The Better Angels of Our Nature (11 page)

Sherman nodded slowly and chewed his cigar. He knew precisely what the officer meant—hadn’t he lived in the
honorable
South for six years? Captain Jackson at his side tried to read the look on his commander’s hawkish features, but the shapeless hat, pulled down low over his brow, and the collar of his oilskin pulled up high against the now hard-driving rain, masked all expression. Instead, the Hoosier exchanged meaningful grimaces with Van Allen, who was also listening intently. True enough, they didn’t know the boy that well, but neither the Hoosier nor the New Englander could picture him as a coward, a spy,
or
a traitor, which of course they all knew he wasn’t, even that lying son of a bitch Shotwell, covering his own arse.

“He said it right out, sir; he said if the boy hadn’t done what he did he woulda shot the whole damn bunch of us without a second’s thought. You can’t brand the boy a coward, sir, like Captain Shotwell said, he’s a good boy, a credit to his folks, to the Union army, and to his commander, and that, sir, is the plain, simple, unadulterated, gall darn truth, so help me God.”

“Get your shoulder looked at, Lieutenant Washington,” Sherman urged.

“No sir, with respect, not ’til I know the boy won’t pay for Captain Shotwell’s tardiness.” Washington stood his ground, though his craggy features were contorted with pain.

“You’ve explained what happened, Lieutenant, and you have my word, sir, that this private will be treated fairly, now take yourself off to the hospital, before you bleed to death.”

Lieutenant Washington glanced across at Jesse kneeling on the floor in the rain, gathering up the contents of his haversack. Throughout Shotwell’s hysterical accusations as well as during Washington’s impassioned defense, the boy had maintained a dignified silence. Even now, the officer was reluctant to leave him to the division commander’s mercy.

“Private Davis, come here,” Sherman said tersely.

Jesse obeyed, Shotwell’s dress sword, still tied around his waist, clanking on the ground as he moved. Jackson and Van Allen gave each other close-mouthed smiles. Beside the division commander, seated upon his large chestnut, was the ever-amiable James McPherson, silently observing the proceedings.

The boy saluted, blinked rainwater, looked from Sherman to Jackson, to Van Allen, to McPherson, whose dark, kindly eyes were twinkling and whose small mouth pursed in anticipation, or was it amusement?

“Why are you wearing an officer’s dress sword and sash?” Sherman demanded to know.

“It was the Rebel captain’s joke, sir. I believe he wished to make a point.”

“And what, Private, was the point he wished to make?”

“I’d rather not say, sir.”

Lieutenant Washington, still standing beside the boy, spoke up. “The Reb cap’in’s point, sir, was that this boy has more right to those trappin’s of an officer than Shotwell, and he was darn right.” He touched his shoulder. “Thank you, son,” he said in his deep voice, “for everything. I sure am sorry for what I called you. But I ain’t never seen anything like I saw you do for Private Atkinson and the Lord is my witness I won’t never forget it ’til the day I breathe my last.” He would not allow the orderlies to place him on a litter but put his battered hat on his head and started back to camp on foot.

A hysterical voice preceded the arrival of the surgeon who had accompanied Colonel Buckland from his brigade headquarters and who was now running across the road holding up the rubber tubing. “Who inserted
this
into that soldier’s throat? Does anyone know who inserted this into that soldier’s windpipe? Sir,” the surgeon spoke to the general, “I must know who inserted this into the soldier’s throat.”

“I did, sir,” Jesse stated.

“You
did
?” The brigade surgeon stared at him, blinked, and stared at him again, as though the young private was a species of life quite alien to him. “You did, Private?”

“Damn you, Doctor,” Sherman said, as his spirited horse pranced restlessly in the rain, reflecting the impatience of his master. “The boy
said
he did. Do you want him to draw you a diagram, sir, take an oath on the Bible?” He shortened the reins and spoke calmly to the animal, stroking its neck. “Easy now…easy—”

“He…he…saved that soldier’s life, you see there, sir, he…he used this”—he held up the hollow tube higher for the commander’s inspection—“to perform a
tracheotomy
—he inserted this into the windpipe to help the soldier breathe—I have not heard of such a thing before, sir, nor will my colleagues have heard of such a thing. You see, sir, this is a catheter, a urinary tube, used solely to relieve distension of the bladder. If a patient cannot urinate, we insert this into the—”

Sherman broke in. “Come to the point, sir, come to the blasted point.”

Van Allen heard Jackson chuckle.

“Well, sir, according to
Wood’s Practice of Medicine—
”

“Damn you and
damn Wood’s Practice of Medicine
!” bellowed Sherman. “Lieutenant Colonel McPherson, my staff and I are soaked to the skin, sir, soaked to the skin, and
you
are giving us a lecture on surgery. Did the boy do good or didn’t he?”

