It was the same dream again. The bad one.
Dan Holmes had told him about the execution. His words had burned themselves into Jed’s brain. And now the dream kept coming back and he could not stop it. He saw the hate on Edward Maxwell’s face as they bound David Strong’s hands behind him and led him out of the jail to the courtyard. There was a wagon standing there. Soldiers drawn up in two lines. An officer. The flag flying from the top of the courthouse, snapping in the fresh morning breeze. Two men to be executed standing alone in the center of the yard. Orders being shouted. The second man was a deserter named Stoddard, who had killed a woman on a farm near Kelly’s Ford and then raped her fourteen year old daughter. He began to whimper when they put the noose around his head.
‘Don’t hang me,’ he whined. ‘For Christ’s sake don’t hang me, Jesus, witness how I repent for what I did, please, please, don’t hang me.’ Over and over, please, please, Jesus, please. And David Strong, who had been silent throughout, spoke his last words as they placed the black hood over his head. His voice was bitter and disdainful.
‘What damned fine company you people give a man to die in!’ he said. And then the soldiers shouted the horses into startled motion, and the two bodies were jerked into space, the nooses twanging tight, tighter, burning, cutting, choking.
And Jed would wake up, bathed in sweat, to find he had kicked his blanket on to the floor and someone was holding him down, Hampson or Herndon or one of the others. He knew the name and the story of every man in the hut by now: Herndon and Mitchell, McMaster and Stern, McElroy, Jordan, Selby, Price, Woodward, Bishop, Nevins, Johnson and McLaughlin, Wortley, Clark, Linton, McHenry, Ganoe, Moskink, Lossing, Weigley, Ropp, Pullen, Henderson, Nicholson, Grant ‘No relation,’ he’d say, showing tobacco-stained teeth). Sixty-four beds crammed into this one makeshift hut, every one of them an amputee. And every one of them had lost not only an arm or a leg or in some cases both legs, but also some other, ineffable part of themselves no surgeon and no medicine would ever replace. A loss of self, a loss of immortality.
There was no more talk of The Cause: that kind of thing was finished. They knew the bitter truth too well. The Federals could lose and lose and lose, yet still they emerged, like Antaeus, stronger than before. Every battle it fought permanently weakened the South. Second Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville: what had they proved, except that, in the end the South could not win the war no matter how many battles it won? We whipped them all, the dying boys said, yet still more come, like dragon’s teeth. What future for any of us? Jed wondered, looking around the hut. The war went on, a gigantic ship plowing through an ocean of blood that was huge and dark and unending. But they were no longer passengers.
October came: rain, colder winds. Jed was able to get out of bed twice daily, and walk up and down the length of the hut, his strength returning slowly. The skies outside were a harder blue: leaves whirled down off the beech trees like snowflakes. And as slowly as his strength came back, Jed was learning, all over again, the things he had learned as a child: how to tie a shoelace, how to fasten your pants, button your shirt. How to live with one hand in a world made for two-handed men. Everything was difficult, and some things you began to believe were impossible.
One night they did not come around with the morphia, and Jed asked the nurse what had happened.
‘You’ve been taken off it,’ he said sternly. ‘That arm of yours has healed up real good. You’re one of the lucky ones. There’s plenty needs morphia a lot worse than you and we ain’t got unlimited supplies, you know.’
With which Jed could hardly argue. Nevertheless the man’s words left him with a vague feeling of unease which grew as the night progressed. His strength left him all at once, like water going out of a tub. He yawned continuously but he could not get to sleep. By four in the morning he was shivering and sweating at the same time and a watery discharge streamed from his eyes and nose which no amount of wiping seemed to stem. He was wracked with cramps until, at dawn, he fell into a restless sleep, tossing and moaning until he shouted himself awake. Great moaning yawns forced his mouth open: he could not in any way control them. He was cold, cold. The pores of his skin were mottled, like the flesh of a goose. Tears streamed from his eyes, mucus from his nose.
‘Come on, Jed, get up out of there!’ someone said, his voice urgent. It was Gerry Hampson.’ Jed, get out of bed, quick!’ Jed tried to swing his legs over the side of the cot but he could not make it. A great contraction rolled through his belly and he threw up explosively, spattering Hampson with bloody vomit. Hampson was yelling now: the doctor came on the run.
