Andersonville (49 page)

Want you to go seek the captain, boy.

Yes, sir. Want I should ride? Course the captain took the Old Gray Mare home with him.

I reckon you do have to ride, you little Yankee limb! Can’t walk all that way, and I want Captain Wirz bad, and I want you to hustle! You take my own Mouse mule.

Quickly the boy filled and lighted another lantern and put on his tiny shoes . . . small shoes indeed on his small feet, they might have been cobbled by elves, they were solid patches. In rare good humor Wirz had promised the boy boots, but thus far no boots could be found small enough to fit him. Ransom Powell clapped upon his head the crimson peaked cap with its tarnished gilt lace which had given him his name. Davis watched the freckled light go bobbing down to the pen where Mouse was kept; soon the lantern was blown out, and Davis could hear the shrill eager voice of Red Cap ordering Mouse into speed on the narrow road, and could hear him switching the mule’s flank, and it sounded as if Mouse were bucking in resistance. Dimly it seemed to Davis that even a domestic animal might feel the tautness of this hour. Davis sat heavily on the step and felt the pressure of apprehension wrapping him like an overcoat unwelcome in July.

He growled at the sentry. Old Man, you get up there and walk your beat like you’re sposed to. Don’t you know nothing? Joe Brown ought to feed you to the hogs!

...Later he grew too nervous to sit idly, and went slouching off to the South Gate, and listened to the guttural hum and wailing of that terrifying herd beyond the up-ended logs; and then he thought that he was too tired to stand listening longer, and he thought that his heart was swelling large and painful within his ribs. Some day twill bust, he thought drearily. Just like a bottle busting in a fire. . . .

Davis considered that Wirz was long overdue when at last Wirz arrived; indeed the captain was long overdue, for he had been operating on his forearm when Little Red Cap arrived at the Boss house. He had been picking out scraps of honeycombed bone with a steel knitting needle. Henry Wirz cursed Little Red Cap vehemently (this was not unprecedented but it was unusual. Like many another of the most savage of his type, Wirz had a genuine fondness for children. He remembered his own childhood with nostalgia, thought that he had been happy then, cried sometimes when he thought of Paul and Louisa Emily left perforce with their grandparents in Switzerland.
Ja,
so tall they had grown by this time; and it was nearly a year since he had seen them. Nowadays he was impatient with his stepdaughters because they were of awkward and seemingly unmanageable age; they had been sweet tiny creatures when first he knew them, but now their skirts were long, the girls were flighty, unpredictable, openly disobedient at times. Coralie was still wistful and birdlike, she was only nine-and-a-half, not quite nine-and-a-half).

So God damn you, you bad Little Red Cap, you!

Captain, please sir, I couldn’t help it. Lieutenant Davis ordered me to come fetch you—

Nothing you know why I should be fetched? God damn, did you
ask
?
Nein!
So all the way to that damn stockade I must worry, worry, worry. Now, you bad Red Cap, this strip of linen you hold here. . . . Nah—
here
you hold it, I hold it
here.
Now you wind it once.
Ja—
son of a bitch—I tell you—not
once
only around the arm. Wind, wind,
wind
!
Sweat gleamed on Henry’s thin forehead, fell from his sharp nose, made wet places on the thickening bandage. The pressure on the tangled tissues became a steady ache; yet it was a benefit; frogs in the arm kept piping as always, Let me out, let me
out,
and the bandage would keep those frogs in check.

Seneca MacBean said one day to Nathan Dreyfoos, after a particularly lively encounter with the superintendent, You know, Brother Nathan, Wirz is the most even-tempered man I ever saw in my life. He’s always foaming mad.

So he was foaming mad as he rode through threatening woods toward the pen, and little Ranny Powell wisely and cheerfully fell farther back into darkness, pretending that Mouse would go no faster. So Wirz was foaming mad when he encountered the unhappy Davis in thick hot smell (Andersonville seemed to smell worse in the night than in the daytime, and how could that be?). True to the lieutenant’s lugubrious prophecy, Henry swore that he would grant no leave to any subordinate so derelict in his duties. . . .

For why you call me from
mein
house? All the nights I got to work too, all the daytimes too? You say nobody is shot, nobody is making escaping,
oder
they not set fire to the fence,
ja?
So what are you good for, you damn Davis?

Captain, now you quit. You know I got a weak heart and—

Ja,
a fat ass you got also, lazybones!

All right, by God! Just you go up on some of them sentry stations. I bet you never heard them act like this afore, not so’s you could notice it. . . .

