The Storm Before Atlanta (29 page)

“Ain’t no more,” said Charlie.

“Let me ask,” said Jeremy.

The truth was, he couldn’t stand being around Charlie’s pain, and Jack’s fever was scaring him. Dulcie was a sight better at this sort of thing than Jeremy was. Jeremy would never make a great medic. But a drummer boy without a drum had to do something.

He went and found Dulcie lining an ambulance wagon with pine boughs.

“There’s no more morphine,” said Dulcie. “Not till supplies come in. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Are we sending the wounded to the rear yet?” said Jeremy.

“Soon as we can. Dr. Flood is writing up the passes now.”

“They need passes? Even if they’re wounded?”

“Course. Can’t go to the rear without a pass. That’s desertion.”

“Are Jack and Charlie going to be sent to the rear?”

“Jack ain’t badly wounded enough.”

“Dulcie, have you seen him?”

“Saw him yesterday.”

“I wish you’d go see him.” Jeremy didn’t like Jack much—all right, he didn’t like him at all—but a pardner was a pardner and you saved his life as often as you could. Jeremy suspected getting Jack to a real hospital was becoming a matter of life and death.

“He had a good infection.”

“I think it’s turned into a bad infection. Dulcie, you got to get Dr. Flood to send him to the hospital.”

“All right,” said Dulcie. “I’ll ask him for a pass for Jack.”

“And for Charlie. Charlie’s hurt bad.”

“I know that. They’re just giving him time.” She didn’t say “to die,” which Jeremy appreciated.

“I think he can get better.”

“Better for him if he don’t,” said Dulcie baldly.

Jeremy bit back an angry retort. This was the side of Dulcie he was fighting with now. The side that didn’t like Charlie, not in the way that Jeremy didn’t like Jack but in
a deeper, colder way that was much older and much harder to argue with.

“He’s my friend,” said Jeremy. “Dulcie, please.”

Dulcie shut her mouth tight, and said nothing, and walked away toward the tent Jeremy had just left. She was going to check on Jack. Jeremy didn’t follow her. He didn’t know how to get through to that cold, old part of her and make it see that Charlie was a person and his friend—whoever he was and whatever his real name was—and needed saving. He would have to do it himself.

He started toward the field hospital tent. Maybe he could get Dr. Flood to see it his way. He stopped. Dr. Flood would see it Dulcie’s way. He was waiting for Charlie to die too. And if Charlie didn’t die it was the Elmira prison camp for Charlie. What Charlie needed was to escape.

Jeremy turned around and walked back the other way. Charlie needed to escape, and Jeremy needed to help him. But how could he get Charlie back to the enemy lines when Charlie couldn’t even turn his head without crying in pain? Much less walk. And then there would be the Reb hospitals, which Charlie hadn’t wanted to take Lars to because they were out of drugs and out of everything. Charlie might say he didn’t want doctoring, but Jeremy didn’t think he should be without it.

He turned and started back to Dr. Flood’s tent. Surely he could make the doctor understand.

No. Nobody was going to see it Jeremy’s way. To the
other men in the regiment Jeremy was what Nicholas had called him—just a boy who made them tired.

The only person who could possibly help him was Dulcie, and Dulcie wasn’t about to.

It was Jeremy’s task to go and tell his messmates that Jack was much worse. As Dulcie said, they couldn’t leave it to Seth, whose crutches slipped and slid in the mud from the constant rain. And when Jeremy found them sheltered under a lean-to, he realized just how few of his messmates were left. Lars was gone, minus a leg but perhaps plus a new wife by now. No-Joke had been left at the Hell-Hole, a few miles back, forever. There was Seth, of course, back at the hospital. And Jeremy and, at least for now, Jack.

That left Nicholas and Dave, trying to keep a fire going in the driving rain, trying to brew up a pot of coffee.

Jeremy watched them through the rain as he walked toward them. He thought how different his messmates were from what he had imagined back in the Northwoods. The flashy U.S. uniforms he had pictured had become mud-soaked rags. The valiant do-or-die charges had become agreements between the two sides not to fire, as long as they didn’t have orders to. And his noble comrades, the very flower of American manhood, were these two muddy men who looked like they would far rather be in a dry tent than in a battle, no matter how noble or valiant a battle it
might be. He had never imagined a war would have so much rain in it.

“Jeremy.” Nicholas smiled a friendly greeting, and it looked sincere enough. “Good to see you, pardner.”

