“No,” she said. “I plan to look for a rooming house or, failing that, seek lodging in a modest hotel. Perhaps you could recommend a respectable place—not too expensive?”
Bessie shook her head. “Have you no people at all, here in Washington City?” she persisted.
“Only my Jacob,” Caroline replied.
“There probably isn’t an empty room to be had in the whole city,” Bessie continued. “Not one you’d want to stay in, anyhow. No, it won’t do, your wandering around at night all by yourself.”
“Oh,” Caroline said, deflated. In her hurry to get to the capital and find Jacob, it hadn’t occurred to her that there might be no lodgings available when she arrived. After all, the city was so large.
In the next moment, however, she thought of a possible solution. “I’ll just walk back to the train depot, and pass the night there,” she said. The depot, modest as it was, had walls and a roof. Surely people came and went, and not all of them could be hoodlums and scoundrels. She’d sit up through the night, remain vigilant. She still had a heel of bread, some cheese and an apple tucked away in her travel case, so she wouldn’t go hungry.
“Nonsense,” Bessie said right away. “Come and stay the night with me and the other nurses. We have a tent, and while it sure isn’t much, you’ll have a cot to sleep on and people around you.”
Caroline, feeling thoroughly grateful, thanked Bessie again.
“You look all done in,” Bessie said, clearly gratified that the matter had been decided, and to her satisfaction. “There’ll be folks along to relieve me and the others in a little while, and then we’ll go on and get you settled. Meantime, come sit inside for a bit, and I’ll rustle up some of that mush the men had for supper.”
Too tired to argue, Caroline followed Bessie along the wide aisle between still more cots, where men snored or murmured or cursed, quietly or otherwise, to a smaller tent set apart by several blankets suspended from poles, forming a partition. Here were a few chairs, a small stove and two cots covered in crumpled blankets.
Caroline dropped her bag, sat and immediately regretted it, not at all sure she’d have the strength to stand up again.
“I’ll fetch that mush,” Bessie told her. “You just rest.”
“Please don’t trouble yourself, Bessie. I have food. Cheese and bread and an apple. I’d be happy to share it with you.”
Bessie paused. “I’m obliged for the offer,” she said, almost whispering, “but I eat the same as these men do. Wouldn’t seem right to do otherwise.”
Caroline felt a touch of shame. Her humble meal, packed in the kitchen house at home before dawn that morning, would seem like a banquet to men subsisting on cornmeal mush, hard tack, thin soup and boiled beans. She knew from Jacob’s letters that such foods were standard army fare, in camp as well as in hospitals.
Her chagrin must have shown in her face, because Bessie smiled and wagged a finger at her. “You go right on ahead and enjoy your meal,” she ordered good-naturedly. “No reason you ought to feel bad about it.” A pause. “Just don’t go letting any of these poor fellas know what you’ve had, that’s all. Hard on their spirits.”
With that, she was gone, off to answer a chorus of calls from beyond the cloth partition.
Caroline sat for a while, then ate part of the cheese and all of the bread, but every bite tasted not of home, but of unwarranted privilege.
* * *
Caroline spent the next morning waiting to hear from Bessie and helping out in whatever small way she could—folding bandages, addressing envelopes to soldiers’ families, whatever any of the staff asked her to do. As she worked, she spent time in conversation with another young woman who told her that “a famous writer” known for his kindness and commitment to the soldiers was working as a wound dresser at some of the hospitals. When she heard the name, Caroline immediately recognized it—her grandfather had at least one of Walt Whitman’s books in his library, a volume of poetry, she recalled. That brief memory of Doc Prescott brought her both comfort and sadness.
