Where was Meshach?
She shifted her inspection to the leg. Cutting away the remains of the man’s pant leg, she kept herself from gagging only with the greatest effort. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths to calm the need to faint. If there was to be any chance for the man to live, the leg would have to go. With all the dirt and shredded flesh and bone, the wound would putrefy before morning.
Whatever had kept this man alive this long?
“Well, sir, if you want to live this bad, we’ll sure do all we can to help you.” She got to her feet. “Benjamin, bring in our saw. Ophelia, get your sewing kit. We got work to do.”
“My ma allus said, you cut off a limb, you gotta burn it with a knife or somethin’.” Jane Ellen had the three boys huddled under a quilt with her, so only their faces showed in the flickering firelight. “Might help that hole in his side too.”
“Thank you. My daddy said pouring enough whisky over any wound would clean it right up, but we don’t have any whisky, and we do have a big knife or two.” Jesselynn dug into her box of simples that was becoming sadly in need of replenishing. What could she use to help keep away the poison? If only she had some onions, or mustard, or even bread and milk—all things they had taken for granted at Twin Oaks. And whisky … there had been plenty of that too.
Where was Meshach? Good thing the soldier had yet to regain consciousness, but even so, she wanted Meshach there not only to help hold him down but to saw off the leg. Should they try to save the knee?
She took soap and water and started scrubbing, then rinsed and went back to studying the wound. Looked like good bone below the knee for a couple of inches anyway. Unless the infection had already set in and traveled upward. She sniffed the wound. Nope, it didn’t smell like the one that killed her daddy. Putridity had a stench all its own.
“Any of you know where Meshach went?”
Benjamin and Daniel shook their heads.
Ophelia said, “He took the rifle.”
So that was the rifle cocking she heard. He must have gone hunting, whether for man or beast she wasn’t sure.
One of the horses stamped and snorted. Firelight flickered on the walls, setting shadows to moving in a macabre dance that sent shivers up and down Jesselynn’s back. She glanced over at the children and saw they were all asleep, piled like puppies in a heap.
Dumping the bloody water, she poured more from the kettle and went back to work, not even bothering to clean the lower leg. His foot was cold to the touch, as if it had already died. The wound in his side started to bleed again as she cleaned out bits of shirt fabric and removed the handkerchief he must have packed in the wound to staunch the bleeding.
She listened to his breathing. Sounded pretty strong for a man in his condition. Could she touch the hot knife to his flesh and hold it there long enough to do its job? She eyed the broad-bladed knife that Ophelia had set in the flames. Meshach could do this better than she, but since he wasn’t here, she’d better do it.
She called Benjamin and Daniel to help. “All right, hold him down,” she ordered. The eyes of the two men and Ophelia glistened in the firelight, but they took their places and leaned on the still form. Jesselynn closed her eyes for a moment, then taking the bone handle of the knife, she applied the blade to the front of the wound.
The man bucked and groaned. The stench of burning flesh made Jesselynn gag. None of her helpers watched the knife, but Benjamin threw his body across the man’s upper legs to hold him down.
Jesselynn put the knife back in the fire. “We got the back to do too. Roll him over real careful-like, so the bleeding doesn’t commence again.”
By the time they were finished, sweat ran down their faces, but the wounds were clean. The leg would have to wait for Meshach. Jesselynn could hardly grip the handle of the knife she was shaking so. Sammy and Thaddeus now whimpered from under their quilt, but Jane Ellen held her ground, her arms securely around all three boys, murmuring a soft singsong, trying to calm them.
“What do we have for bandages?” Jesselynn asked.
“I gits dem.” Ophelia dug in her box and came up with several rolls of old sheeting. “Lucinda packed dis. Thought we might need ’em.”
