The Deserter (11 page)

“Oh, there's so much more.” Ebenezer's enthusiasm bubbled over. He grew more and more excited, showing them one absurdity after another.

They looked on politely, but Homer was more interested in Ebenezer's euphoric state than in the exhibits in his museum. Enthusiasm was all very well—in fact he himself moved through life on cresting waves of euphoria—but Ebenezer's was completely out of control. Combined with stupidity and ignorance, it was positively dangerous.

“I've got John W. Booth's pistol here somewhere,” he said. He scrabbled in the mess on one of the card tables, knocking aside a bag of groceries, which tipped over and fell with a crash.

“Whoopsie,” said Ebenezer. With a hysterical giggle he dropped to hands and knees.

Mary helped him pick up the tumbled soup cans, trying to think of an excuse to get away. The day was getting on and it was a long drive home. But then under the last tin of chicken noodle soup she found another small leather case. It had fallen open, displaying the photographs of a man and a woman.

The glass over both pictures had been broken, but the woman on the right was the one whose likeness they had bought yesterday in Gettysburg.

Beaming, Mary stood up and showed the battered case to Homer.

“My God, you were right,” he said. “It's the same woman. The man must be her husband. He must be Seth, your great-great-grandfather. Then the woman would be your great-great-grandmother.”

“Well, perhaps that's who they are. Anyway, I remember the two of them together.” Gently she laid the case on the table and set down beside it the one from Gettysburg.

“Goodness me,” said Ebenezer, gazing at them. “Where did you get the other one?”

“In Gettysburg. What was the name of the shop, Homer?”

“Bart, the guy's name was Bart. Bart's Battle Flag Books, that was it.”

“May I ask,” said Ebenezer sweetly, “how much you paid for it?”

Mary told him. His eyebrows shot up and he whistled.

“Oh, Bart was a scoundrel,” said Homer. “All his prices were ridiculous. He said it was part of a set. He tried to sell us a whole bunch of other stuff that was supposed to go with it, but he wanted a couple of thousand for it, so we left.”

“Other stuff?” whispered Ebenezer. “What sort of other stuff?”

“Oh, there was a uniform coat. He was really proud of the coat because of the blood on it, and—
ouch
.” Mary had stepped on his foot. “Oh, well, I dunno what else he had,” he finished lamely. “We didn't offer to buy it. We couldn't afford it.”

Ebenezer seemed to forget about the matching pictures, the bloodstained coat and Bart's bookstore in Gettysburg. He waved them across to the display on the sideboard.

And here Mary took alarm at another priceless piece of Lincoln memorabilia, a kerosene lantern labeled “
THE LAMP BESIDE THE DEATHBED.
” Well, that was ridiculous. But so was the attached price tag:
$350
.

She looked at Ebenezer, scandalized. “Are these things for sale?”

He looked modestly down. “But you see, I am a well-known dealer in historical momentos.”

Her heart sank. “Ebenezer, you're not selling the family things?” Before he could answer, she snatched up the little broken case again and turned it over. A price tag was pasted on the back. Ebenezer was offering for sale this precious photograph of two people related to the family—his family as well as hers—for $750.

There followed a nasty scene—rage on Mary's part, giggles and protestations on the part of Ebenezer and an attempt at rational argument by Homer.

Glowering at Ebenezer, he warned him that they were on their way to visit a friend in the local judiciary. This old friend would clap a restraining order on Ebenezer, forbidding him to sell a single solitary thing that had been removed from Mary's sister's house.

Ebenezer had an immediate change of heart. “Take it,” he said, thrusting the broken pictures into Mary's hands. “Here, these too. And here's some more.” He snatched up scraps of yellowed documents without looking at them and held them high.

Mary looked at his handfuls with scorn, but Homer accepted them graciously and folded them to his chest. “Come on, my dear,” he said. “Thank you, Ebenezer. We'll come back another day.”

“Homer,” said Mary, as the door slammed behind them and they teetered across the sloping porch, “who do you know on the bench in Washington?”

Homer grinned. “Not a soul. But I don't trust old Ebenezer, that important posterior and derelict, any farther than I can see him. Somebody at home must know a practicing magistrate around here. In the meantime, I doubt Ebenezer will dare to sell a thing.”

“Oh, good for you, Homer.”

“But we're not going home yet.”

“We aren't? Oh, Homer, I'm dying to go home.”

“There's something we've got to do first. We've got to get back to Bart's Bookstore in Gettysburg before Ebenezer gets there first and snatches up that goddamned bloody coat.” He unlocked the car, tossed Ebenezer's trash onto the backseat and got in behind the wheel.

Mary sighed and climbed in beside him. Then, while Homer lunged back down the highway in the direction of Gettysburg, she picked up the stereoscope, plucked another card out of the box of stereographs, tucked it into the wire holder and adjusted the gadget in and out until the two pictures became one and jumped into three dimensions.

At once the cluster of men in the foregound stood away from the tent in the background. What was going on? Then she saw the bare leg hanging from a table. One of the soldiers was holding a white cloth over the face of a prostrate patient. In the center, caught forever in the moment before amputating one of the patient's legs, stood a man with a saw.

