My Vicksburg

by Ann Rinaldi

  It was then that I saw the bird.

  There were about six or eight people waiting in all variations of distress, from broken bones to cut faces.

  Also three Yankee soldiers holding rifles were standing around another Yankee soldier who was holding a perch attached to a wooden pole.

  On the perch was a bald eagle. I stopped and stared at them. So did Landon for a minute. "Is this Old Abe?" he asked them.

  "Yeah, Doc. He got skinned in the leg. We need him fixed. People told us to go and find the Yankee doctor. Be that you?"

  "Yes," Landon answered evenly.

  "Will you fix him up for us, Doc?"

  "If you will set down your guns and let me attend to this bleeding girl first," Landon answered. "I won't be long. Give your names and regiment to my mother here."

  "Company C/8th Regiment, Wisconsin Volunteers," one of them recited. Mama took it down and handed me my clothing, a clean skirt and petticoat and pantalets.

  Landon took my arm and led me into the surgery.

  "Doctor, Doctor, Doctor," they appealed, as we passed through.

  "Be with you in a minute," Landon said. "My sister here has cut her hand, badly."

  Landon closed the door and gestured that I should sit.

  "How'd you get the cut?"

  "Breaking into Pa's gun case for a revolver."

  He unwrapped the towel and gestured I should come to the sink, where he poured something over the cut that stung so bad it made me cry. "I'm sorry," he said. Why was it that I didn't believe him?

  "You telling me that you've been bleeding like this for the whole night?"

  "No. Just for a couple of hours."

  "You've been here only a couple of hours then. I'm going to sprinkle some laudanum on this so it doesn't hurt when I stitch it up. That's an ugly cut you've got there."

  He sprinkled it on. Then he got his needle and started to stitch. I wanted to cry out in pain, but I wouldn't let myself. I couldn't control my legs though. They were giving way under me. Not so much from pain as from the sight of him stitching.

  I suppose I would have slumped to the floor just as he finished his stitching if he hadn't picked me up like I was a rag doll and put me on the table. I was sitting there and he stood directly in front of me. "What did you do before you cut the hand?" he said.

  He was wrapping it now, gently.

  "I don't remember."

  "You don't lie very well."

  "Is this the way you treat your patients?"

  There was silence between us. He gave it time to move across the heavens, like clouds across the sky. He was still wrapping the hand. "What happened to Robert?" he asked again, concentrating on the bandage and not looking at me.

  "I don't know."

  "I've got no time for lies. I was going to turn Robert over to the authorities, yes. It was the right thing for me to do. No one in the Confederacy will ever know now who lost that order of Lee's and a few people will always be under suspicion. A few lives ruined. Do you think that's right?"

  I didn't answer.

  He sighed. It was deep and sad. "When I put Rosie in the barn, I saw that Jewel was gone. You did a big thing tonight, giving Robert your horse. I know you think you did the right thing, but it was wrong. It was none of your affair, and it was wrong."

  Tears were coming down my face.

  "Do you really think he's going to go home? Where he can be found? He'll likely go West, where all the fugitives from this war will go. Claire Louise, I'm going to ask you one more time. Not with the intention of having him run down. But for us. To save what we have. Had. What happened to Robert?"

  I felt like a fox in a leg trap. Did he have to make his voice so kind? So gentle? I shook my head. Tears were really coming down my face now.

  "You haven't anything to say to me then. All right." He handed me my clean clothes. "Change in here. I don't want you going through the waiting room and all those patients seeing you covered with blood."

  He helped me down from the table and went to one corner of the surgery and drew a curtain across it. "Here. For your modesty. If you think you're going to faint, call me. Remember, I'm a doctor."

  I went into the corner. He had a grip on the curtain. He was about to close it when he stopped. "Oh," he said, "one more thing. If you don't tell me what I want to know tonight, then I don't want you ever to tell me. Someday when we're both old and sitting around drinking a mint julep and our grandchildren are picking blackberries down by the stream, you can tell me. And I can't see any reason why we have to be friends between now and then, either."

