Depressed, George swatted at a floating spark. He missed, and it stung his cheek. "As many as it takes to win." He was proud of the work he and the black men, so diverse in appearance and personality and yet so united in purpose, had accomplished. But he hated the reason for the work.
He clapped Scow on the shoulder in a friendly way that wasn't suitable for an officer, but he didn't give a hang, because the corps was an odd outfit. Odd and proud. "Let's find some food."
Presently George sat cross-legged next to Scow at a campfire built of pieces of broken crossties. He was spooning beans from his tin plate when a whistle signaled the approach of another Falmouth train. He and Scow peered through a maze of stumps toward the track a quarter of a mile away. Northern Virginia was a land of stumps; few uncut trees remained.
George watched the white beam of the headlight sweep around a bend, stabbing above the stumps and bleaching Scow light tan for a few moments.
"Wounded," George said, having judged the speed. He went back to his beans as the car carrying his brother rattled by.
104
In a thunderstorm, Virgilia and eight other nurses rode the cars from Aquia Creek to Falmouth. There a temporary field hospital had been established to augment the deserted Fredericksburg churches, stables, and private homes used for the same purpose. Casualties were pouring in from the contested ground around Spotsylvania. The worst cases, the ones who couldn't survive even a short rail trip, were treated at Falmouth.
The car in which the nurses traveled had been gutted, the passenger seats replaced by bunks exuding the familiar smells of dirt and wounds. The windows were boarded over, except for one at each end left for ventilation. From these the glass had long ago been smashed. Rain blew in as the train rolled south. A lantern hung by the rear door, but flashes of lightning washed out its glow and lent a corpselike look to the cloaked women attempting to sit decorously on the bunks.
The nurse in charge was Mrs. Neal, from whom Virgilia had three times tried to escape. Each time, Miss Dix had answered her transfer request in the same terse language. Miss Hazard was considered too valuable. Miss Hazard was an asset to her present hospital. Miss Hazard could not be spared for duty elsewhere.
Virgilia suspected Mrs. Neal had a hand in the refusals. The older woman recognized Virgilia's ability but took pleasure in frustrating her. Virgilia, in turn, continued to despise her supervisor, yet could not bring herself to resign. The work was still deeply satisfying. She brought comfort and recovery to scores of men in pain. The sight of the maimed and dying kept her hatred of Southerners at full strength. And when she lost a patient, she was philosophic, remembering Coriolanus again. Volumnia saying, "I had rather eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action."
"— they say the Spotsylvania fighting has been fearful." That was a buxom spinster named Thomasina Kisco. The edge of her black travel bonnet cast a sharp shadow across her face. "And the number of casualties enormous."
"That will assure Mr. Lincoln's removal in November," Mrs. Neal said. "He refuses to end the butchery, so the electorate must." She seldom stopped electioneering for McClellan and the Peace Democrats.
"Is it true they're bringing Confederate wounded to this hospital?" Virgilia asked.
"Yes." Mrs. Neal's tone was as cold as her stare. Virgilia was accustomed to both. She shivered. She was chilly because her cloak was damp, but at least the odor of wet wool helped mask those of the car. She considered the supervisor's answer and decided she had to speak.
"I will not treat enemy soldiers, Mrs. Neal."
"You will do whatever you are told to do, Miss Hazard." Her anger drew sympathetic looks from the others — all for Virgilia. Mrs. Neal retreated. "Really, my dear — you're an excellent nurse, but you seem unable to accept the discipline of the service. Why do you continue?"
Because, you illiterate cow, in my own way I'm a soldier, too. Instead of saying that, however, Virgilia merely shifted her gaze elsewhere. Prig and martinet were only two of the terms she applied to Mrs. Neal in the silence of her thoughts.
The past year had been difficult and unhappy because of the supervisor. Many times Virgilia was ready to do exactly what Mrs. Neal wanted — resign. She hung on not only because she drew satisfaction from the work but also because she had become good at it, knowing more than many of the contract hacks who posed as distinguished surgeons. Whenever the need to quit overwhelmed her, she fought it by remembering that Grady had died unavenged — and that Lee, then still a Union officer, had led the detachment that put an end to John Brown's brave struggle. After that, the work always won out.
It did so now. The car swayed, the wind howled, the rain blew in through the shattered windows. Miss Kisco cast an apprehensive eye on the ceiling.
"That thunder is extremely loud."
"Those are the guns at Spotsylvania," Virgilia said.
The storm continued, battering the canvas pavilions of the field hospital. The pavilions were located near the Falmouth station, so that in addition to the outcries of the patients and the swearing of the surgeons and the shouts of the ambulance drivers there was a constant background noise of shunting cars, ringing bells, screeching whistles — war's bedlam.
Virgilia and Miss Kisco were assigned to a pavilion that received men who, though seriously wounded, didn't require immediate surgery. The slicing and sawing went on in the next pavilion, where Mrs. Neal took charge. She inspected Virgilia's about once an hour.
"Over here next, Miss Hazard," said the chief surgeon of the pavilion. A paunchy, wheezy-voiced man, he fairly jerked her along to a cot where orderlies had placed a slim lieutenant with silky brown hair. The young man was unconscious. Though his cot occupied the pavilion's darkest corner, Virgilia clearly saw the color of his uniform.
"This man's a rebel."
"So I assumed from the gray coat," the surgeon said crossly. "He also happens to be shot." He pointed to the right thigh. "Remove that dressing, please."
The surgeon stepped to the left side of the cot, where a large scrap of paper was pinned to the blanket. He ripped it loose to read it. "Bullet lodged near the femoral artery. Vessel torn but not clamped. He's a Mississippi boy. General Nat Harris's brigade. Captured in front of the rifle pits at the Mule Shoe Salient. Can't quite decipher his name —"
He tilted the scrap toward the nearest lantern some yards away. Virgilia, meantime, forced herself to remove the dressing from the torn trouser leg. In the next aisle, a boy gagged and wept. From the operating pavilion, she heard the rasp of saws in bone. So much suffering — and here she was tending one of those who had caused it. Her rage intensified like fire in a dry woods.
The reb's wound had been decently cleaned and dressed by the ambulance orderlies. The bare, pale leg felt slightly cool when she touched it. That explained the lack of bleeding; it had stopped when his temperature dropped.
"O'Grady."
Virgilia's head jerked up. "I beg your pardon?"
"I said," the doctor growled, "his name appears to be O'Grady. Thomas Aloysius O'Grady. Didn't know there were any potato-eaters down in Mississippi. Let me have a look."
The weary doctor waddled around the end of the cot. Virgilia remained where she was, her eyes fixed, unblinking.
"Will you please stand aside?"
Mumbling an apology, she obeyed. Her head hit the sloping canvas; she bent forward to avoid it. O'Grady. She hated the silky-haired boy twice as much for bearing that name. She clutched her apron and began to twist it, gently at first, then with increasing violence.
"Miss Hazard, are you ill?"