Three Oaths at Gambrill Mill

Words by Michael Harris

Art by Sandra Eckert

He found a suitable oak near the stream, then dismounted to secure his horse there and untie the sacks. The horse appeared just as grateful for the relief of that unusual burden as for the cool water of the stream. She drank deeply, making ripples with her nickering, and he crouched down on his long legs to drink beside her with the shade covering them both.

After he drank his fill, the man refilled his canteen with a visible concentration not commonly associated with the task. Despite the long ride, his uniform was impeccable. And yet, as he stood he still brushed at himself, as if in the name of some deeper cleanliness. His silhouette was slim and bladed, a close beard in the style of General Grant’s, but covering a softer face. A field officer’s shoulder strap ran across the dark Union Blue of his uniform and across that strap ran a gold bar identifying him as a captain. Captain James Morris was his name.

With a grunt, he hoisted the large sacks, also of Union Blue, one over each shoulder.

As he made his way up the bank and into the sun, he observed the meadow and farmland. The wheat was waist high and the cicadas chirped and in the distance the tree line flowered with every shade of summer green. If one could take leave of one’s sense of smell, there would have been no evidence of the battle. With this being a field hospital, the limbs and bodies were undoubtedly gathered and piled somewhere, rather than strewn about as on the battlefield proper.

A young soldier rode toward him.

The captain saluted. “How do you do?”

The soldier saluted back. “As well as can be mustered, sir. Are you the man from Washington, here to call on Lieutenant Sullivan?”

“That I am. What was the decisive clue?”

Morris looked down at his crisp uniform, looked up again, and smiled a bit. The soldier chuckled.

“Believe me when I tell you,” the captain said, “I have an older one that looks rather different.”

“What’s old is new again, huh?”

“Opposite.”

There was silence for a moment but for the cicadas. The young soldier nodded toward the field hospital, a gray stone building with a water wheel in the stream.

“Building’s a mill,” the soldier said. “Converted to its current use after the fighting. Works all right.”

“Owner?”

“Man by the name of Gambrill.”

“He get out?”

The boy shrugged. “As far as we figure. No sign of anyone when we got here. Must’ve caught wind it was coming this way. Wouldn’t have had much trouble getting out. He was a rich man. Some kind of impresario.”

“Impresario?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A flour impresario.”

“Yes, sir, that’s right.”

Morris smiled again.

“Sir, might I inquire as to what you’ve got in those sacks?”

“All in good time,” the captain answered. “But suffice it to say you won’t think I’m so bad once you find out.”

“Permission to speak freely?”

“I reckon that horse is out of the barn but come ahead.”

“Well, sir, all my friends are dying or going feral in that hospital. Or both. And all I can think of is running after the Rebs for their whipping us. It’s all I think about, even as I look after them.”

“You did an ocean of good,” Morris said. “When you’re outnumbered two to one the outcome’s probably inevitable. But you slowed them down. You gave the capital time to ready itself for what’s coming.”

“Bully for the capital, sir. Truly. It’s just that it didn’t exactly feel triumphant in the moment.”

“Well, soldier, I won’t be here long but if you feel you wish to discuss it more you have my ear.”

The soldier did not react for a moment.

“If I could ask you to stand by,” he finally said, “I’ll relay your arrival to Lieutenant Sullivan, sir.”

“Take your time.”

The soldier saluted and turned back toward the hospital.

Sullivan wasn’t long in arriving. He made his way across the grass with a high-loping gait, as if navigating a field of cow pies. Morris noticed Sullivan’s uniform was in disorder. The man had lost weight but was still bigger than Morris, with the kind of ponderous mustache Morris could never manage. It made a strange pairing with Sullivan’s youth; like Morris, he was an old man only by battlefield standards.

“I knew I’d have a use for you sooner or later,” Sullivan said as he approached. The mustache could make it hard to discern whether he was serious or just fooling about. Morris knew him well enough to know guessing was useless.

The captain laid the sacks on the ground. “For you and your men. From Washington. Have a look.”

The lieutenant stepped forward, hooked a finger and tugged open one of the sacks. He ran a hand over his mouth as he tallied the treasures: ham, coffee, sugar, molasses, raisins and even some fresh fruit, a big jar of pickled eggs, tobacco, whisky and rum, medicine and bandages.

