Nathan Englander (6:13)
Every night for a thousand years. He dreamed his brother's death at Fredericksburg. General Burnside appeared as an angel at the foot of his bed to announce the tragedy. The army regrets to inform you that your brother, George Washington Whitman, was shot in the head by a lewd fellow from Charleston. The general lit on the bedpost and drew his dark wings close about him as if to console himself. Moonlight limbed his strange whiskers and his hair. His voice shook as he went on. Such a beautiful boy. I held him in my arms while his life bled out. See, his blood made this spot. He pointed at his breast where a dark stain in the shape of a bird lay on the blue wool. I am so very sorry, he said, choking and weeping. Tears fell in streams from his eyes, ran over the bed and out the window, where they joined the Rappahannock, which had somehow come north to flow through Brook Franklin bearing the bodies of all the battle's dead. In the morning, he read the wounded list in the Herald. There it was. First Lieutenant G.W. whitmore. He knew from George's letters that there was nobody named Whitmore in the company. He went to his mother's house. I'll go find him, he told her and his sister and his brothers. So he went. Washington, he quickly discovered, was a city of hospitals. He looked in half of them before a cadaverous looking clerk told him he'd be better off looking at Falmouth, where most of the Fredericksburg wounded still lay in field hospitals. In Falmouth, he wandered outside the hospital tents, afraid to go in and find his mangled brother. He stood before a pile of amputated limbs, arms and legs of varying lengths, all black and blue and rotten in the chill. A thin layer of snow covered some of them. He circled the heap, thinking he must recognize his brother's hand if he saw it. He closed his eyes and considered the amputation, his brother screaming when he woke from the chloroform, his brother's future contracting to something bitter and small. But George had only got a hole in his cheek. A piece of shell pierced his wispy beard and scraped a tooth. He spit blood and hot metal into his hand, put the shrapnel in his pocket, and later showed it to his worried brother, who burst into tears and clutched him in a bear hug when they were reunited in Captain Francis's tent, where George sat with his feet propped on a trunk and a cigar stuck in his bandaged face. You shouldn't fret, said George, but he could not help fretting, even now that he knew his brother was alive and well. A great fretting buzz had started up in his head, inspired by the pile of limbs and the smell of blood in the air and ruined Fredericksburg across the river, all broken chimneys and crumbling walls. He stayed in George's tent and watching him sleep, felt a deep satisfaction. He wandered around the camp, sat by fires with sentries who told him hideous stories about the death of friends. Ten days later he still couldn't leave Falmouth, even after his brother moved out with the healthy troops on Christmas Day he stayed and made himself useful, changing dressings, fetching for the nurses, and just sitting with the wounded boys with the same satisfaction on him as when he watched George sleep in Brooklyn. A deep and sinister melancholy had settled over him. For the past six months he had wandered the streets, feeling as if all his vital capacities were sputtering, about to die in the hospital, that melancholy was gone, scared off, perhaps, by all the misery and replaced by something infinitely more serious and real. He finally went back to Washington in charge of a transport. With every jolt and shake of the train, a chorus of horrible groans wafted through the cars. He thought it would drive him insane. What saved him was the singing of a boy with a leg wound. The whole trip he sang in a rough voice indicative of tone deafness. His name was Henry Smith. He'd come all the way from divided Missouri and said he had a gaggle of cousins fighting under General Beauregard. He sang oh, Susanna over and over again, and no one told him to be quiet. All the worst cases went to Union Square Hospital because it was closest to the train station. He went with them and kept up the service he'd begun at Falmouth, visiting, talking, reading, fetching and helping. Months passed. He went to other hospitals. There were certainly enough of them to keep him busy. Finley, Campbell, Carver, Harewood, Mount Pleasant, Judiciary Square. And then there were the churches and public buildings also stuffed with wounded. Even the patent office held them, boys on cots set up on the marble floor of the model room. He brought horehound Candy to an 18 year old from Iowa who lay with a missing arm and a sore throat in front of a glass case that Ben Franklin's printing press. Two boys from Brooklyn had beds in front of General Washington's camp equipment. He read to them from a copy of the Eagle his mother sent down. Every now and then, looking up at the general's tents rolled neatly around their posts, his folded chairs and mess kit, sword and cane, washstand, his surveyor's compass, and a few feet down in a special case all to itself, the Declaration of Independence. Other boys lay in front of pieces of the Atlantic