Andersonville (51 page)

They dealt first with the core and spine of the gangs; the extremities and supports fell magically from the huge leaders with each blow put down. To gallery gods like Ira Claffey and the Reserves, watching from the platforms, there was only a roaring tangle, with lines swaying for two or three minutes; then a breakage, a sloughing off of defenders.

In microcosm the assault had its history in the experience of Willie Collins. He stood grumbling and scornful, bleared hot gaze trying to single out the largest and most contemptible of the joskins, as he called them. It was a term of opprobrium: joskin meant a rube, an oaf, a bumpkin untried and without danger in him. So these joskins had approached, and even while Willie Collins was aiming his fists at the pressing serious individuals who dared to challenge, a club sang against the base of his skull, it made loose explosions of silver within his head. A youth from Wisconsin—one of the smaller agile Regulators, who had been ordered merely to prevent spectators from joining the raiders if he could— This seventeen-year-old countryman (a German, a young dairyman, a joskin if you please) had filtered his way behind Willie. He struck with the whole force of his young arms and body. Collins turned with a howl. Even as he turned a heel drove into the soft place above his left hip-bone and dented his bowels. Collins swung back, slamming out the hairy freckled rocks which were his fists. He mashed down two men, one was a man of his own gang, Willie was confused. A longer club hurtled from somewhere into his right eyesocket and half the world turned to blood. Even while he struck down two more men, others were diving beneath his fists. Another kick in his groin . . . the welter of his own people seemed turned against him, impeding him, they got in the way, they got in the way. His left eye observed the blank face of Limber Jim. Shrieking he tried to reach that face; but there was a small body diving between his legs, a larger body contending for the possession of his right leg. The next instant the horizon of close-riding figures descended with a jerk. Willie’s head went back; he was down, more feet danced upon his face, more feet beat his belly with staccato blows. He entertained a ruling perplexity of Why, How now, This is not the way it should be, What am I doing on the ground? He is dancing on me. . . . The bastards fear me. Faith, I’m greater than they. Hammer stroke. A wooden stick forced past his spread lips and breaking off some of his teeth and wounding his tongue, he could taste the bitter sap in that piston of wood. Something was wrapping his left wrist. He tried to utter the rallying cry, O Yes, O Yes, as he had yelled it in New York; but the sole of a boot trod his left eye and closed it, another boot crushed into his stomach. His left arm was jerked out and to the left and twisted. A dozen hands were on his legs, prying—and now the right wrist— What was that, a rope? Wrench, wrench, wrench; the noose brought the two thick wrists together and wrapped them, no matter how he strained. Willie could only say, Agh, agh.

Sarsfield also was down. Patrick Delaney had flattened a row in front of him before his shin was cracked by a kick, and so he staggered; then whiteness burst inside his skull, he heard nothing more, he went into deepness. Many raiders began to break and run.

Flying in appalled retreat was the bowlegged figure of Edward Blamey. The favorite weapon which he had fetched with him when he came to subsist with Willie Collins, in the spring: he had it still, he’d tried to use it to advantage. But an Ohio quarryman rose in front of him, and Edward Blamey could not resist a man of such size. He turned and ran. He fell into a shallow well; the next thing he knew, people were dragging him out and tying him. One of them damn sailors, he heard someone crowing. It was an error understandable. Edward Blamey had long since thrown away his cavalry rags and was garbed in stolen navy blouse and bell-bottomed trousers. Now, what of The Wrath To Come?

Hangers-on went skulking toward the marsh; but people who might have sheltered them before out of terror of their masters were now shrieking, Here’s one, that little bastard, went down that way. Throngs of lightweight Regulators spread in successful pursuit.

It was an object lesson for all time; yet man might never learn that a wickedness must be singled out and struck if it is to be done away with. Man would keep on equivocating, searching himself for a sore. He would declare to internal rottenness here and there, would declare that there was no concentration of sin among the enemy merely because he had discovered a wrong within his own structure. The lesson was reiterated during those intense minutes; yet it would be ignored and forgotten. The pulsing organs of raider vitality were separated from their body abruptly. People saw that the body could not survive. In bruised awe they offered thanks to their Spook of battles. Forty or fifty chief offenders were tied and dragged toward the gate. A hundred more could be hunted down and singled for trial during the afternoon and day to follow.

Twas easy, someone gasped later to Seneca MacBean.

MacBean sponged at a flap of skin torn from his stubbly cheek, and grinned crookedly. No, Mister, twasn’t easy. But if the world ever saw concerted action it witnessed it right here today.

 XXX 

T
he Claffeys sat upon the gallery in rocking chairs moved out into the dusk when hot rain stopped and the sky dried slightly and pale stars appeared. There was a boon in that the wind blew from the southwest for a time. Wind came lightly but with persistence, and kept the prison’s smell away as if the wind were a strong bold hand held steadily at arm’s length, palm outward, restraining the stockade and that murmur more apparent at night than in the day.

Lucy held a mended blue fan which had been a prize won for accomplishment in ball room deportment when she attended the Institute, and her father was armed with a Macon newspaper with which he might fan himself; but it was unnecessary to employ these fans more than languidly until the wind changed.

