Father cleared his throat, loudly. “Ladies—”
“Yes, Doctor?” Mother answered.
“The matter is academic. Mr. Smith told me that he could talk only a few moments because there was a long line of students waiting to use the telephone. Similar messages, I assume. So there is no use in trying to reach him; the telephone wire will be in use…and he will be gone. Which in no way keeps you two ladies from praying for his safety. Maureen, you can tell him so in a letter.”
“But I don’t know how to write to him!”
“Use your head, daughter. You know at least three ways.”
“Doctor Johnson, please.” Mother then said gently, to me, “Judge Sperling will know.”
“‘Judge Sperling.’ Oh!”
“Yes, dear. Judge Sperling always knows where each of us is.”
A few minutes later we all kissed Tom good-bye, and Father also while we were about it although he was coming back…and, so he assured us, it was extremely likely that Tom would be back…sworn in, then told what day to return for duty, as it was most unlikely that the state militia could accept a thousand or more new bodies all on the same day.
They drove off. Beth was crying quietly. Lucille was not—I don’t think she understood any of it—but was solemn and round-eyed. Mother did not cry and neither did I…not then. But Mother went upstairs and closed her door…and so did I. I now had a room to myself, ever since Agnes married, so I threw the latch and lay down and let myself cry.
I tried to tell myself that I was crying over my brother, Thomas. But I knew better; it was Mr. Smith who was causing that ache in my heart.
I wished, with all my soul, that I had not caused him to use a French purse in making love to me a week earlier. I had been tempted—I knew, I was certain, that it would be ever so much nicer just to forget that rubber sheath and be bare to him, inside and out.
But I had told Father solemnly that I would always use a sheath…until the day when, after sober discussion with the man concerned, I omitted it for the purpose of becoming pregnant…under a mutual firm intention of marrying if we succeeded.
And now he was going off to war…and I might never see him again.
I dried my eyes and got up and took down a little volume of verse, Professor Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. Mother had given it to me on my twelfth birthday, and it had been given to her on her twelfth birthday, in 1866.
Professor Palgrave had found 288 lyrics which were fine enough, in his exquisite taste, for his treasury; that day I wanted just one: Richard Lovelace’s “To Lucasta, Going to the Warres.”
“I could not love thee (Deare) so much,
“Lov’d I not Honour more.”
Then I cried some more, and after a while I slept. When I woke up, I got up and did not let myself cry again. Instead I slipped a note under Mother’s door, telling her that I would get supper for all of us by myself…and she could have supper in bed if it pleased her to do so.
She let me cook supper but she came down and presided and, for the first time, Frank seated Mother and sat opposite her. She looked at me. “Maureen, will you return thanks?”
“Yes, Mother. Dear Lord, we thank Thee for that which we are about to partake. Please bless this food to our use and bless all our brothers and sisters in Jesus everywhere, both known to us and unknown.” I gulped and added, “And on this day we ask a special blessing for our beloved brother, Thomas Jefferson, and for all other young men who have gone to serve our beloved country.” (Et je prie que le bon Dieu garde bien mon ami!) “In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
“Amen,” Mother said firmly. “Franklin, will you carve?”
Father and Tom returned the next day, late in the afternoon. Beth and Lucille threw themselves on Tom and Father, and I wanted to, but could not, as I was carrying George and he had picked that moment to wet a diaper. But I just held him and let him wait, so that I wouldn’t miss any news—a spare diaper under him; I knew George. That baby peed more than all the rest put together.
Beth demanded, “Did you do it, Tommy, did you do it, did you do it, did you?”
“Of course he did,” Father answered. “He’s Private Johnson now; next week he’ll be a general.”
“He will?”
“Well, maybe not that fast.” Father stopped to kiss Lucille and Beth. “But they do promote them fast in wartime. Take me, for example. I’m a captain.”
“Doctor Johnson!”
Father straightened up. “Captain Johnson, Madam. Both of us enlisted. I am now Acting Surgeon, Medical Detachment, Second Missouri Regiment, with assigned rank of captain.”
