High Hearts

by Rita Mae Brown

  His eyes fluttered open as he whispered, “But I did.” He closed his eyes.

  She put her head to his chest. His heart was beating.

  A major, covered from head to toe in blood, knelt beside Mars. He took his pulse. He pulled an eyelid back. “On the table!” he shouted.

  “I’m not leaving him,” Geneva cried.

  “Do as you please, Sergeant, but don’t pass out or vomit near me. I’ve got enough to do.” The surgeon brushed by her.

  Mars was slapped on a table after a fresh bucket of water was thrown on it. Behind him was another table and one was behind that, a row of torture. Immediately behind the Colonel, she saw a foot being tossed on the pile as though it were a ham hock. A bloody stump confronted her. The surgeon feverishly tied off the artery with waxed thread.

  The surgeon and his assistants worked like a well-oiled machine. They cut off Mars’s tunic and the shirt underneath. They examined his upper body to see if he’d taken any more wounds.

  An orderly rapidly washed the left arm.

  “No chloroform,” the surgeon said. He stared into two holes on Mars’s bicep. Then he pulled the arm away from the body. “One in. One out. Forceps!”

  A master sergeant handed him the long steel instrument after wiping it on his bloody apron. Another man held the arm down. Plunging into the ugly tear, the surgeon probed for the bullet. He saw no signs of shattered bone, but he couldn’t feel the bullet either.

  “Do you want the scalpel, sir?”

  “When I want it, I’ll ask for it!” he snarled. He probed again, none too deliberately. “Ah!” He played with the forceps and extracted a bullet, perfectly shaped.

  “May I have that?” Geneva tearfully asked.

  “Huh?” The surgeon had forgotten she was there. He tossed it to her.

  “Will he live?”

  “He’s lost a great deal of blood, but he ought to make it.” He spun to face the next case, a man shot through the throat. Mars was carried away from the field tent and put in a grove of trees. Geneva followed him. Once she was sure he was still alive, she fetched Dancer. Removing her tack, she led the exhausted mare by throwing the bridle reins around her neck, then put her on the other side of the grove. Geneva brought her a bucket of water and a bucket of corn. The orderly chatted that they’d taken supply wagons from the Federals and the corn was one of the prizes. After Dancer drank her fill, Geneva pumped up more water and gave the horse a sponge bath.

  A wounded man called to her, “Blooded, ain’t she? Where’d you get her?”

  “My father, Henley Chatfield, bred her.”

  A cloud of dissatisfaction blotted his serene composure. “I’m sorry ’bout him.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  Terribly upset that this tall, skinny boy didn’t know the truth, the wounded man quietly said, “He was killed yesterday at Mechanicsville. Took it calm. Wrote letters.”

  Geneva stared at the kind face of the battered man. She touched her finger to her cap by way of thanks and walked back to Mars. She sat cross-legged beside him and buried her face in her hands. Racking sobs convulsed her. Those wounded who were conscious whispered one to another. Soon they knew Henley Chatfield’s boy, a young one at that, was among them.

  One man, considering himself luckier than the rest because he’d lost only three fingers from his hand, came over. “Sergeant, would you like a belt of whiskey?”

  She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “No, I’ll be all right. Thank you.”

  He touched her shoulder and walked back to the others.

  Mars moaned and twisted. He opened his eyes. “I’m alive?”

  Geneva bent over him. “You’re gonna pull through, Colonel.”

  “May I have a drink of water?”

  “Here.” She held her canteen under his lips and told him about her father.

  Mars reached up and put his right hand on her cheek. She rested her head on his hand for a moment. “Don’t you die, Colonel.”

  “I’m not dying.” He fought to stay awake, but fell asleep again.

  Geneva curled up next to him as night came. She could still hear guns. She thought about Henley. It didn’t seem possible that he was gone. She wondered if her mother was holding on. She vaguely remembered Lutie’s hysteria when Jimmy died. The aftermath she remembered only too well. But when Sumner was killed, Lutie seemed to grasp life more firmly instead of letting it slip away. There were no men left in the family.

