Sunlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 2)

by Fergus O'Connell

  Gilbert touched the man’s hand and whispered, ‘God speed’. It seemed so inadequate. There had been Sarah, the lieutenant yesterday and now this man. Did everything Gilbert touched die? He stood up as the two soldiers began to unroll their stretcher.

  Gilbert and Roberto continued on. Once or twice, despite their best efforts, one or other of the wagon’s wheels crunched over a body. Gilbert prayed that the men were dead. Finally, the wagon was within a couple of hundred yards of the ridge top.

  ‘Okay,’ said Gilbert. ‘That ought to do it.’

  Roberto tied the reins around the brake and they hopped down.

  ‘See boss – Leonardo, he ain’t grazing.’

  It was true. The place they had stopped the wagon had some grassy patches – it actually looked like trampled down wheat – but the horse was not touching it. Instead he held his head erect and looked around.

  ‘They always know,’ said Roberto.

  They worked away for the afternoon. Every so often they glanced anxiously back towards the Emmitsburg Road to see if there was any sign of a photographer’s wagon, but the afternoon wore on and they saw none.

  They continued to move towards the ridge. Sometimes, there was no way round the corpses and they had to step over them. Close to the ridge some of the bodies appeared to have caught fire. Was it possible that artillery could do this? The field itself looked like it had originally been wheat or clover but most of it had been churned up, either by the passage of many feet or by artillery fire. There were shell craters and paths ploughed in the ground where solid shot had landed, skipped and bounced, careering through the mass of men. In the tracks of these shells and in small hollows in the ground, pools of water from the rain had formed. Most of the pools were a browny red color. There were also some large patches of burnt grass and in the centre of one of these three dead Rebels lay. Their bodies were badly burnt as though they been unable to move from the grass fire. Had they been wounded and burnt to death there?

  Back near the road, the forms on the ground had consisted of individual corpses or groups of two or three. Here it was a different story. Here it was clear how the artillery had done its killing work. Clusters of ten, fifteen or perhaps more, bodies – it was impossible to tell exactly how many – had been driven together into mangled masses of flesh. Heads, arms, legs and entrails were mashed together with bits of uniform and equipment, the whole splashed or in some cases coated with black blood. There were flies everywhere.

  They climbed the gentle rise to the crest of the ridge. This could only be done by stepping over bodies. At times, they couldn’t do even that. In places the bodies were literally heaped on top of each other so that they had to walk around a low mound of dead human beings. They were, almost without exception, Confederates.

  As before many of the Confederates were not distinguishable as individual bodies but rather as one bloody mess. The cannon had been so close here – what would the detonation of a cannon be like if you were standing a few feet in front of it? Looking more carefully, Gilbert could see that sometimes hands, arms, legs and even heads didn’t appear to be attached to anything. The opulent smell of rotting was very strong.

  In the course of the afternoon, some kind of general showed up. He was mounted on a fine black horse and surrounded by aides. Seeing Gilbert and Roberto with the camera he came across to them and inquired what they were doing. He seemed pleased with the reply.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’ll be good for the folks back east to see what this is all about … what we have to do ….’

  And so the day proceeded. They had ten slides left by the time the light was starting to fade.

  ‘Get up at dawn tomorrow?’ Gilbert asked Roberto. ‘Take the last of them and then start on the road back to Washington.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Roberto.

  He sounded distracted but then Gilbert reckoned anyone would have been distracted after what they had seen today.

  ‘Want to go into Gettysburg?’ he asked. ‘See what that’s like?’

  ‘Sure,’ Roberto said again.

  Gilbert smiled, remembering the evening – was it really only a few days ago – that Roberto had said they must come here.

  They returned to the wagon, loaded up the equipment and steered it carefully back out towards the road. It was a bit easier now. The bodies had mostly been gathered into a series of big piles. Men whom Gilbert assumed to be Confederate prisoners, watched over by Union soldiers were digging large pits. When the wagon reached the road Roberto turned it in the direction of Gettysburg.

