I Have Seen Him in the Watchfires Page 8

  “I must say I never saw one patient gather so many visitors—especially in a quarantined tent.” He didn’t look pleased, maybe suspicious. But he studied and thumped me, then stood back. “All the attention seems to have done you some good, soldier. I’d say you’re out of the woods and ready to be released from quarantine.” He turned to Katie Frances. “Nurse O’Leary, I’d like you to accompany me on my rounds.”

  “Yes, Col. Monroe. As soon as I get this patient his breakfast.”

  “I believe this soldier has help enough. You’re needed elsewhere, nurse.” He spoke to Katie Frances but shot a challenge toward Chap. Goforth. The chaplain didn’t seem to notice.

  Katie nodded but did not look pleased. She tucked my arm beneath the blanket. “I’ll check on you later, soldier.” To Wooster she said, “Mind your brother eats, then.” But she gave Chap. Go-forth a smile to shame the sun.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Wooster acted the penitent.

  At the tent flap Col. Monroe turned to Wooster. “Didn’t you say you and your brother are from the 26th North Carolina? And you were wounded—where?”

  “Yes, sir. Gettysburg. Wounded at Gettysburg.”

  He nodded. “A Maj. McCain rode in from North Carolina this morning. He’s been reassigned to our regiment. I believe he said he’d been with the 26th—escaped Fort Delaware’s prison early last summer. You must know him.”

  “Maj. McCain?” Wooster stumbled over the name. Col. Monroe’s stare bored down on him, then through me.

  “You did say you boys were with the 26th?”

  “Yes, sir.” Wooster sounded miserable.

  “Maj. McCain’s just gone out, leading a much-needed foraging party… should be back in three or four days. With any luck we’ll enjoy improved rations as a result.” He hesitated, frowned. “I’ll have him stop by to see you.” He waited.

  “That would be good, sir. Thank you, sir.” Wooster didn’t convince anybody, least of all Col. Monroe.

  “Nurse? Shall we?” Katie Frances followed, not looking back.

  Chap. Goforth looked from me to Wooster, frowned, searched our faces. “Are you two in need of help?”

  Wooster shook his head. “No, sir. I’m just glad my brother’s getting well.”

  Chap. Goforth smiled and placed his hand on Wooster’s shoulder. “The last I knew Robert didn’t have a brother.” Wooster colored like a russet apple. “Now, don’t you boys think you could use a friend?”

  Wooster looked like he was fixing to die. “It’s all right, Wooster. I’ve known Rev. Go—Chap. Goforth a long time. He’s a friend—mine and my family’s. We can trust him.” I hoped that last part was true. I never knew where I stood with Rev. Go-forth after I ran North with Jeremiah, but I’d long hoped he’d understood.

  And then I told Chap. Goforth about Emily’s letter, about Cousin Albert, and Gettysburg, and the captured men of the 26th, about Fort Delaware and how I’d gone to see Cousin Albert, what I’d found. When I came to the part about the escape, Cousin Albert’s deceit, and all the rest of it, Wooster seemed to shrink into himself. I told about the Maynards and McCain and the cellar and stealing Mr. Heath’s horse. By then I was mad all over again. Wooster looked shamed into a pecan shell. Even in my heat I felt a mite sorry for him, but I didn’t cut him any slack.

  Chap. Goforth took the reins. “And Wooster’s stood by you all this time you were sick? He’s fed and clothed and nursed you, bringing you South toward your mother and Emily?”

  “I wouldn’t have needed that if they hadn’t—”

  “Life is full of ‘ifs,’ Robert. What is important is what we do with what is. It looks as though Wooster has proven himself every ounce your brother. It looks as if he’s as good as laid his life down for yours.” And with every word Wooster looked up, a slim light growing in his eyes, a light I hadn’t seen since I’d met him. “Wooster,” Chap. Goforth said, “can you get Robert something to eat? He needs to build up his strength.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll do it now.”

  “Thank you. I’m sure I’ll see you later.” Wooster fairly glowed from Chap. Goforth’s good nature. I didn’t. Chap. Go-forth was my friend, or I thought he was. When Wooster’d hobbled out the chaplain gave me his full attention. “It’s good you’re on your way to Ashland, Robert. I know Emily needs help with your mother.”