  He closed the curtain with a dramatic movement and went to call in the three Yankee soldiers with the bald eagle.

  I felt like I'd been slapped. I was stung so by the words. I commenced to cry again and I struggled to change. I felt weak. The back of my neck was in a cold sweat, as was my scalp. And my stomach felt queasy. But I'd faint dead on the floor before I'd call Landon in to help me, doctor or no doctor.

  I listened to the exchange of words between him and the Yankees. One soldier was bragging how, when the 8th Wisconsin went into battle, Old Abe would fly over the fighting and screech at the enemy. "So many times those Rebs tried to shoot him and they'd miss," he told Landon. "Is he bad, Doc? Will you be able to fix his leg?"

  "Sure will," Landon assured them.

  I rolled my bloody clothes in a ball.

  "You finished back there, Claire Louise?" Landon called out.

  "Yes."

  "Then you'd better skedaddle. I've got a heap of patients to see yet."

  I stepped out from behind the curtain. "How's the hand?" he asked without looking at me. "Any more bleeding?"

  "No, but it hurts precious bad."

  He went to a cabinet and got some powders and put them in some paper and handed them to me. "Help you to sleep tonight," he said. "Take only one at a time. I suggest you go over to the hospital in a day or so and have Dr. Balfour take a look at it. I'll be gone tomorrow."

  What was he telling me? I paused only a moment. "Can I pet the bird?" I asked.

  The eagle blinked at me.

  The soldiers nodded their head, yes, saying he liked women.

  "No," Landon said. "This isn't a game we're playing. You'd best leave."

  The soldiers looked embarrassed. He'd told them I was his sister, hadn't he? I'd heard it when I was behind the curtain. They knew he was a Southerner and were likely thinking, "I thought Southern families were close and loving."

  I left, and as I did I heard him refusing to take money for fixing Old Abe. From the window in the center hall of the house I watched the Yankee soldiers, guns at the ready, walking down to the waterfront. Old Abe was secure on his perch.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I asked Mama if I could sleep in my own room in our house that night, and she said no, to go home to the cave, all we needed was there. But to wait until Landon was finished in his surgery so he could walk both of us back.

  I said yes, then I walked back alone. Might as well be hanged for a lion as for a lamb, or however the saying went.

  I wondered how Old Abe was faring, and if my brother had fixed him up so he could fly again. I felt a repeat of the anger I'd felt for Landon because he wouldn't let me pet the eagle. I knew it was his way of punishing me.

  How many other ways, I wondered, would he find, over the years.

  Years. Did he have it in him to let this go on for years? It wasn't so much the bald eagle, though it would have been one more thing to tell my grandchildren. It was the feelings that made him do it that saddened me so.

  I went back to the cave and found it quiet and put myself right to bed after taking the powder that Landon had given me.

  The next morning low voices from the kitchen woke me. Landon and Mama. I didn't want to face either one of them now, so I dressed slowly, careful to put on my blue and white check and make one braid down the back with my hair because today I would be going to the hospital.

  They were still at table
when I went for my breakfast.

  The Confederate dispatch rider had been in town early and Mama had a letter from Pa. She was glowing as she recited he'd be home in a day or two.

  Landon, all spiffed up in his uniform, held James on his lap. Chip had Rosie waiting outside. "You going to be a good boy while I'm gone?" Landon asked James.

  "No." James shook his head solemnly.

  "Who's going to be man of the house when I'm away?"

  "Pa's coming home in two days," James told him.

  "Yes, but he's ailing. You have to take over until he's well."

  "Do I get to tell Claire Louise what to do like you do?"

  I put sugar in my coffee. I felt Landon's glance in my direction, but I did not return it.

  "You can try," Landon says. "Maybe you'll have better luck than I've had." He put James from his lap and got up then and kissed Mama. "Take care, darling," he said to her. "If you need anything, if Pa gets bad, send for me."

  He kissed the top of James's head, then looked at me. "Claire Louise, look at me."

  I looked. What did he want now?

