Glory In The Name

Respectfully,

Hieronymus M. Taylor

From the Journal of Lieutenant Thadeous Harwell:

…and then through blood-soaked lashes I opened my eyes to gaze on the noble visage of the Captain. How very concerned he looked! And for me, but a lowly officer! But such is the nobility of the man’s heart.

“Nay, lie here, good man, till you have strength enough to stand,” quoth he, but I struggled to my feet and with barely strength enough I saluted as crisp as I might and reported myself ready for duty.

23

Went to Miss Sally Tompkins’ hospital. There I was rebuked. I deserved it. Me: “Are there any Carolinians here?”

Miss T: “I never ask where the sick and wounded are from.”

– Mary Boykin Chesnut

“Hello, Mississippi.”

Jonathan Paine opened his eyes. There was a young black man looking down at him, about his age, a few years older, perhaps. Black hair cut close. A day’s growth of beard over a deep mahogany face. He was smiling.

Jonathan fixed the face with his stare for half a minute, a minute. It was not like the other faces, from before, not ghostly and indistinct. It seemed real. So did the bed he was lying on, the room around him.

He had been caught in an undertow of nightmare, swirling images, dreams that were not dreams, jarring motion that made him cry out but would not stop, dark and light shadows, faces moving like phantoms in front of his eyes.

But this was not like that.

“Water…” he said. He could barely hear his own voice.

The young man nodded. He reached down and Jonathan could see he wore an apron and the apron was covered with blood. It was an image right from the nightmare, but it was more solid than those ephemeral things had been.

The man lifted Jonathan’s head, pressed a glass to his lips. The water was tepid but clean, and Jonathan sipped it, felt the liquid wash over the dry, raw patches in his mouth and throat, cool them and wet them. He drank some more, and then drained the glass.

“More…”

They repeated the procedure and then Jonathan let his head fall back, exhausted. He closed his eyes for a moment, but this solidness, this new reality, was too intriguing for him to ignore. He could recall coming to a vague and unconscious understanding that he was dead and in hell. He opened his eyes again. The young man was still there, and that was a relief.

“Where am I…?”

“ Richmond. You inna hospital.” The young man seemed to find delight in the questions, as if he had been waiting for Jonathan to ask.

Jonathan turned his head, just a bit. He was in some kind of sitting room, a big one, like the sitting room at the Paine plantation, but beyond the molding and the light fixtures and the fireplace, there was nothing else that suggested a private home. All of the chairs, the tables, the bookcases that one might expect were gone, and in their place were beds, perhaps twenty beds in that one room.

There were men in the beds and others bustling around them, and women, too. Men in tattered uniforms, walking on crutches or sitting on the edges of beds. Sunlight streamed in from big windows, filling the place with brilliant light. Far from hell, this place with its white sheets and brilliant sunlight looked more like heaven. But it was not that. In heaven, Jonathan was sure, he would not be in such agony as he was.

“My name’s Bobby,” the young man offered. “Bobby Pointer. I work for da missus, runs the hospital. I take care a da stables, most times, but now I’s helping out here. Nurse, you might say. We gots more wounded boys den we gots horses, now.”

Then a woman appeared, beside Bobby, seemed to just float into place. A young woman, not thirty. She had dark hair and wore a white apron, spotted here and there with dark brown stains.

“Is our young man awake, at last?” the woman asked. Her voice was musical. Jonathan could not recall the last time he had heard such a voice.

“Yes, ma’am. Jest opened his eyes.”

“Hello, Private. My name is Miss Tompkins. How are you feeling?”

Jonathan tried to nod but could not. He opened his mouth to speak, but there were too many things he wanted to ask, and so he just shook his head.

Miss Tompkins watched his struggle and said nothing. She did not seem impatient or surprised at his inability to speak. After a moment she just smiled again, a lovely smile, patted his arm, and said, “I must go attend to the others, but I’ll be back. You are in good hands here, with Bobby.” And with that she seemed to float away.

Bobby leaned close, and said in a conspiratorial tone, “She call herself ‘Miss,’ but da truth is, she ‘Captain’ Tompkins. Jeff Davis hisself done give her a commission as captain in da army. Imagine dat!”

Jonathan nodded again, still could think of nothing to say.

“You was at da battle at Manassas, you recall?” the young man asked. “You done took a hell of a knock on da head.”

Jonathan tried to think. Battle at Manassas… Yes, he could recall that, but just images. Not like the fleeting nightmare images, but close. He recalled thirst. He recalled noise. He recalled the horror of bullets whizzing past, men screaming and dying.

“Nathaniel…”

“Nathaniel? That your name?”

“No…” He paused for a long moment, felt consciousness slipping away, thought he might pass out, but the lightness faded. “He was my brother…I’m…Jonathan.”

“Well, howdy, Jon’tin. We been waiting to see if you gonna live or not. You be one tough sumbitch…”

Jonathan stared at the young man. Tough son of a bitch? He felt weak as a baby. “How did I get here?”

“You was at Manassas. Somehow you gots in wid da 33rd Virginia, got shot up awful bad. Near left for dead, but someone seen you was still breathing, so they patched ya up, sent ya here. You been crazy wid da fever for a week or more. No one knowed who you was, on account of you not bein’ with you regiment. We jest called you ‘ Mississippi.’ ’Cause dat’s what it says on you buttons.”

Jonathan swallowed and nodded. He could recall the bullets plucking at his coat, the waves of blue Yankees coming on, up that hill. He felt points of pain all over his body, places where the ache was not general but rather concentrated, as if he was being stabbed repeatedly in the same spots. But of all the aches, one clearly pronounced itself the worst.

“My leg…it hurts like hell…”

“Which one?”

Jonathan closed his eyes and thought about where the pain was. “Right…” he said. He opened his eyes again. Bobby was looking at him, and his expression was part sympathy, part amusement.

“I hates to tell you dis, but you ain’t got no right leg.”

Jonathan frowned at him. I just told you it hurts like hell… He struggled to lift his head and look down at his body, lying on the bed. He was covered with a white sheet, clean and sweet-smelling. At the far end of the bed he saw the point of white cloth made by the toes of his left foot. To the right there was nothing.

He fell back on the pillow, stared up at the ceiling.

“You be surprised,” Bobby was saying, “how often dat happens. Fella feels pain in a arm or a leg that ain’t even