Hoofs echoed on the bridge. Caleb watched Colonel Morgan race by, heard a blast. Only then did he realize that Morgan had fired his revolver.
Captain Crane crumpled, folded over.
At the edge of the bridge, Parker Pruitt screamed.
Another shot. A third.
The horse raced past the prone body of Parker Pruitt. Morgan jerked the black to a stop, wheeled the horse around, galloped back toward the assembly. He lowered his pistol and sent another ball into Parker Pruitt’s body without stopping, and reined up in front of Captain Crane’s lifeless body, cocked the revolver, aimed, fired again.
When Morgan dismounted, the orderly raced forward to take the reins to the black, and the colonel handed him his smoking revolver, too. He stormed toward the firing squad: “That was a disgrace, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You almost let that prisoner get away.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Discipline wins battles, Sergeant. Discipline wins war. You and your men showed no discipline whatsoever.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The next time I give an order, I expect you to obey it. And your men. If not, the next time it will be you and these boys who face a firing squad.”
“Yes, sir.”
Morgan spun on his heels, drawing his saber. Caleb watched in horror as the colonel dipped the point of the saber in the lake of blood pooling underneath the dead bushwhacker’s body, then raised the tip to the bridge’s railing and wrote, in blood, the letters US on the wood.
“What have I gotten myself into?”
A moment passed before Caleb realized he had spoken those words, loudly, so that everyone on the bridge had heard.
He did not care.
Chapter Ten
January 1, 1862
Corinth, Mississippi
Even her friends called her String Bean.
Grace Dehner had learned to accept that nickname, much as she had realized she could not do a thing about her height. In her bare feet, she stood just an inch under six feet tall and had towered over even her mother back when she had turned thirteen years old. Now, four years later, she could look her father in his eyes, and easily look down upon practically every boy her age that she knew in Corinth. She could outrun them all, too.
Which was what she was doing.
Laughing hysterically, holding up the hems of her green hoop skirt, she ran down the sidewalk, then, without even slowing down, crossed the warped plank that a slave had laid across the muddy street. Behind her, a boy swore, which was followed by the dull sound of a body falling into thick mud. She knew that it was Jimmy Evans who had fallen, and even though she couldn’t hear the ragged breathing of the other boys chasing her, she picked up a little speed just to be safe.
Turning onto Waldron Street, Grace Dehner slammed to a stop, just barely missing knocking Miss Prudence Caxton onto her hindquarters.
Nick O’Brien and Johnny James rounded the corner, turned sharply, and raced away from the Waldron Street Christian Church. Johnny James shouted a warning as he tore through the mud on Taylor Street. Everyone else retreated, leaving Grace alone to face Miss Prudence Caxton.
“Grace Dehner, you should be ashamed of yourself!” Miss Prudence stuck up her nose, brushed herself off indignantly as if she had been knocked onto the sidewalk. “Why, just look at you! Running around like a termagant. What has become of you, child?”
Grace lowered her skirt, tried to look properly ashamed of herself.
“Look at your hair, goodness gracious. Fringe! Fringe hanging down into your eyes.”
Grace tried to brush the bangs off her forehead.
“And you are perspiring in these frigid conditions!”
It was sunny, maybe fifty degrees. Of course, after running for a half mile, she couldn’t argue the fact that she was sweating.
“You are too old to wear your hair down in curls, young lady.” She pointed to her own silver hair, neatly tucked up in a bun and covered with a lace net. “Where is your snood? For that matter, where are your gloves?”
Grace would have sworn her mother had pinned up her hair before she left the house that afternoon, but Miss Prudence was right. The lace net was gone. Must have fallen off when she had tripped crossing Bunch Street. As far as the gloves, however, she detested wearing gloves. They cut off the circulation to her long fingers.