cable, ingenious toys, rat traps, the razor of Captain Cook. He could not visit every place all in a day, though he tried it first. Eventually he picked a few and stuck with those. But mostly he was at Union Square, where Hank Smith was. I had my daddy's pistol with me, said Hank Smith. That's why I got my legs. Still, it wasn't the first time he'd been told how Hank had saved his own leg from the chopping butchers in the field hospital. But he didn't mind hearing the story again. It was spring. The leg was still bad, though not as bad as it had been. At least that was the impression that Hank gave. He never complained about his leg. He'd come down with Typhoid 2, a gift from the hospital. I want my pistol back. I'll see what I can do. Walt always said that, but they both knew no one was going to give Hank back the pistol with which he'd threatened to blow out the brains of the surgeon who had tried to take his leg. They had left him alone then, and later another doctor said there wasn't any need to amputate. They would watch the wound. Meanwhile, have an orange. Walt pulled the fruit out of his coat pocket and peeled it. Soldiers heads began to turn in their beds as the smell washed over the warden. Some asked if he had any for them. Course he does, said Hank. In fact, he had a coat full of them. He had bought them at Center Market, then walked through the misty wet morning over the brackish canal and across the filthy mall. The lowing of cattle drifted toward him from the unfinished monument as he walked along, wanting an orange but afraid to eat one lest he be short. When he got to the hospital, he had money for oranges, sweets, books, tobacco from sponsors in Brooklyn and New York and elsewhere. And he had a little money for himself from a job three hours a day as a copyist in the paymaster's office. From his desk he had a spectacular view of Georgetown and the river and the three stones that were said to mark the watery graves of three Indian sisters. They had cursed the spot. Anyone who tried to cross there must drown. He would sit and stare at the rocks, imagining himself shedding his shirt and shoes by the riverside, trying to swim across. He imagined drowning, the great weight of water press pressing down on him. Inevitably his reverie was broken by the clump, clump of one legged soldiers on their crutches coming up the stairs to the office located perversely on the top floor of the building. Union Square was under the command of a brilliant drunk named Canning Woodhull. Over whiskey he explained his radical policies, which included washing hands and instruments, throwing out sponges, swabbing everything in sight with bitter smelling laborac solution, and an absolute lack of faith in laudable pus. Nothing laudable about it, he said. White or green pus is pus, and either way it's bad for the boys. There are creatures in the wounds, elements of evil. They are the emissaries of hell, sent earthward to increase our suffering, to increase death and increase grief. You can't see them except by their actions. They knocked glasses and drank, and Walt made a face because the whiskey was medicinal, laced with quinine. It did not seem to bother Woodhulling. I have the information from my wife, who has great and secret knowledge, woodhull said. She talks to spirits. Most of what she hears is garbage, of course, but this is true. Maybe it was. His hospital got the worst cases and kept them alive better than any other hospital in the city, even ones that got casualties only half as severe. Woodhull stayed in charge, despite a reputation as a wastrel and a drunk and an off and on lunatic. Once he was removed by a coalition of his colleagues, only to be reinstated by Dr. Lederman, the medical director of the army of the Potomac, who had been personally impressed by many visits to Union Square. General Grant is a drunk too, he would say in response to a charge against Dr. Woodhull. They are vulnerable to prayer and bromine and whiskey and labrax. Lucky for us. He downed another glass. You know, some of the nurses are complaining. Just last Tuesday I was in Ward E with the redoubtable Mrs. Hawley. We saw you come in at the end of the aisle and she said, here comes that odious Walt Whitman to talk evil and unbelief to my boys. I think I would rather see the evil one himself. At least if he had horns and hoofs in my ward. I shall get him out as soon as possible. And she rushed off to do just that. She failed, of course. He poured again. Shall I stop coming then? Heavens, no. As long as Old Horse Face Holly is complaining, I'll know you're doing good. God keep some dried up old shrew from driving you away. Two surgeons came into Woodhall's makeshift office, a corner of Ward F sectioned off by three regimental flags. Assistant Surgeon Walker is determined to kill Captain Carter, said Dr. Bliss, a dour black eyed man from Baltimore. She has given him opium for his diarrhea and, very foolishly, in my opinion, withheld ipecac and calomel. Dr. Mary Walker stood next to him, looking calm, her arms folded across her chest. She held the same rank as George did. Their uniforms had the same gold stripes, the same gold braid on the hat. Dr. Walker is doing as I have asked her, said Woodhull. Ipecac