Chapter Twenty-Three

The air was cloying even though the temperature had cooled since the sun went down. On the back porch at Laurel Hill, Clara rocked a slow and measured rhythm by the dim light of the twinkling stars and crescent moon. The humidity curled the loose tendrils which had escaped her braid, and perspiration dampened her skin.

Since Jeremiah had been sent to the front, Clara hadn’t slept a night through. Every time she laid her head upon the pillow and closed her eyes, her mind began racing with a myriad of awful possibilities. Finally admitting that rest was an elusive wish, she had given up on the effort and taken to passing the sleepless hours of the night in the rocking chair. At least there she could see the open expanse of the sky and hope that somewhere her husband was gazing up at it too.

“Worryin’ youself sick ain’t gonna help Mistah Jeremiah none,” Mamie told her after scrutinizing the purple shadows beneath Clara’s eyes.

“I know,” Clara sighed. “I only wish I knew what I could do to help him.”

“If you want to know, I can tell you,” Phoebe volunteered, her dark eyes sympathetic.

Clara narrowed her brows curiously. “What’s that?”

“Pray for him,” Phoebe answered certainly. “Best thing for both of you.”

With a disappointed sigh, Clara replied, “I’ve already tried that. It doesn’t bring me any peace, and I think God has closed His ears to prayers for soldiers—Rebel or Yankee. I’m afraid we’re in it alone.”

“I sure glad I disagree,” Mamie retorted, her purple turban wobbling as she nodded her head emphatically. But she didn’t bother to argue the point, turning instead back to her work stewing tomatoes for canning.

Clara clamped her lips and turned back to spooning the tomatoes into a mason jar. How could God possibly hear the prayers of every mother, wife, sister, or daughter crying out to Him on behalf of a soldier? Providence had surely turned away, unable to watch as the people He created slaughtered one another by the thousands.

Of all the bloody battles the Civil War had seen, the battle at Gettysburg had been the bloodiest. The Union had claimed it as a victory, but with the ever rising toll of the dead and wounded, there was no glory to be found in it.

Every day the casualty list grew as the reports trickled in from the front. It had taken days for the wounded Federals to be collected and cared for, and the abandoned Rebels still waited their turn. Those not killed by cannon or gunfire were dying of thirst, blood loss, and infection. The dead were buried in shallow graves, the great number of corpses rotting in the sun necessitating the haste of this unpleasant task.

Jeremiah’s name had not appeared in the paper, but that was little assurance when so many injured were still being found, and the identity of many deceased would remain forever unknown. Clara couldn’t explain it, and she didn’t even try, but she knew her husband had been present at the battle and was wounded there.

As the hours of the night grew long, Clara’s eyes finally grew heavy. She waited until she could barely carry herself up the stairs to fall into bed, grateful for a brief escape from the suffocating black cloud of foreboding that pressed in on her.

Morning came too quickly, and Clara dragged herself wearily from the comforting oblivion to meet another day. Her mind was numb with exhaustion and she fumbled through her morning routine in a trance. The sunlight streaming through the muslin curtains told her she had already slept longer than she should have, and she felt a twinge of guilt as she rushed down the stairs.

The sound of a man’s voice in the parlor brought her to a halt, heart thumping wildly against her ribs. Despite the warmth of the day, she could feel the blood draining from her face and her fingertips felt cold as ice.

“She hasn’t come down yet. I’m afraid she isn’t going to take it very well,” Francis replied, an edge of pain layering his words.

“I’ll wait so we can give her the news together,” her father’s somber voice replied.

Clara closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before she squared her shoulders and willed her feet to propel her forward. She dreaded hearing the words, but the truth would find her sooner or later.

She entered the parlor as if she was facing a firing squad, determined to meet the pain with as much dignity and courage as she could muster. Her father stood rigidly by the window, a newspaper crumpled in his hands. Francis sat in the armchair as if he had collapsed there, shoulders stooped and face drawn.

“What’s happened to Jeremiah?” Clara demanded in a quiet, steady voice.

The men’s gaze met, then shifted slowly back to her. It was her father who answered, “He’s been wounded at Gettysburg.”

Clara’s breath left her lungs in a rush. At least he was still alive, or had been at the time the information was released to the paper. Instead of the tears they expected, Clara lifted her chin stubbornly as she announced, “I’m going to be with him.”

“No you most certainly are not!” Francis insisted, coming to his feet.

