Beckoning

BECKONING

A Novel by R.S. Lehner

License notes: All rights reserved. This is copyrighted material and may not be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the author.

Beckoning

R.S. Lehner

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

CONTENTS

PRELUDE

CHAPTER 1-THE CROSSING

CHAPTER 2-GRAVESEND

CHAPTER 3-THE SCOLDING WHALE

CHAPTER 4-THE ESTATE

CHAPTER 5-THE SECRET

CHAPTER 6-PROSCRIBED

CHAPTER 7-THE AGREEMENT

CHAPTER 8-PRETENSION

CHAPTER 9-THE ASSEMBLY

CHAPTER 10-CONJURER.

CHAPTER 11-RESOLVED

PRELUDE

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

November 12, 1867.

The Civil War’s four year-long conflict had been horrific.  The newly formed nation would convulse into utter chaos and eventual war.  With North versus South, revolting against each other and with the recently established tradition of their unity cast aside; the bloody conflict had taken tens of thousands of lives from both sides.  The North, seeking to abolish slavery throughout the entire United States had forced the Southern states to rebel and divided the newly formed nation into two conflicting factions.  Now at war and with the South using slave labor to fortify their newly formed capital of Richmond Virginia, the Union had adopted President Lincoln’s proclamation and abolished slavery.  Thus the North had given every man his God-given right of freedom, much to the dismay of the South whose very essence and financial livelihood was now in jeopardy; for without slave labor to plant and harvest their cotton, who would maintain the plantations and crops that their economy had become so dependent upon?  The South would fight to the end.

There had been no question of war, it was just a matter of when and on April 12, 1861 at 4:30 am the South opened fire on Union held Fort Sumter in South Carolina.  After thirty four straight hours of cannon fire, the fort finally fell and the Confederate flag was hoisted.  The South had fired the first shot and incidentally would fire the last shot.  The Southern Confederate vessel CSS Shenandoah was the only ship to carry the Confederate flag around the world and would be the last to know that peace had been struck.  She fired at a whaler off the Aleutian Islands near Alaska and was the last combative unit to lower its flag.

Tens of thousands had died in the battles fought with each side gaining or losing in any given situation.  From open battlefields with their colors blazing to knee deep in swamps and covered in mud, these tattered soldiers found the courage to charge their enemy with savage ingenuity.  With the cannons flashing and bayonets mounted, each side had given it their best.  In the four years of campaigning, the North (because of her industrial might and some luck) had won the struggle.  In the aftermath that followed, the so-called rebels returned home; some without arms or legs, most without homes or livelihoods and some without reasons to live, they packed up their meager belongings and began walking.

The South was the vanquished.  The Union Army had confiscated their weapons, so as to insure a true end to the Confederate revolt.  Now, without hunting rifles, even their food supply was gone.  They got by with pilfered vegetables and fruit accompanied by many a fresh-caught brook trout.  If they stayed somewhere long enough snares were placed to provide rabbit and squirrels.  Sometimes with luck, they would be offered a barn to spend the night in and a hot meal from southern sympathizers.  Slowly the meandering vagabonds returned to what was left of home. 

The South suffered greatly after the truce was signed at Appomattox, Virginia on April 9, 1865.  The commanding General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate forces ordered his troops to stand down but many refused and continued to fight their war without regard to orders or regulations.  The so-called Red Legs (because of their red spats) were one such group.  They and others like them carried on the fight with minor skirmishes with Union troops, in a hit and miss fashion.  They were vastly outnumbered, without supplies and with a bounty on their heads.  They ranged far and wide being taken out one by one.  Usually when they ventured out alone and got too close to home, where they were betrayed by old acquaintances usually because of the reward, but other times it was an old feud or just plain bad blood.  From their ranks would evolve many of the outlaw gangs of the post-war period, with the Jessie James group being the most notorious.