Standing at the entrance to the Waldron Street Christian Church, the other fine ladies nodded in approval of Miss Prudence’s observations. Grace felt her face begin to redden, and she wished Miss Prudence and every other lady in Corinth would mind their own business. She had never been one to bite her tongue, and was about, instead, to bite off Miss Prudence’s head when Dr. Kenton Landon arrived, stepping between Miss Prudence and Grace, and extending his right hand.
“Grace, my dear Grace, thank you for racing to see me. I feel if we hurry, we might just manage to save Darius McGillicudy from being called to Glory.” Smoothly he turned Grace around, tucked his hand underneath her arm, and led her back to Taylor Street and crossed that plank.
“Aren’t you coming to hear the Wednesday sermon?”
The question, from Mrs. Hildegarde Beaumont and directed at Dr. Landon, was sarcastic. Everyone in Tishomingo County knew Kenton Landon to be a freethinker, although Dr. Landon liked watching the horrified faces when he proclaimed himself to be an atheist.
Dr. Landon released his hold on Grace’s arm, and turned, tipping his bell crown hat without slowing down, calling back: “I’m sure someone will tell me all about Parson Mark’s preaching. But please pray for Grace and me. Better yet, please pray for relief for poor Darius McGillicudy. Cholelithiasis is a terrible way to die.”
When they were safe from view behind the walls of Weatherby’s Mercantile, Grace asked: “What is cho— what is chole—” She gave up, and began again: “And who is Darius McGillicudy?”
Kenton Landon had pulled a tobacco twist from the pocket of his green frock coat. “Darius was a childhood friend an eternity ago on the Thames River, though his surname has long since faded from my fleeting memory. McGillicudy was the scoundrel who told me Cross City would be a great place to hang my shingle.”
Back in 1853, Cross City had been the original name of Corinth, until a newspaper editor suggested that they name the city after a place in Greece that had been a crossroads of some sort. Two railroads, the Mobile & Ohio and the Memphis & Charleston, crossed here at this swampy settlement in northern Mississippi.
Grace and Dr. Landon were heading toward those railroad tracks now.
Nobody had sounded really enthusiastic about the name change, so the editor had made a compromise. Try Corinth out for size. If nobody liked it after a year, they could always go back to Cross City. They hadn’t gone back to Cross City, and that had been four or five years ago.
“And that disease?” Grace asked.
“Cholelithiasis?” Dr. Landon had bit off a substantial chaw from the twist, and had shoved the tobacco back into his pocket. “I have yet to hear of anyone dying from that indisposition, although many have sworn they felt like they were about to. Most people call it gallstones.”
They crossed the tracks, moved between bales of cotton, and among slaves, who quickly dropped their gaze lest anyone accuse them of improper glances at a white woman.
Dr. Landon stopped, started to say something to Grace, then bit his lower lip. “Come on,” he said, and continued his long gait, which Grace easily matched. Standing six feet, three, Kenton Landon was one person Grace could look up to, literally and figuratively.
“And what did you do to incur Prudence Caxton’s wrath?” he asked after a while.
She shrugged. “I was racing Johnny, Jimmy, Nick, George, some others.”
“Winning, I presume.”
Of course. Grace didn’t have to answer that question. An
d it wasn’t even fair. All the boys had on were their pants, shirts, coats, and shoes. Grace was laden down with a chemise and other unmentionables—stockings, whalebone corset, crinoline, camisole, bodice, skirt, belt, jacket, and shawl. And those velvet slippers on her feet slowed her down. She would have been even faster had she raced barefoot.
“Where were you supposed to be going?”
“I was there,” she said with indignation. “Church. Papa and Mother will be madder than hornets when they hear that I missed the Wednesday Bible meeting and sermon.”
The doctor spit into the mud.
“I can tell you exactly what Parson Mark will say.” They had started winding down Tate Street.
