Free Pamela Morsi by Sweetwood Bride Page B

at the spring social. He had seen himself once more as he had been, young and strong and whole.
    “Get away from me, all of you,” he yelled angrily at them. “And leave me be.”
    They scurried back from him as if he were a rabid dog. Jeptha supposed that he knew how one felt. He ruminated unkindly upon why his nephew had married a woman with a whole passel of children in tow. He didn’t want to see anyone. He didn’t want to know anyone. It had been better than twenty years since he’d had more than a word or two to say to anyone but Moss. How in the devil was he suppose to continue his life with a half dozen noisy, nosy children romping around the cabin?
    He reached for his shirt and pants hanging upon the bedpost. The former he pulled over his head without ceremony. The latter he dragged beneath the covers, managing to struggle into them inexpertly from a lying-down position. The gentlemanly behavior was not as much modesty as it was defense. The uneven stumps of his legs were a sight he could barely look upon himself without recoil. He would not inflict upon himself the horror and pity of onlookers.
    The ripped stump on the right was the one lost to the cannon shot. It was the longer of the two; badly sewn, it was jagged and lumpy just above the knee, part of the useless joint still inside. The left stump was infinitely neater. Cut cleanly at midthigh with a surgeon’s saw, it was carefully covered over with a flap of skin and stitched with the capable competence of a physician who did a dozen amputations per day.
    The front of his short trousers buttoned, he was clothed and ready to start the morning. He had long since given up such civil niceties as washing and shaving. Under no circumstances would he bathe naked in the creek as Moss did. And he was far to proud to ask his nephew to carry water to fill a tub in the cabin for him. He swiped off with a rag from time to time, frequently enough to keep the lice at bay. And he just allowed his beard to grow as it would. He didn’t see anybody and nobody ever saw him. There was no purpose in his life for dandifying. There was no purpose in his life at all.
    Grasping the headboard for balance, Jeptha leaned over and felt beneath the bed until he found his cart. His movements were slower and more deliberate than usual. Carelessness had caused more than one tumble onto the floor. He didn’t relish the bruises at any time, but now that he no longer had his privacy, pride was at issue as well.
    He slid down the side of the bed onto the cart without much trouble. He glanced up at the children. None were looking directly at him, but he felt their surreptitious gaze. They were curious and could hardly be blamed for that, he reminded himself. The whole world seemed to be drawn to the sight. Theyoung were just honest enough to be unable to hide the morbid fascination.
    Jeptha understood that. He’d been a boy once himself. A curious, cheerful, adventuresome boy, full of hopes and aspiration, though he tried not to remember it.
    The dreams were the worst. In the dreams it was often as it had been last night. He was Jigging Jeptha Barnes once more. Young and full of life. A delight to the ladies’ eyes, not an abhorrence they couldn’t take their gaze from.
    Jeptha picked up his “oars,” the two little blocks of wood that he used to propel himself forward. Forward, into another sunrise, another day, another eternity of hell on earth.
    He hadn’t thought that he would live. In the field hospital, when they’d cut off his other leg, putrid with gangrene, he hadn’t even offered an argument. He hadn’t believed that he would live.
    Why should he live? Neither of his brothers had. Nils had been cut down by a blunted saber at Antietam. And young Zackary, just fourteen, had been blown to bits by a canon shot at Piney Ridge. DeWitt Collier, his sister’s husband, had fallen at Gettysburg before ever getting a glimpse of his baby boy. Claude Pusser and Madison Pierce. Judd