  "I want you to behave. No shenanigans. Pa isn't well. Do your part. You hear?"

  "Yes."

  He nodded briefly, took up his things, but did not go out the door. There was going to be more. I waited.

  "I don't want you inviting friends in. Or talking about any food or possessions we might have. Most other caves are barely an improvement on cow stalls. You hear me?"

  I said yes. I heard. And he went out the door.

  Something went with him. Something vibrant and right. I cannot name what it was. But there was a black hole in the cave, nevertheless, when he was gone.

  It wasn't until after he left and Mama lingered over her tea and I over my bacon and scrambled eggs and bread that I saw the front page of the Citizen, printed on the back of a piece of wallpaper.

  The date was Thursday, July 2. The story said that General Pemberton, in a council of war, had told his generals: "I am a northern man. I know my people. I know we can get better terms from them on the Fourth of July than on any other day of the year."

  Pemberton was readying to surrender Vicksburg.

  I looked at Mama. She nodded, sadly. "Landon says we can't hold out any longer," she told me. "We're eating well, thanks to him, Claire Louise, but most of the people in town are starving. Molasses is ten dollars a gallon; flour, five dollars a pound; meal, a hundred and forty dollars a bushel, if you can get any of it."

  "Why didn't Landon say anything at breakfast?"

  "Why does anyone in this house say or not say anything, Claire Louise? You and Landon are both so moody, I can't keep up with you. Tell me, why aren't you two talking?"

  I didn't answer.

  "This is no time to fight. The war has torn everybody apart. You both had something wonderful together. Now it's gone. You must work to get it back, Claire Louise. Any of us could get killed, any day."

  "Why do I have to work to get it back? What about him?"

  "He has much on his mind. His work, his family. He kept us together all the while Pa was gone. He kept us alive with food, didn't he? He even treated people in Pa's surgery."

  "And he treated a bald eagle, which he wouldn't let me pet, even though its owners said yes."

  "I don't know anything about that, child."

  "He did it to be mean, because I wouldn't tell him how Robert got away. And he said, if you want to know, that we will never be friends again." I started to cry. "And you want me to make it right with him? Why should I?"

  "Because you're the woman," she persisted. "And that's part of a woman's job. When you wed someday, you will find out why. You'll have to do it to keep your marriage together. Men are stubborn creatures, the lot of them, Claire Louise. You have only to make the first step and see them come around."

  "Is that what you did with Pa?"

  "Many times, child."

  I lowered my head. "I have to go to the hospital," I said, "before the shelling starts again."

  There was a perfect excuse to get away. The shelling would start again in fifteen minutes.

  I leaned over and kissed her. She held me close. "I know Landon really loves you, Claire Louise. He always did. He was only twelve when you were born, and he kept insisting that when the baby came he was going to be its father."

  I picked up the page from the Citizen. "It says here that they need contributions of wallpaper if they're to continue publishing," I read to her. "Could I give them a piece of wallpaper from my bedroom at home, Mama? Could I please?"

  "Now what do you want to do that for?"

  "Because I want to do something that I can tell my grandchildren about someday. I haven't done anything important in the war so far. And now Pemberton is going to surrender the town. Oh please, Mama," I felt myself warming to the idea even as I spoke. "I'll just cut a small piece from my wall. We can put new paper up when the war is over."

  "Now I call that destructive," she said.

  "No, Mama, it's sacrifice. Something I did that nobody else in the family did. You've done things. So has Pa and Landon. Please, Ma? I'll be good if you let me. I'll be so good."

  She eyes me narrowly. "Will you think about making things up with Landon?"

  I hesitated only a second. Long enough to realize there was no way I could make things up with Landon. It was impossible. He'd never agree to it.

  "Yes," I said.

  So she said yes, only don't, she said, go ripping all the paper off the walls in your room. "That paper came from England, in better times. Lord knows when we'll be able to get some again."

  The hospital tent seemed twice as crowded as it had been two days ago. Dr. Balfour scarce had time to say hello to me.

