The Root Cellar

by Janet Lunn

  “I don’t mind the work,” said Susan grimly, “but I can’t abide a cold Christian. That ain’t what the good Lord meant us to be.”

  That day was very like the one before. Each hospital they went to, someone knew of at least one more they might try. Many nurses were sympathetic, and many convalescent soldiers wanted them to stop and talk, but all of them, some gently, some rudely, told them they ought to look in the Arlington cemetery before they wasted any more time looking in hospitals.

  Worn out and discouraged, they slept that night in the front room of a little hospital in a building that had been a bank. Susan would not go back to Mrs. Fiske’s. In the morning she helped the nurses. Rose could not face dressing wounds. She went into the kitchen. “I’m very good at washing dishes,” she said.

  “How are you at carrying trays?” asked one bright-eyed girl, thrusting a tray of porridge and toast and coffee into Rose’s surprised hands. She carried the trays to the soldiers in their beds until the job was done, then started collecting them again.

  “You reminds me of a young soldier we had here a while back,” said a gray-haired man leaning back against his pillow, smiling wanly at Rose. “You walks with the same do-or-die attitude what he had—you and your sister there.” He inclined his head toward the next bed where Susan was dressing a bandage. “Come to think of it, he talked like her, not like you. He come here with a comrade and he nursed that boy as loving as a mother until the boy died and the poor feller was so struck by his dying he never went home. He never said much to no one. He just stayed on helping out and growing more and more miserable and thin, till it looked like he’d die too.”

  Susan looked up. “Where’s that feller now, mister?” she asked in a quiet, tense voice.

  “I dunno, miss. Seems t’me I heard tell he’d gone on to another hospital. There was a nurse here was powerful good to them boys and she left here. I believe he went with her.”

  “Where would that be?” Susan persisted.

  “I dunno, miss. Maybe Matron knows.”

  When she had finished her work, Susan went into the little front room that served as an office for the matron and asked her what she knew about the young soldier who had stayed to work and gone on to another hospital. Rose stood in the doorway, listening.

  “I did hear something about that,” said the matron. “It was before I came here. A young fellow, just a boy, so shattered by the death of his friend that he lost his memory or something.”

  “Where might he be now, ma’am?”

  “You think he might be the boy you’re looking for?”

  “Might be.”

  “I see. Well, girl, you might go over to Georgetown and try there. There are a couple of small hospitals there, and I think one of the nurses from here went to Georgetown.” The matron gave Susan directions and they left quickly. They said nothing to each other during the half-hour trip to Georgetown in the horse car, or walking the short distance to the hospital.

  At the hospital, they found a tired-looking elderly woman. In a low voice, Susan asked about Will and Steve and told her the story that had been told them that morning.

  “Just a minute,” the woman said, “wait here.” And she went off inside the hospital.

  When she came back moments later, she said, “I’m not sure. I’m not a regular nurse at this hospital. I’m here only because my niece came down with typhoid fever. I’ve just come this morning. I don’t have the names of any of the patients, and I can’t even ask as the men here are all in a very bad state. There’s only one other nurse here now and she’s sleeping. But there’s certainly no boy like the one you describe. I really can’t tell you any more than that.”

  Susan turned away from the door and said, staring straight in front of her, “I guess we got to go out to the graveyard.” Her face was expressionless.

  Mutely Rose nodded. She asked directions and within a few minutes they were on the road to Arlington.

  It was only a mile and a half across the Potomac River and up a long hill. They did not speak and they did not look at each other. They stopped for a moment at the foot of the hill. They could see the Arlington cemetery above them. A solitary figure was coming through the gate. They walked slowly, quietly, up the hill, watching him come toward them. As he drew level, they saw he was a soldier. Suddenly Susan stopped. She drew in her breath sharply.

  “Hello, Susan,” said the soldier.

  “Oh, Will,” said Susan, “you got so thin.”

  Richmond Is a

  Hard Road to Travel

  Susan and Will stood staring at each other stupidly. Will moved forward a step. “Steve’s dead,” he said.

