No Common War

by Salisbury, Luke;

  Mary returned to Moreau. They looked and looked. Disbelief and thankfulness in one, sympathy and confidence in the other. It made that crowded, warm room bearable.

  She stayed the night with Moreau. In the morning she watched how the cloth was threaded through his ankle and worked back and forth, and she saw his pain when the morphine wore off.

  “I will do it when we leave,” she said.

  When we were alone, Mary laid her head against my shoulder. She was exhausted. She closed her eyes and said, “Now my battle starts.” Her clothing was wrinkled. The hem of her dress was smudged with soot; bread crumbs stuck to her lap. I smelled her perspiration.

  “You look tired,” she said, opening her eyes. “Your hair is whiter.” She smiled.

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  She touched my mouth and cheeks. “Your trip was harder than mine.”

  “You look splendid,” I said softly.

  She closed her eyes and some of the worry left her face. Her hair was tied in a bun. Her gentle face was lined with fatigue. Pronounced wrinkles showed below her clear eyes and dark furrows creased her pale cheeks. Would we ever look like the proud couple of two weeks ago?

  No matter. She was here.

  “We have hope,” Mary said, opening her eyes. “And the Lord. That is all we need.”

  “I have seen things I cannot tell,” I said. “I cannot imagine what our son has seen. You will see things too. You will hear.”

  “You needn’t tell,” said Mary. “I saw his wound. I need know nothing more.”

  “There is something I must say. I sent my son to do what I could not, and I can barely look at what is wrought. I believe in the Cause, I believe in the men, but I cannot ask another man or mother or father to send a boy to the field. I will not give another speech. I will not stand for election. This is all the courage I have.”

  Mary stroked my hair. “You needn’t sacrifice your career.”

  “I’m done with politics. Done with talk. It’s what I owe. What I owe all of them.”

  “You must forgive yourself, Mason. Even if the worst comes. We are here and this is all we can do.”

  “Amen,” I said.

  “Everything has changed, Mason.”

  “No, Mary. You haven’t.”

  52

  The next night Mary saw a phantom—not a ghost; ghosts are for mourners, not nurses. Mary saw a man with a large hat and large beard. She saw him, very late, coming out of the room of a dying man. The man looked at Mary. He was soft. Soft eyes, soft hands. Kind, but stealthy. He made her uneasy. Mary feared a thief, but the man wasn’t stealing. He seemed used to this reaction. bowed slightly and gave her a book, saying, “This will help.”

  Mary didn’t read the book. I did. I don’t know if it’s proper to call it poetry, but the man was right. It helped. After speeches and sermons, arguments and hot political words, this was different.

  You shall no longer take things at second or third hand….nor look through the eyes of the dead…. nor feed on spectres in books,

  You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

  You shall listen to all and filter them from yourself.

  53

  On a day in October, three weeks after the battle, Merrick was in less pain, but cold. He knew where he was and who was around him. He was happy to see Mary and held up his hand to Moreau. He said, “Comrade,” and lay back. Lorenzo stayed by Merrick’s side. No one intruded. Lorenzo stroked his son’s hair, wiped his son’s face and held his hand. That night, while Moreau slept, Merrick died.

  Lorenzo stayed by the bed. I went into the night and cried.

  The next morning, Lorenzo put a hand on my shoulder and said, “He’s going home.”

  Lorenzo bought a wagon, an oak casket, and a pair of white mules. I don’t know who embalmed Merrick. I helped my brother put the casket in the wagon. I hugged him and felt an inconsolable strangeness. Each of us had gambled. It turned out right for only one of us.

  Lorenzo shaved his beard and drove away. I wasn’t sure I would ever see him again. Had there been fighting, I believe he would have driven into it. But there wasn’t, so Lorenzo, wagon, white mules and casket started down the crowded road. A company of Zouaves took off their caps.

