“Why not?”
The man slowed the wheelchair. “Only one left.”
“Only one?” Halsey turned and looked up at the black face. Somewhere in the distance behind the Negro, gaslight glimmered in the windows of the Capitol.
“The brother named Zion. Jubilo and Hallelujah and their cousin Jim-Boy all joined up with the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth. First colored regiment. All but Jim-Boy died at Battery Wagner, or so we heard.”
And Halsey wept until dawn.
By breakfast, the Moaner’s bed was empty.
And the Frowner spoke for the first time. “His sufferin’ is over.”
Halsey said, “God’s mercy on him.” And the Frowner nodded. So Halsey asked his name. “George Smith.” From where? “Philadelphia.” Occupation? “Gardener.” Then George Smith turned his gaze to the middle distance. He had no more to say.
Healing came in different ways and different rhythms for every man, and sometimes sadness slowed it down.
* * *
On Tuesday afternoon, Samantha brought fresh air and the smell of spring. She told Halsey that they were going for a walk and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then she turned to the Frowner named George Smith and said, “Would you like to sit outside, too?”
George Smith frowned and said, “Why?”
“Because the sun is warm. It’ll do you good.”
George Smith said no and turned his head.
So she walked to the end of the ward, found a wheelchair, brought it back, and said to him, “I need weight in this, to give Corporal Murphy something to lean on. Your torso may be just the thing.”
George Smith looked at her, then at the chair, looked off again into the middle distance, as if remembering some horror or hope, then reached out.
Halsey watched Samantha put a hand under George Smith’s right arm and pivot him onto the chair. He admired the way she worked, performing an act of kindness yet making it seem a manly challenge.
“There now,” she said once Smith was seated. “You’ll make fine ballast.”
George Smith kept his frown firmly in place. But with Halsey holding one side of the chair and Samantha pushing from the other, they headed out into the sunshine. They went past the privies, the chapel, and the quarters of the lady nurses. Then they followed a path onto the Mall, to a row of benches.
The trees were making lime green buds. The forsythia glimmered yellow in the sun. A few flower beds, planted and tended by the nurses, were pushing up tulips and daffodils.
Samantha took out a newspaper and asked her patients if they’d like to read. She said, “You must be engaged in the world if you hope to have any future in it.”
George Smith frowned and turned toward the National Greenhouse, near the end of the Mall.
So she handed the front page to Halsey. “Read us something.”
Halsey would have preferred talking to her, alone. He had a thousand things to say. But if she believed that engaging in the news of the world mattered for their future, he would engage. He read the first story his eye fell upon: “‘Intelligence reaches us that General Robert E. Lee has appealed to the rebel legislature to permit the enlistment of colored soldiers in the Confederate Army.’”
Samantha let out a laugh. “You’re making that up.”
Halsey held up the paper. “No, I’m not.”
George Smith’s frown almost cracked into a smile.
Halsey read on: “‘He insisted that those who enlist should be promised their freedom. In granting his request, the legislature said, “The country will not deny General Lee anything he may ask for.”’”
Samantha said, “Now I know that the war is almost over.”
“It’s only a matter of time.” Halsey looked at her. “Then we can worry about what comes next, for the nation … and for us.”
“Get stronger, first,” she said.
Halsey scanned the rest of the front page. The Federal line ran for fifty miles around Petersburg. Lee’s army was melting away. The president had gone south to confer with Grant and observe the operations. Sherman had continued his relentless march north. The vise was closing.
Then an article in the lower corner caught Halsey’s eye, a bit of local news: A pair of Negroes had been arrested for armed robbery in a northern ward. It would have meant nothing, except that one of them “was carrying a rare Adams pocket revolver.” What’s more, the suspect had worked as a stretcher-bearer at the City Wharf.
Halsey knew now where his gun had gone. And he wondered, who else was reading that paper?
II.
By the last week of March, the war was rushing to its finale.
But all the news washed over Halsey, because his fever came back.