and calomel are to be withheld in all cases of flux and diarrhea. For God's sake, why? Asked Dr. Bliss, his face reddening. He was new in Union Square. Earlier the same day, Woodhull had castigated him for not cleaning a suppurating chest wound. Because it is for the best, said Woodhull. Because if you do it that way, a boy will not die. Because if you do it that way, some mother's heart will not be broken. Dr. Bliss turned redder, then paled, as if his rage had broken and ebbed. He scowled at Dr. Walker, turned sharply on his heel, and left. Dr. Walker sat down. Buffoon, she said. Woodhull poured whiskey for her. It was an open secret in the hospital that they were lovers. Dr. Walker, said Woodhull, why don't you tell Mr. Whitman about your recent arrest? She sipped her whiskey and told how she'd been arrested outside her boarding house for masquerading as a man. Walt only half listened to her talk. He was thinking about diarrhea. It was just about the worst thing he had decided. He'd seen it kill more boys than all the mignets and shrapnel and typhoid and pneumonia than all the other afflictions combined. He'd written to his mother, I think we ought to stop this war, however we can. Just stop it. War is 999parts diarrhea to 1part glory. Those who like wars ought to be made to fight in them. I did my best to resist them, said Dr. Walker. I shouted out, congress has bestowed on me the right to wear trousers. It was to no avail. She was silent for a moment, and then all three of them burst out laughing. In the summer he saw the President almost every day because he lived on the route the President took to and from his summer residence north of the city. Walking down the street soon after leaving his rooms in the morning, he'd hear the approach of the party. Always he stopped and waited for them to pass. Mr. Lincoln, dressed in plain black, rode a gray horse surrounded by 25 or 30 cavalry with their sabers drawn and held up over their shoulders. They got so they would exchange bows, he and the President, he tipping his broad, floppy felt hat, Lincoln tipping his high, stiff black one and bending a little in the saddle. And every time they did this, the same thought bloomed large in Walt's mind. A sad man with the coming of the hot weather, Dr. Woodhull redoubled his efforts to eradicate the noxious effluvia. They threw open the windows and burned eucalyptus leaves and small bronze sensors set in the four corners of each ward. The eucalyptus, combined with the omnipresent reek of labrack solution, gave some of the boys aching heads. Dr. Woodhull prescribed whiskey. I want a bird, hank Smith said one day late in July. The weather was hot and dry. Hank had been fighting a bad fever for a week. Walt helped him change out of his soaked shirt, then wiped him down with a cool, wet towel. The wet shirt he took to the window, where he wrung out the sweat, watching it fall and dapple the dirt. He laid the shirt to dry on the sill and considered his wet, salty hands. In the distance he could see the Capitol gleaming magnificently in the late afternoon sun. I want a bird, hank said again. When I was small, my sister got me a bird. I named it for her Olivia. Would you help me get one? Walt left the window and sat on a stool by the bed. The sun lit up the hair on Hank's chest and made Walt think of shining fields of wheat. I could get you a bird, he said. I don't know where, but I will get you a bird. I know where, said Hank as Walt helped him into a new shirt. With a jerk of his head, he indicated the window. There's plenty of birds out in the yard. You just get a rock and some string, and then we'll get a bird. He came back the next day with rock and string, and they set a trap of breadcrumbs on the windowsill. Walt crouched beneath the window and grabbed at whatever came for the crumbs. He missed two jays and a blackbird, but caught a beautiful cardinal by its leg. It chirped frantically and pecked at his hand. The fluttering of its wings against his wrists made him think of the odd buzz that still thrilled his soul when he was in the wards. He brought the bird to Hank, who tied the string to its leg and the rock to the string, then set the rock down by his bed. The cardinal tried to fly for the window, but only stuck in midair, its desperate wings striking up a small breeze that Walt, kneeling near it, could feel against his face. Hank clapped and laughed. They called the bird Olivia. She became the ward's pet. Other boys would insist on having her near their beds. It did not take her long to become domesticated. Soon she was eating from Hank's hand and sleeping at night beneath his cotton. They kept her secret from the nurses and doctors until one morning. Hank was careless. He fell asleep having left her out in the middle of the aisle while Woodhull was making his rounds. Walt had just walked into the ward, his arms full of candy and fruit and novels. Who let this dirty bird into my hospital? Woodhull asked. He very swiftly bent down and picked up the stone, then tossed it out the window. Olivia trailed helplessly behind it. Walt dropped his packages and rushed outside, where he found the bird in the dirt, struggling with a broken wing. He put her in his shirt and took her back