  Mason

  Maryland to Christmas

  October-December

  1862

  54

  By the end of October, three weeks after Merrick’s death, Antietam had been declared a victory. That was the talk in Frederick City and the northern papers. Militarily the battle was a draw. The chance to destroy Lee’s army was squandered, as McClellan did not pursue it into Virginia. I heard from a captain that McClellan had the “slows.” Lee was allowed to rest a whole day before recrossing the Potomac. The captain didn’t like it. His men didn’t like it. Lincoln didn’t like it. The general sat in Maryland proclaiming himself savior of the Union and one of the great men of history. The President visited, stewed, and asked McClellan if he didn’t mind lending him the Army since the general didn’t seem to have any use for it.

  In November, Lincoln fired McClellan. The general had played his last great role. Certain officers urged McClellan to stage a coupd’état, but instead Little Mac bowed out gracefully. The cautious, vain, little man who had whipped an army into shape but could not fight, was at his best saying goodbye.

  A week after Lincoln removed McClellan, we took Moreau home. We traveled by ambulance to Baltimore, where we stayed in a private residence while Moreau gathered strength, then by rail to the North Country. It was too soon. The trip was hard, but we wanted our son home. We wanted him in the room off the parlor where nothing moved in the dark, no one moaned, screamed, wept, or died. Home, we thought, was the place to heal.

  Trains rocked. The waiting between trains was awful. Morphine helped. Sometimes we thought Moreau was lost, already in the place that had taken Merrick. Moreau’s skin was yellowish, his nose sharper. I was gambling with his life again. But not only for him. We wanted Moreau away from the dying. We all needed home.

  When we reached Philadelphia, his fever rose. We gave him morphine and wiped his face. Mary prayed. We held his hand through the night and feared we should have stayed in Frederick City.

  Everywhere people were kind, helpful, and respectful. Here was a soldier and his parents. Here the Union. Here America. So many gone. So many to go. No end, Mary said. No end in sight.

  At New York, Moreau was switched to a passenger car of the Hudson River Railroad for the trip to Albany. He was feverish, soaked with sweat. The car had been outfitted for stretchers. They were stacked three high, like bunks, fitted neatly on scaffolding. I didn’t see one loosen or fall. They were well built and we secured a lower berth. Mary and I took turns standing or sitting on the floor to be at his side. Other parents did the same with their own sons. We wiped Moreau’s flushed face, held his hand when he tossed on his cot. I told him he would live. I told him I loved him. Sometimes he didn’t hear.

  Moreau had what we could buy for him, quinine and morphine. I thanked absent God for Mary. She had cared for both boys, now one. She cared for me. Men make the world. Women hold it together.

  As the Hudson RR car rocked towards home, Moreau fought for his life. It was a hard, hard fight. A fight with pain and infection. A fight to see how much a body could stand. It was hell, especially as we waited at crossings, for couplings, to change cars in Philadelphia, New York City, Albany, Rome. The world moved, but not on time.

  Mary prayed. She knelt, her lips moving, on worn-out railroad carpet, scuffed planks, dusty baggage. Moreau was in God’s hands, but her own never stopped. If Moreau died, it would be God’s will. God wasn’t cruel or absent for Mary. Moreau was alive and Mary was caring for him. That’s all she asked. Without God, she believed, he’d be dead already.

  I worried about Lorenzo. He would drive that wagon home or die. It was his choice. Lorenzo had Merrick and solitude. Lorenzo said he’d bring the boys home. I shook my head.


  When the train chuffed by West Point, Moreau opened his eyes. His pain was eased by morphine and he said, “I will see Helen soon.”

  “She’s waiting for you,” I said.

  “I got her letters.”

  “She’s changed. Older. Not such a girl.”

  “I’ve changed.” Moreau closed his eyes.

  “We’re all changed,” I said. “But you, Merrick, all of you, did what had to be done.”

  “For now.” Moreau sighed.

  “Lee struck north to get British recognition. Oren heard from Seward. The Rebels can’t win without British recognition.”

  “Less we quit.” He looked away.

  “They’ll be no quit after your victory.”

  “Our victory,” Moreau said quietly, and closed his eyes.

  “If you’d lost, if Lee had got to Harrisburg or Philadelphia, there’d be noise to quit. That won’t happen now. Seward says the Emancipation Proclamation is the end for British recognition of the Confederacy.”

  “Emancipation,” Moreau said. “I wonder if Gib heard?”

  I wondered too.

