Kary, Elizabeth (62 page)

"Mrs.
Banister?" General Grant's tone was gentle. "I'm terribly sorry about
your husband."

The
words of consolation were kind, but they also spoke of dismissal. Leigh came
unsteadily to her feet, feeling as if her bones had turned to jelly.
"Yes," she managed to murmur. "Thank you for taking time to tell
me what happened, General."

"Your
husband was a very gallant soldier to risk his life
to break the
siege. We're all grateful for his sacrifice, and yours."

"Yes..."
Leigh made her way to the door. She felt the coolness of the knob beneath her
fingers, moved forward as the panel swung outward.

The
hall was filled with dozens of civilians and officers waiting to talk to Grant.
She moved through them like a sleepwalker.

Hayes,
dead. It was impossible, impossible.

The
young corporal came to where Leigh stood. "Are you all right, ma'am?"
he inquired, his words reaching Leigh from a distance.

"Of
course I'm all right," she heard herself assure him. Then, without
warning, a golden mist swirled around her until the corporal, her surroundings,
and her despairing thoughts were swept away.

Winter 1863—Chattanooga, Tennessee

"Got
any
more panado ready?" Mother Bickerdyke asked as she crossed the hospital
compound to where Leigh was stirring a huge pot of the steaming, fragrant
gruel. Panado was the mixture the older woman had invented as nourishment for
the sick and injured. The formula varied with the ingredients at hand, but for
the most part it was a combination of hot water, whiskey, brown sugar, and
crumbled hardtack. Its restorative properties were legend among the wounded,
and as the stretcher-bearers brought in more and more casualties from the
fighting at Lookout Mountain, the nurses had made up gallons of the stuff.

"This
pot is ready," Leigh offered, swinging one iron kettle away from the
flames.

Delia
joined them at the fire. "Lord, it's cold," she muttered, and set to
work doling out cups of the steaming panado. "I wish we had just one wagonload
of blankets to give out. The tents are completely full, and there are wounded
lying everywhere without a shred to cover them."

Leigh
shivered as an icy blast of wind swept through the encampment, fully in
sympathy for the men lying on the ground around her. In spite of the months the
Union troops had been in the city, the hospital at Chattanooga was the most
primitive one she had ever seen. There were far too few tents to shelter the
wounded. The cooking facilities were almost nonexistent, and the supply of
medicines, warm clothes, and blankets was critically short.

After
the siege was broken, it had been military stores, not sanitary supplies, that
had been brought into the town. Grant had been intent on capturing the
Confederate strongholds around Chattanooga, and weapons and munitions had taken
priority over all the rest as the wagons came rumbling into the town from
Bridgeport. And while it was not Leigh's place to question the general's
decisions, she fervently wished that he had seen fit to provide the nurses and
doctors with better facilities and more supplies.

Soon
another kettle of panado was ready, and as Leigh ladled the thick mixture into
cups, she glanced across the compound to where the surgical tent stood. The
doctors were hard at their grisly work by the wavering light of lanterns. As
she watched, one surgeon cut into a soldier's ravaged flesh, then paused to
warm his stiffened fingers in the vapor that rose from the man's body. The
scene was like a vision of hell, completed by the number of disembodied limbs
piling up outside the surgery. Still the wounded continued to arrive, brought
in by stretcher-bearers who staggered with weariness. All that any of the
nurses could do was tend the fire and make panado to warm the survivors, bathe
and dress their wounds, and offer comfort to the patients who had felt the Army
surgeons' knives.

The
"Battle in the Clouds" was the romantic name the newspaper reporters
gave the conflict on Lookout Mountain, because of the thick mist that shrouded
the peak's rugged terrain. But there was nothing romantic about the brutality
of the fighting or the casualties who continued to arrive all the following
day. When the fog cleared on the third morning, the Union flag waved from the
summit, and Grant had claimed his victory. But the true price for Lookout
Mountain and for Missionary Ridge to the east was paid by the hundreds of dead
and two thousand wounded who were in dire need of care.