At this point I ought to say something about the families of my parents especially Father’s brothers and sisters, as what happened that week in April 1898 in Thebes had its roots a century earlier.
Father’s grandparents were:
George Edward Johnson (1795-1897) and Amanda Lou Fredericks Johnson ( 1798-1899)
Terence McFee (1796-1900) and Rose Wilhelmina Brandt McFee (1798-1899)
Both George Johnson and Terence McFee served in the War of 1812.
Father’s parents were:
Asa Edward Johnson (1813-1918) and Rose Altheda McFee Johnson (1814-1918)
Asa Johnson served in the War with Mexico, a sergeant in the Illinois militia.
Mother’s grandparents were:
Robert Pfeiffer (1809-1909) and Heidi Schmidt Pfeiffer (1810-1912)
Ole Larsen (1805-1907) and Anna Kristina Hansen Larsen (1810-1912)
and her parents were
Richard Pfeiffer (1830-1932) and Kristina Larsen Pfeiffer (1834-1940)
Father was born on his grandfather Johnson’s farm in Minnesota, in Freeborn County, near Albert, on Monday, August second, 1852, the youngest of four boys and three girls. His grandfather George Edward Johnson (my great-grandfather) was born in 1795, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He died in a nursing home in Minneapolis in December 1897, and the newspapers made a to-do over the fact that George Washington was still alive when he was born. (We had nothing to do with this publicity. While I was not aware of the policy until I was married, even at that time Howard Foundation families avoided public mention of ages.)
George Edward Johnson married Amanda Lou Fredericks (1798-1899) in 1813 and took her to Illinois, where she had her first child, Asa Edward Johnson, my grandfather, that same year. It seems likely that Grampaw Acey was the same sort of “premature” baby as was my oldest brother, Edward. After the War with Mexico the Johnson family migrated west and homesteaded in Minnesota.
There was no Howard Foundation in those days, but all of my ancestors appear to have started breeding young, had lots of children, were healthy despite the uncontrolled diseases of those times, and lived long lives, mostly to a hundred and more.
Asa Edward Johnson (1813-1918) married Rose Altheda McFee (1814-1918) in 1831. They had seven children:
1. Samantha Jane Johnson, 1831-1915 (died from injuries suffered while breaking a horse)
2. James Ewing Johnson, 1833-1884 (killed attempting to ford the Osage during spring flood. I barely remember him. He married Aunt Carole Pelletier of New Orleans.)
3. Walter Raleigh Johnson, 1838-1862 (killed at Shiloh)
4. Alice Irene Johnson, 1840-? (I don’t know what became of Aunt Alice. She married back east.)
5. Edward McFee Johnson, 1844-1884 (killed in a train wreck)
6. Aurora Johnson 1850-? (last heard of in California ca. 1930) (married several times)
7. Ira Johnson, August 2, 1852-1941 (reported missing in the Battle of Britain)
When Fort Sumter fell in April 1861, Mr. Lincoln asked for volunteers from the militias of the several states (just as Mr. McKinley would do in a later April). On the Johnson farm in Freeborn County, Minnesota, the call was answered by Ewing (twenty-eight), Walter (twenty-three), Edward (seventeen)—and Grampaw Acey, at that time forty-eight years old, thus producing a situation that utterly humiliated Ira Johnson, nine years old and a grown man in his own estimation. H
e was going to be left home to do chores, while all the other men went to war. His sister Samantha (whose husband had volunteered) and his mother would run the farm.
Small comfort to him that his father returned home almost at once, turned down for something, I do not know what.
Father endured this humiliation for three long years…and at twelve ran away from home to enlist as a drummer boy.
He found his way down the Mississippi on a barge, managed to locate the encampment of the Second Minnesota before it joined Sherman’s drive to the sea. His cousin Jules vouched for him and he was tentatively accepted (subject to training; he knew nothing of drums, or of bugles) and was assigned quarters and rations with headquarters company.
Then his father showed up and fetched him home.
So Father’s service in the War was about three weeks and he was never in combat. He was not credited even with those three weeks…as he learned to his dismay when he attempted to join the Union veterans’ organization, the Grand Army of the Republic.
