Nostalgia (34 page)

There is so much I have not told you—nothing of battle (I have spared you that), nothing of my improbable journey through the Virginia forest. I cannot tell where God is in all this. I fear that in our recklessness we have repelled Him
.

Casper has been mumbling angrily in his sleep about a certain “Millerite.” I wonder if you’ve heard of it? I wonder what it means?

My perceptions cannot entirely be trusted, but everything about the hospital—its sights & sounds & smells, its atmosphere—strikes me as a kind of limbo, somewhere between life & death
.

I imagine it lacks the concrete of Heaven, too, if there should be anything like concrete there. I have been thinking of the “fire that does not consume,” for frequently
I witness out of the corner of my eye flames & smoke, even when there are none actually there. I would think it a premonition of catastrophe, but somehow it feels to issue more from the past, not the future
.

Captain Gracie smiles now when he passes the foot of my bed, a smile sweet with malice & secret knowledge. I believe he’s unhappy with my impending transfer to the Asylum for the Insane & that he still contrives to see me court-martialed as a deserter. I believe that before all is said & done, he will succeed
.

My wounds have been entirely neglected. It is clearer to me every day that the hospital is keeping me sick & if only I can escape it I’ll regain my health & be fit to fight again
.

They are only figments of my imagination, I know, I know, but still they terrify me when they appear. If you had asked me before the war whether or not I believed in ghosts, I would have said no. (Surely, if ghosts existed, our own parents would have returned to bid us farewell.) Always at the end of my bed, always at night, first Leggett, then Billy Swift. Of course I dare not cry out. I wonder if they mean to remind me that they are dead, for I do often forget. If they must appear, I wish they would appear friendlier. I believe we loved one another in the condensed way of comrades. I cannot think of any harm I did either of them
.

… quite deteriorated, the drugs … the whirring in my ears has come back, put there by Burroughs, I think …

The happy thing about letters such as these is that I needn’t weigh repercussions. No need to worry about increasing your concern, no need to spare you certain details
.

A mute man can kill as competently as any other, perhaps even better—think how blind people hear more keenly than those with sight
.

Among the advantages of the battlefield … here, I cannot tell friend from enemy even though they stand before me visible. My mind hurls possibilities & I’m helpless to distinguish what’s true or false. What even is Walt? I cannot even discern the man’s
category
!

At times I wonder: Have I concocted the story of the sergeant on his horse, fabricated “Leave him … I’ve no time to play nursemaid,” fabricated “Take his weapon”? If so, was it not to cover the fact of my desertion? Desertion, after all, is what best explains my having no documentation of any discharge (no matter how informal it may have been). What I must admit to, finally, is the deeply flawed—no, I should say, depraved—nature of my character …

… deeply depraved character of my nature …

Yes, it’s a depraved nature that brought me to this place & likewise drove me from Hicks Street, away from your love & companionship, drove me into the abyss of battle, & if I am indeed a deserter drove me to that as well. I find myself robbed, dear Sarah, of all …

… horrible, horrible nightmares … I dare not cry out …

My dear Sarah, these will likely be the last words you have from me. I shall be candid here, for nobody can read what has not been written down
.

I cannot explain how it is that the urging in the pit of my stomach (hunger), combined with a certain hollowed-out feeling, keeps me settled on Earth. Otherwise I fear I might disappear
.

It was a group of men, perhaps as many as a dozen. They asked all the usual questions. I believe I tore at my clothing in their presence, because of the sudden & profuse bleeding of my wounds. Now, when the bell rings outdoors, it’s as if it rings inside my skull. The clank & clang of the trains, the sundry calls & whistles, the clattering of wheels & clopping of hooves are like a grand Death-chorus. The stench of the canal sanctifies the air in preparation for …

Evidently, what began as a steadying device no longer steadies. I love you, my dear one—no, I will not call you sister here, not now—I love you, with all my heart. You twirled your parasol at the front of the boat, smiled down at me as if you knew me better than any other person on Earth, knew me better than I knew myself. You said, Why, Summerfield, you’re an athlete & a poet. The calamity in
Ireland, the loss of Mommy & Papa, only pushed us together closer than we were already
.

Nobody can read what has not been written down
.

What began as a steadying device no longer steadies
.