“Absolutely not,” her father shouted, almost simultaneously.

Clara couldn’t explain the calmness she felt, and she had no idea where this certainty came from. But one thing she knew, she needed to go to her husband. And she would.

“The battlefield is no place for a lady,” her father lowered his voice, laying a hand gently upon her arm. “I know you are worried for him, but it would be better for you to wait here and let the medics and nurses attend to him.”

“I am going to Gettysburg,” she repeated with a softness underscored by steely determination.

“Jeremiah wouldn’t want you to go,” Francis countered, compassion evident in his blue eyes even though the words were gruffly spoken. “There’s dead and dying everywhere, Clara! You aren’t prepared for what you’ll find there.”

For a brief second, Clara hesitated. Her mind had no images to conjure of what the aftermath of a battle would look like. She admitted to herself that she wasn’t prepared for the reality of it. But that awareness didn’t diminish her resolve in the slightest.

“Just the same, I have to go,” she explained to her father and her father-in-law, searching first one face and then the other for some indication of understanding. She glimpsed a hint of wavering in George’s eyes and narrowed in on it. “I need to be with him, Father. I’ll face whatever I have to.”

“Sir?” a voice interrupted behind them. Clara turned to see Phoebe standing in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her aproned skirt.

“What is it?” Francis asked.

“I go with her, sir. I take care of Missus Clara,” the Negro woman offered, her mahogany features carved with fierce loyalty.

Clara let her gratitude shine in her eyes.

But Francis huffed irritably. “I’m not sending two women off to the devil’s playground alone!”

“What if my Henry go?” Phoebe persisted.

“I don’t—“ Francis began, but was interrupted as George stepped forward.

“Will he swear to her safety?”

“You can trust my Henry,” the slave woman affirmed confidently.

Spinning to face her father, Francis erupted, “You can’t mean to let her go?”

There was sadness and regret in George’s expression as he studied Clara’s pale face, chin tilted obstinately. “If that is what she needs…” his voice trailed off, and Clara suspected he was thinking of Jane’s loss and the way it had defined her.

Clara stepped forward and clutched her father’s hand. “Thank you,” she blinked back tears. Turning to Phoebe, she whispered, “And thank you.”

~

Jeremiah blinked. He felt as if he were drowning in a gray ocean of oblivion. From a distance, he could hear voices, but they were too remote and far away to grasp what was being said or by whom. He blinked again, trying to break free from the intoxicating void which held him captive.

As his surroundings slowly came into focus, Jeremiah realized he was in a dining room. An oval oak table had been pushed back against the window, and its chairs were nowhere to be seen. A painting hung on the wall opposite him above a fireplace mantle, depicting a stone farmhouse which he presumed was the one where he currently resided.

On either side of him, the walls were lined with cots upon which rested men in various stages of recovery. Some slept, others stared vacantly at the ceiling, while still others groaned in misery. On arms, legs, chest or head, each of them were dressed in medical bandages.

The buzzing of a mosquito in his left ear prompted Jeremiah to raise his hand to shoo it away. But the movement triggered a strange and terrible pain. He stared in disgust and horror at the blood-soaked linens binding the rounded stump where his arm abruptly ended just below the wrist. Tingling nerves sent sensations, cold and hot, shooting up to his elbow. His arm fell back upon the cot as Jeremiah closed his eyes, assaulted by a barrage of memories.

Charlie had shot him. Intentionally.

Cullen, Westbrook, and many others were dead.

The soldier next to him moaned and Jeremiah commiserated with the feeling. Far worse than the physical pain was the mental anguish they all must learn to live with. It could not be numbed with morphine, dulled with cloroform, or severed like a damaged appendage. This deep and penetrating ache would be carried with them for the rest of their lives.

Amputee. The word reverberated through Jeremiah’s mind. His thoughts spun and whirled, moving from the gun smoke of Culp’s Hill to the red-stained apron of the surgeon standing over him, and back to the remorse in Charlie’s eyes.

He forced himself to look once more at the absence of his hand. It was strange to see nothing where once his fingers had stretched and opened, to find only a cloth wrapping the pathetic nub between wrist and elbow. A cone shaped towel had been placed over his nose and mouth, smelling faintly of chemicals, and Jeremiah had fallen into a cloroform-induced sleep which had spared him the awareness of the knife piercing his flesh and the saw cutting through bone.