The captain went blaspheming to the southwest corner of the prison and climbed to the same platform where Davis had stood before him. He came down so quickly that the aggrieved exhausted young officer was frightened anew. Why you not call me more quicker?
Gott,
I think those bears they try to force the gate!

Captain, they ain’t tried, yet. But they make so much noise and— Kind of act so funny, all over the place, and—

Now you get the Officer of the Day, you have him get two guards on every station. Not
one,
God damn son of a bitch, get
two
on every station! How you say— Double these no good guards! Now I go over to the fort, I get that battery commander from his bed out!

The battery commander on the star fort was not in his blankets or on them; he was sitting unsteadily on the earth fort above the rude fascines, smoking his pipe. He was nearly as glad to see Wirz as Davis had been. He declared that he had not slept all night. The guns were already shotted up.

And fuses in those touch-holes you got?

No, the fuses had not been inserted. He was always fearful of an accident. . . .

Better accidents we have than Yankees break out maybe!

Well, he couldn’t insert fuses without an order. . . . And, listen to me, you damn Switzer, you don’t rank over me, and don’t go giving me no orders.

One order you get from the colonel, and that damn quick! Wirz went fuming away, and decided also that he would ask that an order be issued to have every piece of artillery manned completely until daylight, and that the gunners not only have the fuses inserted in the touch-holes but that they be standing literally with lanyards in their hands. Thus at a second’s signal the stockade could be raked. Momentarily Henry Wirz closed his strained sore eyes as he rode. Not with those eyes but with the lenses of memory he saw once more that tussle in the pit at Bern, and stood frosted in terror at sight of it. Oh, the bears. . . .

But there was no plan for a sundering of the barrier, no intention for a mass swarming. The weird impatience could not be chained to a fact unless there existed some cloud of precognition, which spilled to affect nearly every man of the region and shiver him into alarm. Far beyond fancied cities and blackbirds’ swales and upland prairies where the buffalo pawed and Arapahoes were tented— Thousands of miles away, that restive spirit might have risen like a wind with no one to say its origin. It seemed to come from the top of the world and perhaps from airless space beyond the top of the world—the restiveness of time itself which will not be quiet or comforted, but travels unceasingly. And where, a few more wise and humble men thought, does time begin? And what shall be the ending, and shall there be one?

 XXIX 

I
mplacably the sun came up steamed and polished. Ready to fry you, said the sun. Yes, yes, this day you shall fry; forty or fifty of you shall be carried off on the sizzled tray of the day when the day is through; the last grease shall be cooked from those forty or fifty; declare them to be cracklings; put them into the loaf of the soil, and I shall bake the whole loaf anew on the next day.

Old Sol’s going to get us again, prisoners said. Hell, I’d ruther have Old Boo get me. Hell you would; you cried your ass off in the rain, all of June.

Among pine barrens north of the Anderson depot a locomotive halted, steam was down, there was no wood left on the fuel tender. Cars bumped to a halt and three Negroes descended with their axes from the tender. A rail fence little more than a relic yielded to their blows, but there were only a few panels of fencing left there; then they had to attack a scorched fallen tree. In less than an hour’s time the tender was loaded once more, steam was up, the line of decrepit box cars dragged toward Anderson, axles rattling and trusses loose and clanking.

Three hundred and fifty-two strained embittered Unionists were counted from the cars. A majority were native to the mountains of western Virginia, and thus were objects of particular scorn to guards who refused to admit the existence of the new State of West Virginia (those who had heard of it. Little Red Cap was accepted and favored because of his youth and charm and handsome vitality. At the worst the Secessionists put him down as a misguided child, they did not think of him as a traitor to his State).

Duly enrolled as prisoners, the West Virginians began to file in through the North Gate. Edward Blamey blinked away his alcoholic tears, spotted the vanguard, evalued their rolls and haversacks, reported to his master. Collins’s Raiders were thus the first into the fray, but other bands were not far behind. They descended upon the newcomers with ferocity unmatched. It was as if they were driven by an impulse which had not ruled the raiders when they slugged merely through cupidity, merely through the craving to exert their strength. The night of unrest had tempered them with beastliness. Haversacks flew from hand to hand and were distributed through the air, jackets were ripped, buttons flew, sleeves were pulled out. In earlier months there had been a pretense of innocence, a masquerading as humans on the part of the raiders. That was when incursions were limited to nighttime; and later the bulk of them might lounge or stroll or play chuck-a-luck, elaborately aloof from strife when six hooligans descended on, say, two Westerners who happened to own a poncho. But in this sharp hot morning the evil element rose in an unrestrained body, they were a single baboon. There were a few stray calls of
Raiders!
from more knowledgeable prisoners who fled the area; then a hush lay over the two or three thousand people who stood near at hand, backing off, pressed together in ragged watching ranks, an audience who had paid their admission in the coin of long starvation, the coin of sickness and penury.

