"My mother didn"t want me to enlist." The boy had become confessional. Mary didn"t like it, didn"t like what it meant.
"I left my mother too," she said.
"You did? You left your mother?"
"Yes."
"Are you sorry for it?" the boy asked.
Mary almost lost focus. Do you want me to go, Mother? As you like.
"The way she looked at me when I was leaving?" the boy said. "Like she"d never forgive me. Now I won"t ever get to see her again."
"I need a surgery kit," Mary cried. "Does no one have a surgery kit?"
The women shook their heads. Not one of them possessed such an exotic thing. The boy"s eyes were beginning to flutter.
Mary was losing him. She was pressing hard, but the artery was still bleeding. This was why she hadn"t wanted to come back. She was easing her agitated sister back down on the bed. Renouncing the hapless doctor and his forceps. Centering the knife just so. Separating the cartilage to save Thomas and Jenny"s child. She could almost recall the heft of the scalpel in her hands, the deep pleasure of locating that notch in Jenny"s pelvis, the release of the bone at the tip of her fingers. The soaring, triumphant feeling that she had done something miraculous. Laudable. Singular.
The matron rushed up and thrust a kit at Mary.
"Here, press hard," Mary said, and when the matron slipped her fingers next to hers, Mary lifted her hand away, and then tore off the boy"s dressing and searched for the failed st.i.tch. She used the long tenaculum to separate the ravaged tissue, found the unraveled st.i.tches, the bleeding artery, inserted the needle, looped the st.i.tch, once, twice, again, and then again, finally formed a knot. She was acting out of memory. She heard someone call her name, but she ignored the call, told the woman to ease the pressure on the artery. Waited, as Stipp had once waited. Waited, until she was certain the suture held.
Reflexively, she put her hand to the boy"s wrist. The pulse, though faint, beat.
Mary stared at her hands, at her skirts glistening with the boy"s blood, a smell and sight as familiar to her as her lost family.
The matron bent low and said, "Well done. Now, come with me." She wrapped an arm around Mary, steered her away to an office, where she helped her out of her stained dress, and for a moment Mary was almost naked, shivering in the August heat. Then the matron swaddled Mary in a blanket.
"Mary, you said your name was?"
"Yes."
The matron pursed her lips. "You are not by any chance the Mary Sutter who worked at the Union Hotel? Miss Dix told me to look out for a nurse who was interested in being a doctor. That isn"t you, is it?"
Ident.i.ty as a question. Mary wondered if her mother would even know her now.
The matron pressed. "I hear she was quite good. Extraordinary, even. That she had a gift."
"No. She wasn"t good at all. She made a lot of mistakes."
"What kind of mistakes?"
"Unforgivable mistakes."
"Mistakes are rarely unforgivable."
"These were." Mary shut her eyes.
"I need you to come back here tomorrow and work," the matron said. "Will you?"
Come home. I need you. Mary looked up. If only, if only. Time the terrible trick. Find your way through the black shadow of the past. And if you failed to s.n.a.t.c.h life from death for Jenny, you must still do it for yourself. You must still try. The impossible dictum. You will not last.
The matron pressed again. "You will make more mistakes, my dear. We all will, I"m afraid. But you must help us. Can you help us?"
Come home. I need you. There had been a moment when Jenny had bolted upright, as if to stop her, and Amelia had thrown Mary a gasping, despairing glance. But Mary had cut anyway. She remembered trying to stanch the flow of blood, remembered seeing Amelia paralyzed at the bedside, taking in Jenny"s last moments.
Mother, Jenny had cried.
Perhaps it wasn"t her fault that Jenny had died, Mary thought now, but she knew that she would never know, and that not knowing would be her punishment, her own little circle of h.e.l.l.
She could almost see Albany, could almost imagine Amelia at the door, holding Jenny"s baby, could even envision Thomas cradling his infant daughter.
"Will you help us?" the matron asked.
Mary made a noise, not quite yes, but a cri de coeur, soft, like the splash of Charon"s oar, or the sound of a train whistle, going home.