“Looks like we do.” Jesselynn took the rolls and folded some into pads to apply back and front, then wound more around the man’s midsection to hold the pads in place. They’d just have to wash the bandages in between. There were not enough to throw away. “We’ll let him sleep now. Ophelia, we need to make a tea of this willow bark. Get him to drink it soon as he wakes up. If only we had some meat to make a broth. Mother always said to give a wounded man beef broth to build the blood back up.”
“Will venison do?” Meshach and the deer he had tied over his shoulders filled the mouth of the cave.
No need to ask where he’d been. He laid the carcass down on the other side of the fire and untied three rabbits from his belt to hand to Ophelia. “We can skin dese de quickest and get dem to boilin’. I spotted some wild onion and Jerusalem artichoke for diggin’. I gits dem next.” He stepped around the fire and knelt down by their patient. Nodding, he smiled up at Jesselynn.
“You done fine, Marse Jesse.”
“I thought to wait a bit on the leg, let him gain some strength.” Liar. You just couldn’t bring yourself to do it.
“No, poison get ’im. We do it now. Got to come off?”
Jesselynn nodded. “All I can see. Good flesh and bone just below the knee, so maybe we can save that.”
“We try.”
Within minutes, they were ready. Even with four of them holding the man down, he bucked at the first bite of the saw. Jesselynn nearly screamed herself. Instead she hummed a song under her breath, anything to blot out the horrible noise.
“Done. Hand me de knife.” Again the stench of burning flesh filled the cave.
Jesselynn sewed the flap of flesh over the stump and applied the bandages. Very carefully, she released the knot on the tourniquet above the knee and watched to see if blood would soak the white cloth. When it didn’t, she finally let out the breath she’d been holding, surged to her feet, and dashed outside. After throwing up in the bushes, she tilted her face to the sky to let the rain wash her clean again.
She looked heavenward and raised her fist in the air. “God, if you are indeed God, how can you let this war go on? I don’t want any part of you ever again. You hear me?” Tears and rain flowed over her cheeks and down her neck.
Shuddering both from cold and wet, she strode back into the cave to find the soldier covered, the dead man gone, and the rest of the group eating warmed-up beans and biscuits. One rabbit simmered in the cooking pot, and cut-up pieces of another sizzled in the frying pan. The stench of blood and burnt flesh had been replaced by supper cooking, and the cave now seemed more like a home than a hospital.
“Jesse, sit here.” Thaddeus patted the empty space on the log beside him.
Ophelia handed her a steaming bowl and, while Jesselynn had thought it would be a long while before she could force food down, she shoveled the beans and biscuits in, grateful for the warmth and the flavor.
“I’ll be gettin’ the onion and chokes,” Meshah said. “Benjamin, you rope up de horses, and I show you a clearin’ I found. Wet or not, dey need grazin’. We can skin de deer after dark, dry some of it all night. Ophelia, you kin scrape de hide.”
“I knows how to do that,” Jane Ellen volunteered.
“When de sun come out, de hide kin dry on de wagon.”
“My ma used de brains, lye from fire ashes, and water fer tannin’ de hide.”
“Good. That be your job den, girl.”
“No rush, we won’t be leavin’ here anytime soon,” Jesselynn said, shaking her head. “Can’t leave him and can’t take him with us yet, so looks like here we stay.” She glanced over at John Mark, who was doubled over with coughing. Another reason they wouldn’t be going anywhere fast. Her mother always made cough syrup out of honey, whisky, and lemon juice in hot wa
ter. What could she use instead?
By the time they settled into their quilts that night, thin strips of deer meat draped on racks of green sticks hung over a low fire. They’d gotten some broth down the wounded man, and the deer hide was scraped and ready for tanning in the morning. Best of all, Daniel had found a bee tree, so they had honey on the biscuits that went along with fried rabbit, boiled artichoke roots with wild onion, and carrots. Quite a feast, and to top that off, they were warm and dry.
