Previously in the book: Edwin Stanton places President and Mrs. Lincoln under guard in the White House Basement with Pvt. Adam Christy at the door. Christy does not know he’s about the meet the love of his life, Jessie Home, a volunteer nurse at an Army hospital.
Jessie’s eyes focused on the long expanse of the Mall. Cordie’s comments on men’s bodies turned her thoughts to the evening after her father’s death. She was in the morgue, saying good-bye and explaining to him why she had signed the indigence form. The burial would have taken all their money, and none would be left to pursue the dreams her father had for her. Gazing at his body after she lifted the white sheet, she thought what a fine-looking Scotsman he was. No one would have ever guessed he had a weak heart. Her mother tried to tell Jessie with her last breath, but, in her sorrow, she had forgotten the admonition.
“Miss, are you done?” a man asked.
Jessie jumped as she looked up to see the man in his thirties, fairly nondescript except for an aloof gaze in his eyes. Blinking she did not know how to respond, still in grief.
“I’ve a family waiting supper on me,” he informed her. “I want to lock up.”
“He was me father,” she replied in a whisper.
“Well, I’m a father too, and my children want to see me.” His face remained a blank.
“Very well.” She looked back at her father’s body. “When will the funeral be?”
“Funeral? What funeral?”
“I know it’s just a potter’s field, but there’s going to be a burial, and I want to be there.”
“There ain’t going to be a funeral, miss. This is an indigence case.”
“Funeral, burial, whatever ye call it, I want to be there.” She was beginning to be impatient.
“I told you,” he repeated harshly, “this is an indigence case, no funeral, no burial, no nothing.”
“No burial? Ye have to put him in the ground somewhere.”
“This is New York City, miss. Land is scarce, and it can’t be wasted on indigence cases.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Her brow furrowed as tried not to lose her temper.
“Didn’t they tell you? We toss indigent bodies into the Hudson River.”
“What?” A moment passed before she could collect her thoughts. “Ye can’t do that.”
“Oh yes we can. You signed the form.”
“But I didn’t know what I was signing!”
“Fine. Have your funeral parlor pick up the body tomorrow morning. We can’t keep it around here.”
“I don’t have a funeral parlor.”
“Then you better get one fast.”
“I certainly will.” Jessie turned to leave as she thought of something. Looking around she asked, “And how much will a funeral parlor being costing me?”
“I don’t know. Now will you leave?”
“Yes, I will, and tomorrow morning I’ll be here with the most proper funeral parlor man ye ever did see.”
Jessie went to several parlors the next day, each more expensive than the last. She visited a couple of cemeteries, finding the cost of a plot even more. She could buy a farm in Scotland, she told them, and they told her to go back to Scotland and buy one. Giving her father a fitting funeral and final resting place would take all the money they had saved and put her in debt for another year. What would her parents do, she fretted, walking down the street, absently in the direction of the morgue. Such questions were foolishness, she told herself, because both of them were dead and could not give her advice.
Turning a corner, she repeated the thought that they were dead and incapable to help her. They would never know that fish would tear at his flesh. They were unable to rebuke her for putting her own future first. Entering the morgue, she went to the office to tell the man her decision.
“Very well,” the man said. “It makes no difference to me.”
“May I see him one last time?”
“Don’t take too long.”
Jessie stared at her father’s face, touching his cold cheek, not knowing whether to apologize or to tell him she made a good deal for herself; instead, she walked away. Soon she arrived at a mansion on Park Avenue to begin a day of cleaning. Within a few minutes she broke down in tears.
“What’s wrong, darling?” the cook asked.
“I can’t stay here,” she replied softly. Without giving details, she told the woman her father had died and she could not stand the thought of living in the horrible city that took his life.
“Go to Washington. There are plenty of jobs there. You can make good money.”
“Good money,” she repeated absently. The idea of money repelled her now. She did not want more money. She had enough on which to live simply for some time. Jessie thought this was the moment to do penance for her awful deeds.
“They have hospitals in Washington, don’t they?”
“Oh, but they don’t pay nothing,” the cook replied. “They only take volunteers.”
“Good, then I’ll work for nothing. The poor wounded boys need me.”
The cook must have thought her a fool, Jessie believed as she walked with Cordie, but her atonement made her feel better, and she hoped her parents, looking down from above, forgave her.
“The fog is thick tonight,” Cordie said as they crossed the iron bridge over the old city canal, now a cesspool.
Her comment brought Jessie gratefully back to the present, not wanting to dwell on the fate to which she had condemned her father’s corpse.
“We’re finally getting there,” Cordie said. “I hope Gabby is waiting for us.”
Jessie smiled and nodded at her, even though she was still recovering from her traumatic memories. As they approached the last block to the Executive Mansion, Jessie saw a slender male figure in the haze. Her heart began to beat faster, for the approaching man looked like her father—the same size, red hair glinting in the street lamp light. As she walked closer, her heart relaxed; this man, though similar in shape, did not have her father’s strength. She sighed. It would be nice to have a beau who almost looked like her father.