Jeremy turned to Dave. “Jack’s worse,” he said. “I think it might be time to—”

“Say goodbye?” said Nicholas.

“Yeah,” said Jeremy, still looking at Dave but not seeing how he could avoid answering a direct question from Nicholas.

The two men got to their feet wearily and trudged after Jeremy toward the growing forest of medical tents.

“Hey, Jeremy.” Nicholas’s hand landed on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Hang on a minute.”

Jeremy stopped and looked up at Nicholas. Dave went slogging on ahead of them.

“I hope you know I didn’t mean none of that stuff I said the other day.”

“Yeah, all right,” said Jeremy.

“I was trying to keep you out of trouble. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. All right.” Jeremy wasn’t sure if he believed Nicholas, but he knew that he really didn’t feel like talking about it. He just wanted Nicholas to shut up.

“You’re a good soldier, pardner. You done good at the Hell-Hole, and you done good when you brought Lars back, and you’re doing good right now.”

Nicholas sounded like he meant it. Jeremy suddenly
wasn’t all that angry with him anymore. Nicholas was all right. He almost wanted to thank Nicholas for trying to save him—all right, for saving him—from the angry crowd that had shot Charlie. Almost. But mostly he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

There was one thing he had to know, though. “Was it you who captured Charlie?”

“Me? No. It was a coupla fellas from B Company.”

“Oh. Good.”

And they went to see Jack.

Jack did not regain consciousness. Nicholas said he would write the letter to tell Jack’s family, which Jeremy was relieved at, because he would have hated to write it himself. Later there would be another letter, probably, written by an officer, but a letter from a pardner was important because it told so much more that was real. Not really real, of course—Jeremy doubted that Nicholas would write exactly what had happened that day or tell them that Jack had been shot by a Union soldier. There would probably be something about it having happened in the course of apprehending a spy, something like that. Nicholas would make it sound heroic.

Dulcie removed Jack’s things from his pocket. Nicholas would send them on with the letter. A pocketknife, a folded letter with a lock of hair inside, a leather pouch
half-full of ground coffee mixed with sugar, a St. George medal. Jeremy wondered if Jack’s family knew where he was. Probably they did. Jack had gotten mail and written letters. It was only Jeremy and No-Joke who hadn’t.

Jeremy had promised Dulcie that he would write to Pa, because she’d nagged him until he promised. He just hadn’t done it yet. He didn’t know what to say. He’d had lots of practice writing letters now, with all the ones that Dulcie had dictated to him, but those letters all seemed to be between family who knew each other a sight better than Jeremy and Pa did.

Jeremy was almost too busy to notice Jack’s death. Seth had finally been ordered to the rear, and that meant much more work for Jeremy and for Dulcie. It had taken the combined efforts of Dr. Flood, Nicholas, and Dave to convince Seth that he had no choice but to obey General Sherman’s orders. Finally Seth had been sent off, on foot and crutches, along the road among the many others like him whom Sherman wanted away from the battle line—men with one leg, or one arm, or one hand, who were felt to be hindering the army’s progress by insisting on staying with their regiments.

“I know it ain’t fair,” said Dave. “You ain’t hinderin’ nothing. But orders are orders, pardner.”

Jeremy thought of the rapidly disappearing new supply of morphine and thought that with Seth gone, at least they wouldn’t run out of it as fast. But he was a good medic, Seth was.

“Just be sure and write me when you’re ready for that wooden leg,” said Nicholas. “I wouldn’t want it whittled by some fool who doesn’t know his business.”

Jeremy had figured it out. There was only one way for Charlie to escape, and that was for him to be sent to a hospital in an ambulance, disguised as a Union soldier. The problem was, it needed Dulcie’s help, and this she absolutely, completely, and firmly refused to give.

“You have Jack’s pass, don’t you?” Jeremy urged. “And Jack ain’t gonna be using it. Why can’t you just give it to Charlie and ship him out as Jack?”

“Because,” said Dulcie. “That would be wrong.”

“That ain’t why,” said Jeremy. “It’s because you don’t like Charlie.”

“It would still be wrong.” And this was the point from which he could not budge her. He thought about trying to wrest the pass from her by main force, but of course she would just go and tell Dr. Flood.

