Nostalgia (39 page)

Burroughs laughs. “Did they have a word for a ship that perpetually arrives late to port?”

Mrs. Duffy enters the ward at that moment, carrying a guitar, and Burroughs groans and says, “All that was missing.”

She has never before brought along a guitar, and Hayes is almost interested in this new development. He notices, too, that she is without a bonnet, her hair pinned up elaborately but messily, and that though she’s past her prime and entirely unadorned, dressed in black, and has apparently set out to make herself as plain as possible, she has a lingering natural beauty; it shines through against all odds, rather like her occasional right notes, which always seem like accidents.

She sits near the stove, low to the floor, on what looks like a milking stool, the folds of her dress splayed around her. Happily, she does not sing, but only plays—plays very well, an air Hayes thinks might be from Mozart—and soon after she begins, a hush falls over the ward.

Suddenly Casper sits bolt upright in his bed, eyes shut, and says, “Oh … what a lovely breeze … I hear it singing …”

He pauses for a moment, as if to soak up the agreeable encounter.

He removes his cap, as if to let the breeze have at his red hair.

And then lies back down, immobile.

Burroughs stands and holds his flattened hand an inch above Casper’s mouth and nose. He turns to Hayes, shakes his head, and says solemnly, “I’ll fetch someone.”

Mrs. Duffy goes on playing, and gradually people take up their conversations again and the usual chronic murmur comes back, though lowered.

A minute later, Burroughs returns with the ward surgeon and two attendants whom Hayes has never seen before.

Dr. Dinkle leans down close to Casper’s face, lays his hand on Casper’s shoulder, and jostles him. “Private Mallet,” he says. “Wake up if you can.”

Casper’s eyes flutter open.

“Are you conscious that death is near, son?”

No sign of apprehension in Casper’s face, though his eyes remain open.

“Have you accepted your death, son … are you at peace with what’s happening to you?”

Still no response.

“Is there anything at all you want to say … either to your family or to God?”

Casper lies motionless, and at last Dr. Dinkle bends over and presses his ear to Casper’s chest. After another moment, the doctor stands, closes Casper’s eyes, and pulls the bedsheet over the boy’s face.

He says to Burroughs, “I believe he heard me. I believe he was, at the very last, aware, though he could no longer speak.”

He immediately takes his leave, nodding to the two attendants—dark-faced middle-aged convalescents, who go about their work in workmanlike fashion. They wrap Casper in the sheet that already covers him, lift him onto a stretcher, and, just like that, he’s borne away by strangers to the deadhouse.

There is no alteration in the ward’s constant lowered hum. Mrs. Duffy never misses a note in the air she plays.

Burroughs sits down in the chair and looks at his watch. He says to Hayes, “He was your friend.”

“Even more Walt’s,” says Hayes.

“From what Walt’s told me,” says Burroughs, “I imagine he’ll be relieved to arrive and find the empty bed.
If
he arrives.”

The two are silent for a while, during which Mrs. Duffy plucks out “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.”

Soon Raugh stretches his arm across the narrow space between the beds and offers his hand to Hayes, which Hayes takes. At first, it really does seem to Hayes that it’s Abraham Lincoln who offers him solace. Raugh releases Hayes’s hand and then, shaking his head, says, “ ‘Jesus,… let me to thy bosom fly’ … but please, if I must, let me fly there from home, and not from a place like this.”

The sunlight leaves the ward in a wave from front to rear. The windows glare uniformly, bright silver.

Walt appears at last, looking red-faced and freshly bathed. He wears a tie with his wine-colored suit and a sprig of mint stuck into his lapel, the acorns on the cord of his felt hat newly polished. He kisses Burroughs on the cheek and then likewise Hayes. Clearly relying more heavily on his cane than usual, he sits on Casper’s mattress without any apparent surprise. Hayes thinks Walt has aged ten years since his birthday scarcely more than three weeks ago.

“He was leaving as I was coming in,” says Walt. “Please tell me he didn’t go out raving.”

“Quite the contrary, Walt,” says Burroughs. “It only just happened, not more than five minutes ago. He slept all day, peacefully. And right before he died, he sat up and looked for all the world transported.”

“ ‘Transported’?” says Walt. “Good word.”

“What was it he said?” Burroughs asks Hayes.

