LANDON EXPLAINED to me about the Confederate hospital system, and then about how Pa and Dr. Balfour went way back and how I must always respect Dr. Balfour because he was the most esteemed physician for miles around.
“Even more than Pa?” I asked.
“Not as far as we’re concerned,” he joked. He pulled my hair on the side where it fell to my shoulders. He looked at me long and meaningful, as if he hadn’t seen me in a long time, which he hadn’t, if you discount the last visit home, which had been so fast we scarcely had time to say hello.
“You’re growing up,” he said, as if surprised.
“I keep trying to tell people that.”
“You’re getting so darned pretty it scares me. I meant it when I said yesterday that you’d better start behaving yourself around boys.”
“Pa won’t let me see any boys. Ma, neither. Not alone, anyways.” I blinked my lashes at him. “Do you suppose you can take my side on that when the argument comes up?”
“Shouldn’t be any argument. You behave yourself and start acting like a young lady and I’ll talk to them about it when I get the chance.”
“Oh, thank you, Landon. They always listen to you.” Impulsively, I hugged him, right there in the street.
“Hey,” he said, looking around, somewhat embarrassed. “I have to behave myself in public, too, you know.”
But he smiled and we kept walking. “I need to talk to Balfour,” he said. “Will you be all right in the hospital?”
I nodded.
“Look, maybe I shouldn’t have brought you along. You sure? Some women swoon. Some cry. You won’t embarrass me like that, will you?”
I said no, I wouldn’t. Even though I didn’t know. I was still busy being amazed that Landon could walk through the streets and not be arrested in his Yankee uniform. Or even approached and asked to explain himself. Even with the yellow flag.
“Because of his profession he’ll be allowed to go anywhere,” Mama had said.
People assumed he was on an important mission. As he was, this morning. After all, he was honor bound to treat anyone who was hurt. He’d already told me he’d treated Confederates in his Federal hospital tent, hadn’t he?
Wasn’t he treating Robert?
“A captain from the 3rd Louisiana I met recently,” he was saying, “told me that the hospital population in this town is eight hundred. I think it’s more.”
I was so proud of my brother! So proud that he could fix people, save them from dying, and the minute we went inside the first hospital tent I knew there would be no question of his being a Yankee. The tent was large and filled with rows and rows of cots on which lay our “brave boys,” as Mama called them. At the end of one row of cots was a doctor wearing an apron stained with blood, as if he had just rewrapped a wound. He was aided by a nigra nurse.
All stared at us as we came in. Hands of those on the cot were raised in supplication. One or two of the bodies said, “Water, water.” Others said, “Over here, Doc, I need some morphine, please.”
Another addressed me, “You a nuss, miss? All I need is someone to write to my mama for me. I think I’m dying.”
I backed up a little behind Landon. “You all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s the first five minutes that gets you. Concentrate on the smell of lavender and cologne. Here.” He drew Mama’s note out of his tunic pocket and gave it to me. “When I tell you to go and give it to Dr. Balfour, go.”
We waited a few moments, while the doctor had a patient carefully lifted from the table where he was being treated to his bed. “He’s in blue heaven from the chloroform,” he told them, “but that doesn’t mean you can throw him around. Be careful with him.”
“Go now, while he’s between patients,” Landon said.
I covered the small distance between Dr. Balfour and us in a few strides. He was wiping his face with a rag. He looked at me. “Claire Louise, what is it? Everything all right at your house? Here, what have you got, a note from your mother? Sashee,” he said to the nigra nurse, “I think I’ll take a few minutes. Clean up the table and get me a fresh basin of hot water and soap.” He read the note in a second and looked beyond me and extended his hand. “You don’t need any introduction, son,” he said to Landon. “I’ve known you since you were knee-high.”
The two of them embraced.
“So,” Dr. Balfour said, “your father told me you went and joined the Yanks. Tore him up quite a bit, it did, in the beginning, didn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” Landon answered.
Dr. Balfour found three chairs in a corner and gestured we should sit. “So how’s business with the Yankees these days?”
“I think you hold the record for cutting off a leg in three minutes,” Landon said, “anyways, that’s what Pa told me.”
“You didn’t take your life in your hands and cross Confederate lines to congratulate me on that, did you, Captain?”
“No, sir,” Landon blushed.
But Dr. Balfour knew. “Claire Louise,” he said, “you know that young soldier who asked you to write a letter home for him before?”
“Yessir.”
“Well, if Sashee here gives you pen and paper, how about you do it for him?”
I was shocked. I never would have thought of it. “Can I?” I asked Landon.
“I think it’d be a good idea,” he said softly.
So I went with Sashee, the slim young colored girl, who took me through the lines of cots and found me a chair.
Before I sat down, I looked back at Landon and the doctor. Landon was leaning over in his chair, his elbows on his knees, as if he was confiding in Dr. Balfour. The doctor was listening intently.
And I knew, in those places in your bones where you know such things, that Landon was telling Balfour about Robert. And asking advice about him. It was that serious. Landon was up a tree right now and his conscience was throwing stones at him and he had to figure out how to get down because the tree was soon going to be cut into pieces.
With him in it.
“Claire Louise, this is Bobby Joe,” Sashee said.
We said hello.
He was young, not more than sixteen. He had only one leg, the other long since taken off, and he was here now for his right arm, which had been hit by a minie ball. He was handsome with thick curly brown hair, blue eyes, and a freckled face. “I got to write to my mama,” he said. “She must know I’m still livin’ though I may not be alive much longer. Will you take down my words?”
I said I would, and I did.
His words were polite and concerned. He inquired about everyone in his family. He came from a farm family in Tennessee and he apologized for not being able to carry his weight when he made it home.
“Mama,” he said, “I think that on Judgment Day there’s gonna be such a scramblin’ for arms and legs as you never did see. Why, look at me alone. I’ll have to go to Antietam to get my leg, then back here to Vicksburg for my arm. ’Cause the doctor ain’t seen it yet this mornin’, Mama, but it’s all swollen and red and I’ll likely have to be shed of it. The Lord’ll just have to have patience with me.”
I could scarce see the finishing lines for my tears, which I fought to keep back. And I kissed his forehead when I said good-bye. “You’ll make it, Bobby Joe,” I said as I left him there.
Landon and I both had our spirits on the floor when we left the hospital. Neither one of us asked the other why. I suppose it’s why we get along so well. We respect each other’s feelings.