TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

Author:Colum McCann
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-06-04T07:00:00+00:00

LILY HAD LEFT St. Louis in the same week as her son. To be near his regiment. He was seventeen years old. A head of chestnut-colored hair. A shy boy once, he had left, swollen with the prospect of war.

She had walked for days, found the hospital among a series of small buildings not far from the battlefields. At first she was given the laundry room to work in. They had set up a little makeshift hut out back. The hut was a collection of logs with a sloping tarpaulin roof. Under the snapping tarp sat a row of six wooden barrels, four to be filled with hot water, two with cold. She wore long gloves and thick boots. Mud splashed up on the back of her dress. Her hem was dark and thick with blood. She washed bed sheets, towels, bandages, medical uniforms, torn blouses, forage caps. She stirred the clothes around a wooden drum. Another barrel rolled two drums together to squeeze the dirt from the fibers. The handle circled endlessly. Her hands blistered.

When the water was finished, she sprinkled lime in the barrels. It was said to kill the smell of blood. She hung the clothes high on a washing line. At night coyotes trotted out high-legged from the nearby forest. Sometimes they leaped and ripped the clothes from the line. She could see strips of white scattered through the trees.

After eighty-six days a Negro woman had taken over the washing. Lily was brought inside to help the nurses. She donned a black Zouave jacket and a thin cotton dress. Her hair was tied in a bun at the nape of her neck and kept in place with a bonnet. A Union badge was pinned to the front of the bonnet.

She cleaned the bedpans, changed the sheets, stuffed the mattresses with clean straw, soaked cotton balls with camphor. Scrubbed the bloody operating tables clean with sand. Still, the smell was intolerable. The reek of excrement and blood. She longed to be outside with the filthy clothing once more, but she proved to be a good aide and the surgeons liked her. She did basic stitching and fever-soothing. She refilled their bedside basins and slopped out their chamber pots. Put her arms under their shoulders and shifted their weight. Patted their backs while they hacked up lungfuls of dark phlegm. Slopped up the mess from their terrible diarrhea. Held cups of cool water to their lips. Fed them oats, beans, thin soup, yellow horse fat. Gave them rhubarb for the fever. Ignored their desires, their catcalls. Ice baths were prepared for the soldiers who had gone mad. They were plunged down deep into a freezing tub until they were unconscious. She held their heads underwater and felt the freeze move up her wrists.

Some of the soldiers whispered obscenities when she approached. Their language was vile. Their erections were angry. To quiet the men, she told them that she was a Quaker, though she was nothing of the sort. They begged forgiveness from her.

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