The Widow of the South (5 page)

It was too late to worry about such things.

“Yes. I am Mrs. McGavock.”

I stepped out onto the porch and stood before him, my eyes clear and watery, my hands clasped before me.

He watched me closely, as if I might at any moment crumple into dust.

“Ma’am, my name is General Nathan Forrest. I’m sorry to make a fuss while you tryin’ to rest, but it can’t be helped. I wish to God it could. We’s using your porch to inspect the field before the fighting begins. Goin’ to be a fight around here later, no mistake. If I was guessin’, I’d say the fighting ain’t goin’ to happen right here, but it goin’ to be close by, maybe from around the river to the town. That’s where the enemy has his works. There goin’ to be men passing through this way, and the fighting may come this far.”

“Why here?”

I surprised myself. I hadn’t meant to engage the man in conversation, this General Forrest, but the idea had worked its way up and out of my mouth before I thought much about it. I looked past Forrest to my garden, where magpies were picking at stems and seeds with their black bills. I moved gently back a step, not wanting to have Forrest approach too close.

“This is where the Yankees at today. Tomorrow, maybe they’ll be some other place. But today they right here.”

“What do they want with us? It’s such a little town.”

“They probably don’t want nothing. They want us to go away and die, I reckon. They goin’ to be many men hurt today. We need a field hospital. Your house would work well.”

I thought he was talking hypothetically, simply making an observation. I warmed to him. I liked the thought of someone else seeing something of value in our old crazy house.

“I suppose it would, General Forrest.”

“Then you would agree.”

Now I was confused.

“I’m sorry. I do believe I’ve misunderstood you.”

Forrest’s face set hard, and I saw color rise in his sharp cheeks.

“We may need your house for a hospital. I’m sorry to be in a hurry, ma’am, but I need to know if you’ll agree, right now.”

A hospital? This was no hospital. Every creaking floorboard, every repetition of curve and line in the wallpaper, every mildewy smell wafting down from the attic—they weren’t to be disturbed. Couldn’t he see that?

“I don’t know how we could possibly be a hospital.”

“Your floor and your roof make it possible, ma’am. Nice and comfortable in here.”

I could not imagine what war would look like and what the wounded and dying would sound like. Where would we put them?
This place has never been a good hospital. Everything dies.
I knew this man on the porch was strong. I could see in the way he stood—straddle-legged and solid—that he wasn’t used to being told no.

“Ma’am, I don’t want to be rude. Your house is in a good spot. It’s close enough to the battlefield, but it ain’t too close. You can see it from miles off. If I decide so, it’s goin’ to be a hospital today, and we’re goin’ to send our wounded to this place. Now, I understand that your man ain’t here and that this might be coming as a shock to you, so I will ride around to see if I can find us another house that might work for us. I will send word to you either way. But if I decide it’s goin’ to be your house, you got to get ready.”

I wished I’d never come out of Martha’s room. I wished I had locked the door and stayed behind it. How dare he come into my home and order me around? I looked straight into his eyes, trying to divine the meaning of this burden he was proposing to lift onto me. I saw a man who knew more than he was telling. His eyes pleaded while the rest of his body straightened to its full height and shaded me from the sun. I wondered why he even bothered to ask my permission.

“Then I suppose we will have to make do if it comes to that. I will tell my husband when he returns.”

Forrest looked like he was going to say something else, but stopped.

“Expect a messenger from me shortly. Probably Lieutenant Cowan right there. If the hospital goin’ to be at your house, then he will stay to help with arrangements and organization.”

“As you wish.”

I wondered what we would use for bandages, for supplies.
Surgery
.

5

N
OVEMBER
30, 1864: M
IDMORNING

F
orrest had second thoughts. He worried about his plan for the woman and the nigra, fearing they might not be capable. He had no idea what exactly had happened to the woman shrouded in black standing there on the porch, but he knew that something was clinging to her and wringing her dry. He had seen such haunted faces in Mississippi, western Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, widows and orphans chopping at the soil with broken hoes or running ahead of the invasion in their fancy carriages. Same face. There was a time when he’d brought relief to such people, or at least hope, and their faces had cracked open and smiled. But now he knew he only brought more fear. He had the stink of death on him, and it was too late to do anything about it. But this woman who stood in front of him, with her long, heavy bombazine dress and necklace of black beads and her large, clear eyes and chalky skin, with her cramped smile which suggested she expected the worst—this woman made him think of his own wife in Mississippi and how he had neglected her during the years of chasing Yankees. He wondered if she looked as worn out as this one, who couldn’t be much older than thirty. He wanted to go home more than anything at that moment, to run away from such women. He swallowed that thought and tried to forget it. There was no running.

