Nostalgia (35 page)

“Oh, you know we’re very good here,” says Dr. Bliss. “He’s not the first soldier we’ve managed to resurrect.”

Dr. Speck laughs and says, “Well, I’m happy to report that this resurrected soldier is one of Brooklyn’s finest young pitchers of the base ball … a member of the Eckford Club. Quite good at the bat as well and—”

Hayes’s knees buckle and Dr. Speck catches him and settles him back onto the bed. He lifts Hayes’s legs one at a time onto the mattress, and once he has got him arranged, he says, “Last week in Cold Harbor, I treated a certain Frenchman who revealed himself an acquaintance of yours.”

He quickly confides to Dr. Bliss that a tree limb had fallen upon the Frenchman and fractured his shoulder. Then, to Hayes, he adds, “He told me the most extraordinary story about you.”

Hayes recalls standing next to Leggett by a cooking fire and watching as Dr. Speck—who was assigned to a different regiment—walked away down a hillside; the doctor, whom Leggett called Major Sawbones, was suffering from the flux and turned abruptly and hurried toward the sinks. He recalls writing in a letter to Sarah that the
surgeon who’d befriended him was named Speck, despite his being quite a large man.

Now Dr. Speck sits next to Hayes, leans down close, and peers into his eyes, as if he will mesmerize him. Softly he says, “You must start eating, my friend,” and Hayes nods.

The doctor, never allowing his gaze to waver, says, “And you must speak to us, for there’s no reason for you not to. Your voice still resides within you … you have only mislaid it.”

Hayes turns his head to the side, but Dr. Speck rights him by the chin. “Look at me,” he says. “I have absolute confidence in you. You might have walked through hell since I last saw you … I don’t know … but you are still the exceptional young man who can hush the crowd at the Union Grounds … self-possessed as a man twice your age. I want you to take a deep breath, in and out, and then I want you to say my name aloud. Don’t
try
to speak … Only speak.”

Hayes inhales. He imagines himself running up to the line and releasing the ball inches from the ground, his knuckles nearly brushing the grass. He exhales and says, “Felix Rosamel.”

He recognizes the voice as his own, though it sounds smaller than before, and dry, like Casper’s.

Dr. Speck smiles and glances at Dr. Bliss. “That’s the Frenchman with the fractured shoulder.”

“Remarkable,” says Dr. Bliss.

Hayes looks up at the surgeon in chief and says, “The attendant … the one named Babb … he steals money from the soldiers when they’re sleeping.”

“Is that so?” says Dr. Bliss.

Hayes, who can tell that the surgeon is more intrigued by his speaking than by what he has said, answers, “Yes … and he sells morphine to the ones in pain.”

“Well—,” starts the surgeon, but Raugh interrupts from the adjacent bed, surprising both Hayes and the two others.

“It’s true,” says Raugh in his deepest baritone. “He tried putting his hand under my pillow one night and got a good throttling for it.”

“O
F COURSE
,” says Walt with a dreamy look. “Your mother was a summer field and your father a haze … so naturally the happy product of their union would be a summer-field haze. Lovely.”

Burroughs laughs and shakes his head, as if Walt has said something naughty. The three of them—Walt, Burroughs, and Hayes—sit at the end of a table in the dining room. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and they are the only people left in the plain long room with its two rows of tables and one bare window.

“I believe I’ve heard of you,” Walt says to Hayes. “I wonder if you’ve heard of me.”

Hayes is thinking of Walt’s remark about the summer field and the haze, and it has the effect of making him feel tired. At dinner, he made an effort to eat more than usual, and the fatigue revives his suspicions about the hospital food. He looks at Walt—who sits with his hands resting atop the silver handle of his cane—and notices, as if for the first time, the man’s unusually high brow; also, there’s a sunken quality to his cheeks Hayes has not seen before and a pained aspect to his eyes that never entirely goes away; his voice has grown so hoarse, he sounds now as if he’s whispering everything he says.

“You’re overwhelming him, Walt,” says Burroughs. “Imagine how it must feel, to speak only a dozen words in all these weeks, and then be asked to—”

“Yes, yes, John, you’re right, as usual,” says Walt. “Where would I be without you to keep me in check? You tame me, and like a so-called lower animal, I end up loving you for it.”

Burroughs bows his head in courtly fashion and says, “More than happy to oblige.”

