It's blinding,
the full moon reflected
against a reflection
reflected back
against itself
until it becomes impossible to tell
the source of the pale glow
so excruciatingly bright
against the night sky.
It's cold,
the condensation of breath
bridging the gap
between strips of white
bisected by a gash of black.
They try, diligently,
those small clouds of moist air,
invisible until chilled into visibility,
to fill in the gap
between white and blue
to complete the picture,
erasing the world from view,
but the canvas is so large
and there is so little paint.
There is a chill here
but no snow,
it never snows,
A breath of wind,
a sigh
an agonizing howl
a banshee's cry
to mourn the offspring
lost in this,
to wake the sand,
and lure it to paint.
Just wisps and eddies
before errupting
white against white against white
and everything gone in between.
For a moment
God is there
then painted over
and swallowed up by the void.
There is nothing to see.
It's blinding.
Copyrighted
1st Place Short Story - "One Day at Appomattox" by Karla Stover
One Day at Appomattox
“Johsanna! Johasanna! It’s over. The war’s over.”
The first voice became a crescendo as others joined it. Inside the Appomattox hospital tent, the news did more good than many of the doctors’ administrations.
“I knew Grant’d do it,” said one patient.
“He ain’t Ol’ U. S. “unconditional surrender” Grant for nothing‘,” said another.
While some recovering soldiers joined in, others, less able, managed to smile weekly and hope they’d be well, and home in time to plant.
Private George Newman listened to the voices as he continued to sponge the disease-wasted body of Major Leander Adams. Adams shouldn’t have been there, Newman knew. He should have been sent to the base hospital where he stood a better chance of recovery. However, doctors were desperately needed, and if there was a chance Adams would be up and about soon , the general wanted him close by.
Private Newman liked the major and he hoped the doctor would recover. The two had worked together almost since Newman’s enlistment, and the private had learned enough just by watching, that he had been assigned to hospital duty and kept out of the fighting. Adams was different, though, he reckoned—not like the other doctors he’d worked with. Adams had peculiar ways—wanted things washed, for example. He was on the nurses to keep things clean, to scrub their hands and swab down the operating tables between amputations. In quiet spells, Adams talked about a man named Lister, and about something called bacteria that got into open wounds and caused gangrene. It was a new idea, Adams explained, something he’d been studying before the war. Newman listened to him because Adams’ patients seemed to recover faster and more often that those of the other doctors. When, however, wagon loads of injured—sometimes 30 or more at a time—came in from battlefields, there was precious little time for all that scrubbing. Doctors stood in rivers of blood and whipped their knives on their pants legs. Men died. Shallow graves rapidly filled with bodies. Piles of limbs grew and were left to rot. Vultures came to clean the landscape. That was war.
As he tended the patients, Newman cast his mind back to events earlier in the day. Newman had seen General Lee, in a new gray uniform and riding Traveler, his much-loved Tennessee Walker, enter the camp. He’d been met by General Grant who wore an old private’s uniform with the straps of a lieutenant-general. Speculation had been rampant, as the two old acquaintances talked of serving together in the Mexican War, and of other old army times. To the restless camp, the results of Lee’s meeting with Grant seemed a long time in coming. Now, as glad cries filled the air, Newman wondered if Major Adams had heard and also knew the war was over.
It wasn’t long before a movement by the tent flap caught Newman’s attention. A gaunt, homespun, butter nut-clad, figure standing by the entrance looked around with an attitude of both defiance and fear.
“I’m looking for my pa,” he said.
“Come on in, soldier,” said one grizzled veteran. “Here,” he fished under his blanket and offered a pouch of tobacco.
“Who’s your pa? He asked.
“James Henry Payne.” The private pinched off a plug, stuck it in his cheek and nodded his thanks as he returned the pouch. “Mosby’s raiders.”
“Wounded Johnnys got their own tent over yonder. Got us a couple of Grey Ghosts there. Reckon you should check.” Exhausted, the old vet fell back on his cot. “Good luck, son.”
From under half-opened eyes, Adams watched the exchange. It was a strange, awkward moment, but only the first. As the day went on, fathers, sons, brothers and friends—those who had fought on opposite side of the conflict—came to search each other out. Campfires started up and men of both sides, but particularly the hungry Johnnys, gathered round to grab a root and fill their shrunken bellies.
Newman was lucky. He knew his own Pa was safe, but he wondered if anyone would come looking for Major Adams. The surgeon never talked about home, but Newman figured everyone had someone who loved him.