Stars shone overhead when Jesselynn made her final trip outside. Snuggling down in her quilt later, she listened for their patient’s steady breathing. The odor of fresh horse manure overlaid the sizzle of drying deer meat. Things seemed as right as possible, but she’d closed her ears when Meshach read the nightly Scripture. While she wasn’t about to tell him to quit reading, she knew she’d been living a lie. No longer did she believe there was a God, let alone a good one.
Somewhere in the wee hours, she got the soldier to take some more broth, and while his mumbling didn’t make sense, the fever seemed only mild, so far.
She fell back asleep without waking anyone else. They needed their rest as much as she.
Screams brought her straight up and out of sleep. Tiny furry feet crawling all over her made her scream too. She flung one of the creatures off and saw an arched tail in the dim firelight.
Only one critter looked like that! Scorpions!
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Richmond, Virginia
The dour look returned with the lieutenant in the morning.
“I’m happy to see you decided to join us.” Louisa, resolving to ignore the dark cloud on his countenance, gave him the same smile she gave the others. Last night was as though it had never been. She hid the sigh behind a flurry of pointing, assigning jobs, and identifying plants for Corporal Shaddock so he would know which were weeds and which were perennials gone dormant. She hoped to divide the irises today and the butter lilies.
“If we dig up the clumps, do you suppose you could stand at the bench, or sit if you prefer, and divide them?” She motioned toward the potting bench along the brick wall, glancing up at the lieutenant at the same time.
“I reckon.”
So much for conversation.
“Have you ever divided irises before?”
“No, can’t say that I have.”
“Fine, I’ll be right with you, then.” She trotted over to where one of the other men was digging with a fork. “Sergeant Andrews, over here, please.” Within moments she had several washtub-sized clumps of iris covering the potting bench and Andrews back to digging up the iris bed. “We need to dig in manure and compost. That’s behind the shed.”
While Sergeant Andrews had only one eye and still wore a bandage around one thigh, the smile he gave her lacked for nothing in the male-appeal department. “I’ll get right to it, ma’am.”
Louisa could feel her face heat up in spite of the broad-brimmed straw hat she wore. Maybe it was more important to get these men back out in society than to improve their attitudes through digging in the dirt. If only she could discuss such things with the lieutenant.
She checked on Private Rumford and, laying a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, smiled and nodded. “Very good. It looks so much better.” Was that life she saw in his eyes or a trick of the shadow? But when she smiled again, the corner of his mouth lifted ever so little. He had responded. Her heart sent joy spiraling upward and blooming on her face, such joy she could scarcely contain it. If she ran and danced as she ached to, all the men would be appalled. One just didn’t do such things. “Thank you, Private. Thank you so very much.”
He returned to his digging and she to the lieutenant.
“Did you see?” she whispered.
“See what?” The man stared from the knife in his hands to the tangle of rhizomes, roots, soil, and long slender leaves.
“Private Rumford started to smile, barely, but it’s a step in the right direction. Now.” She rolled the clump over so the leaves and rhizomes were on top. Pointing as she talked, she identified the old wood for him, the new growth, and where to cut. “Now, iris are really hardy, so you needn’t be too careful, but keep the new plants from each clump together and separate from the others, as they are of different colors.” She glanced up to see that he was following her instructions but caught him staring at her instead.
“What? Do I have dirt on my nose or something?”
He shook his head and transferred his attention to the iris. “I cut here and here and—”
She leaned forward and her shoulder accidentally bumped his. They both leaped back as if they’d been burnt.
“Sorry.” Their apologies even came at the same instant.
Why had she never noticed how long and fine his eyelashes were? And the gold that flecked his eyes. Louisa Marie Highwood, quit acting like a…like a—
“Miz Highwood, this somethin’ you want dug out or left?” Andrews called out, breaking the spell of the moment.
“I … ah … I’ll be right there.” She drew back, wishing she had a fan. A big fan that would create a big breeze and hide her face.