Later, in the moist, weighted heat of midafternoon, she stood at the foot of Jacob’s cot, grateful and stricken, wondering if she would have recognized him at all if she hadn’t eventually been escorted to this particular spot by a Union officer Bessie knew. Rogan McBride, an acting quartermaster, had searched various records, asked a great many questions, and finally encountered an ambulance worker who remembered picking up a man from the Eleventh during the battle at Chancellorsville. The boy recalled Jacob for two reasons: the soldier had appeared to be dead at first, and scared him and his partner half out of their hides when he moaned, and because of the letters tucked inside his coat, addressed to a corporal named Hammer or Harmon or Hamilton, or some such. If he recollected rightly, they’d taken the fellow to tent sixty-eight.
Now, with Captain McBride as her escort, Caroline regarded her husband.
She might well have passed Jacob by, he looked so very different, with his gaunt face; wild, matted hair; and shaggy beard, and his blank eyes that did not seem to see. There were shadows beneath them, purple as new bruises, and his skin glistened with perspiration. His skull bone protruded, and his chest, bound in grimy bandages, was sunken. It was as though he lacked substance, lacked life.
She thanked Captain McBride without meeting his gaze; he nodded and said he’d come back if and when he could. Soon a patient in uniform slipped into the tent, his left arm supported by a sling.
“We can’t give him much water,” he said. “Food, neither. He can’t swallow much.”
Caroline stared down into her husband’s face, once handsome and browned by a lifetime of working under summer suns, now gray and so thin.
Jacob had just turned twenty-four on his last birthday, far from home, in a lull between skirmishes and battles, his life barely begun.
“You can sit with him a while if you like,” the soldier said. “He might hear you. Hard to tell, but—”
Caroline stood frozen.
For a moment, she imagined hearing herself say, “No, I never found him,” to all the people awaiting her return.
“But his eyes are open—” she whispered. But only their color, sky blue, was the same. They used to be expressive, full of mischief; now they might as well have been made of glass.
“Been that way since he got here,” the soldier responded sympathetically. “He never closes them. And—” There followed a moment of hesitation that raised Caroline’s apprehension a notch or two. “Well, he cannot speak. Caught himself a neck full of shrapnel, and then there’s his ribcage—”
Caroline put up a single hand, a bid for silence.
All around them, men were calling out desperately for water, or morphine or ether or death itself. The soldier cleared his throat once more, then went on his way, as the captain had done.
Caroline knelt between Jacob’s cot and the one next to it, where a man slept, tossing and turning in the grip of some nightmare, destined to awaken to another, very possibly worse. Beneath the dingy sheet, his form was clearly defined, an abbreviated shape, one leg ending at the knee, the other at midthigh.
Caroline did not want to learn the poor man’s name, or what had happened to him, or who, if anyone, was waiting for him at home. She couldn’t bear to know.
She yearned to shut everything out, except for Jacob, until there were only the two of them, alone in the midst of a gray, shifting void. She took her husband’s left hand in both of her own and whispered his name.
She saw a tear form in his eye, and knew then that he recognized her presence. She felt her heart shatter. She leaned over and gently kissed his cheek, then his paper-thin lips. His neck and chest were bandaged.
“It’s Caroline, my love,” she said, when she could trust herself to form the words. “I’m right here, and I will stay with you always.”
She thought she saw Jacob’s lips quiver, bu
t he made no sound.
Another tear trickled down his face.
Jacob still made no sound, but Caroline knew what he was trying to tell her. He had held on somehow, through all his suffering, waiting for her.
Now, finally, she was here. He could begin the process of letting go.
Caroline’s throat constricted, and it was a long while before she found her voice again. When she did, she spoke softly to Jacob, telling him how their Rachel was thriving, how she could recite the alphabet and count to fifty, how she adored her papa and always would. Caroline would see to that, see that he was never forgotten.
She told him she loved him, and that she knew he loved her in return.
She told him that Geneva, her grandmother, sent her love and Enoch sent his best wishes. Then she filled him in on the state of the crops. Finally she recited the comforting words of his favorite Psalm, the twenty-third, her eyes scalding as she finished with “‘And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’”
After that, she simply held his hand, stroked his forehead and smoothed his hair. She did not attempt to wipe away his tears, for they were his own, somehow sacred, and he had a right to shed them as he would.
