by Debra Diaz
She marched back into the examination room. Dr. Carey glanced at her and said shortly, as if recognizing her determination, “Good. Wash your hands.”
The operation didn’t take long, though by the time it was over Genny hurt all over from nervous strain. The doctor, however, didn’t falter once. She averted her eyes from the gaping flesh and concentrated on administering the tiny drops of chloroform he prepared, and also under his direction watched the boy’s face and observed his breathing.
At last he made the last stitch and bandaged the leg. Mrs. Warren returned, and after making sure that Thomas was doing well, the doctor left her with her son and accompanied Genny to the waiting room.
Genny sat abruptly in a chair. Now it made her nauseous to see the blood on the floor. Dr. Carey had blood on his clothes.
He stood looking down at her. “Quite a first day,” he said.
“Yes.” She smiled wanly.
“There’s a man named Matthew who does the cleaning,” he told her. “He’ll see to the floor. Let me walk you to the house. I’m going to change clothes and take Thomas to the hospital.”
He put out his hand toward her. Genny looked at it, and all at once it seemed that a shadow crossed the room. Somehow the outstretched hand represented more than an offer of help. It was…a threat. Why she should think such a thing she didn’t know. She wanted to leap up and run, to do anything but take the proffered hand. But she did take it, finally, slipping her own into his, and got carefully to her feet. He held it until she had stepped over the dried stains on the floor, then released it.
“Thank you, Dr. Carey,” she murmured. She avoided meeting his eyes and waited as he opened the door. They crossed the brick-paved walkway, not speaking, and entered the kitchen. Agnes stood at the sink, rinsing a cup.
“Agnes,” said the doctor, pausing at the entrance to the hallway, “will you pour Mrs. Stuart a cup of coffee? How do you like it, Genny?”
“Cream and sugar, please.”
“Of course — why we are a wee bit pale now, aren’t we?” Agnes got out another cup and lifted the coffeepot. “I’ll fix ye right up, Mrs. Stuart.”
When the doctor didn’t leave at once Genny glanced up at him. He stood easily in the doorway, watching her. When she met his gaze he nodded, then turned and left. She sensed his approval, and a warm feeling came over her she’d never felt before. He approved of something she’d done, and it had nothing to do with how she looked or how prominent her parents were.
* * * *
Valerie gave an exasperated sigh and closed the door of Ethan’s study, going back into the hall where Genny and Geoff waited for her.
“He’s not coming,” she said, as they all went outside and climbed into the waiting buggy. Finney, who’d been waiting beside it, had to bodily lift Geoff into the conveyance.
“It’s always the same thing,” Geoff said. “You might as well stop asking him.”
Genny carefully arranged her tiny new bonnet of yellow straw, trimmed with ribbons and an ostrich feather. “Doesn’t he ever go to church? Doesn’t he believe in God?” she asked, intrigued. She’d never met anyone who didn’t believe in God, or at least profess to.
Valerie replied, “He believes. But he’s sort of like Jacob, wrestling with the angel of the Lord.”
“What do you mean? Who does he wrestle with?”
“With God, or with himself, or both. I don’t know.”
“Ethan’s not the same man he once was,” Geoff said thoughtfully, as Finney drove the buggy down the long, residential street. “None of us are, I suppose, since the war. But Ethan especially. Maybe it was what happened to his father.”
“What happened?”
Geoff glanced at his daughter, then at Genny, and explained, “Ethan’s father was a minister. After the Yankees took Nashville in ’62 and Andrew Johnson was made military governor, a lot of people, important people, were sent to prisons in the North for refusing to take the oath of allegiance. Mr. Carey was one of them. He’d been saying things from the pulpit Johnson didn’t like. He took sick and died in prison.”
“How awful!” Genny exclaimed.