  Moreau slept as we chugged by the broad, sparkling Hudson River. The Proclamation had come out of that awful battle. How many times had I said Emancipation was worth dying for, if anything was? How often had I urged men to die for it? It was here and men were dying. I had helped sow the wind and my son and brother’s son had reaped the whirlwind. I felt like one of Job’s comforters.

  I saw war.

  Not battle, not the seconds of blood-splattered insanity, unreal and deadly, but the other part. The other ninety-nine percent of it. Supply trains, sutlers’ wagons, railroad stations, jammed cities, dealmakers, Washington City. I saw it. I smelled it. What is talk compared to the real thing? The real thing is maimed men. The real thing is surgeons, men on the ground, on boards, dying, dead. It’s ambulance drivers, medical wagons, and stretcher bearers. The real thing is a son beyond help, beyond all but pain. It isn’t in newspapers or speeches. Most people don’t see or know.

  The real thing is women and men who nurse the wounded, stay with the bereaved and don’t allow the dying to die alone. The real thing is endurance.

  55

  When the New York, Oswego & Watertown train left Utica, Moreau talked about Helen. His glazed, dark eyes burned with happiness. He was animated. He was better—though only temporarily, I feared. The memory of Helen, a phantasmagoria of need, romance, and love, floated in his feverish eyes and the hoarse timbre of his low voice. I saw what he carried, invented, had to have. Then his strength ebbed, pain returned, and we gave him morphine. He rested fitfully.

  Miss Warriner and my son had turned each others’ heads. Mary and I once had doubts about how serious an afternoon and a blanket might be, unless it brought a baby, which it did not. I believe Mary wished it had, especially after little Wilbur Corse rode down Railroad Street, tears streaming, crying for his brother, dead at Second Bull Run.

  While Moreau was gone—fifteen long months—Helen called often. She brought corn, tomatoes, honey and pies. She brought pies and then made them with Mary. She brought a gentle nature and ready wit. We got to know the young woman and the young woman got to know us. In a way, Helen knew us better than she knew Moreau. Mary called Helen the Intended, then Faithful Intended, without irony. Mary approved of Helen.

  For Helen, knowing Mary helped and knowing Mary hurt. In Mary, Helen saw fear and the determination not to show it. Together, the two gathered lint for bandages, sewed blankets, darned socks, discussed every syllable of Moreau’s letters. Helen came to know the enormity of Mary’s worry. Helen saw the depth and seriousness of worrying about a man away at war. It wasn’t what Mary said, much of which could have graced Mr. Currier and Ives’ cards, but her glances at nothing, an occasional sob in the pantry, the way Mary pronounced his name.

  Ro’s letters said his memory of Helen sustained him and Helen believed it. Ro’s memory was her core, hers must be his. A man or a woman needs faith. Is faith the filter the poet spoke of? The Lord for Mary? A wounded man for Helen? A son for me? Why not in the most important person in your life? Helen believed Ro held onto his soul by loving her. She understood from his letters—what they said and what they didn’t—that war takes more than an arm or a leg. It takes souls. Wears them down. Wears them away. War made men weary because it was worse than what they tell, worse than what they can tell. Worse in ways Helen couldn’t understand. The men were exhausted, trying to keep their souls. What did Ro have but memories? What memory is stronger than love? Helen believed she was the keeper of his soul. I hoped she was.

  Then Lorenzo, Oren and I went to Washington. Mary and Helen worried in a new way. This was a crisis. This was beyond words in the papers, the telegraph, or prayers in church. One generation was going for another. It felt like judgment, even for a Congregationalist with her clear conscience and good works. Lorenzo said he’d bring the boys back. Helen knew they only came back dead or wounded. Men all over the North Country were going for their sons.

  Then word came Ro and Merrick were wounded. It came from me. This was no rumor. Both in jeopardy. Come quickly. Helen wanted to come, but Mary was against it. Helen had to stay for Lucius and her blind brother, Wallace. “I will telegraph,” Mary said. “You shall meet us.”

  Now Moreau and Helen would meet again. Expectations and battered flesh.