Chapter Forty-three.
The morning of August 30, 1862, dawned sticky and oppressive in Washington. A gathering storm had stalled in the Virginia hills far to the west and was making the ordinarily pleasant ride in from the Soldiers" Home, where Lincoln and his family had again retreated for the summer, miserable for Hay and Lincoln. All was confusion because the Union general John Pope had been out of communication for days. All summer, the relentless Pope had chased Stonewall Jackson"s Confederate troops west from Richmond, but now no one knew exactly where anyone was, even though, Hay told Lincoln now, the telegraph operators on the rail lines near Mana.s.sas had been reporting sounds of firing nearby the site of the former battlefield. McClellan was being no help. Ordered by Lincoln to return from the Peninsula, he had reluctantly boarded a steamer a few days ago at Fort Monroe and had sailed up the Potomac, but only as far as Aquia Creek south of Washington, where he was holed up at the naval base sending telegraphs to the War Department every few hours or so asking for updates, and then when updated making excuses as to why he wouldn"t send troops to help Pope, a.s.serting that Pope needed to get out of whatever sc.r.a.pe he had gotten into on his own.
"Petulant man," Lincoln said, removing his hat and wiping his forehead of sweat, though it was only six in the morning and the sun had not risen completely above the horizon. "I do believe McClellan wants Pope to fail."
Hay could not understand why Lincoln did not call McClellan to Washington to have him court-martialed.
"I"m beginning to think McClellan might actually be crazy," Lincoln said. "Do you know he had the temerity to recall General Franklin"s men after General Halleck thrice ordered them forward to help Pope? And last night, McClellan wanted to blow up the Chain Bridge to keep the Rebels from using it. The man is a coward."
In July, after McClellan had failed so magnificently on the Peninsula, General Henry Halleck had been made commander in chief above him, in an effort to goad the golden boy turned truculent imp into action, but even that had not persuaded McClellan. Coward indeed, or traitor, Hay thought now, but held his tongue. He rode with the president in the mornings not as judge, but as listener. Usually by the time they reached the Mansion the president had talked himself around whatever problem he was mulling.
Now, when they arrived at the Mansion, Lincoln went straight to the War Department, as was his habit, to read the latest dispatches. Edwin Stanton, the new secretary of war and onetime rival of Lincoln"s, whom Lincoln had installed back in January to replace the ineffective Simon Cameron, was pacing, his coat jacket slung across his desk.
"I don"t know what the h.e.l.l is going on," he said.
They telegraphed Colonel Herman Haupt for news. Haupt was the superintendent of railroads, stationed most mornings at the central railroad station in Alexandria, where he could direct the military trains full of troops and supplies where they were most needed. Haupt was a reliable source, because he heard everything first, owing to the fact that the telegraph operators were under the guardianship of the railroad.
Haupt replied quickly that the railroad bridge across Bull Run had been burned sometime in the last day. He confirmed that firing had indeed been heard that morning near Centreville and Mana.s.sas. At this very moment, he was sending forward five railcars containing a wrecking car, a construction car, two containing fodder for the animals, and another loaded with meat and bread to Fairfax Station. He had also sent forward a telegraph operator with wire and instrument.
"The only man in the army who can write a clear dispatch," Lincoln said when he was finished reading. Satisfied, he left for the Mansion, though throughout the morning Haupt"s updates were messaged over to him: No firing of any importance, bridges are being repaired, provisions sent. It appears that the firing reported before had merely been Pope running Jackson out of the area toward a gap in the mountains, where his army can no longer threaten Washington.
Lincoln and Hay and Secretary of War Stanton went out to noon dinner. The discussion ranged around McClellan; Stanton wanted the imbecile court-martialed, and thought that Pope deserved commendation for the rout of the Rebel forces. Hay held his tongue yet again. He had learned that Lincoln listened to every suggestion made to him, but judged men on their ability to discern.
