The Tinsmith (36 page)

John told the women to wait for him, then he rushed back down to the cellar. The men had already begun to stir; several had gone through the broken door into the cellar itself. But Caleb had not moved. John bent over him, urged him to stand. Caleb shook his head.

“Dey's no hurry for me. I knowed the truth long ago. I could feel it happen.”

“What truth?”

“Doan lie to me, son. I know dey gone. All of dem gone 'cept . . . I could always tell when something bad happen fo us. I'd have been dead since dat time if word hadn't come down de underground about Jancey. Listen, now, you take dese people as far away as you can, dat's what you got to do.”

“But Orlett. I want to . . .”

“If dat's goin to be, den it will come. But you get dese people away.”

And Caleb told of the house of a free black man south of the village, a man who'd been harbouring runaways since before the war and knew all about the underground railroad. That man would know best how to protect the blacks.

“But you can't stay here,” he told Caleb. “When Orlett comes back and finds the others gone, he'll kill you.”

Caleb's face was blank; the tears had gone from his wrinkles.

“You think dey's anything dose devils can do worse dan what's been done. It's too late for me. But you get dose people away and yourself too. Never mind de overseer. Dat evil jes keeps comin' if you kill it.”

He ran a trembling hand across his lips and blinked slowly, as if his eyelids were made of iron.

“Dey's always evil. You can't kill it by killin' one man. Den you be jes as bad. But you're not a killer, John. Dat ain't your way. You get dose people clear. Go on! I'll get myself to my cabin. Dat overseer, he too busy now to bother about one old nigger. Go on now!”

So he gathered the men onto the main floor and explained that he would take them to safety. Running back to the attic, however, he found only four women; the other two had run off on their own. Now the sounds of the old house and the starting rain on the roof seemed to contain hoof beats and footfalls. He hastened to get the blacks outside.

The air still burned with the acrid chemical smoke of battle, but the rain brought a welcome freshness. John gulped several breaths down and surveyed the immediate area. No one appeared, so he set off, hoping for the one thing contrary to what he'd been focused on for so long: that Orlett would remain absent.

It took the rest of the day to reach the free black's house and relieve himself of the responsibility for the men and women. His success strengthened his resolve; when he moved on, he was surprised to find how much his body had lightened.

Not until after midnight, however, did he reach the farm again, coming at it slowly. The house was dark and empty. Orlett had not returned. John moved on to Caleb's cabin to take him what food he had managed to gather during the day's travels. There had been bodies everywhere, the cries of wounded for water, wagons and men clustered around almost every building, which, he discovered, had been turned into hospitals. Soon, perhaps, this farm, too, would be used for a similar purpose.

He had not slept in a long while. The excitement of the morning's battle and the tension of the aftermath suddenly weighed him down. He entered Caleb's cabin heavily.

The old man was curled into himself in a corner, without even a covering blanket. John touched him gently on the shoulder, eager to tell him that he had succeeded in reaching the free black's house. But when he turned him slightly, he knew that Caleb was dead. His eyes were half-closed, his face cold, but there was no mark of violence upon him save the whip marks scarred into his back.

John wrapped his arms around him and lay there on the bare floor. His tears flowed freely, but they were no relief. He felt them form the two letters on his cheek, and his cheek seemed to blaze, to become a beacon that the overseer could not fail to notice. But the cabin's silence and his own great fatigue closed his eyes. Though there was no peace in the brief sleep he found pressed against Caleb's cold body, he felt stronger when he woke. He lifted Caleb in his arms and carried him to the blacks' graveyard and buried him, not even caring what attention he drew, hoping in fact that his grief would bring Orlett to him.

Afterwards, he found he could not sit and wait. There was much work to do. If Daney and Caleb were denied the benefits of freedom, many others would not be, but only if the Union won the war. He decided he could help the cause and look for the overseer at the same time. For there was no guarantee Orlett or Cray would return anytime soon or at all. Perhaps both were dead out there among all the other bodies. Perhaps he would come upon one or both of their corpses on the battlefield.