For hours, it seemed she didn’t move, disregarding the ache in her knees, paying no mind to the other complaints her body raised.
She could tell by the tempo of Jacob’s breathing when he slept, then felt his awakening in her own flesh, a soft, jolting sensation of alertness.
Eventually, a doctor stopped by, although Caroline was only peripherally aware of him, willing him to withdraw from a space meant just for her and her husband. She was guarding that space and wanted to hold on to it without intrusion.
The doctor’s words seemed muffled, as though spoken from a great distance.
Jacob’s wounds were critical, the doctor told her, but no particular one had been severe enough to cause death. However, her husband could not take proper nourishment because of the injuries to his neck and throat; water and broth had to be administered drop by drop, since even a spoonful caused him to choke. He was slowly succumbing, as he could no longer stay properly hydrated.
Caroline did not look at the doctor, nor did she speak. She simply waited for him to leave.
Still, he continued. It would not be long now, he explained. “The patient’s trials—” did he even know Jacob’s name? “—would soon be over.”
She wanted to scream, “Jacob! His name is Jacob!”
But she didn’t.
Then came the questions. Did she plan to claim her husband’s body personally? Or would she prefer that it be shipped home for burial?
“It.”
“The body.”
As though Jacob had become something other than a person. How was he sure Jacob could no longer hear?
Was she aware that she was entitled to a death benefit? Had she brought burial clothes, or did she prefer that “the remains,” be laid to rest in uniform?
Dear God, the man was offensive. Surely, it was premature to make such decisions. Indecent, even.
If it hadn’t meant letting go of Jacob’s hand, Caroline would have clamped her own hands over her ears, shutting out the torrent of words.
When the doctor finally left, she continued her vigil in silence. She didn’t think about tomorrow, about the answers to the doctor’s inquiries, the preparations, the trip home; none of those things seemed important. Instead, she thought of Jacob, only Jacob.
She knelt beside him and held his hand, quietly bearing witness to their love, having said all she needed to say. The war had changed him. How could it not, after Antietam and all the battles preceding it? After Chancellorsville?
She’d been seventeen when they married. She’d been completely innocent, despite stolen glimpses at some of the etchings in some of Grandfather’s medical books and a head full of storybook fancies.
Jacob had always been tender with her. Didn’t they deserve more time together?
Her Jacob was dying. Everything else was insignificant in the light of that reality.
It was almost midnight, when Jacob gave an almost imperceptible shudder, and then rallied briefly in a way that seemed miraculous, given the hours of silence.
“Caroline,” Jacob said, in a painful croak.
Startled, she gasped, cupping his face in her hands, turning his head ever so slightly toward her, gazing into the depths of his eyes.
She saw helplessness there, and a plea. “Jacob?” she whispered, afraid he hadn’t spoken at all, that she’d imagined the sound of his voice, had somehow conjured up the illusion out of her own longing and despair.
“Come—closer. So weak...”
Eyes stinging, Caroline leaned her head down, her right ear so close to Jacob’s mouth that she felt his flagging breath against her hair and her cheek.
Jacob’s next words were so labored that it hurt to hear them. “They’re—coming. The Rebels. Take Rachel—get away...” He paused then, paused so long that Caroline lifted her head again to search his eyes.
Had he meant they were coming to Gettysburg, to Adams County, and wanted her to leave the farm, strike out for some safer place? That was the one promise she couldn’t make; Gettysburg was the only home she’d ever known, and the land Jacob’s ancestors had settled was their daughter’s only legacy.
But neither could she lie.
Caroline bit her lower lip and said nothing. One of her own tears dropped into Jacob’s scruffy beard and glittered there.
She watched, heartbroken, as her young husband, once so strong and vibrant, carried out his last struggle. Still holding his face between her palms, she waited.
