From Here to Where
Jennifer Eifrig
Diary of Chaplain (Lieut.) Roger Matthews, 9th New York Volunteers
September 17, 1862, 5:30 p.m. – Sharpsburg, Maryland
I freely admit I spent as much of today as possible in my tent, cowering from the incessant boom of artillery fire, followed by the muffled crack of rifle shots. The noise was a drumbeat, a roll call, a tattoo leading up to the denouement that I would have to face eventually. All morning, Col. Hawkins received reports of the engagement with the enemy in a cornfield below a German Baptist church. We heard tell that the 12th Massachusetts boys were slaughtered en masse by the rebs, until someone thought to bring in the three-inch guns and fire point-blank into the corn, silencing the enemy’s war cry forever. All this before seven o’clock in the morning.
It went on. Charge, retreat, slaughter, stalemate. Green men and veteran soldiers alike were wild-eyed with terror and fury. Officers fell, their replacements were dispatched to assume command, and found their new division decimated. Gen. Mansfield of CT bunched his men tight to prevent them bolting, and left the enemy with a target the size of a barn. He paid the price for his mistake with a mortal wound to the stomach; last I knew he lingered in agony, not expected to live the night. Maj. Gen. Sumner tried a daring attack to gain ground, but in the end nothing was achieved except to bloody the earth still more. Some have whispered that Gen. McClellan held back, that we could have crushed the rebs for good if only he had the stones in his trousers to commit his army. I don’t know. All I know for certain is that the day went on, and on, and nothing except death reigned supreme.
There are whispers about me, too, of course. Some say I have no stones, either. I’m not like Father Corby, who rode with Brig. Gen. Meagher’s Irish Brigade to give absolution on the field to those about to die. I’m not a crack shot. The thought of a bayonet makes me shudder, when all my fevered brain can do is think, I am not meant to be here. When I graduated from Union College in 1854, there was no talk of war. Slavery was an abomination, a blight on our new Jerusalem, but I will wager my soul that there was none in this country that would have believed we would come down to slaughtering each other by the thousands in less than a decade.
The fighting ended twelve hours after it began, and now it is time for my tour of duty to commence. I must assist with the retrieval of the dead and wounded, and visit the field hospital that has been set up in Gen. McClellan’s headquarters, a house and barn owned by a Mr. Pry and his family. I will bring my faithful dog with me, selfish beast that I am, for I know I will have need of comfort.
Addendum, 9:30 p.m.
I take up my pen again in great agitation. I will not write of the devastation I witnessed, the four thousand dead on both sides, the nearly twenty thousand wounded. All I will say is that the destruction is greater than mortal man is meant to witness, and I am unable to take it all in.
No, I write instead about one man. So many lives lost and ruined, and all I can think of is one soul, who even now teeters on the edge of the great divide. He has undone me.
I have held my secret inviolate. No one suspects; or, if they do, none has come forward with an accusation. War, ironically, has a way of civilizing mankind; when there is such a larger peril to be concerned with, individual men are more tolerant of the peccadilloes that would otherwise inflame their prejudices and passions in peaceable times. I have labored alongside my fellow soldiers since the outbreak of hostilities, and I have been accepted, and my reticence for battle is attributed to my profession.
Yet, I had barely begun the rounds of the field hospital – I should call it what it really is, a barn, whose cattle has been shooed into the autumn fields – when I felt someone’s eyes upon me. I said prayers with one man, read to another, held another’s hand while the surgeons sawed off his shattered leg, and none of this disquieted my thoughts, but the awareness of being observed gnawed at me. Finally, in a corner of the barn reserved for most savagely wounded, those beyond saving, I found him.
He was blond, thin, and looked younger than his thirty-three years. His skin was gray, and already his eyes were beginning to sink in his head. Fever had set in, and his blood-soaked bandages were also wet with perspiration. Yet he had the bright clarity of those who can see the divide and the gates of Heaven, and he wasted no time in idle chat.
“You are one of us,” he said.
“Brother,” I told him, “we are all soldiers together.” His regimentals proclaimed him a member of the Pennsylvania Reserves, who had seen some of the worst of the cornfield. I looked him in the eye as I took his hand. “I will say a prayer with you. Is there anyone you would like to write to? I am happy to take dictation.”
“Brother, indeed,” he replied, and expended what little strength he had in struggling to sit up on the hay-filled sacks supporting him. “I speak only to you.” He looked down at Caesar, who was regarding him with solemn canine eyes. “Yes, you are one of us.”
I put his words down to delirium, and signaled to the matron to bring water.
After he drank, he continued as if no interruption took place. “I could rail against almighty God that I have found you just when He is calling me out of this world, but it is not my place to question divine Providence. I have little time, so listen carefully, brother.”
I thought wildly about escape, but his eyes had netted me completely. I began to understand. I whispered, “I am listening.”
“You are not like other men, are you, Chaplain?”
I squirmed at the thought. “No.”
“Nor I.” We let the words hang in tacit silence, acknowledging the gulf that sat between us and the rest of mankind. He stared into the distance, as if trying to glimpse the future. “Perhaps someday we will be accepted, someday we might have homes and families, but not now.”
“No,” I agreed, and in that moment I fell completely, shatteringly in love.
I read to him, and prayed with him, and saw to it that he was made as comfortable as possible. Finally I had to leave, and now I sit writing about him, because I know this is all that I will have left of him.
September 18, 1862
Gen. McClellan never issued the expected order for a second attack. Instead, I spent all day assisting with the exchange of wounded under a flag of truce. The more I saw, the more I hated this war, and the blacker my spirits became.
I returned to the field hospital to check on my beloved. The fever was higher, and bright spots of color sat on his livid cheekbones. The matron shook her head and moved away when I asked if he might possibly recover. My heart, already aggrieved, broke into pieces.
“You are a man at war with yourself,” he said when I sat down beside him.
It was true. I had volunteered, as the only honorable thing to do, but this battle had turned me traitor. I was angry, jealous with Death for stealing the only love I had ever known.
“You can’t save me,” he said, “but you can save yourself.”
“How?”
“Leave.”
How many times had I thought that, just today? I could disappear into the woods and never return. But doing so meant I was a wanted man, to be hanged or shot on sight. My family would be shunned, and go to their graves knowing I was a coward.
“I cannot.”
“You must. You must live. Others will depend on you someday. I feel it.”
Once more we read and prayed together, and then I departed for my camp, my thoughts absorbed in the glow of my lantern as I picked my way through the darkness.
September 22, 1862
I am bereft. My beloved died in my arms three days ago. I have spent the time alternately cursing the universe and weeping in my cot, Caesar at my feet.
My beloved was right. I cannot stay here. I am lost to all sense of duty. No thought but the instructions of a dying man fills my head. In a world gone utterly black, I have but one hope: that what he told me is true, that out there awaits a future destiny for me beyond anything I could have believed possible or righ
t.
Can it be true? I am a Son of Anubis, capable of magic in service to almighty God? I would not credit it, only another miracle occurred today, one that has recast this war into a holy battle to exterminate the plague of slavery and build – perhaps – a new country in which men of all colors are brothers.
When word arrived that the President had freed all slaves in the Union and Confederacy, we were stunned into silence and awe. Then, cheers broke out among the troops who had survived Sharpsburg, because it meant that their comrades had died for something after all. The proclamation did not lighten my heart, but rather hardened my resolve.
I am leaving. Tonight. Now. I will take Caesar, and seek out the Sons of Anubis as my beloved made me promise to do. I will leave behind my duty, my reputation, my name, and my honor. In my heart, I am already fled. Here is no more. There is only the future.
A Turn of the Wheel Page 13