Daybreak approached as he skirted the dark woods and walked out among the groaning wounded. In the thick grey-black light, among the wreckage of knapsacks and overcoats, smashed limbers, discarded weapons, and smoking holes, he discovered a young soldier with blood caked on his eyelids and the bridge of his nose. He looked to be sleeping. John put his head to the soldier's chest and thought he heard a faint beating. He picked the soldier up and gazed to the east; somewhere in that direction he expected to see activity, evidence of a hospital at work or a campsite of soldiers stirring with the dawn. Instead he saw a single black tree, its branches shattered but for one, the air a slightly fainter black around it. He moved on, the soldier's head cradled in the crook of his arm. The white face, stained with blood and powder, moved him strangely. It was young enough to be one of Daney's children.

A groan just off to the left broke his odd reverie. It came from a much older soldier, a middle-aged, rough-bearded man with a wound in his neck. He lay on his back, his eyes fluttering. John laid the young soldier down and, on his knees, took the older man onto his back and shoulders. Then, with as much care as possible, he clasped the lighter soldier to his waist, letting the feet drag along the ground. Hunched over, he proceeded slowly, stopping every minute to catch his breath.

More grey light spread over the field and sky. The one tree loomed on the horizon yet never seemed to come any closer. Already the air was poisonous with the gases of the dead. He kept going. Over the pounding of the blood in his temples and his laboured breathing, he heard little. Once, panicked, he thought he heard several quick retorts, like musket fire. He lifted his head and peered around him, but he could see nothing except the same shattered ground of dead horses and tipped-over wagons. Again he moved on.

At last he stopped, figuring that he must have come abreast of the tree because he could not see it. Suddenly he knew he was being watched. The idea that it was Orlett flashed into his mind, but he could not react quickly on account of the wounded he carried. He turned his head slowly, his muscles taut.

A man stood almost directly against the black tree. He wore a kind of smock covered in gore. His face, though mostly hidden under a thick beard, was kind and vaguely familiar, the eyes dark and wet. They were like Caleb's eyes.

“Let me take the other man, soldier,” he said and stepped around John to tend to the body he had laid on the ground.

“Thank you, sir.”

“The hospital's back there.” The man, who must have been a surgeon, pointed eastward. Then he tended to the young soldier, taking up one of his wrists, leaning to his chest, touching his eyelids. The man's shoulders sagged. He looked up.

John recognized him now as one of the surgeons from the day of the battle. Comforted, he lowered the other soldier to the ground. The doctor probed the wound in the neck with his finger, then muttered something John did not catch.

“Sir?”

“Your name?” he said gently.

John touched the letters on his cheek. His name? When was the last time a white man had even asked him for it?

“John.”

“John? What's the rest of it?”

Suddenly a voice cried, “Don't move!”

His heart lurched. It was the cry he had dreaded hearing the whole way from South Carolina, the cry of recapture. He turned and saw two Union soldiers pointing their muskets at him.

The doctor said, “It's all right, I'm a surgeon. We're taking this wounded man to the hospital.”

The soldiers stepped closer. They stared at the doctor a while, then nodded and withdrew into the shreds of remaining dark.

John controlled his breathing. “Just the one man, sir?”

The doctor sighed.

“The other's dead. A burial party will take care of him. Was he a comrade of yours?”

“No. But I reckoned he'd make it.” But what he wanted to say was, I couldn't leave him, he's just a child, his mother will be missing him. Because the doctor looked as if he'd understand, he looked as if he'd do anything to save a child's life. Now he raised his face to the sky and scowled.

“Pick him up and follow me,” he said softly.

John did so, thinking, this man will help me if I need it, this man with Caleb's eyes. Caleb. A cluster of hospital tents emerged from the ground. Then a bugle sounded. John stopped and swung around. He almost expected Orlett and Cray to come galloping across the battlefield.

“Baird! Where the hell have you been?”

An elderly man in a smock drenched with blood strode through the tents toward them. John lowered the soldier to the ground and slipped away. Behind him he could hear the same man shouting. His voice carried through the dawn stillness, then stopped.