“Preston Childs has two sons at Fort Donelson. He’ll pray for their deliverance from Yankee tyrants. He will pray for President Davis’ wisdom and for the hand of God to strike down that Abolitionist rascal, Abe Lincoln. He will ask God to see our great city and wonderful congregation through these dark days, and will pray that the Almighty infect the Northern troops in Tennessee with dysentery. He will lead the entire congregation in a long, spirited prayer that God will spare Corinth, this blessed city, from the savages of war. He will find a passage in the Bible and use it as justification for what he seeks, thus making it right, holy, and just.”
“What passage would that be, Doctor Landon.”
“You may call me Kenton, Grace, as I’ve told you a hundred times.”
“Mama says I shouldn’t be that familiar with a man old enough to be my grandfather.”
A smile cracked granite face. “Grandfather?” He spit again.
“Well …?” She asked again about the Bible.
“String Bean,” he said, “I’ve never cracked a Bible’s spine.”
Silently she made a vow to pray for Kenton—Doctor Landon’s—soul.
They turned down a tree-lined dirt path. It was colder here, much colder, and Grace shuddered as a chill raced up her spine.
“Doctor Landon,” she called out, her voice suddenly timid, “where are we going?”
He answered with a tilt of his head, and she saw the picket shack, saw a bearded white man, shoeless and shirtless, smoking a corncob pipe, rise from a wooden keg he was sitting on and use his right foot to slide a clay jug behind the keg and out of view of his guests.
“How is your quest for higher learning coming at the college?” Landon asked, and then stopped to use thumb and forefinger to hook out the tobacco from his mouth.
He meant the Corona Female College up on the knoll now called College Hill. The Reverend L. B. Gaston had established the college four and a half years ago, getting city officials to donate ten acres and then having a domed, three-story brick building erected. Grace had spent two semesters there.
“I won’t begin my third session till next month.” Grace looked at the wretched man living in squalor. She’d never seen a white man living in such a miserable home.
“Learning anything?”
She snorted. “Arithmetic that I already know. Geography that I don’t give a whit about. History’s all right, I guess. But I’d rather be reading Lord Byron or William Gilmore Simms than going over all that English grammar stuff.”
“All right.” Landon took a step forward. “You’re about to get a real education, Grace Dehner.” He rarely called her by her full name. He stopped, turned, his face sober, serious. “You don’t have to do this, Grace. I had planned on leaving you at the depot, but … Well, never mind. You’re here. But you can run back to church, or home, or bury your nose in Lord Byron’s poetry.”
She shook her head, though at that moment she really wanted to be standing on Waldon Street, being yelled at and embarrassed by Miss Prudence Caxton.
“All right,” the doctor said. “Come with me. If you get sick, don’t be ashamed. If you cry, cry long and hard. If you want to run away, run away. This isn’t Byron or Dickens, Simms or Cooper, or Jesus of Nazareth. This is life, String Bean. And you shall learn why I say there is no God. And, why, sometimes there should never be any doctors.”
* * * * *
She stepped out of the stinking hovel and into the night, looking for stars but finding only tall pine trees and clouds. She felt herself trembling, but managed to block any tears. She wanted to breathe, deeply, hold it in forever, wanted to go home and take a scalding hot bath. Wanted to bundle her clothes, give them to her father, and plead with him to drop them in Dismal Swamp.
The stink of death would never leave her.
Behind her, she could hear the husband, now widower, and Dr. Landon step outside, talking in whispers. What to do next? Should there be a funeral for his wife? His two daughters? His infant son? Would the citizens of Corinth burn down his home, not that it was much of a home, to keep the sickness from spreading?
The man, now alone, wandered to the keg, reached down, found the jug. It was the best, the only thing Kenton Landon could prescribe.
She heard him come near her, felt his arm on her shoulder.
“They would have died no matter what. The baby was dead when we got here. They ….”
“I know.” But she didn’t.
“Medicine can be fragile. There is no known treatment for diphtheria.”
So that’s what had killed that poor man’s family. Diphtheria. She had heard of it, but had never seen it.
“What a great way to bring in this new year,” she said. Her bitterness surprised her. It also eased the rage boiling inside her.
