***
No one questioned Jovie’s identity when the ambulance crews scoured the valley in the deep of night. He was sorted at a Union field hospital—those who would live and those who would die—and laid out with the hundreds of men awaiting their turn in the barn that served as an operating theater. The sun baked his skin and flies swarmed his open wound as the boom of artillery ticked off a third day of battle. Evening descended before his shattered limb was piled with all the others outside the surgery door, but delirium had carried him past the point of suffering long before the dose of morphine was administered.
For two days, Jovie drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point, during a painful moment of semi-awareness, he felt the rocking of a train car beneath him before blissful nothingness blacked out his surroundings once again. He sank back into it gratefully.
He came awake in a long room filled with beds. Two women wearing black dresses and white aprons circulated between them. One of them, a dark-eyed woman perhaps thirty years old, approached him within a few minutes of his waking. She smiled reassuringly. “How are you feeling, soldier?”
Jovie licked his dry lips and tried to form a response, but every drop of moisture had been sucked from his mouth. She seemed to understand. Lifting his head, she brought a glass of water to his lips. He gulped greedily.
“Not too much too soon,” she cautioned, pulling the glass away long before he’d had enough. “You may have more in a few minutes. Do you think you could take some nourishment?”
The exchange had given him time to gather his wits. If he responded verbally, his Charleston accent would bring him into immediate question. Of course there were Southerners who had joined the Union ranks, just as he’d come across an occasional Northerner in the Confederate army, but here no one knew him. No one at all could vouch for him. He’d be safer if he simply kept quiet.
He stared at the nurse blankly.
She tried again, “Could you take some soup?”
He raised a hand to his ear as if it had suddenly occurred to him that it was not working.
“Can you hear me?”
Again, an absent stare.
Compassion filled her eyes. She made a spooning motion with her hand. “Soup?”
He nodded.
She moved up the aisle, stopping to speak to this man, fetching paper and ink for that one, and returned shortly with a tray of food. She set it down at the end of his bed. “Let me help you sit up.”
He made no response.
She motioned him upright, lending her aid and tucking an extra pillow behind his back. A stab of pain shot through his thigh. He looked down at his injured leg for the first time since the battlefield. It simply ended four inches above where his knee had once been—a flat emptiness where bone and muscle should have filled out the blanket.
Why hadn’t he predicted it? He’d seen it happen often enough. Surgeons had only minutes with each patient—time enough to remove limbs but not repair them. Jack, too, had undergone a leg amputation. Still, that abrupt drop into nothingness caught him by surprise. Gingerly, he touched the end of the stump.
The nurse took his hand and gently shook her head, continuing to speak as if he could hear. “You mustn’t worry about that right now. First get well. The rest will come later.”
She set the tray on his lap. It held a bowl of broth and a slice of soft bread. “Can you manage?” she asked, holding out the spoon with a question in her eye.
He took it and tried a mouthful, but the tremor in his hand spilled the broth onto his blanket.
“Let me.” Holding the bowl near his chin, she spooned in mouthful after mouthful. It tasted better than the beans and hardtack he’d lived on for so long, but his stomach soon rebelled. He turned his head away.
“A small appetite is normal after so long without food,” she assured him. Setting down the bowl, she tore off a chunk of bread and simulated dipping it in the broth then pressed it into his hand. “Eat when you’re ready. The bread will settle your stomach. In the meantime, let’s have a look at that leg.”
She moved the tray to a low table and pulled down the blanket to uncover his wound. The bandage surrounding the stump was soaked through with blood and pus. She patted his arm. “I’ll get this cleaned up for you.”
She gathered a pan of water and new bandages. As she unwound the old cloth, Jovie couldn’t make himself watch. Instead he focused on her face. And there, he witnessed her reaction. It was fleeting, the briefest falter of expression as she got down to raw, oozing skin, but it was there nonetheless.
She recovered with a quick smile. “That doesn’t look too bad. I’ll have it dressed up in no time.” With gentle, practiced efficiency, she bathed the wound and rewrapped it in a length of clean cloth. The pain wasn’t as sharp and all-consuming as it had been on the battlefield. No doubt he still had medication in his system. But the wound still throbbed with a dull ache, and the slightest touch to the sensitive stump made him flinch.
She pulled up the blanket. “There, all done.”
She set the tray back on his lap, but his appetite had vanished. The pain of his wound paled compared to the hurt of that one look—the look of a woman gazing at a man with revulsion. She hadn’t meant it, he was sure. She’d been far too kind to purposefully inflict injury. But he’d seen it, that flash of truth.
He was deformed. Damaged. Less than whole.
No woman would ever want him now.
***
During the week that followed, Jovie had plenty of time to think about what the future might hold for a one-legged man. Aside from loneliness, it would include far fewer options for employment. But the thought of returning to his parents’ plantation to live as a dependent filled him with loathing. He could never stomach his family’s pity. Well-intended or not, it would steal away every shred of dignity left to him. How much easier to avoid the encounter, at least for now, and stay hidden in the North until he could come to terms with his new situation. So when the nurse delivered a sheaf of paper to write home, he feigned memory loss, shaking his head sadly and tapping his temple.
