Andersonville (35 page)

I teach you to tell me bacon is bad.

Captain, for God’s sake—

Son of a bitch Yankee, I teach you. Here you stay two days.

You dirty Dutch shit-heel, if I had a gun—

Now you stay one week!

True, he regarded his own punitive measures as painful and ugly, but pain and ugliness must be the lot of all vile humanity who walked in such filth, who planned to escape in order to burn munitions and ravish tender Southern girls, who had been so cruel in their warfare as to inflict a hurt which went throbbing through the years. . . . Devils who hurled mud at him . . . he would show them.

...The other Turner, the Richmond Turner, endorsed Wirz’s report of May eighth with flattering alacrity. He wrote:
Captain Henry Wirz, commanding prison, reports in reference to the general condition of the prison, and suggests the propriety of increased rank being given him. . . . Respectfully forwarded, recommended. Thos. P. Turner, Major Commanding.

General Winder in turn added his cramped agreement:
Approved and respectfully forwarded. Captain Wirz has proved himself to be a very diligent and efficient officer, whose superior in commanding prisoners and incident duties I know not.

But the insignia of field grade shimmered only in a worthless future. There was no new metallic sheen on Wirz’s jacket. Winder did not promote him, he only wrote the words Approved and Forwarded, he wrote words of praise. A simpering clerk in a remote office pinned the report to a sheaf of others and placed the pile under a paperweight to curl. Promotion would be awarded this hysterical tyrant only when he had no prison left to command; it would come as the accolade of a hopeless and disheveled Confederacy.

Under his consciousness Henry Wirz thought of the prisoners as animals, although he was not sure what sort of animals. They varied their coats and colors and shapes from time to time; some days they had hoofs, some days claws, some days they were striped, some days shaggy as bison. Monkeys they appeared to be when they were picking lice, fabled more ferocious apes when they fought in torment, herds of two-legged domestic beasts (but unfriendly, apt to burst through rails and perhaps trample children) when they were marshalled about in a squadding. Finally one night while in bed Henry had a recollective illusion. It was part memory, part dream and nightmare.

He was very young, perhaps eight years old, and had journeyed with his parents from Zurich to Bern to visit his grandmother. He had heard about Bern and the bears there, kept traditionally in their pit. It was the thing to do, to take children to see the bears; all children of Bern were taken so, and thus the little visiting Henry was escorted to this zoo in his turn.

He had not expected that the bears would be so large, and there was a growing feud between the two great males; perhaps the mating season approached. They growled horribly, slapped at each other, one bit the other on the shoulder and a scream arose. Keepers came with long poles and separated the combatants; one was driven into his den and made to remain behind a grating. At this roaring fearful confusion the throng of children gazed wide-eyed, and some little girls hid their faces in their aprons. Henry had no apron, but he could never have hidden his face had he possessed an apron, for his glaring dark eyes were nailed against the bear pit; he could not look in any other direction, frightened as he was. A few other children were led away, Henry could not be dragged.

At last when comparative peace reigned among the fierce brown animals, he saw that people were tossing carrots over the ledge. Two bears, trained to expectancy by long association, sat down with fuzzy legs spread and opened their mouths to catch the morsels. One, a mother bear, had a trick of making cumbersome gestures with her paw, indicating her mouth, indicating that she wished more carrots.

There was a vendor with a pushcart nearby, and Henry begged a few sous. He went to the cart, bought a bunch of carrots, and returned to the feeding. One by one he tossed the small tapering vegetables (they were clean, they were crisp, almost he wished to eat them himself but it was better to feed the bears; the carrots were of a delicate pinkish orange, they were beautiful). Not once did the bear miss, though Henry Wirz’s aim was far from accurate . . . the bear weaved on her haunches, she leaned far out, she swayed from side to side. As the bright morsel flew, seeming to go past her, her jaws would snap and No More Carrot.

This trivial recollection, half dreamed in the night, resolved the identity of the Andersonville prisoners for Wirz into a common dark hairy form. They were bears, they seemed very stupid but they could bite and rend, worse perhaps than African lions.

A few days later he was in his splinter-new office, checking a roll of arrivals which Ben Dilley, one of his Yankee clerks, had put before him. He was eating a lunch at the same time. He had bacon sandwiches and a thin bundle of well-scrubbed carrots, also a canteen of weak elderberry wine. Wirz had eaten his two sandwiches and had drunk most of the wine, and was snapping carrots between his prominent front teeth. The clerk jumped each time that Wirz bit—it sounded like a cap snapping—and then would come the fast grinding sound as Henry Wirz chewed, opening his mouth under his beard.

