A Gathering of Light
Charlton,
I am in Virginia, recovering from a wound I received in battle a week ago. I am getting the best of care and will be well soon. It was a bad fight and many died, but I was most grieved to lose Patterson Hilyard. We signed up together and had stayed together through every fight. Then on the second day of this latest battle, I heard him call out in a strange voice. He had taken a mini ball in the side. There wasn’t very much blood so at first I didn’t think it fatal, but by the time I took off my coat and rolled it to make a pillow for him, he was gone. Tell Mr. and Mrs. Hilyard that he was a brave man who fought well and was much loved by everyone in the regiment. He had his harmonica with him and played it many nights. All the men loved that and made many requests for special songs. I took it when he died, determined to carry it home to his folks when the war is over. I intend to do it, first chance I get. Pray for me and all our men. I am sore tired of fighting and so are all the rest. I know that Mr. Lincoln will bring us through this affair some way, and I look forward to that day. I expect Charlton is a man by now, and may be thinking of joining the fight. Do not. There are dozens of regiments that haven’t yet seen battle. They mostly end up digging ditches, and I don’t recall Charlton as being no hand with a shovel. Eliza, you are surely a young lady. Watch out for those soldier boys that have come home. I have heard the way they talk in the camp and they’d not be the sort you want. I miss you all and think of home, and home cooking, every day. I miss your shoofly pie most of all, Momma. And if any of these soldiers could work like Poppa, the fighting would be done by now. I am looking to the day that I can see you all again.
Your devoted son,
Hixson Matthew Morris
Sarah sealed the letter and addressed it according to Hixson’s instructions, saying nothing. She had been given a glimpse into the Lieutenant’s soul, in a way, and saw a very tender and thoughtful man. He may be a fighter, but there was a gentle heart there. This was a revelation to her.
Hixson rubbed his hand over his face, feeling emotional and drained. Thinking of home and the simplicity of the world he left behind always filled him with aching.
He had started off to war feeling adventurous and heroic, defending the nation, arm-in-arm with his good friend. Every day since, it seemed, he came across a farm that was just like his home. Only it had been burned, shot up, destroyed.
He once thought war was an exciting, manly thing. Now he thought of it only as a savage, bloody way to ruin beautiful country, happy homes and contented families. Hixson’s youthful notions of valor were gone. War was pure hell, and he’d had enough of hell.
It was difficult for him to address the loss of his best friend. He was torn between sorrowful guilt and an inexplicable relief. Patterson, at least, would have to face no more terror on the battlefield. He would never have to eat a wormy biscuit or rancid meat, or cope with dysentery again.
As much as he missed his friend, the horrors of the war had inured him to grief in a way he did not yet understand. More than anything else, he dreaded having to look Patterson’s parents in the eye. It had been Hixson’s idea to go off a-fighting.
Reading all these conflicts in his eyes, Sarah looked at Hixson and found her own eyes filling. This was a kind of pain she could not help with a gathering of light. A boy’s broken leg was a simple matter; the anguish of a soldier in war time was something else.
As much as she wished that a gathering of light could heal an injured heart and soul, Sarah well knew that time and peace and getting back to an ordinary life was the healing Hixson needed. He would need a compassionate ear when he was ready to talk. She wondered where he would be when that day came. Would someone be there to listen?
Hixson was reading Sarah’s eyes as well. He saw her empathy and he saw the penetrating vision that she had. It seemed to Hixson that she could look right into his soul. What he didn’t see was her own wish that somehow, she could be more than she was.
May 17th, 1864--Spotsylvania County, Virginia
It had been eleven days since Lieutenant Hixson Morris fell on the battlefield. He woke to find a cotton work shirt and pants neatly folded at the foot of the bed. The smell of chicory “coffee” was in the air. The real coffee must be gone. Many houses hadn’t had a drop of the real thing in years.
He sat up with an effort but unaided, and looked around. Sarah was breaking eggs into a bowl with one hand, while she beat them with a fork with the other. Hixson had watched his mother do that same trick yet had never mastered it himself. When he tried to break an egg with one hand, all he got was a lot of shell in his egg and a lot of egg on his hand.
