High Hearts (40 page)

Schecter stepped up to him and slapped him across the face with his snow-white gloves. “I demand satisfaction, sir!”

Kate, livid, pushed between them. She turned her wrath on the handsome Schecter. “Baron, this is unforgivable! Consider the circumstances of Colonel Chatfield’s visit and his last two days. A displacement of decorum is not without understanding!”

Empurpled with rage, Schecter spit. “Decorum? This gentleman, madam, has taken it upon himself to belittle me at every possible opportunity.”

“Perhaps you deserved it!” Kate let him have it.

Alternating between rage and terror that he had precipitously fallen out of favor with Kate, he stammered, “Do you think I fear battle? I, who have the scars to prove otherwise?”

“I think, Baron, that our current war is rather different from those dressed-up affairs you participated in on your empire’s borders.”

A pin could drop, the assembled ladies were so still.

Schecter bowed low before Kate. “Then I shall join General Hill’s staff immediately. I may be many things, Mrs. Vickers, but I do not think a coward is one of them.” He spun on his heel to glare at Henley. “I will have satisfaction, sir, when time permits.”

“Indeed, you shall! Pistols or saber?” Henley couldn’t handle a saber to save his life.

“In view of your years, Colonel, pistol seems only fair.” Schecter bowed to him and stormed out.

Lutie grabbed Henley’s hand. “Honey, he’ll settle his tail feathers. You can approach him then.”

“Approach him?” Henley roared. “I’m going to give him the third eye of prophecy! Isn’t that what your mother used to call that dot she put between her eyes?”

Kate stood behind Lutie. “Baron Schecter’s vanity is offensive in the extreme, but in time I’m sure he will withdraw his outrageous request for a duel.”

“He might, but I won’t. Now, I must be getting on.”

Discreetly the other ladies withdrew from the porch.

Lutie asked, “Did you see Geneva?”

“No, but she’s safe. The cavalry couldn’t operate because the ground was an evil bog.” He sat, suddenly exhausted, on a painted wooden bench. “Lutie, after what I’ve seen yesterday and today, I know our son died a hero. Anyone who stands his ground in that hailstorm of killing fire is a hero. We spawned two warriors.” A weary smile played on his lips.

“Three.”

“What?”

“You, darling. You faced the test unafraid.”

“I faced the test, but I prayed. I was afraid, and I was relatively safe.”

“But you did your duty.” Lutie held his hand.

“I am a Chatfield.”

“And so am I.”

“Four warriors then.” Henley put his arm around his wife, who was now half as muddy as himself.

Kate returned to the porch, the light fading. “Everything is prepared for you, Colonel.” Lutie and Kate walked Henley to his horse.

“That’s not my horse.” Henley was surprised.

“I asked my stable boy to give you one of our horses. We’ll take care of yours. I don’t think the poor animal could have taken another step.” Behind him, clattering over the cobblestones were wagons, carriages, and buckboards.

“Where everybody goin’?” Sin-Sin watched the procession.

“Mr. Henley!” Di-Peachy raced out of the house.

“How are you, my girl?” Henley embraced her, covering her with filth.

“I didn’t know you were here. I was in the back winding bandages. Otherwise I would have come immediately. Are you all right? Should we go out to the battlefield to retrieve the wounded?” One question spilled into another, Di-Peachy was speaking so fast.

“No, don’t. Ambulances are overturning in the mud. The roads are a mess once you get out of the city. You’ll do more good for more people if you stay at your post and let the wounded come to you. Colonel Windsor knows you are here, and he may have already sent back wounded to you. You might get some Yankees, too.”

“Can’t they take their own wounded?” Lutie asked.

“Not all of them. The ones most seriously injured stay with us. I believe Lee will work out an exchange of prisoners over this. I hope so anyway. Thank you again, Mrs. Vickers. Good-bye, Lutie.” He moved off through the din and confusion.

Despite darkness, Geneva, Nash, Banjo, and seventeen men from the regiment picked their way through the fields riding in an arc from Williamsburg Road to Charles City Road. Mars knew the back roads and footpaths. The Federals stopped, moving neither forward nor backward. A series of landings on the James River provided them with a way out if they decided to leave. No one knew what would happen next. If McClellan dumped his army in the lap of the navy, sailing them back to Washington, D.C., it would be the end of his career and the end of the war in this part of the country for at least a year. Even with horrendous losses, McClellan still fielded more men than the Confederacy.

