Read Online Walt Whitman's Secret by George Fetherling - Free Book Online

at Armory Square, as a dear young soldier-friend has a limb amputated, and has tended him quietly through the long recovery. He is even more confident that the war will end soon as the glorious GeneralGrant pursues the president’s angelic mission, the noblest one ever devised in These States, that of holding said States together. But while this may be, the maiming and suffering and death must continue, and he must continue to live surrounded by it all.
    He crosses over into the pacified part of Virginia, visiting the hospitals there, which are places to store the wounded temporarily until the goods can be freighted to Washington, mother of the Republic, the most heavily fortified spot on Earth, people say. For weeks he even camps with troops in the field, the not yet wounded and the not yet dead. Later he goes to hear a famous spiritualist, wondering, at the back of his mind, whether there might in fact be some way to receive messages from all the young men whose cots have suddenly become free after a quick scuffle with the angels in the middle of the night or simply from defeat of a spirit weakened by pain and a broken heart. He would like to believe, but he cannot.
    He realizes with greater and greater certainty just how the hospital visits are affecting his own health more and more. He complains to himself and others of poor circulation, tingling sensations in his fingers, toes and reproductive extremities, and mysterious headches that seem to come from the center of the brain, not the front or the temples. In time, the doctors can see what is becoming of him. They order him to stay out of the hospitals until he has recovered. Some days war and family are not separate things. Rebels in his bloodstream are in a secessionist frame of mind.
    Every day the evening papers are full of war news, some of it accurate. An item says that George Whitman’s regiment, the Fifty-first New York, will pass through the city with the rest of General Burnside’s army. Walt stands among the parade watchers for three hours as the current of blue uniforms ripples past, on and on to the point where people might suspect that the head of the column had circled the city block in a flanking maneuver, forming a continuousloop. But no, the regimental flags are always different. Then he sees one such flag, for the good old Fifty-first, and there he is, George, flushed with sunburn though it is not yet May and looking perfectly hale. Fortunately, he is marching at the head of his rank and Walt rushes out to surprise him. He walks along at his brother’s side, keeping pace but staying out of step, and brings him up to date on news from home, none of it particularly refreshing. Walt tires, but the marching does not. He clutches George’s right hand in farewell and soon the two sets of fingers slip away from each other and the army pushes on, disappearing up the street as though into a tunnel.

    â€œTell me about the men in your life before me.”
    Walt is surprised, for he would never make the same demand of Pete, who for all his general cockiness is most guarded about his own affections. His actions always speak more loudly than his words, for he lives in the sway of the present moment, not the stillness of the past.
    â€œThey have been several. More than a couple but fewer than a multitude.”
    The two men are in Walt’s room in a boarding-house on Pennsyl vania Avenue close to Third Street where he has relocated, believing that a change of environment might do him good, not to mention regular meals of better food.
    â€œAll right, who was the first one? Start with him.” Pete says this in a tease.
    â€œThe first important one was a driver.” Walt is actually skipping a few decades here, not letting on that he is transposing Pete’s immediate predecessor to a point far back in time.
    â€œYou fancy all the drivers, don’t you?” Pete is smiling. He has a fine smile, though his teeth are in poor