The Lincoln Letter

by William Martin

  Then Sherman took Atlanta. And Union soldiers took absentee ballots. And as one of them said to Halsey, “Fightin’ men don’t generally fight to put down treason, then vote to let it live.” And Lincoln took the election.

  Now, with the war almost won, the finished white dome appeared to Halsey as a new and spotless symbol of a nation whose sin had been … expiated.

  “I like looking at it,” said Walt. “It comforts me somehow.”

  Halsey shivered, and Walt wheeled him back, saying they had done enough for one day. Halsey was glad to slip between the sheets and pull the blanket up.

  The Moaner moaned beside them. The doctor droned in the distance. The Frowner simply frowned. The day went on as all of them had in Ward A.

  Walt pulled up a chair, reached into the sack of goodies he always carried, and took out a tin of biscuits and a jar of raspberry preserves. He spread preserves on a biscuit and gave it to Halsey. “A man needs a little reward after such strenuous work.”

  Halsey relished flavor, texture, crunch. He thought of his boyhood, when such sweet pleasures were as central to life as exploring the banks of the Charles or the beach at Nahant. And in the strange way that the senses made connections in a man’s mind, he was twelve again, feeling the warm sun and the sand between his toes.

  And out of nowhere, Walt said, “I’ve seen her.”

  “Who?”

  “Your lady friend.”

  “Lady friend?”

  Walt reached under the bed and brought out Halsey’s rucksack.

  It contained the kepi that he had been wearing when he was hit, a toothbrush, a pocketknife that he had taken off a dead Confederate, some writing paper, a copy of A Tale of Two Cities, and a tattered carte de visite he had carried through the whole war.

  “When you were raving,” Walt explained, “I went through your gear, looking for clues to the identity of a young man with the two accents.”

  Halsey’s heart was beating so hard, he feared that it might pound the clots right out. He said, “I had many things in that rucksack. Was there a pistol? When they put me on the steamer, I was carrying an Adams pocket revolver and forty Yankee greenbacks that I’d saved from my pay.”

  “The gun and money were gone. Someone must have lifted them between Petersburg and here. Thievery is a common human failing. But”—Walt held up the carte de visite—“when I saw this, I said, ‘I know her from somewhere.’ Yesterday, I saw her. She runs a ward at Harewood Hospital. Her name is— Do I need to tell you her name?”

  Halsey could not speak. His voice has grown stronger over time, but he still found, in moments of tension or duress, that his damaged throat constricted and the words would not come out.

  He had written to her almost every month. He had thought of her almost every day. He had prayed almost every night that she would read his words of apology and explanation, of the lost presidential daybook, and of his quest through the war’s horror for expiation. And if she had not read them, at least the writing of them had helped him to live through two and a half years of hell.

  “You must have very strong feelings for her, that you’d carry this for so long.”

  Halsey did not know what he felt. He looked down at the blanket. He looked across at the Frowner. He looked into the eyes of Walt Whitman. “She’s a nurse?”

  “For as long as I’ve been here. I came in December of ’62, after Fredericksburg.”

  “She started at the Union Hotel Hospital. That’s where I asked to go, but … is she … is she married?”

  “To hundreds of suffering young men. Would you like to see her?”

  Halsey shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Not ever?” asked Walt.

  “When I’m stronger.”

  * * *

  But strength returned slowly. Sleep took most of his time.

  On the first Sunday of March, he awoke from an afternoon nap to see Walt sitting there with a journal on his lap.

  “What are you doing?” Halsey asked.

  “I’m a writer, you know,” said Walt with a little grin.

  “Of poems, yes. The modern man you sing.”

  “Very good. You remember what I read to you. And writers keep diaries. I’ve even written a bit about you and your two accents. At the moment, I’m writing down my thoughts on yesterday. It was Inauguration Day.”

  “Did you go?”

  “No, but”—Walt read—“‘I saw the president return, at three o’clock, after the performance was over. He was in his plain two-horse barouche and looked very much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate questions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; yet I saw all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness, and canny shrewdness, underneath the furrows.’”

  “I remember the furrows,” said Halsey, “from the first time I met him.”

  “Met him?”

  Halsey had come to trust Walt enough that he often dropped out of character. But he quickly raised the Irish curtain again: “Or should I say, seen him, when he come to Bolivar Heights, after Antietam.”

  Walt lowered his voice. “I told you, son, your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Then read a bit more if ye would, sir.”

  Walt returned to the notebook. “‘I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attached to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and a native Western—almost rude—form of manliness. By his side in the barouche sat his little boy. There were no soldiers, only civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarves over their shoulders, riding around the carriage, much unlike the Inauguration four years ago, when he rode down and back, surrounded by a dense mass of cavalrymen, sabers shouldered, while sharpshooters were stationed at every corner.’”

  “He must feel safer now,” said Halsey.

  “He knows the war is nearly over.” Walt picked up the newspaper he had brought. “Just hear what he said: ‘With malice toward none, with charity for all.’ Those are words to bind a nation’s wounds just as we have tried here to bind yours.”

  “We’re lucky to have him,” said Halsey.