The horses slipped on the soggy ground. The meadows, woods, and swamps choked with the dead. Men carrying torches looked like huge fireflies as they walked over the ground, trying to recover the wounded.

Geneva shuddered at the cries of the suffering. Battle she could take, but it was torture to hear those screams. Every now and then the horror would be punctuated by a single shot. She didn’t know if the search officer compassionately put a hopeless sufferer out of his misery or if he shot a thief. Molesters of the dead scurried among the bodies, vultures of the battlefield. Catholic sisters also walked among the fallen, sometimes bending to give succor, other times making the sign of the cross. Private citizens from Richmond, the fearless ones, also helped the wounded, giving them food and water. The human vultures, upon seeing a sister or a ministering citizen, would crouch and slink away.

Some of the wounded lost their minds. “A ring-tailed ferret, a ring-tailed ferret!” one insane man shouted over and over. Other times Geneva could make out a part of the Lord’s Prayer whispered through cracked and bloody lips.

What frightened her, too, was the sorting system the surgeons used for determining who to help. Those who were certain to survive despite current pain were laid to one side to wait; those who were likely to die no matter what was done
were laid aside to be helped last. But the men whose lives hung in the balance were slapped on the operating tables first. She wondered if she were badly hit would she have the presence of mind to know what group she’d fall into. She could still feel the surgeon’s needle digging in her cheek as he sewed up her face in April. That seemed like a year ago although the bright scar testified that only weeks had passed.

Her horse snorted and danced sideways. He hated stepping on dead humans.

Geneva looked down. “Can’t tell if that’s one of theirs or ours, he’s so caked with mud.”

“I hate the way they stare at you with their eyes wide open. My hair stands up on the back of my neck. I think those glassy eyes reproach me for living,” Nash quietly said.

“Poor devil, whoever he is. He got his quietus.” Banjo placed his hand on his horse’s hindquarters and twisted around to see Nash.

The jingle of sabers and spurs was interrupted only by the pop, pop of pistol fire at disjointed intervals.

“Jesus, save me!” a voice called far from the road.

A torchbearer moved closer to the line. “Hear that one?”

Banjo pointed toward bramble. “There, I think. Night plays tricks on the ears.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant.” The torchbearer, his face shining in the light, walked into the field. Two other men carrying a blanket to use as a stretcher followed him.

As they approached Charles City Road with no sign of the enemy, Captain Sam Wells halted the squadron.

“What in God’s name is that?” Nash exclaimed.

They sat silently and listened to wheels creaking, animals straining to negotiate the terrible roads, and voices, far enough off to be a low stream of sound. Dots of light stretched down the road as far as they could see.

Banjo was the first to figure it out. “It’s the people.”

“Can’t be. Nobody in their right mind would come out in this quagmire.” Nash shook his head.

Sam rode forward. Within fifteen minutes he returned. “Nine Mile Road, Williamsburg Road, and this one, too, are full of people with whatever vehicles they have, coming to claim the wounded and bring them to safety. Fellow I spoke to said that even the gambling parlors, gin mills, and whorehouses are closed down in Screamersville. They’re out here,
too.” He paused for the weight of his words to have their effect. “Let’s go, boys.”

Banjo said in a low voice, “Bless them.”

Nash found himself profoundly affected. “Any nation that can produce such people is worth dying for.”

“Or living for,” Geneva quickly added. She hated it when he spoke of dying. He wasn’t going to die. No one was going to die. When she found her own thoughts becoming morbid, she’d say to herself, Try not to think about it. God took Sumner. That’s sacrifice enough.

At four-thirty in the morning twenty wounded men, most of them from the Twelfth Alabama, arrived at Kate Vickers’s house. The eight women, including Sin-Sin and Di-Peachy, began washing the mud out of their hair and beards, then stripped them and washed their bodies as well. A few weakly protested, but given the circumstances, no one could afford to be modest. Evangelista Settle Egypt refused to touch the “filthy things” as she called them, but she braced herself for duty in the kitchen, a vile step downward.

A few of the men were in terrible pain, and the women had no morphine. Kate quickly dispatched her stable boy to Phoebe Yates Pember at Hospital No. 2 of the Chimborazo Hospital for morphine. The Chimborazo was equipped for forty-six hundred patients, but within hours that number was doubled, and the hospital was running out of all supplies. Lutie, encountering shortages before, told Kate to give brandy to the ones in pain. It would have to do.