After dinner, Hay and Lincoln went to army headquarters to see if they had better information. The War Department was separate from the Department of the Army, and the two were sometimes at war with one another. Each department received different updates; Lincoln had learned to wander between the two. Now it seemed that during dinner, events had changed dramatically. A great battle had begun. Pope had not chased Jackson south; instead, they were facing off on the same battlefield where Irvin McDowell had failed the year before. McClellan was frantically telegraphing from his protected spot on the Potomac, asking what was going on; he could hear the guns from his position on Aquia Creek.
Lincoln and Hay went back to tell the secretary of war. Stanton was agitated, pacing back and forth, flinging open his door to speak to his telegraph operator, then shuttling back again to his desk. Thousands of wounded were being brought off the lines and laid at Fairfax Railroad Station, and there was no one to care for them.
"Letterman is still on the Peninsula, with most of our ambulances, all of our tents, and a good number of our surgeons. My men are posting notices as we speak around town for any able-bodied men willing to work as nurses to report to the Long Bridge for transportation to the front. I sent an order to the guards at the Long Bridge to let volunteers across without a pa.s.s."
"Men with no experience? As nurses? At the front? Don"t you think they"ll be in the way?" Lincoln asked.
"I"m trying to save lives, Mr. Lincoln," Stanton said. "Until Letterman gets here, we are without medical direction. It is essential that someone take charge." He glared at Hay, as if to insinuate that he should have taken charge, because he, Stanton, already had plenty to do.
Walking back toward the Mansion, Lincoln said, "Haupt will have his head."
Hay agreed. "It will just be a bunch of idiots, showing up out of curiosity."
Lincoln regarded his young secretary, whose keen intelligence he cherished. "Keep your ears open. If Haupt wants a meeting with Stanton, I want to be there. I get so little entertainment of late."
"Entertainment? Fireworks, more likely."
"Just what I expect, yes," Lincoln said, as a slow smile worked its way across his face.
Fatigue had hewn Lincoln"s craggy face into a visage that appeared a decade older than even the year before. Hay worried about him, but now he marveled again that the president could find the humor in anything, even in the midst of disaster.
Across town at the Patent Office, the evening sun was slanting in through the windows, shining above the ever-darkening cloudbank brewing in the west. Even with the windows flung open, the air in the hospital sweltered. Mary wiped the perspiration from the back of her neck and said, "But I don"t understand."
The matron had run up the stairs with a copy of the Evening Star and had read Stanton"s notice aloud.
"Stanton wants men?" Mary said. "Why men?"
The matron grew alarmed as Mary"s eyes flickered; Mary had stolen the paper away and was earnestly reading the notice. It was like holding back the tide with her. She had convinced Mary to help and now she couldn"t stop her. Though the young woman said she kept a room somewhere, she stayed overnight many nights of the week, rarely sleeping, instead haunting the long rows of beds, as if she were trying to make up for all those months away.
"You cannot go. It will be dangerous. And besides, try to convince a general that you should be on the field. They will dismiss you as a camp follower." It was worth the shock, the matron thought, because she knew that argument to Mary was a challenge rather than an obstacle, but Mary met her gaze with a familiar steely look. Her resolve had rebuilt itself in a very short time.
"No one would ever think me a prost.i.tute."
The matron nearly gasped. Measure for measure, Mary could certainly hold her own. "Surely, you understand that to go is madness. They will ship the men back here. I will need you here. The men will need you here."
"The last time I waited to do something, my sister died," Mary said. She stuffed a bag with supplies-lint and bandages and a bottle of whiskey-and then a surgery kit that she slipped into her bag too.
"Wait," the matron said, grasping her hand. "Take a candle and matches. It will be dark out there."
"You there! You! You can"t go!"
Mary had just been hoisted into a freight car by two men, whose precarious hold on her tightened as the lieutenant screamed at her from the platform.
