Crawling Between Heaven And Earth Read Free Page B

and would move about for their own purposes from eating all of it, leaving nothing for the worst sufferers.

    While at these labors, I found a bottle of spirits in an unused cupboard and I thought it might be used to comfort some of those in worst extremities. I have to confess I thought foremost of my head-wound case, the nameless man who, as I've written earlier, had made wondrous progress in the last five hours, so that he sat up and looked about with remarkably clear green-brown eyes.

    However, upon reaching the front parlor, where he had lain, I saw that his space had emptied, though all about it the wounded lay crowded as before. He must have died.

    Yet, as I walked to the door, I looked at his spot once more and saw him standing where he'd once lain.

    He looked startled, scared, his eyes wide and unreasoning, like the eyes of a horse about to rear.

    I hastened to his side. He showed some hint of recognizing me and allowed me to sit him down.

    I proffered the whiskey, and he took a healthy swig, capping the flask and handing it back to me, all as sane as you please. He might have been a fellow drinker on a social visit.

    And then he spoke.

    "How goes . . .the fighting?" he asked. His voice, scarcely louder than wind rustling through trees, sounded alarmed.

    I shrugged. I knew little enough of it, being here, away from the action, and heard close to nothing from the mouths of those I treated. "I hear Stonewall Jackson's command took Cemetery hill," I said. "And it seems as though we'll carry the day, though we get so many dead and wounded, one way and another"

    He nodded, as though he understood. The ligature on his head, brown with soot and seeping blood, had remained vermin-free. "So the Yankees won't win?" He spoke in the familiar accent of the Piedmont.

    I shrugged again. "It looks like we'll carry this. And in a month the Yankees might well have capitulated and we all be home."

    He raised a dirt-encrusted hand to his forehead, bringing it down again before touching that portion of it where the ligature hid broken bone and said, "I had dreams. Dreams like when one dreams of being awakened and in the dream walks and talks and does all the normal things of life. I dreamed I rose and walked as through an open door, and found myself back home, but the Union had won and scavengers from the North descended upon Dixie like vultures on an ill-dead carcass." He looked away. "My wife had died of dysentery. My farm was ruined. I had to sell the house."

    "A nightmare," I told him. "You've been grievously wounded."

    "Yes," he said, and looked in some distaste around him, at the wounded lying all about, as though he himself weren't as filthy and meagerly fed and hard-driven as them. "And will I live?"

    I couldn't tell him it was passing marvelous that he was alive with half his brain destroyed. Though it was. So I told him . . ..

     . . .(water damage renders a few lines illegible) . . .and with that he had to be contented.

    The rest of the day and through the night I was kept busy with more wounded brought in, half of them at least Federal prisoners that we treated as we did our own, though some of the doctors refused to treat anyone not of their regiment, a crime and offense against divine law for which I often wished they would be incinerated on the spot. Alas, divine mercy and divine justice both being in short supply in this war we had to make do with the human variety that required sweat and blood and sleepless nights for your humble servant.

    At daybreak on the second of July, I searched for and found my head-injury case. He walked about the yard, as though in a daze, tracing an erratic path around the fires that warmed those not so seriously wounded. He looked at everything with a strange, detached expression, as though not sure who he was, nor why he walked.

    Judging him to be prey to a fever, I found him and took him by the arm and started guiding him back inside.

    But he pulled his arm from