Memphis

by Sara Orwig

  “Damn!” He sagged against the stall. His arm was still lightly around her waist and she felt a wave of sympathy for him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I need your help. I think Will’s worse than you are.”

  Major O’Brien squeezed her waist as if in answer and he swayed.

  “Don’t faint! Major O’Brien!”

  “I’m here. Where’s … wagon?”

  “There,” she said, pointing to the far end of the barn. “We have to go out that way, because they can see us from the farmhouse if we go out this end. I’ll return their wagon.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a weak grin. “Get Will.”

  She nodded and held the major around the waist, feeling his hipbone. He gasped when he took a step, and his weight sagged on her again. She felt frightened he would faint and she was desperate to get them into the wagon. Moving would make the major’s wounds worse, but there wasn’t any choice.

  “I’m sorry we have to do this,” she said as they struggled toward Will.

  Major O’Brien bit his lip, and she hurt for him. They reached Will. She knelt beside him. “Captain Stanton! Will! Please—”

  Major O’Brien’s hand fell on her shoulder. “Pull him to a sitting position. I’ll pick him up over my shoulder.”

  “You can’t.” To her horror the bandage around his leg showed a bright crimson spot of fresh blood. “Your leg is too bad—”

  “Pull him up ’fore I faint.” He braced his good hand against the wall. “Can’t argue.”

  Tears stung her eyes. She hurt for both of them. They shouldn’t have to do this, she thought. Will should be home with his sister and parents. “I hate this war! I know I shouldn’t, but I do.”

  She knelt behind Will and slid her arms around him and tried to lift him. It was like trying to lift the barn.

  Major O’Brien moved closer and leaned down. His face was flushed, only inches from hers, but when she looked into his eyes, she was startled by his look of determination. With a jerk he pulled Will over his shoulder and stood up.

  “Oh, damn,” he said, letting out his breath.

  She grabbed the blankets and jammed his floppy hat on his head, picking up Will’s hat as she ran ahead. She had pulled a stone beside the wagon and the major stepped up on the rock to drop Will onto the flatbed of the wagon. As soon as he released Will, Major O’Brien slumped against the wagon.

  “Major? Major O’Brien!” He was unconscious again. She climbed into the wagon. It took agonizing minutes to tug him into the wagon and cover them with blankets. The first faint graying of the sky made it light enough to see and the sweet scent of rain-fresh spring was in the air. From a nearby pen a rooster crowed. The world looked normal until she glanced over her shoulder at the two wounded officers. It bothered her that she was stealing a wagon; she had never taken anything that wasn’t hers. Should she ask the people if she could take their wagon or just go and return it later?

  She glanced down at the wounded officers. She would go. She knew the way home through La Grange and Germantown. She flicked the reins and they moved ahead. In minutes they circled back to the road. “Please, let them be alive when we get to Memphis,” she whispered.

  Three hours later she stopped to crawl back into the wagon and feel for heartbeats. Both were unconscious and at a glance, she couldn’t tell if they were still alive. She returned to driving, thankful at least they didn’t have to suffer with each lurch and jiggle of the wagon.

  Finally she saw the spires of a church above treetops in Memphis and she urged the horses faster, praying they would get to the hospital in time.

  “Thank heaven!” Sophia said as she turned on shady Adams Street. Purple lilacs and wisteria bloomed on the block of elegant houses. She tugged the reins in front of the two-story Stanton home. Help was only a few feet away now. Feeling relief, Sophia climbed down, expecting servants to come running at any moment. Dressed in a Federal uniform, she dreaded facing Mrs. Stanton who never understood Sophia’s family during peacetime. The town accepted Sophia and her family, and they would have to accept her trip to the battlefield for the paper. Sophia ran around the wagon and up the stone walk to the front steps where she stopped in dismay.

  Six wounded soldiers were on pallets on the front porch. Two small servant children waved fans over the men.

  “Af’noon, ma’am,” a child said without a break in her fanning.

  “Where’s your mistress?”

  “I get her,” she said, setting down the feather fan and going into the house.

  Flies buzzed over the wounded men and Sophia picked up the fan to wave it. In minutes the door opened and Mrs. Stanton stepped out.