  She remembered her father’s face, the deep creases alongside his mouth, his huge hands, the sprig of gray hair that sometimes peeped out from under his unbuttoned shirts on a sultry summer day. Henley smelled of tobacco and horses. It would be difficult to imagine Chatfield without his scent, without his heavy tread shaking the floorboards, without him falling asleep in the peach room with a newspaper over his face.

  The face of the good-looking Yankee captain jumped into her head. That man could have killed them both. When he held up his white handkerchief, his men held their fire. Why did he do that? Why am I fighting such a man?

  For the first time Geneva had an inkling of what she was doing, of what they were all doing. It was wrong. It was so profoundly wrong that she felt cold sweat trickling down her armpits. Gripped with a fear unlike any she had ever known, she curled up beside Mars, seeking an answer in his animal warmth.

  JUNE 28, 1862

  Throughout the night columns of transport rattled over cobbled streets. A new army of wounded invaded the city. Roughly nine thousand men had fallen by yesterday evening. The hospitals, overwhelmed with even greater numbers of wounded than before, pitched tents on the lawns for the soldiers.

  Clearly the battle wasn’t over. McClellan, never defeated conclusively, would withdraw and then turn to fight again. Rather his generals on his right fought, for McClellan apparently waited for Joshua to be sent down from heaven, trumpets and all.

  Lutie, Sin-Sin, Bebe, Di-Peachy, and the ladies worked “from can until can’t.”

  Kate pleaded with Lutie to rest after they returned from Hollywood Cemetery. Henley’s hastily arranged funeral was punctuated by incessant artillery fire. Kate had allowed the colonel to be buried in her family plot. Lutie would have him removed to Chatfield later.

  When a gleaming hearse clattered up to Kate’s front door in the morning and the undertaker presented her with a mahogany casket, complete with ornate bronze railings, everyone was surprised. Hearses were working overtime, and caskets were hard to find. Even the highest ranking officers were going to their graves in pine coffins.

  Lutie, asking no questions, allowed her husband to be placed in the tufted white satin. She kept his officer’s sword, his watch, and his red sash. He was buried in the uniform in which he fell.

  As the women withdrew from the cemetery, the undertaker surreptitiously slipped Kate a note. The funeral arrangements had been made by Baron Schecter. He galloped into Richmond from Mechanicsville after eleven o’clock at night, made provisions for Colonel Chatfield, turned around and rejoined General A.P. Hill. The funeral director wryly made note that the Baron’s dazzling white tunic and other Austrian bric-a-brac were encrusted with blood and dust.

  When Kate read Lutie his note, Lutie remarked, “These arrangements were made more for your benefit than for my husband’s, but I am grateful all the same. If he lives through this hell, please don’t turn him away from your door for my sake.”

  By the time they got back to Kate’s house, they had a new crop of wounded. Gunther Krutzer had already organized the men according to the severity of their injury. Bebe Austin, in charge, rushed to the door when Kate and the Albemarle ladies returned.

  She told Kate that Mars’s name was posted on the bulletin outside the capitol. He’d been wounded.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Now Lutie urged Kate to retire.

  “He’s alive. My blow is nothing compared to yours.”

  “I don’t believe in comparative pain,” Lutie said.

  “I wish I had your cour
age.”

  A howl from the next room and the figure of Hazel Whitmore running out for more bandages galvanized both of them.

  “You have plenty of courage. We’ve buried our dead; let’s do what we can for the living.”

  The howl came from Frazier Hawkins of Hood’s Fourth Texans. He’d been shot through both lungs as well as the thigh. He was slowly drowning in his own blood.

  As Lutie washed him, he babbled between bloody gasps for air. “—bent over like I was turkey hunting. We ran down a slope, and General Hood, he was running right on ahead, and, ma’am, the lead was fearsome. I don’t know how I saw the sky for the fire, but the worst part was when we reached the bottom of the hill. It was a tangle and a mess, and those Yanks were thick on the other side of that creek. More up on top of the slope. I didn’t even stop to take aim and fire. I jumped over and pumped up the side of that hill. I didn’t start firing until we got over the breastworks. Must have been one hundred degrees, and those Yanks, they’d been fighting all day, they finally gave it up. Those of us that made it up the hill, we give ’em everything we had. Didn’t know I was hit until then. I saw my leg bleeding a little, and then like a mess of hornets, I felt them bullets rip into my lungs. Like a terrible thump. We died like flies in a sugar bowl … just like flies.”