Raider forces whirled around the West Virginians like the outer wheel of a corn-sheller cranked by Furies; and each newcomer was a cob to be expelled from the inner mass, to be hurled out, minute by minute, with all his kernels wrenched off. A hand was grasped, an arm was jerked, a bloody bewildered youth staggered free; he collapsed to feel the pounding throbbing draining swelling of his smashed nose, to wonder at scratches seared along his naked ribs, to wonder why he lived barefoot and in his under-drawers, to wonder why and how he lived at all. A quarter of an hour earlier he had been a man, an entity defeated and captured, but still a man with a name and with masculine pride.

He had been Miller Sprouse, Sixth West Virginia Cavalry, age eighteen, a brown-eyed brown-haired brown-faced person with small hard freckled fists and owning better-than-ordinary skill with a carbine. Here he was, captured, but guards on the train had been—most of them—wounded veterans missing a hand or an eye or an ear here and there; and thus they had been stern but decent. Miller Sprouse owned a good uniform, shabby but clean, and he had a rubber raincoat rolled around his blanket, he had a canteen, a spoon, fork, pocketknife, soap, a comb; he had a well-equipped housewife, a diary in which he scribbled painfully a few misspelled lines each day (this was an especial promise made to a girl named Tildy Freeborn; and when he came home they would be married and would raise corn, melons and younguns on a small farm on Beasley Run; and his father had said that Miller could pay him for the farm, so much per year, depending on how crops did. He was to help his father and Tildy’s father mine coal during cold weather). Miller Sprouse had sixteen dollars and fifty-seven cents in currency; the Rebel guards had taken nothing except his cap and the old silver watch which wound with a key, and the key had been lost. He had his health, his identity, he had high hopes of escape; folks said that Andersonville was just a place with a fence around it, and surely that would be more promising than imprisonment in a tobacco warehouse or an abandoned factory in a city; you ought to be able to dig a hole and crawl out, or something.

Then suddenly a gate closed. They were crowded into a cubicle; they said, Hell, this is a little bitty prison, and people laughed about it. Then another gate opened ahead, and they passed into unavoidable unbreathable smell like all the untended privies in all the United States put together; it smelled also like dead skunks or polecats before birds got at them and cleaned them up; it smelled also like Grandpa Abbott smelled when he was dying of that there throat-cancer. A roar and a howl, and thousands and thousands of hairy shaggy black-faced devils swaying all around the place, and then lifted another roar with a different sound. Suddenly he thought that Paul Handland and Scott McConkey were fighting, just ahead of him; but no, they were fighting with two or three strangers, great big fellows. Something hit young Miller Sprouse on the side of the head, and he saw stars, and through the stars he saw a wide scarred face like a monkey’s face (he had seen a monkey once in a circus)—that was how the face looked, except much larger. A hand twisted across his shoulder and jerked on Miller’s blanket roll; he said, By Gol, and he punched and twisted and gulped. Something struck him in the belly, it felt like a cannon-ball driven against him. He was on the ground, gasping for breath, unable to find any breath in the mass of struggling bodies. Hands fought over him, his jacket was twisted, they like to pulled his arms out of the sockets as they pulled that jacket off; his shoes were gone, his trousers hauled from his kicking legs; he was propelled, shunted, flung; he landed painfully on dirty ground again; he was peeled, shucked, shelled; why was he here, where was he, what had happened, what was his name, he was half naked, marred, bruised. Still he couldn’t get his breath, it seemed that his ribs were cracked, he could scarcely lift his left arm, one eye was closing, why, what, when, how, what had happened, why?

Seneca MacBean said, It’s the beat.

Nathan Dreyfoos took his brooding gaze from the scene and looked a question.

I say it’s the beatingest!

Leroy Key nodded. Worst yet. What you think, Brother Nathan?

Nathan thought, This is the repetition of history before our eyes. There comes no answer from philosophy, religion, morality. There is but one answer to a manifestation of brute strength; that is a manifestation of greater brute strength.

Aloud he said, Have we the strength?

That’s as may be. Think so, Seneca?

