The Face of Heaven (46 page)

Lyndel stared down at him. Her husband was out in the same brutal rain somewhere. If he was not beyond help—no, she refused to think about that yet—he had been lying on the battlefield for three days. Why was she wasting time here when she needed to be saving him? She detested Hargrove and all he stood for and wished she had never asked Hiram to halt the wagon.

“For the love of God…for the love of Jesus…”

Lyndel bent and put one of his arms over her shoulder. “Can you stand up?”

“Yes, bless you…yes, I believe I can…”

Morganne got his other arm and they helped him to his feet. He staggered the few steps to the ambulance and crawled into the back. Lyndel sat down next to Hiram.

“He needs someone to look at his eyes,” she said. “The sooner the better.”

“The seminary is on our way.”

“It’s much shorter if we go back.”

“Lyndel, your husband is out there.”

She exploded into tears. “I know he’s out there! I know he could be just barely hanging onto life! But we need to help this man! It’s the road to Jericho and we need to help this man! Turn around!”

Lyndel gripped her hands together as they returned to the field hospital behind Cemetery Ridge. She stared straight ahead as Union soldiers helped Nehemiah Hargrove out of the ambulance and into the tent. When Hiram drove the wagon back to the battleground she shook her head.

“Why am I even bothering? I can’t save anyone! I can’t even save the man I love most! Look at the bodies! How many of them are wounded? There’s only a handful of us! It’s hopeless!”

“We save who we can,” Morganne said softly.

“That’s right. I rescue a slave driver while my husband dies! How wonderful is that?”

Hiram moved the wagon forward. “We’re going to Seminary Ridge.”

“Don’t bother,” Lyndel groaned. “It’s been three days. None of his platoon made it to Culp’s Hill. I have been praying day and night for a miracle…what sort of miracle do I expect? That I can still recognize his face and body after three days in the hot sun? Stay here, Hiram. The wounded from Pickett’s charge have a better chance of surviving. Stop the ambulance.”

“We’re going to Seminary Ridge.”

She struck him with her fists. “No! No! I don’t want to see his body! Don’t take me there!”

Morganne grabbed Lyndel’s hands. “He could be alive.”

“Not after all this time!”

“You don’t know.”

“I do know. We both know. You’re just trying to be kind—”

“What is that line of wagons?” Hiram interrupted. “It’s not the army.”

The wagons were traveling the same track they were, the Emmitsburg Road, except they were coming from Gettysburg and heading toward them. Some were carriages. The sort of carriages Lyndel knew well.

How can this be?

“What is the matter?” asked Morganne as Lyndel strained forward to get a better look.

“I think…that man…in the first carriage…”

Suddenly she leaped from the ambulance, stumbled, fell, picked herself up, and ran through the mud and pools of water and the jagged streams of rain. “Papa! Papa!”

The driver of the first carriage reined in, applied the brake, and jumped down into the road. Lyndel threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek again and again. Hiram and Morganne saw that he began to weep as he held Lyndel in his arms.

“My girl—I feared you might have come to harm in the fighting—”

“What are you doing here? Who is with you?”

“Abraham Yoder is here. Adam King is here. Some of the women also came. Your mother is with the children but she sends her love and her prayers.”

“But why? You said you would never come to a battlefield.”

Her father’s face was covered with rain. “
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me…Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
He placed his hand on her cheek. “We have come to bind up the wounds. The army let us through. Now tell us where to begin.”

“Oh Papa, there are so many wounded everywhere. And I can’t find him. I can’t find Nathaniel. I can’t find Levi. Or Joshua.”

“Then we will make a start right here. I will tell our people to find the living and bind their wounds. Where is it they can take the soldiers after they have tended to them?”

Lyndel pointed. “Do you see that brick building on the ridge, Father? It’s a seminary. There are surgeons inside taking care of the wounded.”

“
Gut
.”

The men and women from the Amish church near Elizabethtown began to fan out over the slope of Cemetery Ridge, the women kneeling in their dresses, aprons, capes, and
kapps,
rolls of white cotton in their hands along with Canada wild ginger leaves for poultices, while the men began to carry wounded to the carriages and wagons and carts. Lyndel watched them a moment, feeling a love for them she had suppressed for a long time because of the shunning. Her father put a hand on her shoulder.

“Daughter, I and Mr. King and Pastor Yoder should like to help you find Nathaniel. Do you know if—” He stopped and took a breath. “Do you know if…Levi…and Joshua would have fallen in the same place as him?”

Shops and houses in Gettysburg were full of Union and Confederate wounded but they couldn’t find the young Amish men there. The Lutheran Seminary was also full of men in pain. The blood left her father’s face as he stood in the hall and saw the soldiers twisting and turning in agony on the floor. But Nathaniel wasn’t there nor Levi or Joshua either. Nor any of the platoon. The barricade had long since been emptied of its wounded and only the dead lay quietly in the rain. They began to search the grounds but the grass too only held dead men. The light faded as they walked over Seminary Ridge. Now and then they passed horses, still saddled, standing alone with their backs to the storm.

“Someone should take care of them,” Abraham Yoder said.

“They will,” Lyndel responded.

“They are so attached to humans. So loyal to their masters.” He pointed. “Do you see how that one will not leave her dead rider?”