Adams, himself, thought it unlikely. He wouldn’t be around, anyway. Between sleeping and waking, he decided he’d given enough of himself to the Union army. It wasn’t his war, never had been. His life was waiting elsewhere and he was going after it.
And so on that day, the ghost-like and wasted figure of a man whose breath carried the stench of sickness, whose olive skin was gray, and whose black hair had turned white, rose from his bed and walked with purpose out of the old Sibley tent and across the bivouac. Mouth-organ music and laughter and talk, and the scent of coffee filled the air. Pitch snapped in campfires sending up sparks to celebrate. Men whooped and danced, shared stories and plug tobacco. None of them appeared to notice the prematurely-aged man who crossed among them. No one spoke.
Adams' medical books, a change of clothes and his journal were in a
haversack. His medical equipment was in an old leather bag. Half hidden, he carried an Arkansas toothpick, its blade razor sharp. With it, Adams cut a circle out of the middle of a ragged blanket. Slipping it over his head, poncho-style, holding his gear, and a Henry's foreshortened carbine, he crossed the encampment to where his horse, Dumas—named for the French playwright who’d found success and acceptance in spite of his black blood—was corralled. There, he led Dumas to the rear of the enclosure so he wouldn’t be seen, saddled him and mounted. Slowly, Adams crossed a muddy stream and followed a well-traveled road toward Appomattox Station.
“My men are in very bad shape for want of food,” General Lee had said, earlier that day. “I would like some rations.”
“For how many men?” Grant had asked.
“About twenty-five thousand.”
And so the Appomattox Station swarmed with hungry Johnnys, and none of them noticed Adams as he filled his haversack with bacon and coffee.
Home lay northeast, but Adams headed southwest, toward the never-seen home of his Mexican-Indian mother. Behind he left a camp of exhausted men who, in the midst of their celebrating, had yet to contemplate the slow painful reconstruction yet to come. Behind him, too, he left his Medal of Honor and a gold watch, the gift of his father.
Not until long past sunset did man and horse stop. By then, Dumas had stumbled more than once on the shell-pocked land, and Adams loved him too much to risk injury. He tethered the horse loosely near a choked spring and gathered enough wood for a small fire. With the warmth of the low flames, the sound of boiling coffee and smell of sizzling pork lying low in the damp air, Adams felt less alone than he had at any time in the past 24 months.
That night and the following day set a pattern for the weeks ahead. At first, the land Adams crossed seemed dark and haunted, planted with the seeds of death. During daylight, distant gunfire made him flinch; and sometimes at night, as he tossed in his blanket, he thought he could still hear the sounds of army life. Once, when he passed a homestead Adams, tried to trade labor for a home-cooked meal. The thin, tired woman, who opened the door at his knock, stared without a word and then shut it again. In the silence Adams heard a bar fall into place. After that he didn’t try again. Eventually, however, the debris of war became less, and the hills blushed with mountain pink. Streams ran clean, and game became plentiful. And Adams rode on, always heading south.
* * *
When the Civil War ended, thousands of disenfranchised Americans left the United States. Single men went to Mexico City and swelled the ranks of Emperor Maximilian's army. Families drifted throughout Latin America, as far south as Brazil. When they settled, it was in adobe houses where lobelia cascaded from terraced roofs, and bougainvillea filled inner patios with color. In these strange, unfamiliar surroundings, women bore children, raising sons and daughters who married Mestizos and embraced Catholicism.
Leander Adams did none of these. In the high altitude of old Texas, where the women looked like his mother, among the cactus and scrub and within the scent of mesquite blown by trade winds, he stopped at last
* * *
Paloma knew every inch of the San Teodoro hills. She'd roamed their slopes as a child, lived there with her husband, Jorge, born seven children, and buried four. Daily, she took her two goats into the hills to graze in the scrub around a limestone cave known as El Viejo, the Old One.
”Madre de Dios," she whispered one aftern oon, as she saw a vulture circling over head, and heard sounds coming from the mouth of El Viejo. But she didn't run. Los Muertos, the dead ones said to inhabit the cave, didn't have horses like the one she saw tethered outside.