The
weeks that followed the victory were cold and grim for the Federal troops and
nurses in Chattanooga. Until the Sanitary Commission managed to have some
supplies delivered just before Christmas, the hospital existed at a subsistence
level. With the shipment came a good supply of baker's yeast. Using that and
the flour confiscated from a nearby mill, Mother Bickerdyke set up a bakery.
Bricks from the chimney of a ruined house were used to build an oven, and in
the weeks that followed she baked as many as five hundred loaves of bread a
day. From the dried fruit that came, she made pies to tempt the most feeble
appetite and cookies miraculously concocted from hardtack crumbs and sugar. Of
necessity Leigh learned to bake too, adding the accomplishment to the list of
others she had learned at Mother Bickerdyke's elbow.

Christmas
came to Chattanooga like an unwelcome guest: dreaded and empty-handed. None of
the packages from families in the North were allowed to take up vital space on
the transport wagons, and the rumor was that they stood in head-high piles at
the Bridgeport depot. Morale at the hospital and in the Federal camp fell
dangerously low. But on Christmas Eve the nurses made batches of molasses taffy
for sick and well alike, and the men spent the evening pulling taffy and
singing songs around the campfires.

The
winter dragged on in the city with subzero temperatures that gave lie to the
Union conviction that the Southern climate was warm and mild. Storms roared
down from the mountains, starching the canvas hospital tents with a coating of
ice, turning the footing rough and treacherous in the encampments, and making
warmth an impossible dream. The fuel the pioneering companies cut was used up
with unbelievable speed, and the men were hard-pressed to keep up with the
demands of the camp and hospital. Nor was the rest of the country being spared
the bad weather. Some newspapers proclaimed this the winter of the century, and
Bran wrote that the Mississippi at St. Louis had frozen solid.

The
cold weather brought more nurses from the North to help with the burden of
caring for the sick. Mary Livermore and Annie Wittenmyer arrived on New Year's
Day, and women from other parts of Tennessee came to help, too.

One
cold February afternoon, Mother Bickerdyke assigned Leigh one of these
newcomers, and Leigh set out to show her the hospital. Sarah was a slight,
spare woman only a few years Leigh's senior, and they took to each other
instantly. Bundled in a heavy coat against the frigid weather, Leigh took the
other woman around the camp and through the hospital tents, pointing out where
supplies and medicines were kept and introducing her to the other nurses,
doctors, and patients.

When
they had completed their rounds, Leigh led Sarah to the relative warmth of the
cook tent, and they settled down at the end of one long table to visit over a
cup of tea.

"What
brings you to Chattanooga, Sarah?" Leigh asked, shrugging out of her coat
and stripping off the fingerless gloves many of the nurses had taken to
wearing.

"After
my husband was killed," the other woman began, staring down into her cup,
"I was very despondent. I had my son to keep me occupied, it's true, but
that wasn't enough somehow. Our men were giving so much in this war that it
seemed only right that we women should do something, too. So I began to go to
one of the local hospitals. I found I enjoyed the work, enjoyed being able to
help. And when I heard there was such a desperate need here at Chattanooga, I
felt compelled to come and help. My mother is looking after David while I'm
away."

"What
unit was your husband with?" Leigh asked conversationally.

"Justin
was with the Confederate Artillery," Sarah admitted with a tilt of her
chin.

Leigh
did her best to hide her surprise at the other woman's words. Most of their
volunteers harbored Union sympathies, but this woman had admitted strong ties
to the Confederacy.

In
response to Leigh's silence, Sarah continued. "It seems to me that people
in trouble need whatever help we can give them, and I've nursed men from both
the North and South."

Leigh
nodded in agreement. "So have I."

"Then
you understand how I feel?"

"Yes,
I do, though you are likely to meet others here who won't," Leigh warned.
As she spoke, she picked up a spoon and reached across the table for the
container of sugar.