to his room, where she died three days later, murdered by his landlady's cat, he told Hank. She flew away. A person can't have anything, Hank said, and stayed angry about it for a week. At Christmas, Mrs. Hawley and her cronies trimmed the wards. Evergreen wreaths were hung on every pillar and garland strung across the hall. At the foot of every bed hung a tiny stocking hand knitted by Washington society ladies. Walt went around stuffing them with walnuts and lemons and licorice. Hank's leg got better and worse, better and worse. Walt cornered Dr. Woodhull and said he had a bad feeling about Hank's health. Woodhull insisted he was going to be Fine. Walt's fretting was pointless. Hank's fevers waxed in wane too. Once Walt came in from a blustery snowstorm, his beard full of snow. Hank insisted on pressing his face into it, saying it made him feel so much better than any medicine had, except maybe paregoric, which he found delicious and said made him feel like he was flying. In his bed Walt read to him from the New Testament the bit about there being no room at the inn. Are you a religious man? Hank asked him. Probably not, my dear, in the way that you mean. Though he did make a point of dropping by the Union Square Chapel whenever he was there. It was a little building with a quaint onion shaped steeple. He would sit in the back and listen to the services for boys whom he'd been visiting almost every day. He wrote their names down in a small leather bound notebook that he kept in one of his pockets. By Christmas he had pages and pages of them. Sometimes at night he would sit in his room and read the names softly aloud by the light of a single candle. Dr. Walker came by and asked to borrow his Bible. She said she had news from the War Department. What's the news? He asked her. Nothing good, she said. It is dark, dark everywhere. She wanted to read some job to cheer herself. Sometimes, when he could not sleep, which was often, he would walk around the city, past the serene mansions on Lafayette Square, past the President's house where he would pause and wonder if a light in the window meant Mr. Lincoln was awake and agonizing. Once he saw a figure in a long trailing black crepe veil move, lamp in hand, past a series of windows, and he imagined it must be Mrs. Lincoln searching forlornly for her little boy who had died two winters ago. He walked past the empty market stalls, along the ever stinking canal. He would pause by it, looking down into the dirty water and see all manner of things float by. Boots and bonnets, half eaten vegetables, animals. Once there was a dead cat drifting on a little flow of ice. Walking on. He would pass into Murder Bay where the hooted at him, but he was otherwise left alone. From a distance he was large and imposing, not an easy target, and up close he looked so innocent and sweet that even the most heartless criminal would not raise a hand against him. He would peek into alleys that housed whole families of contraband. Sometimes a dirty child would rush out of a dank shanty and ask him a riddle. He got to keeping candy in his pockets for the children. He would cut back along the canal, then across, sometimes watching the moonshine on the towers of the Smithsonian Castle and on the white roofs of Union Square. He would walk among the shrubs and trees of the Mall, sometimes getting lost on a footpath that went nowhere. But eventually he would cross the canal again and walk up to the Capitol. The great statue of General Washington was there, the one that everyone ridiculed because he was dressed in a toga. It was said that his sword was raised in a threat to do harm to the country if his clothes were not returned. He liked the statue. He would crawl up into its lap and sprawl out pieta like, or else put his arms around the thick marble neck and have a good wrenching cry. At dawn he would stand outside the Capitol, writing his name in the snow with his foot, and he could smell the bread baking in the basement. He had a friend in the bakery who loaded him down with countless hot loaves. He'd walk back to Union Square warmed by the bread in his coat, and sometimes he'd have enough so that every full diet boy in a ward would wake with a still warm loaf on his chest. They want to take my leg, hank told him. It was early May and still cold. I ain't going to let them. You've got to get me a gun. Hush, said Walt. They won't take your leg, though in fact it looked as if they would have to. Just when he had seemed on the verge of good health, just when he had beaten off the typhoid, the leg flared up again and deteriorated rapidly. Dr. Woodhull cleaned the wound, prayed over it, swabbed it with whiskey, all to no avail. A hideous, stinking infection had taken root and was growing. He went looking for Dr. Woodhull to discuss Hank's case. He did not find him in his office. There was a pall of silence and gloom over all the wards. News of the horrible casualties accrued by General Grant in his wilderness campaign had reached the hospital. Dr. Bliss and Mrs. Hawley were having a loud discussion as she changed dressings. Trust a drunk not to give a fig for our boy's lives, said Dr. Bliss. This war is an enterprise dominated by inebriates, charlatans, and