Andersonville (16 page)

If secretly he took the silk wrapper from the press no one would be the wiser. He could hide it somewhere—as he hid the cups from Veronica’s grim collecting. And, when whips of ardor drove him at last to the Widow Tebbs’ door, he’d have a present for her . . . am I weaker than old Deuce? Why dwell on this, why countenance the savage lurid yielding? I’m not twenty. I’m fifty. I’m old. I should be old. . . . I must be demented. What would Lucy think of me if she learned of the depravity of my plan? She would grow pale with the knowledge. What would Harrell Elkins think? He respects me sincerely; would I still command respect? Cato Dillard would mourn for me. My sons— If they saw, if they could see, if they do see and know—

At this moment of private torment, wavering still in the dull darkness of that road, Ira saw prickles of light ahead and across the tracks. Somebody opened a door, somebody came out. Later, as the muffled approach of feet grew louder, he realized that at least two somebodies were coming. He withdrew past the edge of the road and seated himself; he could not be observed against a mat of vines overhanging the fence and small trees there. Two shapes, men’s shapes, formed in the road. Ira smelled tobacco.

She give you good treatment? Sounded like it.

I hope to shout. What did you pay?

She wanted a dollar, wanted a greenback sure enough. I says, Honey, I got nary a greenback, so she up and settled for five dollars Confed.

Identical what I give her. She sure did take the blaze out of my breeches.

Oh, she ripped and she tore—

They went on, singing not too loudly. Military personnel from the stockade camp. So this is the depth to which your passion has sunk you. You’d share with them, stand in line as men stood in line outside those squalid huts at Matamoras, you’d mingle yourself with hogs.

Are they more swinish than I? Where does the man end and the brute begin? Whom do I hear saying, Brute? Is it my own voice?

He returned to his house, petted Deuce, allowed the wheezing setter to climb the stair. This was a rare award and brought forth a wild waving of the rusty tail. Ira lifted Deuce to the high bed, Badger’s old bed. At the foot of the bed Deuce curled gratefully, glorying in close contact with his master. With care Ira kept his feet to the left side, that he might not disturb the dog on top of the covers. Deuce went to rest in the early morning hours. When Ira awakened belatedly after seven o’clock, roused by sounds from below, the old dog was still curled as he had been hours before. Perhaps the heartworms had reached his gentle heart at last; he was fourteen. Ira had bought the pup especially for Suthy when the boy was ten, but forever Deuce regarded Ira as his one-and-only. Ira Claffey dressed quietly, in respect to the friend who lay upon his bed. Strangely he found a sweetness and warmth in this death, in the manner of its coming. Had he cried, Death, withdraw? It did not seem possible now, when one considered the gift and its healing permanent perfection. He carried the friend down to the library and placed him on the couch, covered with the old cloak; then he went to tell the others. Harrell Elkins said, Poor creature. He must have perished of pure happiness at being allowed to sleep with you. Lucy went to the library and cried softly, lifting the cloak to stroke Deuce’s white hair, thinking of her brothers as she did it. Poppy, maybe he can hunt with them now. In the Hereafter. He’ll be so happy to have someone shoot over him again, to be able to go for birds. I declare, I love to think of it.

Of course you do, you dear sweet girl, girl with the tender heart, blithe spirit.

Veronica said, So he’s gone too. I ask you to save his collar for me. I wish to put it with the other things.

Jem dug a grave in the pet cemetery not far from the family cemetery where a number of dogs, a parrot, a pony, and three especially favored cats were already ensconced. Ira and Lucy bore Deuce to his place, after they had breakfasted, and after Elkins was gone to the stockade; they were attended also by the three black children. Bun whispered to the others, Seed Old Mastah cry. Big tear on he face.

Harrell Elkins could not stand smiling tenderly through specs at the funeral scene. He thought that he should be on duty in the stockade region. He wriggled guiltily inside himself at realization that he was extending that duty beyond its demand. The task to which he had been ordered was vague but loaded with responsibility to the future.

Elkins was selected because he had two years of experience in the field as well as a medical degree. His orders read that he should examine carefully the new prison site, and set forth recommendations as to hospital facilities for an expected ratio of sick among a maximum of ten thousand prisoners. This entailed a study of climatic conditions, water, transportation, shelter. The diet of the prisoners was an unknown quantity; Harry assumed that they would receive the ordinary field ration of the Confederate soldier.