Three of them managed to hold Jed down long enough to force something into his mouth. He recognized the sweet-soft taste of morphia. After a few minutes the spasms ceased and he fell back on the bed utterly exhausted.
‘He got the sickness, Doc?’ Hampson asked.
‘Stand back, soldier,’ the doctor said brusquely, ignoring the question. ‘Nurse, resume morphia treatment for this man.’
‘Yes, doctor,’ the nurse said and beckoned one of the other orderlies to come and help change Jed’s bedding. The other men in the hut watched, silent. Poor bastard, he had the sickness.
Half an hour later, shaved and washed by the nurses, Jed was able to sit up in the bed. The doctor who had seen him earlier came in. He was a new one, Jed thought. About twenty-five with a shock of brown hair and gentle, brown eyes. He wore a long, gray smock over civilian clothes. His fingers were long and tapered and he carried a sheaf of documents beneath his arm.
‘Your name is Strong?’ he said to Jed.
‘That’s right.’
‘Any kin to the Culpeper Strongs?’
‘My father … was David Strong of Washington Farm.’
‘Was? He’s dead?’
‘Yes,’ Jed said. ‘Early last August.’
‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’
‘No, I don’t.’ Jed said puzzled.
‘My name is Billy Christman,’ the doctor said. ‘My mother was your aunt, Mary Strong. You’re my cousin, Jed.’
‘It’s … hard to believe. That you would be here, and I … My father hadn’t heard from his sister since they were kids.’
‘She led a wandersome life, my mother.’ Billy Christman said. ‘Her and my father both.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘Mother died in ’37. Cholera. But Pa’s fine, spry as a goat. He’s a doctor in San Francisco. Very Society, although some of his Nob Hill patients would throw a wobbler if they knew where he got his training.’
‘You must tell me about him.’ Jed said. ‘We’ve always wondered—’
‘That can wait,’ Christman said. ‘There’s something much more important to talk about.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘You had a seizure,’ Christman said. ‘Did they tell you what caused it?’
‘No,’ Jed said.
‘What you had was something they call withdrawal symptoms. They’re finding cases of it all over the place. Something in morphia causes an addiction. While you’re getting regular doses there’s no problem. The minute the medication is discontinued, the patient has a seizure. Believe me, they get much worse than the one you had.’
‘Isn’t there any cure?’
‘They’re trying a new treatment,’ Billy Christman went on. ‘Instead of morphia they’re giving heroin. The theory is that the two drugs will cancel each other out and kill the addiction.’
‘And does it?’
Billy Christman regarded him somberly. ‘Jed, if they ever give you that stuff, you’ll be hooked on it. Believe me. I’ve made a study of narcotics. If you don’t break the habit, you’ll have to take drugs for the rest of your life. Now let me ask you something, and think carefully before you answer: what effect does morphia have on you?’
it kills the pain,’ Jed said, it makes me feel … euphoric. As if I was floating.’
‘Any physical reaction?’
‘Give me a for-instance.’
‘A glow in the belly. A thrill all over, almost sexual?’
‘I’d have noticed that,’ Jed said with a grin. ‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Good, good,’ Billy nodded. ‘Current thinking is that opiates only produce a physical response in disordered personalities. As their bodies become accustomed to the drug they find they can no longer obtain the sensation it first caused. The only way they can is to increase the dose – and that way lies perdition.’
‘Well,’ Jed said. ‘I don’t think I’m a psychopath.’
‘That’s a much-abused word, too,’ Billy said. ‘People tend to think of someone with a butcher knife looking for babies to murder. In fact, a truer definition would be that it is someone who’s out of mental equilibrium, at odds with society. Not insane at all.’ He pulled a watch from his pocket and grimaced. ‘I’ve got to go.’ he said. ‘I’ll try to come back tomorrow. As for you, eat, get your strength back. I’m going to try to get you out of here.’
‘How many of the boys have had the sickness, Gerry?’ Jed asked Hampson later that evening.
‘Purt’ near all of us, I’d say,’ Gerry replied. ‘Some real damn bad. You okay now?’
‘Thanks,’ Jed said. He wondered whether to tell Gerry what Billy Christman had told him. That the only way to break the hold of the morphia was to go through the seizure and out the other side. There was no alternative. It was a damned bleak prospect; but the other was even bleaker.
Billy Christman came back the next day carrying clean clothes, some fresh-baked bread and fruit. The shirt felt incredibly clean and luxurious, the woolen pants soft and warm. There was a decent pair of boots, a little battered but serviceable, and a warm pea-jacket.