“You look splendid, my boy,” says Walt to Hayes. “Freshly shaved and neat as a pin. Try not to be anxious. Remember, your supporters wildly outnumber any dandy self-seeking antagonists … and besides—”

“Besides,” says Burroughs, “Walt won’t allow anyone to bully you. You may be sure of it.”

“That’s right,” says Walt, but Hayes observes a hint of self-doubt cross his face, even as he tries to veil it with a smile. Hayes has noticed variants of this symptom before: Walt’s constant good nature is a
cultivated thing, requiring preservation, and Hayes wonders if the always-pink rims of the man’s eyes are not the mark of regular private weeping.

In truth, Hayes does not fear being bullied, not by the angry Captain Gracie or anyone else. He thinks perhaps he
should
fear it, but he has not been able quite to muster the feeling. He fears the hospital’s catching fire. He fears being burned alive. He fears he might have actually already died in the Wilderness and that everything that has unfolded since (and unfolds still) is a sort of stagecraft, with none of the players being who they seem. He wants to believe that Dr. Speck’s unexpected arrival in Washington is the miracle foretold just hours before it happened by Billy Swift’s ghost. But he’s afraid that at any moment what he perceives as Dr. Speck will change to a charred hull of the man, a kind of ashen gantry from which the soul has long departed. He wants to believe that now that he has found his mislaid voice, he might affect the course of his future for the better, but he fears, as he has feared all along, that finding it might work against him instead.

“I told you once, a while ago,” says Walt, “and now I’ll tell you again—”

But at that moment, the others—Captain Gracie and the two surgeons—enter the room. All three already at the table quickly stand, and Hayes notes that the room turns considerably darker. His salute seems to go unnoticed, and immediately, before Dr. Bliss can make any introductions, Captain Gracie says, “Why are these men here?”

“They are Private Hayes’s friends,” says Dr. Bliss.

“I see no need of them,” says Captain Gracie. “What do we want here of infamous poets and poets’ friends?”

“Well,” says Dr. Bliss, smiling, “they’re not here for you, Captain. I have given them permission to audit. Please, do try to proceed without needless insults. Walt, will you and Mr. Burroughs please take a seat over there?”

He indicates the opposite row of tables, to which Walt and Burroughs retreat. From Hayes’s vantage, they are now only silhouettes, and Walt, possibly because of his being reduced to a silhouette, puts on his hat.

Dr. Bliss instructs Hayes to sit where he was sitting before, but the captain says, “I prefer the private to stand during questions.”

“Private Hayes,” says Dr. Bliss, with emphatic composure, “are you prepared to stand during the captain’s questions?”

“Yes, sir,” says Hayes, though his legs feel as if they might fold under him.

“Very well,” says the surgeon. “But if the private is to stand, we’ll all stand.”

Dr. Speck, already seated opposite Hayes at the table and busy trimming a cigar, sighs and stands up again. Dr. Bliss draws a watch from his coat pocket and looks at it. “Since we find ourselves so inundated with new arrivals,” he says, “and since that inundation is the cause for Dr. Speck’s reassignment to us here, I’m eager to return him as quickly as—”

“Pardon me,” calls out Walt from the other side of the room, “but should Mr. Burroughs and I stand as well?”

This provokes soft laughter from Dr. Speck, and Dr. Bliss says, “No, Walt, you should remain seated. Now, Captain Gracie, I was about to say—”

“If you wish to return Major Speck to the wards,” says the captain, “you might let him go right now as far as it concerns me.”

The surgeon in chief lowers his head for a moment, takes a breath, and then looks straight at the captain. “Sometimes, Captain, your lack of decorum tries my patience. As you know, I consider this interview unjustified, and I should think you might at the very least refrain from advising me, unbidden, in the process. Now, you have exactly five minutes.”

“Thank you, sir, my apologies,” says the captain. “I only meant that if the major would be more useful elsewhere, I don’t want to be the cause of his detention.”

Dr. Bliss looks down at his watch again, and at last the captain blinks his eyes, clears his throat, and turns to Hayes.

“Private Hayes,” he says, “we’ve been told that following the battles in Virginia on the fourth, fifth, and sixth of May, you were deliberately abandoned in the field … by your commanding officers and by all other personnel … left to find your own way … purportedly
to find your way back home. And this, without any sort of formal discharge.”

“Yes, sir,” says Hayes. “That is true.”

“I wonder if you appreciate how such an improbable tale burdens our credulity?” asks the captain. “Abandoned on the battlefield by one’s own comrades. And at a time when the army needs every possible—”

“Unfortunately, Captain,” says Dr. Speck, “it’s not so rare as you suggest. If it were, there wouldn’t be a need for an order from the War Department stating—”

“Am I to have my five minutes?” says the captain to Dr. Bliss.