  “I know.”

  The next moment Susan had her arms around Will and he was sobbing.

  Rose stood back watching, not knowing what else to do. She was bewildered by finding Will like this and by the strangeness of him. Although she had seen him the day he had gone off to war, her memory of him was as he had been that day they had spent together in the boat and the orchard, a day that now seemed like three years past, not only in Will and Susan’s lives but in hers. This Will was not only tall, over six feet, but his ruddy face had become pale as parchment and he was thin and he looked so old. An old man, and Susan had her arms around him and he was sobbing.

  After a time, Susan took Will by the hand as though he were a small child and led him to the bench by the cemetery gate where they sat down. He sat very still, holding tightly to Susan’s hand. He looked up.

  “Hello, Rose,” he said. “There you are.”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “What you said was true about where you come from.”

  “Yes.”

  “You ain’t got any older.”

  “No.”

  “I guess it don’t matter none.”

  Will turned back to Susan. “You was right,” he said. “You was right, it wasn’t no good.” He began talking in a low, tired voice. “I never once took sick, but Steve, he got shot up at Cold Harbor right soon after we joined up and then, when he took sick after Petersburg, he was weakened and he never got shut of the sickness.” Will paused and looked down at the ground. “He was a year younger than me.”

  “I know,” said Susan, “I know. You want to tell what happened, Will?”

  Quietly Rose went over and curled up under a tall yew tree that stood at a little distance from the bench where Will and Susan sat.

  Will began again in that same low, tired voice, almost as though he were reciting a story he had learned by heart and did not want to tell but felt he had to. “We joined up in Oswego and we was plenty scared, but we was pretty bucked up about it, too. ‘We’ll get to Richmond and show them Johnny Rebs who can leave this country and who can’t!’ That’s what Steve said. I remember him saying it as we marched down the street toward the recruiting office on West Bridge Street. They wasn’t too particular about how old we was as they was getting pretty desperate for men by that time. The sergeant at the desk was a big-shouldered feller, with bristly black hair and beard, the kind that looks like a logger no matter what he does, and he said we was fine fellers and how glad Uncle Sam was going to be to have us fighting for him. We was so proud and excited we was likely to bust. I said I knew the fife as I figured it couldn’t be so different from the flute, and Steve said he knew the drum. Steve, he always figured he could do anything he set his mind to—and most always he could, too. The sergeant said we was to join the 81st Infantry, and he give us money and train tickets and uniforms.

  “I remember the day was grand. You mind it was early May and the trees was in bud. The sky was blue as a bluebird’s wing that day and there weren’t no clouds at all. It was warm—awful warm for them uniforms—but we didn’t care. We put ’em on straight away and marched us down to the train station with the sweat pouring down inside, and Robert E. Lee himself couldn’t have made us take off them coats. You know, Steve was almost a foot shorter than me, but them quartermasters couldn’t really see no difference. T
he uniforms was the same size, a mite small for me and a good bit big for Steve. We didn’t even mind that, and when we got down to camp in Virginny we made trades with fellers that had our size.

  “We took the train from Oswego to Washington and then we went by boat to West Point in Virginny. It was pretty swell. People was always cheering us on and giving us grub and smiling and waving. We felt pretty near on top of the world. At West Point we was to get our training. They didn’t need no fifers, nor no drummers neither, so we was made just ordinary soldiers and, what’s more, we wasn’t there much more than a week before we was needed so bad in the regiment we was declared trained. Steve was wild to get started. As soon as we got to Virginny we found out that the 81st had been fighting at Proctor’s Creek and Drewry’s Bluff and that them places was only a few miles from Richmond.

  “ ‘They’ll get there before we ever even get going,’ he kept saying. Ever since he’d read that story about putting the first American flag up over Bennington Hill in the revolution in 1776, he’d dreamed of being a soldier and raising the flag for the country. And all the way down on the train he’d say, ‘We’re going to put that flag up over Richmond, Will. I know it! I know it! We’re going to put that Old Glory up over that city, and I’m going to be the boy that does it!’ And he was scared, really scared the army’d get there before he got to be in it. But they didn’t. They didn’t.”