‘As the lady said when her husband died … ’ Jed said.
‘I know, I know,’ Christman grinned. ‘I feel like a new man.’ He arranged for Jed to be paroled in his care and they walked down to the town from the hill on which the hutments for the wounded stood. South of the town, peaceful and browning-green in the slanting autumn sun, lay the fields and woods over which the great battle had been fought. Way off to the southeast lay Little Round-Top and Big Round-Top, two hills which had been the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting. Cemetery Ridge looked peaceful and undisturbed.
‘It looks all right from here,’ Billy said. ‘It’s a little less pleasant close to.’
They walked past brick shops, wooden houses. Christman told Jed that a man named Wills had bought fifteen acres of the battlefield to set aside as a cemetery for those who had fallen at Gettysburg. There was talk of the President coming down to attend the dedication, maybe give a short speech.
‘I’m hoping by that time, you’ll be long gone, Jed,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get out of that damned place up there before they make you an addict for life!’
‘What about the others?’ Jed asked.
‘What about them?’
‘They’re good men. They deserve as much of a break as I do.’
‘I don’t doubt it for a second,’ Billy said. ‘But you can’t get two or five or ten men paroled to me.’
‘Has anyone tried to get away?’
‘A few. Not many. They’ve usually been caught quite soon, begging for food, or lying in a ditch dying of pneumonia.’
‘What makes you think I can do it?’
‘Because I’m going to help you,’ Billy said.
As they walked, he told Jed about his family. They had lived a wandersome life, all right, Jed thought as the story unfolded. Ike Christman – ‘Doc’ as everyone called him– was a rolling stone. Part-time confidence man, he was a tall, imposing figure of considerable presence, who sported a goatee and a luxuriant moustache which he was fond of stroking. He knew nothing of his own family and was not even sure where he had been born, but it was sometime around 1800. Whenever it was, he was at the head of the line when the charm was handed out.
He met Mary Strong while he was bringing his medicine show through Culpeper, but what Doc had expected to be the painless seduction of a simple country lass behind a haystack, turned into a brawling, noisy marriage – if you could call the ceremony which they went through a marriage – that produced six children. In between the traveling and the children Mary, with her mane of black hair and her lively intelligence, soon figured out that the best way to get a crowd around the wagon was to give them a bit of a show. She taught herself to play the guitar and sang the old songs in a velvet-sweet voice that brought tears to the eyes of even the foulest-mouthed roughneck.
‘She not only knew the words of the songs, she actually knew what they meant,’ Billy said. ‘Anybody can sing a song but very few people can make you see it. My Pa says that when Mama sang “The Ministrel’s Return From the War”, it like to broke your heart.’ After the singing, she’d move among the crowd, selling Doc’s Genuine Kickapoo Indian Elixir, while Doc gave them the spiel. It was a damned good elixir, according to Doc. Nothing in it that would hurt a body like some. Just natural things and a smidgen of wood alcohol to give it a kick.
‘All of us were born in the wagon,’ Billy said. ‘She called us after whatever place we were in. Virginia was the first; she died a-borning. Then there was Carolina, and Tex, for Texas. Washington next, then California. If I’d been born ten days earlier than I was, my name would be Monterey, but when I arrived, Mama didn’t have a decent name handy, so instead I got the name of the traveling preacher who baptized me.’
‘She died of cholera, you said.’
‘I was still a baby. Asiatic cholera, they called it, out on . the plains. Mama and three of the kids died. Caro was real sick but she pulled through. Pa brought us to California. He said it was a coming place and he was right. He tried mining when the Rush was on but he never had that kind of luck. He found that the miners would pay anything for medical treatment; by this time, he’d learned simple things, how to lance a boil, set a broken bone. He set up as a doctor. Nobody seemed to mind. He made a lot of money. I mean a lot. We moved down to San Francisco and became “respectable”. And when the time came, he sent me east to medical school, here in Baltimore. Everyone there was drafted for duty when the casualties started coming in off the battlefield.’
‘And Doc still lives in San Francisco?’
‘He does,’ Billy smiled. ‘In considerable style.’
They walked back up the gentle slope towards the raw, churned ground where the hospital buildings stood. Jed felt better than he had done in a very long time.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Billy said. ‘You’ve got to make your break as soon as possible.’
‘When?’
