High Hearts

by Rita Mae Brown

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “I’s here every night, ma’am, so no harm kin come to you.” His voice was gravelly with sleep.

  “I think we’d better get up the hill.” She’d worry about him later.

  Everyone at Chatfield huddled around the kitchen porch. Ernie, dripping with importance because Lutie had already whispered the news to her, displayed her power by putting up coffee in the winter kitchen next to the bell, so everyone could see her. Boyd was banished to the summer kitchen, some distance from the big house, where she was doing the same. Ernie was preparing to feed everyone at Chatfield before they began their unusual toil.

  The children bedeviled Sin-Sin for the news. She shook her head no while pacing on the porch, her arms folded across her bosom. Lutie looked ten years younger with her hair down and the soft light on her face. The Chalfonte beauty was still there, despite the plumpness and the years.

  “Dear people of Chatfield”—Lutie’s voice quavered slightly—“I have just received a telegram. Our troops have won a most glorious victory.”

  The children whooped. Most of the adults did, too, but a few remained less enthusiastic.

  “Is Marse Sumner alive?” Timothy put it bluntly and received a sound smack from his mother.

  Lutie’s voice shook. “I am sorry to say I have received no information on my son.”

  Boyd said soothingly, “Take more than a Yankee army to ketch Mr. Sumner.”

  “The reason I have disturbed your sleep is that the telegram came from Colonel Jeffrey Windsor. I am to meet him at the train station to receive the wounded. I shall need everyone’s help. Braxton, dispatch messengers to Hazel Whitmore, Rise Rives, Miranda Lawrence, and Lillian Philpotts. Tell them to meet me at the station and bring their bandages, medicines, bedding, and any clothes they can spare. We don’t know how many men will arrive.” She gave everyone instructions, then all left to make hasty preparations.

  Lutie and Sin-Sin reached the station before the others. Braxton and Big Muler followed with the big wagon. To be on the safe side, Braxton hitched up a buckboard. Timothy drove while Di-Peachy kept the boy company. Thanks to the moonlight, they stayed on the roads with no problem. They didn’t need coach lights or lanterns although Braxton prudently packed them. No sooner had they gotten into town at sunup than a light rain spattered on their heads.

  Hazel and Judson Whitmore greeted them. The Whitmores had made arrangements to use the facilities at the local university on behalf of the Confederate troops. If need be, they could even use the lawn for the wounded. They left Charles Duval, a professor of chemistry, in charge of organizing help, then they rushed to the station.

  Across from the small train station was the Delevan Hotel, called Mudwall by the older residents of Charlottesville because in their youth one entire side of the building had been a thick mud wall. Judson, in his wheelchair but commanding, woke up John Slingsby, the owner. Slingsby, called Grits because of his fondness for the dish, pulled on his pants over his worn nightshirt and started to work immediately.

  Grits crossed the street and personally put Lutie’s bright red and gold gig into the stable. Braxton spoke with him, and they hauled out large water troughs and lined the side of the street with them. The horses would be needing plenty of water if the day proved as hot as yesterday. Braxton figured that wagons would line up to cart away the wounded to the university or to Stone Tavern on Market Street or to other houses who would agree to take the wounded.

  Jennifer Fitzgerald arrived, her court in tow. She, too, had the presence of mind to bring a buckboard. By 7 A.M., Rise Rives, Miranda Lawrence, and Lillian Philpotts had arrived.

  They waited for the train and waited and waited. By now it was raining buckets. Jennifer, never at her best when bored, flounced around asking who hunted with black and tans. She received no satisfactory answer. Lutie overheard and kept her mouth shut, which was difficult.

  Finally, under the pretext of offering Lutie some honey cakes, Jennifer said, “I saw people hunting with black and tans last night. I think it’s you, Lutie. You keep a pack of those hounds where none of us will ever see them and then tell ghost stories.”

  “I’m not the horsewoman my daughter is.”

  “You can handle a team like a driver.” Jennifer offered the compliment as an argument.

  “No one would hunt at night, Jennifer, and the scent’s no good in such hot conditions. Hounds would get thrown off by nature’s richness, if you will.”

  “And if I don’t believe that, you’ll tell me that the cubs are half-grown and no one would hunt now anyway.”