  "I don't even know half of the new ones yet," he said. "Later, I'll look at that hand of yours. Landon sent by a note. Said you should just talk to them if you can't write. Can you write?"

  I was taken aback that Landon should give the time to write such a note about me. For a brief moment I had a glimmer of hope. Did he still consider me part of his family? How far did the boundaries of his disinterest go?

  "Yessir, I can write," I told Dr. Balfour.

  "Don't overdo it," he cautioned.

  I wrote three letters that morning. One for an Irish boy who had a wife in Georgia and who'd had an arm amputated and was here for a fever that followed. "They think I'm gonna die," he said bitterly. "Well I don't aim to die. An' if they send a priest, tell the good Father I don't need him."

  "Why can't you tell him?" I asked.

  "'Cause, as soon's I write this letter to my wife, I aim to have a dose of this here whiskey a friend smuggled to me yesterday"—he reached his good arm under the cot and picked it up and showed it to me—"an' go into blue heaven land. An' I'll be there when the good Father comes in. An' I don't want to be waked. Sure'n it's what I deserve, considerin' what I gave for my country, isn't it?"

  I agreed and set about taking down the letter.

  The second one, I was just about to approach when a male nurse came up behind me. He was a colored man. "'Scuse me, Miss Corbet, but Dr. Balfour, he say, doan get any closer to this here man. He done got typhoid."

  I looked into the nurse's kindly face, then past him to the far corner of the room where Dr. Balfour was looking toward us. He was waving me aside.

  Then, from my place on the floor, about six feet from the bed, I looked at the young soldier with typhoid. "Oh, please, Miss, take down my words. They aren't much, but I've got to let my wife know I'm still alive."

  I looked at the colored man. "Go and ask Dr. Balfour if I can do it standing here," I said. Then I waited while the male nurse made his way between the cots and conferred with the doctor. Then maneuvered his way back again.

  "Doctor say you gonna be one difficult woman, and then Doctor say, okay, but not one step closer or he send for your brother right now."

  That, according to Dr. Balfour, was the worst threat he could level at me. I nodded my hea
d, yes. And since young Edward Baldwin overheard the whole thing and I didn't have to explain, he commenced dictating his love letter to his wife loud enough so that at least twelve other patients could hear it.

  All talk around us stopped. No one moved. They all lay still and some had tears coming down their faces. And Edward Baldwin poured his heart out for all of them it seemed, especially when he said: "If I don't make it out of here, my dear Rosemary, I want you to know I will always be with you, no matter where you go or what you do. I will always be at your side. And we will meet again in heaven."

  The third letter was for a man from "Nor' Kaaaliana, Miss. But afore you put my words to paper, kin you just somehow git me a biled sweet purtatur? I do so long for one. I ain't had a one since I left home an' my mama's cookin'."

  I told him as soon as we got the letter written I'd ask the cook, but that I had a hurt hand and it was starting to throb and his was the last letter I could do today.

  "Lord a'mercy, then cud you all jus' move me away from this here dead man in the cot next to me? I mean I wuz used to seein' men die on the field, but I thought this here hospital wasn't fer dyin' in. Please, Miss?"

  I said yes and grabbed a nearby orderly who had heard the request and in five minutes the dead man was removed. Then we went about with his letter. And true to my word, I ventured into the kitchen, which was really just an adjoining tent, to order a "biled sweet purtatur" for my charge.

  On the way back, at the far end of the tent near the kitchen, I saw her.

  Sarah Clarke.

  It was her, wasn't it?

  What was she doing here? And then it came to me. It was Sarah Clarke, and she was sick or hurt. Stupid, I told myself. And she was here, right under our noses, and none of us knew it, maybe not even Dr. Balfour. He'd told me he didn't know all of them yet, hadn't he?

  I stood, stunned for a minute, like I was nailed to the floor. And then I did what I knew I should do. I walked over to her bed. "Hello, Sarah."

  I heard her gasp. I saw her adjust the bedclothes closer, as she must be accustomed to doing so people couldn't see her bosoms and know she was not a man.