Malcolm trudged down Baltimore Pike, dragging feet that had been in stirrups since daybreak. He’d tethered Midnight just outside town, letting the battle-worn animal munch on grass. It was unlikely there’d be any hay left for the horse in town. Taking the last quarter mile by foot, the sheer will to let Sarah know he’d survived was the only force left in Malcolm’s body.
Sorrow rose like bile in his throat as he thought about the men he’d lost that day. Through the haze of smoke and dust, he’d watched them fall like chess pieces across a board of rolling farmland. He touched his arm where a bullet had marked a clean path through flesh and muscle, nicking vessels but thankfully not hitting bone. The makeshift bandage was soaked with blood. An inch to the left, and he’d have lost the arm for sure. There was no compromise for shattered bone.
As he approached the first houses, he saw the bullet-ridden facades and the trampled gardens that only yesterday had been lush with summer roses. His heart clenched at the thought of Sarah being struck by a stray bullet, but with Caroline’s house on a side street, she and her sister should not have been in immediate danger.
The acrid smell of artillery fire hung in the air, stinging his nostrils, and a thin layer of dust, stirred by passing caissons, grayed over porches that had welcomed visitors with spit-polished shine. The weight of battle that had passed through that day dented the brick streets.
Malcolm walked the three blocks to Caroline’s house surrounded by an eerie silence, punctuated by moans emanating from upstairs windows. His men would not be here in town as their injuries were being treated in field hospitals. But he suspected that most of the homes and businesses throughout Gettysburg were now laden with thousands of soldier casualties. He hoped the civilians had taken to their basements when the Confederates marched through and that no one had been injured.
Before he could knock on Caroline’s door, she rushed out of the house to meet him. “Malcolm, thank God you’re all right.” She squeezed his arm. “But you’re white as a ghost.”
He grimaced. “Careful, sister-in-law. I’m in one piece, but the arm’s a bit sore.” He looked beyond Caroline to the house. “Where’s Sarah?”
“She’s at the High Street school. They’ve turned it into a hospital. As soon as the gunfire stopped, she headed over there with a stack of sheets.”
Malcolm backed down the porch steps. “Isn’t that just like her?”
Carolyn nodded and wiped her hands on her apron. “Wait. I’ve been cooking all day. Take my soda bread with you.” She ran into the house and returned with two baskets filled to the brim with her crusty loaves. “Can you carry a basket on your bad arm?” She proffered both baskets to Malcolm.
“I’ve fired a carbine and reined a horse with it, so I’m sure I can.” Malcolm took both baskets in his good hand, and then transferred one to his injured arm. He staggered.
Caroline rushed forward to grab the basket. “Let’s go there together.”
They walked the two blocks to High Street. Malcolm’s legs tingled with numbness, but he pressed on, anxious to see Sarah. Blood from his wound leeched into his uniform jacket like a scarlet tide. As they approached the red brick school, screams from an upstairs window signaled the unmistakable agony of an amputation.
Caroline faltered. “I don’t know if I can go in. I’ve never been as brave as Sarah.”
“Give me your basket.” Malcolm held out his good arm, and she looped the basket just above his wrist. “Sit down on the steps and take some deep breaths.”
Malcolm pushed open the heavy front door. Three women in the vestibule tore sheets into strips. One of them looked up at Malcolm, registering his blue uniform. “Union soldiers are on the second floor,” she said.
“Does that mean that Confederates are on the first?” he asked.
The woman nodded. “It seems crazy to me that men who’ve been shooting at each other all day should now be united in suffering. That’s the way of war, I suppose.”
Malcolm handed the baskets off and took the stairs two at a time. His arm throbbed, and he had to steady himself on the landing before mounting the last few steps. His eyes scanned the room. A surgeon was sawing on a soldier’s leg in an alcove at the far right. The boy, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, screamed like an Irish banshee. Sarah stood by his head, clutching his hand to her heart. She wore her drab gray riding dress, now spattered with blood.
The scene unfolded: the soldier’s fearful eyes, Sarah’s lips moving with words of comfort, the surgeon’s furrowed brow as he doggedly set to his task. Malcolm stood frozen in admiration of his wife, so young, yet so brave. He wanted to sweep her away from this tragedy, to tell her that all would be well, but the scene here was magnified a hundredfold on the battlefield. The preamble to war may have been glorious, with great expectations, hearts afire, and strains of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” but the reality was hell.
The surgeon finished his amputation, and another soldier would walk on a peg leg for the remainder of his days, providing his stump didn’t become infected or typhoid fever didn’t claim him. He’d mercifully lost consciousness from the trauma of metal on bone, and Sarah mopped his brow and smoothed the hair from his face. She returned his hand to his chest, but not before kissing it. Malcolm was certain she’d said a silent prayer for the soldier, too.
Malcolm shut his eyes and said a prayer as well. When he opened them, Sarah looked up and slowly turned her head toward him, as though they’d prayed in unison. Her eyes grew wide and her hands went to her mouth. She locked her gaze with his and stepped toward him. She reached out, and then stopped. “Please tell me you’re not an apparition.”
A smile curled his lips. “I may be back to haunt you, but I am no ghost.”
She reached up to touch his cheek. “Thank you, Lord.” She closed her eyes, and when she opened them she saw his arm, now soaked with blood. “Oh my darling, you’re injured.” Taking his uninjured arm in hers, she led him to a chair. When he sat, he realized it was the first time he’d done so that day.
“It’s nothing, Sarah.” He started to get back up, but a wave of lightheadedness hit him, and he collapsed back in the chair.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she said, “and that wound could get infected. At least let the doctor have a look at it.”
“I’m fine. “ He struggled to get up, and then the room began spinning and his world went black.