 | CHAPTER I Manuscript Draft: Walter Reed: Doctor in Uniform, by Laura Wood, [19—] |  |
1. CHAPTER I
It was the spring of 1865, and the Civil War was almost
over. Petersburg had been under siege since June, 1864. At
this little Virginia city Robert E. Lee's half-starved, half-clad
army -“Lee's Miserables,” they called themselves, in allusion to
Victor Hugo's somber classic -had checked the advance toward
Richmond, the Confederate capital, of the Union commander Ulysses
S. Grant, who was determined to end the war by capturing the nerve
center of southern resistance.
1.
No longer did the high, canvas-covered wagons, drawn by six
great horses decked with bells, rumble over the plank road into
town with hogsheads of tobacco and sacks of corn and wheat. The
batteaux, similarly loaded, were gone from the canal and the river.
The thriving tobacco factories had stopped operating: they had
long since been converted into military hospitals. The siege,
vigorous during the summer and fall, had dragged wearily through
the winter.
During the cold weather, while military activity was al-
most suspended, Petersburg was animated with the gaiety of
people who did not know whether whey would live to see the next
day. There were dances, weddings, entertainments -and,
because of Grant's raids against the surrounding
railroads, almost nothing to eat at any of them. When the occas-
ional cannonades began, ladies took their reading and sewing and
hurried to the “bomb-proofs,” holes six feet deep and covered with
heavy timbers and packed earth, and listened quaking to the martial
thunder.
Inaction might prevail at the siege, but the countryside
around was ceaselessly, anxiously, on the alert. There was no
telling when Union raiders, clad in their camp stained blue uni-
forms, would trot into the yard and scour house and barn
and grounds. The purpose of their raids was not only to provide
Federal troops with necessities, but to prevent food, clothing and
anything else of value from reaching the Confederates. It was no
wonder that families developed considerable skill in concealing
valuables. Important papers were jammed into chinks in the wood-
pile, silver was tossed down the well, and food stuffed into cook-
2.
er bed or vegetable patch. Livestock was driven into the thickest
available woods, and hobbled. Then, when the raiders came, the
report that others had been there before them had all the air of
truth.
As the Yankees combed the country in widening circles in
the early months of 1865, Lemuel Sutton Reed, the Methodist min-
ister stationed at Lawrenceville, some fifty miles south of the
siege, made what little provision a man of peace and a man of God
could make to protect his property against enemy foragers. He
told his two youngest sons, Walter and Christopher, so young that
even the desperate Confederate army could not use them, to be
ready to hide the horses on short notice in the thickets along
the banks of the Meherrin River.
* * *
Walter had not been in bed long, but he realized, as
he became conscious of the light shining weakly on his face, that
he must have dropped asleep almost at once. He opened his eyes.
His father, dressed only in his long white
nightshirt, was bending over him, shading the candle with his hand.
In the swift passage from sleep to waking, the thirteen year old
boy noted, for the first time, how gray Pa had become in
the last several years. His full, handsome beard, still as luxur-
iant as ever, was grizzled, and his dark hair was heavily salted
with white. Almost at the same moment he noticed that the blinds,
open when he and Chris went to bed, were drawn now. In the waver-
ing hollow of light, scooped by the candle out of the dark room,
the bed posts loomed close, the rest of the furniture shrank into
the protective dark.
3.
Fully awake, Walter asked in a low voice, “What is it, Pa?
Is Ma sick?”
His brother Christopher, two years older than he, stirred on
the other side of the big bed, and sat up.
“No, thank heaven, it isn't your Ma. Joey Rogers is just in
from the country. Sheridan's men were there today. He and Jeff
got away with their team. They're down at the stable now, saddling
Bess and Turnip.”
Walter and Christopher slipped out of bed and began drawing
on their trousers. They knew what to do. For the last several
weeks the saddle-bags, packed with cornbread and ham -nothing
that would have to be cooked over a telltale fire -had been kept
ready against the time when they might have to leave hurriedly
to conceal the horses from the foragers.
