by Tim Bowling
He stepped over to the corpses on the ground and picked out the next one for the table. Wearily thinking of how much he’d have to sweat to lift the corpse onto the table, he decided to approach the tall soldier instead. Before speaking to him, Greaver noticed the stripes on the uniform of the corpse the tall soldier stood over. In fact, Greaver noticed the stripes even before he noticed the grey fabric surrounding them.
“A Reb colonel,” he said, unable to keep the impressed tone out of his voice. To mask it, Greaver lowered himself stiffly to his haunches and considered the old, white-whiskered face. It would be a pity to trade such a noble corpse back to the Rebels. Perhaps it would be worth the risk to do the embalming himself and find some way to recover his fee from the family—no doubt they’d appreciate Greaver’s skills more than most, given the regal bearing of their patriarch.
The embalmer stood, straining with the effort. Suddenly the sky darkened as clouds scudded across the sun; the air tasted of rain. Greaver lowered his eyes and the same unblinking gaze burned into him. The soldier was well over six feet and wore a uniform tight across his broad chest and shoulders. The uniform was torn in many places, like the shirt of a scarecrow that hadn’t scared off many crows. The powder burns were so thick on the soldier’s face that they almost seemed the beginning of a beard, and one of his cheeks was roughly scraped. And he was young, perhaps twenty or so. Only he didn’t seem young at all. He gave the impression that he’d been walking battlefields to sell corpses ever since the beginning of time. Greaver shuddered as the soldier nodded toward the corpse at his feet and said, “I’ll trade.”
Trade? Greaver scowled. What on earth did the man mean by trade? Perhaps he had lost his wits in the fight. Best just to humour him.
“Put him on the table,” Greaver said.
The soldier picked the body up as if it was a sack of dust and placed it on the planks. Then he stood by as Greaver made a closer inspection. The colonel’s hand, when held to the light, was most intriguing—the inner flesh of the fingers had not turned opaque yet. The embalmer reached into his vest and removed a small mirror; he positioned it over the colonel’s mouth. No breath blurred the glass. Greaver pressed his ear to the colonel’s chest. Nothing. He must have taken his time dying, since the battle had ended almost two days ago now.
“Freshly dead.” Greaver narrowed his eyes at the soldier. As the man seemed too dense to understand the implication, Greaver added, “Very freshly.”
The soldier’s blank expression did not change. His arms hung loosely at his sides. Greaver noted the large hands—they twitched every few seconds. They were obviously hands that could do great damage. But, after all, what did it really matter how the colonel had died? If this soldier had finished him off, he’d probably just done the Rebel a favour.
“I can give you a dollar,” Greaver said.
The soldier’s upper lip curled slightly. He shook his head and spoke in a deep, anxious voice.
“Have you . . . did anyone bring in a body, not a soldier . . . it had been cut.”
Greaver glanced over the battlefield. He might require Tomkins’s assistance if this soldier’s madness turned violent.
The soldier placed his twitching hands near his groin. He stammered. “Cut here. Cut off.”
“Well, now . . .” Greaver pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with one plump forefinger. “I don’t recall such.” He turned his head slowly toward the dead colonel. “But this one. Even though he’s not one of ours and I might not be able to collect on him, I can offer you two dollars.” Perhaps the thought of money would bring the soldier to his senses. After all, even a madman needed to live.
When Greaver turned his head back, he almost struck the soldier’s chest. The man had moved closer. His huge eyes narrowed. And as they kept narrowing, they seemed to shut out the light. But it was only the sky doing that, the dark clouds suddenly stalling overhead.
“A hard bargainer, sir, very hard.” Greaver attempted a smile as he fished in his leather purse for a more appropriate bill. “But I won’t say unfair. A colonel’s a colonel, and worth the price.” He couldn’t keep a quaver out of his voice. The soldier stood so close that Greaver could smell him—sweat and earth and . . . chloroform? Unmistakably so. What did this mean? Was he out walking the battlefield, poisoning the wounded?