After about ten days, Jovie began to feel better physically. The ache in his leg subsided, some of his strength returned, and he was able to spend more time sitting up. But pain sometimes shot down into the missing flesh. It was the most frustrating kind of discomfort. He caught himself reaching to rub it, to soothe it, only to find nothing there to work with.
His heart seemed equally absent. Whatever corner of himself that once held hope, anticipation, and joy now echoed with dull nothingness. A hollow as empty as his pant leg. He couldn’t even muster the willpower to care. He just sat, day after day, entombed in numb listlessness.
The men around him began to notice his growing strength. “Hey, bed thirty-three,” the fellow across the aisle called out. “What’s your name?”
Jovie ignored him.
“We need a fourth for a game of quadrille. What do you say?”
No response.
“He can’t hear you, Paxton,” said the man in the bed beside Jovie’s. “I heard the nurse say he’s deaf.”
Paxton waved his arms to get Jovie’s attention. Jovie let him catch his eye. Two men sat on either side of Paxton’s bed, one in a wheeled chair and one on a folding camp chair. Paxton held up the deck of cards. “Want to play?”
Jovie turned his head away. He had no heart for games, and these were Yankees. Men he had fought against for two years. He loathed them. Even if he weren’t trying to hide his identity, he wouldn’t have responded.
“Friendly, isn’t he?” Paxton observed.
“I told you he’s deaf,” repeated Jovie’s neighbor.
“You don’t need ears to play cards.”
“Lay off, Paxton. He’s got no memory, either. He can’t remember friends or family, regiment, commander. Nothing.”
That sobered the men across the aisle. The man in the wheeled chair shook his head sympathetically. “Poor kid.”
They left hi
m in peace after that. It was Jovie’s first taste of the solitude he had to look forward to in the North.
The next day Jovie woke with a stiff neck. He thought it was just sore from sleeping in an awkward position. It wasn’t easy to get any rest in a hospital, so he had taken to sleeping with a pillow over his head. He liked the way it blocked out the world along with the noise. Rotating his neck to try and stretch the muscles loose only made it worse. By dinner, he could no longer open his mouth.
He flagged down a nurse, an older woman with a bonnet of neat gray hair. She’d been unable to disguise her alarm. She rushed off and returned moments later with one of the doctors in tow.
“Ah, our mystery soldier,” the doctor said. Most of the hospital staff continued to speak to him normally. “Still no name?”
The nurse supplied the answer. “When I asked, he shrugged and wrote out the name George Avery. It’s as good as any, I suppose.”
“Let me see what we’ve got here, George.” The doctor rotated Jovie’s neck gently from side to side. “It’s tight, all right. Can you open your jaw?” He demonstrated and pointed to Jovie, who tried to oblige without much success.
“Can you swallow?” The doctor pointed to his own throat and demonstrated again.
Yes, Jovie could still do that.
The doctor turned to the nurse, his face grave. “You’re certain he can’t hear us?”
“Not a word.”
“It’s almost certainly tetanus. I’ll prescribe tincture of valerian and belladonna, but I’m sure you’re aware of the mortality rate.” He jotted something on a pad of paper. “When the spasms and convulsions begin, keep him sedated. At least he won’t suffer when they suffocate him.” The doctor handed the paper to the nurse and turned to Jovie with a reassuring smile. “We’ll do the best we can for you, son.”
Jovie held his face expressionless, but the doctor’s words came almost as a relief. What did he have to live for anyway? Emily had rejected him. Jack was dead. And he didn’t want to face endless decades as a cripple. It seemed fitting that he should follow in Jack’s footsteps. They had suffered the same injury; they would die of similar complications. In time, his family would come to accept his disappearance.
The disease progressed just as the doctor predicted. By the next day, Jovie had difficulty swallowing. Then his abdomen grew stiff, as if he’d worked too long at strenuous exercise. Within a few more hours, he had lost control of his muscles altogether. They would tighten unpredictably at the slightest stimulant—a stirring of the breeze through the open window, the cough of the patient next to him, the emergence of the sun from behind a cloud.
Fever set in. Heat. Cold. Sweat. Chills. The nurses faithfully administered his medicine, but the spasms grew worse. Then the convulsions began. A violent contraction gripped his body, wrenching it into a painful arch. The nurse on duty rushed to administer a dose of chloroform, but not before his spine bent backward so forcefully that he thought surely his head would touch his feet. When the powerful drug took effect, he welcomed the empty nothingness of death.
2
Emily felt warm and alive in Jovie’s arms as they twirled across the dance floor. With her hair braided elegantly around her head and her slender figure framed in a gown the same shade of blue as her eyes, she drew the attention of every man in the room. But he was the lucky one who had claimed her, even if only for the moment. The stirrings within him at this, their first connection as young adults, were far stronger, far deeper than his silly bids for her attention in their childhood years. She laughed lightly at something he said, and he drew her closer, wishing the dance might go on and on…
The scenery shifted. He was sitting with her in her father’s Thoroughbred pasture, flipping through the images in her artist’s portfolio, stunned by their beauty… Leaning on a piling together with the masts of three dozen sailing ships rising like a small forest in the harbor... Standing on a balcony watching her alight from a carriage…
The memories came faster. Grew darker. Walking through the burned-out district of Charleston… Standing beneath his parents’ grape arbor, watching her walk away… Riding in a hansom cab with rain streaming down the glass... Facing off across his sister’s table, unable to meet her eyes...
