My Vicksburg (5 page)

"You all must have a fearful number of dogs in this town," Robert said at breakfast the next morning.

"What makes you say that?" Mama asked.

"'Cause every time a shell bursts the dogs all send up a god-awful howl. Seems they're the only ones who have any sense."

"Did they keep you awake last night?" Mama pushed.

"No, ma'am. I got plenty else to keep me awake."

He was a handsome man, now that I had a chance to really take his measure. His serious manner gave him an appearance of dignity as much as the mustache and goatee he wore. I imagined the piercing blue eyes could smile if they chose to.

"Claire Louise, eat your breakfast if you want to come back to the house with me later," Landon said quietly.

I gasped. "Can I?" I looked at Mama. "Mama, can I?"

"If you eat and mind yourself," she said. "It'll be a
good chance for you and Landon to catch up with each other. Sometimes I think what you need around here, Claire Louise, is your older brother to keep you in line."

Landon grinned. I stuck my tongue out at him. "I'd go along, but I'm sorry to say I'm too weak to make the trip," Robert apologized.

"You are going back to bed," Landon told him firmly, "until I figure out just what kind of fever you have. It's not like the children's, that I know. Ma, which hospital do you help out with on occasion? The one for the really wounded who need amputations? Or the one for the sick who can go back to serve?"

"The badly wounded," she said. "That's where Dr. Balfour is."

"I'd like to see him this morning."

"Oh, good. Here, let me pen him a note and invite him to tea someday. We mustn't stop being civilized just because we live in a cave."

She laughed at her own joke, Mama did, as she went over to her ladies' desk in the corner and wrote the note. Before she had finished, the shelling stopped. We all knew it meant the Yankee artillery were taking time for breakfast. Eight o'clock.

"I don't know when we'll be back," Landon said. He kissed Mama on the cheek. "We may have to stay until the noon cease-fire. If that happens, don't worry. C'mon, Claire Louise. Robert, get back to bed. James, mind Ma."

"Why can't I go?" James put in. "Sammy will be good."

"You and Sammy take a walk with Ma now. You've got near an hour. And don't be a pest to Robert."

Soon as we started walking away from the cave, people began coming out of their "rat holes," as they were beginning to call them, for some air. We couldn't walk very far before they spotted Landon, came up to him, shook his hand, and asked him what Grant intended to do. "Do you think he'll take the town, Dr. Corbet?" came the question.

And, "Do you know where your pa is?"

And, "How's your mama? Give her our best."

And, "You seeing patients in your pa's surgery at all?"

Landon was polite and courteous to all of them. The Yankee uniform mattered not a bit. Folks considered him one of their own.

"How is the food holding out, Claire Louise? Tell me what you know about it."

"We brought with us a half barrel of flour and sugar each," I told him, "same with cornmeal, three sides of bacon, two smoked hams, some containers of coffee and tea, sugar, and eggs. About every other day Andy sends down two quarts of milk from Buttercup, the cow from home. We have enough."

"When I told Mr. Bullock before that I didn't know what Grant was intending, I was lying, Claire Louise. He intends to take Vicksburg. The devils all left hell, you see, and they're here. You all are going to live in that cave a long time. Grant doesn't know the meaning of the word
'lose.' And the people in this town are too god-awful proud to surrender."

I did not answer. I did not quite understand, though I sensed something terrible in his voice.

"I'm thinking, the Rebs must have army stores. One of these days Robert is going to do us a good turn. Dress up in his uniform and secure us some provisions. He just can't make his presence known right now. He has to stay secluded."

"Why?"

He gave a deep sigh. "Because he's a wanted man by his own army. If he's caught, they'll shoot him. That's all I can say right now. Don't ask me anything else."

He gave me the small yellow flag to carry. We walked in silence for a minute. It was more than silence on my part. I was struck dumb.

"Don't tell Ma any of this," he said.

I promised I wouldn't. What had Robert done? No wonder his eyes looked haunted, like he knew every sin of the world. I looked at my brother as we walked up a hill and toward a tented hospital, and I wondered how he could keep the secrets of so many people and not burst like a Parrott shell inside.

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. Bal-four 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 Lan-don. "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.

We stopped at our house on the way home, joyous to find it had not yet been shelled or destroyed in any way. Landon said he thought Mama ought to offer it for a residence hospital, that he'd talk to her about it.

Andy and Clothilda were there, and since the shelling had commenced Landon said we should go into the cellar to wait it out.

"No," I said, "not the cellar."

He had taken a letter out of his pocket. I'd seen Dr. Balfour give it to him, heard him say that the Confederate dispatch rider had been through this morning, asking him to find Dr. Corbet. Landon was reading the soiled and wrinkled envelope, not looking at me.

"What do you mean 'not the cellar'?"

"I'm afraid of the cellar."

He sighed, stuffed the envelope back in his coat pocket, and gave me his full attention. "You mean you still haven't gotten over that nonsense?"

I blushed. "No."

"Well, maybe a day and a night down there would cure you of it then."

I bit my bottom lip. "Please, Landon."

He took pity on me. His voice went kind. "Look, I'll go with you. We'll stay until the shelling stops. I'll have Clothilda bring us some food, and I promise I won't leave you. How's that?"

I said all right. Hesitantly. I followed him down, trying to ignore the shadows and the dark corners that had so terrorized my childhood. As soon as we had found some old blankets and settled on the floor, Landon opened and reread the letter.

Shells burst outside, Porter's shells from the river.

"I've been reassigned," Landon said. "To the division hospital at Milliken's Bend, close by. Grant wants to make it a hospital for the slightly injured who can be made well quickly so they can go back into the field as replacements. The Sanitary Commission has brought three boats of supplies and doctors and nurses down the river to get started. I report by the beginning of July."

He looked at me. "At least I won't be far from home. I can still keep an eye on you," he teased, but I sensed there was some sadness in his demeanor. And then I thought of something.

"What of Robert?" I said.

He shrugged, and looked terrible sad. "I have to figure out what to do with him before then," he said quietly. "Just make up my mind and do it."