Suddenly the report of a sentinel’s gun popped through the air, and there was yelling in the pen. Wirz sent Benny to see what had happened, to find out about the shooting.

Ben came back. Prisoner, sir, he said.

Is he dead?

No, sir, he’s kind of kicking around. Guess it went through his thigh.

I go see, said Henry Wirz.

He went to the nearest sentry station, climbed, and looked down. The wounded man was lying well inside the deadline at the edge of the marsh, and seemed wallowing in pain but making very little noise.

You shoot him? Wirz demanded of the wan-faced guard.

Huh-uh. Twas Tom Luckey over yonder, and the boy pointed.

The superintendent called across thirty yards to the next station where the sentry had just finished reloading. For why you shoot?

He was scooping up water clean inside the line, Captain.

Then it is good you shoot. . . . Wirz spoke to the staring prisoners below, whose permanent anger was always so obviously intensified by such occurrences (they came more frequently all the time). Some from you son of a bitch Yankees get that Yankee who was wounded. From out the deadline take him; I let you move him.

The victim’s friends sprang into the fatal area promptly and lifted the youth from slime in which he writhed. They carried him across the narrow footbridge and up the hill toward the South Gate, planning apparently to have him ready for examination should any of the stockade surgeons appear. Wirz turned from watching the departure and studied the mass of wild dark faces upturned below, and felt their hatred sweep through him, and he fired back his own silent hate. They were bears . . . here he stood with carrots again, he had come up with the things in his hand, he had not realized that he was carrying them.

Before he knew what he was doing, Wirz had shifted the five remaining small carrots to his weak right hand, and his left hand went over to feel for a single vegetable and to toss it out and far.

There was a scramble, more faces turned up; there sounded profanity, scattered insults, a scatter of laughter. Again Wirz threw a carrot. Bern, he said in his soul. It was long ago, I was so little.
Ja,
they are bears.

Fresh carrots were seen seldom in that place except by raiders who might purchase them from guards. (It was against the rules, of course; but much trading went on every night, much buying and selling, and often even in the daytime. Wirz would have been powerless to stop the practice even had he cared to.) Hands groped, waved, snatched at space, the bears were grabbing and fighting, bears were growling as in that ancient pit in Switzerland. One at a time Henry Wirz threw the rest of the carrots and saw them vanish into turmoil. Wirz turned away and descended the ladder carefully; he had no wish to fall, to fall and hurt his arm. Bears, he kept saying to himself.

 XXI 

C
hickamauga possessed almost no beard at all; he said that it was because of a disease he had suffered when young. It was at Chickamauga that he was wounded (the same battle in which Badger Claffey received fatal wounds); it was at Chickamauga that he was captured; in the hospital he had talked incessantly about these experiences, so the name clung to him. But also he was called by a variety of other names. Poll Parrot, Pretty Polly and Fortune Teller were some of the designations applied to him—this last because he carried a deck of ragged dirty cards in his pocket, and would tell your fortune for one dollar Confed. If he liked you he would give you a very good fortune indeed; he would say that he saw you alive, well, returned safely to Michigan or Massachusetts, sitting down to dumplings and chicken-pie, the admired of a beautiful young woman, and rich too. But if you had offended him in some way (and many people did offend Chickamauga daily, and well did he merit offense) he would see all sorts of dreadful things in your future. His protruding eyes, green as peas, would glow devilishly as he related his advice. Keep away from water, and did anyone in your family ever die of dropsy, or was anybody in your family ever burned to death—I don’t know for sure, but it says right here in these cards that someone in your family got burned to death or maybe will get burned to death . . . these things he saw for you. His head was bald, and people had a joke and said that his head was perhaps the only place where Chickamauga was balled. Some people said that Chickamauga’s true name was Hubbard, some said Hulburt; some said he was from the Ninety-sixth Illinois, some said the Thirty-eighth. If you asked him he would try to tell you, but he had the sort of deformed lip which made it impossible for him to enunciate with complete clarity. The sobriquet of Poll Parrot was apt also; you had only to look at his nose. Chickamauga talked to anyone, everyone, jabbering on in every waking moment; and when he slept his mouth fell open, and his snoring was the grunt of a hog. It seemed often that he did not sleep at all, but went crutching nervously throughout the stockade even by night, and thus was as well known to folks on the North Side as on the island in the marsh. He wore a pair of Rebel pants, and the right trouser leg, empty throughout the greater part of its length, was turned up and pinned by several large thorns. The smell of his breath might have been an emetic. It was difficult to believe that he had come to exist through the natural process of conception and birth and growth; it was as if he were a changeling from a Grimm tale, delivered by a troop of elves, and wicked elves at that. It was impossible to believe that anyone had ever loved him, and yet somewhere sometime someone must have kissed his horrid face and held him tenderly.