My dear Sarah, I was wounded & abandoned in the Wilderness. When the army moved out of the Wilderness, they left me behind. I have no papers to prove it, as I wasn’t formally discharged
.

In the dream, Walt brings a bulging haversack & lays it on my bed. When he opens it, it’s everything I’m missing: my uniform, intact; my forage cap; my weapon (though it’s broken into many parts, I’m sure I can reassemble it); my canteen, which has a bullet hole in it; my red novel, my Dickens, given me by you; the base ball, given me by the chaplain, varnished & inscribed, 25 April 1864, Bachelors 24, Twighoppers 21; my shoes; & a packet of letters from you. I hadn’t realized you’d written me so often. What happened to the letters I carried with me in the forest, I couldn’t recall (nor can I recall it now). I am awakened by a man’s crying out in pain, Casper, I think at first, but it turns out to be a nurse who has stubbed his toe on the iron leg of a bed. It’s just dawn & I feel more clear-headed than I’ve felt for days. All this time I’ve been imagining my return to Brooklyn—humiliated, compromised in any number of ways … & now I see that fighting’s my true fate, if only it can be managed. I long to be back with my friends, my comrades, Leggett & Billy Swift & Vesey & Rosamel & the others. I sense, even as I imagine this, that there’s an insurmountable problem, though I cannot name it. I do understand I’ll need to make sure my wounds have healed properly, which I believe they will. The whirring inside my ears will cease, I’m confident of that, for it has ceased before. My speech will return. I’ll be all right. When the war is won, when victory comes, I’ll be a part of it … & it will be part of me
.

C
ASPER
, who has developed two fresh abscesses on his left cheek, looks up at Anne, quite pathetically, and says, “I only asked him to bring me back some potatoes.”

She has just finished rewetting his dressing with cold water and now dries her hands on her apron. She has taken to wearing her hair in curls, which, under Matron’s watch, would never have been permitted. “Yes,” she says to Casper, “and Mr. X, being the good fellow he is, brought you some. But, Casper, you’re not allowed potatoes.”

“I know I’m not,” says Casper, looking straight ahead now, vacantly. “That’s why I wanted them.”

Hayes, who has pilfered from the dining room a small plate of boiled potatoes, puts it on the table and then sits on his own bed. He finds it difficult to look directly at Casper, for the boy’s face has become a horror—the skin, splotched yellow and pink, sags and tugs down the lower eyelids, exposing the salmon-colored inner tissue, the abscesses, whose purplish aureoles overlap, peaked with pustules.

“I’m sorry, Casper,” says Anne. “I can bring you some beef tea.”

“I don’t want no beef tea.”

“What about a cup of milk?”

“I don’t want no milk.”

“Casper—”

He grabs her hand now and says, “What’s the matter with everybody? Can nobody see I’m dying?”

Tears spring from his eyes, a remarkable sight as they arc toward the bedcovers and catch the orange light of sunset through the window. Anne turns and looks back at Hayes. She glances down the length of the ward, one way and the other, and then returns her eyes to Hayes, who reaches for the plate of potatoes and passes it into her free hand.

She places it in Casper’s lap and whispers, “Eat them quickly then.”

Which he does, using his fingers and making small squeaking noises.

Hayes watches for a moment, repulsed, a larger reaction than the thing deserves and having little to do with Casper’s rapacious manners. Rather, it’s Casper’s begging that has offended him, the macabre and decisive argument of his dying, Anne’s uneasy relenting, a plate of blandest cold potatoes made over as an offering of charity. He shuts his eyes and sees an image of Truman Leggett, forcing on him his sack of coffee mixed with sugar. He lowers his head, thinking,
Dearest Sarah, these will likely be the last words …
but then leaves off, recalling that
this diversion no longer steadies him—no longer even diverts. Besides, when he has reviewed these fragmentary mental letters, he has found them wanting in both wit and wisdom. Among the several properties lost to his brief encounter with war, he supposes he must count his former modicum of ingenuity. Combat has dulled him, undoubtedly because combat’s a dull business, befitting, after all, barbarians. This accounts, he thinks, for so much being made of military strategy and tactics, costume and matériel—they’re meant to parade as warrantable, even noble, something that’s fundamentally childish.