The oldest daughter had been maybe Grace’s age, although Grace had never seen her, not at the subscription school, not at church, certainly not at the Corona Female College, not even along the railroad tracks or anywhere. Her eyes had seemed paralyzed, along with her throat. She had just lay there, unable to move, unable to breathe, until her heart had finally stopped beating. Her eyes had never closed, until Dr. Landon came over and shut them with his own shaking fingers.
“No treatment,” she began, hating how her voice quavered. “That tube …?”
He shrugged, released his hold. “I just thought …” He turned away. “An experiment. Had it worked, they would have written me up in all the medical journals.”
They had tried pushing a thin tube down the mother’s throat, Grace holding the woman’s face, trying to keep her mouth open, feeling the woman’s desperate fight, but she had no strength. And Dr. Landon hadn’t been able to get the tube through the obstructions. So she had died, gagging, choking, with Grace still holding her face.
Church bells rang out, signaling the new year, celebrating something. Not mourning the dead.
Grace wondered what time it was.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Dr. Landon said, “but I needed you.”
She looked at him, saw tears in his eyes. That surprised her. “No,” she said, her voice urgent. “No, I’m glad I came. I just had hoped …” She turned away.
“You’ve been coming to my office for two years now,” Dr. Landon said. “I told everyone … your father included … that you wanted to become my nurse, but I always said that in a joking manner. Yet deep down, String Bean, I knew. You can help people. You can be a nurse. You can become a doctor.”
She laughed. “A woman doctor!”
“Believe me …” He started to say something else, but excused himself, telling her not to leave, that he would walk her home, explain everything to her parents, assure them that she was never in harm’s way, that there was no cause for alarm, that diphtheria … that diphtheria … Shaking his head sadly, he joined the man on the porch, and waited for him to pass the jug.
* * * * *
Back on Tate Street, they could see the depot, illuminated by street lamps, and could make out a puffing black locomotive preparing to head northwest toward Memphis.
“Why did you bring me along?” It had struck her back at the shanty, while Dr. Kenton Land
on helped kill a jug of corn liquor with a grieving man who had just lost his entire family. “You knew there was nothing you could do for any of them.”
“I had to try.”
“That was not my question.” She stopped, turned, faced him.
“I will need your help, Grace.”
She blinked. “Help with what?”
His smile held no humor. “Remember when I told you that the parson at your brick church will pray that God spare Corinth from war?” She didn’t answer, didn’t blink, didn’t move, just waited. “It will be an unanswered prayer, and not because I say there is no God, and not because God, in His infinite wisdom, does not always answer those prayers of hopeful believers. War will come here, String Bean, and soon. Because of that.”
He pointed, and Grace turned.
Ahead of her, a powerful black American locomotive—a 4-4-0, she knew the type, had seen them often enough—began coughing and sputtering as it came to life, pulling its tender, several boxcars, and a caboose away from the depot.
Chapter Eleven
March 15–18, 1862
Houston, Texas
There was no drill duty, no fatigue duty that blustery morning of the fifteenth, no mock battle to be executed under Sergeant Rutherford’s and Captain Smith’s critical eyes, and no ball or party honoring the Second Texas Infantry scheduled that evening.
As they assembled, Colonel John Creed Moore looked grim, and it couldn’t have been that the men had performed horribly in Friday’s “sham” campaign the previous day. If anything, the Second Texas Infantry drilled better than any troop in the Confederate Army—at least those troops still in Texas. Moore had commended the captains that evening, and his praise had been passed down to the lieutenants and to the sergeants and finally to the real soldiers themselves. Even Sergeant Rutherford had not found anything to criticize.
“Men”—Colonel Moore stopped to clear his throat—“we have our orders.”
All whispering, all clanging of metal, and the restless footsteps of soldiers stopped. Every eye trained on Colonel Moore, who wet his lips and said: “On Tuesday, we will depart for Arkansas and report to General Van Dorn.”
And There I’ll Be a Soldier Page 9