‘I’ll come for you tomorrow.’ Billy said. ‘We’ll take a ‘walk, just like we did today. Only this time, you won’t come back.’
‘They’ll arrest you for breaking your parole.’
‘Not the way I plan to do it,’ Billy said with a grin. ‘Go on, get back to bed. Rest up as much as you can. And Jed …’ He put a finger to his lips. Jed nodded. He’d thought over what Billy said about telling the others and Billy was right. A group of crippled men in tattered Confederate uniforms trying to walk back to Virginia would be as easy to spot as a spider on a whitewashed wall.
He slept badly that night and rose early, impatient for Billy Christman to come. He arrived shortly after three, carrying a small grip. In it, he said, were extra socks, a warm scarf, a glove, some jerked meat, chocolate.
‘How about a walk?’ he said cheerfully. Jed nodded, unable to trust himself to speak.
‘See you later, Jed.’ Gerry Hampson called as he went out. ‘There’s a game tonight.’ They played penny-ante poker almost non-stop. Jed felt like a traitor as he raised his hand in acknowledgement. I should have told Gerry, he thought. At least Gerry.
He walked down the hill to the town with Billy Christman. Dry leaves skittered along the road in front of the fitful wind. The twin hills to the south looked dark and near: rain coming, Jed thought.
‘Which way will you go?’ Billy said as they turned into Baltimore Street.
‘I’ll take the Emmitsburg Pike. Cross the Potomac at Antietam or Point of Rocks. I’ll have to see. Work my way south down the Shenandoah Valley, I guess. Try to find our army.’ He hated lying to Billy, but thought it the best thing to do. He didn’t think Billy would willingly divulge the information. But there were other ways they could make him talk.
‘That’s a long walk,’ Billy said.
‘I’ve seen barefoot kids do it under a hundred-degree sun,’ Jed said. ‘I’ll make it.’
‘All right,’ Billy said. ‘Now listen to me. You’ve been getting five grains of morphia a day. I’ve mixed you forty grains. You’ve got to taper yourself off as you get stronger. You understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Take five grains the first two days. Then four the next three days. Three the next three. Two grains for four days after that, then one grain on the last day if you still need it. Use the measures on the bottle.’
‘Will I still get withdrawal symptoms?’
‘Some. All we can hope is that they won’t be too bad.’
‘I’ll take my chances. Now, how about you?’
‘That’s easy.’ Billy said. ‘Look in the bag. At the bottom.’ Jed rummaged beneath the clothes and felt the cold solidity of a pistol barrel. Jed peered inside. It was El Gato’s gun.
‘Where did you get it?’ he asked, astonished.
‘They had it with your personal belongings,’ Billy said. ‘I sort of – borrowed it. There’s some ammunition. Not much.’
‘You’re a goddamned wonder, you are!’ Jed said. ‘What do I do now, shoot you?’
‘Perhaps something a shade less drastic,’ Billy grinned. ‘But when we get to the trees, down there along the pike, I want you to give me a good tap on the head with it.’
‘The hell I will.’
‘Jed, don’t be a fool!’ Billy Christman said sharply. ‘We’ve got to make it look good. I can’t go back up there and tell them I let you walk away. We don’t want them to know you’ve got a gun. That only leaves one way to do it.’
Jed nodded slowly. ‘I can’t think of a way to begin thanking you, Billy,’ he said slowly.
‘Then don’t try,’ Billy said. ‘Cousin. Let’s hope we meet again … one day.’
‘Aye,’ Jed said. ‘One day.’
The gun felt very heavy as he took it out of the bag and hefted it. Billy Christman turned around to face the town, half a mile away, and Jed hit him with the barrel of the gun. Billy crumpled at the knees and stretched out on the ground. Blood trickled down the side of his head.
Jed stuck the gun into his belt beneath the pea-jacket, locked the bag and slung it by its strap over his shoulder. Then he set out purposefully down the Emmitsburg Road, a solitary figure moving south. Among the trees he could see the wreckage of the battle, shattered wagons, the gleam of bones, knapsacks moldering in the grass.
By nightfall he was many miles from Gettysburg. He felt glad to be moving again, glad to be filled with purpose. But he wasn’t going south to find Lee’s army. He had lied to his cousin about that. No, Jed was going south to try to find Edward Maxwell. He was going to do it if he had to spend the rest of his life at it.
And then he was going to kill him.