  45

  It was like riding through a land of death. The rain had begun again and the terrible smell of putrefaction was in the air. Sometimes when a body was disturbed or moved a great black cloud of flies rose from it.

  ‘It’s the end of the world,’ said Gilbert.

  They found a hotel that had reopened and having taken care of the wagon and Leonardo, they went into the dining room. The owner had told them that all he had were some cans of food that he had hidden from the soldiers. He warmed something up that looked like stew and served it to them. They had thought they were hungry but when the food came neither of them could eat very much. Unlike the previous night, they hardly spoke unless it was to talk about some aspect of the remaining work they had to do tomorrow.

  Nor did they feel like sleeping afterwards. Gilbert had an image of Death stalking the streets and fields of Gettysburg, choosing people at random. It seemed to him that there was so much death around that if he went to sleep he might not wake up.

  So they went back out into the night and wandered the streets of the town. They took a street that led west. On the edge of town they found an encampment of Union soldiers, their campfires bright yellow in the inky darkness. The white canvas of the tents showed patches of yellow where they reflected the fires. Men crouched around the fires, drank coffee, cooked bacon. How did life go on after death on such a biblical scale? His life hadn’t been able to go on after one death.

  They turned back and took a different street. A rain shower started. They saw a house with a neat white fence around it. Yellow lamplight showed in its doorway and through one of the two front windows. Rain dripped from the roof. In the light Gilbert could see that the veranda of the house was crowded with men lying packed close together. But as he stopped at where the front gate had once been, he realized that the entire front garden of the house was full of people. Men lay in the rain – on stretchers, blankets and just on the ground. And dozens of men stood around cradling bloody arms or with rough bandages covering head wounds or eyes. The men who were lying down tossed and twitched. There was no conversation, nothing except for a constant murmur of groans and the occasional scream of pain.

  ‘Be a good place to take pictures in the morning,’ said Roberto.

  ‘Maybe we need to get permission,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘I think I stay out ‘ere,’ said Roberto.

  Gilbert went through the gap and found himself walking on what had been the front gate of the house pressed into the mud. He went up the house’s front path, threading his way through the standing and lying men. Carefully he went up the front steps, and across the veranda, praying that he wouldn’t stand on anybody. Just inside the doorway he stopped, looking around for somebody to talk to.

  The place smelt like a butcher’s shop and of stale sweat and excrement. In the room on the right hand side of the hallway, the floor was covered with wounded men. On the left what looked like the dining room table had been commandeered for use as an operating table. In poor lamplight, a surgeon with coat off and sleeves rolled up was poised over a man on the table. The surgeon wore an apron that was drenched in blood. There were spatters of it across his face, arms, shirt and on the wall a couple of yards behind him. As Gilbert watched, the surgeon’s assistant poured something from a bottle onto a small square pad of white cloth in his hand. Momentarily the smell of chloroform overpowered all of the other smells. The man on the table began to lift his he
ad as though he was about to protest or say something but then the pad was held down over his nose and mouth. He moved once or twice and was still.

  The surgeon slipped a tourniquet onto one of the man’s legs and ran it high up on the thigh. He had the expert movements and bored manner of a man who had done this many, many times. Here he tightened a screw-like device on the tourniquet. When he lifted up a blade that looked like a butcher’s boning knife, Gilbert looked away.

  A harried orderly came down the stairs. He too had bloodstains on his face and shirt. Gilbert was about to stop him but suddenly thought he was going to vomit. He tried to say something, but there was no time. He put his hand over his mouth and rushed back down the path way. He made it to the gate, stepped past Roberto and then his food came up.

  Monday 6 July 1863

  46

  Next morning they took some amputation pictures.

