Fire by Night (49 page)

He was sweating and white with shock, but he said, “Whiskey’s okay. Save the strong stuff for those who really need it.”

She put the cup in his good hand and helped him take a drink. He was studying her. “You look familiar,” he said between swallows. “Do I know you, ma’am?”

Phoebe decided to lie. It was easier that way. She asked him which company he was in, and when he told her she said, “You must know my brother, Ike Bigelow.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s it. I do see a family resemblance. You twins or something?”

She nodded vaguely.

“I’m sorry about Ike going missing, ma’am. I don’t know if you ever heard about it or not, but he was a good man and a brave soldier. Best marksman I ever met.”

Phoebe’s heart pounded with fear and dread as she prepared to ask the sergeant her next question. She needed to know the answer, but she was terrified to ask, terrified to hear his reply. “Um …Ike always used to write and tell me about his friend Ted Wilson. How’s he doing these days?”

“Wilson turned out to be a real good soldier, too. He tried very hard to find out what happened to your brother. Wouldn’t give up looking for him for the longest time. He was pretty broken up over his disappearance.”

“Is Ted still alive? Is he all right?” She held her breath. Her heart seemed to stop beating as she waited for his reply.

“I had coffee with him this morning, right before this mess started.”

Phoebe rose to her feet and fled, unable to utter a word. When she reached the supply wagon, she sank down behind it and wept. Ted was alive, grinning his boyish smile, drinking the awful coffee he always made. She cried with happiness and longing until she had no tears left.

A few hours later, Phoebe overheard two stretcher-bearers explaining to Dr. McGrath how the wounded soldier they’d just brought in had been badly burned. “The rifle fire was so heavy it set the woods on fire. We got this fella out, but most of the injured men who were laying in there couldn’t escape in time, and they burned to death.”

“It was terrible, Doc. We could hear them screaming for help, but we couldn’t get to them.”

“Are there more in there now?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah, but we can’t find them all because they’re scattered all over the woods.”

“We know where there’s a whole bunch of wounded men from a Pennsylvania regiment, but we can’t get to them.”

“Why not?” Dr. McGrath asked.

“The Rebels shoot at everything that moves. There’s a captain and about thirty of our wounded boys pinned down, and the Rebels fire at us whenever we try to go in after them.”

“Is it possible to take me to them? Could I treat them where they are?” he asked.

“The Rebels won’t care if you’re a doctor. They’ll shoot you for trying.”

“Wait here,” the doctor said. “I’ll get my bag.”

Phoebe trailed behind him as Dr. McGrath went to the medical supply wagon and quickly filled his bag with chloroform, morphine, bandages, and surgical instruments. “I want to go with you,” she told him.

“Not where there’s fighting, Phoebe,” he said without looking up. “This is as close to the battle lines as I ever want my nurses to get.”

“It’s my old regiment,” she said quietly. “Ted might be one of those wounded men.”

He looked up. “Is he the man whose life you saved once before?”

She nodded.

“You would risk your life to save him a second time?”

“I’d do it a hundred times. If you don’t let me go with you, I’ll go in there by myself.”

He didn’t reply. Instead, he closed his bag and walked back to the waiting men. Phoebe simply followed.

The ambulance drove them as close as it could get, then the stretcher-bearers took them as far into the woods as they dared. Dr. McGrath walked in front of Phoebe for the rest of the way, ducking low and following the sound of moaning men as Rebel bullets whistled overhead and thudded into tree trunks. Curiously, Phoebe didn’t feel at all afraid.

They found the injured men lying in a hollow in a grove of trees. Ted was not among them. Several of the soldiers had already died, but Phoebe and Dr. McGrath quickly set to work helping the living. She gave them chloroform while he operated to remove any bullets. She passed around water and gave morphine, calmed and fed and comforted them as best she could. When it grew dark and the risk of sniper-fire lessened, she and Dr. McGrath walked back through the woods to fetch the stretcher-bearers.

As the two of them sat alone beside the road, waiting for the ambulance to return, Phoebe summoned the courage to ask him the question she’d been wondering all afternoon. “Why’d you take a chance like that, Dr. McGrath? You could’ve been killed. In fact, I almost think that’s what you were trying to do.”