fools. He gave Walt a mean look. Walt asked if either of them had seen Woodhull. Neither of them replied, but the young man whose dressings were being changed told him he had gone out to the dead house. Walt found him there. Among the bodies. There were only a few, just the dead from the past few days. He was weeping over a shrouded form. Dr. Walker stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. Canning, she said, you've got to come back now. We've got boys coming from Spotsylvania. Oh, darling, said Woodhull. I just can't stand it. He was leaning over the shrouded body, dropping tears onto the face as the fabric became wet. Walt could make out the boy's features. He had a thin mustache and a mole on his cheek. There's such an awful lot of blood. You'd think they could do something with all that blood. A great work. Oughtn't something great to be coming? Dr. Walker noticed him standing by the door. Mr. Whitman, she said, if you would assist me. He put his arm around Dr. Woodhull and bore him up, away from the body and out of the deadhouse. They put him on an empty cot in a half empty ward. Oh, darling, said Woodhull. I don't even want to think about it. He turned over on his side and began to breathe deeply and evenly. The odor of urine began to rise from him. Dr. Walker took a watch from her pocket and looked at it. We got a wire, she said. They're moving a thousand boys from the field hospitals. Then she leaned down close to Woodhull's snoring face and said, you had better be well and awake in five hours, Sir. I will do whatever I can, said Whitman. I am glad to hear it. She adjusted her hat on her head and uttered an explosive sigh. General Stuart has died, she said. Did you know that? Shot by a lowly infantryman. I had a dream once that he came for me on his horse with garish feathers in his hat. Come along with me, Mary, he said. We'll ride away from it all. Not by your red beard. General Satan said, I get thee behind me. Do you suppose I did the right thing? Would you have gone with him? Walt thought about it. He pictured himself riding west with General Stuart to a place where the war could not touch them. He imagined the tickly feeling General Stuart's feathers would make in his nose as they rode to the extreme end of the continent. And he thought of the two of them riding shirtless through sunny California, and of reaching out their hands to pick fat grapes. I've got to get out, said Hank. A week had passed and Union Square was stuffed to the gills with new patients. Hank's leg was scheduled to come off in two days. In the dead house there was a pile of limbs as high as Walt's head. Settle down, said Walt. There's no cause for alarm. I won't Let them have it. You've got to help me get out. I won't make it if they take my leg. I know I won't. He had a raging fever and had been acting a little delirious. Dr. Walker is said to wield the fastest knife in the army. You'll be asleep. You won't feel it. Ha. Said Hank. He gave Walt a long, wild look. Ha. He put his face in his pillow and wouldn't talk anymore. Walt walked around the wards, meeting the new boys. He went to the chapel, the limbs piled higher in the deadhouse, many of them joined there soon by their former proprietors. That night, unable to sleep, he made his usual tour of the city, stopping for a long time outside Union Square. He found himself outside Hank's window and then inside, next to his bed. Hank was sleeping, his arm thrown up above his head, his sheet thrown off and his shirt riding up his belly. Walt reached out and touched his shoulder. All right, Walt said. Let's go. It was not a difficult escape. The hardest part was getting Hank's pants on. It was very painful for him to bend his knee, and he was feverish, disoriented. They saw no one on their way out. The night attendants were in another ward. They stole a crutch for Hank. He fell on the mall, and the crutch broke under him. He wept softly with his mouth in the grass. Walt picked him up and carried him on his back toward the canal and over it, then into Murder Bay. Hank cried to be put down. They rested on a trash heap, teeming with small, crawly things that were unidentifiable in the dark. I think I want to sleep, said Hank. I'm so tired. Go ahead, my dear, said Walt. I shall take care of you. I would like to go home. He put his head against Walt's shoulder. Take me back to Hollowvale. I want to see my sister. He slowly fell asleep, still mumbling under his breath. They sat there for a little while. Some people passed them but did not disturb them. If this heap were a horse, thought Walt, we could ride to California. Never mind, General Stuart, he said aloud, taking Hank's wet hand in his own. In California there is no sickness. Neither is there death. On their fifth birthday, every child is made a gift of a pony. He looked at Hank's drawn face, glowing eerily in the moonlight, and said, in California, if you plant a dead boy under an oak tree in just one day's time, a living hand will emerge from the soil. If you grasp that hand and pull with the heart of A true friend, a living body will come out of the earth thus in California. Death never separates true friends. He looked for a while longer into Hank's face. His eyes were darting