Andersonville (7 page)

“What'd you do that for?” Jim asked shrilly.

“They was beatin' on one of them Indians, tryin' to take his ration.”

Limber opened his mouth, lips curling, but then took a breath.

“Ah, hell, you did right, Earl. I can't be mad at you. You damn near shamed us all today. These Raiders are a goddamned pestilence. We ain't never gonna be rid of 'em unless we start stickin' together, I guess. Still, I wish you'd said something to me. I'm responsible for you all. Tell you what. From now on, we get a watch going in shifts, just like we were in camp. Look out for each other. Agreed?”

Barclay shrugged.

“Sure.”

Limber looked down at Charlie and shook his head.

“I guess you just got caught up in it, huh?”

Charlie looked at Barclay briefly, then back at Limber, and nodded.

“Shit,” said Limber. “In the morning you better report to the South Gate and get your face sewn up, Charlie.”

Charlie shook his head violently.

“What kinda sense does that make?” Barclay scolded. “You want your lip to green up and drop off?”

“I'd rather one of you do it,” Charlie murmured through the bloody rag. “I don't want no Rebel sawbones stitchin' me.”

“Suit yourself,” Limber said, sighing. “But you ain't never gonna be the beauty you were if one of us does it.”

“I trust you, Jim,” Charlie mumbled.

Limber laughed.

“I'll get my sewing kit.”

In the morning, Charlie's swollen, haphazardly stitched wound looked like an ugly tropical caterpillar had settled across his face.

But he didn't join the thousand or more infirm who crawled or were borne on blankets by their comrades to wait alongside the rows of dead at the South Gate to see the three surgeons in their pavilion on the other side of the widget. By the time that multitude had been seen and mostly returned groaning to the stockade, many of their number were simply laid among the dead, having expired in the queue.

Barclay marveled again at the inefficiency of every official procedure of the prison. The entire ungainly mechanism seemed deliberately designed to foment misery and suffering in its charges. Could the administrators really be that poorly organized? There was plenty of wood in the surrounding forest, but no barracks had been constructed to shield the prisoners from the elements. There were surely berries and onions and potatoes in abundance in the countryside, but none were issued among the rations to bolster the men's resistance to disease and malnutrition. Was there something to what he had been told about the place?

He knew vaguely that above Captain Wirz there was General John H. Winder, the superintendent of military prisons, a cruel and corrupt officer who until recently had been responsible for Libby Prison and Castle Thunder in Richmond, in the latter of which he previously had experienced some of that man's cruel and neglectful policies firsthand.

As roll call ended and he took his place in the Negro work detail once more, Captain Wirz, who had ridden into the stockade on his horse to oversee the cockeyed proceedings, was approached by Sergeant Turner.

When Wirz nodded, Turner took his ever-present whip from his belt and raised it in some kind of signal.

From the lines of orderly formed wraiths, Chickamauga hobbled out on his crutch.

The three men conferred a bit, and Barclay's stomach dropped when he saw Turner turn from the conversation and look directly at him.

Wirz looked down at him, too. He nudged his horse in the ribs and walked over to stand before the Negroes.

Turner handed something to Chickamauga, who touched his hat and doddered back to his ninety hurriedly without a backward glance.

Wirz led his horse up and down the line of Negroes for a moment, then stopped in front of Barclay and pointed to him.

“Step forward, you.”

Barclay swallowed and took four steps out of line.

Turner joined Wirz. He had not replaced his whip.

“About-face,” Wirz commanded.

Barclay hesitated, then turned and faced the other black men.

“It has been brought to my attention,” Wirz bellowed at them over his shoulder, “that this man may not be who he claims to be. He is on the rolls as Private Earl Stevens, 57th United States Colored Infantry. Are there any among you from that unit who can attest to his identity? Any assistance in this matter will earn you an extra ration of meat today.”

The prisoners stood stone-faced, and as Barclay glanced up and down the line of stoic faces, he felt sure Wirz would get no help from them at any rate. He met Callixtus's good eye. The young man nodded slightly in reassurance.

Then one dark hand was raised in the back.

“Yes? Step forward.”

The other prisoners looked back in surprise as Clemis limped to the front to stand only a few feet directly in front of Barclay.

There was no avoiding that accusatory gaze now. Clemis looked him right in the eye and said, “I joined up with Earl Stevens in the 57th, Cap'n. I ain't never seen this man before.”

Barclay narrowed his eyes and balled his fists at his side. The shiftless son of a bitch had sold him out for no reason other than pure meanness and an ounce or two of bad bacon.

