A Gathering of Light, Page 2

This place, however, looked to be doing well.

  Outside the window, the trees were tall and close. He thought this must be some backwoods cabin nestled in dark timber. He could hear nothing outside the thick walls; certainly no sounds of the army he knew must be near.

  Something about it all nagged at him. There was some mystery here, something that defied explanation. He still felt disoriented. He had not yet regained his presence of mind and so was at a loss to figure it out.

  Hixson heard the scrape of someone wiping their feet outside the door. A big black dog with a short coat and a cold nose darted through the door first and came to him, pressing that cold nose onto Hixson’s hand.

  He saw a petite woman come in next. She set a basket overflowing with garden greens on a bench and quietly closed the door. Her head was wrapped in a kerchief in a way that hid her hair completely, giving no hint of its color. Her face was young and fresh and beautiful.

  Her peachy skin and rose lips were lovely, but it was her eyes that were most arresting. They were round and green, with long dark lashes. With a spark of wit and wisdom showing in them, her eyes alone would make her beautiful.

  As she turned to call the dog away, she saw that her guest was awake and smiled. Hixson noticed a nasty bruise above her eyebrow on one side and wondered what had happened to her. He also noticed that she had a voice as soft and smooth as butter when she spoke, “Towzer, get in your place.”

  The dog immediately went to a rag rug by the fireplace and lay down. The woman turned to Hixson, “You’re awake at last. It was rest you needed above all else. Are you in pain? Do you think you could keep a little broth down?”

  He looked, transfixed, into the greenest of green eyes and tried to think of what to say. In four sentences and only a few more seconds, she had taken his breath away. Hixson looked into her eyes; she had already memorized Hixson. She had been watching him and watching over him for days.

  He was tall; she guessed him to be over six feet, and lean. All soldiers seemed to be lean. He had brown wavy hair. Now that they were open, she could see he had hazel eyes framed with very heavy lashes. His lashes lay on his cheeks as he slept, giving him a boyish look. Open, his eyes were enchanting enough to make her heart flutter.

  The beard that had grown in since Hixson had been recovering was peppered with red. He had strong, even features. His hands were broad and calloused, clearly those of a man accustomed to work. But his eyes betrayed a youth and tenderness that didn’t seem to fit the mold of a soldier.

  Finally, Hixson found his voice, “I could eat, yes. How long have I been here?”

  “It’ll be eight nights and seven days, now. Are you hurting?” she nearly whispered, as if she knew somehow that his head was fuzzy and that the sounds in the room seemed brittle to his ears. She had just a hint of the slow way of drawing out words he had heard so often in Southern speech. She did not, however, have the backwoods pronunciation he expected in these surroundings. She quietly ladled steaming broth into a pottery mug and laid a bit of biscuit on a napkin to bring to him.

  Setting the food down near the bed, she propped him up a little. She tended to him without speaking but looking at him in a way that made him feel that she could see everything. It was unnerving and comforting at the same time. He knew in the core of his soul that he was in good hands. And she had hardly spoken.

  “Where is this place? What happened to me? Where is my regiment? Who are you? Are you alone here?” The questions began to tumble from Hixson like jacks thrown from a child’s hand.

  He listened to her downy voice explain patiently that he was in her home, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. He was right: he had been gut shot but seemed to be mending fine. The armies had left the field of battle the day after he was wounded and were now engaged over at Spotsylvania Courthouse.

  “My name is Sarah Westbay, and I was alone here until the evening of May 6th. That’s when my young neighbor came running in here to tell me that he’d found someone bad hurt from the battle. ‘Caught in a thicket of berry bushes and bleeding all around the middle’, he said. So we loaded you up in his hand cart and hauled you here to tend to your wounds. His momma is my dear friend and she helped me take care of you this past week. You’re sewn up like a Christmas turkey, I’m afraid, and you’ll be some time yet healing. But there’s no infection and you have youth and strength to carry you through.” All the words came softly. “And what should I call you?”

  Sarah’s answers had opened the gate on a stampede of thoughts in his mind. He struggled to corral them long enough to answer the question she asked.