"Are you mad?" Lieutenant Watson"s face was puffy with heat and fury. Around him surged hundreds of inebriated men, who had already imbibed most of the whiskey they had ostensibly brought as medication for the wounded they were intended to nurse. Earlier in the evening, a hard rain had begun to fall, but that had done nothing to deter the hordes now clambering into the freight cars. The lieutenant, in charge of sending cars on to Alexandria from the Long Bridge, had telegraphed Colonel Haupt, questioning the unbelievable order to waive the requirement for a pa.s.s. Haupt replied that orders were orders and to send them on, though to make certain that surgeons got on first. But there was no telling who was who, and no surgeon had made himself known to Watson. The rest of the men were not so much nurses as rabble. Watson estimated there must be a thousand men at least demanding to go across, every one of them drunk. Months and months of security abandoned in one night. And now a woman was forcing her way on. He shuddered to think what might happen to her.
He made one last glance up and down the platform as stragglers scrambled into the cars. At his signal, workers methodically moved down the train, slamming the doors shut. Then he dropped his hand, and the engine hauling the rabble spit steam and ash into the rainy night and lurched from the Long Bridge terminal toward Alexandria.
"We are concerned for your safety." Colonel Haupt, a trim, tall man with a full beard, was shouting through a megaphone at the occupants of the cars he had waylaid at the Alexandria station. The volunteer nurses, all men, milled about the platform, stumbling and shouting, utterly drunk. It was ten o"clock at night, and he had so few tracks. He still needed to send troops and ammunition forward, to say nothing of commissary stores and fodder. No doubt these revelers would all skedaddle as soon as they saw what destruction awaited them at the end of the line. It had been stupid of Stanton to authorize a lark for a bunch of curious idiots. And of course, they would have to be transported back, taking up precious s.p.a.ce once again. Haupt shook his head. The inefficiency appalled.
"Listen," he shouted again. "You will be in grave danger once you leave this station. We are going to send a train ahead of you with ammunition, and only then will we send you on. An armed regiment will travel atop your cars. Be patient; the delay is for your safety. But do not provoke me. If I see anyone consuming any more alcohol, you will be removed from these premises by armed guard."
Haupt stalked off with his a.s.sistant, hoping that his warning would subdue them. In the yard, lanterns were flaring as his men feverishly directed cars onto tracks, hitching them onto engines, the racket and thuds ringing out into the clammy night. The scene would have been beautiful if it hadn"t been so panicked, for more than anything Haupt loved a rail-yard at work. At the beginning of the war, he had left his job building the Hoosac Tunnel in Ma.s.sachusetts to renew his commission. But now he was remembering why he had left the military. There was nothing so exasperating as a confused chain of command. For days now, he had gotten only a few hours of sleep, and the long night was still before him. He cast his gaze over the riot that was the trainyard, forcing himself to think on what required his attention next.
"When you send that train on," he said to his a.s.sistant, "telegraph ahead to McCrickett to arrest them all."
When the train finally jerked to a stop at Fairfax Station, Mary had been standing for thirty-odd miles, clutching her bag to her chest, praying for the ceaseless rocking of the train to end. The men in her car had grown restive; some had been sick. Above the loud hiss of the engine releasing steam, she could hear the railcars" doors being thrown open one after the other, the sound growing louder and louder until finally the doors of her car were unlatched and heaved apart. The car had been stifling, but now, as her companions scrambled out the door and fanned onto the platform waving their flasks and shouting that they had come to nurse, by G.o.d, and no one could stop them, a chill flooded the emptied boxcar. Mary peered into a shadowy fog of locomotive steam and mist. Blazing torches illuminated a small station house, around which hundreds of men were milling.