“First you cut off a run to the capital, and now you’re staffing a field hospital,” Morris told him. “There’s a chance someone would have come sooner or later with something like this between now and when the relief arrives, regardless of whether you’d called on me specifically.”

“Uh-huh.” Sullivan, jeweler-like, inspected an orange. “But I did call on you specifically. What did you say your new position was again?”

“I’m an officer with special duties, centered largely for your purposes on morale.”

“But you are also here on that other matter I wrote to you about, correct?”

“Let’s stick to the aforementioned job description, shall we? It’s in no way inaccurate.”

“Spot any Rebs on your way up?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t mutual. A lone man can elude most anything, especially when he knows the terrain and has a particular set of skills.”

Morris winked at Sullivan, who let out a loud laugh.

“Godamighty, Jim. You are still the cockiest son-of-a-bitch scout in this army.”

“Glad you still think so. But why don’t you tell me, Peter, why exactly you bothered to write. Count yourself fortunate; we usually require more information before paying this kind of visit.”

“A morale visit.”

“Yes, Sullivan. But let’s be serious now. I’m going to ask you to explain in detail the reasons why you wrote. You’re the reason I’m here but not the reason I’ll stay.”

“I suspect some of our boys may be in danger.”

“Sullivan, I will get on my horse and ride away from here.”

“Not what I meant, Jim, goddammit. Now shut up and listen to me. Since the Rebs moved on we’ve had plenty of boys come through the hospital. The ranks have mustered out for the reasons you might expect, but it’s still a busy place, and I like to make the rounds, talk to the boys. Something I have a knack for, I’ve been told. But I’ve counted among the dead those who took a wound that I believed to fall short, by all appearances, of mortal. It’s an area I’ve come to understand. And yet they showed up dead anyway.”

“These things can turn quick. Gangrene sets in, blood loss, maybe something else.”

“That may be so,” Sullivan said. “That may be so. But I reckon there’s more to it. Once I saw one turn up with a missing leg that carried no justification I could even begin to fathom.”

“This is a pretty unusual story, Sullivan.”

“We both know I don’t often put pen to paper for any purpose, much less to pull an illustrious special officer such as yourself away from his duties as a Union Army Saint Nick. Boys are dying here, Jim, boys that don’t have cause to. I’d take my oath on it.”

They locked eyes. For an instant Sullivan began to look downward, then appeared to think better of it. The gesture put a sadness into the captain. He remembered what they’d seen and done together, what Sullivan endured as Morris stood by helpless. At least, Morris thought, Sullivan’s body had remained intact.

A pair of fingers snapped in front of the captain’s face.

“You gonna say something, Jim? You win the staring contest, all right, you cocky son of a bitch?”

“Ah,” the captain croaked, his eyes refocusing. “Now then, the obvious follow-up question: What does your sawbones say to all this?”

“Quite a good deal of nothing. Same stuff you just said, about gangrene and fevers and so on. He waves me off. I think he’s a bad egg. He’s been at this a long time. As have we all.”

“Do you suspect him?”

“Indeed I do. He’s a carpenter with command of his tools and no recollection of how to build a house.”

There was a moment of silence as the captain considered. Finally, Morris asked, “How many boys do you think this has happened to?”

“Five. At least that’s what I’ve seen. But there could be others. Maybe many others. Last I checked we had fourteen living bodies still in the cots.”

“I imagine I ought to call on that sawbones.”

“Go to it, then. I told him you were coming.”

“Huh.”

“What.”

“Why’d you tell him I was coming?”

“I don’t know. Wanted to scare him, probably. Anyways, he can’t hide forever. Not from Jim Morris. So, you let ’er rip and I’ll commence to parsing out the contents of these sacks.” Sullivan lifted a bottle of whisky. He held it out toward Morris and made a face. The captain broke down and laughed despite his best efforts to resist.

“Parse some out for the boys, too, will you?”

“Just an officer’s cut here or there, perhaps. Don’t worry, Jim. I’m the man for the task.”

Morris shook his head. Then he turned and made for the mill, its telltale yellow flag with green “H” flying to identify it as a hospital. The flag was shredded at its edges and bore bullet holes.