wildly under the lids. Walt said, well, if we are to get there soon, we had best be going now. But when he picked him up, he brought him back to the hospital. You will wash that beard before you come into my surgery, said Dr. Woodhull. Walt Stank of garbage. He went to a basin, and Dr. Walker helped him scrub his beard with creosote, potassium permanganate, and Labarach solution. Walt held a sponge soaked with chloroform under Hank's nose, even though he hadn't woken since falling asleep on the heap. He kept his hand on Hank's head the whole time, though he could not watch as Dr. Walker cut in and Dr. Woodhull tied up the arteries. He looked down and saw blood seeping across the floor into mounds of sawdust. Looking up, he fixed his attention on a lithograph on the far wall. It had been torn from some book of antiquities, a depiction of reclining sick under the care of the priests of Asclepius, whose statue dominated the temple. There was a snake entwined, staff in his hand, and a big, friendly looking stone dog at his feet. A large caption beneath the picture read, every night for a thousand years, the sick sought refuge and dreams in the temple of Asclepius. He closed his eyes and heard the saw squeak against Hank's bones. Hank woke briefly before he died. They got my leg, he said. You let them take it? No, said Walt. I've got it right here. In fact, he did. It lay in his lap, bundled in two clean white sheets. It could have been anything. He would not let them take it to the dead house. He put it in the bed. Hank hugged it tight against his chest. I don't want to die, he said. He packed his bag and sat on it, waiting at the station for the train that would take him back to Brooklyn. The train came and went. He stayed sitting on his bag. Then he got up and went back to Union Square. It was night. Hank's bed was still empty. He sat down on it and rummaged for a pen and paper. When he had them, he wrote in the Dear friends. I thought it would be soothing to you to have a few lines about the last days of your son, Henry Smith. I write in haste, but I have no doubt anything about Hank will be welcome. From the time he came, there was hardly a day, but I was with him. A portion of the time, if not in the day, then at night. I am merely a friend visiting the wounded and sick soldiers. From almost the first, I felt somehow that Hank was in danger. Or at least was much worse than they supposed in the hospital. As he made no complaint, they thought him nothing so bad. I told the doctor of the ward over and over again he was a very sick boy. But he took it lightly and said he would certainly recover. He said, I know more about these fever cases than you do. He looks very sick to you, but I shall bring him out all right. Probably the doctor did his best. At any rate, about a week before Hank died, he got really alarmed. And after that he and all the other doctors tried to help him, but it was too late. Very possibly it would not have made any difference. I used to sit by the side of his bed, generally silent. He was oppressed for breath and with the heat, and I would fan him. Occasionally he would want a drink. Some days he dozed a great deal. Sometimes when I would come in, he woke up and I would lean down and kiss him. He would reach out his hand and pat my hair and beard As I sat on the bed and leaned over him. It was painful to see the working in his throat to breathe. Some nights I sat by his cot far into the night. The lights would be put out, and I sat there silently, hour after hour. He seemed to like to have me sit there. I shall never forget those nights in the dark hospital. It was a curious and solemn scene. The sick and the wounded lying around. And this dear young man close by me lying on what proved to be his death bed. I did not know his past life, but what I saw and know of. He behaved like a noble boy. Farewell, dearie boy. It was my opportunity to be with you in your last days. I had no chance to do much for you. Nothing could be done. Only you did not lie there among strangers without having one near. Who loved you dearly and to whom you gave your dying kiss. Mr. And Mrs. Smith, I have thus written rapidly whatever came up about Hank and must now close. Though we are strangers and shall probably never see each other. I send you all Hank's brothers and sisters my love. I live when at home in Brooklyn, New York. In Portland Avenue, fourth floor, north of Myrtle. He folded up the letter and put it in his shirt. Then lay down on his side on the bed. In a while a nurse came by with fresh sheets. She thought she might scold him and tell him to leave. But when she looked in his face, she turned and hurried off. He watched the moon come up in the window, listening to the wounded and sick stirring in the beds around him. It seemed to him, as he watched the moon shine down on the dome of the Capitol, that the war would never end. He thought, in the morning I will rise and leave this place. And then he thought, I will never leave this place. He slept briefly and had a dream of reaching into Hank Smith's dark grave, hoping and fearing that somebody would take his groping hand. He woke with the moon still shining in his face. Somewhere down the ward, a boy began to weep.