All was chaos. A soldier climbed onto a bench near the station house and fired into the air, then began to shout, trying to be heard in the confusion. In the torchlight, the cold rain made the darting shadows grotesque. Mary hugged her bag to her chest, felt the hard ridges of the wooden case of the surgery kit digging into her ribs. She could hardly make out what was happening; men were lurching and hollering and the soldier was shooting again above their heads and there were no wounded in sight. She dropped from the car to the platform and shuttled along the train, not knowing exactly where she was going, but desperate to leave the drunken crowd behind. Beyond the train, she crept away from the lights of Fairfax Station. A few drunks had spilled onto the rocks and slippery gra.s.s surrounding the depot, but no one followed her into the darkness. The night was as inky black as the matron had said it would be. Underfoot, the slippery ground rose and fell away. She could see only a few feet ahead of her. In the distance, a few pinp.r.i.c.ks of candlelight glimmered.
"Don"t step on me," a voice said, as a hand grabbed her ankle.
The voice was choked, hoa.r.s.e. She dug in her bag among the whiskey bottle, surgery kit, and dressings for the candle she then lit and thrust high above her head. In every direction, men were sprawled on the ground, packed so tightly together that she would not have been able to have taken another step without stumbling across their arms or legs. Directly beneath her was the soldier who had taken hold of her ankle. His pants had been torn away. A shattered thighbone jutted through the broken skin of each leg. His wounds were raw, mere hours old. Gunpowder blackened his face; tears were tracing gritty rivulets down his temples.
"Are you a ghost?" he rasped.
"No," Mary said.
"You got any water?"
"I have whiskey," she said, and again opened her bag and pulled out the whiskey bottle. With one hand, she pinned the bottle between her knees and uncorked it.
She held the bottle to his lips and he choked the liquor down.
At the train station, soldiers were shoving the men who had come to nurse back onto the trains. A locomotive was being turned and the racket was fantastic. She imagined that it must be what birth was like to infant ears. The great amniotic buffer finally removed.
She turned to the next man, an arm"s reach away. He wanted whiskey, too. And the next man after that. The men latched on to her as she bent over them, a sob or a thank-you breaking from their lips. They threw their arms around her neck. Some were sixteen, fourteen. She bent over them and flooded whiskey into their mouths and pried their hands off her wrists and moved on. Someone had lain hay underneath them as a bed, and with every move she worried that she would drop her candle and set them all afire. Amid the general din and the trains screaming and hissing and the mules braying and the men crying out, it was nearly impossible to hear what a single man said to her. She smelled the sour battle scent, the gunpowder and the sweat and the fear. It mingled with the musk of sap and loam and leaves stewing in the rainfall. By habit, she surveyed their wounds, running the candle up and down their bodies, but not even the Union Hotel had prepared her for this. From time to time, her hand settled into a pool of clotted blood or vomit and she would wipe her hands on her skirt and scramble on. There were so many men, and she hadn"t even yet gone fifty feet from the station.
In the trees, the birds began to chatter. The night was beginning to fade, but even the morning star, flickering on the gray horizon, seemed to outshine the pale scatter of the miserable dawn. Mary extinguished her candle.
Her whiskey bottle was empty.
She scrambled back to the station, pushing through the unruly crowd. From a small office, a remarkably tidily dressed man emerged, followed by a red-faced colonel who was screaming that no more civilians should be sent, what were they thinking back in Washington? When the two men saw Mary, the colonel abruptly stopped shouting to stare at her. Next to the depot door, chained to the bench, a dozen men were growing miserably sober. The depot clock read four-thirty in the morning.
Mary said, "Do you have any whiskey?"
The men continued to stare.
"Water? What about water? Surely somewhere there is a tank for the trains. We could tap it or fish the water out of it or-"
The two men were staring at her skirts. She looked down. The hem of her dress was sodden with blood to her knees. She leaned over and wrung it out.
"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" the colonel sputtered.
"Just tell me if you have any water."
"There is a well behind the station," the other man said.
A train screamed into the depot. Doors were hurled open. Men surged from the cars and swarmed onto the platform. The colonel roared, "I told those idiots in Washington not to send any more drunks!"
A telegraph operator waded toward them shouting, brandishing a telegram above his head. "We are evacuating Centreville. The Rebels are fast behind our troops. Haupt says they will send no more supplies and we are to send the wounded back to Washington on the trains."