He decided to try again in front of Charlie, just in case Charlie could be of any help. There did seem to be some kind of understanding between Charlie and Dulcie that Jeremy couldn’t entirely account for. Maybe it was because they were both southerners. But if it was an understanding it definitely wasn’t a friendly one.

Dulcie had just given Charlie a dose of morphine and Charlie was a little fuzzy from it, but at least not in so
much pain, and he managed his usual smile. “Dulcie doesn’t want to help. Dulcie’s just waitin’ on me to die,” he told Jeremy.

“You’re not going to die,” said Dulcie automatically. It was a thing she said to wounded soldiers.

“I don’t figure on it,” Charlie said. “Not for another eighty years at least.”

“All you have to do is let him have Jack’s pass,” said Jeremy. Of course, the rest would be difficult too—Charlie was still flat on his back and couldn’t raise his head more than an inch or two.

“And then I’ll be out of your hair forever,” said Charlie.

Dulcie narrowed her eyes at Charlie. “My mama had family in North Carolina. What part you from?”

“Eastern part,” said Charlie guardedly.

“Down around near Wilmington?”

“No, not that far east.”

“Fayetteville way?”

“Sort of near there. Not real near.”

Jeremy was not sure what this was all about. They were both speaking in much thicker southern accents than either of them ever addressed to him, and he felt cut out of the conversation.

“Seem like you took it kind of funny when I told y’all about Anne.”

“Sad story,” said Charlie.

“Where’s your mother at?”

“She died from fever.”

“What about your pa?”

Charlie looked like he wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t move his head. “I run off.”

“Why’d you join the Secesh?”

“What else was there to do?”

“Why you call yourself Charlie Jackson? It ain’t your name, is it?”

“Easiest way to change regiments.”

“Wasn’t no North Carolina regiments at Shiloh,” said Dulcie. “I heard all about Shiloh.”

“Changed a couple times before that.”

Jeremy wondered why Charlie had changed regiments so many times—most people only changed if they were forced to. Your regiment was who you
were
. But Dulcie didn’t seem to think it was strange.

“What does E-A-C-E-P spell?” she asked.

Charlie grinned. “Thought you didn’t know your letters.”

“I heard that, I remembered it.”

“Spells ‘peace.’ ”

“No it don’t,” said Jeremy automatically.

“It’s the signs and countersigns for the Peace Society,” said Charlie.

“You in the Peace Society?” Dulcie sounded dubious.

“Yup.”

“What’s the Peace Society?” Jeremy broke in.

“Sort of like the homegrown Yanks,” said Dulcie.

“Not that much like,” Charlie contradicted. “Just a secret society of Confederate soldiers that want the Union to win.”

“Oh,” said Jeremy. Up north there were people who wanted the South to win, and what they were called was Copperheads, at least by everybody but themselves. But there were no
Union soldiers
that wanted the South to win. Not that Jeremy had ever heard of. Certainly not enough to form a secret society.

“We want to rejoin the Union,” said Charlie. He sounded tired, and Jeremy thought the morphine would put him to sleep soon.

“Why?”

“ ’Cause life was better in the Union. ’Cause we weren’t fightin’ and dyin’ for no rich man’s slaves while he stayed home and got richer growin’ cotton he wasn’t supposed to be growin’.”

He looked at Dulcie and said, “ ’Sides, th’Union don’t want no more slavery. I don’t either.”

Dulcie looked at Charlie for a moment in thought. Her look wasn’t quite as cold as it had been, and Jeremy hoped maybe she was making up her mind to help Charlie. He wondered if Charlie would stay awake long enough for her to decide.

“All right,” she said finally. “I’ll do it. On one condition.” She glared at Charlie.

Charlie looked at her through half-closed eyes. “What c’dition?” he murmured.

“You tell Jeremy who you are.”

Charlie’s eyes opened all the way, startled wide awake. It was clear to Jeremy that Dulcie was suddenly holding all the cards and that Charlie hadn’t even realized she’d been dealt a hand.

“What’s that mean, Charlie?” Jeremy asked.

“Tell him,” said Dulcie. “Or I don’t help.”

Charlie gave Dulcie a thoroughly fed-up look and then looked at Jeremy with the expression of a man letting another man know that the two of them would just have to put up with this woman’s whims.

“All right. She wants me to tell you I’m black,” he said.

“You’re what?”

“Black.”

Jeremy laughed, not wanting Charlie to think he didn’t get the joke, although he didn’t. “No you’re not.”