  The day had begun dry with some cottony clouds floating across a blue wash of sky. They ate breakfast and then took the wagon to the house they had visited the previous night. The surgeons were already busy. They had moved the table out to the front of the house – presumably because the light was better – and a canvas awning had been rigged up over it. Gilbert waited until they were between patients and then explained to one of the surgeons what he wanted to do and why.

  The surgeon seemed too harassed to care.

  ‘Just don’t get it in the way,’ he snarled.

  So Gilbert and Roberto set up the camera just beyond the fence and took pictures from there of the amputation in its various stages.

  After that they returned to the scene of the great charge and used up the rest of their slides. The most horrifying sight they saw was a body lying on its back with a large stomach wound. The man’s hand had also been shot off and lay on the grass, palm upwards, like a blackening crab. It was as though his stomach had been hollowed out with a giant spoon. How could gunfire or artillery do this they wondered? It was a passing Union infantryman who put told them.

  ‘Wild hogs,’ he said. ‘Hundreds of ’em around here. Come around after dark for a feast.’

  It was noon by the time they were finished. They had fifty photographs. Their wagon lay at the foot of the low ridge which they had discovered was known, with remarkable irony, as Cemetery Ridge. The sun had come out. Union burial squads could be seen all over the field, still working away. Gilbert and Roberto began to ferry their equipment down to where Leonardo still refused to eat the grass. When they were finished, Roberto said, ‘We did it, boss.’

  ‘We did,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Still no sign of Gardner or any other guys,’ said Roberto.

  ‘Nope. It’s all thanks to you, you know,’ Gilbert said.

  ‘We both – how you say – play a part, boss.’

  ‘No, Roberto. It was your idea, you made me come. If it wasn’t for you I’d still be drinking myself to death in that stinking bed in Washington. You saved my life, you know.’

  ‘You save your own life, boss. You wanna live, you live – I think.’

  Gilbert said. ‘And maybe when you don’t want to live, nobody can make you.’

  ‘Probably is true,’ said Roberto.

  They were silent. Then Gilbert said, ‘But then what about all of the death that we’ve seen? I’m sure most of those boys didn’t want to die. Some day the war will stop and will it really have been worth it – all those lives?’

  ‘If the slaves are free, boss. Some things – they worth dying for.’

  ‘Really?’ said Gilbert. ‘Maybe we should ask the ghosts of those boys – see how many of them world agree. How many of them would rather be where they are now than here with the sunlight on their faces?’

  ‘Just show,’ said Roberto. ‘Every day is a gift. A little treasure.’

  ‘I used to feel that,’ said Gilbert. ‘I wish I still could.’

  ‘You will again, boss.’

  There was another long silence.

  At length, Gilbert said, ‘I was thinking … when we get back to Washington … instead of working for me … we should be partners. A new sign over the door. Owens and – I don’t know your second name – Photographic Studio.’

  Gilbert was surprised when Roberto said nothing. He wondered if it was because the Italian was overwhelmed by the offer. Eventually Gilbert looked across at him. Their eyes met. Roberto began slowly.

  ‘Eez a very generous offer, boss. And any other time I woulda been delighted to say yes. But I’m afraid I gotta say no.’

  ‘Why?’ Gilbert asked.

  ‘I gonna stay ‘ere, boss.’

  ‘Here in Gettysburg?’

  Roberto shook his head.

  ‘No boss. I gonna join the army.’

  ‘But you can’t do that,’ said Gilbert. ‘Not now, not when we’ve achieved all of this.’

  ‘Is the right thing to do, boss. I love this country. I wanna fight for it.’

  ‘But what about the photographs?’

  ‘You can put my share in the bank, boss. When the war is over I come and get it.’

  ‘But supposing you don’t survive the war? Supposing you get killed? Or wounded? Lose limbs? Get blinded?’

  He could hear the anxiousness in his voice.

  ‘Don’ worry, boss. I be fine.’