There was no record of his service, as the regimental adjutant had “discharged” him and let Grampaw Acey take him home simply by destroying the paper work.
I think it is necessary to assume that Father was marked for life.
During the nine days that Father and Tom waited at home before they could be inducted into army life I saw no indication that Mother disapproved (other than her first expression of surprise). But she never smiled. One could feel the tension between our parents…but they did not let it be seen.
Father did say something to me that, I think, had some bearing on this tension. We were in his clinic and I was helping him to thin out and update his patients’ records so that he could turn them over to Dr. Chadwick for the duration of the war. He said to me, “Why no smiles, Turkey Egg? Worried about your young man?”
“No,” I lied. “He had to go; I know that. But I wish you weren’t going. Selfish, I guess. But I’ll miss you, cher papa.”
“I’ll miss you, too. All of you.” He was silent for several minutes, then he added, “Maureen, someday you may be faced—will be faced, I think—with the same thing: your husband going off to war. Some people say—I’ve heard talk—that married men should not go. Because of their families.
“But this involves a contradiction, a fatal one. The family man dare not hang back and expect the bachelor to do his fighting for him. It is manifestly unfair for me to expect a bachelor to die for my children if I am unwilling to die for them myself. Enough of that attitude on the part of married men and the bachelor will refuse to fight if the married man stays safe at home…and the Republic is doomed. The barbarian will walk in unopposed.”
Father looked at me—looked worried. “Do you see?” I think he was honestly seeking my opinion, my approval.
“I—” I stopped and sighed. “Father, I think I see. But at times like these I am forced to realize that I am not very experienced. I just want this war to be over so that you will come home and Tom will come home…and—”
“And Brian Smith? I agree.”
“Well, yes. But I was thinking of Chuck, too. Chuck Perkins.”
“Chuck is going? Good lad!”
“Yes, he told me today. His father has agreed and is going to Joplin with him tomorrow.” I sniffed back a tear. “I don’t love Chuck but I do feel sort of sentimental about him.”
“That’s understandable.”
Later that day I let Chuck take me up on Marston Hill and defied chiggers and Mrs. Grundy and told Chuck I was proud of him and demonstrated it the very best I knew how. (I did use a sheath; I had promised Father.) And an amazing thing happened. I had gone up there simply intending to run through some female calisthenics to demonstrate to Chuck that I was proud of him and appreciated his willingness to fight for us. And the miracle happened. Fireworks, big ones! I got all blurry and my eyes squinched shut and I found I was making loud noises.
And about half an hour later the miracle happened again. Amazing!
Chuck and his father caught the eight-oh-six out of Butler the next morning and were back that same afternoon—Chuck sworn in and assigned to the same company (C Company, Second Regiment) Tom was in, and with similar delay time. So Chuck and I went to another (fairly) safe spot, and I told him good-bye again, and again the miracle overtook me.
No, I did not decide I was in love with him, after all. Enough men had had me by then that I was not inclined to mistake a hearty orgasm for eternal love. But it was nice that they happened since I intended to tell Chuck good-bye as often and as emphatically as possible, come what might. And did, right up to the day, a week later, when it really was good-bye.
Chuck never came back. No, he was not killed in action; he never got out of Chickamauga Park, Georgia. It was the fever, whether malaria or yellow jack, I’m not sure. Or it could have been typhoid. Five times as many died of the fevers as were lost in combat. They are heroes, too. Well, aren’t they? They volunteered; they were willing to fight…and they wouldn’t have caught the fever if they had hung back, refused to answer the call.
I’ve got to drag out that soap box again. All during the twentieth century I’ve run into people who either have never heard of the War of 1898, or belittle it. “Oh, you mean that one. That wasn’t a real war, just a skirmish. What happened? Did he stub his toe, running back down San Juan Hill?”
(I should have killed them! I did throw an extra dry martini into the eyes of one man who talked that way.)
Casualties are just as heavy in one war as in another…because death comes just one to the customer.