  “Sophia Merrick! Come in here, dear. Great heavens, you’re wearing a Federal uniform! Dilcie, you get the fan.”

  “Yes’m,” the child said, and Sophia placed it in her small hand.

  “Sophia, what on earth have you been up to now?”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Stanton. I went to the hospital,” Sophia said, feeling overwhelmed with relief to reach help. “They turned me away—”

  “My dear, several of us have taken the overflow. Whatever are you doing in that horrible uniform? You must get it off at once! Great heavens, child, it’s bad enough to be in men’s clothing, but a Yankee uniform is dreadful. Your brothers would have apoplexy. I just can’t—”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Sophia interrupted again, feeling desperate to get help for the men, “I have Will in the wagon and he’s hurt. Doctor Perkins said the hospital is filled to overflowing. He said he would see Will here.”

  “You have my Will?” Mrs. Stanton asked, looking at the wagon. “Oh, my Lord!” Catching up her blue grosgrain skirt, she ran inside, calling to a servant and in seconds, servants came out along with Mrs. Stanton and Hannah Lou whose blue eyes turned to Sophia.

  “Sophia, Mama said you have Will. Land sakes, you’re wearing a Yankee uniform!” Hannah Lou pushed strands of brown hair from her face, and Sophia drew a deep breath. This wasn’t the homecoming she pictured. Petite, with a china doll’s pretty pink cheeks and blue eyes, Hannah Lou looked exhausted and disheveled, something Sophia had never seen before, not even when they were young and played outdoors. Without waiting to talk, Hannah Lou held up her skirts and ran down the steps to the wagon. Sophia went out with them as the servants lifted Will onto a stretcher to carry him inside.

  “Lordy, where can we put my precious Will! Every bed is full—”

  “He can have mine,” Hannah Lou offered.

  “Mrs. Stanton, when the servants come back to get the other officer, he is Major Caleb O’Brien from New Orleans.”

  Mrs. Stanton frowned and glanced at the wagon. “Hannah Lou, go with your brother. Uncle Barley and Shed, you boys come back here and bring the stretcher to help Miss Merrick. You ride to her house and carry this wounded man inside.”

  “Mrs. Stanton!” Sophia gasped. “I can’t take the major!”

  Mrs. Stanton wiped her eyes and clutched Sophia’s hand. “Sophia Merrick, you’re the strongest young woman I know. Your father has made you shoulder a man’s burden for the past four years of your life. I’ll send Doctor Perkins right over the minute he’s through with Will. Jubal has midwifed and she’s a good nurse. I’ll send her and whatever laudanum I can spare with you.”

  “I think me major’s arm is broken and he’s shot in the leg and has a wound in his shoulder.” Sophia felt as if she would burst into tears. She couldn’t take care of an injured soldier. “I don’t know anything about injuries. This man has lost blood and is feverish—”

  “Sophia,” Mrs. Stanton said, her voice firm. “All three of your brothers are fighting in this war. We have to do our part. The hospital is overflowing. I can’t take another wounded man into my house. You’ll have Jubal and the medication and you do the best you can.” She glanced at the wagon. “At least he’s not out on a battleground waiting—”

  “I can’t take him home. Except for servants, I’m alone. It woul
dn’t be proper. Even Papa and my brothers would agree about that,” she said, grasping for any reason to sway Mrs. Stanton.

  “Stuff and nonsense! Since when has your family ever regarded propriety as important? You know the town will accept your taking him in. Your father has raised you in the most unconventional manner possible and—” She stopped at the sound of the clop of hooves as a buggy came down the street.

  “Thank God! It’s Doctor Perkins.” Mrs. Stanton walked away while the servants returned with a maid between them.

  “Boys, you get in the wagon,” Clairice Stanton called to them, waving her hand. “Jubal, help Miss Merrick until she sends you home.” Mrs. Stanton turned toward the doctor’s carriage. “Doctor Perkins!”