“ ‘Oh, what a lovely breeze,’ ” answers Hayes. “ ‘I hear it singing.’ ”

Walt stands and puts his arms around Hayes. As he squeezes him, he says, “You are a very fine young man. And John … I see you out of the corner of my eye, consulting your pocket watch.”

Walt releases Hayes but, instead of sitting back down, turns to Burroughs and says, “Let me have your chair, please, John. I want to put my back to the window … the light hurts my eyes.”

After they have rearranged themselves, Burroughs clears his throat and says to Walt, “So, tell us where we stand.”

“I can tell you two things for absolute certain,” says Walt. “First, Mrs. Duffy should definitely prefer this instrument to the one inside her neck. And second, I’m afraid I’m very ill and have procrastinated far too long. I can stay in Washington City not another day. I leave this very afternoon.”

Hayes receives this news with a realization that his cultivated indifference does not extend to being left at the hospital without Walt.

Evidently Walt sees this in his face, for he says, “Don’t worry, my friend. I’m not about to wave them around here, but I have in the pocket of my coat not one but two car tickets.”

Captain Gracie passes by in the aisle accompanied by a member of the guard. He glances at the three of them as he goes, but only for a second and then looks quickly away—as if their sort doesn’t merit even an iota of his consideration.

Burroughs says, “What about
him
?”

“All squared away,” says Walt. “Deepening my respect for topsyturvydom … Matron’s scrap of paper has worked its magic. Abigail Cox, a female nurse in Ward K, turns out to be a very sweet but very brittle cookie … and crumbled quite readily. I felt sorry for the poor girl. I fully expect the captain to turn a blind eye. You might have noticed him just now in the aisle, practicing.”

Hayes, a bit dizzy, says, “So I’m to leave with you … today?”

Walt smiles. “I told you already what Dr. Bliss feels about you. We’re skirting officialism … and what’s left are papers, forms, signatures, et cetera … which can catch up to you in Brooklyn as well as any other place. By the way, what happens today doesn’t preclude your return to the front later, if that’s still what you want. It’s my earnest hope that the war will be over sooner than that.”

Burroughs bends forward from Casper’s bed and retrieves the parcel he left beneath Hayes’s table.

Walt, observing, says, “Ah, yes, the all-important package.”

Now Walt takes out
his
watch and looks at it. At that moment, Dr. Bliss enters the ward from one of the middle doors, coatless and wearing a bloodstained apron over his uniform. All the soldiers who are able, including Hayes, stand at attention, but Dr. Bliss strides down
the aisle waving his arms like a bird in flight, encouraging the men to stay as they were.

The ward remains silent, and even Mrs. Duffy stops playing, mid-phrase. As Dr. Bliss is about to pass her milking stool, she bids him to stop. Gazing up, she says something to him, which appears to give him pause. His response to what she has said is a moment’s hesitation, followed by a reluctant consent. He leans down and whispers something into her ear. She nods. He removes his apron, folds it, and holds it beneath one arm. He smiles round at the many wounded and sick soldiers, all of who seem to be in a state of suspense.

At last, Mrs. Duffy strikes a chord, and the surgeon in chief, in splendid voice, begins singing the first verse of “Woodman, Spare That Tree!”

At once, Walt whispers to Burroughs, “Go … go now.”

Burroughs stands and reaches for Hayes’s hand.

“Go with John,” says Walt. “He’ll tell you what you must do.”

Hayes grabs from the table the Dickens novel, into which he has already placed the two letters, Walt’s and Anne’s, and then he and Burroughs walk quietly to the back of the ward. As they go, Hayes bravely glances at the other soldiers, who listen to the music with rapt attention (“In youth it sheltered me / And I’ll protect it now …”), their eyes already glistening.

Burroughs opens the door to the bath-room, allowing Hayes to enter first, and then latches it from the inside. He places the package on the table, where rest a pitcher and basin, a towel, and a block of soap. He unties the string, and still facing away from Hayes, says, “Take off your clothes. Quickly as you can.”

Hayes doesn’t move but only looks around at the plain brown room, dimly lit by one small window—the two tin tubs hanging on hooks in the wall, the little round mirror the size of a base ball above the table.

Burroughs pours water into the basin and then turns to face him. “I’ll put my back to you if you’re modest,” he says, “but we must work fast.”