Dr. Porter admitted he was puzzled. He observed no redness around the wound. “It must be typhoid or some other thing. Men who’ve survived as long as you have in the camps usually don’t get sick in the ward, but some men leave here sicker than when they arrived.”
Walt agreed. “Sickness kills more men than bullets, I’m afraid. This damn war sometimes seems to be nine hundred and ninety-nine parts diarrhea and one part glory.”
Or perhaps it was a sign of the sadnesss that came back when Samantha told Halsey that his father had died in the summer of ’64, of a seizure at the breakfast table, as he read of the hell of Cold Harbor. She said she had withheld the news until she felt he was strong enough to handle it.
Samantha sat with Halsey through each night of fever and grief. And since the Mall was not safe after dark, she slept in the lady nurses’ quarters at Armory Square. And she helped with the other men of Ward A, also. She even got George Smith to stop frowning and talk of roses.
Then, on Wednesday, the twenty-ninth, Halsey passed through a crisis, broke a sweat, and slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep. On Thursday, he awoke to a clear head and a golden shaft of sunlight slicing in the back window, as if God were telling him that the death of an elderly father was in the natural order of things.
The ward was quiet. It was not yet six.
He looked across into the eyes of George Smith, who said, “You are a lucky man, Murphy.”
Halsey wanted to say that a man who had survived two amputations enjoyed a special kind of luck as well.
But George Smith kept talking. “She sat with you till two. When she left, I was cryin’. I cry in the night. Can’t help it … Anyways, she come over and said, ‘If you want to make yourself useful, stop cryin’ and keep an eye on the corporal for me.’”
“Did you?”
“All the damn night.”
The man who had replaced the Moaner rolled over and looked at them as if they were annoying him; then he rolled over again. He had the fever, too.
“Watchin’ you took my mind off my troubles,” said George Smith. “Then somethin’ funny happened.”
“Funny?”
“About four thirty, the sky was just gettin’ light, a feller let himself in the back door and comes down the aisle, lookin’ from bed to bed. He had a carte in his hand. He saw me awake, so he showed it to me and said, ‘Have you ever seen this man?’”
“What did he look like?”
“Short, slope shoulders, brown beard, heavy brow. Dangerous lookin’.”
Halsey swallowed the fever-bile in the back of his throat. McNealy. He must have read about the gun, tracked it through the serial numbers to the Negro stretcher-bearers, and frightened them into admitting the truth: They had stolen it from a wounded soldier bound for Armory Square … or was it Harewood?
George Smith said, “That picture surprised me more than mealy bugs in February. It showed a lieutenant, a good-lookin’ man in a fine mustache and chin strap, lookin’ a lot like you, though a lot younger. You’ve walked some hard miles. Murphy.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Never seen him before in my life. Then, Mrs. Cannon come scuttlin’ up, whisperin’ and yellin’ at the same time, ‘What’s the idea of sneakin’ in here at this hour?
’ The feller said he was a War Department detective and showed her the carte and a badge. She give ’em a squint and said, ‘I don’t care if you’re Jesus Christ Almighty come down to raise Lazarus. There’s nobody in here who looks like that, just a lot of hurtin’ men who need their sleep. Now, git on the hell out of here.’”
“What did he say to that?”
“Nothin’. Then he just went through the rest of the ward with her shooin’ him along like he was a dog lookin’ to lift his leg on the furniture.”
“Thanks,” said Halsey. “I owe you.”
“I wouldn’t do it just for you. But for Miz Samantha, I’d lie like a politician.”
Life’s wisdom, thought Halsey, from a man with no legs.
* * *
That afternoon, Walt Whitman came to say good-bye. “I get three weeks leave from the Bureau of Indian Affairs starting the first of the month. That’s Saturday. I’ll be off home to Brooklyn to visit Mother.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Is there a last favor I can do for you”—Walt lowered his voice—“Lieutenant Corporal Halsey Jeremiah Murphy Hutchinson?”