  Feeling dismay and fear, Sophia stared at Dr. Perkins as he climbed from his carriage and headed into the Stanton house. Never had she felt so alone and helpless. It wasn’t proper for her to be alone with the major. Papa would never approve. And she couldn’t take care of a wounded man—not one wounded as badly as Major O’Brien. She glanced at the wagon. He lay sprawled in back, long ago having kicked off the blankets. The servants stared at her, waiting for her to take them home with her.

  She climbed into the wagon and turned it around in the street to ride the short distance to her home on Washington.

  Moving in a numbing fear, she pulled the wagon to a stop beneath branches of an oak. Three faces turned to her for instruction.

  “We’ll take him in through the kitchen door and I’ll lead the way. Careful of his arm, because I think it’s broken.”

  “Yes’m,” one of the men said and climbed down. She watched as they moved Major O’Brien onto the stretcher. He groaned and shifted.

  “This way,” she said, knowing the worst was to come. Her brothers and father were robust men and never ill until the last month of her father’s life, and then Dr. Perkins called constantly. Her brief nursing had been for a man confined to bed with pneumonia, not battle wounds.

  She walked through the cool, high-ceilinged rooms to her brother John’s bedroom on the southeast corner of the first floor. She had long ago taken over her father’s room next to John’s bedroom where she could work at her father’s large desk. Now it would be easier to have Major O’Brien downstairs in John’s bed. She rushed to turn back the counterpane as they set the stretcher on one side of the bed and eased Major O’Brien onto the horsehair mattress.

  “We’ll go home now, ma’am,” one of the men said.

  “Thank you,” she answered, barely thinking about them as she glanced at Jubal. “Do you know what to do?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And Doctor will be here soon. We need some clean rags for bandages and some hot water and some scissors to cut away the major’s uniform.”

  Stretched on the bed, he was rumpled, bloody, and covered with dried mud. His face was ashen, his breathing shallow and fast. He didn’t look as if he could survive the next few hours.

  “I’ll start water heating,” Sophia said, leaving and praying Dr. Perkins wasn’t called to the hospital from the Stantons’.

  Two hours later she stood in her doorway and watched Dr. Perkins head toward his wagon. As she closed the door, Jubal stepped into the hall behind her.

  “Jubal, how many wounded men are at the Stantons’?”

  “I don’t rightly know. Probably almost twenty-five now with Mister Will home.”

  “Doctor Perkins is sending some wounded here, but if there are twenty-five men at the Stantons’, you better go home.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll tell Mrs. Stanton you’re getting more men here.”

  “Please, do,” Sophia said, still cold with fright to take care of them when she didn’t know how.

  She heard Mazie go out the back door and clang a kettle and Henry thrust his head into the hallway. “Ma’am, I hear we have a hurt man to care for. Do you want me to kill a chicken?”

  “Yes, Henry. We have a Major O’Brien. There’s a battle near Shiloh Church near the Tennessee River.”

  “Yes’m,” Henry said, nodding. “I’ll go behind the carriage house.” He turned to shuffle out and she looked at his stooped shoulders and tightly knotted gray hair. He had worked for her family when her father was a boy and Henry always said he didn’t exactly know his age, but she knew it had to be over eighty. He could help, but not as much as she might need. And Mazie could cook, but nursing was out. The sight of a wound or anything hurting and Mazie fainted. Henry was going behind the carriage house to kill the chicken to keep Mazie from seeing him or they would have to get out the smelling salts and revive her.

  Two servants, one over eighty, the other given to fainting at the sight of anything in pain, a paper to print, wounded men to tend. Sophia felt overwhelmed. “Papa, I need your strength,” she whispered. She squared her shoulders. Papa was buried at the cemetery and Amos and Morris and John were fighting for the Confederacy, and she would just do the best she could.

  She glanced toward the bedroom. When Dr. Perkins worked on the major, she had almost fainted. And she felt waves of fire in her face when the doctor lifted the sheet Jubal had placed over his naked body and began to work on him without giving Sophia warning.

  Three nights later she made the rounds. Lieutenant Landerson was upstairs in Amos’s room with a foot wound. Sergeant Mulligan with a shoulder wound was in Morris’s room. Major O’Brien was delirious and Dr. Perkins gave little hope for his survival, but as Sophia leaned over him in the candlelight and bathed his face, she remembered the determination in his eyes when he said he would pick up Will and get him into the wagon. And that moment on the battlefield when she had looked into his eyes and he could have shot her. He spared her life and saved Will’s—now she would try to save his. Major O’Brien deserved to live and she would pray for him.