  “Lieutenant Hixson Matthew Morris, ma’am. Second Corps, Army of the Potomac.” If he was in Virginia, he was in a Confederate home! And still, she had helped him. Since he’d been in the army, Rebel women had cursed him, sneered at him and even spit on him. This one had helped him, taken him in to her home and tended his wounds.

  He should be afraid, a Union officer in a Rebel home, and yet he trusted her and wanted to open his soul to her. He wanted to tell her everything. Who he was, what he thought, how he ended up with a hole in his midsection and how he missed his home. Trying to contain himself he soon tired. Sarah silently fed him the soup until he could eat no more.

  Sarah heated some water and sprinkled some kind of dried flower into it. Then she asked Hixson to lie flat and relax so she could have a look at the wound. She carefully removed the bandages. Then she dipped a soft cloth in the warm flower-water, and washed his stitched up belly.

  He tried to look, but what he saw scared him into turning his head away. She had said he was mending well, but all he could see were scabs: meandering trails of dark red. The scabs were crossed with almost clear, fine thread of some kind. He couldn’t tell if he had been shot more than once because it looked like he had at least two sewn-up holes in the front.

  When she asked him to roll onto his side facing away from her, he knew there must be more in the back. He braced himself for the pain that rolling would surely cause, but nothing. It didn’t hurt to move.

  “This looks very good, Lieutenant Morris. I’ll be able to take the stitches out before much longer, and then it won’t look nearly so frightening.” She washed all the stitches with the poultice.

  “It’s true, ma’am, I’m not very good about wounds...especially my own.” Hixson replied, chagrined that she saw his fear.

  “Don’t worry. I think we all feel that way. Probably by the day after tomorrow you’ll be ready to sit up a while. I want to let your insides heal a little more before we try that, though.” As she spoke, Sarah was efficiently straightening the bedding, and making Hixson comfortable.

  She looked at him for a moment, looked to the ceiling and held her hands, palms up, with arms extended. Hixson noticed her small, delicate hands and graceful arms as she closed her eyes and stood, tense and trembling slightly. Was she praying?

  Then she opened her eyes, leaned down and placed one open hand on Hixson’s belly and slid the other one under him and pressed it to his back. A feeling like strong static flowed through him, from her one hand to the other. He felt warm and buzzing and thoroughly confused, but Sarah stood there with her hands upon him, trembling.

  Hixson decided he must be very sick, after all. He thought he saw a light glowing faintly from under her palm as she pressed it to his belly.

  Sarah let go, jerking back somewhat as if it were difficult to do. Then she sat down hard on the chair at the foot of the bed. She seemed unable to speak.

  Hixson tried to watch her and see if she needed some kind of help, but he could not. He felt warm and heavy, remarkably well and very, very sleepy. He would not wake again until late morning

  May 14th, 1864--Spotsylvania County, Virginia

  Even through the thick cabin walls, Hixson could hear the alarm in the voices of the people who approached. Sarah heard it, too. She had the door open and the dog sent to her place before they could even knock.

  A boy about eight years old was carried i
n and it was immediately apparent he’d had a serious accident. His leg was bent below the knee at an unnatural angle. There was blood on his cheek and more running down one arm.

  They laid him on the kitchen table. The little boy’s momma was tearful. The grandfather who carried him was out of breath. Another woman had come in as well. She went straight to the stove and got to work.

  Her bright red, curly hair matched the color of the embers as she stoked the fire. With her was a boy who looked about fifteen. Her familiarity with everything showed she had been there many times and her speech showed she was from Ireland.

  She tied an apron around her striped skirt, filled a pot with water and placed it on the stove to heat. The red-haired boy with her strolled over to Hixson and asked how he felt, introducing himself as Caleb.

  This must be the young neighbor Sarah had mentioned. This was the one who found Hixson dying on the battlefield and brought him help.

  Sarah cut away the injured boy’s clothing to have a better look. When she had done this she gave them to the mother and handed her a sewing box. Then she selected four sticks out of the kindling box and handed them to the grandfather.

  “Sand them very smooth and cut them all this long.” She told him, marking the stick to show him. “You folks set out on the porch while you take care of those things.