  My ears pricked up. “Ma? She’s all right, isn’t she?”

  He hesitated. “I thought you said Emily wrote you about her.”

  “She did. But all she said is that the war had been hard on her.” Now I frowned. “What is it? What’s wrong with Ma?”

  Chap. Goforth raked long fingers through his hair. Shades of silver ran through the brown, and I marveled at the change these few years had brought. “The war’s been hard on everyone. Some are better able to stand up to the hardships, to accept the deprivation.” He walked to the far side of the tent and back, taking his time, weighing his words. I held my breath, fearful to interrupt. “Caroline, your mother, is—not strong. The last I knew, Marcus—I’m sorry, your grandfather—was quite ill. I’ve tried to stay in touch with Emily, but we’ve had no mail these last months.”

  “You and Emily write?” Why did I think that strange?

  He colored a little. “We did. I’ve tried to help her with—with her family and the plantation, but our expectations have changed.”

  I waited, but he didn’t keep on. “What does that mean—your expectations have changed?” I wanted to understand.

  He colored deeper, more like Wooster had. “Emily is an extraordinary young woman. She’ll make someone a splendid wife.” He turned to face me, then stepped away. “It just won’t be me.”

  “You courted Emily?”

  “I asked for her hand.”

  “She turned you down?”That was hard to believe, but I was glad beyond words, and relieved—a thing I’d never own out loud. Still, it made me wonder what chance I had, if she’d said no to Rev. Goforth.

  “She chose a different path … That’s not important now.” He turned to face me. “What is important is that we keep McCain from meeting you. Or better yet, we get you and Wooster on your way to Ashland.”

  “Are they alone? Are Ma and Emily both at Ashland?”

  Chap. Goforth shook his head. “The last I knew Emily was dividing her time between Ashland and Mitchell House on weekends, trying to keep an eye on both. She’d been attending the Girls’ Academy in Salem—the only reason Col. Mitchell would hear of her staying in the South once he enlisted. You know he sent Alex to England?”

  I nodded, and my bile rose at the mention of Alex’s name. “I’m sure he’s safe and sound.” My sarcasm wasn’t lost on Chap. Goforth. His raised brow told me that we thought alike.

  “When your grandfather became ill and your mother-once your mother needed more help—Emily left school for longer and longer periods to stay with them. That is the last I heard.” He took my measure. “It’s good that you’ll be with them, Robert. They need someone.”

  “Cousin Albert seemed to think Ma couldn’t come home.” I waited, but he didn’t answer. “What’s wrong with her?” He still didn’t answer. “Chap. Goforth, what’s wrong with Ma?” I demanded.

  He looked miserable. “She’s—frail. She’s just frail.”

  I shook my head, tried to take that in, tried to understand what he meant. “What about Nanny Sara? Is she still there?” Nanny Sara had cooked for Grandfather forever and nursed Ma as a baby.

  “Yes. Nanny Sara, old as she is, might just outlive us all.”

  “AndJedSlocum?”

  Chap. Goforth frowned. “I’m afraid he is, as far as I know. He should have been conscripted, but your grandfather paid a substitute, saying he needed his overseer. And that worries me. Without your grandfather to keep Mr. Slocum in line, I—” He worried the seam down his trouser leg. “I’m concerned for the women.”

  The tent flap lifted, and Wooster struggled in with a steaming tin cup. “It’s not coffee, but it’ll chase the
early morning shakes away.” He grinned and pulled a broken tag of hard cracker from his pocket, pushing it into my hand. “It’s not much. There ain’t much to be had. But it’s eats.”

  “Thanks.” I took the food but stared hard at Chap. Goforth. It wasn’t talk I wanted to carry on in front of Wooster. But we weren’t finished.

  Ten

  I was moved, just before dusk, to a ward tent.

  A storm brewed through the night. Northeast wind heaved and blasted, slamming the rain in sheets against our tent’s sides. Paths trod by orderlies walking in and out of the tent flap rivered. Water streamed under the sides, soaked our pallets and thin blankets till we all smelled like wet dog, rotting flesh, blood, and urine. Plank flooring had long ago been burned for firewood, so the sopping floor straw was raked up, half dried, spread, and soaked again.