“If you’ll give me a minute, Lieutenant, I’ll help you get dressed.” She said.
“I thought you were going to call me Hixson.” He replied, smiling. “And where are my own clothes? I’d rather have those, if you don’t mind.”
Sarah looked him directly in the eyes, saying, “Well now, that could be a problem, Hixson. Blue pants with a stripe on them are not a popular fashion around here right now. If you want to get a little sun on your face today, I’m thinking you might want to just wear what’s there. You never know who might be passing by.”
The idea of going outside and getting a little sun was so appealing that Hixson would have worn a skirt, if that’s all that would allow him outdoors. Sarah helped him dress, since he was still weak, with the no-nonsense experience of a practiced nurse.
For the first time in a very long while, Hixson sat at a kitchen table to have breakfast. Between the days injured, and many months in camp, it had been a long time since last he’d been inside a home for a meal. Mostly, he sat on the ground around the fire to eat, like almost everyone else.
Scrambled eggs and a slice of fresh bread had never tasted so good. The coffee was gone, but they made do with chicory coffee. Hixson wished for a bite of bacon or salt pork, but knew his wounded innards would not appreciate anything that heavy.
The few steps to the door were a struggle to navigate, but a comfortable bench stood on the porch outside. That was Hixson’s goal. He sat contentedly in the morning sun, watching Sarah go about her chores and feeling a little guilty to be sitting.
She collected eggs and threw some scratch to the half-dozen hens clucking about. A forkful of hay and a few tender words to a roan mare, pump a bucket of water: ordinary tasks country women everywhere were doing.
Sarah went inside the cabin, picked up a half-full bucket of kitchen scraps and the man’s coat and hat. “I’ll be right back” Sarah told Hixson as she pulled on the coat and plopped the hat on her head. She grabbed the bucket of scraps and disappeared around the side of the cabin.
Hixson deduced that she must have a pig hidden in the woods somewhere. Soldiers marching through would take livestock if they wanted it, and kill it if they didn’t want it. A dead horse would be an inconvenience. A dead pig could mean starvation, so people hid them.
Why the coat and hat? He wondered. Probably just the caution of a woman alone, he reasoned. Yes, that explained a lot. In the days he had been here, he never saw any other person that seemed to live here. He didn’t know where the coat and hat came from, but he could understand why she used them.
The gun? That was easy. With livestock came predators and with being alone came predators of a different sort. Of course she would keep a gun handy. Hixson wondered why she always wore a kerchief covering her hair. He thought her hair was amazingly beautiful when he saw it. Why cover it?
Sarah returned quickly, rinsed out the now-empty bucket and put it back inside. She hung up the coat and hat, grabbed the coffee pot and their cups, and came outside to sit with Hixson. They sat without speaking for a while.
At last Hixson gave voice to a question that had bothered him since he first found himself in Sarah’s care. “When I was lying on the battlefield with a hole in my belly, I heard other men around me who were still living. Of all of those, why did you choose me to heal?”
“I’m not the one who did the healing, Hixson. That healing comes f
rom someone bigger than me. And it was really Caleb who picked you. I think it was because he thought the others were either too far gone, or had an injury the surgeons could deal with.
“He saw the hole in your belly, too, and knew infection would kill you without special help.” Sarah answered very quietly and uncomfortably. She’d meant what she said; she did not regard this as her doing. She was merely an agent of a higher power.
They sat companionably as the sun arced high into the sky. The shadow of the porch roof inched further toward their feet as the day warmed. They talked of small things: the name of the roan mare, how far to town, Hixson’s siblings. Sarah suggested Hixson rest a while inside and he was glad to do so.
He was accustomed to being strong and healthy; to tire so easily was disturbing. Still, he could not fight it. He was tired.
Lying on the bed, he found he could not nap. Hixson had always been an observant person, apt to notice details and make rapid judgments about people and situations. It was a talent that marked him for leadership, and one reason he had risen in the ranks rather faster than his fellow soldiers.
He could take in important details very quickly and make sound decisions instantly. Still, he could not seem to make a judgment about Sarah. She was a bundle of mysteries to him. He