He removed his hat and nodded at the lieutenant as he passed toward the end of the porch to look at the battlefield
. Take a look at that shit and come up with a plan, for once
, he thought. He glared at him and turned to the young woman. She made him wish he had a cleaner shirt.

She resisted his plan for her house and tried to engage him in a conversation about war and battle. How many such conversations had he suffered through? Thousands maybe. He had no more time for it. He might someday have to flap his gums again about the war, but at the moment he was too busy fighting it. He’d already spent too much time at the house. There was something attractive about the place that had made him linger. In another time he might have stayed awhile, but who knew when such a thing would be possible again? He had to move on.

Lieutenant Cowan returned to stand by Forrest, visibly pale and wild-eyed. Forrest smiled the briefest smile, knowing what the man had seen and appreciating his discomfort. He had seen the Federal works and Fort Granger and the remains of a grove and cleared fields strewn at the feet of the battlements for miles around. Open country. His army might as well just shoot themselves, Forrest thought. The two of them walked off the porch, through the bedroom, down the stairs, and out the front door. It wasn’t until they reached the horses that the lieutenant said a word.

“Damn.”

The troop mounted up and rode off. They’d ridden for about a mile before Forrest turned to Cowan. He’d put his slouch hat back on, and this time it was pulled down so tight his eyes disappeared in the darkness. He talked low so the others wouldn’t hear.

“Now, what I want you to do, Cowan, is ride out to Hood’s headquarters and get the word passed that this here house, Carnton or whatever the hell they want to call it, that it’s goin’ to be a hospital. I reckon we goin’ to need too many hospitals today, but this one’ll get us started. Make sure they send out messengers with the word, don’t just tell his shitheel staff. Then I want you to ride back to that house and tell the woman that General Forrest, upon much reckoning and reflecting and what all—you make it fancy—that General Forrest has decided that the house will be used as a field hospital for the good of the cause. You make sure that goddamn place is a hospital where a man can go to die comfortable. And if it ain’t like that, I’ma come for you. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, git.”

“Yes, sir.”

All the while Cowan rode, and all the time he was talking with Hood’s people, he wondered why Forrest had chosen to spare him for hospital duty. For surely they were going to die that day.
The old man wants a nice comfortable hospital because he sees himself ending up there today,
Cowan thought. He mistrusted the motives of most men, but toward Forrest he could never muster too much animosity. The general had saved their necks any number of times, and they all owed him that. But Cowan simply liked Forrest, liked that the man could make every word out of his mouth sound homely, profound, and vaguely threatening all at once. He wouldn’t begrudge Forrest a warm place to die. And he vowed never to forget that he himself had been spared, and by whom. Lieutenant Cowan was not a courageous man, and he did not care to be. He preferred to be alive, whatever the circumstances.

When he returned to Carnton, he rode right up to the front door and dismounted his gray horse. He walked around the side of the house to take stock of the grounds—he knew they wouldn’t be able to fit all the wounded and dying in the house—and around the back he saw a little dark-haired girl in a gingham dress playing with a hoop, which she rolled down the mowed walkway until it gained speed and got away from her, finally crashing into the tall, dead grass that surrounded a little cemetery plot. He stopped. She was lovely and clean and happy.
That is the most beautiful girl in the world,
Cowan thought. The girl drove off all memory of the whores he’d been with in Atlanta, all rouge and stink and sharp tongues.
Pure, pure, pure,
he thought, looking at the girl. And then he thought,
You’re a sick bastard,
and walked past her to the back steps. The nigra servant was standing there, watching him. He called up to her.

“I’d like to speak with Mrs. McGavock.”

“I keep telling y’all she indisposed, and y’all don’t listen. Now she asleep.”

Cowan was afraid of nigger women; they always seemed like they knew something you didn’t, and so he didn’t rise to her bait.

“Well, then, will you please tell Mrs. McGavock that General Forrest sends his apologies and that he has regretfully concluded that this house is the only suitable structure for a hospital to serve the upcoming battle and that he trusts she will not be too inconvenienced by the intrusion.”

“Inconvenienced?”

The Negress laughed through her nose. Cowan heard the girl banging on the hoop some distance behind him and thought he could hear the swish of her dress. The Negress just turned, walked back in the house, and left the door open. Cowan followed.