  I missed my cot and thought it wry how a body conscious enough to enjoy the pleasure of a dry bed lost it just as quick as he realized he had one.

  The storm blasted through the next day and night. By the third day every man dreaded the misery of waking and wished mightily for August’s drought. Wooster and I figured the storm would either slow McCain down, causing him to hole up somewhere and wait for its passing, or make him give up his foraging and backtrack, returning to camp early. We prayed for the first but did what we could to get my strength up. Only that ran as risky as lying sick, so far as Col. Monroe’s plans were concerned.

  “Keep this up Gibbons, and we’ll have you back in the field before Christmas.” Col. Monroe seemed more than satisfied with my progress.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “As soon as this storm breaks I want you outside. Walk up and down between the hospital tents, then through the camp; build your strength.”

  “Yes, sir.” I looked away. That sounded better to me than he knew. I’d have tramped through the rain and mud if I could catch my breath and get the lead weight off my lungs.

  By the fourth day the rain had fallen off to a drizzle, though the wind kept blasting.

  It was three days since Katie Frances had stopped to talk. Col. Monroe kept her by his side nearly every minute. Despite her easy smile and the fact that every man in camp would have died twice to bring it to her lips, she looked done in.

  Chap. Goforth stayed busy, too. More casualties poured in from skirmishes between the camp and Dinwiddie. He helped tend the wounded, nearly as good as most doctors and good as any nurse. He washed and bandaged and sewed men up. He said words over those that didn’t make it. Their bodies stacked up, waiting for burial, waiting for the rain to stop. He prayed with wounded men scared of dying, men too scared to die, and men scared of living with just one arm, one leg, one eye—or none.

  Three of the fifteen soldiers crammed into my hospital tent died during that storm; one died from gangrene in a shoulder wound, two from dysentery. Chap. Goforth sat with them, every minute he could spare, talking, praying them out of this world, preparing them for the next. He looked older, more beaten down each day, and I worried for the broken way he carried himself.

  One night, late, while the other men slept, I woke. Chap. Goforth tended a man on the pallet next to mine, a man so near dying I don’t think he knew the chaplain was there. I didn’t worry that he’d hear me.

  “Chap. Goforth?”

  The chaplain turned to face me. “Robert.” He smiled, sad and tired. “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “I was wondering.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why you stayed in the South. Why you joined the secesh.” I spoke as quietly as I could. He moved closer on the ground beside me.

  “Because these men need comfort and salvation, Robert. Because they are members of the body of Christ—or might become. Never is a man more ready to accept the Lord than when he faces his own mortality. This is the vineyard the Lord has given me to tend.”

  His words didn’t ring clear in my head. “I didn’t think you’d stay—for the South, I mean.” And then I decided to press the thing I’d wondered nearly five long years. “What you said to me that night on Grandfather’s verandah—two nights before I ran North with Jeremiah—all that from Isaiah about loosing the bands of wickedness, letting the oppressed go free, breaking every yoke. That made a difference to me. I never thought you’d hold slavery up as something worth dying for.” I wanted to know where he stood on those things. I needed to understand.

  He gave me a look I’ll not forget. “While you and Jeremiah ran North I was in High Point that Christmas Day, holding services, and then I transported a family of five slaves to a safe house. How do you think Nanny Sara knew where to send the two of you that Christmas Eve? Did you ever wonder who got word to the conductor in the church at Mount Pleasant?”

  “You?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “How do you think I know where you hid? In the bell tower.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I could hardly take it in. “Why didn’t you go with us? Why aren’t you serving the Union?” I’d wondered and wondered where he stood, what he’d thought. It would have meant the world and all to know he stood with us.

  “I was needed there, at that time. Now I’m needed here. I’m where the Lord has called me.”

  I pushed that away. “But the South—”

  “I told you long ago that I’d surrendered my life to the Lord. He is my general. He is the One I take orders from.”

  “But God’s not fighting for the Confederacy! You know He’s not holding onto slavery or wanting to tear the country apart! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you helping the men of the Union?”

