“Sarah!” Maw called from the porch. “I need water!”
By the time she was back from the springhouse with her buckets, the ambulances were gone, swallowed by the shuffling and beaten horde as it surged south toward Van Winkle’s mill.
The impossibility of it numbed her as she stepped between the prostrate men, her buckets sloshing. Twenty-some were in the yard and on the porch, another thirty or so in the house. Most were calling to her, weakly asking for a drink, some for a blanket, others delirious as they called out names, or seemed to be talking to the very air.
“What do we do?” Sarah almost wept as she stepped around a boy laid before the door. He looked no older than sixteen; black blood soaked a torn section of coat that had been tied around his middle, and he kept whispering, “Cain’t move m’legs.”
Maw shoved a cup into Sarah’s hand as she took one of the buckets. “Get them a drink first.”
Panic lurked just under Maw’s hard veneer. “Then … then someone’s going to come for them.” Maw swallowed hard, bending down to scoop a cup of water from the bucket as she murmured, “Someone has to.”
But they didn’t.
Through that long afternoon, Sarah trudged back and forth from the springhouse. The worst of the lot kept crying out to her, and it nearly drove her to madness. They insisted that Sarah was their mother, or they called her the names of their sweethearts or sisters. They implored her to stop the pain, or in agony, they called out to God.
And he just didn’t seem to hear.
When they died, she and Maw just let them lie on the floor, their eyes wide and empty, mouths ajar, faces sunken and waxy. She wasn’t sure they could carry the bigger ones, had no idea where to put the dead.
Somehow she held her teetering thoughts together. As if she could shut off the suffering and horror.
More men kept arriving, some trudging up the road, guns hanging from their shoulders. Others appeared out of the woods, only to look about, peer into the barn or sheds, and then amble slowly down to the main body of men hobbling south on the road.
Early on she saw five men emerge from behind the house with the old black boar. She recognized the pig’s hide, but it had already been gutted and quartered. As they walked with the animal’s various pieces thrown over their shoulders they were chewing thankfully on strips of raw meat.
A melee almost developed as others caught sight of the prize, but a corporal who tipped his hat at her ordered the scavengers to pass the booty around. A long-barreled revolver gave authority to his rank. By the time the looters reached the Huntsville Road, all that remained were the boar’s bones scattered along the lane. And by dark, they, too, were gone. No doubt for the marrow they contained.
Sarah turned her attention to that first man—the one with the missing arm. The blood wasn’t obvious where it had soaked into the dark blue Persian carpet. When she bent down, the man kept staring fixedly at the ceiling. Numb, she wondered when. If he’d made a sound that she’d missed.
“Sarah? Help me please.” Maw was bent over a blond, bearded fellow.
“He’s dead,” Sarah heard herself whimper. “They’re all dying. Right on our floor!”
“Sarah!”
She caught herself, stood, managed to step around the slowly moving men who groaned and wheezed to where Maw crouched with sparkling and desperate eyes.
“No one’s coming, Sarah. It’s just you and me. It’s a job to be done, that’s all. Like shucking corn or hoeing weeds. Just pitch in and do it.”
Sarah swallowed hard. “What do you need?”
Maw had pulled the blond man’s shirt up, revealing small holes around his navel that leaked dark blood. The man’s throat worked, and he said, “I can’t feel nothing down there.”
“Might be a blessing, son,” Maw said as she unbuckled his belt. “Sarah, help me here.”
“Maw! You’re undoing his…” She couldn’t finish.
Maw’s eyes were blazing. “Help me ease these trousers off!”
Sarah ground her teeth as she took hold of the man’s pants; the blood-saturated fabric was already ripped and torn. Maw’s quick fingers undid the few remaining fly buttons, and he gasped as she pulled the flaps back. Blood squeezed between Sarah’s fingers as Maw nodded, and she eased her side of the pants down.
Her stomach rose in her throat. The smell of urine and sour bowel was bad enough. Clotted with blood, the man’s penis hung by a shred of skin, a testicle dangled by its cord. A deep puncture above the pubis was partially plugged by a swollen knot of intestines.
“What do we do?” Sarah heard herself squeak as she labored for breath.
“How … bad?” the blond man asked.
Maw, her resolve crumbling, had settled back on her haunches, face gone pale. “Bad, son.”
“Write my mother. Sally Adams. She’s on Izard Street. In Pine Bluff. Tell her I love her.” He swallowed again. “God … it’s so … cold.”
Sarah blinked, forced herself to look away from his mangled manhood and the coagulated blood and urine pooling in the grotesque wound.
“We’ll get you a blanket, son.” Maw stood, swaying on her feet. “Sarah, get the quilt off my bed.”
Sarah stood, almost staggering as she stumbled back into Maw’s bedroom and tugged the quilt off the bed. She stared in horror at the stains her blood-caked fingers left on the fabric, and then burst into tears.
17
March 11, 1862
Billy picked his way across the dark yard and slipped in the back door. The main room was illuminated by lamplight, what Billy would have considered a flagrant luxury given the cost and scarcity of lamp oil. But when he stopped at the end of the pantry and counted the number of men lying on the floor, heard their soft whimpers and ravings, he forgave the excess.
He’d never smelled such a stench.