6

L
IEUTENANT
N
ATHAN
S
TILES,
104
TH
O
HIO

W
e were digging just as fast as we could with everything we had—bayonets, cups, picks, shovels. I was the commander of my company now, by virtue of the death of the three previous company commanders in the last three months—not much to commend the job, truth be told. But the outfit practically ran itself. You said dig, they dug. You only had to be in one fight to know what a beautiful thing a trench could be. The first minié ball whizzes by your head, and you’re a digging man evermore. But we couldn’t quite figure out why we were supposed to be digging so hard here. It didn’t seem possible that we would fight. I climbed up on top of the cotton gin around which we were digging a trench line and looked out, and I couldn’t see a thing—just open fields for two miles around and those rolling hills we’d stumbled over the night before. Who would fight here? I looked around and saw all the rest of the brigades and companies digging in just as hard as we were, and it looked mighty cozy on our side of things. My little piece of it was right there at the cotton gin, and between us Ohioans and the Indianans and the Illinoisans, we were wrapping a pretty good trench and battlement system right around it. We were a bulge in the line—the colonel called it a salient, but I didn’t go to West Point and learn such fancy words, so it was just a bulge to me—and we were exposed on three sides instead of one. But it was pretty steep coming up the hill toward us, and out front some of the boys from Indiana were cutting down a big spiky hedge and dragging it into place at the bottom of the hill. No one was going to make it up that hill.

I was ready to sleep. Some of the other officers had already found places to rest, up on porches and even in some houses. Someone had found some whiskey, and more than a few men were taking their fill. I couldn’t help thinking that there were rebs in those houses, even if they were hospitable and their women gracious, so I didn’t trust them or their whiskey. I stayed out at the trench line and tried to boil up a cup of coffee. I saw a general stumble down the middle of town, his eyes on fire and spittle flying out of his mouth and sticking in his beard as he cursed a couple messengers about something I couldn’t understand. Those men had come riding up from some units that were way out in front of us on the pike, down the hill a half mile or so. I squinted my eyes hard, and I could see those men out front frantically digging in just like us, maybe harder, like they’d seen something big and terrible. I heard a couple shots, but I didn’t pay it much mind, which I would regret later. I couldn’t figure why those men were out there, but then, I didn’t always understand the stratagems of war, I just did what I was told. I told my men to keep digging, and burned my tongue on my coffee.

I will always remember an odd scene I witnessed a little while before the shots rang out and everything went to hell. I had walked back from the lines a few hundred yards, wandering in and out of occupied houses. I had decided that I actually could use some of that whiskey, but it was now scarce and I had no luck. I don’t know how many pie-eyed, lolly-tongued men told me they were fresh out before I finally realized I wouldn’t be finding any. I was about to turn back after rooting around in one more cellar, located below one of the larger houses just off the town square, when I heard loud voices out in front. There had been some socializing on the front porch, and now it sounded like there was a fight about to break out. It’s odd to think, now, that at that moment just hours before the battle, I was excited to see a fistfight. But I was.

I walked around the front, and what I saw was astounding: a young Confederate officer.
We have taken a prisoner,
I thought. But then it was apparent that he was no prisoner. He sat on his horse glaring down, red-faced and fiery as he tossed errant blond locks from his eyes and spit words down to an older civilian man. The soldier was disheveled like we’d come to expect rebs to look, but he didn’t have that broke-down mien that made you think you were seeing a raggedness that was natural. This was a man used to better things, a better class of man. The Confederate and the old man were having a row, and I had a hard time keeping up with the words they flung at each other. I couldn’t understand what he was doing there, but my fellow officers just looked on goggle-eyed. The old man was bareheaded and dressed in a severe black suit. His iron-gray hair blew about in the warm breeze, and he glared back at the young rebel. I wish I could remember everything they said, but all I really remember is this: the old man telling the younger one he was a fool, and the younger shouting back that the older man was a traitor consorting with the enemy.

At that, the lollygaggers on the porch finally got up their liquor courage, and one of the bigger men stepped down as if he would apprehend the man on the horse. But the old man held up his hand, which was big and flaky and rough like a farmer’s.

“Gentlemen, this man is the only son of a widow,” he said, which seemed to mollify our boys, because the men on the porch just sat back down and shook their heads.

I wanted to say,
I’m the only son of a widow, too,
because it was true and it hadn’t kept me from being shot at yet, but among these men that phrase seemed to mean something. I expect they were Masons or some such. You never really know how men choose to associate themselves, and especially why, until it’s too late to understand or to care.