  “I expect you saw the Harkaway Hunt.”

  Jennifer laughed. “Really, Lutie, really. I am not given to superstitions or imaginary companions.”

  Sin-Sin cleared her throat. Lutie’s face flushed. “The only people who ever hunted with black and tans were the Harkaways. That’s the truth.”

  “You have great respect for the truth since you so rarely use it.” Jennifer laughed.

  Lutie, enraged, grabbed her driving gloves, which she’d jammed in her skirt pocket, and hit Jennifer full across the face. That stopped traffic. “You offend my honor, Mrs. Fitzgerald. If I were a man, I would call you out. Being a woman, I’ll have to be content with the invitation.”

  Jennifer, rubbing her cheek, growled, “No wonder Henley seeks diversions from you, madam.”

  Rise Rives, a lady of refinement, stepped in. “Really, Mrs. Fitzgerald, this is—not done.”

  Jennifer, happy that she wounded Lutie, retired for the moment to the Delevan Hotel. No sooner was she in the door than finally the train whistle pierced the listless air. She rushed back out again. To fall under the wheels, Lutie hoped.

  A shudder of excitement passed through the little band gathered on the siding. This was soon followed by a shudder of another sort.

  The engine grunted into the station. Behind it were flat-cars with only two covered passenger cars; all the cars were crammed with men. The odor was overpowering, even in the downpour.

  Hazel Whitmore sobbed, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  Sin-Sin, speechless, grabbed Lutie’s elbow. Fearing for Lutie as well as being queasy herself, she whispered, “Miz Lutie, mebbe you’d better not stay here.”

  Lutie, charged with mission as she had never been before, said loudly, “If they can take it, so can I.”

  The other ladies and their servants looked at Lutie with amazement. They decided they could take it, too.

  Lutie walked the length of this train of agony, soaked to the skin. “Whoever can walk, go and sit over there.” She pointed to the side opposite the train. A wooden canopy, painted dark green and white, covered the wooden sidewalk. “We will care for you as soon as we can.”

  Those that could walk did as they were told, glad for what minimal shelter was offered. Other men were crying like babies, begging for water. Miranda Lawrence, trying not to gag, was lifted up to the flatcar by Big Muler. She carried a water bucket and a dipper. Following her example, many of the other ladies and servants climbed onto the cars and began to dispense fresh water. Out of the rain, the flies settled on the men’s faces. Rise Rives noticed as she squashed one that it smelled like the rotted flesh it had been eating.

  Colonel Jeffrey Windsor had not slept for thirty-six hours. His uniform was caked with blood, and it had stiffened. His face and hands were covered with the smoke of Manassas and the grime from the train.

  “Are you Colonel Windsor?” Lutie asked.

  “Yes. Thank God you are here. If you will excuse me a moment, I must attend to something.”

  He walked to the front of the train and called the engineer down. He pulled the engineer behind the train. Moments later, Lutie heard a pistol shot. Jeffrey shot the man in the head. Stunned, she said nothing. When Jeffrey rejoined her, he said wearily, “Had to be done.”

  Much later, Lutie and the others learned many of the train engineers were Union sympathizers. They delayed troop move
ments, created mechanical problems, and did what they could to harass the Confederates. Unless one is an engineer, how could he tell if the problem was genuine? Jeffrey just insured that the three workers left on the train would think twice. The train, which should have covered the ninety miles in four hours, or even less if they shoveled on coal, had been bumping and stopping and scraping since one in the morning. Jeffrey thought to shoot him somewhere around Warrenton, but decided to give the man one more chance. Well, the engineer died for the sake of the Union, if that’s the cause he believed in.

  The doctor explained to the ladies what the soldiers needed. Those who could walk would be helped after the emergency cases. Those who could not walk, yet needed no surgery, were loaded onto wagons and sent to the university. The cases requiring surgery were immediately taken across the street to the hotel.

  Unloaded now, the train returned to Manassas. The wounded were laid out in neat rows, and the overflow were placed on the grassy banks flanking the station. At Lutie’s orders, Braxton ran to the closest church, the Presbyterian at 2nd Street and Market, and asked the sexton to ring the bell. When the people came to the church, the sexton directed them to bring towels, sheets, bandages, umbrellas, and anything else that might be useful. Soon, church after church rang their bells as the word spread. First they rang the bell for the victory. Then they rang three rings and silence, three rings and silence, which signaled an emergency. They did not yet ring a dirge for the dead. Casualty reports had not arrived.