Hayes starts to undress, thinking that his short tenure in the army ridded him of modesty.

“Take off everything,” says Burroughs, “even your drawers. I’ve brought fresh ones for you. The suit’s exactly like mine and should be a good fit. Now come over here and wash up a bit.”

The two men switch places, Hayes naked now, and for a second, Hayes worries about Burroughs seeing his shrapnel wounds. Then he recalls that he has none. It almost amuses him.

As Hayes sponges himself with the soapy water, Burroughs says, “Walt will be waiting for you by the front doors. I’ll hang back here for a few minutes. You’ll have to walk the entire length of the ward by yourself, but you’ll do fine. Carry your book in your hand, that’s a good touch. Don’t stop for anything. Don’t speak to anyone. Walk straight to where Walt’s waiting. As you go out together, you might tell him the meaning of the word
walt
. He’ll like that.”

Hayes nods, and then Burroughs says something about his having seen Walt naked once, something about Walt’s ruddy pink roundness, but Hayes is listening to the music he hears through the wall, Dr. Bliss’s clear beautiful baritone:

Early on the first day of July, a Friday, Summerfield takes his coffee into the garden, where he finds Jane pulling weeds from her tomato patch. The sun is well up, though it hasn’t yet cleared the treetops at the riverbank, and he identifies the high misty glow in the air as sunlight reflected off the water. Since his return home a week ago, it has become his habit to dawdle about wearing his father’s embroidered smoking cap and slippers—he reads the newspapers, naps when he can, sorts through the mail that accumulated in his absence—and he has the distinct impression that the three women of the house, each in her own way, labors to accommodate his new and lurking presence. Now he gazes down at Jane, on hands and knees among the tomatoes; she looks to him paler and thinner than ever, as if, in time, she’ll simply fade away. He places his nearly empty cup on a nearby potting table. “I see the cabbages are coming along,” he says idly. “What kind are they?”

Jane pauses, raises her head. “I used to know the name, but I’ve forgot it,” she says, and returns to weeding.

He dodges a laundry pole and moves to the shed at the back of the garden, where vines, sagging with scores of young pods and small purple flowers, climb on strings against a wall. “Your beans are thriving, too,” he says. “Do these have a name?”

“I expect they do,” answers Jane, “but I don’t know it. Mrs. Perkins gave ’em to me. They’re long and green and get purple stripes when they’re ready, and then you cook ’em, and the stripes disappear.”

He returns to the tomato patch. “Have we always had tomatoes?” he asks. “I don’t recall having tomatoes when I was a boy.”

“Your mother was suspicious of tomatoes,” says Jane.

“These fuzzy ones look as if they’ll turn yellow,” he says. “What are they called?”

“I call ’em yellow,” says Jane with a sigh. “Yellow tomatoes. Mr. Foster gave me the seeds. That’s all I know. I’m not one for names.”

“I can see that,” says Summerfield.

Jane gets up from the ground, wiping her hands on her apron. “Excuse me,” she says, not looking at him. “I must go and wash.”

An orange cat leaps onto the fence at the back of the garden, trots silently to the corner post, and disappears into the tall grasses on the other side. A warm breeze stirs the air, promising a scorching day. Summerfield puts his hands in his pockets and looks up at the blue and cloudless sky. He didn’t sleep well last night (like most nights), his dreams full of thunder and voices and tall columns of fire. Since his return to Hicks Street, he has had an odd and ongoing feeling of suspension, as if he has been catapulted through the air and his feet haven’t yet touched ground. He is back at home. He joined the army, saw three impossibly long days of battle, survived. For more than a month Sarah thought him dead. Everyone assumes he walked through hell, though certainly not without some measure of glory. But his memory of Virginia is blurry, insubstantial, indeterminate, as if he’d gone to touch what he thought to be a hard surface and his hand sank into it instead. He frequently suffers an urge to return, to touch the thing again, to confirm its nature and actuality. Increasingly, the stuff of his dreams mixes with the stuff of his waking hours, and when he sleeps, he often finds himself running, both
in
the dream and
from
it. Two recurring images stay with him during the day: a great wooden box (larger than a casket) and charred cylindrical shapes, tapered at the ends; he recognizes each of these as a sort of container but further recognizes that he can say nothing about their contents.