Andersonville (61 page)

Together they hunted hastily through lower rooms, then in disorder realized that which they should have noticed all along: the front door stood open to the night. Ira fetched a lantern from the rear stoop. She may have gone over to The Pines, child. He said that, not wishing to mention the family burying-ground. Often they spoke of their cemetery as The Pines.

I’ll go see, said Ira.

Let Ninny rouse the hands!

But she’s suffering hysterics because you struck her, child— I reckon you’ve never struck her before. Jem is fussing with her. Do you clothe yourself at once.

Ira hunted with no result among the graves; he’d thought that surely he would find Veronica there. He went to the blacks’ cemetery, even to the pets’. Rouse up, old Deuce, and aid me in seeking your mistress, and he thought for a moment that Deuce came wagging. When he returned to the house Lucy had put on shoes and stockings, and a shawl over her wrapper. Already she had called Jonas and Coffee. Jem came lumbering a moment later. Ira told them off to the search. He warned the slaves about stopping in their tracks if challenged by pickets, and explained what they must say.

Lucy, you shall go with me. I can’t let you explore by yourself, not with these vagabond troops about. Though we should surely cover more ground if you— We’ll go toward the stockade.

Can’t you fetch Coz from the hospital, Poppy?

How could he aid, other than to seek as we are seeking? If we do not find your mother promptly I’ll appeal to the Officer of the Day.

One slave poked west toward the railroad, another (Jonas, the most trustworthy) moved among trees which screened the rifle pits and fort. They were told to cry, Mistress, Mistress, as they wandered. Also the black women were recruited; Orphan Dick wept along with Ninny, he did not know why. The women were ordered to investigate orchard and shrubbery, areas close to cabins and sheds. They went crying Mistess,
Misss
tess
.
It was a strange fluting and rumble of calling voices spread farther and farther apart, muting in lonely black distance, small lights poking wan fluttering holes in the curtain of blackness, curtain of heat and decay.

Veronica Claffey discovered her pool. It had altered . . . oho, no frogs? Badger then shall have none to place in spirits, in glass jars within his Museum of World-Wide Wonders. Elsewhere he must collect his frogs. Veronica waded toward the pool, the earth grew spongier, looser, her bare torn feet began to slip through feather beds of air whereon she strolled, her feet began to splash. It was difficult to draw her feet free from ooze and plashing, they sucked deeply, something drew her feet down and mired them. This, she decided, is whence it cometh. The Yellow Smell. For it is here, and They must be here because it comes from Them. They make it.

They were a far different They from Those who’d baked her on the bed, on the griddle iron. They were Yankees.

Grid, pan, skillet?

A spider?

Come in.

Will you walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
This she began to sing in a crusty sharp tone.
Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.

But although wetness smelled, although Veronica struggled amid reek, she struggled in comparative coolness. The marsh was soft . . . pool lay beneath, the pool would comfort her could she but reach it.
O heat,
a remembered voice was quoting. Assuredly heat would dry up her brains did she not lave and lave and lave. A slow gurgle sounded; why, the pool was moving. The collection of moisture would be treated serenely with moss and water bugs as she’d dreamed it; and Veronica Arwood was too wise a girl to be afraid of water bugs. Just skitter you hand, Mis Ronny, said Mammy Pen. Just skitter, skitter with you hand, child. Then all them bug they go a-fleeing.

Deep in the bog she squatted and began to skitter, and thought that bugs skated off from her disturbance.

...Halt!

I’ve halted, we’re halted.

Who goes there?

Mr. Claffey from the plantation. We’re hunting for Mrs. Claffey—she’s stricken with fever—ill—wandering somewhere.

Is it Mr. Claffey sure enough?

Here, I’m holding the light on my face.

Why, Mr. Claffey, we hain’t seen nobody.

Hold on there, Jeff, Allie done shot at something, while back.

Good God, did you—?

Yes, sir, I fired at something sure enough, but don’t reckon I hit nothing.

What was it, what did you see?

Just something white kept a-moving even when I’d challenged.

Where? Which way?