In the next moment, eyes still shut, a maddening whir inside his ears, he believes he has read similar sentiments expressed in newspaper editorials on the subject of grown men playing base ball. When he raises his head, he sees that Anne (holding an empty plate from the dining room) and Casper (licking the fingers of his one hand) each stare at him with a kind of wonderment.

Muttering
, he thinks,
I have been muttering aloud
.

Anne sits next to him on the bed and starts to put her arm around his shoulders, but he pulls away, and she stands up again. His hands tremble madly, and so he squeezes them between his knees. He hears her say, “My dear Mr. X … don’t you know by now I’m your friend?”

“ ‘Friend,’ ha, you’re
sweet
on him!” cries Casper. “That’s what makes him so scared. He pulled his pants down in front of the—”

“Oh, Casper, hush,” says Anne and moves away quickly.

When Hayes raises his eyes, she is already gone.

Casper calls out, “Where’s my punch? Where’s my pill?” and then turns on Hayes a crushed-looking face.

He sighs, gives his stump a consoling pat, and shakes his head sadly. “I’ll tell you one thing for sure,” he says. “She’s gonna be downright heartbroken when they cart you off to the booby hatch.”

L
EGGETT STANDS
at the end of the bed, peering down at him through the mosquito curtain. The ward, bathed in amber light, is entirely quiet, but Hayes can hear the sound of a bell ringing somewhere outdoors, irregularly, as if blown by wind. Leggett stares at Hayes with his eyebrows arched and his mouth drawn into a straight line—as
if he has just asked Hayes a question and awaits the answer. After a moment, he removes the canteen from his belt and takes a long drink, then offers it to Hayes.

A spiral of smoke rises from the opening in the canteen.

Hayes presses his hands over his eyes, and the moment he does so, he is filled with a longing for his father, as if it were his father’s ghost at the end of the bed. He parts his fingers and sees that the specter has gone. He lowers his hands and turns onto his side.

Raugh, awake, looks at him wide-eyed and whispers, “Who was that?”

But Hayes pretends not to hear and closes his eyes again.

I
N THE DREAM
, he lies on his back somewhere warm and wet—he cannot tell where, for even though his eyes are wide open, he can see only absolute blackness. He hears a nearby crackle of fire, but whatever burns casts no light. Soon there’s an increasing din of musketry, thundering artillery, and the maniacal rebel yell. What wakes him from the dream is not the noise but a startling awareness that he’s bleeding from a wound at the middle of his spine and the warm wetness beneath him is his own blood.

A charred Billy Swift stands at the end of the bed, the whites of his eyes blazing in the ward’s dark blue air. Billy has lost his cap. Wisps of smoke rise from the scorched fabric of his coat. He looks at Hayes with eyes like skewers, as if he means to read his mind or somehow see his future. At last his face softens, and he says, “It’s a miracle, Hayes, a miracle,” and then turns and limps away into a cluster of human-shaped shadows that appear to greet and envelop him.

H
AYES FEELS
a hand on his brow, and when he opens his eyes, he sees the face of Dr. Bliss, the hospital’s surgeon in chief. “Wake up, son,” says the major, “there’s someone here who thinks he might know you.”

The mosquito curtains have been drawn toward the rafters. Morning sunlight streams at a sharp angle through the windows on the opposite side of the ward. Hayes sits up partway and sees—standing at
the end of the bed, precisely as Leggett and Swift had stood earlier—a uniformed surgeon, a large and strikingly handsome man, who smiles and narrows his gray eyes. “Yes,” says the man, nodding, “though I might very well have missed him … his hair’s grown long and he’s terribly wasted.”

“He’s wasted because he doesn’t eat,” says Dr. Bliss. “And can’t be persuaded to.”

He turns back to Hayes and asks, “Do you know this gentleman? He says he met you at Brandy Station.”

Naturally Hayes believes he’s dreaming, but he gets to his feet anyway and salutes the man—who returns the salute, comes forward beaming and reeking of cigars, and pulls Hayes into a careful but firm embrace.

“You remember me,” he whispers into his ear. “It’s Speck, my boy … Dr. Speck.”

He holds Hayes at arm’s length, still smiling, and says, “Major Bliss, this young private was presumed dead by all who knew him.”