Inwardly, the embalmer gave another great shrug. He had seen much that did not reflect well on the human species. And, in truth, he could not say chloroforming wounded men to death might not be a kind of mercy.
The first drops of rain fell. Greaver passed the money to the soldier, who took it and stared at it in wonder. Then he let it fall to the ground. “Are you sure?” he said. “A man with small eyes and red hair all around his face? Grinning?”
Despite his apprehension, the embalmer could not repress a chuckle. A grinning dead man? But his mirth passed quickly. He turned his chuckle into a cough and scanned the field for Tomkins.
The soldier’s lips parted slowly. His tongue slowly crossed over his large top teeth. The sight made Greaver even more uneasy. He stepped back, cleared his throat, and said, “I pay only for soldiers. No one else.”
The tongue stopped, vanished.
Then the soldier fixed his gaze on the metal canister filled with the captain’s blood. The rain continued lightly. From the distance came the singular retort of a rifle, which oddly extended into the barking of a dog. But Greaver listened only to the light tap of raindrops on the metal canister; water joining water, he thought soberly, wishing the soldier would go away, wishing he had said he wasn’t buying any more bodies, coupons or no coupons. Not from this man. Greaver couldn’t understand his energy. The energy of the dead, though also mysterious, at least belonged to some other realm. He did not confront it except to stay the mortal rot with herbs stuffed into orifices and mercury shot into vessels. And he did not like to confront the enemy of any living thing he could not read as easily as a corpse.
Without another word, the tall soldier backed off. His departure seemed to take the rain away. For the light drops ceased to fall. Greaver shivered the whole length of his body as he watched the soldier break into a loping run and shrink to a black mark near the distant woods. Then the embalmer removed his glasses and wiped the sweat from his forehead. At last he returned to the regal body stretched out on the planks. A few raindrops had settled in the wrinkles below the slowly sinking eyes. Horace Greaver was not a fanciful man, but he couldn’t shake the idea that the Rebel colonel was crying.
IV
September 21, near Sharpsburg, Maryland
Four days after the great battle, Anson Baird had been reassigned to a large encampment of tents filled with Rebel wounded, more than a mile to the west of his previous field hospital, across the dusty turnpike and a half-mile south of the little white Dunker church that had been in the centre of the fiercest fighting. His labours remained unpleasant and unending. He stooped in and out of the sagging canvas tents, checking wounds and amputations for infection, trying to cool fevers, changing pus and bloodstained dressings when supplies of fresh bandages were available. His eyes were sore and bloodshot, he shook constantly, and he coughed until he thought his bones would fracture. When he slept—infrequently—he suffered terrible nightmares in which whole armies of horses were tossed alive on great blazing pyres of railroad ties, and then awoke to the stomach-churning reality of an ever-thickening miasma that enveloped the whole landscape.
Only one thing sustained him in his daily rounds, one small contribution he had made to the cause outside of his expected duties. At his lowest ebb, when yet another amputee did not survive, when a hemorrhage proved unstoppable or a wound blackened or a face set into the awful devil’s grin of lockjaw, he thought of the tall soldier and his spirits lifted just enough to carry him to the next tragic, mundane moment. To save a life by cutting off an arm or leg was necessary and unpleasant; to save a life without taking up an instrument at all was something he had not expected, and it felt like
a blessing. In fact, the knowledge of the tall soldier’s escape from the army’s investigations of the farmer’s gruesome death and molestation became as much of an addictive drug to Anson as the opium he swallowed.
It wasn’t difficult, what he’d done, at least not on a practical level. A young soldier new to the regiment had fallen in the fight, and no one would miss him. The army’s recordkeeping was, to be charitable, incomplete. And so, within just a few days of the battle, a runaway slave with no other name besides John became, in the army’s records, a Union soldier named William Sullivan Dare. Though the deceit initially troubled Anson’s sense of honour, he soon accepted it as a necessity for the greater good. But there was a problem.