As the boys dressed rapidly, the father's eyes were on his
youngest son. Walter was a lean, wiry boy with blue eyes and
straight brown hair. Good temper and quick-witted humor lay
behind his serious and attentive expression. The shadow of the
war, that had lain for so long over all of them, seemed to his
father not to have darkened his youth, but rather to have touched
it with a becoming gravity. The happy disposition, the generosity
in thought and action, that had characterized him as a child were
unaltered; but the discipline of hardship had made him strong be-
yond his years.
The boys were dressed now. Pa hugged them both without a
word.
“Don't worry about anything. I'll take good care of Wal-
ter, Pa,” Chris promised him, pressing his hand. “We'll be all
right, and the horses, too.”
“I know you will, son. You boys have always looked after
4.
will go with you to see where you hide. Then he'll come back to-
morrow and fetch you more food, and let you know when it's safe
to come out. Now off with you.”
They slipped down the stairs, Pa leading the way with the
candle. A quiet, hasty good-bye to Ma, and they were out in the
damp spring night. The rain had been dripping down, softly, stead-
ily, for a week, but tonight it had stopped and there was a thick
mist. They made their way to the stable, where, feeling their way
in the unfamiliar dark, Joey Rogers and Jeff, his father's young
Negro boy, were saddling the horses. A few whispered words,
and they were mounted, filing past the dark, wakeful house and
down the village street.
The embrace of the sodden dark made Walter shiver.
Through the black he could barely distinguish the bulk of the
familiar houses on either side. There were no lights showing;
apparently no one was astir. They rode past the deserted school-
house -it had not opened at all this term -at a trot, andz the
horses' feet squelched loudly in the hock deep mud. The damp,
fresh smell of the earth subbggested spring, but there was nothing
but hope to suggest that it would ever clear. The weather had
made this road a mud-hole, but those leading into Petersburg, he
had heard, were little better than morasses. Even the plank road
was submerged in sticky red gumbo, stirred up by days of rain and
renewed military operations.
Trotting along at the end of the short procession, with
every sense alert to catch any sound that might mean someone was
approaching, Walter forgot the wet and cold. As a matter of fact,
he thought, we're very lucky to have such a murky night. No one
5.
bor stealing off into hiding. In the dark he smiled to think what
a fright they would give each other if they met.
A couple of miles out of town they turned off the main
road into a lane that shortly dwindled to a wagon track. Low-
growing branches smacked wet in their faces as Joey led them off
the trail into a narrow path. The Negro boy began to sing
softly, then to pray, a rapid chattering. Walter listened to him
uneasily.
“Hush, Jeff!” Joey told him sharply. “Do you want to
wake up the whole county?”
The boy did not answer. He was quiet, but his teeth
clicked together with chill and nervousness.
“Are you cold, Jeff?” Walter called softly.
“He's not cold -just scared to death,” Joey's irate
whisper carried back to him. “He's afraid of the dark.”
Walter suppressed a chuckle. “We don't have to be afraid
of the dark, Jeff,” he reassured him. “It's the best friend we
could have right now.”
“No Yanks will ever find us on a ptichy night like this,”
Chris encouraged he the frightened boy, “and Yanks are all we've
got to be scared of. The dark never hurt anybody. I hope you
know where you're taking us, Joey,” he added.
“I've hunted all over this country,” Joey told him. “I
bet I know every foot of it, light or dark or blindfold. We'll
come out on a steep little bank at a bend in the river. It's deep
there -good swimming and fishing -and the thickest trees you've
ever seen in your life. No raiders, not even Sheridan's, are
going to stumble across us there.”
6.