It changed, it shifted to the east, then bore farther from the north. Smell walked the trees in a cloud and swept across the open verandah among short squared primitive posts which supported the upper gallery. Now the fans switched steadily.

Poppy, shouldn’t I have the wenches make a smudge?

It all depends. Whether you wish to be smoke-dried or whether you wish to breathe—this.

Reckon I’d rather have smoke in my eyes, said Lucy with a nervous giggle. She lifted a copper camel-bell which Uncle Felton had brought from Egypt before she could remember, and rang it. She waited, rang again, waited, rang, rang, rang.

From loneliness at the far end of the gallery Veronica called a warning in her weak dried voice. I just got them to sleep, she complained.

Mother, I’m merely summoning the wenches.

But you’ll wake the children.

Ninny came shuffling. Lucy sighed, it would profit nothing to upbraid Ninny for tardiness, Ninny would pretend that her feelings were hurt because the young mistress did not recognize her deafness and excuse her because of it.

Do you make a smudge, Ninny.

Yas’m. In that old kettle?

Did Jonas cut fresh evergreens today as I bid him?

Yas’m.

Wet the boughs thoroughly, dip them in water before you pile them on the coals. And do you put the kettle over there, Ninny, this side the jonquil bed, for the smoke to reach us.

Presently two dark figures lurked in the gloom, the glow of fresh coals went aloft, Ninny and Pet were lined against the glow. Each was a sorceress, you could imagine that they assembled ingredients for a potion.

Round about the cauldron go,
said Ira.
Gall of goat and slips of yew sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips.
He left off quoting Macbeth abruptly as he realized that the next was
finger of birth-strangled babe,
and neither he nor Lucy cared to mention babes, birth-strangled or otherwise. Wet greenery was pressed into the kettle, spice of cedar swept the Claffeys. They waved the thickest smoke away but still it was wreathing close, protecting them, building a wall to keep out Andersonville. The black women went away.

Poppy, I heard Mrs. Yeoman’s Scooper talking with our hands.

And?

He was telling them that the smell reaches all the way to Aunt Ella May Piggott’s place when wind is right.

When the wind is wrong, Lucy.

Her laugh a phantom. Ah, certainly. When the wind is wrong.

Ira measured distances in his mind. At least two miles.

All of that. Well.

Smell fought to get through the aromatic cedar. Sometimes it wormed past the clouded drift, sometimes it accompanied the smoke, riding on top of it, crawling beneath slyly. The smell was crafty, it found a way . . . wall of smoke was rifted, leaky. Smell said, Do not forget
me.
Do not forget
us. I
will not—
we
will not—permit you to forget.

Poppy, is it— Is it the Dead?

Partially, I suppose. Although they’re so far in the other direction. But mostly the marsh and its filth, and the Yankees themselves.

How many have died by now?

Thousands, tis said.

I overheard you speaking with Uncle Dayto, Poppy.

Ah, I regret that.

About—the hogs— In the cemetery—

Such things are bound to happen. I mean—when burials are so shallowly and carelessly made. In any event, more earth is used now. They’re—deeper. Lucy, shall we speak of other matters?

Mean little drafts, guerrilla breezes, they hovered close to the ground, went aloft suddenly, took smoke high, reduced it to no value. Ira went down and moved the hot kettle with a stick, shifting it into a position he thought more favorable. Soon the wind worked capriciously once more, Andersonville was upon the gallery, the gallery was within the stockade.

Lucy strangled. We must go into the house, Poppy. Oh, this is the worst yet! And close all windows tightly.

Daughter, it’s too blamed hot!

Yes, yes— Poppy! I’ve just recollected: I’ve still some Balm of a Thousand Flowers. I’ll go fetch.

Her limp-skirted figure fluttered away against the gleam of one low lamp inside and Ira heard her speeding on the stairs. He got up heavily and pushed through the heat and smoke and night and smell, making his way to Veronica, hoping that a share of smoke traveled to her thickly enough to do some good. She too was in a rocking chair, but she sat bolt upright, she did not rock, the claws of her hands were bent tight under the old silk shawl. She ate very little nowadays. She must have raised her eyes to look at Ira although she did not move her head. She whispered, At least that youngun is not clattering her bell.

Of course not, my dear.

See that you walk with care. This old gallery pounds so.

Certainly. I came to see if the cedar smoke reaches you.

Veronica drew a long breath with intense and lingering satisfaction. I like it, Ira.

He said brightly, So do I. Evergreen smoke is one of the pleasantest things. Somehow it causes one to think of holidays and good times, does it not?

She said, Noooo, said it softly and drawn out like the plaint of some animal. Not the evergreen smoke, Ira. The other. The Yellow Smell.

He was cast, cast in his shabby rough but dignified clothing, he was metal poured and cooled. His body was a portion of the statue that he made inside his garb. The spirit which dwelt in that body was molded also (might it ever again walk abroad, witness beauty and thrill to suffocation to it, be proud, be generous, might it know the fierce satisfaction of suffering?) and the spirit was the skeletal structure which a great and awful Molder had strung together to hold his illusion together; so by some accident in a foundry the original skeleton was part of the finished bronze.

