Andersonville (70 page)

But Tite Cherry and Rom Hillburner were his especial chums, and they had respect for Willie and knew that he wasn’t a dunce; neither was he an invalid in need of salts and powders. They hung back and begged quietly for a taste. After plain water, Katty Fiedenbruster’s gift seemed a nectar. The word got around. Consistently thereafter Willie was importuned each time the squad descended on a well . . . he set his jaw, and shrugged: to think he’d ever toyed with the notion that the powdered lemonade might last through an entire campaign! But a man couldn’t be niggardly with his campmates—especially not when he and Tite and Rom and Rom’s brother Reem all messed closely together. Remus Hillburner was a natural born forager; if he couldn’t beg a basket luncheon from bonneted ladies in some village he could manage to subtract a tender pullet from one of those same ladies’ hen-coops. Once he came back into camp with a corned leg of beef, and where had he stolen that? Reem stood in fine favor with the lieutenant, and even the cross-grained sergeant regarded him with a tenderly appraising eye. Pity that he had to die of fever that winter.

Tite Cherry and the Hillburner brothers and a few others had their share of the deliciousness proffered by Katty; probably more than their share, for Willie was generous to a fault. The day he emptied the bottle, and smashed it against a brick wall in sacred ceremony so that nothing else would ever be contained therein— That day he thought to himself, Hard lines from now on. Oh, I’ll drink; but maybe Katty’s lemonade powder took away a lot of the sickness I might have found in those wells along the roads, and now I got to show caution. So he did, though often his dry innards coiled like snakes at the sight of his fellows plunging their faces into dark streams which edged through dirty towns—rioting around some broken-down open well or cistern with a privy on one side of it and a hog-pen on the other, and manure piles rotting close.

In arid moments like those he thought of Doctor, and somehow he managed to live and to train himself into Going Without. The discipline Willie wielded over himself was not so bad, in all likelihood, as the discipline which Doctor had had to muster. In rare intimacies Willie had learned the whole story, bit by bit: the bestial father, the blows and tortures and eventual flight, the busy lordly doctor whose garden-digger and stable-boy the senior Mann became, the medical books borrowed secretly—
thieved
would be more like it—and read by light of a tin lantern until the weary body fell off the bench and the weary brain hummed with a demons’ litany of discutients, femurs, carminatives, and tartareous adhesions. The Latin learned so slowly, the trip to a strange city on borrowed money, the waiting-on-table, the long lectures listened to by tired ears, the shoveling-of-coal, the first cadaver to excite the spirit—

Doubtless his father was more of an ideal and symbol to Willie Mann than the National Flag; definitely more of an ideal and symbol than a vague thought of the President and the Congress and the engraved unfinished dome of the National Capitol. So what would Doctor say if he knew about Willie and Katrine? What would Doctor say—what would Doctor
do—
if—?

Hard lines, waiting to hear. Oh, hard lines.

The letter came finally, and gave to Willie a release and a freedom and vigor he did not well deserve, and knew that he did not well deserve.

It was not the only letter she wrote to him, but it was the only one which reached him until the spring of 1864.

It was after the Evening of Fireflies, and word had come that the soldier boys should prepare to depart on Wednesday. Sunday the skies wept at thought of their going. The Fiedenbrusters attended one church, the Manns another, so there was not even a glimpse of Katty to be caught in the wet of noon. In afternoon Willie put an old piece of blanket over his head in lieu of mackintosh, and walked to the Fiedenbruster place where things were dismal in the extreme. The two youngest boys were sick abed with whooping-cough and you could hear them whooping like animals or Indians or something as you sat in the sitting room. Wempkie and Marta insisted on keeping their elders company, and Katrine was indignant about this, and spoke shortly to her sisters and her face became colored as always when she was angry. She sat and looked out of the little window and Willie thought she was mad at him. He suggested Authors—the Fiedenbruster girls owned a set of the cards, each card decorated with imposing pictures of Dickens and Wordsworth and Shakespeare and folks like that; if Marta asked Wempkie for Love’s Labour’s Lost, Number Two, and Wempkie didn’t have it, then when it came your turn you could say, Marta, do you happen to have Midsummer Night’s Dream, Number Two? Sometimes Authors was a jolly business; but Mrs. Fiedenbruster wouldn’t let them play on this day because it was Sunday. She said, No,
mein Kinder,
hickory nuts you can crack.

Katty said pettishly,
Ach,
Mamma, it won’t do no good. All last year’s nuts, and dried up. Not fit to eat.

It was dull indeed; the drizzle kept up outside. Jake Fiedenbruster slumbered noisily on the sofa in the kitchen-dining room with a red handkerchief over his bearded face; and the other children read Sunday School books around the kitchen table . . . those were all they were allowed to read. Willie went home early, and was cross with his sisters; and back at the other house Katty covered herself with a comforter on her bed and Wempkie’s, and cried. He couldn’t know that, of course, but she told him later.

