He gets to whimpering again, but she is calm, unwinding that bandage like he ain’t making a sound. The closer she gets to the end of the stub, the worse it looks with map lines of veins running in red streaks up Joseph’s arm. Once the flannel is unwrapped, there is nothing but the hot red arm and a clump of rust and yellow clotted lint at the end of the stump. Mrs. Chalmers drops the flannel to the floor and picks at the edge of the lint, trying to get it loose, but it sticks fast.
She wets a cloth from her basket, gently running it down Joseph’s arm, the water dripping through the lint pad and onto the floor, making a pale pink stain on the old bandage lying there. Then she wrings that cloth out into the bowl by Joseph’s bed and runs it over his arm again and again. Holding his upper arm, I feel it getting cooler, but the heat still burns from deep inside and it won’t be cool for long.
When the lint is wet through, it peels off easy in Mrs. Chalmers’ hands. This don’t seem any better than those parts by the door outside, only it’s got a body attached to it. At the end of the stump the skin folds over on itself, held with a line of black horsehair stitching, smeared with thick lemon-curd-yellow pus, a sickly sweet smell coming from it.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘that’s the laudable pus. The surgeon says it’s a sign of healing.’
‘Ward-Master says he ain’t long for this world,’ I whisper.
‘Well, only the Good Lord knows for certain.’
Mrs. Chalmers takes the rag again and keeps wiping the end of the stump, only stopping her cleaning to squeeze the bits of softened scab and pus into the bowl. There ain’t a place to look that don’t make me feel something awful.
When she gets that stump cleared off, Mrs. Chalmers takes a ball of lint from her basket and a fresh roll of flannel. She presses the lint against the end of the stump with one hand and begins winding the bandage around and around it. Joseph’s head moves and his eyes start to open when she touches him, but he sighs and then is still.
She catches me watching her tie the bandage knot and smiles. ‘You’ll do the other one.’
‘No—I—’
‘I’m needed elsewhere. You can do this on your own. Unless you’re a coward,’ she says, as she puts a ball of lint and a roll of flannel at the foot of Joseph’s bed.
‘Mrs. Chalmers—please?’
‘Do this one,’ she says, turning her back on me, her basket on her arm. ‘Then you need never do it again.’
I mutter under my breath, ‘Goddamn it all to hell.’
I drag the stool round to the other side of his bed. The noise of it makes Joseph twitch, but he don’t seem near to waking. I do everything just like Mrs. Chalmers did, but it takes me twice as long, flies gathering on the end of his arm each time I rinse out the cloth.
My bandage don’t look so smooth and even, but I’m hoping it will still do the job when Mrs. Chalmers comes back to my side.
‘I’m all out of bandages and I think it’s time we get to camp. We’ve done some good today,’ she says. ‘I knew you had the knack,’ she goes on, nodding at Joseph’s arm.
‘I ain’t got the knack,’ I say too loud, making Joseph shift in his stupor, and then make my voice go quiet. ‘But I can do a thing that needs doing.’
WE ARE ON the edge of camp when Mrs. Chalmers looks at me and says, ‘How do you do it?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Being a soldier,’ she says, her skin going the same sunrise pink as the flowers dotting her dress, and I tell myself she only means about the marching and laboring.
‘You grow up on a farm?’ I ask her, even though anyone can tell by looking she ain’t. She shakes her head.
‘Well, it’s like everything else,’ I say, working to keep my voice low. ‘It just has to be done, is all.’
‘But I’m not doing it,’ she says. ‘I don’t see another soul doing what you are.’
She touches my elbow and that is when I see she ain’t talking about the drilling or working and I wonder how it is she knows the truth about me.
‘I ain’t got another choice in the matter,’ I say to her. Then I grab her wrist and it is so birdbone tiny it might snap in my hand. ‘Don’t you tell a soul. I can’t go back like this, not after leaving like I did.’
Her hazel eyes go big and shimmery like Betsy’s sometimes do. I let her arm go.
‘I won’t say a word,’ she whispers. ‘I was only hoping … I get so lonely.’ She sweeps her hand through the air, toward the tents, the soldiers gathering for their nightly poker games, already loud with drink. And then those tears start spilling.
‘It is a lonely thing sometimes. But you ain’t got the same worries as me.’ I shake my head. ‘You ain’t got to hide—’
‘I won’t tell a soul,’ she says, her voice so firm and serious. I think on the lies she told her own husband. Then I think how gentle she was with the soldiers at the hospital.
‘You’ve got to help me keep it secret,’ I say. ‘There’s people back home but they don’t—that letter—My husband and I, we need the money I’m earning so we can have our own place.’
‘I promise,’ she says, and I don’t dare do a thing but believe her.