  “Every day I hear men claim that God is on their side. I hear our soldiers invoke God’s protection and leading to victory over the evil invader of their lands and homes. I hear them beg God to crucify the tyrant, Abe Lincoln! And when I tend wounded Union prisoners I hear them pray that God will save and restore them to His kingdom made manifest in these United States, that He will punish Jefferson Davis, chief devil of all the devils!” Chap. Goforth spat a fierce whisper.

  “What I know is that the Creator of Eternity is not a marionette, thrown this way or that by our arguments or by our blood baths. The question is not whose side is God on, but whose side are we on? Do we stand for God or against Him? Do we stand and serve where we are called or where it is convenient? Think about that, Robert. Where are you called? To what are you called? Then answer Him.”

  The dying man on the pallet beside me cried out. Chap. Go-forth crawled to his side. I stared after him, saw how he cradled the dying man’s head, heard how he prayed over him. He used every bit of strength his body possessed for these men, these men who were fighting and dying for the Confederacy. That reminded me of Cousin Albert, and how he’d said he and his men were fighting to protect their homes, their families.

  Is it possible to do the right thing in the absolute wrong place? Why would you stay, if you knew the people you were helping were serving the wrong cause? How could he be laying down his life in the opposite place of Pa and still be right? But what he’d said sounded right. I lay back, more confused than ever.

  A good while before day broke, while the rain still poured and thunder still rumbled across the heavens, sounding for all the world like cannon exploding in the distance, Katie Frances O’Leary stepped into our tent. She slipped out of her oilskin and hood, shaking the rain from her shawl, her dress, her hair.

  Kneeling beside a man who’d lost both legs and too much blood, Chap. Goforth had dozed off, his head on his chest—or maybe he was praying. But he didn’t seem to hear her, didn’t turn at her coming.

  Katie Frances peered into every face. Something made me feign sleep. Satisfied we all dozed, she knelt behind the chaplain and took his stooped shoulders in her hands. She massaged them back and forth, back and forth, gently at first, then deeper. Watching her in the lantern light, watching as the rain sparkled through her hair like a thousand points of dew in the morning sun, I held my breath. A man might give all he had for such a woman’
s touch. I might.

  Chap. Goforth didn’t start when she took hold of his shoulders. He just leaned back into her hands as they worked their medicine, and let out a long breath. The two of them worked a rhythm, a slow dance without music.

  It went on so long I nearly fell to dreaming, imagining they were my shoulders she worked, my back she rubbed. Only, in my dreams, the face behind me, the hands on my shoulders belonged to Emily.

  Chap. Goforth pulled Katie Frances’s hands from his shoulders, and turned just enough to draw her around him. He traced the line of her jaw with his hand, the line of her mouth with his thumb. Even in the lantern’s low flame I saw the question in his eyes. She must have answered. They found each other’s mouths like they’d been born knowing. He kissed her, long, and with more desire than I’d imagined he carried. It was a kiss with all the love and heat and tenderness I’d ached to see between Ma and Pa, the kind of kiss I hoped to know someday. I wondered that I’d not seen the love light between these two before.

  I caught my breath and turned over, wanting to watch them, knowing I’d watched too long already. A sharp pain welled inside me. I prayed that Ma and Pa would find that kind of love again. I prayed that I would know it in my life. But I thanked God that Chap. Goforth—Andrew—my friend, had found her now, when he needed her most. And then I closed my eyes.

  Eleven

  Quick as the pallets of the dead were emptied and shaken by the burial detail they were filled with new wounded, men from a Confederate cavalry shot while scouting Union troops.

  With them came rumors of two Union brigades marching toward Petersburg to resupply Gen. Grant. Fifty miles of open fields, timber, and our hospital camp stood in their path as the crow flies—more miles if they traveled the roads. That gave us roughly three, maybe five days, if the storm slowed them down. Wooster and I were hard pressed to guess which might be worse for us—McCain or Union troops.

  The rain stopped altogether on the fifth day, leaving the whole camp flooded. Still the wind blasted, still rumors flared from couriers anxious to talk after three sips of John Barleycorn, and still McCain’s foraging party did not return.