“Perhaps I was,” he said quietly.

“Why?”

He sighed. “It takes less courage to end your life in a burst of glory than to face the mistakes you’ve made and start over.”

“But you can start over no matter how many mistakes you made,” she said. “I did.”

He shook his head.

“Remember that first night I helped you at the shantytown,” Phoebe asked, “and I read a Bible verse to you about being a new person? Remember that? You said to let you know if I ever found out what it meant. Well, I think I’m starting to figure it out.” She paused, and the soft hooting of an owl and the call of a whippoorwill seemed out of place after all the carnage that she’d seen that day.

“We all tell lies and hurt people and do awful things,” she said. “I was never very nice to anybody, and I used to beat kids up at school and treat my brothers mean. Later on I even killed people when I was pretending to be a man. The first one was a young fellow sitting on a rooftop in Yorktown. He was a sniper, and I aimed for his leg, but the fall might’ve killed him. And I killed a lot of others after him. But the worst thing I ever done was to live my life without God. I never once asked Him which way to go or what I should do. I deserve to die for all that. There’s a bullet with my name on it heading toward me, and God is right to kill me. I made myself His enemy. But Jesus came in between that bullet and me. He covered me with His own body when I deserved to die, and He died in my place. I guess He done that for everybody, not just me.”

Dr. McGrath shook his head. “I’ve seen the worst in mankind, Phoebe. You have, too. Why would Christ do that? Why not just give us the punishment we deserve?”

“Same reason I saved Ted. Jesus saw someone He loved in trouble, and He just had to do it. I loved Ted, and I never even thought twice about saving him. But the best part is that now God lets me start all over again. It’s like all the things I’ve done don’t matter no more. Sure, there’s still people in Bone Hollow who knew me before and know what I done. But what they think don’t matter. It’s what God says that counts, and He says I’m brand-new, like that little baby we delivered in the shantytown—all fresh and new with a whole life ahead of me.”

“So you’ve found the atonement you sought by working as a nurse,” the doctor said.

“I’m not sure I know what that means.”

“It means you’re getting a chance to make up for all the things you’ve done wrong by working here, going through this hell on earth.”

“No, that ain’t it. I could work as a nurse for a hundred years and it still wouldn’t make things right in God’s eyes. Jesus already did that for me. I work as a nurse because I want to share His love with others. I never knew anything about love before the war started. Isn’t it funny that it took something this awful, with all the killing and suffering, for me to find out what love is?”

“What is love, Phoebe?” he asked quietly.

“It’s a gift. It’s never something you work for. Ted didn’t do a single thing to make me love him. He was just Ted. God loves me the same way, and He says I’m supposed to share that love with others, whether they deserve it or not. It was hard, at first, to help the Rebels. But I know I’m supposed to forgive them the way God forgave me, so I’m trying.”

“You’ve found forgiveness?” he murmured, almost to himself.

“Yes.”

They sat in the darkness for several minutes. Phoebe was aware of how the gentle evening sounds of crickets and frogs blended with the distant crack of a rifle or a man’s moan, how the fresh scents of earth and pine mingled with the bitter smell of smoke and gunpowder. Strangely, she felt at peace, even though she sat in the middle of a horrible battleground.

Dr. McGrath scooped up a twig and slowly began breaking it into pieces. As he did, he began to talk, his voice hoarse and filled with pain. “Eldon Tyler had been my patient for several years. He was a wealthy financier with everything a man could ask for in this life—except his health. I saw him regularly, at least once a week, and he always shared a glass of his imported Scotch whiskey with me. The cause of his symptoms eluded me for a while until he hinted one night that he had a fondness for …how shall I say this? For a certain type of disreputable woman. I realized then, as he had suspected all along, that he had syphilis. And I immediately knew that the disease was now in the third and final stage.

“The last night I saw Eldon…” The doctor paused, drawing a breath as if for strength.

“You don’t need to tell me this,” Phoebe said.

“I know. But I want to. On that last night, when I listened to Eldon’s heart, I heard valve damage. He was experiencing some loss of sensation in his legs, which meant the disease was already affecting his brain.

‘“Will I go insane?’ he asked me. I didn’t want to answer him.