Right down that way, sir. On that path winds around there, going over south side the hospital.

In time Ira found the woman. His lantern picked out her fragile figure now not so white, crouched in muck and painted with muck, the wide-spread slime of the hospital’s drainage. He waded in, lifted the muttering creature, carried her out. So dry hot on that spider, she said distinctly. Shall need to drink more. The stuff dripped from her chin, plastered her night-dress, her babbling mouth was anointed with it. Ira strode lamely, carrying Veronica to her bed. Lucy scampered gasping ahead, she began to call to the black women before she entered the dooryard.

Come in.

Veronica went down those several steps as she had gone in fancy so many times. Smaller tombs within this larger edifice were open, and someone dressed in white lay within each marble shell. Or was it marble, was it granite? Off into nethermost reaches the bell-stroke of that voice resounded, and above outer roofs a sky must be painted mystically, yews or cedars must be black against retreating sunset.

Someone dressed in white sat up suddenly in one of the coffins.

A swathed arm stretched, grave-wrapped finger pointed, indicating the destination toward which Veronica must venture. In this instance she did not come from her dream. She thought of some great truth which she should announce, she should call it back to people behind her. Then she heard children running and laughing ahead, and began to laugh, herself, and to run toward the children.

 XXXVI 

J
ohn Winder stood with Henry Wirz on a sentry platform. John Winder did not see the bears witnessed by Henry Wirz; he saw scum, a marsh under the scum, pollywogs in the marsh. They were too thick, the marsh could not support their life, it was fated that many would die. Perhaps the survivors, if sufficiently cannabalistic, could sustain themselves directly by feasting on dead pollywogs. Or indirectly, as by swallowing fruits to be reared in a forest of growth which the dead creatures had manured.

I have not yet seen your most recent return, Captain.

General, that Gus Gleich he is sick.
Ach,
so much trouble I have with my office! And that Gus Moesner, he is good for the work, but with the English he is not so good. Slow he goes,
ja.
Tomorrow I present the return of prisoners to date.

Approximately . . . Captain?

Sir, it is maybe twenty-nine thousand now.

Because Winder was older in his mind than in his years, and sometimes worse than senile in his addiction to a crusty past, he sent Cadet Davis to the board again. Winder, aged perhaps twenty-seven, sat behind his small desk on a raised platform, and the cadets of this section sat before him, lining the sides of the long form—six on the left, five on the right, now that Mr. Davis had vacated his chair. Mr. Davis stood beside the easel which held the board, and gripped a pointer in one of his knotted bony young hands—the hand nearest the board, as prescribed.

Elementary tactical combinations of the Greeks were very simple, but they were methodical. An army corps was composed of—

The pointer found the long printed word at the top.

A
Tetraphalangarchia.

Sprightly young Mr. Wayland at the lower end of the form wished to make a joke about this, you could see mischief peppered in his eyes, you could see his naughty soul fairly writhing for release within his rigid body; but he had a dangerous weight of demerits already, and the tactical instructor’s hard eye was upon him.

This consisted of sixteen thousand, three hundred and forty-five
Oplitai.

The pointer moved.

An
Epitagma,
numbering eight thousand, one hundred and ninety-two
Psiloi;
also an
Epitagma
of cavalry numbering four thousand and ninety-six men.

Might you explain to the section, Mr. Davis, the composition of the grand phalanx.

Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.

The tip of the pointer went walking.
Tetraphalangarchia,
four.
Phalanxes,
sixteen.
Chiliarchiae,
sixty-four.
Syntagmata,
two hundred and fifty-six.

...But in Andersonville these scraps of mouthing, hobbling, gurgling debris were neither Greeks nor Romans. Said old John Winder, They are Yankees, they are Nationalists; they must be treated so.

He cried at Henry Wirz, and so unexpectedly that Wirz’s nerves gave a leap— He cried, I haven’t yet set foot in this damnable place, nor do I intend to!

Ja,
General. It is not good you do so. You they would attack!

Ah, I’m not afraid of the sons of bitches! Are
you
afraid?

No, no!

Ah, you fear them.