Approaching home, some would see the aftermath of General Sherman’s notorious March to the Sea, a 60 mile wide path of total annihilation that slashed hundreds of miles through farmlands and fields, small towns, Plantations, bridges, and railroads.  He is quoted as saying war is hell and he should know because he perpetrated it an almost unrestrained fashion.  It left a huge blackened, smoldering scar that literarily cried from beginning to end across the southern states.  This was the tactic used to demoralize the South and with the slash-and-burn policy in place, looting and rape were inevitable and unavoidable.  Though some cases were brought to the attention of Union General Ulysses S. Grant, they were for the most part dismissed as collateral damage with the parties involved either lying, missing or dead.  Coupled with the impossibility task of finding the men involved or living witnesses, it was considered a waste of time and resources to pursue.

Enter now, Doctor David Desear, a 34 year-old surgeon from England who volunteered to fight for the North.  Serving in this capacity, he was ordered to near the front lines to aid the horribly maimed and mutilated soldiers of both sides (though the North took precedence)  A rebel soldier, though deemed an enemy combatant until surrendering, would then become a prisoner of war.  He found himself working under the most strenuous conditions of butchery and filth.  Hacking and sawing every night after battles had raged and men had fallen literally to pieces.  Through this he toiled, sometimes on duty and call for days on end.  The three day long battle at Gettysburg was the most barbaric.  The stretcher bearers never stopped delivering this audible, moaning carnage to his operating table.  It amazed him that these men, more dead than alive, would actually survive.  Some were literally without legs or lower trunks and would spend the rest of their short lives in continual care.  David found that the men without faces were the most disturbing.  Very little could be done for them.  Even though they were alive, their gross abnormalities would usually lead them to an early grave.  Imagine not being able to look into a mirror without retching or having each meal pre-cut into tiny pieces, then mashed to a pulp and finally poured down a funnel into what was left of your oral cavity.  This was to be for the rest of your life, which usually wasn’t very long.  He found this especially distressing.

He had taken the Hippocratic Oath upon completion of medical school and even his own enemy, was not his enemy on the operating table.  There was never enough morphine, diethyl ether (Letheon) or chloroform for the operations and several times during the amputation process, he had unwittingly taken a finger or thumb off of one of his assistants in the frenzy of sawing through a femur bone.  Speed was called for here.  You can cut off a man’s leg and not put him into shock which would probably kill him, if you were fast enough.  To this end, David was fast.

Two years had passed when a letter from his younger sister in London had arrived and because of its urgency, he had resigned his commission in Washington and booked passage on the fast and heavily masted Clipper Verilin which hailed out of New Bedford, Massachusetts.  He was going home.

CHAPTER 1-THE CROSSING

From where David stood topside, the Atlantic Ocean rolled and frothed.  Its foaming crests reared up and slammed into the prow of the Verilin.  She would ride high over three waves and then like the falling barometer, plummet beneath the next, just long enough to make him wonder if it was going to recover, but make progress she would.  Time and time again like a ceaseless pile-driver the ship’s forecastle would rise up and up, suspended on a huge swell and then as if holding her breath, breach deep into the depths almost as if it was looking around.  The entire ship would shudder and snap with loud groaning while the main canvas whipped in the soaking rain.  Soaking wet and holding the rail with both hands he wondered if he had acted too quickly and maybe without reservations, for this truly was an unintended portion of sea-faring that was new to him.

This had continued for a full day and a half.  He was unable to eat and fully nauseated.  David slipped below decks to his quarters and lay on his bunk.  Here the constant movement was tolerable because he couldn’t see it; just hear and feel it.

Taking the moment to reflect on his rash decision to go home, he opened the letter from his sister and began to read:

October 2 1867

Dear David,

I am sorry for not writing you sooner but the state of affairs here in London has become somewhat of a tizzy.  Things have changed since I last wrote.

Although father is ever busy with his papers and anthropological presentations and acting so pre-occupied, though you know he cares deeply about you, he is voicing little concern about your civil war adventure there in America.  In kind, your abrupt decision to take a commission in that Great War in the United States leaves me slightly amiss as to your reasoning and ideology.  Surely your leaving was undefined and without merit as I hope you can now agree.  Can you?

After years of medical school both here and abroad, you have become a man of the world, a truly specialized physician in traumatic field injuries and exigency care and there it all ends.  I on the