The woods seemed to be getting thicker, the night, if that
were possible, blacker. Turnip struck his foot on a root, shook
his head and blew indignantly. This was no kind of a jaunt for a
respectable ministerial mount, even for a circuit rider's horse
who was used to almost anything. Some of the boys' tension relaxed
in the feeling of safety engendered by the thick darkness. Chris
began to whistle almost inaudibly, and a tuneless hum from the
front of the line indicated that Joey was busy with Dixie. But
Jeff, unimpressed by the assurances of the white boys, who could
know nothing of the sinister powers of the enveloping night, re-
sumed his prayers.
Walter lost track of time and distance. For hours and
miles, it seemed to him, he had been warding off the swish of
branches and straining his eyes into the absorbent blackness.
He was beginning to be conscious of fatigue, but in spite of it
felt increasingly alert, as though each nerve were becoming
tighter and more sensitive. This night ride could have no end,
had had no beginning; it had been going on for all remembered
time. Automatically he held up his arm to fend off the slap of
the wet boughs, tightened the reins as Turnip stumbuled again. The
darkness and his weariness seemed to merge, both of them to
fold him around him warm and suffocating. Then he remembered: Pa
had closed the windows -the miasma was bad for Ma. He could feel
her tiredness all through him.
He was half out of the saddle before he felt himself slipping.
Jerking himself back, he shook his head vigorously to clear it.
“Joey, where are we?” he called in a whisper.
“Almost there.”
In a daze Walter finally dismounted. The ground felt un-
7/.
see, the little clearing amid the dense trees, sense the stream flow-
ing swift and full at the foot of the bank. The tired boys unsaddled
their horses and tied them at the edge of the thicket. With quick
strokes of his hatchet Chris cut pine boughs for them all to lie
on. Using their saddles as pillows and wrapping themselves in
blankets, they fell asleep without even a whispered good-night.
A bird call, and the rays of the early sun pointing through
the branches woke the sleepers. The sun was shining again! It
was a glorious, a perfect spring day, warn, with an opal sky
that would become a brilliant blyue as the sun rose higher. The
boys sat up, stretching and smiling sleepily, then looked at each
other blankly.
Jeff was gone.
* * *
In hiding the horses the boys had done all they could to
insure their safety. Now they had nothing more to do until they
received word that the raiders were gone from the neighborhood.
High spirits, long suppressed by war time anxieties, bubbled up
again. The first day they wrestled, told tall tales, built them-
selves a rough shelter of pine boughs in case of rain, and, between
relief and fatigue, slept again. Their anxiety over Jeff's dis-
appearance evaporated gradually.
“After all,” Chris reminded Joey, “we knew he wasn't
going to stay with us. He's just gone off to get us some more food,
the way Pa said he would.”
“I don't see why he lit out before anybody was awake,”
8.
get back till late evening, not straggle in in broad daylight for
the Yankees to nab him.”
“I guess he didn't like the notion of being out after dark
again,” Walter remarked. “I'm afraid you maybe hurt his feelings,
Joey, saying he was scared last night.”
“Oh, I didn't mean to -I was kind of jumpy myself. I was
sure glad you fellows were along.”
“Don't worry about it,” Walter advised him. “He'll come back
tomorrow or next day, with some food, and maybe news. I hope....”
His voice trailed away. As far as the war was concerned, even he
knew now, there was nothing left to hope for, except its quick con-
clusion. And he had done nothing to help! When he had told Pa how
that made him feel, Pa had consoled him. There was always plenty
to do in the world, he had explained, and his turn would come soon,
just a few more years.
What shall I do when I'm a grown man? Walter wondered. He
had thought about it many times, but had never been able to decide.
Now he sat on the edge of the bank above the river, forgetting the
horses, forgetting the war, his intent blue eyes staring unseeing
at the water, trying to detect the shape of the future.
Joey strolled over and sat beside him.
“What are you going to be when you grow up, Joey?” Walter
asked.
“Why, a farmer, of course,” Joey answered. “What else would
I be? I'm one already. Like my pa, and my grandpa, and his pa.
Rogers are always farmers.”