  Lutie put a cold compress on his glistening forehead. “You rest quietly.”

  He sat bolt upright and grabbed her. “Sister, I want to see you in heaven.” He released his grip, then lurched back, dead.

  “Jensen,” Lutie called. She suddenly thought of Big Muler. Whatever his insanity over Di-Peachy, he had labored like Hercules to help the wounded. Jensen, with difficulty, moved Frazier Hawkins out to the barn.

  As heat climbed into the low nineties, the day pulsated with a nightmare quality.

  “Glad to see you’re back in the saddle, Colonel Vickers,” said a soldier.

  “Thank you.” Mars’s lips were white with pain.

  Mars and Geneva trotted toward Dispatch Station on the York River Railroad line.

  “Let’s rest. A drink of water and a little corn and hardtack, compliments of the U.S. Army, will do you good.”

  “I’ve returned to duty. I can manage.”

  “Yeah, you can manage to make yourself worse,” said Geneva.

  At Dispatch Station the railroad had been yanked up, and telegraph wires swayed like long tendrils.

  From Dispatch Station they rode to Tunstall’s Station. This, too, was torn apart, although they did notice that the Federals had reinforced it somewhat since their earlier raid.

  From Tunstall’s Station they rode toward White House Landing. A drift of smoke crossed over the Pamunkey valley.

  “Someone’s torched the Landing.” Geneva sat up straight.

  “There’s only one reason the Federals would abandon their supply line. They’ve moving their base of operation.”

  “Can they afford to lose that much material?” Geneva, never having visited the North, could not conceive of that section’s industrial wealth.

  “Yes, they can afford to lose it and replace it ten times over.”

  “Colonel, are you worried?”

  “I hope General Lee knows about this. I don’t want these weasels to slip the trap!”

  “We’ve got cavalry fanned out everywhere. If he doesn’t know now, he’ll know by tonight.”

  They rode up on the rear of Stuart’s column at night. The men had halted at Black Creek just before White House Landing. Yankees destroyed the bridge and contested the opposing bank, but a few salvos from Captain Pelham’s guns and they left. The men observed cannon along the ridge, but it was not brought into play.

  While engineers worked to replace the bridge, the men camped for the night.

  Geneva found Nash and Banjo. They rejoiced to see her. After hearing of one another’s exploits, Geneva said, “Nash, they killed Daddy at Mechanicsville.”

  “Oh, no,” Nash said.

  “I heard it at the hospital.” She told them about the letter to the baron.

  “I think your father had a premonition.” Nash scratched his sandy stubble. “The day he came to fetch you to Richmond, he asked Banjo to look after your mother if anything happened to him.”

  “That poor lady has known her share of suffering.” Banjo slouched on a log. “Don’t you worry, Jimmy, I’ll keep my promise to your daddy.”

  JUNE 29, 1862

  Geneva awoke earlier than usual. A few sentries were alert at the bridge. Everyone else was asleep. Three days of constant marching and skirmishing had taken their toll.

  She waved to the sentries and walked down Black Creek to get out of sight. Lice irritated her considerably. She figured it must be around three-thirty in the morning. The temperature hung in the mid-seventies. The day would be a sizzler.

  Crawling down the steep bank, she removed her boots, then plunged into the cool water, clothing and all. She got out of the water, stripped naked, and washed her clothes. Only boiling would kill the lice, but this would help some. She spread her pants, shirt, and tunic over branches and dove back in the water. Dirt and blood washed off her.

  She heard a rustle on the bank on the other side of the bend from where her regiment was sleeping. Someone dived into the water. She heard coughing. She realized someone was drowning. She swam around the bend and saw a familiar curly head bobbing up and down in the water. It was Mars. She grabbed him under the arms and across the chest in an instant. Even under the water, she could feel he was burning up.

