“How’d you get here, Doc?” Clyde asked. “We been so busy, I been wondering.”
“Hell,” James cried, delighted to indulge in profanity now that he was not only a soldier, but far from his mother’s strict censure. “He’s in love, Augustus. With my sister. She’s the one talked him into this madness. Thinks that after the war’s over, he’s going back to Memphis with a pocketful of money to set up his own surgery and marry her.”
Doc took a deep breath, adding, “I’d be there now if James, here, hadn’t enlisted. It’s his sister’s fault. She said her brother wasn’t capable of taking care of himself, and if I didn’t get him back to her in one piece, she’d marry a Yankee selling tinware before she’d marry me.”
James grinned self-consciously and hugged himself tighter against the cold. “I think she’s about as smitten as you are, Doc. After Father’s death … shucks, I don’t know what we’d a done without you.” He paused, gaze vacant. “It was like I just stopped. Sort of like I’d been cored out like an old apple.”
Which was when James had given up on the dream of steamboats. At least for the moment.
Doc lifted an eyebrow in Clyde’s direction. “I’m here because of freckles.”
“Freckles?” Clyde shot him a sidelong glance. James was smiling, sharing the joke.
“She has the cutest freckles on the bridge of her nose and cheeks. So, assuming I can keep James from getting shot up, when my service is completed a year from now, I’m going back to Memphis, establishing my surgery, and I’m going to look at those freckles for the rest of my life.”
And more, of course, but that wasn’t any of their business.
That last night in Memphis, Ann Marie had given him a hint and promise of things to come. Betrothed though they might be, she’d somehow managed to remain a lady, and he’d forced himself to be a gentleman. Nevertheless, the desperation in her lips as they’d kissed, and the arching of her body against his, hinted of the magic their wedding night would conjure.
“Dear God, I love you so much,” she’d whispered as her green eyes had fixed on his, pupils wide with desire and intimacy. Her lips had parted, breasts rising and falling with each panting breath she’d taken.
A year had suddenly become an unbearable eternity.
A deep boom carried through the storm, causing the men around the regimental fires to look up, shift, and stare off to the west.
Artillery. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Just beyond the tents, earthworks had turned the island into a fortress. If you laid a letter S on its side and turned it upside down, Island No. 10 was situated at the south end of the first bend with shore batteries on either side. Any approach down the river would have to run a gauntlet of cannonfire.
Doc had only had time for a glimpse, but he wondered how even the supposedly vaunted Federal ironclads could withstand bombardment from the mass of heavy artillery.
As the boom from the shore battery faded into the gray day, John Mays slopped his way out of the pest tent and shivered as he stepped under the surgery awning. “That’s the last of the wood, Doc. I banked the stove down as far as it would go. Then I checked beds. Private Jenks is still hanging on, but it wouldn’t surprise me if’n he’s dead come morning.”
Another boom carried on the sodden air.
“Hope their aim has improved.” James shook his head. “It didn’t do them a hell of a lot of good at Fort Donelson. Can you believe the whole garrison surrendered? Thought one Southerner was supposed to whip ten soft-bellied Yankees.”
“Thinking like that will lose us this war,” Doc told him as he shrugged into his winter coat. “Heard that Johnston is pulling our forces back all along the line. With Donelson and Fort Henry gone, the guns up at Columbus can’t be protected from an army coming from the east.”
“Wonder where General Johnston is going to make a stand?” James said. “I talked to Nathan last night. The rumor is that Nashville is being abandoned without a fight. That all the supplies are being burned rather than let them fall into Federal hands.”
“That’s just a rumor,” Mays muttered truculently. “Johnston will hold the line at Nashville. By Hob, it’s the capital of Tennessee. He can’t let that fall. What kind of message would that send to the rest of the state?”
As if in response, the lilting call of a bugle sounded assembly. Doc was barely familiar with the melody himself. Mays had to say, “That’s your call, James. You’d better be in formation pronto, or you’re going to find out what sergeants and punishment can really be like.”
James grabbed up his wet slouch hat and charged off into the slushy rain.
Doc had just turned to make a bed check, when Lieutenant Francis came slopping out of the murk, saluted, and said, “Dr. Hancock? Colonel Neely’s compliments, sir. You are ordered to pack up and be ready to move. General Johnston is relocating the regiment.”
“Where to?” Doc asked. “My hospital is full of men who can’t be moved.”
The lieutenant hesitated, glanced uneasily at Mays and Clyde, and said, “Corinth, Mississippi, sir. We’ll see about ambulances and wagons to transport the sick.”
“You do that, and you’ll kill some of these men.”
“Then we’ll have to leave them behind to catch as best they can, sir.”
With that the lieutenant snapped off another salute, spun