On rickety legs, Paloma approached the cave opening and looked in. First to greet her wa s the smell of fever sweat. However, as her eyes adjusted to the dim green light, she saw a man wrapped in a blanket tossing deliriously on the ground. As she stared, the horse tossed his head and whinnied. Paloma wasn’t afraid of spirits, but she maintained caution around horses. After ting up the goats, Paloma hurried back to her village to get blankets, and men to help transport the stranger to her hut. She recognized coastal fever. Her people had always treated it with cinchona--Jesuit bark. In her one-room, dirt-floor hut, it didn't occur to her to wonder, as she boiled out the extract and force-fed the man, if he was worth the effort. Paloma was a giver.
In the days and nights that followed she kept him warm, sponged his wasted body and listened to ramblings in a language she didn't understand.
* * *
Both Zadock Adams and his son, Samuel, were quiet throughout the breakfast neither of them ate. Leander, newly home from medical school, filled his plate twice and wiped up the last of his egg with a flaky biscuit. As he did, Zadock said, "Leander, may I see you in the study, please?"
"Of course." Zadock's requests were so politely issued it rarely occurred to anyone to refuse. All important family talks took place in the Adams study. As Leander sat down he recalled them. First was when he was given his freedom. He and his Mexican-born-mother had traveled the underground railroad for many days, arriving only two days previously to a place called Pennsdale in the rolling hills of northeastern Pennsylvania. There in the basement of a big stone house, the boy’s mother sat near him in the dark.
“Manana—tomorrow, you will have a new home,” she said. “A rich man is taking you into his home. You will be fed and wear fine clothes and learn to read.”
“But what about you, madre mia? Will you come too?”
“No, hijo mio. I cannot. But I carry you in my heart and one day we will meet again.” Tears rolled down her young-old face and he held her son close. “You will not forget me but you will forget the pain. This I promise.” And in the dark, when Leander again began the silent journey to freedom, he looked around but she was gone.
"Leander," Zadock Adams had said, and the young man’s memories jumped from distant past to the first day of his new life. "I'm giving you these papers now. You can leave this house anytime you want, but I'm hoping you will choose to stay. If you do, I will consider you my other son. I'll see that you're fed, clothed and educated. I don't hold with slavery, and I believe there will come a time when this country and your people will need you."
Did the eight-year boy with scarred legs and bare feet, wearing torn and dirty clothes, whose nappy hair and wide nose said Negro, but whose medium-brown skin spoke of another race understand manumission?
He understood food. He stayed.
Memories in Adams' fevered brain reenacted themselves so realistically he relived them. There was the day, after a year of tutoring, when Old Joe drove him to the same school Samuel attended.
"We sho' is proud of you, y oung massa'," the man said, as a face broke into a wide grin. "We sho' is." But forever after Leander felt the burden of leadership.
When both boys were 16, Zadock introduced them to fine cigars and after-dinner port, included them in his informal male gatherings, and encouraged them to think aloud. Sometimes he agreed with their callow opinions, other times not, but always courteous of their individuality.
Memories of evenings spent before the fire in the book-filled study, with its lingering smells, made the fevered Adams sniff and sigh. And Paloma crossed herself and send another prayer to the Holy Mother.
On the morning of Leander's last day under the Adams roof, Samuel fiddled with his cravat , gave Leander a long look, and bolted from the dining room. With a shrug, Leander followed the upright figure of his adopted father into the study. Outside, purple crocus bloomed. Inside, vases of early daffodils warmed the room with their color. It was 1863. Zadock, hands behind his back, paced.
"Leander," he began, tentatively, "you've succeeded beyond all my expectations. You're a credit to me." Zadock permitted himself a little smile, "But more important, you're a credit to yourself and your people."
Your people. Half Mexican, half Negro, raised in a white home, Leander was forever see-sawing between different worlds. The only college accepting Negroes was Oberlin, so Leander had trained there. In the laboratory, caught up in the Lister-Pasteur theories o Leander had trained there. In the laboratory, caught up in the Lister-Pasteur theories of bacteria and in his own septicemia experiments, Leander forgot about "his people"
Would he always be torn?
* * *
His drifting thoughts were interrupted by Zadock's words. ". . . the hardest thing I've ever had to ask."
Leander, straightening his slouched posture, noticed weariness on the face of the man he loved.
"Leander, President Lincoln called for volunteers today. The good Lord, in his infinite wisdom, has seen fit to prolong this war. There's no doubt we'll win in the end, and perhaps we'll honor victory more for the sacrifices made. But, in the meantime, the army needs men, needs doctors. I want you to go."
Leander Adams recoiled. He loved medicine, but loved more the environment of the laboratory with beakers and vials, and the sound of a pen nib scratching notes. For two years the country had been at war and was no closer--some said farther--from victory than ever. Enlist? For how long?