“He did magnificently, sir.”

“Then kindly tell him so and take yourself and your urinary tube back to camp and let me get on with questioning this boy….

“How many of the enemy were in the party that attacked my picket guard, Private?”

Jesse related all he could remember, including the name of the Rebel captain and his regiment, information enough to have Sherman suggest the boy would make a very reliable spy.

“The damn Rebel cavalry are getting saucier by the second,” he said, turning to McPherson.

“You recall what the Rebel prisoners you interrogated at Shiloh Church told you, sir, they openly boasted of being part of a grand army that will push us into the Tennessee,” McPherson reminded him.

“But can we believe them, Mac? Prisoners will boast of anything to give themselves an importance they do not have. It makes them feel better to contemplate a great victory for their army, even if they are incarcerated and not able to participate.” He turned his piercing gaze back on the boy and, stabbing with his cigar stub, demanded, “What were you doing out here anyway, and what’s in the sack?”

“Peaches, sir. I picked them at the Widow Howell’s farm.”

“That ain’t the truth, boy,” spoke up Captain Jackson, the peacetime farmer. “Everyone knows peaches ain’t even out on the trees ’til May, let alone ready to pick ripe.”

Sherman was fierce. “I’ll ask you again: What have you got in that sack? Have you been stealing chickens from these people? They already think us vandals and barbarians.” The commander’s face had gone red; his eyes glittered dangerously.

“No sir, I paid the widow a full cent for every two peaches.” Jesse held the sack wide open for Captain Jackson to see. He blinked, thrust his head further forward as though to get a better look, and then blinked again, his suspicious eyes getting smaller. “Peaches,” he declared suspiciously, as if he now did not trust the evidence of his own eyes. “Well, I’ll be darned.”

Marcus sniggered at his fellow aide. When he saw the commander look at him sharply, he made a kind of contrite motion of his handsome head, but he could do nothing to conceal the laughter in his dark eyes, which he lowered.

“The peaches are for the men in the hospital,” Jesse told Sherman. “Dr. Cartwright said he wished to God he could give them fresh fruit.”

“Darn it,” Andy said, removing his large hat and holding it aloft by the brim as he scratched his hair with the same hand, a regular balancing act admired by all who witnessed it. “They’re peaches a’right and no mistake, nice ones too.” He took one out and examined it. It was yellow and large, round, fleshy, and juicy when he bit into it. He grinned at Van Allen.

“You heard the accusations made by Captain Shotwell?” Sherman asked. He was now bored with the subject of the peaches.

“Yes sir.”

“Have you nothing to say in your defense? Do you feel that you acted inappropriately?”

“I feel that my actions were entirely appropriate, sir. I knew also that the lieutenant would speak up and tell the truth.”

“
How
did you know?”

“How can I doubt the honesty of a man whose name is Washington?”

Sherman, McPherson, and the other members of the headquarters party had ridden off. Only Captain Jackson remained. Gruffly, the aide called out, “Over here, boy.” He reached down and gripped the sack, securing it to the pommel of his saddle. “I’ll get this back to camp for you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jesse said and then started off on foot.

Jackson stared in amazement after the tiny figure in the oversized uniform. Then found his voice. “Hey, soldier, where you goin’? Come on back. This fine strong animal can surely carry me, this sack, and somethin’ no bigger ’an a goose egg.” Jackson extended his arm. The boy held on as he inserted his foot into the stirrup. “Don’t fall off in the mud now, you hear me?” He looked at the boy’s arms about his waist. He had wrists no thicker than young twigs. “Tell me sumpthin’, were you really gonna carry this sack back to camp under yer own steam?”

“Yes sir.”

“Darn it, boy, if I don’t believe you.”

Over supper that evening the Hoosier and Marcus were discussing that morning’s excitement. They both agreed that the boy was no ordinary boy, no farm boy, and well educated, even though, as Jackson reported, the boy hadn’t said two words to him all the way back to the hospital. Marcus even suggested that the commander might want to have him transferred to division, since they were always looking for decent copy clerks.

“Left a widowed mother at home ter weep,” was Jackson’s sentimental view.

“The boy is an orphan. He told me so and I believe him,” Sherman informed both men.

Sherman’s tone was dry, even for him, as he passed a hand over his stomach and winced. The pickled beef he’d eaten that evening, what the enlisted men called “salt-horse,” stank to high heaven and the desiccated vegetables had tasted like cardboard. He smoked six to eight cigars a day and a further four or five during the night. He drank whiskey, ate no lunch, a meager supper, and took only black coffee for breakfast and slept perhaps two hours a night. This lethal combination, mixed with too much nervous energy, had brought on severe headaches and stomach cramps even the strongest of anodynes could not overcome since his turbulent days as commander of the Department of the Cumberland. He was also at this time not immune to the great army curse of diarrhea and looked suddenly discomforted. “Excuse me.” He shot up and rushed away.