  Will fell silent. His words hung in the still afternoon air like drops of water in a spider’s web, fragile. His voice was so quiet, they barely heard him when he began again.

  “It wasn’t more than three days before we was in battle at Cold Harbor. Cold Harbor was something I never even had nightmares about beforehand to give me any kind of an idea of what it could be like. Even the old veterans said it was the worst battle they’d ever seen—worse than Manassas, worse than Chancellorsville, some said. It was hot as a bake oven and the dust stuck to your sweat like plaster, and it was so thick you couldn’t see who was friend and who was foe.

  “And the Rebs was waiting for us on the field, all dug in their trenches nice and cozy, and they shot us down as we moved in like we’d been a flock of pigeons. On the first day our regimental colors was taken. Captain Ballard and Captain Martin was killed and I think it was five other captains wounded from our regiment. Some said more than half the men and boys who started out that morning was left dead or dying on the field that night—not just from our regiment but from the whole Eighteenth Corps. There was a fifer not more than nine years old lying dead near us.

  “And it went on for twelve days. Twelve days! And in the nights, when we was frantically digging us trenches with anything we could get to hand, them mortars was flying over with their fuses like angry little red shooting stars through the blackness, and us never knowing where they was going to land. And the sound of battle never once let up—like some devil’s music, the screaming bits of shell, the bullets and bars, the bugles blaring, the drums pounding, the horses and the men screaming.

  “And the men dying. When they die, you know how they die? They jump. They shout. They cry. And they fall. You go into a rage and you want to get them devils who’s shooting at you. That’s all you think about. Then the battle’s over for the day. The smoke and the dust starts to settle. The vultures—them big ugly turkey vultures—starts to wheel and circle around in the sky, looking for their dinners, and the smell of the dead is something awful. You look around and the rage is gone out of you and you don’t hardly know yourself or your comrades neither.

  “There’s dead and wounded men lying all over the field, moaning and groaning, and those of us who wasn’t hurt was trying to get them back to safety, and sometimes we could and sometimes them Secesh devils kept shooting and never once letting us near.

  “Twelve days it was like that in them swamps and fields and briar patches. It was on towards the end Steve got shot. He was some fighter. I don’t think he figured he could die. While the rest of us spent as much time crouching down in the trench like a bunch of scared groundhogs, Steve’d just put his head and his arms up and let fly with rounds of shot. We stayed together all the time so I was right beside him when it come, and he was so mad he was set to run right up out of the trench and get that black-hearted rebel who done it. I never stopped to think it through. I just hauled off and socked him in the jaw and put him out cold. I expect he would have got killed right there if I hadn’t, and many’s the time since I wished I’d have let him. But I guess what was at the back of my mind was that I wasn’t going to go through the whole thing without him.

  “He got shot in the arm right up close to the shoulder. Nobody thought too much about it, excepting to dress it, on account of there was so many so much worse off. Captain Raulston said he was a fine lad, and at the end of them twelve days in hell we was marched off to Petersburg, just south of Richmond. There was so few of us left after Cold Harbor—not a third of the regiment—there was only enough to make four companies. We hadn’t the time to mourn, we was needed so bad, and three days later we was at Petersburg where the Secesh had their supplies defended.

  “That General Grant he figured if we could cross the Chickahominy River and get to Petersburg We could knock down those defenses and starve out the Rebs. Then we’d be in Richmond in no time. He just kept us going and going and going. We had a battle. We lost it. So Grant settled us all down in the trenches to see if we could starve them out. But we couldn’t, and after a few weeks of that we was back in the Bermuda Hundred where the regiment had started from. I figure it was about that time Steve took the fever, but he never let on—not even to me.”

  Will stopped again. Susan said nothing but, even from where she sat under the yew tree, Rose could feel the comfort of Susan, patient and loving.