  The citizens and slaves in the county brought what comfort they could. No one was prepared for the rows of men sobbing, dying, sleeping, and babbling in delirium. Nor was anyone prepared for the smell.

  Perhaps it was shameful, but no one wanted to remove the body of the engineer from the tracks. Everyone was happy to have the train back over him. Finally the Stationmaster grabbed the dead man by his feet and pulled him over to the side by a switching station.

  Dr. Windsor, using Lutie, Sin-Sin, Big Muler, and Di-Peachy as aides, set up an operating table in the Delevan kitchen. Grits sharpened his knives and hacksaw. He also sharpened Jeffrey’s tools, which had seen constant use.

  Despite the horror and stench, Miranda Lawrence was a happy woman because her husband, Ralph, also a doctor, accompanied Jeffrey Windsor from Manassas. Dr. Lawrence set up a second table behind Dr. Windsor’s. They left the back door of the kitchen open so they could toss the amputated limbs outside.

  Responsibility for removing the arms and legs was accepted by Rise Rives. The gratitude expressed to that brave woman further infuriated Jennifer Fitzgerald, still angry and somewhat irrational over the morning’s conversation. She rushed in to help Rise, and some ladies said later that the sight of Jennifer Fitzgerald heaving arms and legs onto an offal cart during the deluge gave them the creeps. Others said they knew for certain that was when she went off her nut.

  When Jeffrey removed his coat, his shirt underneath was caked with blood. Lutie insisted he take it off. They would find him another shirt and an apron in which to operate. When he took off his shirt, the skin underneath was chafed and blistered. Lutie flinched as she washed him down. Exhausted, Jeffrey drank vats of coffee and kept going. He refused any rest. If he didn’t operate on these men immediately, many of them would surely die.

  One by one the wounded were slapped on the wet, washed-down table. Some men chewed rawhide strips. Others, unconscious from the pain, slept through their surgery; they were the lucky ones.

  Di-Peachy, Lutie, Big Muler, and Sin-Sin took turns assisting. They poured liquor down the throats of some to knock them out. A few endured the surgery clear-eyed with no liquor, only a prayer.

  Hearing of the makeshift hospital, ladies drove down from Orange County and over from Louisa and Fluvanna. They came from as far away as thirty miles. Some caught a ride on a train, others pressed on in their wagons.

  Late in the afternoon, a young corporal named Mercer Hackett was on Jeffrey’s table. His leg was swollen three times its normal size. He’d been hit by a minié ball which blew out the whole back side of the leg and shattered the bone. Try as he could, he couldn’t keep the flies from depositing rows of their white eggs in the open wound. Much of the wound was green and black. He was running a fever, but in control of himself. He spoke to the surgeon. “Do your best, sir.”

  Jeffrey motioned for Big Muler to hold his right leg, the good one. Lutie stood behind Jeffrey and handed him a large scalpel. “I think I can save your knee, soldier,” said Jeffrey.

  “Good. Then I can sit on a horse and get back to the boys.” He glanced away from Jeffrey and looked to his right at Di-Peachy, who had placed her hands on his right arm. Sin-Sin now held his left. They used horse harnesses as makeshift straps, but even so, most men had to be held. If a man struggled, they knocked him out with a drink so strong he’d regret the hangover as much as the amputation.

  Mercer’s light blue eyes looked into Di-Peachy’s green-hazel ones. “Am I dead?”

  “No, sir,” she answered. “You’re alive. You’re alive.” She said this again as Jeffrey made the first incision. Black blood spurted over his apron. He cut higher. Now it spurted red.

  Mercer grimaced but he didn’t cry. “I know I’m alive now, but you must be an angel.”

  Di-Peachy began talking to him in an effort to take his mind off the horrendous procedure. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “If I live, I’m going to marry you.”

  “I’m a slave, sir. You won’t want to be marrying me.”

  He smiled. “I took on a whole Yankee army yesterday. By damned, I’ll take on the Confederates, too, if there’s a man in it says I can’t marry you.” He passed out.