He applied himself seriously to the work, but by his third night in the Anderson community he recognized that there was little excuse for staying longer. At Milledgeville he had secured what crop and weather reports were available; from other sources he had scraped together figures on British campaigns in the Crimea and on illness incident to given numbers of troops in the Italian wars. He possessed also a lengthy report on hospitalization and the diet of prisoners at Dartmoor prison in England.

Superimposing this technical information on the structure of a firsthand study of a not-yet-completed-and-unoccupied stockade, he hoped to present a coherent report with attendant recommendations.
Surgeon H. Elkins will proceed to Camp Sumter, at the village of Anderson, in Sumter County—
No time limit was mentioned in his orders; paper work at most headquarters was performed sketchily these days. Harrell knew that he was naughty in drawing out his stay; this was the eighth morning he had risen at the Claffeys’.

 XI 

V
eronica locked herself in her own room, to examine minutely a collection of beetles which Badger had gotten together when he was twelve or thereabouts. The beetles had been discovered atop a huge wardrobe in the boy’s old room; wenches never dusted that surface—it was beyond their reach—and apparently the collection had been forgotten by Badger when he went away to college and later to the army. Beetles of various sizes and shapes were impaled on pins and the pins were thrust into a thin planed board. There were no differences in their coloration now: time and heat and tinier insects had had their way with the creatures. They were shells of shapes, more brittle than straw. Dead as he is dead, said Veronica to herself, playing over that dirge. Creatures smaller than they have long since made dust of their insides. So must similar creatures have made ruin of Badger’s body e’er now.

At times she journeyed through her past—a limited past, on the whole, circumscribed by her own limitations as an individual. For years her body and her affection had been able to accompany Ira’s, but never her mind. Intrinsically she was a selfish creature, not sufficiently elastic to examine herself; but taught the habit of kindliness toward others in her rearing and by example. In wartime the suffering of the South as a whole she deplored; never had it wounded her truly. She was not aware that in loving her offspring with such abandon she was loving herself. Her children, living, were important to her mainly because they were hers. Her children, dead, were a woe greater than the accumulated woes of all tribes, nations, peoples, places, centuries.

She thought, But I cannot leave them on this board. The pins will come loose. But if I should remove them—each beetle, singly, pin and all—I should be destroying the collection
per se,
as Badge put it together. So must it be wrapped for storage with everything else, but how, how, how? Cloth will not protect the delicate dry bugs. Jem is fair to middling as a carpenter; might I not have him build a little box? I shall try to make him understand. . . .

She saw seven children, assorted as to sex and age, set on pins in a row and labeled much as Badger had labeled these creatures—not Order, Family, Sub-family, Genus— But labeled with the names and pet names her children had worn. There was an empty pin, waiting for Lucy. I have a collection also, she told herself.

But the assemblage must be put away, it must be kept, retained in private, guarded. It will be— What is the term? I recall Doctor Kennebrew lecturing to us when I was at Miss Benham’s. A study collection. Not displayed to the common view.

Secret, smelling of camphor, the more fragile things smelling of lavender amid camphor.

What is a scarab? A kind of beetle, to be sure. There is some association with mummies—

Instantly there rose before her the picture of seven mummies large and small, spaced in their colored coffins. There was a vacant mummy-case awaiting Lucy.

Doctor Kennebrew did not lecture about mummies. His bent was for zoology and botany. Someone else— It could have been Miss Benham herself who gave the lectures.

The pages of the
Southern Recorder
rustled at an 1830 breakfast table. It was always quiet at the Arwoods’. The servants were made to wear felt slippers as they moved about. In some slovenly households servants walked with their feet bare, but never at the Arwoods’. Bare feet made a slap-slap on the painted boards, slippers made a gliding sound.

Mr. Arwood. So Veronica’s mother addressed her husband.

My dear.

Possibly have you discovered some notices concerning schools? As to the subject of our discussion on Sunday evening—

Ah, yes. One moment, my dear. Here it is. The issue of January second. Miss Benham, late Principal in several distinguished Female Institutions at the North, will reopen her Select School for Young Ladies in Milledgeville. . . .

Veronica was close to fourteen years in age. It was high time.

