ALL THAT'S LEFT OF ME

By Jo Anzalone

Chapter 19:

"Virginia! What in the name of heaven do you think you're doing?" It was Sally Lucas, at 28, four years older than her sister. "Daniel's room? You've put some soldier not only in Daniel's

room but in his...bed?"

Virginia turned from tucking up the covers around Jonathon. "Not 'some soldier', Sally. This

is Jonathon."

"Jonathon?" Sally spluttered. "The man's unconscious. You can't possibly know his name."

"But I do," Virginia smiled. "Jonathon James McDaniel from Mississippi."

"I don't care what his name is. Daddy will have an absolute fit when he sees what you've done."

"He already knows."

"He...knows? And you still...?"

Just then William Lucas came up behind his older daughter. "She bested me again, Sally. You

know how she is when she gets her mind set on something."

"But what if Daniel...?"

"Our brother is in Richmond, Sally, and you are well aware of it and that he will not return for

some months. I am certain he will not mind if his bed is put to good use while he is absent from it."

"But the other soldiers, they're all up on the third floor. Why is this one different?"

"Because I have decided he is," Virginia answered firmly.

William shrugged. "She's adopted him, Sally. He's her pet project."

"Project? How can he be a project?" Sally frowned.

"Because he does not wish to wake up and I wish him to."

"How do you even know the man does not want to come around?"

"His friend, one of the men who was helping bringing the soldiers inside, explained it to me."

"And she refuses to explain it to me," her father said, shaking his head at his daughter.

Finally Sally laughed. "Well, the man just better open his eyes now because he doesn't stand

a chance against you, Virginia!"

Virginia turned back, gazing down at Jonathon.  What she'd learned of him earlier was

something she wanted to keep to herself. With Mr. Ellis gone back to the army, she was the

only one who knew and she liked it that way.  "He will. Give him time and he will."

"Give you time, you mean!" Sally retorted, walking closer to the bed. "Well, at least he's not

getting Daniel's sheets dirty."

William sighed. "Virginia would have bathed the man herself if I'd let her, but Abner did it,

over her vociferous protests, I might add."

"I could have done it."

"It's not proper and you know that, child."

"In war, Daddy, proper is not a proper term."

"For a young lady of your background, Virginia, proper never ceases to apply. I've allowed

you to put the man in your brother's bed, in your brother's nightshirt, but I will not allow you

to bathe him."

"Yes, Daddy," she replied with feigned meekness.

William rolled his eyes. He adored his younger daughter beyond reason, and not simply

because she reminded him so of his wife, who had died when Virginia was only two.  She

radiated a vibrant aliveness combined with a fierce intellect that led her to be curious about

everything. In a time when women of her class were expected to sit by the fireside with their needlework, she was out roaming through the pastures, studying how the plants grew, how

leaves were shaped, which insects preferred which flowers. And she wrote about it, wrote

poems that had earned her the nickname of "the pastoral poet of the Shenandoah Valley."

Daniel was, among many other things, also a poet, and he, too, adored his sister, indulged

her in her whims, took her with him to explore ponds and woodlands, which they would

then both write about. Daniel, two years older than Virginia, had gone off to war in 1861, serving on the staff of General Henry A. Wise, but after a year had returned, unable to

continue. His nurse had dropped him when he was an infant, injuring his spine in a way that caused him pain the rest of his life. He was an attorney and was presently on business in Richmond.

(Daniel Bedinger Lucas in later life, and his and our Virginia's mother, also named Virginia. After the war, when Daniel married, he named

his only child, a daughter, also Virginia. That Virginia was a poet as well and lived until 1929, writing a volume called Love Time at Rion Hall.

I could find no picture of our Virginia.)

"I expect you to be present at supper, Virginia," William said, stepping back out into the hall.

"Yes, Daddy," Virginia smiled.

When her father and sister had gone, she pulled a chair close up beside the bed, studying

Jonathon's profile.

He had several day's growth of beard but it was obvious he didn't grow the bushy facial

masses she didn't like.  His hair was still damp from the washing Abner had given him and

she pushed back a strand that had wandered onto his forehead.  The whole top section of

his pants had been covered with blood and gore and she'd had them burned. He'd arrived

shirtless and now all he had to wear was Daniel's nightshirt.

"You know, Jonathon, if you don't wake up soon, I shall have to shave you myself."  She, of

course, had never done anything remotely similar, but when she said it, she meant it.

"Daddy," Sally asked, following her father down to the main floor, "do you think this is all

right, Virginia's suddenly taking this unknown soldier under her wing?"

"I find it very...interesting," he replied thoughtfully. Virginia, even though she was almost

24, had never really permitted a man to court her. She had much rather be out in the woodlands

or the fields, with the animals, with the open sky, with all the plants she dearly loved.  "Something in this man has touched her, Sally, and I am hoping part of her heart may open

up in a way it never has before so that when she meets a proper young man, she may be

ready for him."