The door through which Morris entered was matched by another just like it on the opposite wall, in the style of a shotgun shack. Inside, the field hospital was dark but nearly as warm as outside. Set a safe distance from the mill machinery, the cots lay in rows with soldiers filling many of them. The boys slept, read, talked to and among themselves. Morris looked at their bloody bandages, smelled the rot, listened to the flies buzz. He brushed at his shoulders.

On the far wall was the reviled operating table, mercifully empty, and next to it a smaller table bearing a wooden chest with an open lid. Inside were glass bottles containing laudanum, chloroform, quinine, sodium hypochlorite, turpentine, horehound.

Seemingly out of thin air, a man emerged, and Morris knew it was the surgeon. He was an older, shorter man wearing a heavily stained canvas apron. He was bald except around the sides. His face was arrayed such that his teeth were often visible, the expression of a man perpetually expecting the answer to a question unasked.

“You the sawbones?”

“Doctor Steven Withers, thank you, at your service. I assume you’re the man Lieutenant Sullivan sent for?”

“That’s right. Captain Jim Morris.”

The surgeon’s teeth came into wider view, but it was not exactly a smile.

“The lieutenant filled me in,” Morris told him. “He believes a few of the boys here may have met an unexpected demise. Are you aware of that claim?”

“Well that depends, Captain. Have you built the gallows yet or are you still looking for one final load of lumber?”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“The lieutenant filled me in, too, with no small degree of passion, during one of his recent and frequent nights in the cup. His mind’s made up, and you’re his close associate, aren’t you? He’s a talkative fellow and he said you’re fast friends. Is that true, Captain?”

He felt a shock of irritation toward both men.

“None of your damned business, but yes,” The captain said. “But never mind about me and Lieutenant Sullivan. I want to hear your side of the story. I’m here for the truth and the truth alone, and you have my oath on that.”

“Well then, let me start by telling you I’m not the only man who could’ve wielded the saw.”

He beckoned Morris forward and toward the other doorway. Out under a large oak were the bodies and limbs Morris knew had been lurking. The flies were a hellish fog. There were two severed legs on the ground, clearly arranged for the occasion, with the cut side facing them.

The surgeon waved away the flies and made his way toward the pile. He reached down and lifted the limbs.

“See this first leg? It’s ragged cut. See this other one? It’s clean, using the circular method. Do you know what that means?”

“I see that one is more neatly cut than the other.”

“I’d never do anything so sloppy as that first one.”

“Do you ever drink whisky, Dr. Withers?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Do you ever drink whisky, Dr. Withers?”

“I take a nip from time to time.”

“Ever drink to calm your nerves? I’m sure this job is tense.”

“What business is that of yours?”

“Are we concerned now about the boundaries of other men’s business? Never mind. I only mean that the quality of a person’s work can fluctuate, for a hundred reasons. Far be it from me to decry a man for taking a drink of whisky, but I daresay neither of us needs instruction on how it affects the faculties. You’re suggesting a party other than yourself is killing the soldiers because of the different types of cuts on those legs, but how am I to know your work isn’t fluctuating in itself, for any number of conceivable reasons, and rendering boys unnecessarily septic?”

The surgeon scoffed and turned toward the small table, busying himself with the bottles.

“Your friend Sullivan,” Withers said. “He’s been making his share of noise about this, but I have a stake in it, too. Not one of emotion, like the lieutenant, as that particular maiden disappeared over my horizon long ago.”

“Explain yourself, Doc.”

“I was glad when I stopped hearing screaming in my dreams, Captain. I daresay that’s a notion you can understand, on account of your soldiery. But I’ve been thinking: what if its removal is not just a relief but an advantage? Emotion is not always our ally.”

After a moment of mutual silence, he continued. “I’ve saved many men and I’ve lost my share, I’m sorry to say. But a long time ago it became rote, you see. No way to help it. In other words, there’s no chance I can be accused of murder when I need go to no special trouble to achieve the same result without rebuke, and a result, let me add, that I’ve undergone more times than I could ever tally. It’s equivalent to pruning one’s own garden before hurdling the wall to see to the apple orchard next door.”