‘“There’s no way to tell for sure.’ I hedged.

‘“Is there anything you can do?’ He spoke calmly, as if asking me if I thought it would rain.

‘“There is no cure, Eldon. I’m sorry.’

‘“Sit down, James,’ he said. ‘Have a drink with me.’

“I was upset. I allowed him to fill and refill my glass. I confess that I drank more that night than I usually did, but he kept pouring and pouring, and it seemed to cheer him to see me drink. I wanted to dull my thoughts. My pride couldn’t handle the fact that I couldn’t cure Eldon Tyler.

‘“I want to show you something,’ he said after a while. He opened his desk drawer and took out a set of dueling pistols. He offered me one, asked me what I thought of it, and when I stood to take it, I felt the effects of the whiskey. I had to sit again to stop the dizziness. And then he began saying the most terrible things about Ellen—my wife. I won’t repeat them because they were so shocking. And the language he used …I’d never known him to speak so coarsely. I thought he must have already begun losing his mind.

‘“Eldon, I must go,’ I said when he wouldn’t stop. He began to shout.

‘“What kind of man are you?Won’t you even defend your wife’s honor?’ He started waving the second pistol and calling me terrible names. I realized that he was trying to draw me into a duel— although I couldn’t think why he would do that at the time. I was too shocked by the change in him to think very clearly. And I felt responsible. I was his physician and his friend. I was angry with myself because I couldn’t help him. He would go insane and die very horribly, and there was nothing I could do. I was already grieving his dissolution and was not thinking straight from all the Scotch. I stood again.

‘“Would you like some laudanum?’ I asked, hoping it would calm him.

‘“No! I want you to help me!’

‘“There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.’

‘“You can end my suffering and let me die honorably in a duel, before my sons have to chain me up in the basement as a madman. You can put a bullet through my head, James! For God’s sake, help me! Help me!’

‘“I can’t do that.’ I laid the pistol down. I needed to take the other gun away from him, to sedate him and get him into bed. He’d drunk a great deal of Scotch, too. I started around the desk toward him. I was tipsy, moving too slowly. Before I could get to him, he suddenly put the pistol to his own head—and fired.”

James closed his eyes. He grew very still, as if reliving the horror.

“I wanted the clock to turn back,” he said hoarsely. “I wanted a second chance to get to him in time. I’d been trained to heal, and in my horror and shock I tried to …to gather the pieces of him and put them back together, to fix him. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but the servants found me that way, covered with Eldon’s blood and brain matter, trying futilely to piece him back together and undo the damage that the pistol had done. I was weeping and saying over and over, ‘I’m sorry, Eldon. I’m so sorry.’ The gun that had dropped from his hand was somehow in my own.

“The servants called the authorities. They’d heard Eldon shouting, arguing with me. I was too incoherent with grief and shock— and too much Scotch—to explain what had happened. They arrested me for murder.

“I spent a month in prison. The prosecutors felt they had enough evidence against me to go to trial. Everyone believed that I’d murdered him. In fact, most people still believe it—like the fellow you met the other day. But eventually Eldon’s attorney found the suicide note he’d written, detailing his plans, saying that if I couldn’t cure him, he would end his own life. The note had somehow been overlooked for all that time …I’m not sure how. They weren’t expecting to find one, I guess. Eldon told about his incurable disease and his plans to kill himself. Someone finally believed me when I said I hadn’t pulled the trigger.

“But Eldon had ordered his attorney to spare no expense in keeping the details out of the newspapers, and the Tyler family has enough wealth and political connections to do just that. To save the family from scandal, Eldon’s true medical condition was never made known, nor was the fact of his suicide. The authorities quietly released me from jail, all charges dropped. Your minister friend will find that out when he investigates. But no public explanation was ever given. Most people believe I’m guilty. My reputation, my medical practice—my life—were ruined over a murder I didn’t commit.”

He fell silent again. Phoebe could hear the rumble of the returning ambulance in the distance and the sound of the stretcher-bearers coming through the woods behind her with some of the wounded men. She rose to her feet, straightening her cramped legs. “You should fight back, Dr. McGrath. Make it clear to everybody what happened. It ain’t fair.”