Silence

Silence is what befell on me when the young boy’s eyes drunkenly closed.  His excruciating screams, hushed.  His pounding of his tense, vein popped fist, stilled.  The thoughts haunting my mind, scattered and disappeared.

That was a moment.

The darkness that draped itself on the corner of the blood splattered tent that enclosed the operating table tormented me.  It scurried away from the swaying lantern’s flickering light.  The light chased the darkness around the makeshift table until the devilish shadows engulfed my body and moved my hand that clasped a saw.

Silence.  The young boy’s eyes bulged open and his body flailed - and then he screamed.

Noise.  His cries transpierced my being.  My hand drove the saw further into his leg that had already been cut up into scrappy pieces of flesh from battle.

Noise.  It cracked - his bone cracked and the sound echoed throughout the night, forever resonating in my mind.  I felt the nearby mountains trembling with fear, but it was more likely that the camp was being attacked by an invasion of cannonballs.

The artery had to be clamped, the blood forcefully flowed out of it and then pooled into a crimson sea whose tides rose to the young boy’s waist.  Almost without looking I felt for the left over flaps of flesh, stitched them together, soaked the wound with vinegar, and poured alcohol down the boy’s throat.

I ran out of the tent and out of the Union Army’s camp.  I ran until the luminescent light that emanates from the hundreds of tents could no longer be seen.  The sun was tumbling toward the horizon until it lost its grasp on gravity and fell into the next day.  Then, there was room for the bountiful moon.  The stars appeared as little peep holes for the angels in heaven to look down at Earth and I prayed that one angel was watching over me.  I made sure that the papers that I had fastened to my ankle were still there.  They were.  Thank goodness.

I was scared.  I was right in the midst of the civil war and like when I played the piano with two hands, I was playing two different roles.  The music that my left hand played was like Beethoven’s fifth symphony, pristine tones of peace that became overpowered by a crescendo of dark tones of misery and death.  I remembered all of the soldiers that I had helped - I gave all of them medical attention regardless of what side of the war they were on.  The music that my right hand played was indefinitely changing.  A year ago, when the war first began I became a volunteer nurse.  I mostly traveled along with the Union Army because they had the means to supply me with food and shelter, however the officers had a misconception that I was utterly devoted to their side of the war.  To me, a brother killing a brother was unnatural and wretched.  It made me sick.

When it was my first week traveling with the Union Army, I accidently walked through their prisoners’ of war camp.  Men were laying on the ground weeping over their disheveled and torn bodies.  There was one man directly to my right who was laying in a mound of scarlet hay - an untreated abdomen wound.  I immediately started to care for the soldiers, however an Union Army officer confronted me, 

“Miss, I cannot let you do that.  You cannot help these men.”  His voice was rough, as if his vocal chords were made out of sandpaper and his hand tightly clenched my shoulder.  I looked the man who bore three stars directly in the eye and asked him why.  He responded, “Because, these are Confederate soldiers and we are holding them prisoner.  These rebels should die and then burn in hell.”  My stomach churned and my pulse rose to levels that it never had before, but there was nothing that I could do.  The officer showed me the way out of the prisoners’ of war camp and as I walked I felt disgusted with myself.  There I was, unintentionally putting my freedom in the prisoners faces.  Little did they know, I felt helpless and meek.

The next day I snuck into the prisoners’ of war camp for the first time.  I could not let these men die - I had to help no matter what may have happened if I were to be caught.  However, when I got there, there was a mound of dirt on the top of the hill.  Only five of the Confederate soldiers with minor bone fractures remained.   I sat on the hard relentless ground and sobbed.  I had let those men die.  I hadn’t done anything for them when I had the chance - and why? - because I was too afraid of what the officer might do to me.  But what did that make of the young men?  A mound.

I felt someone’s light touch along my shoulder.  I looked next to me and one of the soldiers with a fractured bone was sitting beside me, comforting me - the girl who allowed his friends to die the night before.

“Shh, shh... It’s okay, Miss.  It’s all going to be okay.”  The young man had a southern twang that was soothing to my ears.  

“How can you say that it’s alright?  I could have saved some of them - I could have..” My whisper trailed off into a cracked voice until it burned my throat to even breathe.

“You couldn’t have done nothin’.  In fact, you can’t do nothin’”  He spoke reassuringly.  I wiped my tears away and was able to fully see him.  A young handsome man with light brown hair and hazel eyes that seemed to change color every second.  From that day on, I ventured into the prisoners’ of war camp every night to see the handsome young man, whom I had fallen deeply in love with, to bring the prisoners food so that they didn’t starve, and to care for those who needed medical aid.

It was times like amputating a man’s leg that made me doubt myself.  How could I possibly help these men - I’m chopping off their limbs!  I only make them suffer physical pain so that they can live the rest of their life with emotional pain.

I looked around me.  Trees were scattered in the field, nestled between rolling hills that blanketed the Earth and tucked the trees into a deep slumber.  In the distance, a firefly came into my sight.  Its yellow glow was the brightest that I had ever seen.  Suddenly thousands of fireflies appeared.  It was as if the Creator himself brought the shooting stars from the sky and released them into Earth’s gravity to float about our night world.

The venomous fear that had seeped into my veins when I ran out of the tent vanished.  I realized that I was doing everything that I could possibly do for my American brothers because a life is a life no matter what border it is confined to - North, South, East, or West.

I began to walk toward a different hill full of lights when I saw two trees.  Two trees, separated by the clammy tar of a road that was freshly rained on just two hours ago.  Two trunks of coarse weather-beaten bark, each intertwines into its own spiraling pattern.  Their branches stretch in all directions, but each has a single limb that extends over the pathway that is being blanketed by the coalesced memories of fog left by last night’s storm.  These limbs long to touch but they are out of their leaves’ grasps.  Two twined trees, forever connected by their water source yet indefinitely apart - until their leaves age and fall to the ground, where they will dance to the music of the wind in their afterlife.  This was him and me.  If the war were to continue or if the Union were to win, we would be separated, just out of reach forever.  I had to find a way for us to be together forever.  I reached down my leg and firmly grasped the papers and untangled the piece of cloth that strapped them to my leg.

I walked until I entered the Confederate Army’s camp.  I was immediately pinpointed and thought to be a spy.  Their tents were dirty and their men were skinny.  A few privates put my hands behind my back and as the shouted in my ear I also heard a few whistling noises - classy.

“I’m not a spy, I’m here to help.  Take the papers.”  I yelled over the ruckus which prompted silence among the rowdy soldiers.  An officer came out of his tent and snatched the papers from a very nervous and stuttering private.

“Let’s see what we have here.”  It was obvious that the officer was amused, but once he began to read what was written on the paper he was dumbfounded.  He gratefully looked me in the eye and said, “Let her go boys, she’s one of us.”