The Better Angels of Our Nature by S. C. Gylanders Read Free Book Online Page B

sir, if you were to calm down and take a grip on yourself.”
    “And if I don’t, what will you do, have me court-martialed?”
    “No, sir, but I will make a formal request of the chief medical officer that you be examined for traces of insanity.” Fitzjohn spoke like a man who had been considering this option for some time. He turned on his heel and walked away.
    “Maybe I am insane, maybe we’re all goddamn insane!” Cartwright shouted, following him down the aisle. “Look around you, Fitzjohn, does any of this look like the work of a sane people?
You’re
crazy, I’m crazy,
Old Abe
is crazy.
Jeff Davis
is crazy! But I’m not gonna let you cut off that leg, do you hear me, Fitzjohn? You’re a damn fool—and one of these days so help me God I’ll put you out of your misery—” His voice tapered off as he suddenly became aware of his cheering audience—the patients whose well-being he was so energetically defending. “—And when they lock me up I’ll say I did it because you killed more of our boys than the Rebels ever did.” He concluded in a more subdued voice, removing his spectacles.
    A soldier in a nearby cot who heard him called out, “Hey, Doc, wanna lend ma pistol so yer can shoot that old coot?”
    “What?”
Cartwright blinked at him.
    This soldier produced a rusted navy Colt from under his pillow, which he stroked lovingly. “Took it from the same lousy stinkin’ Reb who done this to ma leg. I kept it close by when I hear’ed you an that old buzzard debatin’ whether I was gonna lose this’an.” He tapped the leg with the pistol.
    “Give me that gun.” Cartwright walked toward him, his hand outstretched. “No damn guns in here. No damn guns in my hospital, you understand?”
    “Ah, Doc, don’t yer know’ed ah’m on yer side.” The soldier held the gun to his chest.
    “I said
give me the gun, goddamn it!
”
    Reluctantly the soldier handed it over. Cartwright slipped it into the pocket of his apron.
    “Yer know sumpin’, Doc, yer got one hell of a mean disposition for a sawbones,” said the soldier who’d just lost his prized possession, laughing heartily.
    “I’d have me a special room to keep ma hound dogs.”
    Jesse brought his eyes back to Davy Hubble, who was fully dressed, lying on his cot staring up at the canvas ceiling and grinning. “I wouldn’t have no coffee room. I’d have me a room special fer ma old hound dawgs and then Ma wouldna keep gettin’ at me so when they shite on her newscrubbed floor.”
    “Read some more, Jess,” said the sergeant with the sling in the next cot.
    Jesse lifted the book and continued to read, “‘…When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast—’”
    “That fella ain’t got nuthin’ t’do but wait on his vittles from morn’ ’til night.” This observation came from a corporal of artillery recovering from a bout of dysentery.
    “Hey, Doc—”
    Cartwright had joined their small reading group.
    “Doc, I ate ma breakfast.” Davy showed the surgeon the empty bowl that had contained rice pudding. “Jess here fed me, jest like ma old ma used to do when we were young’uns.”
    “That’s the spirit, soldier,” he said in a tired voice, his mouth making the shape of a brief smile. It was barely midday; he had been on duty all night but had no inclination to leave. He wouldn’t sleep anyhow, he would dream of the gothic Fitzjohn hovering overhead with an amputating saw between his teeth. “What you doing in here?” he asked Jesse. “Ain’t you supposed to be drilling or marching?”
    “You said Davy needed encouragement to eat, sir.”
    “Did I? I don’t remember saying that. It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing I would say, leastways not when I’m sober. Go on reading, don’t let me interrupt you. You read very well.”
    “Thank you, sir. ‘A bottle of good claret after dinner—’”
    “Yessiree.” Cornelius’s shrill high-pitched