Cheryl Reavis (15 page)

Abiah didn’t say anything—but it was all she could do not to ask if Elizabeth had mentioned Thomas.

“I have one other reason for coming,” Dr. Nethen said, reaching into his coat pocket. “This arrived for you a short time after you left. Clarissa wanted to make certain that you received it. She thought the judge might interfere if she tried to forward it to you through the mail—or that it might not reach you.”

He held an envelope out to Abiah a long time before she finally took it. It was addressed to “Mrs. Abiah C. Harrigan.” She recognized the handwriting immediately.

“Now, I have some other business to attend to. Shall I see about that, and then return—in case you want to send Thomas a reply back with me?”

“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “I have nothing I want to say to him.”

“But surely—”

“No,” she interrupted. “I thank you for your offer—and for the trouble you’ve gone to on my behalf. But no.”

“How will this ever be resolved it you don’t at least—”

“No,” she said again, forcing herself to meet his eyes. How could she explain to him that this letter, as
long as it was unread, gave her a small glimmer of hope? And she needed hope desperately.

“Dr. Nethen,” she said when he reached the door. “Thank Mrs. Harrigan. I wish…”

She didn’t go on. There was nothing more to be said. She stood there with the letter clutched tightly in her hand.

The mail carrier came at the end of the week—not that it mattered. There was no reply from Abiah.

And it was clear to Thomas now that there wasn’t likely to be one, just as it was clear to him that it was his military lot in life to be led by a succession of lunatics. Joseph Hooker had been more inept than he could ever have imagined. In the fiasco at Chancellorsville the son of a bitch had blatantly misinterpreted the obvious at every turn. He had stubbornly insisted that what could only be a flanking movement was a Confederate retreat. His staff, his pickets tried to tell him otherwise, and he simply refused to listen. Even when the deer and rabbits came bounding out of the woods straight toward them, terrified by the advancing Rebel army, Hooker remained unconvinced. The Union line had been cut to pieces, and all for nothing.

Thomas himself was lucky to have only been slightly wounded—a spent mine ball that cut a short but deep gash into his scalp. The bleeding had been markedly disproportionate to the injury itself. His head still ached, but he wasn’t dead, and he supposed that was something.

And if he and the entire army weren’t demoralized enough, by the third week of June, a new problem presented itself. Robert E. Lee was clearly no longer
concerned about the Grand Army of the Potomac coming after Richmond or anything else, for that matter. He dismissed the threat entirely by marching his army northward into Maryland, leaving hysterical citizens in his wake and nothing to be done but to chase after him.

Which was exactly what Thomas did
not
need. How would he ever get to see Abiah if he was forever going entirely in the wrong damn direction? He had never felt so down in his life. He had nothing of her to carry with him. No photograph, no ribbon or lock of hair, and for damn sure, no letter. All he had were the memories it hurt too much to think about. And he and La Broie both knew the gravity of this military situation, if no one else did. The mongrel dog was chasing conveyances again. And if Joseph Hooker caught up with
this
damn wagon, there would be hell to pay.

On June 28, Hooker was replaced by George Meade, and Thomas wrote two letters he could not mail, one to Abiah and one to his mother. On July 2, he waited with his regiment in a Pennsylvania peach orchard, his mind strangely calm but his heart aching with what might have been. His men were lying on their bellies in the dirt in front of him, out of sight of the Confederates, who were rapidly massing on the other side of an open meadow. Thomas walked up and down in the blazing hot sun, trying to keep everyone’s courage up—and his. At one point, he thought he saw a particular regimental banner in the line of trees—Johnny Miller’s, if he still lived.

Bender returned with all the canteens he could fill with water and still carry.

“Keep your head down, Bender,” Thomas admonished
as the boy began to distribute them down the line.

“Aw, Cap, they ain’t going to shoot
me
when they got you to aim at,” he said, causing a ripple of laughter along the line.

“Cap,” La Broie said at his elbow. “I got something to say, sir.”

“Then say it,” Thomas said, watching the Rebel line swell and swell as more men got into position.

“If you see Gertie again—and I don’t—would you say to her that I wish I’d married her, and that’s the God’s truth.”

Thomas glanced at him and nodded.

“And, sir—well, there’s one other thing, sir.”

“Hurry it up, La Broie, they’re bringing the artillery around.”

“I want you to tell Miss Abiah she and Gertie don’t have to worry about Zachariah Wilson no more.”