That phantom hand dangling limply from the bucket covered over with a crimson towel floated to his consciousness, and Jeremiah felt a wave of nausea as he imagined his own severed hand flung casually on top of it.

How would he ever wield a hoe, drive a plough, or complete the other tasks required on the farm with only one hand? He was disabled, disfigured, and disgraced. What would Clara think of him?

Clenching his teeth, Jeremiah cursed the tear that seeped from the corner of his eye. How could his own brother have done this to him?

“Now here’s a familiar face!” the voice of Chaplain Davies interrupted Jeremiah’s internal dialogue.

Placing a hand on his shoulder, Davies leaned against the edge of the cot. “How are you, son?” he asked gently.

Jeremiah felt humiliated. He forced his voice to come out evenly as he answered, “I’m all right, Chaplain. How are you holding up?”

“I’ve been better,” Davies admitted. Exhaustion and heartache were etched in the lines of his face.

“Cullen’s gone,” Jeremiah told him, although he assumed the chaplain already knew. “And Westbrook.”

Davies nodded.

“What about Phillips?” Jeremiah wondered.

“He’s upstairs. He took a hit in the shoulder, and would’ve been a lot better off if he could have had immediate care. But I think he’ll pull through just fine. Bullet went straight through.”

Jeremiah let out a sigh of relief, grateful that Phillips had survived. The image of Cullen’s smooth, pink face under a film of gunpowder, eyes wide with disbelief in his dying moments, would haunt Jeremiah forever.

“Did you write Cullen’s mother and sweetheart?” he dragged his right hand across his face, unable to imagine the scope of grief that would grip the nation from the losses suffered at this one battle.

“I did.”

“Was he… did they…” he struggled to push the words past his lips, “bury him?” The road had been lined with piles of decomposing corpses. He hoped that the young man had at least been spared the indignity of decaying in the full sun, exposed to carrion eaters of all kinds.

“He has,” Davies’ eyes glistened with tears as he nodded. “It wasn’t much of a burial, but he is under the ground.” He reached for Jeremiah’s hand.

Jeremiah gripped it tightly. “This is worse than anything I could have imagined,” he whispered. “We were so naïve, all of us. There is nothing noble—nothing honorable—about war.”

The old man ran a hand through what was left of his white hair. He thumbed a tear from his eye, then sighed. “I wish I knew what to say. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.” He shook his head, lips quivering.

Jeremiah pushed himself onto his elbows, intending to scoot back against the pillows into a sitting position, propped against the wall. But the surgery had taken more out of him than he realized, and weakness flooded him. The sensitive stump would not tolerate even the faintest pressure, and when bumped against the mattress, needle-like pain ripped through his arm. Stifling the urge to cry out, Jeremiah compressed his lips into a hard, angry line.

Davies moved beside him, helping to manage Jeremiah’s weight as he shifted into an upright posture. The heat of shame flushed Jeremiah’s cheeks at his helplessness.

Raising his bandaged arm in the air, he pointed the stump at Davies as he spat, “Charlie did this to me! My own brother!” The words cut through the air, the sharpness of their reality piercing Jeremiah’s heart once again.

The chaplain’s eyes grew wide. “You’re sure?”

“As sure as I’m Jeremiah Turner,” he ground out bitterly.

Davies eased his small frame down onto the edge of the cot, bowing his head. “I’m so sorry, son. So sorry. This war has turned everything upside down. We’ve brought hell to earth.”

“There’s no way to undo what’s been done. This country will never be united again, no matter who wins the war,” Jeremiah predicted wearily, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes.

“I’m afraid you might be right,” Davies admitted regretfully. “This war defies understanding. We’re not fighting the British or the French, strangers with strange ways. We’re fighting one another—family, friends, neighbors… There’s a story going around about a soldier killed there on Culp’s hill. His cousin owned that hill, and he played there as a child. His name was Wesley Culp and he was a Rebel.

“When he died, Wesley was carrying a note given to him by an injured Union soldier, a long-time friend, Jack Skelly. Jack feared he would die and wanted to send one last letter to his fiancée, Jennie Wade. But she was killed in a home she had fled to for safety when a bullet penetrated the house. By the time the battle ended, all three of these friends—Union, Rebel and civilian, were dead.” Davies shook his head sadly. “All this killing. It’s such a waste of human life.”

“And limbs,” Jeremiah added dejectedly, the miserable nub of his arm resting uselessly in his lap.