PART X

IDA

There stood the surgeons, their sleeves rolled up to the elbows, their bare arms as well as their linen aprons smeared with blood, their knives not seldom held between their teeth.… Around them pools of blood and amputated arms and legs in heaps sometimes more than a man high
.

—G
ENERAL
C
ARL
S
CHURZ

THE SURGEON

I
n the vestibule of the courthouse the surgeon could not spare a hand to mop away the sweat on his face or the tears that kept running down his cheeks. The tears were partly from exhaustion and partly from the perpetual anguish of caring for an endless succession of mangled men.

Now his left hand held the forceps clamped on the severed end of an artery, and with his right he was trying to tie the ligature. His steward reached out to help, but his clumsy fingers grazed the forceps and the artery slipped back out of sight.

The woman was the last straw. When a shadow eclipsed the sunlight from the open door, the surgeon glanced around and saw her, then looked back angrily at the mess on the table, the wreck of a boy no older than fifteen.

He pitied these women, but he was sick of them, sick to death of their doleful questions, their weeping, their habit of swooning at the sight of a gangrenous leg. And then, of course, he had to stop whatever he was doing and take care of them first.

This one was obviously in a family way. She'd be more trouble than all the rest. In a minute she'd keel over when she caught sight of the basket under the stairs, or faint away from the smell of ether and chloroform and the reek of suppurating wounds combined with the general town stench of the dead horses that hadn't been buried yet.

Or maybe the wretched mother-to-be would venture past him into the courtroom, where hundreds of men lay naked on the bare floor with nothing but newspapers to keep off the flies. Even out here with the door shut, she could hear their whimpering cries.

The surgeon did not turn around again. He checked the tourniquet, tightened it a little, made another attempt to tie the ligature, succeeded, picked up his instrument, judged the line his saw would take—it was a single-flap amputation—and got to work.

But his strength was draining away, the nervous energy that had kept him going day after day when he had hardly paused for food, only sipping a little whiskey now and then, managing only a few hours of sleep, falling like a dead man on a horsehair settee in the judge's private chamber, now cluttered with waiting coffins.

He did not look at the woman, but knowing that she was there, he edged sideways to hide the back-and-forth movement of the tool in his hand. No doubt she could guess what was going on. She could see his right elbow driving back and forth and hear the brittle rasp of the saw. Any moment now she'd crumple to the floor and give birth.

Still she uttered no sound. When the last shred of skin was cut through and the severed leg tossed into the basket, he left the task of dressing the stump to his steward and turned around to glower at the woman.

She was deathly pale, but still standing. “Sir,” she said quickly, seizing the moment, “I've come to Gettysburg to find my husband. His name's Seth Morgan. He's a first lieutenant in the Second Massachusetts. No one seems to know where he is. I tried to find Colonel Mudge, but they told me he was killed at a place called Culp's Hill.”

“Oh, yes,” said the doctor, who had received some of the wounded from that criminally stupid attack. His grim look softened. “There must have been a muster after the battle,” he said kindly. “Do you know who took Colonel Mudge's place? Surely someone will have a list.”

The boy on the table whimpered, and the surgeon spoke testily to the steward, “Keep it up, keep it up.” Obediently the young man dripped more ether on the cloth over the soldier's face.

“Oh, yes, there was a list in the paper, the Philadelphia paper. I saw it, the casualties for the Twelfth Corps, and my husband was listed as missing. And I met a corporal in his company just now, but he hadn't seen Seth since the fighting. I'm not sure, but I think that's what he said. I believe the corporal wasn't very well.”

Drunk
, guessed the surgeon. “Well, of course the roster of the wounded isn't complete yet.” He looked at her doubtfully. “If your husband was wounded, you might find him in the hospital for the Twelfth Corps. You see, they sort them out by corps.”

“Where?” she said quickly. “Tell me where to go.”

For a moment he considered, looking at her silently. “Are you sure? Perhaps it would not be wise for a woman in your—”

“Where is it? Tell me.” Then she had to stand aside because the next case was coming in, slung in a blanket between two young women.

Carefully they rolled the new patient onto the table. It was a head wound this time. The boy's face was flushed with fever. He was thrashing from side to side.

With relief the surgeon dismissed the woman. “I believe the Twelfth Corps hospital is in a barn somewhere south of town.”

She said something, probably “Thank you,” and he heard the swish of her skirt against the frame of the door.

The poor woman is in for a shock
, thought the surgeon, handing the can of ether to the steward. If her husband's name was not on the muster roll of dead and wounded after the fracas at Culp's Hill, and if he hadn't been seen since the battle, most likely he was a deserter.

The surgeon grimaced at Sally and Sarah. “Go on home, you two. William and I'll get along first-rate.”

Sally folded the blanket and shook her head. Sarah said softly, “Sir, I'm afraid there's two more have died.”

A TIDY LITTLE
VILLAGE

My, but the white went quickly. None of us had any white petticoats as it was all cut up for bandages
.

—N
ELLIE
A
UGINBAUGH,
G
ETTYSBURG

S
econd Massachusetts?” The officer was in a hurry. His tent was being dismantled. There was a thump, and one of the canvas walls collapsed. “Here, ma'am, we'd better step outside.” He took Ida by the elbow and led her out into the hay field, where the flattened grass was wet and and the harvest spoiled.