“An apple orchard can be tempting.”

“Not if you’ve lost the taste of the apple.”

Morris looked at him. “So, what you’re telling me is that you couldn’t possibly have killed these boys because it’s too much of a chore and because you no longer value human life.”

“Wouldn’t put it quite in those words.”

“Dr. Withers, if you’re attempting to remove suspicion from yourself then I admit to having lost sight of your strategy.”

“We all do our best to make the best of it, Captain, with the oft-limited resources available to us. That’s all. Your man Sullivan? He’s no different. And I didn’t do what he suspects me of doing. I’d take my oath on that.”

“If you know something about Sullivan, Dr. Withers, now’s the time to speak your piece.”

The surgeon gave an exaggerated chuckle.

“If you worry over my whisky intake, you ought to take a gander at his. I don’t know where it all goes when he tips it up to his mouth, but when he does he sees ghosts. He sees ordnance incoming. There’s a young man in particular, who he sobs over, a man beheaded by cannon fire.”

Morris brushed at his shoulders and immediately cursed himself for doing so. The surgeon let the silence linger.

“One time he made some of the boys duck and cover in the middle of the afternoon,” the doctor said. “For no tangible reason whatsoever.”

“I’ll make a note of it.”

“You do that. And then do yourself a favor, Captain, and head on back to Washington. I know their whisky to be a damn sight better than the pop skull we got here. You did what you came here to do. These boys aren’t dying unnecessarily. I have no quarrel with you or the lieutenant. There’s nothing more to see.”

“I’ll keep my own counsel on that. Good day now.”

Morris went to make camp. The boys, who by now were reveling in the special delivery, started a bonfire and began to pass a bottle around. The cook cut slices of ham and spread molasses on them before laying them in the skillet. The smell covered the camp and some of the men smiled.

Everyone sat around the fire to eat and share stories. Sullivan led them in song and later wrestled one of the larger boys. The boy was bigger than Sullivan, but Sullivan still toyed with him before catching him in a fish hook. The boys howled with laughter; Sullivan cuffed the youngster on his head.

One by one the soldiers thanked the captain for the delivery. Once the rum began to warm them they spoke to him about where they were from, what or who they missed, what they wanted after the war. Each story was similar, Morris noted, but at the same time unique. He listened to them all and answered questions about himself as freely as his true purpose there allowed.

The sun went down and the cook made dough and filled it with raisins. The cake went around with the rum close behind it and a tin cup of a sauce made from more rum, sugar, and orange juice. Each time the rum reached him, Morris raised the bottle but did not drink.

One by one they walked, wandered, limped, or staggered off, some silently, some loudly. Morris bid everyone good night and retired. His bedroll was ready; he sat on top of it but did not remove his clothing. Instead, he cleaned and loaded his pistol.

“I imagine whisky will flush you out,” he murmured. He looked out of his tent, which faced the hospital, and the moon was nearly full.

* * *

No sound he could later recall woke Morris in the middle of the night, but he jerked awake nonetheless.

He picked up his pistol and peered through the tent flap. He saw the field hospital and, through its double doorways, the light of the bonfire on the other side.

Not one accustomed to the luxury of time when the moment for a decision was at hand, the captain slid out of the tent and crouched on his long legs in front of it.

After a moment, he stood and crept toward the hospital, pistol arm low. When he walked in through the first door, he could see the fire was burning as brightly as ever, far from the embers one might expect. The men in the cots appeared to sleep. Morris crept through, staying light on his feet to avoid noise, engaging his peripheral vision.

The captain reached the table that held the medicines. As he drew closer he recognized the bottle of laudanum from his sacks. Closer still, and he saw it was unopened. Nearby a bottle of chloroform lay empty on its side.

There was a rustling. Morris whirled and raised his pistol to the surgeon’s chest.

“Trouble sleeping, Sawbones?” He said it in a half-whisper.

“Just waiting on you.”

“Wait no more. Have you got something to say or should I drag you by your ear over to my horse? I say again, Dr. Withers, and I’ll say it one final time. If you have anything to tell me, do it now.”

“Why tell you when I can incline my head toward that fire yonder and in so doing show you instead?”