“It made Ethan madder than I’ve ever seen him, before or since. He knew his father had been sent to prison, but he didn’t know where and couldn’t find out what had happened to him. General Forrest was — still is — a friend of his and after the war was over he helped Ethan look for his father. When Ethan found out he was dead, and that he’d been sick and neglected, he was for hunting down every officer who’d been assigned to that prison and killing them. Oddly enough it was Forrest who calmed him down…the same Forrest that could fight like a wild Comanche when the situation called for it.”
“Was he already a doctor then?”
Valerie answered, in her prim and proper manner, “He didn’t really start his practice until about seven years ago. He had a master of arts degree when he decided to enter the medical field, but the war interrupted his studies. He was an officer in the war, and when it was over he was placed on parole and permitted to continue his education…doctors were in very high demand. He graduated from the Medical Department of the University of Nashville, then he studied in Philadelphia and Baltimore. He even spent a year in Europe, so he could observe the latest surgical advances made in Berlin and Vienna.”
“Well,” Genny said, “you certainly seem to know a lot about Dr. Carey.”
“Of course I do. I’ve known him all my life.”
Genny sensed something almost like an air of possessiveness about Valerie, and for some reason this annoyed her. She said airily, “With those credentials he must be quite the most popular doctor in town.”
Valerie said nothing. Geoff replied, “Not exactly. He’s much more admired in other cities than he is here.”
“Why on earth is that?”
“There is a lot of incompetence in the medical field. He’s made a few enemies. He says there should be laws to control medical practice. The politicians don’t like him either, because he’s always criticizing them for not supporting better supervision of water supplies, and sewerage systems. He advocates the monthly inspection of schools and prisons. He’s written some very frank letters to the city newspapers.”
“He’s been pushing for a bill to establish a State Board of Health,” Valerie added, with the same sense of pride and possession. “He thinks it’s going to pass this time, very soon.”
Geoff chuckled. “I’ll say this for him — he doesn’t give up easily. I guess that’s what made him such a good soldier.”
“Were you and Ethan together in the war?” Genny asked.
Geoff’s smile faded.
“Up until the spring of ’62. That’s when I lost my leg.”
Genny tried not to look at the place where his trouser leg was pinned over the stump. For a moment, it seemed that he wouldn’t say any more, but his brown eyes had taken on a strange, inward look, and he began to recount the incident in a low voice, barely audible over the clattering of the buggy as they entered a more populated part of town. Valerie stared into the distance, her brow furrowed, and it seemed obvious that she’d heard the story before.
“A shell exploded, killed my horse, tore up my leg. I just lay there for the rest of the battle, explosions all around me, men running and yelling. We were raw troops, even some of the officers didn’t rightly know what they were doing. I just about bled to death. But finally everything died down and somebody picked me up and took me to the field hospital.”
He paused. “They were out of chloroform by the time they got to me, out of morphine, out of everything. Ethan had been in the battle all day, but he was there, helping the surgeons. I don’t know who actually did the cutting, but I’ll never forget the look on Ethan’s face. I think it hurt him as much as it did me.”
Genny sat stricken into dumbness. But Geoff didn’t seem to expect a response, still with that inward look as if he could see the battle, as if pain and terror could no longer touch him, even by remembrance…
CHAPTER SEVEN
Even as Geoff spoke of the battle of Shiloh, named after the little church nearby, Ethan was reliving it all…as he had at least a hundred times in that mysterious realm of sleep over which he had no control. He never thought about it when he was awake, never permitted himself to remember anything about those days, but when he slept…
He’d lain down on the sofa in the parlor to read a medical journal, but he’d been up late the night before, and the oppressive heat of early summer beat down upon him and he fell asleep. Perhaps it was the twittering of birds in the tree outside the open window that reached his subconscious mind and set it on the familiar, dreaded road to Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee.
It had rained that night in early April, but when morning dawned the forest came alive, vibrantly green, raindrops sparkling on the buds of the dogwoods. Birds sang in the trees, rabbits scampered in the underbrush, squirrels leaped playfully in the branches overhead. The whole scene was surely as beautiful and serene as the first day of creation.