They let that young rebel go, just like that. I watched him turn his fine chestnut mare around and trot off as if no one would dare stop him, which they didn’t. I felt embarrassed to watch him, and I had a momentary urge to run up and apologize to him for being here, in this place that was so obviously his home. He rode well in the saddle, and that mare kept tossing her head back at him as if to urge him to go faster. They looked like they’d been together a long time. But he kept it slow, and I watched him peer into the windows of the occupied houses as he passed.

After he disappeared out of sight, the men on the porch tried to convince the old man in black to have one more drink with them.

“None of us getting any younger, Mr. Baylor, least of all this whiskey, thank God.”

But he waved them off and bowed his head as if to look intently at his shoes. Then he shoved those big hands in his pockets and walked off, right past the corner of the house where I was standing. He didn’t seem to notice me, and I almost asked him who the hell the rebel was to him, but his face was furrowed and twisted like something was trying to chew his skin right off, and I let it alone. Just when I thought he had passed, he took notice of me and turned for a moment, straightening the front of that black suit and looking at me curiously with the most unusual gray eyes.

“You’re a smart boy,” he said, and then he walked away.

I knew that I had witnessed something I’d rather not have seen.

I wandered back to my unit, suddenly despondent, and not just because I hadn’t found a drink. The streets had become crowded while I was away. Wagons full of Negroes jostled with each other and with the finer carriages of white refugees who wouldn’t make eye contact and wouldn’t yield to the escaping slaves, though they were both fleeing before the same Confederate army. On every wagon hung a collection of pots and pans of varying sizes and conditions, which made quiet music against the wood as the wagons swayed. Slowly the flood of civilians ran toward the north end of town, where the bridge over the Harpeth River was being repaired and reinforced. With a little luck it would soon groan again under the weight of the refugees and the army’s supply wagons. I could hear the distant shouts of quartermasters trying to keep order at the bridge, and I heard the splashes of people who could wait no longer to cross the water. There was singing.
We’ll praise the Lord in heav’n above, roll, Jordan, roll.

When I finally arrived back at the cotton gin, the digging had stopped and my men were standing on their toes at the edge of the entrenchment looking out across the fields that surrounded the town. They stood in various states of stupor and were quiet like they were afraid of being heard or singled out. One new man, Colbert, sat back from the others and was crying into his hat, but the others apparently didn’t notice, they were so mesmerized. (Colbert, I would learn, had just received word of his infant son’s death due to smallpox. He wasn’t just a sniveler. Later he fought well and died quick.) One of our veterans, a short, bandy-legged German named Weiss, stood on top of the cotton gin with his head cocked and his one good eye squinting at something in our front. I joined him, climbing up on bales of cotton until I could get my arm up on the shingle roof and swing my legs over. Soon I stood beside him.

What I saw was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and I wished to never see it again. In the distance the entire Confederate Army of Tennessee stood on line. All of them. We’d been fighting out here in the west, in Alabama and Mississippi and Tennessee, always hemmed in by rivers and forests and tight little winding roads, and I had never thought about what thousands of men would look like if they stood out and faced us. But there they were. They shimmered in the distance, the warming air making them look wavy like a dream, something from another world. There were flags of all sorts snapping in the wind—the red and blue cross on their battle flag, the odd, faded blue and white flags of one of the divisions in the center. Sounds of brass bands, one playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” I wanted them to stay there always, frozen in their splendor. An odd happiness possessed me then, and I can only explain it by saying that I had fought them so long and they had fought so hard I was proud to finally see them in their entirety. I was proud that such an army, a vibrating mass of butternut gray and sharp metal, screeching that strange wail of theirs, was arrayed against me and my men. I was proud that we were worthy of that. And though I knew that not one of them would hesitate to shoot me in the head as I stood there watching with Weiss, who was muttering curses in a strange tongue, I didn’t take it personal. I wished it could all end right there and that the rebels could see themselves as I saw them at that moment. But such things never happen, and such sights are bound to disappear. And so they began to move.

Weiss put his hands to his head and mumbled to himself. “My God, they will fight us here, and they—they will be slaughtered. Butchered, like animals. Stupid, stupid.”

Weiss cursed some more.

“It is not right, no, so stupid. I cannot fire my gun at sheep, no.”

I told Weiss he must, and to get off the goddamned gin.

“I will not shoot sheep,” he said again.

“Keep digging,” I told him.