“What do you mean?” Thomas said, looking around sharply.

But the cannonade began in a great, sequential booming that drowned out the question.

“La Broie!” Thomas said, trying to be heard over the cannons’ roar.

“It’s been a pleasure serving with you, sir,” Thomas saw him say more than heard. La Broie gave him a smart salute and moved away.

A
biah could hear someone whispering in the hallway. That in itself was enough to get her attention, because the Yankee boarders heretofore had never minded how much noise they made, regardless of the hour. She opened the parlor door. Miss Gwen was standing toe-to-toe with Dr. Nethen, and if Abiah had thought he looked worried at their previous meeting, she had been wrong.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“Abby…” Miss Gwen began. She gave a heavy sigh. “Dr. Nethen,” she said, giving over to him.

“Abiah, Thomas was at Gettysburg,” Dr. Nethen said. “You understand that the lists are often wrong. The confusion is…”

Abiah waited for him to go on, but whatever he was about to say, she was determined not to believe it, and she supposed that her face must have shown it. He abruptly handed her the folded newspaper he had in his hand. She looked down at it, but she couldn’t read it, not with Miss Gwen and Dr. Nethen watching her
so closely. She turned abruptly and walked out of the house, taking the newspaper with her. There were a few people out, promenading Yankee wives who had come down from Massachusetts to ease the tediousness of the occupation for their husbands. They looked at her curiously as she passed, one of them holding her child closer to her skirts as if she thought Abiah might be a source of harm.

She kept walking until she reached the Methodist church, but she didn’t go inside. She went into the cemetery instead, and she didn’t stop until she reached the low stone wall at the far end. There, in the dappled shade of an oak tree, amid birdsong and bees and cicadas incited by the intense July heat, she began to read. The wind rustled the canopy of oak leaves overhead. Her hands trembled.

She finally found Thomas’s regiment on the list. The names under it went on and on, and they weren’t in alphabetical order.

She kept reading.

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered, seeing a name she recognized.

La Broie, Peter, Sgt., killed.

And then,

Harrigan, Thomas, Capt., killed.

She made a small anguished sound. He couldn’t be dead. Even seeing it in print, she believed that she would have known if he was. How many days since the battle? Twenty? Twenty-one? Every day since the news of the terrible losses at Gettysburg came, she had grown increasingly certain that Thomas was all right.

“Abiah.”

She looked around. Dr. Nethen had come after her.

“How old is this?” she asked, unfolding the newspaper even as she asked so she could see the date, her voice accusing and filled with unshed tears. It was over a week old. “Has there been any news since?”

“No. Or at least when I left, this was all we knew. The judge is trying to verify it—for Clarissa’s sake. He has people searching the hospitals, and the houses in and around the town. I understand there were so many wounded, the citizens of Gettysburg had to take them into their homes. Apparently Thomas was in a very…bad place during the second day of the battle. But thus far, they can’t find anyone from the regiment to ask.”

“Anyone alive, you mean.”

“Yes. Anyone alive.”

“He’s not dead.”

“Abiah—”

“He is not dead!”

Dr. Nethen was looking at her with such pity that she abruptly turned away from him. She could not allow him to make her doubt her conviction.

“Abiah, Miss Pembroke told me about your…condition.”

She looked at him. “She had no right to do that.”

“Perhaps not. But she has the good sense to want what is best for you. This pregnancy could be very hard on you. You’ve only just come through a life-threatening illness. Your body may not yet be strong enough, particularly now with the shock of Thomas
being—” He broke off. “I think you should come back with me to Maryland—where you can be looked after properly,” he said after a moment.

“No.”

“It would mean a lot to Clarissa to know Thomas left a child.”

“Thomas is
not
dead!” she said vehemently. “I would know if he were. I knew about my brother, Guire. Everyone said he was fine—but I knew better. I knew he was dead and I know Thomas is alive.”

The doctor sighed and sat on the stone wall. “Did you read the letter I gave you?”

“No,” she said, looking across the cemetery so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. The grave diggers were at work in the far corner. She hadn’t noticed them earlier. One of the women from the church had gone to Pennsylvania to bring her son’s body home, and the undertaker was making ready.

“Abiah, for God’s sake! He may have explained this thing with Elizabeth—”

“I don’t want it explained. I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to think about it. I have a child coming. I have to save all my strength for that. I can’t let myself be distracted by Elizabeth Channing.”