The Federals hadn’t expected to be attacked. General Sherman, contemptuously underestimating the abilities of Confederate forces, failed to place his men in a defensive position, nor did he send out adequate scouts and patrols. Somehow the Confederates had marched into the heavy woods undetected and set up camp within such close proximity that music from the Yankee bands could be plainly heard.
The Confederates knew this battle had to be won, and won quickly, before the Federals could gather up more men and ammunition. To them, it was conquer or die. What they didn’t know, however, was that their two commanders, Johnston and Beauregard — for reasons which would always remain unclear — had failed to formulate a definite battle plan, or if they had, certainly they hadn’t communicated the plan to each other. The consequences were confusion, chaos, and an opportunity for southern victory that was forever lost.
The first shots rang out shortly after daybreak, and soon turned into the heavy thunder of continuous fighting. Nathan Bedford Forrest, then a colonel, led his men across Lick Creek and sent one of his staff for instructions from General Johnston. When he’d received no answer by eleven o’clock, the impatient Forrest waited no longer but plunged into the thickest of the fighting, saying something to the effect that he wasn’t going to stand around guarding a creek, when men were falling by the hundreds only a few miles away.
Sherman, appalled both by the unexpected attack and its ferocity, had been forced to retreat. Grant, arriving at the landing in the middle of the morning with reinforcements, was met by the sight of hundreds of Federal stragglers hiding under the river bluff in mortal terror. Some finally rejoined the battle, but no amount of coaxing or threatening could induce others to come out; they’d rather be shot where they stood then return to the front lines.
Images, impressions, sounds…men’s faces streaked with sweat and blood and gunpowder, bodies decapitated by cannon balls, torn apart by shells, horses running about in a frenzy, trailing their guts on the ground. The sun glared, penetrating even the underbrush that grew as thick as some tropical jungle. Choking clouds of smoke from the guns caused the battlefield to resemble a scene from the underworld. Roars and explosions, the earth torn apart, dead and wounded men everywhere…In a peach orchard, the soft pink blooms fell like snow beneath the onslaught of metal. The woods nearby caught fire and burned alive those men too severely injured to crawl to safety.
Yes, later writers about that battle would agree…the Garden of Eden had turned swiftly into hell.
Johnston died that afternoon, and Beauregard, believing the battle won and knowing that his men had reached the point of exhaustion, finally ordered his troops to withdraw, planning to attack again in the morning.
Colonel Forrest, however, in his usual fearless and intrepid manner, did his own reconnaissance along the riverbank and reported to his superiors that thousands of Federal reinforcements were on the way. He urged another attack before daylight. As happened often during the war, to the detriment of the South, Forrest’s insight was unappreciated and his advice went unheeded.
Ethan at that time was one of Forrest’s scouts, and concurred with him that either the attack should be resumed at once or the Confederates should retreat under cover of darkness. Forrest prowled like a panther all night, and Ethan was so disturbed by the situation, and by the pitiful cries of the wounded, that in spite of his exhaustion he couldn’t sleep. The Federals kept up a constant shelling, and it was doubtful that anyone slept. He requested to be allowed to help with the wounded, a request that Forrest at first denied, wishing him to remain with his scouts, but when it became clear to the colonel that there would be no more action until morning, he allowed Ethan to go to the field hospital.
It rained again that night and a cold wind sprang up, so that even those men who bore no wounds were in misery. Thousands of the injured lay on the battlefield, alone except for each other and the lifeless bodies of comrades, whose staring eyes couldn’t see the blackness of the night and the blue flashes of lightning, nor could they feel the rain and chill wind. Some of the wounded managed to crawl to a little pond to drink and, sometimes, to die.
Rivers of blood and rain flowed from under the hospital tents. Nightmarish sounds rang out into the night…screams, moans of despair, oaths, and prayers. A sentry on duty outside became violently sick when Ethan walked out with a basin full of amputated arms and legs. After dumping the basin in a trench, so did Ethan.
