A Gathering of Light
Patricia Iles
Copyright 2010 Patricia Iles
mailto:
[email protected] I dedicate this labor of love to my own true love: my husband of over 25 years. Thank you for being the rock of my world.
Thank you to my two grown sons, for being proud of their mom, and to the dear friends who supported and encouraged me through the process. My special thanks to Holly F., for reading my rough draft and telling me I had a story here.
Last, but maybe most important of all: thank you to that Southern teenager, circa 1863, whose experience inspired me to want to give her a different outcome to her personal tragedy.
May 6th, 1864--Wilderness of Spotsylvania, Virginia
The sun was about to set; it was already below the treetops in the dense woods. Twenty-three year old Lieutenant Hixson Matthew Morris lay in a tangle of brush. He was at the far left flank of the Union’s position on the battlefield.
Conscious and in pain, Hixson decided a bullet in his guts was a surprising experience. He felt as if he had spilled scalding coffee on his belly. It was not what he expected.
As Hixson lay tangled in the thicket, he listened to the scattered sounds of the battle. He could not tell if the skirmish line moved away from him or if he were dying and moving away from himself.
Other casualties lay about, some moaned softly. Others were past agony or too brave to express their pain. Bravery? Maybe it was hopelessness.
A soft breeze quartered away. The battle ignited fires in the deep forest litter: a fire faster than the wounded men. From where he lay, Hixson heard wounded men perish in the flames. Though he was not threatened by the fire where he was, he knew he was as good as dead anyway.
Hixson closed his eyes and recalled recent events. The engagement started early that morning, about six o’clock. Hixson’s unit fought at the extreme left flank, on ground they had struggled over before.
This was the place where the Battle of Chancellorsville, almost exactly a year before, overlapped the field of the present fight. Somewhere on this ground, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson lost his arm and then his life. Hixson vaguely wondered if he were near the spot.
General Grant had ordered the camps to be set up to the west of the old battlefield. But there laid Hixson: dying on the same land where so many had perished a year before.
When Fort Sumter was fired upon in April of 1861, Hixson was nineteen, working on his father‘s Pennsylvania farm. Like almost every boy between fourteen and forty, Hixson wanted to go right away.
His father understood Hixson’s desire to go, but grieved terribly all the same. Mother was inconsolable. Hixson left his younger siblings Charlton and Eliza behind to take over his chores, kissed his parents and walked away.
He left with his best friend, Patterson Hilyard, to save the Union and have the adventure of their lives.
The day before he was wounded, Hixson and Patterson got their first good look at Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had recently been given command of the Army of the Potomac and was there to oversee General Meade.
Patterson was disappointed in Grant’s appearance, but Hixson liked the look of the man. He had a good, solid kind of look. He was not the dapper, pompous sort that often seemed to be in command. Grant did not cultivate his mustache into a sculpture, nor give a nod to any other sort of fashion.
There were widespread rumors about Grant’s drinking habits, but Hixson was not fond of rumors. He knew that a good story went round faster than dull truth. He believed that a man might take to drinking for many reasons and leave it alone just as quickly
Grant did not have the courtly equestrian manner of many officers. What he did have was a way of sitting his horse that made him look like he was more aware of the horse than of himself. What’s more, Grant seemed to look into the face of each individual soldier as he passed.
All this, Hixson decided in the 100 yards or so Grant traveled within his view. Patterson decided only that Grant was covered in dust and not very interesting to behold.
Patterson Hilyard had been Hixson’s best friend since they were little boys. Patterson was a happy boy and grew to be a cheerful man, even in the face of battle. He always had a song or a joke. If he happened to participate in a jar of moonshine being passed around, he was apt to giggle.
But it was no giggle Hixson heard earlier that 1864 day. It was a gurgling, forcefully whispered cry, “Hixson...??? damn it...”.
Hixson turned to find his closest friend with a hole in his side. Hixson took off his coat to make a pillow for Patterson. Very little blood was coming out of the hole in Patterson’s side and Hixson thought maybe it wasn’t serious.
He soon discovered his error. Before he could stuff the coat under his friend’s head, Patterson was gone. Hixson took the harmonica from his dead friend’s shirt pocket. He closed Patterson’s eyes, and held his hand for a moment before he turned his attention back to the battle.
An hour later, Hixson felt like someone shoved him hard. He spun where he stood, not understanding at first that the shove was from a bullet. Then the searing pain in his middle and the sudden weakness told him.
He sat down and ripped his shirt open, looking for the wound. Seeing the blood and fluid leaking from the hole in his belly, Hixson realized he was gut shot. He laid back and wondered how long it would take him to die.
Twilight was giving way to darkness as Hixson lay thinking. The thin slice of a crescent moon was descending when Hixson felt someone dragging him away.
Was he alive? He was not sure. Could a dead man feel his body being taken away for burial?
Is that how a soul knew to leave the body and go on?
May 13th, 1864--Spotsylvania County, Virginia
Hixson was covered with a blue and yellow quilt.
He was wrapped tightly around the middle with strips of muslin. He looked down and saw there was no blood seeping through the bandages and none on the quilt. The pain was gone and he was almost sure he was not dead.
He was surprised to be alive: Hixson had seen a great many battle wounds. Gut shot men never survived. He was sure there had been more than just blood on his shirt: there was yellow fluid and what looked like water. He knew the wound had pierced organs and spilled bile into his abdomen. Everyone knew that if the wound in your guts didn’t kill you, the ensuing infection would.
The fact that he was still alive made him question his own interpretation of his wound. It was a puzzle. He was not ordinarily a man to panic, but he had given himself up for dead. Still, here he was, feeling quite alive. He didn’t know how many hours had passed.
Sunlight streamed in the window. Its angle and color told him it was very late in the afternoon. He must have been sleeping all day, he guessed. Hixson lifted his head and looked around. He was in a large room and it seemed to be the only room. Just one door and two fairly large windows interfered with the expanse of hewn-log wall.
Hixson was lying in the only bed, near the fireplace on one side of the room. A chair stood by the foot of the bed, and two more were in front of the fireplace. On the opposite side of the room he saw a very large kitchen table. It was a table such as might be owned by a family with many children. There was an iron stove, a box of stove wood and several pieces of kitchen furniture. There was also a shelf with a great many books stacked on it, plus two wooden boxes of the kind that might hold buttons or love letters.
The cabin had a lived-in look and seemed to have been built many years before.
The logs were hewn square, some were deeply cracked and they were very dark with age. He could see places where the original chinking had fallen out or cracked. The patches were a different color than the old chinking.
&nbs
p; He was alone in the room but it was obvious this was someone’s home and he felt sure there was a woman in the house. Everything was neat and clean; there were herbs and flowers hanging upside-down to dry. The floor looked swept and he could smell chicken broth simmering.
Someone was making a quilt: it stood on a frame with a basket of fabric remnants nearby. It was design unlike anything he had ever seen. Hixson’s mother was well known in their area for her beautiful work, but she never made anything like this. It had a bright red center that changed to burning yellow as it approached an irregular frame of black fabric. There was an iridescent quality to the red-to-yellow part that made it seem like sunshine.
There must also be a man of the house. There was a gun hanging on the wall, a man’s coat and hat hung next to it and the place seemed to be well provisioned. Hixson had been in a few homes since the war began. He had learned if the man was off to war, or worse, the woman left behind to fend alone had a lean time of it.