Finally, Jacob summoned enough of his rapidly waning life to speak again. “I—have...loved you—dearly...”
Caroline nodded, weeping in earnest now. “I know that, Husband,” she said. “And I have loved you as well.” As soon as the words were out, she dropped her forehead to his, unable to bear the probing intensity of his regard.
She felt so raw, so broken, as though her flesh had been stripped away, baring every nerve, every private emotion, every secret—even those she kept from herself.
Yes, she thought fiercely, she had loved Jacob. She had loved him.
His breath moved softly in her hair, like a caress. A low, strangled sound escaped him, though whether it was a laugh or a sob, she could not tell.
“You are—so...beautiful,” Jacob said.
She sobbed, clinging to him. “Oh, Jacob, I—”
“Hush, now,” he ground out. “Be strong. Promise—me—”
Caroline raised her head, her face wet, and nodded vigorously. “I promise,” she said, but even as she spoke, she saw that Jacob was gone, leaving only absolute stillness behind, like a silent echo.
She dried her tears with the back of one hand. Jacob had always valued dignity, and she would not dishonor him by creating a spectacle in the presence of strangers.
She remained at Jacob’s bedside for a long time, and presently someone came for her, murmuring condolences that could not begin to salve her sorrow. Caroline’s fingers had to be pried loose from Jacob’s hand, though it was gently done, and she was lifted to her feet, supported until she could stand on her own.
She looked back at her husband, saw that someone was covering his face. She knew he would be carried away soon.
And another soldier, sick or wounded or both, would lie in Jacob’s place.
Bessie had been summoned, roused from her weary sleep, for she appeared at Caroline’s side in her nightgown and a tattered wrapper, her gray hair twisted into a plait and dangling over her shoulder. The effect was oddly girlish.
“Come, now,” she whispered, wrapping an arm around Caroline’s waist. “You’ll see your man in the morning, you have my word. Make your decisions then, child. Not tonight.”
Caroline a
llowed Bessie to lead her away, as though she were a blind person, wandering a maze.
* * *
Only now two days later, in the baggage car, with its slatted sides letting in speckled slices of sunlight, seated on Jacob’s pinewood coffin, over which she’d spread her cloak, did Caroline let herself remember the details of what came next. After entering the shadowy confines of the nurses’ tent, once Jacob had been carried off, she recalled a cup being placed in her hands and hearing Bessie’s quiet urging to drink its contents. She had obeyed mutely. Her shoes were loosened, button after button, and then removed. The drink was syrupy, sweet but slightly bitter, too.
Laudanum, she’d thought.
She had handed back the cup, empty, stretched out on her narrow cot still fully clothed, and given herself up to darkness.
Remembering, Caroline gripped the edges of Jacob’s coffin now to steady herself as the train lurched into motion, whistle shrieking a shrill farewell to Washington City, with its living and its many, many dead.
Yesterday, with so much to do, she’d had no time to think beyond immediate requirements. She had refused the modest breakfast Bessie had brought, unable to imagine a time she’d ever be hungry again. She dressed and performed what ablutions she could.
She had feared Jacob would be lost to her, necessitating another exhaustive search, but that wasn’t the case. With unusual efficiency, the army had set aside a ramshackle building as a morgue, and he was there.
Caroline had seen Jacob’s body, examined every wound. Given a basin of tepid water, a cloth and a scrap of soap after much insistence on her part, she bathed her husband and did what she could with his unkempt hair. At home, she would have washed those light brown locks clean, trimmed away the excess with her sewing shears. She would have shaved off his beard, for Jacob had never worn one, and then asked Enoch to dress him in his Sunday suit.
Alas, she hadn’t been at home, but in the capital, on the outskirts of hell itself.
She’d agreed to have Jacob embalmed, considering the journey back to Gettysburg, the viewing and the funeral.
The Yankee Widow Page 4