there.

  PART XI

  THE

  BLOODSTAINED

  COAT

  THE GUN THAT

  WON THE WAR

  Three thousand,” said Bart.

  Homer was scandalized. “But you said two thousand when we were here before.”

  “Maybe I didn’t show you the whole collection. There’s this letter, it’s extra. And this rifle here”—Bart stroked the gleaming walnut stock—“it’s a Spencer repeater. Mostly it was the cavalry at Gettysburg got Spencers, Custer’s brigade.” Bart picked up the beautiful gun and showed them the magazine that held seven cartridges. “Breech loader—you could fire fourteen rounds a minute. So they didn’t have to reload after every shot and ram the cartridge down.”

  Doubtfully, they stared at the gun.

  “To be honest with you,” said Bart, lying in his teeth, “I’ve already got an offer for this rifle, but I hate to break up the set. If this genuine Spencer repeating rifle straight from Gettysburg was on TV, God knows what it would bring.”

  Homer smelled a rat. By returning to the shop they had become sitting ducks. He had seen the look in Bart’s eye as they walked in—The suckers are back.

  He asked a skeptical question, “Where did you get this collection anyway?”

  “Government auction. Unclaimed relics removed from the bodies of Civil War victims. Collectors, they bid against each other. I won this time, but it was pretty—”

  “Pricey, I’ll bet,” growled Homer.

  “Your assumption is correct.” Then Bart ended his sales pitch with a masterly stroke. “This is the gun that won the war.”

  Homer gave in. So did Mary. Five minutes later they walked out of the shop with the gun, Otis Pike’s identification tag, and the bloodstained coat with all that its pockets contained, leaving behind in the hands of the proprietor a check for $3, 150.

  Grinning, Bart watched them go, congratulating himself on his quick wit, because the rifle had been a last-minute inspiration. In the back room, running his eye over his shelves of miscellaneous relics, he had recognized the gun at once as Otis Pike’s own personal firearm. And the yarn about winning the war always worked like a charm.

  It was time to lock up. But just as Bart hung the CLOSED sign on the door, another customer turned up, a whiskery man so out of breath he could hardly speak. “I feel sure”—puff, puff—“you will not want to close your door because, you see, I am here”—puffity puff—“to purchase a few things that I understand you are offering”—gasp, choke—“for sale.” The new customer bent himself double, panting to recover his breath.

  Generously Bart reopened his shop door and let him in. And then of course Ebenezer was disappointed in his quest because his third cousin twice removed, or perhaps it was his second cousin three times removed, had beaten him to it. But his wild drive to Gettysburg was not entirely wasted.

  The wily proprietor of the shop spread other delectable items before his goggling eyes—a pair of drumsticks that had belonged to a famous drummer boy, a feather cockade that might once have adorned an artilleryman’s dress cap, and a dirty little bottle possibly containing a few drops of the tincture of laudanum, that precious old standby in the pharmacopoeia of the Civil War surgeon.

  The jewel was a .44-caliber Remington revolver, the gun that had won the war.

  All of these things were pricey, very pricey, but Ebenezer snapped them up.

  Afterward, as he approached his car with his bag of precious things, he fell prey to another huckster.

  It was a smiling elderly woman peddling salvation, handing out pamphlets. She appeared before him on the sidewalk as suddenly as though descending from above.

  Ebenezer stood stock-still beside his car and stared at her.

  Fixing her pale eyes on his face, she handed him a pamphlet and said softly, “Good afternoon, dear friend. Tell me, wouldest thou be perfect?”

  He gaped.

  She toddled a little closer. “Wouldest thou inherit eternal life?”

  Ebenezer was still transfixed. His mouth opened in wonder, a pink O in the cataract of his whiskers.

  She crept still closer. “Wouldest thou, dear friend, have treasure in heav
en?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Ebenezer. “I would, I certainly would.”

  THE POCKETS

  In the motel they laid the Otis Pike collection down on the bed—the identification chain, the coat, and the articles taken from the pockets. Mary also put down on the bed the two little cases of photographs. Homer leaned the gun in the corner, having ceased to believe in it.

  “Of course Bart cheated us,” he said. “We were babes in the wood.”

  “Of course we were,” said Mary dreamily, “but just the same”—she touched the coat—“it brings it so close.”

  They pulled chairs up to the bed and sat down to look at everything carefully.

  “I’ll make a list,” said Mary, pawing in her bag.

  They began with the blue coat. “Not much blood on the outside,” said Homer. “Strange the way the stains look like fingerprints.” He undid the buttons. “Most of it’s on the lining. You know, if we were paying so much per ounce of blood, we didn’t get our money’s worth.”

  “Don’t be such a ghoul,” said Mary, but she scribbled it down. An hour later there were ten items on her list.

  1. Brass tag on a chain identifying Otis M. Pike of the Second Massachusetts Volunteers (Seth Morgan’s regiment).

  2. Union army sack coat, no stripes on sleeves (probably meaning a private). A few bloodstains on front of coat, lining somewhat stained.

  3. Contents of left front pocket—folded note, very mysterious—

  FOR GOD’S SAKE, OTIS, IN THE NAME OF FAIRY BELL,

  THE YOUNG SCAMP AND THE FEMALE SMUGGLER,

  DON’T DO IT AGAIN.

  THE CONCORD ROSEBUD

  Extracting the next item, Mary burst out laughing.

  4. Right front pocket, oilcloth packet containing photograph of curvaceous woman in tights, name printed below, “LILY LEBEAU.”

  5. Also in packet, dapper-looking man in top hat.