As
she did, Sarah drew a sharp breath and caught Leigh's left hand between both
her own. "Where did you get this ring?" she demanded suddenly.

For
an instant Leigh looked down at the signet ring shining in the lantern light.
It would have seemed almost delicate on a man's hand, but on Leigh's it was
broad and substantial with the wide, gold band melding into the upper surface
where three initials were entwined. Since she had come to Chattanooga, there
had been little time to grieve for Hayes or dwell on the past. But as she
stared down at the ring, a kaleidoscope of memories spun through her brain: of
Hayes placing the ring on her finger, of what she had discovered marriage could
be, of the way they had parted and the months of painful silence before she had
learned that he was dead. Involuntarily Leigh snatched her hand from Sarah's
grasp.

"Where
did you get it?" Sarah demanded again, her voice growing harsh with the
need for a reply.

Leigh
swallowed around the lump in her throat, wondering why this woman wanted to
know about the ring, her last tangible bond to her own dead husband. "It
is my wedding band," she said softly. "My husband took it from his
cousin's body on the battlefield at Shiloh and gave it to me when we were
married a month or so after."

"Hayes?"
Sarah murmured, the single word hardly more than a whisper.

"Yes,
Hayes, Hayes Banister." A chill of premonition touched Leigh's heart as
she realized who this woman must be. "And you are Sarah Dean, Justin's
widow."

For
a moment the two women stared at each other in stunned silence. As was often
Mother Bickerdyke's way, they had been introduced by first names only, and
there had been no reason to ask for more than that.

"Yes,
I am. But how..."

Quickly
Leigh sketched the story Hayes had told her of sitting with his cousin the
night he died. It brought back other memories Leigh could not share with Sarah:
of Hayes coming to find her at Savannah, of the pain and anger he had felt at
his cousin's death, of the need for care and comfort she had seen in his eyes.

"Hayes
wrote you about Justin, but the letter was intercepted, and after that he dared
not write another," Leigh finished.

"Oh,
Leigh, you don't know what it means to me to know that Justin didn't die
alone." There were tears in Sarah's eyes. "It has haunted me that he
fell and died and was buried in a common grave with no one to mark his passing.
I feel so much better to know Hayes was there."

"Hayes
was glad he had been able to make Justin's last hours more comfortable, but he
was surprised to find any Deans with the Confederate Army."

"I
didn't want Justin to go. To me there seemed no reason, but he was convinced
that the Tennessee units could not go into a fight without him. It was a man's
vanity, I suppose. But it cost him his life and David a father." Sarah
paused. "But how did Hayes come to give you Justin's ring as a wedding
band?"

"We
were married in something of a hurry a few months after Shiloh. Hayes didn't
have the time to buy a wedding band, so he gave me Justin's ring, just until he
could get another. Somehow he never did."

As
the two women talked, it became increasingly obvious to Leigh what she must do
about the keepsake. She had known all along that Justin's signet ring had been
a loan, and, as much as it meant to her, it was time to return it to its
rightful owner. She had memories of Hayes to carry her through a lifetime,
memories to cling to for all her days. She had stored away Hayes's laughter and
his tenderness like a treasure; she had cherished the wondrous contentment she
had felt in his arms. She knew Sarah must have her memories of Justin, too. But
David had nothing of his father, and it seemed wrong to keep something Hayes
had intended for Justin's son.

Slowly
Leigh took the golden ring from her own finger and laid it in Sarah's palm.
"Hayes meant to bring the ring to David when the war was over, and I think
he would want me to pass it on now that I have the chance."

Sarah
hesitated for a moment before her fingers closed around the bit of gleaming
metal, holding it tightly in her palm. There were tears spilling from her
bottomless brown eyes when she spoke at last. "Oh, Leigh, you can't know
what this means, to have some part of Justin for David. I realize your
sacrifice, and I thank you with all my heart."