  “I wanted to tell him that very thing, so I went to the public levee last night. You never saw such a jam in front of the White House—all the grounds filled, all the way out to the sidewalks.” He read, “‘I was in the rush inside with the crowd. We surged along the passage-ways, the Blue and other rooms, and through the great East Room, upholstered like a stage parlor. Crowds of country people, some very funny. Fine music from the Marine Band, off in a side place. And Mr. Lincoln, dressed all in black, with white kid gloves and claw-hammer coat, as in duty bound, receiving, shaking hands, looking very disconsolate, as if he would give anything to be somewhere else.’”

  “Did you shake his hand?”

  “I never got close enough. But I left knowing that there are bright days ahead for this nation, thanks to him. Democracy will survive. We will do what he asked in his inaugural. We will bind up the nation’s wounds. We will go forward. And you, my friend, will walk.” Walt threw the blanket off Halsey’s legs. “Starting now.”

  Halsey stood in his nightshirt and Sanitary Commission flannel robe. He felt his legs wobble, but only a bit.

  Walt knelt in front of him and slid leather slippers onto his feet. Then he offered an arm, but only an arm.

  And Halsey took his first step. He went with his right foot, his good side. Then he put weight on his wounded side and felt little pain. So he took another step, then another.

  The Frowner frowned, perhaps envying a man who had legs to walk again.

  But soon, Halsey had reached the back door. He looked up at the Capitol for a few moments, then looked behind him for a wheelchair.

  “The chair is occupied.” Walt smiled, as if he had played a little joke. “You’ll need to get back on your own two feet.”

  Halsey glanced toward his bed. It looked as unassailable as the Confederate works at Cold Harbor. But Wal
t urged him on. So Halsey wiped the sweat from his forehead and turned. He felt something pull in his side. He hoped it was nothing serious.

  A lady nurse at the far end of the ward grabbed a wheelchair and came rolling.

  Walt held up a hand. “It’s time for the man to walk.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” said Walt with surprising firmness.

  The woman stopped and glared. There were some lady nurses who could not abide the poet-turned-caregiver. Halsey had heard one of them gossip about “that odious Walt Whitman, here to talk evil and unbelief to my boys.” Others complained, in cold tones, that he took some men home to continue his care in a more personal way.

  This one said, “The corporal’s going to fall.”

  “If he falls, I’ll catch him,” said Walt.

  All that Halsey knew was that Walt had eased pain and offered kindness in a world where there was too much of one and not enough of the other. And Halsey did not want to disappoint his friend. So he took another step, then another, then he stopped and wobbled, but Walt urged him on until he reached his bed, exhausted and drenched in sweat.

  “Walk the length the building,” said Walt, “and you’ll get a reward.”

  * * *

  A week later, Halsey did, and Walt reminded him of the reward.

  Sometime around midnight it arrived: a kiss on the forehead to awaken him.

  At first, he thought it was Walt, who had visited late on other nights, too.

  Then he smelled jasmine perfume and sweet perspiration. And in the instant before his brain made the connection between the aroma and the woman, she kissed him on the lips. She had come to him.

  When the ward was wrapped in sleep, Samantha found him and kissed him and held her face against his smooth cheek. He was glad now that he had been shaved. He could remember no feeling more exquisite than her soft skin against a face that had known snow, rain, mud, hard-ground pillows, musket-butt blows, and now …

  When he tried to speak, she simply said, “Shhhh.”

  The ward was dark, but for lanterns at either end and a glow from the woodstoves. Someone coughed. The Moaner moaned. The Frowner seemed to be frowning in his sleep.

  “Just lie still,” she whispered.

  So he did. And he took a deep breath and filled his lungs with the life-affirming scent of her and felt the rest of his body fill with life as well.

  She whispered, “I prayed I would see you again.”

  “Do you like what you see?”

  She looked him up and down and her eyes fell on the wool tent rising from the covers. “I like that you are recovering … rather well, apparently.”

  He slid a hand along her side.

  She twisted away with the deftness of a woman who had learned many skills in ministering to men reaching out for comfort. Then she stroked his face with the back of her hand. “I like that you shaved your beard, too.”

  “I like that you’re here, unless I’m dreaming.”

  “You’re not dreaming,” she whispered. “This is real.”

  And he was awake enough that he felt the fear that had filled him whenever he wrote to her. “Did you read my letters?”

  “Every one, more than once.”

  “Then you know my story.”

  “All that you’ve told me … about the diary, the death of Constance, the shootings.”

  “And I told you I loved you, too.”

  “Did you really kill those men on the bridge to protect me?”

  “They were murderers. They followed Constance and killed her. They were following you, so they might have killed you, too.”

  She thanked him with another kiss.

  And he said, “Do you love me?” He no longer had time for subtlety.

  “I’ve waited for you,” she answered. “I’ve nursed and mothered and sistered a thousand men, and I am plain worn out from it, but I’ve waited for you.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “That’s a promise to think about it.” She urged him to get well before he worried himself about his fate as an accused murderer… or about their fate together.