A hoarse shout woke him, and even before it left his throat he knew it was his own shout. He was sweating profusely, his mouth was dry, and there was a dismal, haunting cloud hanging over him. That, too, was familiar. He sat up, elbows on his knees, and ran his hands over his face.
Ethan knew the cloud would descend and suck all the life out of him if he allowed it, if he didn’t busy himself at once, so he went into his study and began going through his desk drawers, discarding papers and old newspaper articles. He found some notes on a patient he’d been looking for. Then his hand brought out an object that had half hung in the back of the drawer, and he looked at it as if he’d never seen it before.
It was a hand-tinted photograph of a slender, black-haired woman, uncommonly beautiful, with large green eyes. Her name was Caroline Adams.
* * * *
She’d been eighteen then, the belle of the city. She had received innumerable proposals of marriage after the war started, but it was his she’d accepted. It was Ethan she’d chosen. He hadn’t seen her again after their engagement, for a few months later came the disastrous second day of Shiloh, when he and his horse were shot almost simultaneously. The force of the shot had knocked him off the horse, fortunately as it turned out, for instead of falling on him the dying animal plowed into the road some distance ahead. He forced himself to his feet and swung up behind one of the other mounted soldiers.
His name erroneously appeared on the casualty lists as Dead. The mistake was soon rectified, but not before Caroline had “consoled” herself with questionable activities involving half a dozen other men, all Yankees…for by then the Federals had occupied the city of Nashville. Why she’d done it, he never knew. Personal gain, a favor, a permit — any of these could have been her motive. He didn’t know or care.
His unwilling informant, a well-meaning friend, had hinted that this wasn’t the first time Caroline had been “indiscreet”, so his alleged death hadn’t been what set her upon her philandering path. Apparently there had been at least one lover before Shiloh, though Ethan never learned his identity. How he’d failed to recognize her true character he would never understand and could only blame it on the old adage that love is blind.
There had been no opportunity to see her again before the war was over. By then he had other, more pressing matters on his mind. But he had finally gone to her, asked her if the rumors were true (yes, she’d said, unashamedly), called her what she was, and left. Soon afterward Caroline left Nashville, and he’d heard nothing from or about her since.
The Japanese bronze clock on the mantle chiming the hour diverted him from his thoughts. He became aware of the delicious aroma of roasting chicken drifting from the kitchen and realized that in a few moments the others would come in from church. He shook his head, as if to clear it, and slowly replaced the photograph in the drawer.
A moment later he heard the front door open. Geoff paused in the doorway of the study, waited until the ladies had gone upstairs, then hobbled inside and closed the door behind him. Ethan, wreathed in smoke, was in the act of lighting his pipe. He glanced up as Geoff approached.
“Hello, Geoffrey,” he said amicably, taking the pipe from his mouth.
“Ethan. I’m not disturbing you, am I?”
“Not at all.” He looked closely at Geoff and asked, “Something on your mind?”
Geoff nodded, shifting a crutch. “It’s about Valerie.”
Ethan waited, not speaking.
“Well, first, I introduced Genny to Charles Spencer today at church, and he’s invited her to go with him to the church social next Saturday afternoon. Valerie is going with them, and she expects me to escort her.” Geoff paused for a moment. “I’d appreciate it very much if you’d take her, Ethan.”
Ethan regarded the other man thoughtfully and said, “Geoff, you know about me and church socials.”
“Well, I don’t like them either. Valerie doesn’t know how much I despise going. I only go to church to please her, anyway. Her mother always went, and Valerie seems to — get something out of it. I don’t. Besides, I’d only put a damper on things.”
“No,” Ethan said. “No, you wouldn’t put a damper on things.” He stared at Geoff. “This belief that others think less of you because of your leg has gone on long enough. Why don’t you let me talk to — ”
“No!” said Geoff vehemently. “I don’t need a lecture on the latest marvels of artificial limbs. I refuse to go thumping about on one of those blasted things. Besides, you’ve done enough for me. Forget it, will you?”