Lord, I feel like I can drown in his eyes. I want to smooth that frown from his forehead, and…and…I’ve never felt like this. Do you think he feels the same way? Is this the beginning of love? And if so, what do I do next? She hustled over to Andrews and bent down to study the clump of leaves. “No, that stays, but you can dig around it. I forget what Aunt called it, though.”
On her way to fetch the wheelbarrow, the thought hit her. What if he doesn’t feel the same way? Trundling the wheelbarrow back, she let the posts down with a thunk. Tonight she’d ask Carrie Mae about it. Surely she would know.
By the time Abby came out with glasses of lemonade and fresh lemon cookies, the iris were all replanted in the re-dug bed with a thick layer of compost on top, the peonies were weeded, and another bed was prepared for winter vegetables. The men were wiping sweat from their brows in the full heat of the sun, and Louisa’s nose felt pink, since she’d given up trying to keep her hat on hours ago.
“Dinner be ready ’bout an hour.” The slender woman with skin like creamed coffee handed ’round the glasses. “Looks like you been diggin’ up a storm.”
“Miz Highwood here, she keeps us right busy.” Corporal Shaddock grinned up at the serving woman from his seat on the grass. “But we make her pay back by readin’ to us. Out here would be a fine place to lay back and be read to. Right after dinner.”
“But I …” One look from the lieutenant and she clamped her lips shut. “What about the others?”
“We bring ’em out too. Be better out here in the sun and breeze than inside.”
Louisa stared at the young man in astonishment. He’d never said so much at one time since she handed him his first drink of water three weeks earlier.
“Bring ’em out here to eat, right, Lieutenant?”
Louisa looked at the man leaning back in the recliner with his eyes closed.
“Now, how you goin’ to bring them out? Gettin’ ’em here yesterday was hard enough.” He brushed at a fly that insisted on buzzing around him.
Abby had the answer to that. “Reuben fix dat last night. He make up a two-wheel chair. We bring dem out.”
Abby was as good as her word. Zachary came out first and settled onto the lounger the lieutenant vacated. The two young men from the parlor followed.
“Now if we could fashion a gate through that wall.” Louisa stared at the brick wall, daring it to form a gate so the men in the other house could join them.
“Gettin’ over here will be a good incentive for those two to walk again,” the lieutenant said from beside her.
“Gardens have a way like that.”
“It’s not the garden, Miz Highwood, it’s you.” He spoke so only she could hear, but she jumped anyway.
“What a thing to say,” she hissed. “I never—”
“Dinner is served.”
She spent her
time helping the men eat, cutting meat for those missing a hand and adjusting pillows so they could sit straight enough. When she sat down to her own meal, she found herself between Zachary and the lieutenant. Her brother started the storytelling, and soon the others took part, stories of home and growing up and families that wrote more often now that they knew where their boys were.
Surely she could go over to the hospital while everyone napped in the afternoon.
As soon as silence fell, she left her place and sneaked back in the house. Aunt Sylvania had returned from her morning with the sewing group, and now she too was taking a lie-down.
“I’ll be back in an hour or two,” she whispered to Reuben as she packed some leftover biscuits and honey in her basket. She added cookies and contemplated the jug of lemonade.
“I carries dat for you.” Reuben hoisted the gallon jug, sweating in the warm kitchen.
“Surgeon general wants to see you,” the orderly said when she walked into the ward a few minutes later.
“Oh.” Her heart set to triple timing. Had the lieutenant broken his word, then? The thought made her stand two inches taller and march out of the room and down the hall to his office. The subaltern showed her in.
“Why, Miz Highwood, I’m surprised to see you here.” The surgeon general rose from behind his desk and motioned her to the chair.
“And why is that, sir? I am sorry to be late, but—”
“But you have men to care for over home, and your husband sent me a message saying you would no longer be helping us here.”
“He … he what?” She felt like scrubbing at her ears. Surely she had heard wrong.
“So I want to thank you for all you’ve done for our men and for taking soldiers into your home.”
“General, sir, more wounded coming in.” The young officer made the announcement from the doorway.
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