  “Shut up, Colonel,” she warned him. The last thing she wanted was a platoon of men jumping into that black water. Black Creek was aptly named.

  “Jimmy,” he cooed in his semidelirious state. “You hot, too?”

  “You near drowned.”

  “It’s so hot, so hot. I could fry an egg on my forehead.” He whispered, water going in and out of his mouth.

  She pulled him around the bend until she found level ground. Grunting, she heaved him on the bank. “You stay here.”

  Instinctively she smacked his hand as he picked at his bandages. “Let that be. Wait here. I want to fetch my clothes.”

  “I’m going back in the water, Jimmy. I can’t stand this heat.” He slurred his words. “What’s wrong with you?” He sputtered.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me.” Furious, she restrained him with both hands. “Stay put!”

  “Jimmy,” he whispered in shock, “you lost your cock.”

  “You’re delirious.” Too late, she realized she was naked. She brazened it out. “Mars!” It was the first time she addressed him by his Christian name. “Stay here until I fetch my clothes.”

  He blinked. He stared at her. She plunged into the water, swam to the bushes, then swam back, holding her clothes over her head. She quickly dressed.

  She reached down to help him. “Come on, I’m taking you back to camp. We’ll find your clothes.”

  “I want to know why you’re a girl.”

  She felt his hot flesh. “Be quiet about this girl stuff. We’ll talk about it when you’re right in the head.”

  He leaned against her. Fevered though he was, he understood what she was saying. “I promise.” He paused for a moment. Then he held her in his good right arm and kissed her. At first she tightened, but then kissed him back.

  Shaken that she could kiss anyone besides Nash and mean it, she said nothing and hauled him along the banks of the creek until she found his clothes. He stumbled and couldn’t get into his pants. She sat him down and had him wriggle into them. He stopped before he pulled his pants over himself. “Shoots blanks,” he whispered. “I don’t think I can have children.”

  “You will. After the war,” she reassured him.

  “Not with Kate, I won’t.” He was drenched in sweat.

  She hurried down to the creek, dipped his shirt in water, and returning, pressed it to his forehead, then wiped his chest with it.

  “Jimmy, you could of been killed taking that fence.” Overwhelmed, h
e started to cry. “My own wife wouldn’t of risked herself to save me.”

  Continuing to wipe him, she said softly, “You’re sick. You’re feeling low. It’ll pass.” She got him back to his feet and into camp.

  At dawn the men were awake and Pelham’s guns rolled over the makeshift bridge. The cannon on the ridge was the Quaker variety, painted logs. Geneva, with Banjo, got Mars up and changed his dressing. He didn’t say anything about their swim.

  Geneva found Fitz Lee and asked him if they could put Mars in a house once they arrived at White House Landing. He readily agreed.

  By eight they reached White House Landing. The glow of the fires set by the departing Federals illuminated the sky like an orange halo. The U.S.S. Marblehead floated in the middle of the Pamunkey River, firing eleven-inch naval shells at the advancing column. Stuart called for seventy-five troopers to dismount. They aimed their rifles at the gunboat. John Pelham hurried forward and opened with his howitzer from the woods. The U.S.S. Marblehead weighed anchor and moved away, losing a small boat in the process.

  By noon Geneva had Mars Vickers in Lisette Woodard’s small, white cottage about two blocks from the river.

  The White House, for which the landing was named, once belonged to Martha Washington. She was Rooney Lee’s great-great-grandmother, and he inherited the house from her. Usually happy, Rooney fought back the tears when he saw his beautiful plantation smoking, her timbers charred, her architectural glory burnt away. Not only was a piece of his heart ripped out, so was a piece of Revolutionary history.

  Two square miles of depot smouldered. Five locomotives were ditched, railroad cars still crackled with fire, and wagons were scattered everywhere. Barges in flames listed in the river.

  Aghast at such wealth and then the destruction of it, troopers ransacked wagons and storehouses at their own peril. A few burned their hands, and another narrowly missed being crushed by a falling timber. Banjo plucked out an official-looking box, opened it, and discovered a dozen pair of spotless, white kid gloves. Disgusted, he lifted his arm to toss it back into the flames.