When Johnny Came Marching Home (33 page)

"His people were from England," Doc said. "Maybe he was just keeping with custom."

Doc unbuttoned Johnny's tunic and exposed his chest. Widely spaced sutures closed the incision from the autopsy and the lanterns made his pale, white chest appear to shimmer in the flickering light.

"Dis here is spooky," Josiah said. "I gonna be dreamin' 'bout dis fer a long time."

Doc took the awl and compared the long slender blade to the wound on Johnny's chest. "Looks like it fits perfectly," he said. "We'll have to check the interior wound."

Doc cut the sutures and pried the rib cage back. The ribs had been cut and spread for the autopsy and they moved easily, making a distinct sucking sound that sent a chill down my spine.

"Jesus," my father said, indicating it had done the same to him.

Doc took the awl again. All the organs had been removed and examined during the autopsy and lay inside the body cavity. They had begun to putrefy and a heavy odor of decay rose from the body, causing all but Doc to cover our noses and mouths. Doc picked up the heart and carefully slid the blade of the awl into the wound. He looked at us in turn. "It's a perfect fit," he said. "That makes it ninety percent certain this was the weapon the killer used."

 

* * *

 

My father, Doc, and I were seated at our kitchen table and a bottle of whiskey had been set out. We had returned Johnny to his grave and it left a pall hanging over us. I had seldom seen my father drink hard liquor, but I could tell he needed it to put aside the evening's work.

"Walter Johnson came ta see me this afternoon," my father said, trying to push other thoughts away. "He invited us ta supper next weekend ta talk over weddin' plans."

My father was avoiding the question he wanted to ask, but Doc stepped in and asked it for him.

"I'm real happy for you, Jubal," Doc began. "Please be certain of that. But I'm also worried. What are you going to do if it turns out someone in the Johnson household killed Johnny Harris?"

I tapped on the table. "The only evidence we have is the awl, our belief that it was the weapon that killed Johnny, and the fact that it was found behind some boxes in the Johnson barn. What we still need to find out is how it got there. Right now I can't answer that question. But one thing's certain: anyone could have thrown it behind those boxes. Anyone."

"You're right, son," my father said. "But there's also the talk that Mary Johnson was involved with Johnny. An' that could point a finger at both her an' Walter. Have ya talked ta either one of 'em?"

"I talked to Mary. She denied there was anything between them." The words burned in my throat. I had never lied to my father, not even as a boy. Now I had.

 

* * *

 

Chancellorsville, Virginia, 1864

Word came in November that General Sherman had put Atlanta to the torch and was now headed for Savannah and the sea. Jubilation filled the ranks. Everyone believed the South would now crumble before Sherman's marauding army and that he would march through the Carolinas leaving destruction in his wake. Within months he was expected to unite with Grant to deal the final crushing blow to Confederate forces.

My wounds had healed and I was working as a clerk at the field hospital. We were between battles with few new casualties coming in, and my job was limited to filling out discharge papers for those who were being sent home. I had expected to be sent home myself, only to be told that the loss of a single arm left me capable enough for clerical work, thereby freeing up a more able-bodied man for battle.

Lieutenant Nettles came to my small clerical tent while I was filling out papers for a man who had lost both an arm and a leg. The army had decided to send him home to his wife and child in New Jersey, even though his wife had written telling the army she could not care for him and insisting he be kept in a military hospital. Otherwise, she warned, they would leave her no choice but to turn him out to the streets.

Nettles picked up the papers and read quickly through them. "How does a woman like that live with herself?" he wondered aloud.

"How does the army?" I replied.

"The army is supposed to have a cold and calloused heart. It's the nature of the beast."

"Cold and calloused, even to its own men who have given so much?"

"Especially to its own men, and especially to those who are no longer useful." He tapped the side of his nose. "Why else would we take fine young boys and throw them into battles where we know many will be slaughtered? And all on the whim of politicians and generals."

"You're speaking treason, sir." I smiled at him, letting him know it had become my brand of treason as well.