Not solely a statue . . . he was a group. He was Laocoön with serpents wrapping him.

Yellow smell, my dear? Smell has no color. He said it because silence knocked at his ears—this nearer silence, separated by leagues from the crooning of the stockade.

I like it. It’s Them.

She said again, They smell because it hurts Them. So. I want Them to be hurt. A chuckle crawled beneath the stilted calm of her tone.

Why? Oh, why? And he was not certain whether he spoke the scream of query aloud or whether it rose only within him, and was unvoiced; yet she found question or answer to his communication as often she had found them when sane.

They killed Moses.

My dear. It’s a war. People are—

They killed Sutherland.

Veronica, you hear me? People are killed in wars. They take risks. It—it finds them—

Killed my Badger—

Hush up, you— You idiot! You idiot woman! Didn’t you yourself just insist that the children were safe, safe asleep upstairs, I shouldn’t walk heavily on this gallery? You know they’re there— They’re asleep upstairs! You said so—

O smell. Well he knew it, he had known it longer than anyone else. He found it when the first cross-bred vines tangled under a fence and dragged their rotting fruit shaped like skulls, and he sent a slave to rid the region of their presence. He’d smelled it—unidentified, unticketed but still noticed—in the long ago when he and his daughter journeyed to their plantation from the incompletely fenced area and he wondered: was it a dog, was it a worried cat, what was the nuisance which lay gassy?

Course they’re asleep.

She agreed to this austerely and did not seem to be aware that he had named her an idiot; or, if she were aware of it, did not resent it.

Ira knew for the first time that there were two notions and knowledges claiming Veronica’s belief simultaneously. There was no rhyme or reason to this. Veronica was a youngish mother still, of child-bearing age, haughtily maternal. She owned a troop of boy-and-girl children possibly all of the same size. This unseen litter she tended with selfish devotion. They were dead but they were alive, she saw that they were fed but offered no bottles or breasts or mugs or spoonfuls; they wailed when they were sick and Veronica soothed them, changed their napkins, did the nursing stint herself, would not let old Ruth do it if old Ruth were about.

And, in identical moments and treading in a quite different avenue of fancy, she was the bereaved lioness whose cubs had been slaughtered . . . yet crueler far than a lioness, not only willing to perform more slaughter in revenge but willing—nay, eager—to brood on an awfulness and call it a Love.

She tittered about it. She said again, I like it. It’s Them. Surely it must hurt Them when They smell like that.

Some of this she spoke aloud . . . the rest seethed inside her and only bubbled out in laughter.

Lucy was close, Lucy stood beside her father and her skirts were brushing him. He stumbled away and bruised his shoulder hard upon the nearest column; this alone kept him from falling off the gallery onto plants and rocks beneath—because he could not see, the night loomed black as a student’s slate, he could not see through it. Lucy held a bowl in which she’d mixed her Balm of a Thousand Flowers cologne with water. In this bowl three of her small pocket handkerchiefs were saturated and should be wrung out: one for her mother, one for herself, one for Ira. They had done this a few other times when the stink overwhelmed them. Lucy thought that her cologne was all gone, used up, and then she remembered another older bottle in her cupboard with a small quantity of cologne remaining in it. They might make masks through which to breathe and thus be able to remain on the porch in comparative coolness. The night was so stifling. In the house it would be worse.

This was the first occasion when Veronica rejected the aid, the boon, the ministration.

Mother, Lucy insisted again, but the woman waved her off.

Tis a pleasing scent. Tis—attar—

Surely it is pleasing. But let me spread the cloth over your face. See—it’s all wet—and cool—

With dread strength her mother pushed the hand away. My dear young lady! Don’t be insistent. Don’t be impudent—

Mother—

Gifts should never be forced by the giver! Mind, now. I worked it once in cross-stitch. Twas something like that. Twas a motto—

But, Mother, if you insist on breathing that noxious scent you’ll be ill. Cousin Harry warned by letter that the very air must be laden with miasma. And—and the effluvia of so many who are sick—

Dying, said Veronica. Dead. Better dead.

Her thin iron hand and arm swept up and out, hurling the bowl from Lucy’s clutch. It was a heavy vessel, not fragile, it did not break immediately. There came a loud splash on the gallery’s floor, then no sound but the bowl’s rolling as it made small thunder across the hollow boards (Ira thought of skulls again, he thought of a skull rolling) and then for a portion of time, the part of a second, there was silence as the bowl went through space; then it struck the ornamental ridge of stones bordering a flower bed. The smash said, This is termination. Something definite has happened. Something is over and done with.

Balm of a Thousand Flowers rose up to vie with the stockade’s smell and the faint odor of charred cedar lingering, to be defeated first by the other, and soon they were both defeated by the one. Andersonville towered and struck, almost you could see it in the night, it slapped as the hand of Veronica had slapped the bowl gone to atoms.

Lucy found her father and sank her head against his arm. Veronica Claffey sat motionless, no longer giving forth her laugh. That was one kindness in a life grown dank otherwise.