Chapter Forty-two

Every day, the vigil changed over Shadrach’s body. Isabel and her uncle switched at noon, crossing each other on the stairs, their bodies swollen with lack of sleep, eyes meeting, locking, looking away. In the anxiety over his wife and son, Uncle George no longer paid much attention to his niece. He spoke to Bel only of deliberate things, asking her how well the hospital was supplied with bandages, how many wounded had come in that day, how long her aunt had stayed awake. He bowed his head like a penitent as soon as he passed her.

Upon reaching the ward, George would raise his chin, stride in, and shut the window behind his son, scaring the sparrows that gathered on the sill. The once-handsome man insisted on watching Louis, the invalid nurse, change the dressing. He did not flinch at the sight of Shadrach, but peered with tender interest at where the fire had melted his son’s skin against his ribs and shoulders. He lightly touched the white dust that bloomed over it and the flecks of soot that were buried in the soldier’s cheek. Shadrach’s empty eye socket shone back at them, a yellowed cave of pus. The boy was beyond the ugliness of the maimed, who peopled the ward like a new race, the slow shufflers and awkward lifters, their skin knit back together by the amateur hand of man. He was just a shell for the little spirit left in him, hollow and cool to the touch.

On the morning that Shadrach woke and spoke to his cousin, the Canadian’s rough hands finally stopped trembling. He understood that Isabel’s uncle tolerated his presence because he had saved his son. He understood that his place had been carved by his rescuing, that as long as he continued to save the boy, this slot remained for him. Consequently, he had quailed at the daily changing of the dressing as a student who dreads a test he knows he’ll fail. Shadrach’s father was a firm believer in work’s ability to elevate the worker, however, and he observed Louis with grudging praise, day after day. For a while, they both believed in Shadrach’s recovery, cracked jokes, and spoke to the sleeping soldier about his imminent return to Allenton. But on that afternoon, the invalid nurse knew the patient would never see his home again. When he lifted the bandages, he noticed immediately that the skin that had once tightened to a raw pink sheen was loose, giving way to dark patches of gangrene.

“Tell me again how you saved him,” the father said in a hoarse whisper as Louis heaped the used bandages in an old chamber pot. This was their other conversation, repeated over and over. The man knew the story so well, he would interrupt like a child who guesses what is coming on the next page but must hear it all anyway, this tale he knows the end to.

“He was lying in the creek bed with his face down—”

“Before that—”

“The fires?”

“Yes, the fires.”

“The captains left alive thought no one could survive the fires that swept through the trees. The flame was high and bright and we heard the men screaming as they died.”

“But my son—”

“But your son was lying in a creek bed with another body beside him—”

“And the body—”

“And the other body was burned beyond recognition. I thought it was his sergeant, but they found him a mile away, shot through the head. I don’t know who it was. Some say a contraband, others—”

“Someone saved my son.”

“Someone saved him,” Louis repeated bitterly, changing the story because he was tired of the father’s wish for the savior to remain unknown and therefore grander in gesture. “I saved him. He was half-buried when I found him. I carried him from the forest, and when no ambulances came, I carried him farther, until I could find a train to take us—”

He laid the fresh bandages across the seamed skin of Shadrach’s ribs.

“Someone saved my son,” continued the father. “A man who respected him. And you will stay as long as he stays.” This was a command not to remain. The nurse met the father’s eyes across the deflated body.

“As long as we both shall live,” he said.

“Do you love her? Then go when this—” He gestured to the body but did not finish. Shadrach slept peacefully on the cheek that was not burned. Louis refused to answer.

“A man like me can reward you in many ways,” the father said, threatening, his voice the low growl of a dog that knows it will be beaten but fights anyway. “What do you need?”

“A chance,” said Louis, starting in on the face. He gently peeled off the bandages, revealing the featureless gap between the patient’s eye and mouth, the nose sunk to a black coil. The father sucked in his breath.

“What else?” he said. The smell of the body was terrifying and rich.

“Another,” said Louis.