"Come take a walk with me, Foster."

I followed Lieutenant Nettles outside. He was not a big man, and I towered over him, but he had a presence about him that commanded respect. His beard was fuller than the last time I'd seen him, his brown eyes a bit wearier. But he still walked with his shoulders squared and his back ramrod straight, almost as though he was defying anyone to think him a cripple. But, of course, there always would be those who would.

We stopped next to a large mound of dirt. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.

"It was a pit where they buried amputated limbs," I said.

Nettles nodded his head somewhat like a schoolmaster. "They filled this one up last May. It probably has your arm down there. They've dug two others since and filled them as well."

"Where is your arm, sir?" There was a touch of resentment in my voice. I didn't need to be reminded where my arm was.

"Vicksburg," Nettles said. "Our commander in chief, Mr. Lincoln, through the good offices of General Grant, allowed me to donate my arm to the greater good in beautiful Mississippi, a place best suited to alligators and cottonmouths." He turned away from the closed-over pit and faced me. "General Sherman's great success in Georgia has brought freedom to most of the men held at Andersonville Prison. A list of those freed was sent to Washington, which in turn informed the various units from which the men were captured. I learned last week that Johnny Harris and Bobby Suggs were among those freed. They were not in good shape. Conditions at Andersonville can only be described as horrendous. There was very little food and even less medical care, the Confederacy preferring to reserve its limited resources of each for their own men. I was informed that the men capable of travel were being sent home. Harris and Suggs were among them."

"What about the charges I filed against them?" I could feel the sudden anger radiating from my face.

"I asked that exact question. I had forwarded those charges to my superiors, urging they be acted upon." He drew a long breath, an angry one, I thought. "This morning I received a reply. There are to be no charges filed, no court martials, nothing. Our superiors feel that accusing federal troops of atrocities against civilians would only inflame hatreds at a time when we will be seeking to mollify a conquered people. They also feel that a trial that suggests Union troops deliberately caused the death of a fellow soldier and the serious wounding of a noncommissioned officer would only taint the great victory we are about to achieve." He placed a hand on my shoulder. "So nothing will be done. And nothing can be done on our part to change that fact. Of course, that doesn't stop you from seeking justice yourself," he said as he walked away from me. "Private Suggs hails from a small Pennsylvania town called Solebury, and I believe you know where Private Harris can be found."

 

* * *

 

General Lee abandoned Richmond on April 2, and the Confederate government followed his example and fled to Lynchburg. Lee led his army west, hoping to eventually join forces with Confederate troops in North Carolina where he could continue the fight. He got only as far as Appomattox Court House, where Grant and the Army of the Potomac cut off his retreat. Lee attempted to break through the Union lines, believing it was made up entirely of cavalry. When he realized that the cavalry was backed by two corps of Union infantry, he had no choice but to lead his army into a massacre or suffer the indignity of surrender.

Lee's surrender took place on April 9, and three days later Lieutenant Nettles came to my tent and handed me my discharge papers.

"Go home, Sergeant Foster," he said. "The war is over, or will be shortly, and all those who were seriously wounded are being discharged with the sincere thanks of a grateful nation." He clearly enjoyed the irony of his statement.

"Are you being discharged, sir?" I asked.

"The nation is not that grateful, Sergeant Foster. I have been reassigned to Washington where I shall be in command of a magnificent desk . . . undoubtedly in some delightful basement room of the War Department."

 

* * *

 

The next day I packed my few things, collected my separation pay, and arranged a ride to Washington where I could catch a train north. Before leaving, I borrowed a horse and rode to the cemetery where Abel was buried.

His grave was on a hillside that overlooked rolling Virginia hills. The countryside was still scarred by battles, spread out like a fallen man with deep wounds. But those wounds would heal—heal or be covered over and callused by time. There was a simple white wooden cross on Abel's grave, and I laid some wildflowers I had gathered at its base, then knelt and prayed for the boyhood friend I had loved more than I knew. Tears ran down my cheeks, but I ignored them, let them flow freely, knowing that Abel deserved tears at his gravesite, tears from someone who had loved him in life, something that his death so far away from home had denied him.