Chickamauga had learned early in life that benefits might accrue to him if he curried favor in high places, so he came to know Henry Wirz very soon after his draft of prisoners was sent down from Richmond. Wirz, thinking about it distastefully, came to the conclusion that he must have seen Chickamauga the very first time that he, Wirz, came into the stockade. Always that wheedling hare-lipped murmur, high in the mouth and throat of the cripple . . . we don’t get enough to eat, and, Captain, if I tell you when someone is going to escape, and prove it too, will you let me have a piece of meat?—not jackass, but real honest to God meat; and, Captain, I heard some fellows talking, and I think they’re digging of a tunnel, and I think I know where it is, and if I find out just where that tunnel is, will you let me go Outside and pick berries? Look, I won’t try to Take Leave, I couldn’t try to Take Leave, I’ve only got one leg, and I couldn’t very well run away with these here crutches.

Wirz disliked Chickamauga as he disliked most people except his wife and little Cora; also the weird Poll Parrot face was a Yankee face. But Henry recognized the necessity for having spies and informers within the stockade, and since Chickamauga’s half-mad babblings were looked upon as the outpourings of an idiot child by the prisoners, it was possible that they might speak unguardedly in his presence. Wirz did give the one-legged man small favors from time to time. Maybe the prisoners thought that it was out of pity, but few of the prisoners believed that Henry Wirz had any pity in his heart. Henry Wirz did have. He had pity for himself.

Chickamauga prayed constantly to be taken Outside, but the Outsiders must be able-bodied in order to perform work demanded of them; and once he was put on Wirz’s list of informers he might as well have ceased praying to go out, except that he was granted two brief sumac berry excursions with the wood gang. From these sorties he returned more voluble than ever, carrying extra berries in half of a broken wooden bucket. The first time he set up shop on Broadway and sold his berries (one at a time, for the most part, but some customers had sufficient means to buy a dozen) at a sublime price. Sumac berries, dried on the bush or not, were a recognized antiscorbutic and thus valued highly by the prisoners, who ascribed all sorts of tonic values to the bitter fruit.

After the second trip Chickamauga made the mistake of going into business on South Street and that was near the haunts of the raiders. A foot came out slyly and hooked itself around one of Poll Parrot’s crutches, the crutch was jerked from under the bald man’s weight, he went sprawling. Of course when he arose the berries were halfway to the sinks; people pointed out the thieves, but what might this plundered salesman do against raiders? Naturally he sought each day to find favor with them just as he did with Wirz; he followed the chiefs, wheedling and lying and offering information about fresh fish who were reputed to own enormous bankrolls or gold watches. He went capering after Collins or Sarsfield or Delaney, after any and all of them, until the epithet of Brown Nose was added to the weight of those other names he bore already. But the raiders who stole the berries were young boys, mere hangers-on, ambitious ruffians who strove to emulate their lords. Willie Collins laughed when Chickamauga came complaining. He said that the berries were all eaten, and why hadn’t Chickamauga brought some to him, to Willie Collins? This the cripple planned to do, next time he went Out, but he didn’t go Out again.

When the Plymouth Pilgrims appeared the raiders came into luxuriant funds; they enjoyed banquets of pork, rice, milk, green vegetables, they even had coffee and army crackers at times. Bundles of canteens filled with pine-top were smuggled in dusk to the conical tent which now rose alongside the headquarters near South Street. They sang, bellowing through night hours, singing off-key and sometimes ending up with a free-for-all, a battle royal among the chiefs. They owned strength enough to fight, for their board was better set than it had been when they were campaigning; the food was excellently cooked (why not? They had kettles, iron skillets, plenty of wood) for they’d found trained cooks among the horde of New Yorkers who clung in satellite formation around them; and one skilled cook had been impressed bodily, captured and kidnapped and retained in slavery, mourned as dead by his Philadelphia comrades on the North Side.

Liquor bubbled, voices grated into the night.

In Athol there lived a man named Jerry Lanagan;

He battered away till he hadn’t a pound.