And besides—In the summer of 1898 we did not know that the war would be over quickly. The United States was not a superpower; the United States was not a world power of any sort…whereas Spain was still a great empire. For all we knew our men might be gone for years…or not come back. The bloody tragedy of 1861-1865 was all we had to go by, and that had started just like this one, with the president calling for a few militiamen. My elders tell me that no one dreamed that the rebel states, half as big and less than half as populous and totally lacking in the heavy industry on which modern war rests—no sensible person dreamed that they could hold out for four long, dreary, death-laden years.
With that behind us, we did not assume that beating Spain would be easy or quick; we just prayed that our men would come back…someday.
The day came, the fifth of May, when our men left…on a special troop train, down from Kansas City, a swing over to Springfield, then up to St. Louis, and east—destination: Georgia. All of us went over to Butler, Mother and Father in the lead, in his buggy, drawn by Loafer, while the rest of us followed in the surrey, ordinarily used only on Sundays, with Tom driving Daisy and Beau. The train pulled in, and we made hurried good-byes as they were already shouting “All abo…ard!” Father turned Loafer over to Frank, and I inherited the surrey with the gentle team.
They didn’t actually pull out all that quickly; baggage and freight had to be loaded as well as soldiers. There was a flatcar in the middle of the train, with a brass band on it, supplied by the Third Regiment (Kansas City) and it played all the time the train was stopped, a military medley.
They played, “Mine eyes have seen the glory—” and segued right into “I wish I was in de land ob cotton—” and from that into “Tenting tonight, tenting tonight—” and “—stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni!” Then they played “In my prison cell I sit—” and the engine gave a toot and the train started to move, and the band scrambled to get off the flatcar and into the coach next to it, and the man with the tuba had to be helped.
And we started home and I was still hearing “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching—” and that tragic first line. “In my prison cell I sit—” Somebody told me later that the man who wrote that knew nothing about it, because wartime prison camps don’t have anything as luxurious as cells. He cited Andersonville.
As may be, it was enough to make my eyes blur up and I couldn’t see. But that d
idn’t matter; Beau Brummel and Daisy needed no help from me. Just leave the reins slack and they would take us home. And they did.
I helped Frank unharness both rigs, then went in and upstairs. Mother came to my room just as I closed the door, and tapped on it. I opened it. “Yes, Mother?”
“Maureen, your Golden Treasury—May I borrow it?”
“Certainly.” I went and got it; it was under my pillow. I handed it to her. “It’s number eighty-three, Mother, on page sixty.”
She looked surprised, then thumbed the pages. “So it is,” she agreed, then looked up. “We must be brave, dear.”
“Yes, Mother. We must.”
▣
Speaking of prison cells, Pixel has just arrived in mine, with a present for me. A mouse. A dead mouse. Still warm. He is so pleased with himself and clearly he expects me to eat it. He is waiting for me to eat it.
How am I going to get out of this?
CHAPTER
SIX
“When Johnny Comes
Marching Home—”
The rest of 1898 was one long bad dream. Our men had gone to war but it was difficult to find out what was happening in that war. I remember a time, sixty-odd years later, when the malevolent eye of television turned war into a spectator sport, even to the extent (I hope that this is not true!) that attacks were timed so that the action could be shown live on the evening news. Can you imagine a more ironically horrible way to die than to have one’s death timed to allow an anchor man to comment on it just before turning the screen over to the beer ads?
In 1898 the fighting was not brought live into our living rooms; we had trouble finding out what had happened even long after the fact. Was our Navy guarding the east coast (as eastern politicians were demanding), or was it somewhere in the Caribbean? Had the Oregon rounded the Horn and would it reach the Fleet in time? Why was there a second battle at Manila? Hadn’t we won the battle of Manila Bay weeks ago?
In 1898 I knew so little about military matters that I did not realize that civilians should not know the location of a fleet or the planned movements of an army. I did not know that anything known to an outsider will be known by enemy agents just minutes later. I had never heard of the public’s “right to know,” a right that cannot be found in the Constitution but was sacrosanct in the second half of the twentieth century. This so-called “right” meant that it was satisfactory (regrettable perhaps but necessary) for soldiers and sailors and airmen to die in order to preserve unblemished that sacred “right to know.”