  Just then, Dr. Porter came through the ward, stopped, looked at the shadow of the woman seated on the edge of Corporal Murphy’s bed.

  Samantha stood and said, “So, Corporal Murphy, I thank you for a report on my brother in the Twentieth.”

  Dr. Porter said, “Nurse, you know that consorting with the patients is more than frowned upon. It’s a firing offense. Return to your ward.”

  But Samantha Simpson was not the wide-eyed girl who first saw Washington on a gloom-ridden Fourth of July. She held her voice to a hard whisper and told the doctor, “I am nurse-superintendent of Ward M at Harewood Hospital. I am visiting a family friend. If you don’t like it, Doctor, I’ll ask permission of the Surgeon General, whose son was nursed back to health in my ward. I’m sure he can accommodate any wish you have to visit Petersburg in the spring. I hear that the fighting is very lovely this time of year.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned back to Halsey. “I’ll visit when I can. Count on me next Tuesday. I take Tuesday as my day of rest. I have fond memories of Tuesdays.” Then she stalked out.

  Halsey said, “Don’t walk back alone.”

  The surgeon looked at Halsey and said, “Not all women are made for wives, Corporal, so don’t let the opium cloud your brain.”

  “You forget, Doctor, you’ve weaned me off of the opium.”

  * * *

  Nights had been the hardest time for Halsey. The fevers had been hotter at night, the pains sharper. So most nights, he had spent time awake, suffering, wondering, praying, listening to the clank of the steam engines that crossed the city incessantly, ignoring the snores and coughs, the sleep farts and death rattles around him.

  And now something else bothered his sleep: hope … that Samantha would come in the night and announce herself with a kiss.

  That first night, he awoke around midnight and waited. And though she did not appear, anticipation of her kiss and sweet scent caused another response beneath his blanket.

  After half an hour of waiting and hoping, he thought about turning his hand to the insistent business. Soldiers joked about it, but none frowned on a man for surrendering to his need in the night. Halsey was sure that somewhere in the ward, some soldier was taking care of himself right then, his mind’s eye focused on an image of his sweetheart or some stage beauty, society’s promise of disease or blindness notwithstanding.

  But Halsey would not want Samantha to find him like that.

  So he turned his mind to other things … things so vexing that a man would lose any urge. Across two and a half years of war, these things had not bothered him. Survival had been his only worry, expiation his only goal. But he knew that he could not live as an Irish veteran forever, any more than he could live as a hole man on a night soil crew.

  How could he ever clear his name? How could he ever be Halsey Hutchinson again?

  Some time around two, he heard the Frowner crying, softly but bitterly. It was the first time that Halsey had heard a sound from him.

  An hour later, as he drifted, Halsey heard a familiar sound outside. He realized he had heard it before, during his fevers. It was the sound of whispered orders, scraping shovels, dumping buckets, and the snorts of a pair of horses.

  A night soil wagon had rolled up to the two four-holed privies behind the barracks, and men were working, quickly and quietly.

  Halsey listened and wondered if the Freedom brothers were out there.

  * * *

  The next night, the Moaner died.

  He simply stopped moaning, and the sudden quiet woke Halsey.

  When the night nurse went by, he called to her.

  She was a coarse old woman from Camden, New Jersey, by the name of Mary Cannon. She checked the Moaner’s pulse, pulled the blanket over him, and whispered to Halsey, “At least he won’t be shittin’ through a hole in his belly no more.”

  Halsey agreed and asked,
“Do I hear the night soil wagon again tonight?”

  “Well, them privies out back fill up fast when five hundred men are doin’ their business, some with diarrhea so bad, they’re squirtin’ their own innards down the hole. So it’s a two-night job. Plus we got the indoor privies to clean, too.”

  Halsey asked, “Most night soil wagons are run by coloreds, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mrs. Cannon, “but them boys workin’ out there right now is as black as the holes they’re cleanin’.”

  So he told her he needed to make a visit.

  She said, “You sure you don’t want the chair pot? I don’t recollect you’ve set out on the four-holer yet. Don’t want you passin’ out on the stool and freezin’ to death.”

  “Tonight I feel a powerful need, and I’d rather take it outside, considerin’ the heavy portion of beans I et tonight.”

  She chuckled at that, wrapped a blanket about him, wheeled him out to a cleaned privy, and said she’d be back in a bit. “Just don’t fall in.”

  He spent a few minutes on the seat but had no real need. He was there to talk to the night soilers. So he wobbled to his feet, came outside, sat in the wheelchair.

  The stars glittered above him. The stink simmered below.

  The tub man went past and dumped a load into the wagon. Then he came back and said, “Mighty smelly out here, mister. You wants me to roll y’all back inside?”

  “I’d appreciate that.” And once they were rolling toward the door of Ward A, Halsey asked, “Do you boys know the Freedom brothers?”

  “Why you askin’?”

  Halsey understood that a colored man had to be naturally suspicious. So he said, “They did some fine work for me years ago. Always liked them. Jubilo … Zion…”

  That seemed explanation enough, so the man said, “We use their compostin’ yard sometimes. Mother Freedom’s right generous. But they ain’t brothers no more.”