Sir, they are very bad. Like bears in Bern.

Where in hell’s that?

Sir— I mean— General Winder, so many we have now; not more should be sent by me here.

God damn it,
you
don’t send them.

I mean—
To
me at this stockade. They should not send more.

Winder made his stiff heavy way down the ladder, the ladder sagged and groaned under his weight. Flory Tebbs, displaced from the platform by the coming of these officers, stood bug-eyed and expected the ladder to smash and the general to fall with it. But to Flory’s disappointment the ladder did not break.

Winder returned slowly up the hill to his office, breathing heavily as he went (he felt somehow that the prisoners had made him short of breath and he blamed them accordingly). Late that afternoon, when Wirz’s delayed regular return was placed before him, he meditated upon it and then addressed himself with testiness to the adjutant and inspector-general, General Cooper.

Your indorsement on the letter of S. B. Davis, relating to the strength of the guard at this post, contains a very severe censure—

Winder
sat for a time with the penholder shaking in front of his thin mouth. He wanted to chew the penholder, for thought, but he might press that infected tooth again. In old age he was trying to break himself of biting penholders.

—Which I am sure would not have been made if you had a clear comprehension of this post, of its wants and its difficulties. Reflect for a moment; twenty-nine thousand two hundred and one prisoners of war, many of them desperate characters—

Just how desperate, Cooper might never know. If Cooper could have stood upon that platform, if Cooper could have seen the lanceless
Oplitai—
God damn it! If Cooper could have seen squirming pollywogs in the marsh—

—
A
post a mile long by half a mile wide, the stockade for prisoners within one hundred and sixty yards of a mile in circumference, numerous avenues leading to the post to be guarded, public property to be cared for, guards for working parties—

He did bite the penholder at last. The jolt from that savage tooth-nerve went like a knife through his upper jaw and splintered the top of his head. He wrote on, as soon as his vision cleared. The ink was hot, the ink bitter, the ink black, black as John Winder’s own blood had been for nearly fifty years.

You speak in your indorsement of placing the prisoners properly. I do not exactly comprehend what is intended by it. I know of but one way to place them, and that is to put them into the stockade.

He thought, And remember me to the President, devil burn you.

Again he retreated to the Hudson, he retreated into a classroom of 1827, a classroom of early 1828. . . . Did Mr. Davis have his pointer in hand? Had he advanced to the blackboard? Yes. Did the
Tetrarchiae
still number one thousand and twenty-four, the
Lochoi
or files, four thousand and ninety-six
Enomitiae
of four men each? Did Mr. Davis remember? John Winder remembered.

Perhaps ten days later, at two o’clock in the morning, Elizabeth Wirz roused up to see a dull brown bird on the ceiling above her and on wall and windows. This bird was the shadow of her husband Henry as he bent above and beside a stub of candle, extending his arm in a nest of rags and lint.

Husband, are you picking again? Her high-pitched voice was soft with sleep.

Gott,
it is that I must pick. Almost it kills me, Ilse! He called her that often, it being an affectionate diminutive of Elizabeth with which he was familiar; also a favorite neighbor of his Zurich childhood had been named Ilse; the name had a connotation of warmth.

Elizabeth put on the nightcap which had come off while she slept, and in her wrapper went to help her husband. He had some surgical instruments in a pan, and had been trying without success to relieve the congestion of his old wound by establishing drainage. He cursed, not directly at his wife, but he cursed civilization around her, behind her, ahead of her. He complained that his left hand trembled with the pain engendered by his right arm: so he was making a botch. Furrowed hide of his forearm was a stubble field of angry corrugations—there were marks of old openings and old healings, there were long fresh ridges of cherry red drilled unevenly amid silvery scar tissue. Kinky black hair grew in disorderly patches, it did not grow upon scar tissue.

Will never I be rid of this?

You said you did not wish it amputated, said the little woman sadly.

Nein,
rather would I be dead. He indicated an area which he wished to have sliced with his scalpel, and afterward he wished the incision deepened by use of a sharp probe. Elizabeth had performed this surgery for him several times before but once she fell in a faint while doing it. This was the first time Henry Wirz had made such a request of her since the day when she fainted.