The newly named William Dare still required medical attention and was in no shape to understand that he’d been given a new identity, a chance to move on with what remained of the army as something more than a white-looking contraband. The shock of killing his former master had unhinged his mind, and so Anson kept him hidden from prying eyes, covered with blankets in a tent full of dying rebels. Ever since Anson had become his protector, the tall soldier had done little but shake and gaze at the empty air as if it flashed a steady stream of pictures. He pulled at his scraped cheek and mumbled incoherently. A few times he sprang bolt upright and cried out, “The mulatto! He’s come!” Once, he shouted violently into Anson’s face, “It’s a lie! He’s a liar!” Anson could make no sense of these sudden exclamations, but they were infrequent and caused little trouble or notice amid the groans and cries of the men around him. Besides, the tall soldier grew less agitated day by day, and that, more than anything else, strengthened Anson as he made his rounds. He had been so saturated with death and misery, had felt so deeply in his own body the relentless onslaught of physical suffering, that the mere thought of preserving one life and setting it on a clearer, if not exactly safer, course proved a continual elixir to his spirit.
Late on the day of the 21st, however, after he had bent and emerged from yet another tent of moans and decay, Anson received a jolt. From twenty feet away, a man standing upright behind a tripod was staring at him. Anson shrank from the sight, though at first he was not sure why.
“Ah, doctor,” the man said, walking forward, his broad face jovial, trailing a beard thick as smoke. “I’ve come about that study at last.”
Study? Anson blinked into the sunlight. Behind him a patient snored heavily, the sound like tearing canvas. Anson’s thoughts became clear and he remembered, with a quickening pulse, who the bearded man was.
“I can see you dinna remember our bargain.” The Scotsman smiled and pushed his long hair back from his face. But Anson felt threatened anyway. This man—yes—this man alone could have suspicions. Did he? His expression seemed innocent enough. Anson shivered, started to walk out from the group of tents onto the grass.
“Nay, doctor, if you dinna mind.” The Scotsman held up one hand, the fingernails black, as if rotting. “If you’ll just be so good as to stand right there. Still as still. That’s right. I won’t be but a few minutes.”
Anson stood completely unprotected as the man hurried back to the strange-looking wagon all hung with tarp and spoke a few words into it. Anson struggled to calm himself. How could the photographer suspect anything?
The Scotsman ran to the tripod, a small object in his hands. He busied himself about the camera. Then, holding up one hand again, said, “Just like that, just exactly there,” and slipped under the black cloth.
Anson’s eyes shifted from side to side. This man was reading him, possibly discovering the truth about the tall soldier’s changed identity. And if so, well . . . Anson’s forced, weak smile broke. Out of the corners of his eyes, he watched for motion, afraid that Dare would choose just that moment to emerge from his shock.
The black cloth shook and the Scotsman reappeared. Again, he worked rapidly around the camera. Then he sped to the wagon, as if yanked back by an invisible rope. More words, but Anson couldn’t hear them. The tarp moved. A hand appeared, disappeared. Then the Scotsman strode toward the tents, still smiling. But his soft eyes had a questioning, curious cast to them. He stopped a few feet before the first tent, his long coat opened in two behind him like great wings, his legs apart, firmly braced. Anson couldn’t shake the sense that the man had become a tripod and camera himself—he seemed to investigate and record, he seemed like a small god. Anson glanced to one side. No one was there. He exhaled slowly.
“I’ve not seen you since . . . ah, when was it? . . . at the other hospital, in the barnyard.”
Anson clutched his side. If the man was leading up to something, why didn’t he just get on with it?
“I wasna sure I’d be able to take your study, after all. I’ve been busy, and then I thought perhaps when some of the army moved, you’d have moved with it.”
“No. I had to stay behind.” Anson lowered his eyes to the tent in front of him.
“Ah, of course, of course.” The Scotsman relaxed his stance, exhaled through pursed lips. “I’ve no right to talk about being busy to you, have I? You dinna look as though you’ve slept much, doctor.”