Morris glanced from the side of his eye. There were shadows there, the solid kind. Keeping his pistol on the surgeon, he sidestepped toward the doorway. When Morris got as close as he felt he could, he turned and faced the flames.

Two soldiers carried a motionless third between them, one gripping the shoulders and one the feet. Morris wondered whether he recognized the boy who greeted him at the creek that morning as the one manning the legs, one of which was in a fracture box and the other of which appeared rubbery.

They laid the man on the ground near the fire. The man at the head produced a funnel and a wad of cotton, which Morris presumed was soaked with the chloroform. The man mashed the cotton into the wide end of the funnel and placed the funnel over the boy’s face. The boy at the feet said something to the boy with the chloroform, then began to work the saw. The wounded soldier, still silent, started to shake.

It sounded at first as if the saw was cutting through ripe fruit, then it sounded more like hickory lumber. Morris was unsure what to make of what he was watching.

The shaking intensified. By and by it subsided and the soldier was still. The sawing stopped not long after. The foot boy stood, lazily raised one arm over his head, then let it drop. It struck Morris as an odd gesture, one of triumph and resignation in equal measure. Then they gathered up the body and carried it into the night.

Morris returned to the surgeon.

“See it all?” the surgeon asked.

Morris raised his pistol to the surgeon’s forehead.

“What did I just witness, Sawbones?”

“It’s those two boys doing all of it, I reckon.”

“Why did they kill the third one?”

“You should find them and ask them. Good luck in the dark.”

“You can identify them to me in the morning.”

“You just got closer to them than I ever did, Captain.”

“Have you never tried to confront them?”

“They always do it at night. Sometimes in the woods or down by the creek, sometimes here if there’s a fire. I follow them when I hear them. They seem to use the chloroform to actually kill the wounded boy, but they saw on him too, right through the femoral artery. I’ve wondered if they think they might be operating, to help somehow. Sometimes they holler about the Rebs, or weep.”

“I asked whether you’d confronted them.”

“I get as close as I can. A safe enough distance, but one where I can still observe. I’m taking notes for posterity.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Science needs subjects. Something happened to these boys, and I want to understand what it is. Because it’s what’s happened to me and to your friend the lieutenant, even if he doesn’t grasp it.”

Morris felt a sudden lump in his throat. He re-gripped the butt of his gun.

“Maybe there’s a distortion these kinds of situations can inflict on the mind,” the surgeon continued. “Situations like war and death. Now do you think that might be possible, Captain?”

“Dr. Withers, I want you to listen to me very carefully. We must stop them.”

“Want to shoot them? Go ahead. It’ll be tough in the dark but I reckon we could do it. I’ll make you a fine torch and help you navigate the terrain. I’ll be glad to testify on your behalf. Or will you haul them back to Washington? Or imprison them somewhere around here? I bet Gambrill’s mansion up on that hill has a pretty big cellar. We could put them in there, bar the doors from the outside. Perhaps you’ll shoot or imprison me instead. An action followed, of course, by the action of you plucking another old sawbones down from the sawbones tree, am I right? What shall we tell them, Captain? What shall we tell these boys we punctured and smashed and terrified and bereaved time and again and who are now dispatching wounded boys who would, and let us acknowledge the corn here, face pain and hardship for as long as they lived, a time that may not last beyond that flour mill anyway, under even the best of circumstances?”

“Now you listen here.”

“I’m listening, Captain. What shall we tell them?”

Morris felt a burning sensation under his uniform, most strongly on one shoulder. He’d first felt it as a private at Bull Run, a few moments after a round shot killed his friend, a fellow private by the name of Sam Woodward. When the shot went through Woodward’s head, flecks of what looked like brain splashed across the front and side of Morris’s uniform. The places where it had landed burned him sometimes in a strange, nervous way.

“I need to return to Washington first thing in the morning,” Morris said, pistol still trained on the surgeon. “I saw Sullivan take in a rather heroic amount tonight, so I imagine he won’t be up with the sun.”

“I reckon not.”