Dr. Bliss cautions Dr. Speck with a look.

Dr. Speck whispers, “Sorry,” and returns his attention to lighting his cigar.

Hayes detects, beneath the floor, the gnawing and scratching of an animal trying to eat its way into the room. He thinks of Walt’s saying
so-called lower animal
only minutes before. From the sash of the solitary window hangs a short piece of red ribbon, now and again stirred by a current of air, and outside, on the white clapboard wall of another building, sunlight blazes and then fades.

“At a time when the army needs every possible man,” says the captain, “at a time when, for expediency sake, every kind of defect’s overlooked … can you tell us why you would be cut loose?”

“No, sir,” says Hayes. “I had temporarily lost my hearing. Despite my efforts to stay awake through the night, I fell asleep. The army was quitting the Wilderness. The bugles didn’t wake me. When it was time to go, I wasn’t ready. The officer said, ‘Leave him. Take his weapon.’ ”

“What officer was that?”

“A sergeant, sir,” says Hayes. “Unknown to me. I’d never seen him before.”

“And to whom did he give these extraordinary orders?”

“To Private William Swift,” says Hayes, “of my same regiment.”

Across the table, Dr. Speck shakes his head.

“I have misremembered,” says Hayes. “It was Felix Rosamel. Rosamel took my piece but secretly gave me his own bowie knife.”

“Did he? And where is that knife now?”

Hayes has sometimes thought that Captain Gracie possesses the knife, but he doesn’t say so now. He says, “I don’t know, sir.”

“And where exactly were you when this mysterious sergeant gave orders to someone named either Swift or Rosamel, who secretly gave you a bowie knife that has apparently vanished?”

“On the ground, sir.”

“On the ground.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And why did you not get up from the ground?”

Hayes’s right foot has gone numb. The noise beneath the floor grows ever louder, and he cannot think why someone doesn’t do something about it. Now it sounds less like an animal’s gnawing and more like the drone of an engine, the purr of turning wheels or gears—perhaps, he imagines, how an electrical motor might sound.

“And why did you not get up from the ground?” repeats the captain.

Hayes has lost the proper answer to this question, and finding it would require him to explore the Wilderness more painstakingly, which he would prefer to avoid. Impulsively, he says, “There was a horse.”

“A horse?”

“Yes, sir. The sergeant rode a horse. He said, ‘I’ve no time to be playing nursemaid.’ ”

Captain Gracie laughs and says, “Assuming these words were spoken by the sergeant and not by the horse, why did he think you in need of a nurse?”

“My shrapnel wounds were bleeding,” says Hayes. “That’s why I didn’t get up from the ground.”

“But Private Hayes,” says the captain, “you didn’t in fact have any shrapnel wounds, did you?”

Dr. Speck’s tobacco smoke has virtually filled the room; a blue ring encircles the head of each of the three men near to Hayes. In the background, Walt and Burroughs appear to have dozed off, leaning upon each other. Hayes can tell exactly where the thing beneath the floor—animal or machine—will burst through, a spot under the table visible only to him and quite near his feet; the whirring has now become
a hiss, within which voices intermittently communicate. Wholly distracted, Hayes says, “I’m sorry … would you repeat the question?”

The captain says, “I said that you were not in fact wounded, were you?”

It occurs to Hayes that the noise inhabits only the semicircular canals of his inner ear, and this explains why nobody else seems to mind it; it’s but a new version of the saw’s rasp already familiar to him. He recalls sitting on the ground in the Wilderness as the drunken sergeant peered down stoically from the saddle. He is struck anew by the man’s resemblance to Captain Gracie, but he thinks this an observation best kept to himself. On the ground, he had removed both his coat and shirt in an effort to expose his wounds—he meant to see them, to assess their gravity—and his trousers were crumpled at his ankles, for one of the wounds burned at the back of his thigh. All about, the woods shuddered with the army’s chaotic flight. The ground shook beneath him. He envisions himself as the drunken sergeant must have seen him, looking down from the saddle, and this view lends a new clarity. He recalls the remarkable silence of the ravaged forest: he remained on the ground and drew with a stick a circle around himself in the dirt; the entire army departed the Wilderness; and everything fell utterly still. He catches his breath now and speaks into the smoky dining room: “I
believed
that I was wounded, sir.”