Anson scowled. Was the man suggesting he had reason for his conscience to keep him awake?
“I’ll no ee keep you then. I’ve my own work to do, though it’s not as important as yours.”
The Scotsman seemed sincere enough. Even so, Anson breathed easier as the burly figure turned to go. But the man took only a few steps before stopping and turning back.
“Ah, doctor? About that body?”
Anson’s heart thumped and turned over. If Dare should appear now . . .
“You remember?” the Scotsman continued.
Anson nodded and looked along the line of tents. Still no one appeared. The thin smoke of a fire drifted on the heavy air.
“The army’s still after it. Seems the man might have had some important papers on his person.” He paused and leaned forward, his coat tails flowing out like the ends of his cloven beard. “I hope that soldier who was helping you so much with your surgeries has gone with the troops that have left. I was not more than two hours ago privy to a conversation that might prove uncomfortable for him.”
Anson touched his stomach instinctively but only blinked in response.
The Scotsman continued with a visible shudder. “I was at the embalmer’s tent. Unpleasant fellow, clammy-looking as death itself. Must be from the work. Anyway, two officers were asking him about that slave owner’s mutilated body. I rather think they suspected him of trying to cash in on it.” The Scotsman’s thick moustache bristled. “And I canna blame them. There’s some here would rob the dead of their souls if they thought they could make a dollar from the sale.” He paused, let his eyes roam over the dozens of tents. “The embalmer . . . I heard him mention a very tall soldier who’d been quite active bringing him bodies. I didna think of it at the time, but seeing you again, doctor . . . I was reminded, you see.”
Another cramp almost doubled Anson over. But he remained standing, sweat dripping into his eyes, stinging them. He cleared his throat huskily.
“The soldier you refer to”—his voice, booming out, half frightened him—“he left with his regiment yesterday.”
The Scotsman smiled. His whole face became a camera, the lenses wide open, reading, reading.
“Ah, that’s a good thing, doctor. I’m pleased to hear it. I’m no friend of the propertied myself, and when they’re slave owners, well . . . my sympathies would be of the abolitionist bent, you see.”
He knew something, then, but what? Anson heard a low groan of misery from behind him. It might have come from his own mouth. He had lied again and knew he would continue to do so if necessary. But how much did the Scotsman really suspect?
“My apologies, doctor. I must take full advantage of the light that’s left.”
As quickly as that, he bowed slightly, gripped the two sides of his coat together, and strode away.
Anson watched him climb up onto the board of the wagon
. Then a strange, glassy clinking began as the horse moved forward and the wagon slowly shrank to a black smudge along the pike road. Eventually Anson brought his gaze back to the greasy shadows in the clustered tents—a mass of cocoons filled with putrefaction. Somewhere inside one of them breathed the tall soldier he had given new life. Anson realized it would be best if the newly minted William Dare moved on as soon as possible.
V
September 19, the battlefield at Antietam
Horace Greaver’s mood had turned as foul as the air. He still smarted from the failure of the truce the afternoon before. With his wagon containing three Rebel officers neatly solidified with mercury and resting naturally in lovely zinc-lined coffins, he had bumped across the battleground to the still-contested area where the Federal and Confederate surgeons gathered and exchanged wounded. The sun dazzled off the broken muskets and sabre tips, then sank inexorably into the bared flesh of the dead.
He climbed stiffly out of his wagon and approached a Rebel surgeon who was busy directing stretcher-men. Clearing his throat loudly, he said, “Pardon me, sir. Horace Greaver, embalming surgeon, at your service.”
The willow-thin man looked up, his eyes dark as bruises on a transparent apple. He glared a few seconds, then turned back to a soldier trembling on the ground.
“I realize, sir,” Greaver went on, offended by being disregarded but not wanting to let the offence interfere with business, “that you are engaged in your most important and honourable duties. If you could just direct me to your embalming surgeon?”