"I'm sorry I'm not taking you home with me," I said out loud. "Just as I'm sorry we won't become old men together, sitting in front of the store and telling tall tales of deer hunts and days spent fishing for trout. It's how it should have been." I lowered my head and closed my eyes. "I'll always keep you in my thoughts and my heart, Abel. And I promise you that I'll help Josiah look after little Alva." I reached down and ran my hand along the new grass that covered the grave, stroking it softly. "You were the best of us," I whispered. "You were always the best."

 

* * *

 

I took the train north to Philadelphia. It was April 14, Good Friday, and the station in Washington was crowded with holiday travelers and discharged soldiers like myself who were finally heading home.

I left the train in Philadelphia and rented a horse and rode north for Solebury. But it proved a wasted journey. When I arrived I was told that Bobby Suggs had left town nearly a month before and headed to parts unknown to look for work. I don't know what I would have done if I had found Suggs. But I knew I wanted to confront him and let him know that his villainy had not been forgotten. Perhaps I would have smashed him into the ground and beaten him until my strength was gone, and settled for that. Perhaps I would have killed him. I suppose it would have depended on what he said. I only knew that there was a deep and simmering rage inside me for both Bobby Suggs and Johnny Harris.

I returned to Philadelphia on Easter Sunday and found everyone I encountered in a state of shock and mourning. I learned that President Lincoln had been shot on Friday evening, only hours after I left Philadelphia for Solebury. A massive manhunt was now underway for Lincoln's assassin, an actor named John Wilkes Booth, and it made me consider that I, too, might well be the subject of another manhunt if I had found Suggs and made him pay for Abel's murder.

I sent a telegram to my father, telling him I was on my way home and when my train would arrive in Richmond. I also asked that he tell no one else about my return, explaining that I wanted time alone with him, time to adjust to being home again.

My train followed the Hudson River, passing through peaceful valleys that had seen nothing of the war, moving by the rising hills of the Catskill Mountains. Throughout the journey I thought of President Lincoln, of the brief encounter I'd had with the man at the field hospital outside Sharpsburg, the tears that had glistened in his eyes as he stroked the cheek of the wounded boy Abel and I were carrying. It was another sad waste in a war that, to me, had been nothing but waste.

We made stops in Poughkeepsie and Albany, and at each place discharged soldiers—many on crutches, many missing arms or legs—were greeted by waiting family and friends. Day became night and I changed trains the next morning at Saratoga and took a spur line across the Hudson and into southern Vermont. It was mid-April and the trees were just blossoming with new growth, giving the Vermont hillsides a renewed hint of pale green. As the train moved north we passed rivers and streams swollen by the snowmelt, and the roads that ran beside the tracks were thick with mud.

We stopped in Rutland and Brandon and Middlebury before moving north again, and suddenly Lake Champlain was just west of the tracks, a wide, shimmering expanse of blue water, beyond which rose the Adirondack Mountains in New York. I moved to the other side of the train and as the forests turned into fields I watched our own mountains appear: Mount Mansfield and Bolton and finally Camel's Hump, the foothills of which I and the people of Jerusalem's Landing called home.

The train stopped in Burlington and then turned east, passing through Winooski and Essex Junction, before finally arriving at the small red building of the railroad station in Richmond. I was exhausted from my journey, and my heart pounded in my chest as if I'd just run a great distance. I took a deep breath to calm myself while my mind raced through memories of all the days and nights I had laid in blood-soaked fields and forests, wondering if I'd ever see my home again.

I climbed down from the train carrying the one bag I'd brought with me and saw my father hurrying toward me, his smile so wide it seemed to cover his entire face.

"Oh God, oh God," he said as he pulled me to him. He stepped back, measured me from head to foot, looked at my missing arm, and then pulled me to him again. "Thank God you're home, son. Thank God Almighty you're home."