Horatio chose that inopportune moment to bring forth a tin bowl overflowing with fresh yellow peaches, which he handed around with a proud grin. “Day is a present,” he called out after the fleeing commander, “frome dat boy, gen’al, sir, der one yo give dat cheese, bread, an a apple toe der udder night. Yo ’member, gen’al, sir? He dune give me toe fer my own self. Day is real good, gen’al, sir, real good, sweet as honey like they is full ripe. He say toe remind yo they dun settle yo stom’ch real good, they dyn cure what ails yo.” He turned his big, red-flecked eyes onto the officers. “Where der gen’al g’on in such a hurry, yo ’spose?”

The next morning Jacob De Groot was in a hurry. For such a large man he could move awful fast when required and he was moving awful fast toward Seth Cartwright’s tent, where the surgeon was just reaching for his safety razor, and it wasn’t even Sunday.

“You must come quickly; you must come right now!” the Dutchman cried in his native tongue before the surgeon got it out of him in English.

Cartwright drew his suspenders over his naked torso, cussed when the elastic caught his chest hair, grabbed up his medical case, and followed his steward down the mazelike arrangement of tent streets until they reached the clearing before Colonel Buckland’s Fourth Brigade headquarters. Then both men stopped in their tracks. It seemed as if the entire brigade, every soldier in the Seventieth, Forty-eighth, and Seventy-second Ohio, had turned out that morning to watch a boy and a horse do battle.

“Oh hell—” Jacob heard the surgeon mutter, and had he been a cussing man he would have concurred.

“Stay with him, boy!”

“That boy sure knows how to handle an ’onouree horse, that boy’s from Kentuck and no mistake.”

“There was another boy tryin’ to ride that no good crazy jug head yesterday mornin’, three hours past they were still tryin’ to scrape his remains offa the fence rail.”

“That little runt ain’t got no chance, he’s too damn green.”

“Hell, it ain’t the runt who’s green, it’s the damn horse. The runt’s black and blue.” Loud appreciative laughter greeted this observation.

“Gosh darn horse ain’t no horse!”

“Goddamn son of a bitch horse!”

“Keep his head up, boy, keep his head up! If yer keep his head up he won’t buck thataway!”

“Ain’t knowin’ which er ’em is more ’onouree, the horse or the boy.”

“Hold on to him, soldier!” the excitable Marcus Van Allen was shouting as he waved his hat in the air in a most ungentlemanly fashion. “Hold on with all your strength, young fellow!”

“Hold onta him,” echoed his fellow aide, “hold onto him, boy, I tell you he’s weakenin’, you got him wonderin’ now, boy, you got him on the run!”

Thus was the collective advice being offered as the surgeon pushed his way through the noisy crowds to the roped-off corral in time to see the young infantry private go hurtling headfirst through the air, to land face down in the dirt, swallowed up in a swirling cloud of dust, like a chicken in a tornado.

“What the
hell’s
going on?” Cartwright stared over at the now-prostrate figure, then at the baying mass of blue pushing against the rope, then at Jackson and then back at the horse, an indisputably handsome, biscuit-colored animal with flowing white mane and tail.

“See for yerself, Doc,” Captain Jackson told him, “that boy’s game as a two-cent whore.”

Jesse Davis, after lying there for a few seconds, just to catch his breath, had picked himself up, brushed himself off, wiped the dust and sweat from his face with the back of his hand, and was approaching the palomino doggedly, for a third time. The horse waited, pawing the ground with his near side hoof as though beating time with the boy’s determined march across the corral, his long mane flowing from side to side with every movement of the magnificent head. He waited until the boy had gripped the reins with one hand and the saddle horn with the other and, to a steadily rising crescendo of cheering, allowed the boy to slip his foot into the stirrup. Then the canny animal sidestepped, and sidestepped again, until the boy was hopping on one foot, while trying to extract his other foot from the trap. The uproar of laughter and shouting from a hundred male throats vibrated in Cartwright’s ears; he could hardly hear himself think, let alone protest. He stood there in horror, wiping shaving cream from his face with a grubby handkerchief. The horse had become perfectly still, unfazed by the shouting, giving the boy just a second’s chance to extricate his foot, to let go of the reins so he could use both hands, before the animal cantered across the corral leaving the boy to topple over backward in a cloud of dust. Neighing loudly, as if with laughter, this ghostly mount watched the boy sitting dazedly on his backside in the dust enjoying to the limit the cruel but delicious game he was playing.