“Abiah—”

“Dr. Nethen, you realize, I hope, that this is none of your business.”

He gave a slight smile. “I can’t help it. I had truly hoped things would work out between you and Thomas. How have you been feeling—physically, I mean?”

She looked at him. Her first inclination was not to answer him.

“I feel…all right,” she said after a moment.

“Can you get enough to eat here?”

“We manage. We have a garden, and Miss Gwen has some…very charitable friends.”

“How charitable will they be if they find out your husband was a soldier in the Union army?”

“They are
her
friends, not mine. I don’t believe they would hold the actions of her relatives against her. And please. Stop referring to Thomas in the past tense.”

“Abiah—”

“Please! He may be wounded. He may be injured very badly, but he’s alive. I believe it. I
feel
it…”

He didn’t say anything else. After a moment he offered her his arm. She took it and walked with him back to the house. Miss Gwen was waiting anxiously on the veranda.

“Abiah, are you—” she began.

“I think I’ll lie down for a while,” Abiah interrupted.

“Yes, my girl,” Miss Gwen said. “You are so very pale. Doctor…?”

“I don’t need anything,” Abiah insisted. “I just want to lie down.”

She left them standing, and hurried up the stairs to her room. She stretched out on the bed, her eyes closed, the newspaper still in her hand.

He’s not dead! I would know if he were dead.

She rested her hands protectively over her belly.

We would know.

The afternoon breeze had finally risen, and the lace curtains Miss Gwen had managed to save from the looters billowed outward from time to time. It was still so hot. Abiah could smell the heat, smell the dust in the curtains each time they stirred. Somewhere nearby a dog barked. Somewhere nearby children laughed and played.

She closed her eyes. She was not ill. She was filled with regrets.

“A
bby!” he said aloud, startling himself with the sound of his own voice.

“Ah, no, sir. It’s me.”

Thomas took a quiet breath. He had to stop doing that. He had to stop thinking every sound, no matter how insignificant, was her. Sometimes he thought he heard her singing—the same sad ballad he remembered from that summer night at the Calder house so long ago.

How did that go?
I can’t remember. I can’t
—

“What was your name again?” he abruptly asked the orderly, because he couldn’t remember that, either.

“Private Murphy, sir.”

“Yes. Murphy. How…long have I been here?”

From the look on the man’s face, Thomas immediately realized that he must have asked that question before as well.

“It’s now the last day of August, sir. You’ve been here since the fifth of July.”

“In Washington.”

“Yes, sir! That’s right, sir!” the man said enthusiastically—as if Thomas were a small boy and he’d just managed to count to ten. “Would you be remembering your name now as well, sir?”

“My name?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve kind of had to be guessing about that, you see.”

“Harrigan. Thomas…W. Harrigan.”

“And your rank?”

“Captain…Twenty-second…Massachusetts…Infantry. Company…B.”

“I see. Let me write that down. We have folks asking after soldiers all the time, you know. It’s good you can remember. Now we can let your family know.”

Thomas reached up to touch the side of his face. It was heavily bandaged. In spite of the pain, he abruptly lifted his head, trying to see his arms and legs.

“No, now don’t be worrying about that, sir. You’re all there—every bit of you. You’ve got a few holes in you you didn’t have before, but they’re healing. You’ve lost nothing important at all—except time. From the looks of you when they brought you in—all the dirt and rocks stuck in your hide—I’d say you were close to a shell when it landed. But not too close, or you’d be dead now for sure. It’ll take a while to get you back to your former loveliness, but your Abby will be knowing you at first glance. I promise you that.”

“Who did you say?” Thomas asked, because for one brief moment he thought that perhaps she’d been here, after all.

“I said ‘your Abby,’ sir. You’ve been calling for her since they brought you in. Even in the delirium.”

“Delirium,” Thomas repeated, trying to take in everything the sergeant was telling him.

“Yes, sir. That’s like having a terrible nightmare, only you’re not asleep. There’s been many a soldier here these last few weeks suffering that—ones that came from the same hell you were in there in Gettysburg mostly. But we whipped the Rebel sons of bitches and that’s the truth. You’re going to be getting well now, sir. You’ll see. The ladies of Washington will be arriving this afternoon—I’ll be sending one of them ‘round to write a letter for you. You rest now. What a fine day this is, when a brave soldier comes back to his own.”