So Halsey asked Walt to do three things: determine if a man named McNealy still lived in Ryan’s boardinghouse on East Capitol, stop for a shoeshine at the National Hotel and ask for Noah, and see if a woman named Harriet Dunbar still resided on the corner of K and Sixteenth. He even suggested a few questions to ask.
“I will cross the city seeking your truths and your friends.” Walt Whitman stood. “Where the city of faithful friends stands, there the greatest city stands.”
“That’s a good poem, Walt, but they’re not my friends, except for the bootblack.”
“A Negro for a friend? You are a man of many surprises, Corporal.”
* * *
Halsey realized that he would have to get better and quickly.
But Dr. Porter restricted him to bed rest until there was no sign of fever for forty-eight hours. “Whatever you’ve just had shows how weak you still are.”
If Halsey had been stronger, he would have checked himself out and disappeared. Then he could deal with McNealy on his own, on foot, from the shadows. But the doctor was right. He had barely survived a brutal wound, infection, fever, grief. He had little strength and no stamina.
So he spent the rest of the day reading the papers, talking across the floor to George Smith, and wondering what McNealy really wanted from him.
At this point, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment had made slavery a dead issue … dead though not buried, perhaps never buried.
Halsey had seen what lay ahead. He had seen it in Virginia, whenever the Army of the Potomac brought freedom to a few more of the four million uneducated, ill-prepared Negroes being loosed upon a nation. He had seen how much the nation, deep inside, simply hated them. How Lincoln confronted this problem, how he reconstructed America after its new birth of freedom, would determine his legacy.
Halsey searched his memory for the things he had read in that daybook three years earlier. Lincoln had wondered aloud about Negro voting rights, about their limited intellectual capabilities, about the evils of miscegenation, about satisfying a national desire to see them sent back to Africa. Halsey expected that Lincoln had changed many of those positions. But what other ruminations were in that book? What had Halsey missed?
He wished now that he had sat down and read it from cover to cover. But his goal that long-ago morning had been to return it safely to the president. And that should be his goal now.
* * *
On Friday night, Samantha sat beside Halsey’s bed, took his hand, and whispered, “He found me.”
“He?”
“McNealy, if that’s his name. He came through the wards at Harewood today, showing the carte de visite from the day we went to Brady’s. He said he was looking for the man in the picture, to give him a medal.”
“Did he know you?”
“He appeared not to, but he had a suspicious eye.”
“He may want to lock me up and throw away the key.”
“Then we need to protect you. Does anyone but Walt know your real identity?”
“Not even Walt knows everything.”
“Who else in Washington knows you from before?”
“Lincoln, Eckert, Homer Bates, a few Negroes, the Wood Brothers, Booth—”
“Booth.” She said the name as if spitting it.
“Do you ever see him?”
“I sometimes check into the National to recover my wits. They have very nice bath facilities for ladies there. I’ve seen him with Lucy Hale in the lobby.”
“Lucy Hale, daughter of the Abolitionist New Hampshire senator?” Halsey put his head back and remembered. “Wendell Holmes courted her in Boston years ago.”
“I’ve heard that Lincoln’s son Robert has courted her as well. But Booth courts her now. There’s a rumor that they’re engaged. It may be true, considering that Booth bought a lot on Commonwealth Avenue, in the new Back Bay lands in Boston.”
“The city of Abolition,” said Halsey. “Once, Booth wouldn’t speak to you if he thought you were an Abolitionist. Has he now become one to marry one?”
“Lord, no. He’s even more outspoken in his Southern sympathies. I stayed in the National on Inauguration Day. I saw him cross the lobby in a fine top hat. I asked where he’d been. He said he had just come from the ceremony. Lucy had gotten him a ticket so that he could stand on the pediment directly above Lincoln.
“I said, ‘You must have had a fine view of him as he delivered his oration.’
“He said, ‘I was close enough to touch him. But why would I want to?’ Then he and Lucy went upstairs.”
“Arm in arm?” asked Halsey.
“Outrageous, I suppose, but—” Samantha paused. “— I for one would not go behind closed doors with him. He appears dour, depressed, focused on some other world, much unlike the Booth who escorted me to the train station one unhappy day.”