“I guess it's nice being a farmer,” Walter agreed with the
unspoken assumption, “planting things, and seeing them come up and
9.
added longingly. It had been four long endless years since
anyone he knew had had plenty of food.
“Not for me,” Chris remarked, joining them. “Farmers never
get a chance to read anything. They work so hard that they
haven't time to study things. I'm going to be a lawyer, and a city
man. Maybe I'll go to New York.”
“There?” Joey was shocked. “That Yankee town?”
“Oh, we'll all be friends again by the time Chris is
ready to go,” Walter explained trustfully. “I'd like to go there
myself, and then maybe out west. But I'd like to see such a big
city first. Pa says 'most a million people live in it.”
“No!” Joey exclaimed incredulously.
“Really,” Chris assured him. “Pa told us so.”
They were all silent, contemplating the awesome figure. It
was too big for Joey. He dismissed it. Anyway, he didn't believe it.
“What are you going to be, Walter?” Joey finally inquired.
Walter answered slowly, “I don't know. I haven't made up
my mind. Maybe a minister, like Pa. Or maybe a schoolmaster. I
want to do something,” he hesitated a moment seriously, “whatever
it is, that will help people.”
“You better not be a schoolmaster, then,” Joey advised
drily, recalling his own regrettable educational experiences in
which a hickory switch had figured largely. He stood up and stretched,
thinking how good it was to feel the spring sun again on the top of
his head. It made a warmth, a kind of hot, live feeling, run all
through you. “Let's take the horses down for a drink,” he suggested.
“They're acting awfully restless.”
By sunset they had to admit that Jeff probably wouldn't
10/.
The day passed without incident, but by noon of the next
they were beginning to wonder about Jeff.
“He'sd better come pretty soon,” Joey observed. “We'll
starve if he doesn't. Our rations are getting low.”
By sunset they had to admit that Jeff probably wouldn't ap-
pear that day. They sat in the thickening twilight, inattentive to
the final chirps of sleepy birds, the fading brilliance in the west
and the increasing chill of the spring night, and speculated on how
it would feel to be hungry -really hungry, with not a single thing
to eat.
“It won't be that bad,” Walter predicted. “After all, we
don't have to sit here and starve. If he isn't here by the middle
of tomorrow afternoon, I'll go out and see if I can't get us some-
thing.”
“No you won't, Walter,” Chris declared. “I promised Pa
I'd take care of you. I'll go.”
“I'll go,” Joey stated gruffly. “I know the way, and you
fellows don't. You'd probably get lost the first thing.”
“I'd find it, all right,” Walter asserted. “Besides, if
I ran into the Yanks, they'd probably think I was too young to
bother with. But they might take either of you prisoner.”
The argument trailed along inconclusively until it was
thoroughly dark.
Finally Walter yawned. “I reckon I'll go to sleep now,”
he said, wrapping up in his blanket. "Let's see what happens in the
morning, before we decide what to do. Jeff may show up. Maybe no-
body will have to go for food. 2
The next morning, like the one before it, was mild and sunny.
11.
watering the horses, the boys were faced with a long, warm, and
probably hungry day.
“Why don't we take a swim?” Joey proposed. “The water's
probably warm enough. It'll be the first time I've been in this
spring.”
“Good idea,” Chris agreed. Poised on the edge of the bank,
he shouted over his shoulder, “Last one in is a Red Indian,” and
slid down the incline. In a moment all three of them were scrambling
out of their clothes. Chris, to Walter's great glee, turned out to
be the Red Indian.
The water was chilly with spring, and ran rusty from the
recent rains, but the boys didn't mind. They plunged in and ducked
each other, sputtering and splashing. Then they swam, their pale
arms and legs tossing the drops glistening into the air. Finally,
winded, they climbed out and lay panting on the edge of the stream,
while the sun dried them.
They were dressing when they heard one of the horses whinny.
“Drat that racket!” Joey exclaimed anxiously. Hastily
pulling his shirt over his head and jerking his belt tight, he
started up the bank, the others at his heels. When his red head
rose above it, and he took in what had happened, it was too late.