“Well assuming that to be the case, I have two messages to deliver. The first to you, the second to Sullivan. You’ll deliver my message to Sullivan verbatim and comply with your own in the same fashion. If you don’t I’ll find out, and I’ll take an even less-official visit to the estate of Dr. and Mrs. Steven and Martha Withers of Chester, New Jersey, where the apple orchards are even now entering fruition. And two grown sons not far away! You see, I know just who you are, Sawbones. You’re not the only clever one about. And you’re not the only one who, from time to time, feels a call to perform certain nefarities in the name of a greater good. And anyways apples are my favorite fruit. I’m looking at you now, Doc. Agreed?”

The surgeon’s head was bowed. “Yes,” he said evenly. “Agreed.”

“Why don’t you take these messages down in one of your fuckin’ notebooks?”

The surgeon prepared accordingly. Morris thought it through, remembering what he’d seen.

He also considered the surgeon’s words and actions. Disturbing and delinquent to be certain, but was there not a grain of truth to his assertion that real-time study of such matters might prevent them in the future?

Most importantly, though, Morris thought of Sullivan, and then went back once again to the first battle of Bull Run. Sullivan had been there. In fact, he’d been positioned on the redoubt between Morris and their mutual friend Sam Woodward. Morris had jerked away as the ordnance made impact with Sam’s forehead. The round shot never seemed to break stride. Morris never saw what parts of Sam’s head landed on Sullivan, but he’d heard the screams, like thick fabric tearing. He absently brushed at his shoulders as he thought.

Finally Morris raised his head and looked at the surgeon, poised to take down the promised messages.

“First, a private note to the good doctor. As I have pressing business in Washington, I will now take Dr. Withers’s advice and return to the capital. But before I go, my message to him will be thus. The good doctor will personally stop all unexplainable accidents of any kind at Gambrill Mill. With the soundness of Lieutenant Sullivan in doubt, the doctor may choose not to involve him there is not a need. If desired, the doctor may pursue justice for perpetrators as he sees fit and through the proper channels, which he is welcome to try to discern from a field hospital. Failing that, the doctor will see to all the boys, wounded and otherwise, and do all in his power to minimize suffering. In grave circumstances, he will pursue comfort and dignity where additional procedures stand a high chance of causing suffering disproportionate to their benefit. He will tend to those wounded in mind as well as body, and at a harmless distance may continue his observations in the name of science, so long as it does not interfere with justice or medical care.

“And if the good doctor should mention this conversation or utter my name again, I’ll be eating apples by nightfall.”

The surgeon’s hard hand paused and then resumed scratching for a time across the paper; by and by, he ceased, looked up, nodded, and waited.

“And now to Lieutenant Peter Sullivan and, if he chooses, the rest of the boys.”

The lump in Morris’s throat returned.

“Captain?”

“Yes. Tell him to take care of himself and the boys until relief arrives. Shouldn’t be much longer. In the meantime, he should consider this matter resolved, with shoddy and now rectified surgical methodologies to blame.”

The doctor looked up at Morris and scowled at the aspersion but pressed the matter no further. The captain continued.

“I’ll keep tabs on the outfit, and he may call on me at any time and for any purpose. I shall endeavor to respond as soon as allowed by my ongoing duties in the service of morale within the Union Army.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

The captain did not sleep after leaving the surgeon to his notes and the fire to die, but instead broke camp and rode out for Washington. He rode through the mist and the meadows and watched the sun rise. Morris brushed at his uniform even though it was not soiled, as if in the name of some deeper cleanliness.

About the author

Michael Harris is an emerging fiction author based near Washington, DC. This is his first piece of historical fiction. By day he goes by Scott and works as a freelance writer covering everything from college basketball to biomedical science. See more of his work and get in touch at www.scottharriswriter.com.

About the illustrator

Sandra Eckert is a doodler, a dabbler, and a messy and restless individual. An avid naturopath and off-the-road walker, she finds inspiration in the unscenic vistas and hidden places. While her interests currently lie in the world of art, she has been known to tend goats, whitewater kayak, fish for piranha, and teach teenaged humans. She is fascinated by the lessons of the natural world, both seen and unseen. Sandra holds a BFA with certification, and has continued her education both formally and informally, though she is too distracted to gather up her credits. She lives in Allentown with her husband, Peter, and her dogs, Jack and Tobi. Additional works are available here.