“Unhappy for me, too.”
“Unhappy, even if you hadn’t appeared with Constance Wood.”
“That was many lives ago,” said Halsey.
She squeezed his hand, as if she forgave but could not entirely forget.
Then they heard a bustling at the front of the ward. Walt had returned, and like Father Christmas doling gifts from his bag, he stopped at every bed to leave a little something—writing paper, clean socks, taffy candies. But at Halsey’s bed, he set down the bag and said, “A scene for a poet to memorialize.”
Then he lowered himself next to Samantha.
She said, “You leave in the morning?”
“Reluctantly. With the war ending and our friend here getting well, the next few weeks in Washington will be quite joyous, I think.”
“What do you know, Walt, darlin’?” asked Halsey in his brogue.
Samantha smiled and lowered her head, as if to keep from laughing.
“What?” whispered Halsey. “It worked in the regiment. It works here.”
Walt said, “I presented myself at Mrs. Ryan’s as a prospective boarder. I asked after the character of her guests, and she was more than happy to brag on all the men of politics and business under her roof. So I asked your question—did any of them rise especially early—since I was an early riser myself. She said no. Then I asked after a man named McNealy. She looked at me suspiciously and said he no longer lived there.”
Walt paused, waited for a reaction, and asked, “Does that help?”
Halsey said, “It tells me I need to talk to the Negro bootblack.”
“There I can help.” Walt settled back. “I went down to the National, sat in one of the chairs, and allowed him to go to work.”
“Noah Bone?”
“Yes. I engaged him, asked him if he had children. His hands stopped moving, and he said he had two sons working in the hotel, another marching with the United States Colored Troops. Then he stood up straight and added proudly, ‘My Daniel is buyin’ freedom f
or his race.’”
“Very noble,” said Samantha.
“Perhaps, but”—Walt looked around the ward—“in comparison with this misery, I don’t care much for the niggers and their troubles, despite the fine nobility I felt in Mr. Bone, honest dignity born of good honest labor, and—”
“Yes, we know,” said Halsey, “you sing the common man.”
“I also do the bidding of my friends,” answered Walt, “and do not ask why.”
Halsey backed off. “Much appreciated.”
Walt’s good nature returned quickly. “Now, then, this Harriet Dunbar … I sent Pete—he’s a special friend of mine, Peter Doyle—I met him on the horse car—he’s a conductor—used to be a rebel soldier—I sent him to her door posing as a delivery boy, bringing flowers.” Walt paused, looked from face to face.
“And?” Halsey knew Walt as a poet, but there was some actor in him, too.
“She’s dead. Murdered last October. Her body was found in the stable behind her house. Her horse was saddled but not cinched, as if she was surprised in the middle of a getaway to somewhere. A knife, slipped expertly between her ribs, into her heart.”
Just then, Mrs. Cannon came by. “It’s almost nine. Lights go out at nine.”
Samantha said, “We know. We’re nurses, too.”
“Just sayin’”—Mrs. Cannon glided away—“that rules is rules.”
Walt Whitman chuckled and grasped both their hands at once. “I must move on. I have many more boys to see tonight. I’ll look forward to seeing you upon my return at the end of the month, when perhaps the world will have been born anew.”
“I’ll be gone from here by then,” said Halsey.
Walt’s eyes filled with tears, and he gripped even harder. “Then read one of my poems, and we’ll meet again.”
“That’s a wonderful sentiment,” said Samantha.
Walt picked up his rucksack. “Bearing bandages, water and sponge, straight and swift to my wounded I go.” Then he gave George Smith a little wave and announced to the whole ward, “I am faithful. I do not give out.”
Samantha whispered, “He’s quoting his latest, ‘The Wound-Dresser.’”
III.
Soldiers said that Robert E. Lee was a great general because he could anticipate what his opponent would do before he did it. They said that Grant was a great general because he decided what he would do and then did it.
The Lincoln Letter Page 38