"And Samuel?" he asked.
"You're going in his place. I've just informed him. We have government contracts for blankets. I need him."
"I see." Leander did, saw that he was Negro again, good for the sacrifice. Saw Zadock Adams as a hypocrite, without realizing the unfairness of putting any mortal on a pedestal, a place that even the gods couldn't retain.
Dr. Leander Adams enlisted that day, and rode away on the horse called Dumas after the black Frenchman who wrote so brilliantly but who also struggled with discrimination. Behind him, in his beautiful, copper-planted script, he left an invoice for $300 on Samuel's bureau. Another $300-man bought and paid for with someone else's life.
Under the command of General George Meade, Leander saw his first real battle, and faced nightmares that were to haunt him for the rest of his life. In a peach orchard, and the wheat field under Little Round Top, near Culps Hill and Cemetery Hill, Adams crawled, helping where he could, both Union and Confederate, for war knows no place in the oath of medicine. And afterwards, there were the wounded and dying hiding in boulder-covered Devil's Den; the air heavy with the smell of gun powder, ears echoing with the sound of the cannons and the wheels of the caissons, and the groans of dying men. There was an operating tent that was nothing more than an amputation theater, limbs piled higher than the split-rail fences; and finally the vultures, whose keen vision and heightened senses lead them to the slaughter, but who could afford to soar high and silent and wait their turn.
The victors cheered though a Fourth of July rain that washed away the blood. But, for those men who survived Gettysburg, nothing could wash away the memories.
* * *
When his fever broke, Adams woke to the smell of food. Lifting his head to look around, he saw a wooden table, a small fire, and a leather-faced Indian woman shooing goats away from the door. Bright light came in where a red and blue blanket had been tied back from an opening. As he listened, the tired man heard voices, and Dumas' gently whinny.
“My horse,” he whispered. “My horse.”
The old woman looked up and gestured toward outside and smiled. Two pairs of black eyes that met in mute understanding, asked nothing of each other,
and in doing so gave all.
During his convalescence, Adams learned enough of San Teodoro's Spanish-Indian patois to talk haltingly with Paloma, and with the people who soon learned that the gringo was a medico con bueno suerte, a doctor with much good luck. They forgave him when Maximilian's soldiers, or those of Juarez, took him away to treat their wounded. They forgave him because he sat with them in the village plaza=2 0on fine evenings and talked, because though he did not go to church, he visited often with Padre Perez, the elderly Jesuit who had been part of their village for so many years.
For three years Adams lived in a hut he built next to Paloma’s, nursed her when she became ill, and buried her when she died. From her hut, he made a small clinic where, between patients, he continued those experiments begun so long ago. He grew brown and leathered like los natales. But though they were his people, he was never really one of them.
One day an Indian rode into town leading a horse with an injured rider face down over the saddle. Adams put his surgical tools into an ever-ready pan of hot water. Together, he and the Indian carried the bleeding figure in to the small surgery. While Adams cut away the clothing, bloodied from a bullet wound, things fell from a pocket.
"Una persona muy importante," said the Indian as he picked up a gold watch and a medal.
Sun light, shinning through the doorway, was drawn toward the gold. Though blinded from the sudden brightness, Adams' hand, not yet scrubbed, reached out. Who was this who carried his gold watch, who had Leander's Medal of Honor with the initials L.A. scratched into the back? A sealed envelope remained in the pocket. When Adams removed it he saw his manumission documents—his freedom papers. Freedom. That for which soldiers on both side of the Civil War had recently fought, for which even now in Mexico, the poorly armed Indians also fought. Freedom from the haunting pain of his memories. It was the word he cherished above all.
The room around him grew warm, like a mother’s embrace as the light shown brighter with warmth and light.
“I’m at peace,” the doctor thought. He lifted his face into the warmth. “At last, I’m where I should be and I’m at peace.”
* * *
"Captain Becker, Captain Becker." The excited voice of Corporal Newman rose above the rain outside, and filled the hospital tent.
The tired doctor put down his knife, whipped his hands on his bloodied apron, and crossed the room. He looked at the wasted figure on the cot, and put a small mirror near the mouth to check for breath.
“He’s death,” he said, after a moment, putting the mirror back into his pocket. “Good man, good doctor. A sad loss.”
He closed Leander Adams’ empty eyes and=2 0turned toward the private. “Let’s get him out of here, soldier, “we need the bed.”