Lyndel looked at the black mare in the downpour, its reins trailing on the ground, its head bent, now and then cropping grass, pausing to nuzzle the face of a soldier who lay unmoving. She watched for several moments. Then raced over the grass calling out to God and causing the horse to rear and skitter sideways.

“Nathaniel! Nathaniel!”

He didn’t open his eyes but he managed a whisper. “I knew…my nurse would come…I hung on for my nurse…”

Lyndel gently hugged and kissed him while the others slowly gathered behind her. “I’m going to get you up to the seminary—where are you wounded?—here—I have a canteen—please take some water—”

“Libby has kept me alive on grass.” He laughed quietly, his eyes still closed as he sipped water from the canteen she pressed to his mouth. “It was hot…lying here in the sun.”

“I know. But that’s over now, love, it’s done.” She looked at his shattered and swollen right arm. “Who put the tourniquet on?”

“Two Rebs. They argued about it. The one said he wouldn’t do it, that I shouldn’t be here…fighting for the slaves. The other reminded him they had both been baptized…at a revival meeting after Chancellorsville. Would leaving me to bleed to death…be what Jesus would want? So they tied on a pretty good tourniquet. But I know…I’m going to lose my arm.”

“No, darling—”

“Lose my arm or lose my life. I’ve seen enough battlefield casualties.”

“We’re getting you to the surgeons right away.”

He tried to lift his head. “Levi is nearby. And Joshua. Nip. Ham. Take care of them.”

“Of course. I have others with me. They will find them. It’s all right.”

“Are they alive?”

“I don’t know—yes, yes—I’m sure they are—we’re going to move you now—”

“I don’t even know what happened here. Did it matter?”

Lyndel wiped the rain from his eyes with her fingers. “Did what matter?”

“Did their…sacrifice make any difference…do we still have a country?”

But Lyndel couldn’t respond. Her throat tightened and her eyes burned. Abraham Yoder and Adam King had left to hunt for Levi and Joshua, but Hiram and Morganne remained with her. Morganne wrapped Lyndel in her arms as Hiram dropped to one knee by his friend.

“Nathaniel. It’s Hiram.”

“Hiram…ah, Hiram. You would know what happened.”

“I do know. The Army of the Potomac came in the night, Nathaniel, the night you fought to give them. They took the heights. Lee assailed them for two days and could not defeat them. Now he has retreated. You’ve won.”

“I’ve won—”

“You’ve won. Your men have won. The Republic and the slaves have won.”

“Thank God…my boys were so brave…and the Carolina boys coming against them were so brave…I pray we will be one nation…”

“It will come. Even I believe now it will come. Vicksburg will surrender any day now. That will make Grant a hero. I’m certain Lincoln will bring him east no matter what the naysayers do to block him. And Grant will run Lee to ground like a hound does a fox.”

Nathaniel opened his eyes and took Hiram’s hand in a grip like iron. “It mattered…the stand on McPherson’s Ridge and Seminary Ridge…”

Hiram held the grip. “Yes, it mattered. A lot happened in the three days here, Nathaniel. Battles you never saw but I did. The South will never forget Pickett’s charge on Friday. The North will never forget what happened at Little Round Top on Thursday. Both will honor the dead of Devil’s Den and Emmitsburg Road and the peach orchard and the wheat field. And that’s the way it should be. But I will write in my newspaper what I believe—the Battle of Gettysburg was won on the first day. By Buford, by Doubleday and the First Corps, by Howard
and the Eleventh Corps, by cavalry, infantry, and artillery. By the grace of God the Battle of Gettysburg was won on the first day by the Iron Brigade. I will stand by that, my friend.”

Nathaniel released Hiram’s hand as they lifted him from the wet grass. He grimaced. “Thank you…thank you. But…where’s my lady… where’s my bride?”

Lyndel pulled away from Morganne and took Nathaniel’s face in her hands as they carried him. “I’m here, my love. It’s so good to see your green eyes.”

“If I’m sent home after the amputation…your father will not receive me.”

“He will receive you, Nathaniel. He is here now.”

Bishop Keim had Nathaniel by the shoulders. “God bless you, young man.”

“Bishop Keim…I never expected you to be on a battleground…”

“It was God’s will we come to Gettysburg. To bring what healing we could to the wounded and the sick and the lame. Even your father is here.”

“I’m sorry. For the problems we caused. But we had to…we had to fight…”

“The fight is past, Nathaniel. Perhaps it is we who should have forgiven and embraced you. It is we who have sinned in hardening our hearts. But God is the great forgiver. We begin anew. You are wounded. Let us care for you. Let us welcome you home. We wish to welcome home all our sons who felt, before the Lord God Almighty, that they had to wage war against slavery.”

Nathaniel twisted his head and smiled up at Bishop Keim. “Home. I should like that.”

His eyes returned to Lyndel. He reached up for a strand of her red hair and twisted it gently around his finger and his wedding ring, brushing the faint scar on her cheek as he did so. “Tomatoes…you are so beautiful.”

Then his hand fell.

29

“H
e is almost gone. You know that.”

“Yes, Doctor. I know.”

“The amputation may not do any good at this point.”

Lyndel straightened and wiped at her eyes with her fingers. “Please. Try.”