“Sergeant Humes,” said Wirz behind him, “see this man draws an extra ration.”

“I don't want no extra ration, Cap'n,” Clemis said, still staring at Barclay.

“Whatever you like,” Wirz said after a moment's pause. “Return to your place.”

Clemis limped back in line, drawing stares from his comrades.

“Sergeant Turner,” Wirz said.

The details of Turner's order apparently had been worked out in advance. Barclay felt the man's sweaty hand clamp on the nape of his neck like that of a cross schoolmaster.

He stiffened. It was his first instinct to turn and break the wrist attached to the hand. But he knew it would get him nowhere.

He allowed himself to be led.

Turner walked him to the stocks. He heard Wirz's horse's hooves falling behind him.

Turner directed him to the flogging pole and broke into a jogging run, nearly slamming Barclay into it so that he had to throw out his hands to stop himself.

Turner spun him around and put the stake against his spine.

He gripped Barclay just under the chin and squeezed till his eyes watered.

Two of Turner's usual assistants stood flanking him, and Wirz loomed behind, towering on his mount.

“Grab hold,” Turner said, and the two privates came up and grabbed his wrists.

Turner stepped back and drew his Arkansas toothpick from its scabbard, the sun flashing on the blade. He darted in and slashed Barclay's tunic open down the front, the buttons rolling away.

The two soldiers on either side of him pulled it from his shoulders and tore away his undershirt.

Wirz held up his hand like Pontius Pilate.

“This morning,” he called down to Barclay in his clipped Swiss accent, loud enough for anyone else to hear, “a patrol marched back along the railroad and found a missing sentry dead. His neck was broke. They also found a dead nigger in a federal uniform without a mark on him. We can assume he died before he was thrown from the train.”

Wirz leaned forward in his saddle, his arm draped across the horn.

“Now you will tell me who you are and how you came to be on that train or I will have Sergeant Turner give you over to his dogs.”

Barclay closed his eyes. When he opened them, tears were running down his face. He shook his head violently, remembering how the man he'd seen Turner beat to death yesterday had acted.

“Boss Cap'n, sir,” he gasped. “My name Barclay Lourdes. I run off from Wormsloe Plantation a year ago and went north and signed up with the 44th Colored to try an' get enough money to come back down here and buy back my momma. But they didn't pay me in advance, so I left and come back to try an' find some other way. I just jump on the first train I see. I didn't kill no soldier boy. I seent they was a man on the roof of the car, drunk. So drunk I slip past him. And when I get in the car, I find a dead colored soldier, so I throw him off. When I found out where we was goin', I plan to jump off, but I fell asleep. So when we get here and a man call out names, I took the first one didn't answer.”

Wirz stared unblinking at him through the whole speech.

Turner spit in the dirt when it was finished and looked back at Wirz.

Wirz raised his eyebrows at Turner.

Turner shrugged.

“Ten lashes,” Wirz said.

Turner broke into a grin.

The men at his sides forced his arms up and closed the manacles tightly on his wrists.

Turner spun him around, and the chains were drawn tight so that he stood with his arms stretched upward.

Barclay shivered as he felt the man's greasy hand run down his back and across his shoulders, tracing the crisscrossed scars there.

“He ain't no stranger to the whip,” Turner announced. “Ten lashes is gonna be like ticklin' him, Cap'n.”

“I want him to be able to talk,” Wirz said. “Proceed.”

That old pain.

No, not so old.

But he had thought he had put it behind him for good. He surely had sworn he would never feel it again, but here he was, not more than a year since Castle Thunder, the flesh going goose all over his body, turning to welts on his back. It wasn't nearly as bad as the first time, when his skin had been untouched. He had been Jason Sigal then, and his blood had flecked the backyard bricks, not mud. Little else had changed but the names. The Rebels were the same. Captain Alexander, that black-clad pimp, had used a dog as a threat, too. A big black Russian boar hound. Nero. He supposedly had trained the thing to attack anything in Union blue.

The tenth lash was harder than the rest. Turner had put his shoulder into it. He felt blood leak down his spine. He supposed the scars had protected him somewhat. Turner was right. Ten lashes were nothing to a veteran like him.

He was twisted roughly around to face Wirz.

Charlie was standing next to his horse.

“All right, what do you know of this one?” Wirz demanded.

Charlie repeated Barclay's story. Almost word for word. Even admitted to helping him dump Stevens's body and advising him to listen for the name. Even went one step further than that and said the other sentries had complained about the man on the roof drinking too much. Charlie, good for something at last.