John kept as low as possible to the ground, fearing that the uniform might not be enough of a shield. From a safe distance he saw Union troops gathering into lines, saw other buildings that had been turned into makeshift hospitals. The dead and wounded lay everywhere in the grass. He had to take several detours to avoid others who were searching the battlefield, but then he realized that he was almost invisible. At least no one seemed to find his wandering presence unusual. Whatever soldiers had been posted as lookouts must have been ordered to concentrate their attention closer to where the confederates held the line. He had been so focused on his own doings that it came as a sudden shock to think that the battle might be renewed. A periodic crackle of rifle fire served as a sharp reminder. He kept low, and trusted to his instincts to alert him to the overseer's presence.

The day grew warm, then hot. He dispensed what water he had found in the canteens of the dead to the suffering wounded, those who had fallen outside of the disputed ground, and carried several other fallen soldiers to hospitals. The whole time he kept Daney's fiery eyes before him, but they kept turning into Caleb's unseeing ones with the dirt showering down. And as that grave filled, it became a black depth of water from which the bodies of Daney and her girls and the other women slowly surfaced. He could shut the image out only by concentrating on the one face that, more than all things, had brought him this far. He sometimes wondered if he would have been able to escape the South if not for his hatred of the overseer.

In the afternoon, the heavens opened. For an hour the rain poured down so that the battlefield indeed seemed like a river bottom crowded with sodden bodies. He took shelter in a canvas tent in which two wounded soldiers lay; neither moved, but he could hear their breathing. The air stank of rot and chemicals. The rain beat heavily against the canvas and then, all of a sudden, stopped.

When he emerged, he saw that he was very near to the field hospital where he'd walked with the doctor at daybreak. It was midday. There'd been no sign of the overseer or the mulatto. Several civilians, including some women dressed in fine clothes, had appeared on the battlefield. Mostly they just held their hands up to their noses and gazed around, wide-eyed. It seemed, by the time that he approached the hospital again, that Orlett and Cray must have left Sharpsburg or been killed. The idea both disappointed and relieved him. Despite his hatred, he remained uncertain of his ability to kill, knowing that Caleb, right about so many things, could be right about that too. And besides, he knew the overseer would not be easy to kill; that much evil couldn't be overcome without a struggle. He wondered if he possessed the courage and the strength to do the job. But one thing was clear enough: he could do his part for the future that Daney had predicted.

When he walked across the barnyard, he saw the doctor, bent over a body, holding a long strip of dirty bandage in one hand. Just beyond him, caught suddenly in the re-emerging sunlight, was a sloppy, sickening, waist-high pile of arms and legs. For a moment, the doctor looked stunned, defeated. He blinked at the long, growing line of waiting wounded and seemed unable to move. He lifted a gore-covered hand and brushed it over his thick beard. A small cluster of flies buzzed near his face. Then he turned and made a sweeping gesture toward a group of civilians standing a few feet away, their hands over their mouths.

“Go on,” he said wearily. “If you're not going to help, then clear out of the way. For Christ's sake, this isn't a circus. Clear out.”

But his voice had grown increasingly weak. He stared at the limb in his hand as if surprised to find it there, then tossed it on the pile and shouted, “Next!”

John offered his assistance and the doctor immediately put him to work.

“Good man. I need you to keep a firm grip on the patient. Here, at the shoulders. Have you ever seen chloroform used before?”

“I've seen how it's done.”

“Not too many drops,” the doctor said, demonstrating with a cloth. “Like this, over the mouth and nose.”

John nodded. A soldier was led forward and he helped him onto the table.

“It'll be fine,” John said low to the terrified, powder-burned face while keeping a firm grip on a shoulder with one hand and administering the anaesthetic with the other.

“Good man,” the doctor said. “That's it.”

Time vanished, became a steady succession of torn flesh and broken bone. The stench was awful. It seemed to be a part of the hot sun; the flies seemed to breed out of the light and heat. The doctor no longer put his knife down or even rinsed it; he held it between his teeth as John calmed another soldier and applied the anaesthetic. At some point, the doctor asked him to put pressure on the patient's arteries, and he did so, calmly, buoyed by his usefulness and the doctor's confidence in him. The work kept the painful memories away as well as the tension of the immediate future. Not once did he see the overseer's doglike grin hovering in the air, nor did he feel the letters burning on his cheek.