  Di-Peachy tried not to look. Jeffrey had cut away the destroyed flesh around the bone which he needed to expose. Hunks of Mercer’s leg lay on the stone floor. The worst part would come now. Di-Peachy prayed the handsome man wouldn’t wake up again. He did.

  “Is it over?”

  “Not yet, soldier,” she said.

  “Will you take your hands off my arm? Will you hold my hand, dear lady? If you will hold my hand, I know I can bear it, I know I’ll live.”

  Di-Peachy glanced up at Jeffrey. He nodded yes and picked up the saw. She held Mercer’s big right hand in both her small ones. He stared into her eyes. Every time the blade bit into his bone, the sickeningly sweet smell of living bone reaching their nostrils, he squeezed her hand but he did not cry out. She willed him to endure. She gave of herself to this suffering man as she never had given herself to anyone, not even Geneva. She gripped his hand with all her strength. The bone dust wafted up into the stale air. Finally, Jeffrey cut through.

  Big Muler picked up the leg and walked to the open door. It landed in the cart with a soft thud. Mercer didn’t look at his leg. He stared at Di-Peachy. She relaxed her grip.

  “The worst is over.”

  Jeffrey brought a flap of skin he had cut and shaped on the one side of the incision to wrap over the exposed bone. He hoped the tied-off blood vessels would heal. Aside from fever and infection, he feared post-operative hemorrhaging and shock; and in these conditions it might be too late before anyone would notice.

  “Thank you,” Mercer said to Di-Peachy. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Jeffrey patted him on the shoulder. Big Muler picked Mercer up as if he were a rag doll. He carried him to the hotel lobby, found a space for him, and placed a blanket over him. Mercifully, Mercer passed out.

  All day people brought what they could and took men home to nurse. Over at the university, Charles Duval put men in the student rooms of the ranges. Once it stopped raining, the healthier ones were laid on the undulating, beautiful lawns. Those men that were able, sat and read or played cards. Others stared at the sky.

  Apart from seeing what war does to the human body, the citizens of Albemarle County writhed in anxiety. No casualty lists had come over the wire, and nearly everyone had a relative in the army. No one knew what units had taken part in the grea
t battle. Not knowing, in its way, was worse than knowing.

  By 9:30 P.M. the last of the amputations was finished. Jeffrey took a big shot of brandy and fell asleep in a chair, his head on his chest. Big Muler carried the doctor to the best suite in the hotel.

  Lutie and the other women washed up the mess. Sin-Sin, physically and emotionally drained, got on her hands and knees to scrub the bloodstains off the stone floor. They wouldn’t come off. She started to cry. “Blood, blood everywhere. It comes back like the devil laughing.”

  Lutie stared down at the red. “I think these bloodstains will be here unto eternity.”

  Wiping her eyes, Sin-Sin struggled to her feet.

  In the lobby, Di-Peachy placed her hand on the fevered forehead of sleeping Mercer Hackett.

  Big Muler, Boyd, and Timothy sat on the back bench of the train station. There were still wounded men under the canopy, but they’d all been helped. Hopefully they would be taken to private homes tomorrow.

  A train whistle brought the exhausted Lutie up short. “Oh, sweet Jesus, not more. We can’t take any more.”

  The train stopped. The light was still good from the moon although a thin haze spread over the sky like a silvery net. A man in overalls jumped down from the engine. He didn’t speak to anybody. He motioned for another fellow to help him. Together they hauled fifteen wooden boxes off the flatcars.

  Lutie walked over. “Why are you leaving these coffins here?” she demanded.

  “Lady, we was told to drop these ones off in Charlottesville.”

  “Why weren’t they buried on the field of battle?”

  “I dunno. A general say to me, put these on for Charlottesville. These are yourn.”

  Oddly grateful that Albemarle would be able to reclaim her own, she picked up a lantern. No names were on the makeshift coffins. She could smell the contents though.

  “Big Muler, Braxton, I think we’d better open these and identify them, if we can.”

  Casualty lists started to come in late that afternoon. Timothy rushed to tell Lutie that Sumner’s name was not on them. She feared for her son and her daughter, yet she was fatalistic enough to believe that if they were dead, she would know in her heart. So she did not fear these coffins as much as she thought she would.