Wirz ordered him back in line angrily.

“Ten more.”

He was flipped around.

The lash bit deep. Captain Alexander's boys had nothing on Sergeant Turner. You had to like it to do this to a man. You had to or it wasn't punishment. A man who didn't like it would hold back some. Turner, though, Turner loved it. Barclay could tell. The cracker son of a bitch was working himself into a lather, earning the epithet. He didn't let the popper stray all over, sting the ear, cut the shoulder. He concentrated it all in one spot on his back, tearing away so that the blood came more quickly, so that the real pain started.

When it stopped, Barclay was trembling but still standing. He was turned around again, his wrists stinging in the manacles. God, don't let them break my wrists.

He smelled a horrible, overbearing stench of rotten eggs.

Turner's boys had the dogs in the stockade now, straining at their leashes, barking at the fresh blood. Not the Cubans, though. Old Spot and his cronies sat like statues, patiently waiting. The stink seemed to exude from the dogs.

“Tell me again. Who are you?” Wirz demanded.

Barclay told him again. They wouldn't beat conflicting details from him. He had his lies straight. 44th Colored. Wormsloe Plantation. Momma. He and Baker had gone over the details again and again till he almost believed them more than the truth. That was the secret of lying well. Getting the lie down so fine that it was more appealing than the truth.

He faced the pole again. Lost track of the blows. Too busy concentrating on the story so that it came out right. Like a work song now.

44th. Wormsloe. Momma.

44th. Wormsloe. Momma.

44th. Wormsloe. Momma.

A crack between his shoulders after each word, punctuating the verses. He had never been a slave. Was this how the field hand lived? Toiling to the rhythm of the lash?

The world whirled, and he was facing Wirz and Turner and the dogs.

Turner was panting. Hands on his knees. Tobacco juice leaking from his lower lip.

They asked him again. He told them again. They turned him to the pole again.

His back was ablaze, calves aching. He wanted to drop, hang by the chains. But he knew they wouldn't stop. When the man at the tree had knelt, they'd killed him. He wouldn't kneel.

But maybe they wouldn't stop anyway.

The dogs were barking. Yelping. Probably biting one another in their ardor to get at him.

They turned him around.

He murmured something about the 44th. Some place called Wormsloe and a momma who'd been dead for years.

He blinked through his agonized, delirious tears up at Wirz.

He must have blacked out briefly, for his wrists suddenly sang and he jerked awake. Wirz was gone.

Turner was glaring at him. Something strange about him. Like a blurred daguerreotype of a subject moving during the exposure. It could just be double vision from the pain and his streaming eyes. But no, something else. His eyes. His eyes were devoid of iris, burning with an orange fire, each a miniature sun too bright to look at for long.

Barclay's eyes teared up immediately, trying to look into Turner's eyes. He looked away, found the dogs. Whining now, begging to be allowed to tear him apart. But the Cuban hounds were changed.

Old Spot was a huge fleshless beast, his namesake hide and the skin from which it sprouted gone. Every blood-red muscle, every twisting organ and glistening tendon, was exposed, the sniveling mass of cartilage that marked his nose perched above his vicious grinning maw, protruding with oversized saber teeth, bulging eyeballs staring the same bright fiery orange as Turner's out of a skull that was unnaturally cinder black. Wherever Spot's skeleton showed through the layers of connective and locomotive tissue, the visible bones were all that same shiny black, as if the dog's framework were hewn of agate or ebony.

Its partners were equally horrible in appearance, and when one huffed unexpectedly, a burst of hot blue flame spouted briefly from its muzzle and dissipated.

His mother and father both had taught him that on the edge of death, the eyes sometimes see true. They sometimes see the world that is, just beyond the world of the living dream. He had learned it firsthand at the point of whirling exhaustion around the center post in the
hounfor
and in the fearful eyes of fever victims brought to his father for help against their curses. Lord, was he so close to that?

Then his nose was pressed against the pole again, and he saw the tail end of Wirz's horse disappear through the wicket door, a real Pontius Pilate now, washing his hands of Barclay's fate.

The whip again and again. Ten more lashes? Fifteen? Twenty? He didn't know.

And in the sky above, demons cavorted in a vortex. Not
lwa
but maleficent things such as the priests talked about, hideous conglomerations of vile, perverse forms, animal and insect, fish and human. Shark-toothed infants with alligator eyes, limbless felines with moth wings and stiff naked possum tails that screeched like little girls in pain, and thin trout-headed boys with immense clicking spiders for hands. Things clutched at his legs, and he dared not look down.