The Cottoncrest Curse: A Novel

Chapter 33

118 1893 Chapter 33 Dr. Cailleteau left Cottoncrest and headed northwest, back toward Parteblanc, his buggy squeaking with every slow step of his horse. The weather was changing. Soon the temperature would drop dramatically . Dr. Cailleteau could feel it coming. Underneath his vast folds of skin and fat, Dr. Cailleteau’s joints ached with each jolt of the wooden wheels on the rutted road. The air was full of odors. Ominous clouds to the south smelled of rain. The acrid smell of burning fields was everywhere. Strong wind gusts from the nearby thunderstorms gathered force and swept down in waves upon the burning fields, tossing the smoke in strange directions . Rain and smoke. The only thing missing was the smell of death; that was confined to the two bodies starting to rot in the Cottoncrest barn. The smell of death, however, had once filled his lungs every day, decades ago. The smell had remained on his hands and clothes, on his surgical knives and apron, on his boots and socks and hat. Death’s odors had permeated him. François Cailleteau had gotten to where he believed he could smell death coming. The war had done that for him. To him. Well, maybe not the smell of death itself but, rather, the smell of the fear of death. From the time he spent in his gray uniform, his heavy canvas apron red with blood and covered with bits of human debris, he had learned that death could strike at any moment. From bullets. From cannons. From disease. From anywhere. He had seen it time and time again. You could be hidden behind a thick redoubt and have it blown up in your face. You could be kneeling down in the mud to tie your shoe, and a bullet would pierce your brain. You could get scratched starting the late-evening’s fire, and sepsis 119 would set in, and your limbs would rot, and then your body would fail. You could not have a mark on your limbs but start in with a hacking cough and not survive ’til dawn, gasping for each breath, your lungs clogged. You could have survived another day’s bombardment during the long siege and then choke to death on the bone of a baked rat caught in your throat as you hastily ate your first meal in two days, all the while glad that you had caught something to eat, even if it was only a rat feasting on the bodies of your dead comrades. Death was everywhere, every hour of every day. Young François Cailleteau, newly minted as a physician before Secession had been declared, his arms strong on a powerful torso, had walked the deep trenches at Port Hudson, tending to the wounded and comforting the others who were, as yet, uninjured but who cherished a kind word. Young Dr. Cailleteau had found he could smell the fear of those who feared death. It covered them like a thick shroud. You could see it in their eyes—pupils dilating with a growing dread of the inevitable. Some were pimply-faced recruits, mere boys, their ill-fitting gray uniforms hanging limply on them, their Confederate caps pulled down tightly over hair crawling with lice. They had joined up, so sure of themselves and so ready for the glories of battle. Now they were shaken by days and days of bombardment, feeling certain that any moment would be their last. Others were married men, longing for their wives, desperately trying to survive just one more day and trying to hide their panic that they would not. Then there were the injured and maimed. They cried in mortal agony, the mere act of inhaling bringing anguish with each breath. Dr. Cailleteau knew they were screaming not to be granted the release of dying but to be granted just a second more of life, no matter how terrible it was, no matter how wracked with pain they were, no matter that their guts were oozing out of their shirts and onto the ground, their limbs broken and missing. And then there were those who squirmed under the saw and the fleam and the surgical knife. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Dr. Cailleteau had lost count. Bilious fevers racked their bodies. Pus and blood ran from every natural orifice as well as the unnatural ones 120 caused by their injuries. Even though...