  It had been during the night that the idea of offering a partnership had occurred to Gilbert. He had pictured the two of them back in Washington working happily together. It had never occurred to him that he would be going back there on his own. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to – to face all of that. He suddenly understood what he had to do.

  ‘Then I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘I’ll enlist too.’

  Gilbert had intended the sentence as a statement but it had come out sounding like a question. Roberto said nothing.

  ‘Well,’ said Gilbert. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What I think … what I think is that this is not the right road for you, boss.’

  ‘Not the … why not? I’m not scared, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘No, that’s not what I mean, boss. You need to find a new road – where your life will go next. But the army – this eez not it. For me – yes, assolutamente. But for you no, eez gonna be something else.’

  ‘Why?’ said Gilbert, his voice hard. ‘How do you know? Who are you to decide?’

  ‘I feel it, boss. ’ere.’

  Roberto beat the left hand side of his chest with his right fist, ‘You would feel it too if you just ask yourself.’

  Gilbert was speechless. He felt desolate. Death, loss, abandonment – these seemed to be his whole life now. Anything good that came into it seemed to be snatched from him just as he had begun to taste it. How could he go on – into that empty future that lay before him? He suddenly felt like he was going to cry.

  ‘You know, boss,’ said Roberto. ‘I learn a lot from you.’

  ‘What did you learn from me?’ said Gilbert.

  His voice had only sounded sullen. He had wanted it to sound empty. He had no interest in the answer.

  ‘I learn that when you are in hell, is possible to get through it. To come out of hell again.’

  ‘I’m still in hell,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘No boss, you ain’t. Not now. You’ve come through it. You’re ready to start again.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You are, boss. You have no idea ’ow strong you are. ’ow much strength it’s taken you to do what you have done over the last few days. You gotta big life ahead of you now and anything is possible. You can do whatever you want. But you shouldn’t join the army, boss. There is bigger stuff waiting for you.’

  ‘And why are you joining it?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘This is gonna be my country. After war is over, I become citizen. This is the biggest thing I can do right now. Fight for my new country. And you know boss, when I decide this I realize again ’ow every day now is precious. We gotta just make the most of the ones we’re given.’

 
‘I think Sarah was trying to do that,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘From what you tell me boss, I think she was. I think I woulda liked your wife.’

  Gilbert smiled.

  ‘I think you would too,’ he said. ‘And I think she would have liked you very much.’

  After another long silence, Roberto said, ‘You gonna be alright, boss. You will find your new road. Maybe you figure it out for yourself. Or maybe you meet somebody else and they ’elp to guide you the next piece. You gotta trust that this is what will ‘appen.’

  Gilbert could feel his eyes pricking with tears. It was a while before he could speak and even then, he was afraid he was going to cry.

  ‘It … it just seems like everything that is worthwhile in my life … everything that I love just keeps on being taken from me.’

  ‘Sometimes we make the journey with other people, boss – but sometimes, we gotta make it on our own.’

  Gilbert snuffled to hold back the tears.

  ‘But maybe some people are good at doing that. You, for example, leaving Italy, coming here.’

  ‘I think there are times when we all gotta do it, boss. To learn. We learn most when we do it by ourselves. But sometimes, we take a wrong turning. Then, if we’re lucky, somebody comes along to ’elp us find the right road again.’

  ‘Just like you did with me?’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Maybe so, boss. Maybe so.’

  47

  They were on the Emmitsburg Road just outside Gettysburg. Roberto nuzzled up to Leonardo holding his head and talking to him softly in Italian. Eventually, Roberto stroked the horse’s nose one last time and turned towards Gilbert.

  ‘I tell ’im to take care of you,’ said Roberto.

  Gilbert nodded. He thought he was going to cry. Roberto stood facing him.

  ‘You need the map?’ he asked, taking it from his inside jacket pocket and offering to Gilbert.

  ‘Sure,’ said Gilbert.

  He said, ‘You’re my partner from now, you know. Send me an address and I can send you on your share of the money.’