  And there was comfort in the quiet afternoon, in the dappled shade of tall oak trees and the thicker shade of yew and cedar. Up beyond the gate, beyond the graveyard, was a white pillared mansion. It looked old and settled, almost as though it might have stood there forever. Down below the hill, the Potomac River flowed gently toward the sea, and beyond it was the golden dome of the Capitol building. It would be night before Will had finished his story.

  “And after a while”—Will picked up his tale—“it was as though there hadn’t never been nothing but dust and filth, and bad sowbelly and beans and mush—and dying men. Steve took to it right off. He figured it was a good life, even after he had the wound. I could never see how come he did, but I guess Steve was like that. Even when we was little he was always wanting to walk on the edge of cliffs or climb to the top of trees, or run into fields just to scare the bulls. Not me. I used to admire him an awful lot for being brave, but I thought some of them things was foolish. All the same, when Steve was around doing those crazy things, everything seemed exciting, and when he talked about going to war, I felt the excitement, too. I was so full of glory and hallelujah I had to go. But I never took to it like he did. All I could think was, we had to win. I figured we had to save the country, but many’s the long night I lay awake and just prayed for it to be over. And I never took sick and I never once got wounded—just tired of marching.

  “Of course it wasn’t all horrible. In the evenings we’d play crib and euchre. Somebody’d made a fiddle out of a cigar box and another feller had a mouth organ and we’d sing. Sometimes we’d go on foraging parties and swipe chickens—things we’d never dream of doing at home—only of course there wasn’t much left to swipe in Virginny, mostly just berries to pick along the way where they wasn’t burned out.

  “We never got out of our dirty clothes from one month to the next, and after a time we was crawling with lice.

  “It felt like we’d been marching back and forth from one hot, dusty, burned-out spot in Virginny to another forever before I found out about Steve’s sickness. We was sitting by the roadside finishing off a ration of hardtack and camp coffee, and it was hotter than the flames of hell and the only breeze for miles around came from Tim Arepy whistling ‘Rock of Ages
’ through his teeth. I remember Billy Nasset sitting down the way a piece, polishing off his coffee, getting up, stretching and belching, and saying in his big loud voice, ‘Well, so much for the steak and potatoes. Where’s the cake and ice cream?’ and I looked over to Steve to say something and there he was, the color of putty and shaking like a balm of Gilead tree in a high wind. And I realized, all of a sudden, that he’d been sick for quite a while. You know how it is sometimes when you find something out and you know you’ve really known about it for a long time? I stared, and before I could say anything he turned his head and saw me looking at him, and he knew I knew he was sick.

  “ ‘You ain’t to tell, Will,’ he said. ‘I ain’t going to no hospital. I’m going to Richmond and put up that flag.’ And he looked at me in that kind of way he had that had always got to me and always made me do things for him or with him I hadn’t thought right or proper, or hadn’t much wanted to do. So, being the kind of coward I am, I promised. And we went on. Sometimes Steve was bad and sometimes he seemed okay, but as the summer went on he leaned on me more and more while we marched and many’s the time we argued about taking him to hospital, but he always won. ‘You promised, Will,’ he’d say, and I’d just have to give in. I’d have to go along, though now I don’t know why. He wanted it so fierce. And when we was sent up to New York in November, to help keep the peace in case there was riots during the election, he was scared out of his mind that he wouldn’t make it back in time to get to Richmond when she fell. And all that winter he got sicker and sicker—much sicker than I knew because he kept himself going, God knows how. He’d just made up his mind he wasn’t going to be too sick to fight, and somehow he stayed on his feet—most of the time anyways. But all the same he was changing. The fire in him was gone. He didn’t talk much or make jokes anymore, and in some ways he was like a little child. He’d say, ‘Don’t go on without me, Will,’ or ‘You won’t leave me, Will? Don’t go—stay here—wait for me—where are you going?’ It was like he was using my energy to keep him going, and he was afraid to let me out of his sight. And I began to wish to God I could be shut of him for five minutes—just five minutes.