  After our terrible journey, we arrived in Sandy Creek on a cold November night. Mary telegraphed, requesting no crowd, but asked for Helen and our cousins Violet and Sara to meet us at the station. Mac-Gregor, the Scotsman who watched the mill, would bring the wagon. Mary asked please, please, no crowds. She said Moreau wasn’t well.

  Mary was exhausted. She wouldn’t stop or complain or get sick until Moreau was well, but she needed home. The inexhaustible can be exhausted.

  Helen told me about the night we returned. Her father Lucius drove the Warriner buggy to the station to meet us. Lucius had a stone-cutting business and the war brought profit as it brought others grief. Whenever Helen challenged this, Lucius smiled and admitted it was easier to accept the profitable. Lucius was sharp. He adapted. Like his ancestor who played the fife in the Revolution.

  That night father and daughter drove up South Main Street. They said nothing. Helen wished the town grander. She wondered how it would look to Ro, and how she would look to Ro. The velvet pouch was around her neck. Then she thought: Oh, God, these things don’t matter. Helen didn’t want to think about what mattered. Would Moreau live?

  Lucius turned onto Railroad Street and passed the Salisbury neo-classical “domicile” with its attic dormer and Tuscan columns. Lights blazed. Sara and Violet, now Mrs. Norman Scripture, had left for the station after tidying, straightening and cleaning the whole place in preparation for Moreau’s arrival. A hired girl watched the lamps.

  The Warriner buggy joined a line of buggies, many more than expected, heading for the station under the leafless branches of elms and maples. A sudden, cold wind rose and whipped dead leaves, grit and twigs into a frantic canopy. The horse balked and Lucius pulled hard on the reins. Branches danced. Leaves spun and whirled. Shutters banged and lanterns swung against the sides of buggies. Helen thought of playing cards tossed in the air. It scared her. She clutched the velvet pouch. Railroad Street was a gigantic, whirling wreath. Houses deserted, stars gone, the night mad. Then it stopped.

  Many, many times had Helen imagined this home-coming. Once a week she hitched the horse to the buggy and rode to the spot by the creek where she turned from girl to woman, flirt to lover, gossip to confidante. Helen had listened to a man, understood a man, and felt like a woman. Had the war ended quickly, she could have embraced her dream—the dream created hourly in her imagination—part truth, part imagination, all enchantment, as her eighteen-year-old mind created a warrior and knight out of her soldier.

  The young woman meeting the train had left her youth in our parlor and kitchen. She left it in the letters that might have b
een sent to a dead man. She left it in awe of the world’s cruelty.

  The train pulled in, cinders flying. Helen thought of sinners fleeing hell, but kept the notion to herself. She touched her face, worrying about how she looked, and scolded herself. The engine stopped beyond the station and people crowded the tracks, waving to the train windows. Despite Mary’s request for few spectators, there were many Salisburys, all wearing their best. Uncles, cousins, aunts, neighbors. They cheered and danced as cinders shot through the dark. Salisburys waved in the wind-shaken light of station lamps and uneven yellow light from the cars. Some raised and lowered lanterns. Benjamin Franklin Salisbury waved a flag. Reuben Salisbury took off his hat. Deacon Enos Salisbury said a prayer. Cousins waved handkerchiefs, boys raced beside the train, men raised flasks, women cried, and babies squealed. A sign said, “Your Home Ro.”

  I got off first, then Mary. Two men in uniform brought off the stretcher bearing Moreau.

  “Stand back, friends,” I said.

  Helen thought we looked thinner. Our eyes were too bright. Our cheeks pale and drawn. Hair unwashed. My beard ungodly white. Mary’s face was alert, pinched and worn. Helen thought we looked like we’d been in the underworld. If that’s what we looked like, what would Ro look like?

  The crowd separated for Helen, Sara and Violet. Amiable, detached Lucius wept in spite of himself. I forgave a lot for that. The crowd quieted. Helen rushed to the stretcher and put her hand to Moreau’s cheek. He looked up, smiled and closed his eyes. His face so pale, beard so ragged, eyes sunk in pain, was angelic with relief.

  “Let us pass, friends,” I said. “We’re all right.”

  Ro’s cousins stroked his hair. He didn’t look all right.

  I recognized Helen’s expression. Bravery crossing a face not used to being brave. It was beautiful.