Homeland: A Novel by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly [Hambly, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2009-08-24T23:00:00+00:00

Susanna Ashford, Vicksburg, Mississippi

To

Cora Poole, Deer Isle, Maine

[not sent]

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1863

LATE NIGHT

Dear Cora,

This morning General Pemberton issued an order for all non-combatants to leave Vicksburg, while he still holds some part of the railroad. Jackson is in Union hands. Aunt Sally said that if the Army thought it could run her hospital without mere women cluttering things up, they certainly had her permission to try. She said she was taking me, Julia, and Tommy to Richmond. Julia clung on to Tom’s hand (we were at the hospital—we finally got Tom a cot yesterday) and begged me not to leave her: “You can’t take her from me, and you can’t make me go!” And to me, “Susie, if you go I’ll die!”

So I said I’d stay. Aunt Sally left this afternoon. She took Zed, Ruben the butler, and the nursemaid, leaving us with only Nellie and Cook. The house echoes queerly. I feel very strange, probably from lack of sleep, or not eating enough (there’s no time, at the hospital). It’s as if the Real Susanna—that little girl sitting on Justin’s porch reading, who forged letters home for my roommate in the Nashville Academy—is sitting in a little room at the back of my brain, watching things and making drawings that I’ll one day be able to put on paper. I don’t think anyone would want to see them, tho’.

At the hospital I take care of Julia more than Tom, who hasn’t really regained his senses since the amputation. I change the dressings on his stumps, and keep him as clean as I can, and give him water or broth if I can get it, and chase the rats away. I think every rat in town knows where the pile of amputated limbs is, and from there they swarm the rooms and the stairways where the men lie. Sometimes at night I’ll hear a man screaming curses if vermin run across him or chew on his bandages. In between all that I help Doc Driscoll in the operating room (which was the dining-room—they had to get rid of the carpet there, too, because of maggots), and take water around to the men. Julia isn’t much good for any of that, but won’t leave Tom’s side, like a sort of demented Mrs. Micawber. With hardly anybody to keep the men clean, I can’t even tell you what it smells like. That’s another reason I haven’t eaten in days. When more men get brought in, Doc says, “Cut the arms and legs first. Head and belly, they won’t live anyway.” Part of my job in the operating room is just to keep the flies away from the open wounds long enough to clean and stitch.

I will confess to you, back when I got your letters, about first being on Deer Isle, and everyone hating you because of Emory, I was angry at Emory, angry that he’d do that to you, by making the choice he did. Cora, Emory has been like a brother to me and Julia, like a brother to poor Tom.

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