But Thomas didn’t want to send a letter. He felt a pang of guilt that his mother would be worried about him—if she hadn’t given up on him already and assumed that he was dead—but he wanted to be stronger first. He didn’t want to be pounced upon and dragged off to Maryland, as Abby had been. That may have saved her life, but he had no notion that it would do anything to further his. He would not be indebted to his grandfather any more than he already was.

He did have “holes” he hadn’t had before the battle—three of them—and by God’s grace they all seemed to have passed through spots he didn’t particularly require. The worst was in his right thigh just above the knee. Somehow a ball had traversed the muscle without hitting the bone. It hurt like hell when he tried to stand. And when he finally looked into a
mirror with the bandage off, he thought that Private Murphy had been a bit generous in his assertion that Abby would still recognize him. How could she when he hardly recognized himself?

But he was lucky to be alive, and he was lucky to have encountered a surgeon who apparently sometimes tried measures other than radical amputations. He was still feverish at times, but he was in his right mind. Every day he pushed himself to his physical limit—sitting, then standing, then hobbling the length of the hospital ward, and for no other purpose than to be able to go look for his wife. When he wasn’t sleeping in total exhaustion from his efforts, he passed the time talking to the other men.

Everyone he spoke with had come from Gettysburg. He didn’t remember much about the battle himself—how he had happened to be wounded in three places—and he didn’t want to. He knew that his corps commander had disobeyed orders and moved them to an exposed position in a peach orchard and a wheatfield too far out from the Union lines. And he knew that not many of the men who were there with him had survived. But those events were too recent and too raw for examination. He was here and he was more or less on his feet, and that was enough for now.

He made inquiries about the men in his company—La Broie and Bender in particular. No one could tell him anything. And absolutely no one would provide him with a casualty list. It was as if they thought learning a comrade was dead would come as a surprise. Some days he walked through the wards himself,
thinking that some of his men could be in the same condition he had been—senseless and therefore unidentified—but he never recognized a single one.

The middle of September he had a visitor—a wearylooking colonel from the War Department who advised him that he had been promoted to the rank of major.

“Why?” Thomas asked the man in all sincerity.

“The reports say for gallantry and extreme bravery—at the peach orchard salient. You were mentioned by name in several accounts by commanding officers who were on the field that day. It seems the federal line would have broken many times if not for you.”

“I don’t want it,” Thomas said bluntly. If he’d forced men to stand and be murdered on account of a commanding officer’s stupidity, he couldn’t see being decorated for it.

“I’m afraid what you want doesn’t enter into it. You have been declared a hero and you have been made a major. And that, as they say, is that.”

Thomas looked at him, wondering if his grandfather had anything to do with this recognition. If so, then he must know that Thomas had survived. He could easily see the old man’s reasoning—a wounded and decorated war-hero grandson did much to cancel out the scandal-making, seemingly adulterous one.

“Are your injuries such that you will petition to be mustered out, Major Harrigan?” the man asked.

“No, sir.”

“If you intend to stay, I have been authorized by
the secretary of war to tell you that you may ask for reassignment—wherever you choose. Given your leg injury, if you’d prefer a cavalry unit this time—”

“No, sir. If there are still occupation forces in New Bern, I would like to be assigned there.”

The colonel stared at him. “There is a Massachusetts regiment there. The Forty-fourth. It’s a plum posting,” he said.

“Is it?” Thomas asked, because he didn’t know anything about that. He only knew that the last he’d heard, Abiah had gone there.

“But I dare say you deserve it.”

One of the men a few beds down began to weep loudly. It had a visible effect on the colonel.

“I understand there isn’t much of your brigade—or the Third Corps—left,” he continued, when the soldier had grown quieter.

“I don’t really know, sir,” Thomas said, but a fleeting memory of the peach orchard came into his mind in spite of all he could do. He realized that his hands were beginning to tremble. He clenched his fists and cleared his throat and tried to concentrate. “The surgeon hasn’t said when I may leave here,” he offered after a moment.

“I will have the orders for your new posting sent to him. He can authorize them when he sees fit. Now, if you would be so kind, Major. Thus far, I have spent the war safely here in Washington. The sacrifices you and your regiment have made are not unappreciated. You would do me a great honor if you would allow me to shake your hand.”

Thomas shook the hand the man offered. The colonel’s grasp was firm, and Thomas thought, sincere. If he noticed Thomas’s trembling, he gave no sign.

“Good luck, Major Harrigan,” he said. “But perhaps in New Bern you won’t need it.”