  As she sponged his forehead, he groaned. He felt on fire to touch and was covered only by a sheet to his waist. It had been three days now and she still wasn’t accustomed to his bare body. Even though he wasn’t awake, she blushed hotly when she bent over him. Her gaze drifted now to his chest covered in a mat of thick brown curls. Perspiration dotted his shoulders and she bathed him with a cool cloth.

  “You have to get well, Major,” she whispered. “You can do it; you’re tough. You brought Will home and if you did that all shot and hurt like you were, you can get over this. You—”

  He groaned and turned his head, his eyes fluttering, startling her. His eyes opened to stare at her and he frowned, licking his dry lips. “Water,” he whispered.

  She picked up a glass and slipped her arm beneath him to hold him up, spooning water into his mouth, some of it running down his chin. When she lowered him, she wiped his chin with the damp cloth and dabbed at his parched lips.

  When she looked into his eyes, she met a disconcerting, direct stare. His eyes were a crystal green with tiny flecks of gold in the center near the pupil.

  His left hand reached out and caught her arm. “Amity? Amity, sure and I thought I wouldna’ see ye again, lass,” he said in an Irish brogue.

  “I’m Sophia,” she whispered, wondering who Amity was. Was he married? His fingers were strong and blunt and thick, freckles scattered across the back of his hand.

  “Amity—” He turned his head and his eyes closed. Alarmed, Sophia bent over him, her hand going to his throat. His pulse coursed steady and strong, and she felt relieved.

  Her relief was gone within the hour. He thrashed and moaned and then became still, his breathing labored and quick. She pulled the rocker close to the bed, afraid to leave him for fear he wouldn’t be alive when dawn came, yet knowing she could do nothing to keep him from dying.

  He moved, the sheet sliding off one leg that was covered in brown hair and freckles, his thigh and calf well shaped with hard muscles. She blushed as her gaze roamed over him. Henry took care of the major’s private moments and bathed him. The major had scars on his ribs and back and arm and she wondered what he had done, what kind of life he had lived to get such scars. He was
quick and tough and he frightened her, yet he had taken the best possible care of Will under the circumstances.

  He moaned again and turned. In minutes he was shaking and she covered him with a comforter and wrapped a hot brick to place at his feet. His skin felt dry and hot to touch in spite of his chills.

  Gazing down at him in the candlelight, Sophia stood beside the bed. When her legs hurt from standing, she sat in the rocker, watching him, feeling as if she could help by staying awake while he slept, yet knowing it was foolish. Later when he kicked the covers away, she stirred. His face was flushed, and he burned with fever. Sophia hurried to draw cold water and bathe him, trying to get the fever down. His curls clung damply to his forehead as she bathed his face. His lips were dry and cracked. Who was Amity? Wife? Sweetheart? she wondered.

  Sophia climbed onto the high bed and sat beside him, pulling him against her to hold him so she could spoon water into his mouth. It was tedious with a few drops at a time, but gradually she got a cupful down him. She bathed his face, letting the cloth trail down over his throat to his chest. On impulse she released the cloth and moved her hand over his chest, feeling the mat of curls against her palm, feeling the heat radiate from his body, letting her hand drift down toward his belly.

  Flushing, realizing what she was doing, she moved her hand away, yet she continued to study him. She had never touched a man’s body like that or seen a man so bare. She knew she shouldered responsibilities few women her age were allowed to do, such as printing a paper and spying on the Federals, yet in some ways she was ignorant—she hadn’t been kissed and she didn’t know how to dance. With a sigh, she touched the major’s hand, feeling the warm flesh beneath hers, remembering the moment in the barn when she had wakened pressed against him. When Private Crossley had grabbed her, all she felt was revulsion. It wasn’t revulsion Major O’Brien stirred, but fire.

  “Get well, Major. I’m sure you can,” she whispered, easing him to the pillows.