The stench of burning flesh rose from the smoking ruins of Rabbah as Josheb and Eleazar picked their way through its once bustling and prosperous streets. High above the remains of his capitol city, Hanun, king of the Ammonites, and the remnants of his army huddled in the citadel set on an outcropping of rock.
“What I don’t understand is why the young fool behaved in such a high-handed manner after the friendship between his father and David,” Eleazar spoke.
“Apparently the victim of bad companions and advisors who were as young and foolish as he,” Josheb replied.”Besides, he figured the Arameans he hired would bolster his forces enough to defeat us.”
“What a waste of his gold!” Eleazar said. “You and I alone could have defeated the Arameans. They fled at our first approach.”
“The Ammonites themselves weren’t much better… Listen!” Josheb halted, raising a hand. From the direction of the citadel came the clash of battle.
Shammah raced toward them, dodging piles of shattered masonry and smoldering timbers.
“Brothers, come! Joab has assaulted the citadel,” Shammah urged his two comrades.
The Three hurried upward through the winding streets of Rabbah and toward the royal citadel. The shouts and screams of battle increased, lending urgency to their steps. Arriving at the open marketplace before the citadel’s gate, they beheld a mass of struggling men contesting the opening.
“Uriah the Hittite,” the man replied.
At that moment, Eleazar noticed Joab observing the assault from a pile of rubble some hundred paces from the gate and sprinted to him, followed by his companions.
“Does Uriah lead the attack alone?” Eleazar shouted to the king’s general. “Where are the rest of the mighty men?”
“Look, more Ammonites issue from the citadel. Now’s the time to send up reinforcements and smash our way through.”
“The honor of what? Dying uselessly for David?” he shouted. Shammah and Josheb gripped his arms as he seemed about to fling himself at Joab.
“The enemy is pressing about him now,” Josheb urged. “We must go to his aid.”
“You must obey the king’s orders,” Joab gazed calmly upon The Three. “Stand where you are.” Joab’s bodyguard, handpicked from among his kinsmen, closed around them.
In front of the gate, the Israelites gave way, bit by bit, before the furious counterattack. Only Uriah stood firm in the midst of the melee, striking right and left with his two handed sword. Swaying backward to avoid a whistling sword-stroke, he countered with a smashing thrust to his opponents face, then ducked as another blow passed over his head. From his crouched stance, he thrust upward under the breastplate and into the groin of the man facing him. The screaming warrior collapsed as Uriah kicked him into the legs of two other Ammonites. Stepping and weaving with predatory grace, Uriah dodged the=2 0blows of the enemy crowding about him while dealing death and mutilation in the gateway of the citadel.
“Look, they’re falling back,” Shammah yelled.
The Israelites of the assault party edged forward to aid their leader. Suddenly, the Ammonites fell back, and for a frozen moment in time, Uriah stood alone before the gateway, then drew himself up to pursue the retreating foe. A flight of arrows sang from the ramparts and thudded into the torso and neck of the Hittite. His gore-splattered sword slipped from his grasp and onto the bloodstained earth as he sank to his knees. Eyes glazing, Uriah the Hittite fell face forward and breathed no more. The warriors of Israel stood in shocked silence that was broken only by the metallic clang of the gate’s heavy iron bar falling into place.
“You grow soft, Eleazar. Has the sight of so much slaughter taken away your stomach for battle?”
“That’s no answer,” Eleazar flung back. “Surely you know the rumors flying around camp even as we speak. Everyone knows that Uriah’s house is beside the king’s. That he was recently wed to a beautiful young bride is common knowledge also.”
“You should take heed of these. The men are grumbling that the king squanders their lives while remaining at home to prey upon their women. Others defend the king. Several fights have already broken out.”
“If you ignore=2 0this, you may not have an army here to finish the siege. Tell me the truth. Did the king order Uriah’s death?”
“I will tell you this,” Joab’s voice rose, “I follow my orders. You should follow yours. Now leave my tent.”
“That’s the last order of yours I’ll follow.” Eleazar flung his sword, point down, into the ground at Joab’s feet. It quivered there, as he spun on his heel and, teeth grinding in a fury of frustration, stalked from the tent.
Field of blood. The words echoed in his brain, and the smells of death and dying assailed his nostrils. Field of blood. A light but steady rain started to fall. A cleansing rain, he thought, looking heavenward to catch the drops on his upturned face. A brief chill gripped him. Shaking himself, he turned and began to run.
Toward the Jordan River.
Toward home.
