John quieted his rambling as Patina walked near the men. She noticed that John’s eyes seemed to glow with an inner light of joy. Theo hadn’t notice her as yet and was looking off to the outer buildings. John nodded for Patina to come forward with her son. It was time for Theo to meet his son, and John was as nervous as Patina, she could see. She held her breath as she waited for Theo to notice them.
Theo was overwhelmed by his homecoming, the farm looked so run down and the house seemed as if sadness were a living breathing thing. The very air of the house felt heavy with dust and depression. Theo had walked the floors, going from room to room opening the windows to let air and sunlight in. Now, sitting out on the porch gave him room to breathe. He had spent too many nights confined in a hospital bed.
He had spent months in the hospital tent, plagued with bone rattling chills, that shook him to the core. His fevers were persistent and debilitating and even now he could feel one coming on. He had been shot down in South Carolina and sent to a mobile hospital near Georgia. His left forearm had a bullet embedded into the bone. The field doctor had dug and probed with no luck. Theo had screamed until he passed out into sweet oblivion. He woke shortly after, only to be met with the searing pain in his arm.
He had been sent to a hospital in Georgia, near Savannah, where the doctor reopened the wound and dug the bullet out. There was no anesthesia, no whisky, nor morphine. Theo had passed out after the doctor had struck bone. The infection that ensued was as bad as the surgery. Theo’s arm was as hot as Satan’s ass and became putrid, smelling of impending death. Theo had hovered in and out of consciousness for weeks.
The incompetent doctor had cut his arm off at the elbow, but the infection persisted. Out of desperation, the doctor had cut the rest of the arm off just below the armpit. Theo’s screams still echoed in his mind, the pain taking him to the precipice of madness. He lay near death for many weeks, wishing and wanting to give up. But his body had lived.
While he lay recuperating, he received a battered and filthy letter from Sarah, it was over five months old. Eagerly, he opened his fiancé’s letter with his right hand and teeth, a soft smile lighting his gaunt features. His eyes scanned the feminine scrawl, his heart beating heavily in his chest. He had to reread the letter; he could not believe his eyes. Sarah was begging out of the marriage, she told him she had met a gentleman from the north and felt her prospects were better with him.
She went on to tell him that her gentleman was rich and that he could keep her in the style she was use to. She told him that she never fancied herself a farmer’s wife. She added at the end, as an afterthought, that she hoped his health was well and wished him the best. The ragged letter fell from his only hand, his eyes blank with stunned disbelief. His health took a turn for the worse and he refused to eat. An older woman, Mrs. Gray, who resembled a Conestoga wagon, took interest in him and force fed him. Her broad features and steel gray hair belied her tender nature, and Theo found himself reluctantly liking her. She became his confidant and he poured his heart out to her. She consoled him about the jilting and told him life was too short to put all his eggs in one basket.
She reiterated that he was a handsome young man and any girl worth her salt would love to have him. By the spring, Theo was feeling better and the nightmares of battle began to fade. He bade Mrs. Gray goodbye and kissed her on her flushed cheek. Her bright blue eyes filled with tears as she waved an old apron after him. The ride home was long and tedious, jarring his head and loosening his teeth. The men who rode along with him were in worse shape than he, which was saying a lot. The private beside him had been scalped and blinded by a rogue deserter, whom he had stumbled across. The young man had been robbed and beaten, then blinded and scalped. Across from Theo had been an old sergeant, who had both legs blown off by a cannon ball, and Theo suspected that his manly parts were blown off as well. He wore swaddling around his waist.
In the corner lay a man with both hands blown off and part of his lower jaw. His tongue protruded grotesquely from his malformed mouth, causing him to constantly drool. He kept his face hidden away from everyone and wore a wide brim hat low on his face. Theo’s arm ached terribly, but he knew it wasn’t there. Sometimes he woke in the dark of night, sure it had all been a dream. When he brought his hands before him, the overwhelming need to die came back.
That was all behind him now, he was home now, with his father. With Mary and with the slaves. Theo didn’t know what he had been fighting for, anymore. The lines were blurred and he no longer wanted to be a slave owner, he no longer wanted to be a soldier. He just wanted to be home. That was why he’d come home. He wanted to start anew. He wanted to be a farmer. He had come home to farm. He had come home to rebuild himself and his life.
Theo watched the fireflies begin to hover around the bushes. He could smell the