“Hello, Johnny Reb,” the big bearded Yankee said with an
unhurried grin. “Come on up.” The grin fell away as Joey started
to drop back. “Don't try to run,” the soldier warned, shifting his
rifle a little. The smile came back as the two other astonished
faces, incredulous eyes wide, bobbed over the edge of the bank.
“Well, well, well,” he said mildly. “Get on up here, all of you.”
It was impossible to refuse an invitation issued at the
12.
plastered flat from their swim, scrambled up beside him. A quick
glance was enough to show that there was nothing they could do.
There were eight or ten of the raiders, all in faded blue uniforms
that looked as if they had had long, hard service. They had saddled
Bess and Turnip and Joey's team, and were standing around watching
the capture with amusement.
They didn't seem very sinister fellows, Walter though won-
deringly, as he stared frankly at them. They might b almost be
any of their mneighborhood men, needing a shave and a bath and a
fresh suit. He examined their clothes. They were stained and soiled,
but not in rags, like the Confederates' uniforms. And most envi-
able of all, their boots were whole. The young lieutenant in
charge of the group had on a fresher uniform than his men. As
Walter reluctantly admired his fine figure it did not occur to him
that, in another ten years, he would himself put on the United
States uniform and wear it proudly for the rest of his life. Just
then he would have given a great deal to see the Confederate gray
and hear the shrill Rebel yell.
Their captor was solemnly searching them. Resting his
rifle in the crook of his left arm, he patted their pockets with his
free hand. The three knives he took from h them, he dropped into
his own pocket.
“Disarmed, sir,” he reported to his superior with a
straight face.
The lieutenant looked them over, the three young rebels.
The tallest one, who looked like a farmer, glared at him, plainly
uneasy about what was coming next. The other two were examining
13.
“Is there anyone else with you?” he inquired.
Joey sullenly kicked the earth with his toe. His team, the
sturdy matched grays that Pa set such store by, how would they
ever get along without them? What about the spring plowing? He
could feel tears of helpless anger rising to his eyes.
Chris had moved close to Walter. Now he answered for all of
them, a little louder than necessary in a voice harsh with indigna-
tion. “No sir. There are only three of us.” No use telling about
Jeff. He hoped Jeff wouldn't pick this moment to return. When
he did come and found them gone, he could at least tell their fam-
ilies, and they would guess what had happened.
“Yes sir. That's right,” another soldier, one with pale eyes
and a broken nose set in a homely, weather-beatedn face, said. “That's
what the colored boy said -three boys, four horses. Too bad we have
to bother with the kids at all -they're no good to us.” he added.
“We can't turn them loose to warn the whole neighborhood,”
the lieutenant answered shortly.
“So Jeff told you where to find us!” Joey blurted, flushing
angrily. “Wait till I get my hands on him -wait till Pa gets at
him!”
“Take it easy, son,” the man with the beard soothed him.
“You'll never see that boy again. The speed he showed when we let
him go, he's half way to Canada now, I guess.” He laughed hear-
tily at the recollection of the flying heels.
As they picked their way single file through the woods, Wal-
ter reflected on the uneasy distinction of being taken prisoner of
war. There had been nothing at all glamorous about it, as he would
have supposed. No ringing demand for surrender, no parley about
14.
who were also gentlemen. They had simply blundered into a booby
trap set by an ignorant, resentful boy, and been ingloriously
grabbed by some good-natured, quite dirty soldiers under the com-
meand of a very junior officer who scarcely spoke to them. It was
a great disappointment, practically an insult.
Dodging the branches that swept low over the narrow path,
he wondered nervously what their captors intended to do with them.