"She's taken this one in, Daddy, like some stray puppy. If he does wake up, I hope the man

doesn't prove to be some sort of cad."

"Let's just take it one day at a time.  From what I understand, he may simply not wake up,

not ever."

"Well, I intend to keep an eye on her. I'm not at all sure I like this situation."

Reluctantly, Virginia came down for supper, ate as quickly as was reasonably polite, then

hurried back up to Daniel's room on the second floor.

"I'm not sure she should be alone with him," Sally remarked.

"The man's unconscious. What can he do?" William pointed out.

"You haven't moved," Virginia said to Jonathon. "You can't eat, you know, if you don't

wake up, and if you don't eat, you won't...."  Her voice trailed off. If he didn't eat, he wouldn't

live. That was what she'd been about to say. He hadn't eaten since before dawn on the 17th

and here it was the evening of the 20th.  From what Mr. Ellis had said, he hadn't eaten much

at all for some time before that. No wonder he looked so thin. If he didn't want to wake up, if

he wanted to die, he could do it. She knew he could. She had no solidly thought out reason to

want this particular soldier to live. She just...did. Knowing what she did of him, he'd touched

her heart. How terribly he had suffered. What Mr. Ellis had told her was the worst thing she

had ever heard, beyond anything she'd ever imagined, but as she looked at him lying there

so quietly, so clean, the image of him as Ellis had described there in the woods behind the

little church...she could see it all too vividly. A shudder went through her and she lifted his

right hand off the quilted coverlet, letting it rest on her palm. There were little cuts and scrapes

on it here and there, but she liked the shape of it and didn't stop to ponder the fact it was the

first time in her life she'd ever held the hand of a man who was not her father or one of her

brothers.

Later, she lay in her own bed, unable to sleep, watching the stars out her window until she

slipped on a robe, picked up a candle and went as quietly as possible down the hallway to

Daniel's room. Looking cautiously both ways down the long hall, she opened the door and

went inside, setting her candle on the small table near the bed.

The top of the bed was high off the floor, specially made to help soothe her brother's bad back,

and she rested her elbows on the coverlet, watching the flicker of the candlelight on his face.

"I wish you were just sleeping, Jonathon," she sighed, "then in the morning I could feed you

scrambled eggs and you could tell me all about your farm and if there's a stream or a pond

where the fish are and...oh, damn." 

She watched him for a while. "Just how stubborn are you, Jonathon McDaniel? Are you more

stubborn than I am?" She lifted his hand again, about a foot from the cover, then let it drop.

It fell limply, his fingers slightly curled.  Sighing again, she cocked her head, the long braid

she wore her hair in at night, falling over the shoulder of her robe.  "What color are your

eyes?" she mused aloud. "You really must open them so I can see, Jonathon. I hope you don't

mind my calling you Jonathon, Jonathon, even though Mr. Ellis calls you Johnnie."  She sat

there, wondering how long someone could live without a bite of food.  Then she decided that

maybe she could at least get some water in him so she put another pillow under his head,

raising it up somewhat, then tried holding a cup to his lips but the water just dribbled down

his neck, wetting the collar of Daniel's nightshirt. She dabbed at that with a towel then wet

a small, clean cloth in the pitcher, letting drop by slow drop seep into his mouth. After a little

of this, she saw his throat move as he swallowed and she smiled.

"I know you're in there somewhere, Jonathon, and sooner or later you'll have to come out

and let me see you."  Sooner, she prayed silently, please, God, let it be sooner. He wouldn't

live if it wasn't.  She'd known two animals in her life who'd lain down and decided to die

and both of them had been successful. The memories of that haunted her as she looked at

him.  He didn't look much older, if any, than she was.  He couldn't die.  She knew thousands

of men, many of them younger than he, had died in the war, but they weren't here in Daniel's

bed and she hadn't seen them die. "Don't you die right in front of me, Jonathon McDaniel,

don't you dare!"

That was why she was there, why she'd gotten up in the night. He couldn't die if she were

there with him. She could will him to live if she tried hard enough. It hadn't worked with

Sam, her old collie, but it would work with Jonathon. It had to. She would not go back to

her bed. He would die if she did. Rummaging in Daniel's bookcase, she looked for something

to read aloud to him, ending up with a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. The slender book

fell easily open to the 116th sonnet. She wasn't surprised. It was Daniel's favorite and he

often read it aloud to her.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

She sat near the bed, reading it now aloud to Jonathon. No, not really reading because she

knew it perfectly by heart and not once looked down at the printed page.  For the rest of

the night she read to him, quoted from memory to him, on and on into the wee hours of the

morning. She spoke to him poems she herself had written and just before dawn she began

to tell him of things she wished to write but had not yet, of her favorite places on the land

her father owned, of the little nooks and crannies where she sat to watch the cloud shapes

pass and write in the small notebooks she always carried whenever she went out. She'd

grown very tired but would not stop lest his life stop. Her voice would carry him through

the long night, would bring him somehow out into the morning light where he would be safe.