You are giddy? he asked anxiously.

No, husband. I’ll try the scalpel, as you bid. She tittered, trying to comfort him: My, I’m such a baby, Henry. And you, poor thing, suffering eternally—

He gasped, Ilse, do not scrape. It is sharp. Now you cut. Cut deep! The incision was made, the jiggling probe poked in. The woman felt a roaring in her ears. She shook her head and gritted her teeth, continuing with the task. There issued forth a secretion, but not in the quantity that Henry wished, and no flakes of separated bone came with it. Wirz thought that adjacent to the mutilated radius and ulna there was a reservoir of fluid which might later come pouring through the avenue made for it, and so pulsation and hotness would diminish, and so he might sleep again.

Bandage was constructed, linen was wound once more, the candle extinguished. The man and the woman got back upon the bed. Soon Elizabeth was breathing regularly in sleep. Henry’s mind went jerking.

He was concerned with a chain gang. Twelve men had been shackled in this particular gang, ironed by the smith at Wirz’s command. It was a creditable job: Captain John Heath, a commissary officer, superintended the blacksmith at the task and saw that all was well. The men thus confined were dangerous. All had tried to escape, two of them had attacked guards, one had tried to escape twice. Now he would not escape again or even try to! Each man had a chain and a shackle around each ankle, the chain leading forward to the man ahead of him; with legs so shackled, the prisoners could step but eight or ten inches at a time, and mechanically all were forced to keep in step. Each owned a small iron ball which he had to lift and carry in his hand when he moved, and there was a much larger ball chained to every group of four. By combined pulling of the gang the larger balls could be dragged.

At the present a problem intruded. One of the prisoners came down with diarrhoea in its most violent form, and Henry Wirz did not know what to do about this. The final plea brought to him when he left the prison at the end of the previous day had been a complaint of the well prisoners fastened to the sick one. At first they’d tried going along with him to the sink, whenever he had to Go Out; but he had to Go Out all the time. The Yankees fastened to him declared that it was ruthless to compel them—the well, the comparatively unsick—to share the groanings and splashings of a diarrhoeic prisoner. They did not wish to spend all their time at the sink. Nor did they wish to be sprayed with juices of the sick man when his explosions overcame him suddenly, unavoidably.

What was Captain Wirz to do about this? Also they were always complaining that the chain gang and stocks were inhuman. Henry responded cuttingly, jeeringly, asking them if they had ever heard of civil prisons and punishments awarded therein.

If you be good once—model prisoners—in those stocks you should not be, in this chain gang!

That made sense to Henry Wirz, why did it not make sense to the prisoners? Because they were bears. Because most of them had not the wits of bears. Could they not understand why they were being punished?

Him with the diarrhoea: he was something to think about. As a physician, Henry deplored the sight or knowledge of men compelled to associate with the ordure of the sick. That was the reason he’d sought to move heaven and earth, that was the reason he’d managed to have the hospital taken outside the stockade months before. But as prison superintendent he must maintain discipline. Once committed to an act he should not falter, for any change would be interpreted promptly as a demonstration of weakness. The prisoners must not believe him weak. Suppose he yielded to their importuning and allowed the diarrhoeic Yankee to be separated from the others? They would feel that they had won a victory. They were not victors, they were prisoners. How should he decide? His arm hurt him so.

A hot wind came from the northwest, suggesting a shower to follow, and blowing before it the smell of Andersonville which had penetrated across dark low hills even as far as the Boss house. Pine branches were soughing, cardboard leaves of magnolia racketed. So, upon the high hurtful fence laced around a valley of sleep which he fought to enter— Perched on this indeterminate palisade, Henry Wirz had the notion that he was hearing waves, hearing a sea creasing under the bow of a blockade runner. Again an officer said to him, I’m sorry, Captain, we think the Yanks are chasing us, we’ve got to get up more speed, we’ve got to lighten ship. That’s the reason those sailors are dumping out the cabin furniture. That chest of yours, Captain—