Only spies were shot, he knew. But maybe they would be sent to
one of the fearsome northern prisons -Libby, perhaps, from which
such fearful rumors of want and disease filtered back. Maybe they
would be taken to Sheridan himself, and questioned, Walter thought
apprehensively, recalling tales of his ruthlessness in the desol-
ated Shenandoah Valley. It was even possible -humiliating
thought -that they would be liberated as not worth bothering with,
their patriotism dismissed as ineffectual. Although at first in-
clined to resent any such reflection, Walter realized that he
would quickly reconcile himself to it, if it meant freedom.
“They can think what they like, if they only let us go,”
he reasonably told himself.
This was probably the last time, he realized sadly, that
Chris and he would ever ride good old Bess and Turnip. He leaned
over Turnip's neck and gave him an affectionate pat. Fine old
horses! They had faithfully carried Pa through sun and rain and
cold countless miles all over Virginia. They had pulled the buggy
to church, picnics, funerals, christenings. They were essential,
cherished members of the family. He hated to think that they
would now strain at cannon stuck in the mud, or go under fire,
15.
could to save them, but it hadn't been enough.
The path widened into the wagon track, the wagon track into
the highway. The little group of soldiers, breaking their file,
surrounded their prisoners and trotted down the road.
* * *
It was almost dark the next evening when the two limping,
weary boys approached home.
“My feet are 'most worn off,” Chris sighed. “Fifteen miles!”
“And some people do it for pleasure,” Walter groaned. “I'm
nearly starved.”
“Those sardines!”
“Whew! Maybe they wouldn't have been so bad if the soldier
hadn't wrapped them in his handkerchief with his tobacco,” Walter
speculated.
“They were terrible anyway,” Chris affirmed.
“I hope I never see another one of those slimy, smelly fish
as long as I live,” his brother solemnly declared.
“Do you suppose Ma and Pa heard about us?” Chris wondered.
“I'm afraid so. Mr. Samuels saw us when we passed his place.
He'd have let them know if he had to walk every step of the
way. I hope it didn't scare Ma to death.”
But it had scared Ma almost to death. When her youngest sons
actually stood before her, she was hardly able to believe it. She
couldn't stop hugging them, and exclaiming, “My babies! My poor
little babies! Have you really come back to me safely?”
“Oh, Ma,” Chris protested, a little embarrassed at being
called a baby even by her, “it wasn't so bad. They didn't
hurt us. They didn't even scare us, did they, Walter? Only a
16.
“No, really, Ma,” Walter clasped her hard to reassure her.
“They weren't mean to us at all. We were only scared that you and
Pa would worry when you heard.”
“We worried, all right,” Pa said grimly. “When Mr. Samuels
came with the news, I thought your Mr would faint clear away for a
minute. Then she wanted to set right out for Petersburg and give
General Grant and General Sheridan a piece of her mind -persecut-
ing innocent children, she called it.” He chuckled. “She would
have, too, if there'd been any means of conveyance left in the
county.”
“How did my brave boys get away?” Ma asked fondly.
“Well, you see,” Walter explained shamefeacedly, “it was
this way. They just turned us loose. A courier came with a message
for the lieutenant, and he ordered the men to break camp, fast.
Then he remembered us. He said,” indignantly he repeated the young
officer's slighting words, mimicing his brusque tone, “‘Free these
boys. They're not big enough to do us any good, and they're too
small to do any harm. Sheridan's cavalry can't be nursemaids. They
can go home to their mothers.’ So he just let us walk away, and
Joey went to his place, and we came home.” he concluded. He could
hardly keep his voice steady as he added, “They kept Bess and Turnip,
though, Pa.”
“My dearest boys!” Pa exclaimed. “You're what matters.
We can do all right without the horses, so long as we have you back
safe.”
“Did they feed you properly?” Ma inquired anxiously,
watching Chris down his second glass of buttermilk and reach again
for the cornbread.
“Sardines,” he said tersely. “Sardines for supper, sar-
17.
“Sardines and tobacco,” his younger brother amended. “Never
again!”
18.
| CHAPTER I Manuscript Draft: Walter Reed: Doctor in Uniform, by Laura Wood, [19—] | |