For the last hour her eyes had been fixed on the window beyond his bed and she spoke as

she watched the first pink veils spread across the green hills. She described what she was

seeing, how she felt about the different colors dawn could make, of how the birds felt its

coming and would sing while it was yet dark.  "They know, Jonathon," she said, her voice

grown weary, "they feel its coming and they...know."

Her lids were so heavy and she let them close, her cheek coming to rest on her shoulder.

"Do...don't...stop."

She jerked awake, the book she'd been holding in her lap sliding to the floor with a little

thud. "Wh...what?" 

He had no idea of time or place, did not even know the depth up from which he swam, but

as he lay there in the near darkness, he simply gradually became aware of a voice, a voice

that didn't stop but went on and yet on some more.  It was a pleasant voice...and female. He

lay without moving, just floating in the voice for a long while as though there were substance

to it and it could bear his weight. He liked the sound of it, did not analyze the how or the why

of it, and for a time did not even separate the sounds into words.  Very slowly he began to hear

what she was saying and though it could not be real, he lay himself down into the voice and

was soothed.  The voice spoke of things he loved, of the look of fields ripe with autumn, of

the soft haze of green as spring was born on the laced woodland branches, of how the waters

were not broken by the rocks but glided over them, singing as they went, happy to be seeking

the lowest spot.  He kept his eyes closed...listening.  It was gentle, made him feel enveloped

in peace.

Virginia stood, leaning over the bed. "Jonathon?"

Slowly he blinked his lids open. The voice had a face. He hadn't really been sure about that.

That he didn't know the face did not seem important.

"Jonathon?" she said again, her voice different, charged with excitement.

He smiled, just slightly, and his lids closed again. She clamped a hand over her open mouth.

"You didn't die," she said, somewhat amazed. "Oh, Jonathon, you didn't die!"

His lids came halfway up. "Do...don't stop," he breathed again.

"It's dawn now, Jonathon. You made it through the night and no one can die, not in the dawn."

"Dawn?"

"Yes, Jonathon, it's morning." She glanced up at the brightening sky. "Oh, Jonathon, it's

morning!"

His little smile came again. She was happy. He liked that she was happy. She was happy but

her eyes sparkled with tears. "Do...don't cry."

"Cry? Oh, Jonathon, I'm not crying!" Then she laughed. "Yes, yes I'm crying. You didn't

die in the night. You didn't die, Jonathon, you didn't die!"

He had no idea what she meant. Why would he die in the night? The question jarred him into

more awareness and with that came pain in his arm and shoulder. His breath hissed in.

"Where? Seth?"

"Mr. Ellis? You mean Seth Ellis. Oh, Jonathon, he brought you here from Shepherdstown

yesterday."

Shepherdstown? The last he remembered of Shepherdstown was camping there very briefly

after the long, horrible march from Harper's Ferry. His brow knit as with every second he

realized more clearly he didn't know where he was, where Seth was, what had happened. He

tensed and the tension made his wounds hurt all the more.

She saw it all on his face...the puzzlement...the pain. Quickly she began to explain what Seth

had told her about his passing out when the assistant had begun to probe his wound. Vaguely

he remembered that, but mostly he recalled the tumble of the vast pile of dismembered arms

and legs upon him.  He covered his face with his right hand. "Oh...God!" he moaned.

"Your arm, Jonathon," she hastened to add, "you still have your arm."

He lay perfectly still, his eyes tightly closed, and as she anxiously watched, he began to move

the fingers of his left hand, then he turned his head, opened his eyes, needing to see for himself.

His eyes filled with tears. "I thought...."

"I know, Jonathon, I know. But they didn't have to take it. The bone is all right so they didn't

have to take it."

He couldn't speak. The 17th was there again, most of it anyway.  His mouth twisted and his

right hand moved up to his neck as though trying to pull away something that was there,

something too horrid to contemplate.  He shuddered violently. "I...I couldn't...."

"Shhh!" she soothed. "It's all right now, Jonathon. It's gone, all of it, completely gone."

He dragged his lids open again. "How...how do you...know about...?"

"Seth told me, Jonathon. He wanted me to know because he had to leave and go back to the

army."

"He...he's all right?"

"He's fine, Jonathon, just fine.  He wanted so much to speak with you before he left, but when

he couldn't, he told me because he thought somebody should know, somebody who was going

to take care of you."

"You...?"

"Yes, me, Jonathon. You're in my father's house near Charlestown. There are a number of

other wounded soldiers here as well."

"I...I don't...."

"There's nothing you need to do, Jonathon, not right now. Just rest and get better. That's all."

He looked at her, really seeing her for the first time, the delicate, oval face with its heavy

dark braid, the large dark brown eyes. "Wh...who?"

"Virginia," she smiled, "Virginia Lucas."

ON TO CHAPTER 20

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