Dreadnought Read Free Page A

be coming home. They buried him in a grave outside of Plains, unmarked with a dozen others. But he didn’t suffer long.”
    He slouched so that his shoulders held up his chest like a shirt on a hanger. It was as if the weight of his message were too much, and his body still too frail to carry it all. But if he didn’t carry it, nobody would.
    “I’m sorry, ma’am. I wish the news were kinder.”
    She released him then, and sagged back onto her own bench, into the arms of Sally Tompkins, who was ready with an embrace. Mercy let the captain hold her and she said, “No. No, but you came all this way, and you brought it to me anyway.”
    Mercy Lynch closed her eyes and put her head on Sally’s shoulder.
    Clara Barton and Dorence Atwater took this as their cue to leave. They left silently, walking around the side yard rather than cutting back through the hospital, toward the street and whatever transportation awaited them there.
    Without opening her eyes, Mercy said, “I wish they’d never come. I wish I didn’t know.”
    Sally stroked her head and told her, “Someday you’ll be glad they did. I know it’s hard to imagine, but really, it’s better knowing than wondering. False hope’s the worst kind there is.”
    “It was good of them,” she agreed with a sniffle, the first that had escaped thus far. “They came here, to a Rebel hospital and everything. They didn’t have to do that. They could’ve sent a letter.”
    “She was here under the cross,” Sally said. “But you’re right. It’s hard work, what they do. And you know, I don’t think anyone, even here, would’ve raised a hand against them.” She sighed, and stopped petting Mercy’s wheat-colored hair. That hair, always unruly and just too dark to call blond, was fraying out from theedges of her cap. It tangled in Sally’s fingers. “All of the boys, blue and gray alike. They all hope someone would do the same for them—that someone would tell their mothers and sweethearts, should they fall on the field.”
    “I guess.”
    Mercy loosed herself from Sally’s loving hold, and she stood, wiping at her eyes. They were red, and so was her nose. Her cheeks were flushed violently pink. “Could I have the afternoon, Captain Sally? Just take a little time in my bunk?”
    The captain remained seated, and folded her hands across her lap. “Take as long as you need. I’ll have Paul Forks bring up your supper. And I’ll tell Anne to let you be.”
    “Thank you, Captain Sally.” Mercy didn’t mind her roommate much, but she could scarcely stand the thought of explaining anything to her, not right then, while the world was still strangely hued and her throat was blocked with curdled screams.
    She walked slowly back into the house-turned-hospital, keeping her gaze on the ground and watching her feet as she felt her way inside. Someone said, “Good morning, Nurse Mercy,” but she didn’t respond. She barely heard it.
    Keeping one hand on the wall to guide herself, she found the first-floor ward and the stairwell that emptied there. Now, two different words bounced about in her mind:
widow
and
up.
She struggled to ignore the first one and grasp the second. She only had to make it up to her bunk in the attic.
    “Nurse,” a man called. It sounded like,
Nuss
. “Nurse Mercy?”
    One hand still on the wall, one foot lifted to scale the first step, she paused.
    “Nurse Mercy, did you find my watch?”
    For an instant she was perplexed; she regarded the speaker, and saw Private Hugh Morton, his battered but optimistic face upturned. “You said you’d find my watch. It didn’t get all washed up, did it?”
    “No,” she breathed. “It didn’t.”
    He smiled so hard, his face swelled into a circle. He sat up on the cot and shook his head, then rubbed at one eye with the inside of his arm. “You found it?”
    “I did, yes. Here,” she said, fumbling with the pocket on her apron. She pulled it out and held it for a moment, watching the sunlight