Beyond him the silent Limber Jim scowled his half-breed scowl.

Key swallowed. Shall we put it to a vote? If we try now, and get whipped— That’d be the end.

Mister. The halting voice of the mighty Ohioan, A. R. Hill. There ain’t no need to vote. Them roughs have really put it to us.

Get clubs, somebody said.

Anyhow we’ll make a try for it. Come on, Brother Nathan.

Key, MacBean and Dreyfoos moved toward the North Gate. The struggle was done, it had been completed with incredible speed. The last of the raiders trailed triumphantly toward the South Side, waving trophies. Feists and hyenas loped ahead, bound to explore the haversacks they’d taken; Willie Collins and Pat Delaney strolled almost benignly in the rear. Willie was counting greenbacks, Delaney drinking from a bottle. A howling began on the South Side in the vicinity of the raiders’ pavilion; there ensued a private tussle, men came crowding and pushing and punching, to see. A collection of obscene cards had been found in a pocket of one of the stolen jackets. They were of the sort vended by unscrupulous sutlers—made in Germany, it was said, and colored gaily. They depicted mass orgies in which men and women copulated on sofas, beds, tables, even on the floor. The ungodly had leered at them before, but all old cards were long since defaced or lost or handled into ruin; these were bright, they were new and trim; the boy who’d owned them crouched moaning at the end of Main Street, spitting out blood and splintered teeth. His fellows sat weeping or cursing, stripped to the hide.

Little groups of kindly intentioned prisoners assembled to do what they could, to offer sips of water, bits of corn pone. This was the most flagrant assault which had ever occurred, and affecting by far the greatest number, and was pursued with swiftness beyond imagination. The bulk of the helpless Yankees appeared stunned by it.

They were stunned further a moment later at the latest pronouncement of the prison superintendent. Almost simultaneously news was posted at both North and South Gates. A general wail ensued: Wirz said that no rations would be issued that day. He hinted that he might not issue any more rations until the prisoners had seen to it that no such disgraceful episodes would be repeated.

Puts it up to us with a vengeance, said Seneca.

Actually, Nathan told him, we would seem to have Wirz on our side.

Key started toward the deadline but MacBean pulled him back. Key, you got folks to go home to. I have none. Deadline’s an infernal jumpy business, with all these trundle-bed soldiers so nervous on the trigger. He pushed fairly up to the scantling and was greeted by a gun muzzle from Station Number Eight. We need to speak to Captain Wirz, he called to the calico hat behind the gun.

He ain’t here, Yyyank. Get off’n that deadline!

I’ll get, but you get Wirz.

I’ll ask the sergeant when he comes round. Get back, you. Hear me?

I hear you, but you get Captain Wirz.

They waited in staring sun for more than twenty minutes, but after a time Nathan believed that he heard the guard talking with someone on the path outside. They hoped for the best, they knew that spies were watching them, they prayed only that raiders, emboldened by their morning’s feat, might not charge in mass attack upon Regulators or suspected Regulators before the ranks were filled. Presently the wicket in the North Gate squealed open and the plump face of Lieutenant Davis appeared.

Whah-ye!

We don’t want you, Lieutenant. We want your boss. The three moved toward the wicket.

What you want to see him about? He’s busy.

Tis important.

A matter of life and death, said Nathan Dreyfoos.

All of that, said Key.

Davis’s puffy little eyes looked their alarm. I’ll let the three of you into the enclosure here; but you better be sure it’s important or the captain will make you smoke.

Course, said MacBean, settling his long shape in shade of the palisade— Course we’re correct. Whole prison’s a matter of life and death.

Death, mainly.

If we prevail, said Nathan, it will become a matter of life for some who otherwise would have died.

Blame you for a philosopher, Brother Nathan.

A very childish one.

They relaxed in the gift of shade. There was no real shade within the prison except in the best-constructed shebangs. Here, in this cubicle surrounding the North Gate, a fifteen-foot height of logs built a barrier against the scorch and would until the sun reached its zenith; in that same hour the western end of the cubicle would begin to furnish shade. Davis had gone, but he left one armed guard beside the outer gate. Suddenly this guard jumped aside almost guiltily as the outer wicket was jerked open. Henry Wirz tripped across the sill. He wore his calico waist with no collar—there was a naked collar-button showing below his Adam’s apple—and the waist was wet with perspiration, and he bore his arm in its black sling. The three prisoners got up quickly and moved to meet the smaller man. He stood with thin hot face lifted toward them, beard stringy and damp, angry eyes jumping.