She remembered the winter school dress, the very next winter when she was close to fifteen. Miss Benham required her students to appear in what she termed Livery. The gown was of brown Circassian material, with a belt and tippet of the same. With these brown dresses the girls wore aprons of either black silk or of Holland cloth (Veronica’s was of silk) and black leather shoes. They walked out as a troop of young Quakeresses.

Orthography. She remembered: the very name terrified her. So did Civic Knowledge and Statecraft. Some parents grumbled, that Miss Benham should instruct young ladies in such subjects. One would think, said old Judge Beatenbough at a dinner, that young ladies might be bound for the Senate.

Perhaps, said a lady timidly, Miss Benham is ahead of her time.

Ahead, Mrs. Rutland? Behind, by gracious! Portia’s been gone some centuries, has she not? Or, more likely, she never existed!

...Miss Veronica.

Yes, Miss Benham. And a curtsy.

Please to recite the statistics on Milledgeville.

Milledgeville, Baldwin County, is the capital of the State of Georgia. According to the most recent census there are in Milledgeville a total of one thousand five hundred and ninety-nine souls.

That is correct. How many white and black, Miss Veronica?

There are whites to the number of eight hundred and thirty-one, blacks to the number of seven hundred and sixty-eight. There are attorneys to the number of twenty, there are—uh—eight physicians—

Six.

Six physicians, twenty-one merchants, nine innkeepers, two joiners, six bootmakers, uh—six tailors—

Eight.

Eight tailors, four silversmiths—

(Veronica had no intention of going to the Senate, nor the desire to go. She thought of herself as marrying eventually a man quite unlike her father; yet she knew that it was wrong in her to wish to marry a man quite unlike her father.
Honor Thy Father
.)

Sixteen shopkeepers, five blacksmiths—

That will do, my dear. Well done, on the whole.

Eight children, seven dead. Not well done, my dear, on the whole. But in the individual parts—

Like her daughter, Veronica had recurrent dreams, similar in general and sometimes identical in detail. They were not erotic dreams. Thought that she had ever indulged in the act of copulation was increasingly repugnant to her, and thought of the variations of this art which she and Ira had practiced (and which they did for entertainment, for sinful pleasure, not in the doleful dedicated solemnity of Begetting) was worse than repugnant. It outraged not only a code of personal conduct but all religion, all philosophy, all virtue.

Her dream recurred not only when she slumbered, but with increasing persistency when she was erect and seeming to be awake: saying, Ninny, you neglected the vessel in the room where Mr. Dillard slept on Tuesday night. It is smelling. Attend to that at once, do you hear? Saying, Naomi, we shall have beaten biscuits to our luncheon. Saying, So Deuce is dead. So he’s gone too. I ask you to save his collar—

Her dream swept her into a flat bare neighborhood and along a straight road lined with high stiff cedars or yews, very like the cypresses she’d seen in Europe when the Arwoods went abroad, a year or two before Veronica met Ira Claffey. She walked and walked, holding her shawl about her against an increasing chill, and soon she met a stranger who said not a word, but pointed to the left with his stick. Obediently she turned to the left and passed through a gateway; sometimes she turned to look back at the stranger, sometimes not, but whenever she did look back he would be gone. Down a slight slope, turning to the right again . . . grass over which she wandered was cropped close, as if sheep had been keeping it down—or deer, in an English park . . . presently she reached a place made of white stone. It was not marble, it had not the sheen of marble; could it have been granite, was there white granite?

Come in.

But the iron door of the structure stood open already, she did not need to turn the knob.

Come in. It was a throaty voice, it might have been a man speaking, or more likely a contralto with a very deep voice, far in lower registers.

She glanced at the western sky. It was orange, the cedar-yew-cypresses inked black against the color.

Veronica went inside, after passing down three or four steps to reach the door. This building was half above ground, half buried. It seemed to continue indefinitely, reaching back into the hill which now appeared swelling above—

She went inside, and there the sarcophagi were spaced; but there were more than seven, many more than seven, they stretched on and on, on both sides of the room. And the voice echoed, echoed, echoed—the voice which had said, Come in—distantly through space of the room until it lost itself in a single
sostenuto
organ tone—

She went inside. Somebody, a stranger dressed in white (never a child of hers), sat up suddenly in one of the open coffins.

She came from her dream.