One poor devil had part of his face shot away. His right eye was exposed, much of the cheek was gone revealing a smashed cheekbone, and his nose was ripped off his face. His lips
were torn and part of his teeth were smashed. He had no other wounds. If they could keep his facial injuries from festering, he might have a chance. The sight of him was so repulsive that Lutie, after cleaning him, covered his lower face with a large handkerchief.

He motioned for a pen and paper, then wrote: Brittle Smith, Twelfth Alabama. Next of kin is Margarite Hawsley Smith, Mobile. I know I look hideous. Thank you for taking care of me.

Lutie kissed his good cheek, which made him cry, and she forced him to lie down. She lifted the handkerchief, already bloodied, and poured a shot of brandy down his throat, chasing it with cool water. He thanked her by sign, and she moved to the man next to him. He was dead. Without calling attention to it, she motioned for Big Muler to carry the body outside. Several days ago Lutie had taken Muler to the outskirts of Richmond, given him money and papers, and told him to go. He had reappeared at the Vickerses’ that same night. He wouldn’t leave Di-Peachy. Furious as Lutie had been then, she was glad to have him now.

By six-thirty in the morning, every man was clean and as comfortable as possible. Another wagon pulled up in front of the house. Kate walked outside hoping Colonel Windsor would be there. Instead she found another wagonload of wounded. “Sir, we have our share,” she said to the fatigued driver.

“Everyone’s doubling up, ma’am. We got tobacco warehouses full of men.”

“Of course. We’ll make do,” she said. The driver and his assistant, wobbly with exhaustion, began to carry in the wounded.

“Big Muler! Hurry and help these men,” Lutie called.

Hazel Whitmore, hand on her bosom, watched. She had the sinking sensation that Charlottesville had been only a rehearsal.

Kate fed the driver and his helper and gave them food for they were returning immediately to the field hospital. Thomas Freeman was his name; he had a cobbler’s shop on Market Street on Spring Hill. Said he’d started out last night at sunset.

At nine in the morning, the day warming considerably, the women heard the muffled drums of a funeral procession.

“I wish they’d stop,” Rise complained between clenched teeth. “How can we keep up morale with that?”

Another wagon came to the door. “Dear God in heaven,” Miranda whispered. Most of the men in the wagon looked dead. As they were unloaded, a few were discovered to have died during the jolting, punishing journey.

Kate turned to Lutie. “We have no more beds, bunks, or mattresses of any sort.”

“No blankets neither,” Sin-Sin added.

“We can take the cushions off the church pews.” Lutie was forceful.

Kate spun on her heel. “Let’s go!” A light cart was hurriedly hitched, and Lutie drove around the block to the austere and socially correct St. Paul’s.

Kate knocked on the sexton’s door. A haggard gnome of a man answered. He’d been up all night, too. “Mrs. Vickers, enchanting even in the face of misfortune.”

“Mr. Gibson, we are here to relieve you of the pew cushions.” His face registered horror. “We’re out of beds, bunks, mattresses, even blankets. If you can give us old vestments, old anything, we’ll take it.”

“But I must ask permission of Father—”

“There isn’t time to worry about him. Help us, Mr. Gibson.”

“Father John will be most upset.”

“For the love of God, Mr. Gibson, men are dying!” Lutie exploded.

“Yes, yes, I take your point.” The sexton hurried into the church to gather what the women needed, thinking he’d rather face the Yankees than Lutie.

The two-wheeled cart brimmed with long pew cushions, old vestments, and sheets, as Lutie and Kate spun around Grace Street to head down Eighth. As they passed the Catholic church on the corner, a group of ladies known to Kate flagged them down. She explained what she had done, for they too were desperate for supplies.

As Lutie clucked to the horse, one lady, Deborah Castle, said a trifle loudly, “Well, if the Episcopalians can do it, we can do it better!” Within seconds the good ladies were ransacking their church.

“Better, my foot!” growled Lutie.

The Yankees fell back on the roads like sand sliding through an hourglass. Neither army moved toward the other, but McClellan did not evacuate. Reports were that he was digging in and would attempt to capture Richmond sooner or later. Lee, quiet and thoughtful, seemingly everywhere on his horse, was scorned by many of Richmond’s armchair generals and intellectuals before he took over for Johnston.