Page 15 of For This We Are Soldiers
By the eternal, he had. How curious that he had found his life’s vocation in a burning aid station on the second day at Gettysburg. After his commanding officer ordered him to beat retreat through the wheat field, then sank to his knees with a minié ball between his eyes, Colm had done the sensible thing. He beat retreat as ordered, then unhooked his drum and left it there in the wheat field. He took up his other duty as stretcher-bearer and carried out a wounded lieutenant, only to have him burn to death when the nearest aid station took a direct hit from a cannonball. The ether exploded into fireballs, and Colm dragged out the wounded, his own hair singed and stinking.
He went back in, and that made all the difference. When the battle ended two days later, he could debride burns, hold retractors, and throw in a simple suture. He never went back to find his drum, and no one in the Irish Brigade complained.
“Steward?”
Startled, he looked down at his patient. “Sorry, I was doing some rare remembering.” He patted the man. “Can you rest now?”
The private obediently did as he was bid. Colm looked back to see Lysander Locke’s eyes on him, maybe with admiration in them. With a sigh borne of too little sleep and more recollection than he wanted, Colm again sat beside the actor’s bed. To his chagrin, Lysander Locke had not lost the thread of their whispered conversation.
“Well done, Callahan. Do I gather that you have never received a letter either?”
“You gather right, except for memos from the Medical Department.”
Colm started to say something else equally inane, but he sniffed the air instead. Good Gadfreys, was that sausage? He couldn’t imagine anything less suitable for a low diet, but since Captain Dilworth was not there to enforce the prescribed nutrition for sick men, he, Colm Callahan, was not about to quibble.
“I think I’ll check on breakfast,” he said to the ward at large. He rose, but Lysander took his hand and tugged it.
“I think you should surprise her with a letter.” He gave Colm a calculating look. “Even a shy man can write a letter.”
Colm smiled at his patient—Mary and Joseph, but Locke was nosy—and sauntered down the hall to the kitchen.
With the same concentration that he devoted to medical matters, Ozzie was subduing a rank of fat sausages.
“Where in the world did you find those?” he asked by way of greeting.
She pointed to the ice chest. “You should inventory that sometime.”
She wore a different dress, and had tried to curb the exuberance of her hair, tying back the mass of curls with a bit of elastic midway up the back of her head. The effect, while disorderly, struck him as charming. He cleared his throat, and screwed up his courage—a different kind of courage than what he had shown on the nighttime field at Fredericksburg, or the Gettysburg aid station.
“I owe you a thousand thanks,” he said.
She turned around with a smile. “You need me,” she said simply, then immediately returned her attention to the sausage, which made him suspect she was shy too.
A
Perhaps putting trust where she should not, Audra handed Colm the long fork and told him to keep turning the sausage. Meanwhile, she prepared oatmeal and stirred it, standing close to him because it wasn’t a large kitchen range.
Audra stopped. Her face was warm, surely from the steam spiraling off the porridge. She took a step away from Colm Callahan, who stared with fierce concentration at the sausages.
When the porridge was subdued into the occasional glop glop, Audra set it at the back of the range and found some brown paper so Colm could spear out the sausages to drain them.
“You sleep all right?” he asked.
“Never better. Except …”
“It’s a lumpy bed,” he said, apologizing for his mattress.
“It’s not that. The lumps are in the right places.” She transferred the porridge to individual bowls and sugared it well, wondering why she couldn’t leave well enough alone and say nothing more.
But he was looking at her, curious and interested. “Colm, I mean Suh, why does your house smell of camphor? It’s all over your pillow.”
She put her hands to her face, amazed she had mentioned something as intimate as a man’s pillow.You are merely curious, she reminded herself. “I … I sniffed it on you yesterday, Suh.”
The range must have been hotter than she thought, because Colm was red-faced too. At least that much color would never show onherface.
He chuckled then, apparently deciding not to be embarrassed. “It’s this, Audra: I know it’s silly after all these years, but the smell of blood makes me queasy. When the bugle summoned me to the ambulance yesterday, I didn’t know what I would find, so I dabbed camphor on my upper lip. I can’t smell anything else with camphor there. D’ye mind?”
She shook her head. “I just wondered why.” She opened her mouth and closed it, wondering why she was turning so nosy.
