Page 65 of Under the Tulip Tree
Eagerly I went on to the next verse, wanting to prove to Sam the text was indeed about Southerners, but I stopped halfway through verse27. I silently read the remaining words, and I knew. This was why Sam chose this passage.
“What’s it say, Frankie?” asked Henry from the bed next to Sam’s. The young man with a leg missing waited for me to continue.
Sam’s eyes were open now. I fumed when I met his steady gaze. “I think I’m done reading for the day.”
He ignored my hard tone and gave me a patient look. “Please finish it, Frankie.”
I narrowed my gaze. “It don’t change anything.”
He nodded.
With gritted teeth, I read, “‘But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.’”
I felt every eye in the silent room on us. The other patients had heard me argue against tending the prisoners. Their nods of agreement told me I was right. Every one of them had been used by white people. They’d all suffered at the hands of masters and overseers. They lay in this hospital because of men who wanted to keep us in bondage simply because of the color of our skin.
Sam didn’t speak, but it didn’t matter. I knew what he’d say, and I didn’t want to hear it.
Low conversations eventually resumed throughout the room. Henry sent me one last look of sympathy before he closed his eyes. He’d joined the Federal Army mere days before a Confederate cannonball blew off his leg. How would he feel if I up and left him and the others to go tend the very men who’d done that tohim?
I closed the book and laid it in my lap, staring at the black leather cover. Since the day I’d made peace with God, I’d fallen into a comfortable belief in him and the words printed in the Bible. I wasn’t as passionate about it as Sam was, but it felt good to know there was Someone more powerful than the white people in charge of my world. Why he let them rule over us was still a mystery, but I thought I’d begun to trusthim.
Now I wasn’t sure I trusted him at all. How could he ask me to love my enemies? The very thought left me with a feeling of betrayal deep in my soul. Betrayed by God and by Sam.
“Give me one good reason why I should step a toe in that prison hospital.”
Sam’s eyes were closed again, but I knew he’d heard despite me trying to keep my angry voice lowered so the others wouldn’t hear.
He turned his head and met my gaze. “Because you ain’t like them.”
It wasn’t the answer I expected. “What do you mean?”
“You ain’t like them,” he repeated. “You wouldn’t treat someone badly because they had white skin. I’ve seen you care for the officers the last two years, doing their laundry, tidying their rooms. Sure, it was your job, but you didn’t have to give so much attention to them as you did.”
I thought back to the days before the battle began. In my hearing, General Thomas told one of his colonels that I’d taken such good care of his officers, their wives would be jealous upon their return home. The comment pleased me then, but now I wished he hadn’t noticed. I wished Sam hadn’t noticed.
Why, I wondered, had I worked so hard for the officers? The gold coins I received might be an obvious answer, yet I knew it wasn’t because of them. I’d worked just as hard for Mr. Waters back at the warehouse and never earned a cent.
“You ain’t like them, Frankie.” Sam’s soft voice drew me from my thoughts. His eyes held no condemnation. Only peace.
Suddenly my anger with him ebbed until nothing remained.
This man knew me. He saw me. And he loved me in spite of it all.
“I can’t do it, Sam,” I whispered, fear rising at the thought of entering the prison hospital. I’d been willing to tend whiteUnion soldiers, but I could not bear the thought of touching the men in gray. Their kind had wounded me too deeply with their hands, their words, their actions.
“Will you think on it?”
My every instinct screamed to refuse even that small concession, but the earnestness on his face was too much. “I’ll think onit.”
Over the next three days, we settled into a truce. Sam didn’t ask me to help the Confederate prisoners, and I pretended everything was fine. But on the inside, I was a mess. Even my dreams were haunted by men in gray, begging for help.
Illa came to my tent early the fourth morning. I hadn’t slept well. Nell hadn’t come back to the tent last night, and I worried she’d found another good-for-nothing to spend time with. Between Sam and his confounded plea, and Nell and her confounded naiveté, I wanted to pull the blanket over my head and hide from the world.
“Sam told me of his request for thee to work in the prison hospital,” Illa said at my questioning look.
I sat up, shivering in the chilly morning air. I wasn’t in the mood to hear another sermon on why I should help those men. “If you’re here to tell me you agree with him, I’d rather not hear it.”
She sat on the edge of Nell’s empty bed. “Then it will surprise thee to hear me say I don’t believe thee should do it.”