His father he died, and he made him a man again;

Left him a farm of ten acres of ground.

Estimates of the wealth brought in by the Plymouth Pilgrims ran as high as one hundred thousand dollars in greenbacks; probably the actual amount was but a fraction of that sum. Nevertheless in hands of the raiders the Pilgrims were bunnies gripped by hounds. The raiders soon had most of the money . . . thus they had eatables, they had potables, they had prime and power.

It’s of a fierce highwayman my story I will tell:

His name was Willie Brennan and in Ireland he did dwell,

He rob-bed from the rich and he gave unto the poor,

And all the folk did call him Willie Brennan On The Moor.

Somebody was persistently singing John Brennan instead of Willie.

Who the hell is singing John? Tis Willie—

Hell it is. It’s John.

God damn you, tis myself will show you! Willie!

Thwack and tussle, and burbled shouts and hootings, and people nearby crawling away because they feared that guards might fire.

Willie Collins’s voice roaring out, Hold up, you shitty spalpeens! I’ll clout the skulls of both of you.

Clout them he did, and then there was only a snarl and moaning.

I’ll teach you, you bastards. When you sing it you’ll never sing John. Nor Willie Brennan. Willie Collins! Me! Do you hear? Me—Willie Collins! For isn’t that the thing I do—a-robbing from the rich and a-giving to the poor?

Dread laughter in darkness.

Sing it, devil suck it, as I bid you.

It’s of a fierce highwayman my story I will tell:

His name was Willie Collins and in Ireland he did dwell—

In New York he did dwell—

In Andersonville he did dwell—

In the stockade he did dwell.

Laughter, with Willie’s booming the highest.

Chickamauga was fascinated by these monsters as pimps and mendicants forever are fascinated by might and especially by the might of the cruel; but they would have little of him. They did not fancy his bad breath, his snoring, his split-lip chatter. Even Lipsky the tailor knocked him out of his path, threw his crutches aside and delighted in observing him as he crawled to get them. Furthermore the leaders feared that in his approach to idiocy he might apprise intended victims that raiders were at hand, and so they’d meet with no success in stripping the victims. They drove Chickamauga from their neighborhood more frequently than they welcomed him. They welcomed him only when a credulous superstition was ascendant in the drunken state, and they wished their fortunes to be told.

Chickamauga cringed at what he hoped was a safe distance, trusting to be summoned.

Poll, you devil. Pretty Polly, come you here.

He would jerk along eagerly.

Polly, do you tell my fortune. Have you your broads?

Yes, yes, yes, got my cards. What will you give me?

I’ll give you the toe of my boot if you don’t hasten—

Yes, yes, but you want a good fortune. A real good fortune? Give me a bowl of them beans and bacon— Give me a big bowl and I’ll tell you a great big fine fortune— Give me—

Ah, hush your jawing. Here, Cookie, fetch the bastard a bowl of that kitchen physic. Hurry up, God damn you.

They stood, begrudging the Fortune Teller even this moment of good faring, while he spooned the stew with a trembling hand.

And, please, Willie— Please, Willie— Just one little drink of sorghum whiskey— Just one swallow—

I’ve no bingo for the likes of you.

But I’ll give you the best fortune I ever gave—

Give him a slop of bingo, Willie, to hush his guff.

Ah . . . that bottle there. Damn you, Cookie, never pour too much. Don’t be wasting of it on the likes of him. . . . Now, then, hustle with that fortune before I snitchel your ugly conk.

The thick soiled cards spread on a barrel head, the mumbling and scowling as Chickamauga bent above, and moved the cards in a pattern, and rejected some, and shook out others. He was nearsighted, and had secured a gift of spectacles while in the hospital, but the spectacles were long since broken.

Hurry up, you addle cove.

I see you going out of here.

Exchange?

I can’t tell. Maybe exchange.

And how soon would that be? Speak up, you vampire.

I think it’s July, cried the Fortune Teller in triumph. Yes, yes, it’s July. You go out of here—

And to where am I going? To another stockade? I’ll fib the living—

No, no, please, Willie— Not another stockade! I see you going— I see you wearing citizen’s clothes! Beautiful, beautiful citizen’s clothes. You are sitting in a great big gilded dining room—it’s a lobster palace. You got a pretty lady with you. You got—you got
champagne!
And
beefsteak! And strawberries! You got—

Ah, enough of your—

You mustn’t hurt a fortune teller, Willie, wailed Chickamauga in fear but in severity. That’s very bad luck. Don’t you dare hit me again—