The shapes whirled. Grew grotesque. She was standing above him, looking down at his damaged leg. Her mouth twisted in disgust. Revulsion flashed in her eyes. She turned her back. Moved away. Faded from his sight.
Over and over the dream repeated, varying little, until time lost meaning and memory merged with nightmare. He sweated, writhed, cried out, unable to sort reality from fiction, and finally awakened with a gasp.
The doctor’s face hovered above him. “Good morning, young man. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
He wasn’t dead? Jovie looked around in confusion—the slight movement was all he had strength for. There was the same gray-haired nurse standing behind the doctor, the same rows of beds with some of the same men…
“I confess, you’ve surprised us,” the doctor continued, looking pleased. “Only one out of ten men beats tetanus. It was a difficult week, but I congratulate you, Mr. Avery. You pulled through.”
Slowly, the doctor’s words began to sink in. Jovie had come to terms with his death. He had embraced it gladly. The prognosis carried with it peace, rest, the avoidance of a life filled with struggle. Now the world opened before him like a book of frightening images.
He was going to live.
“In time, you’ll be good as new. Minus that leg, of course. But you’ll learn to manage. Any man who fought as hard as you did is going to be just fine.” The doctor wrote something on his ever-present pad of paper. Do you have family who will receive you?
Jovie shrugged.
Your memory hasn’t returned?
Jovie shook his head.
The doctor sighed. “I suppose that would have been too much to hope for.” He scrawled out an address and handed it to Jovie:
Baltimore Soldiers’ Home
No. 62 Conway Street
Superintendent A. E. Hastings
They will help you.
“You’ll have to stay with us another couple weeks while we keep you under observation and build up your strength,” the doctor continued. “At the end of that time, you’ll be fitted with crutches. Then the Soldiers’ Home will help you make the transition back to civilian life.” He turned to the nurse. “You’ll see that he understands all of this?”
“Of course.”
“Very well.” He smiled and laid a gentle hand on Jovie’s shoulder. “It’s truly good to see you alive, son.”
When they had both left, Jovie studied the slip of paper. His arm dropped to the bed, and his eyes closed in defeat. Why would God let him live when Jack had died? Jack was the one who had so much to offer the world. He would have been strong enough to rise above the challenge. But for Jovie, the years simply stretched out bleak and endless. It seemed like the cruelest of jokes.
And of all places, why would God land him in Baltimore?
Jovie rolled to one side and retreated beneath the privacy of his pillow.
Baltimore was the home of the Maryland Institute where Emily attended school. It had been Jovie who brought her there a year and a half ago to investigate the possibility of enrollment when her father would not. That week lingered in his memory like a pleasant dream. It was the last time he’d been truly happy. Back when the war was still just a winter campout with expectations of peace in the spring. Back when he still held out hope that he and Emily might end up together.
He had kissed her in Baltimore. He remembered that perfect evening, the play at the Holliday Theater, their easy camaraderie, the soft touch of her lips. And then on the train ride home, the horrible realization that he had reached for too much too soon. After that her letters stopped. Three months later she announced the engagement that ripped out his soul.
He didn’t see her again until Jack died, and for a few days, the horrible tragedy ha
d linked them together once more. Her letters resumed, but he hadn’t opened them. How could he, knowing that her heart belonged to someone else? It was the purest form of torture, those letters, and he had thrown them back at her this past spring, the last time he’d seen her. He hated to hurt her, but she had to understand that it was all or nothing. Anything less was simply too painful.
That’s when Emily told him she’d broken off her engagement, but she’d given him no reason to hope that she had any interest beyond friendship. So he had kept his distance. He wished he could banish her so easily from his thoughts. The last he’d heard, she had quit school and returned to Charleston to care for her aunt during the summer attacks on the harbor. Would she remain in South Carolina, he wondered. Or would she return to school in the fall?
Could she be coming back here, to Baltimore?
The thought raised hopes that he quickly quashed. Emily did not love him. And with the injury he had sustained, she never would.
***
Three weeks later, Jovie found himself facing the door of the soldiers’ charity home, having been wheeled there from the hospital by one of the nurses. A brand-new pair of crutches lay across his lap. The door opened, and a man with a head of golden curls and a brass hook in place of his left hand opened the door. He stepped aside, regarding Jovie curiously. “Come on in. You don’t have to knock, you know.”
“Thank you,” the nurse replied, holding the chair steady as Jovie pushed himself up on his crutches. “We didn’t know.”
“I’m Michael,” the man said, holding his hand out to Jovie. Jovie shook it, careful not to let any animosity show in his face.
“Don’t expect him to answer you,” the nurse told him. “George lost his hearing in the war.”
“Artillery?” Michael asked.
Ella Wood Novellas: Boxed Set Page 17