Monday dawned as prettily painted as Sunday had been the tone of zinc. Willie went out to do his chores (only two more mornings would he do them) and he was so charged with life and strength that he roared martial songs at the top of his voice while he loped about with forks and pails.
We leave our plows and workshops,
sang Willie Mann or more properly chanted Willie Mann with sublime disregard of pitch because he could never carry a tune on a shovel,
our wives and children dear, with hearts too full for utterance, and but a silent tear.

His mother heard him, and thought of how the dead Samuel had once sung, with more melody, and she lay crying as she looked at bright light making gilt out of the slanted walls across from her.

His father heard him, and snorted, half in his sleep and half awake. Not quite a silent tear, observed Doctor in a mumble.

But Willie’s mother thought of the dead Sam, and of Willie’s departure day-after-tomorrow, and she cried steadily if silently. Doctor was lying on his back with yellow hairs of his beard intertwined with darker curlier hairs of his chest where his nightshirt hung open, and he realized that his wife was crying and why she was crying. He struggled round in bed until he could put both arms around Minnie; so she cried, so he tended and soothed her by saying nothing but by holding her close.

We dare not look behind us,
roared the youth at the stable,
but steadfastly before. We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.
Morning glories were candies of pink and blue where they crawled on the trellis against the privy wall, warming wider and wider although the sun was not yet high; nasturtiums were orange and gold butter spread on the green bread of the lawn beside the well-curb; the tiger cat named Victoria sat on the wooden walk with legs cocked wide, and scrubbed herself with a harsh pink tongue.
We are coming, we are coming, our Union to restore—
Florence had built up the kitchen fire, and smoke smelled sweet; it promised toast and eggs and fried salt pork to come, to say nothing of the best red cherry preserves ever made.

Willie thought of the holiday to be his as soon as morning chores were done, because soon he was going to the war. He thought of Beverly’s Timber, and the crawling of Beverly’s Creek, and the wide brown hole where first he had learned to swim, and where catfish hung dreaming outside the porticos of limestone where in earlier summer they made their nests and guarded their eggs. He thought of hazel thickets he had known in frosty fall; and now in July the grass would turn its tall length flat and lie in springy windrows like little glades of Nature’s featherbeds stretching from bunch of brush to bunch of brush.

...Would you like to go there with me?

...Ja.

So that was the way he dreamed it. Within the hour after breakfast he stood at the Fiedenbruster kitchen door with his old stained straw hat in his hand . . . aw, Katty. Please ask your Ma. We could have a splendid pic-nic party: just you and me. You won’t have to fix anything—I’d fetch all the sandwiches and truck, and we got half a hen left from Sunday dinner in the cooler. And a jar of Ma’s grapejuice. I’ll bait your hook and everything; you won’t have to touch a worm.

My mother might not let me go. Alone in the woods—with a young man.
Nein,
she might not—

Dog my cats, I’ll ask her myself! He shooed Katty aside with enthusiasm, and found Mrs. Fiedenbruster in the buttery, lifting a damp cloth filled with white curds. There he asked her. The old clock spoke persistently on its shelf above the sink—the clock brought from Bavaria with such care, and it had monkeys and vines and rose petals painted on the front. The rooms were strangely silent, except for that clock, for all the rest of the Fiedenbrusters worked in field or garden save for the ailing little boys, and they dozed.

The mother pushed her specs down on her round nose and peered intently over them. I do not know. Katty is so young a girl— But you are a good boy, Willie. And you go to war. Maybe you get killed,
nein?
She took up a corner of her wide blue apron to touch the honest wetness in her eyes.

Mutter,
that you should not say!

But it could be.
Ja,
Katrine, you may go for pic-nic by Willie Mann. Across the road you must go, and through the long cornfield. I do not wish the neighbors should see you go—two, alone. And Willie, you take good care of
mein Katchen
?

Course I will.

No female Fiedenbruster dared permit a boy to prepare the luncheon to be carried to Beverly’s Timber or anywhere else, so Katty was a long while about cutting and wrapping the food, and would have been an even longer while about fixing her curls and getting into her fresh checked gingham. But her mother hastened her up. Mrs. Fiedenbruster deemed it wise that the other children should be unaware of this rustic festivity. They might be allowed to think that Katty had been permitted to spend the day at the Mann house, with Willie and his sisters;
ja,
that was what they could think. Jacob she might tell, Jacob she might not tell: she would decide later . . . come, come, little daughter, away with thee before the girls come from the garden in; and at the gate thy Willie is already with fishing poles. . . .

Corn waited to conceal them, corn was a wilderness with its sharp-edged bent swords of leaves, and the new silk a beauty at the tip of every heartening ear. Solemnly the girl and the boy moved down the long damp corn-row; it was a task; if Katty moved first the leaves chafed at her hands and face; if Willie went ahead the long leaves whipped back and spatted Katty; but they made their way, the corn smelled youthfully rich and filled with strong green juice; they made their way.

He took down two rails of Mr. Beverly’s fence, so that he might aid Katty across with a minimum of skirt-hoisting, and then with care he replaced the rails—set them solidly back into their notches.

It is beautiful, Willie. Here I have never been.

Not in Beverly’s Timber? Don’t you folks ever come over here to fish or—?

By the creek at the bridge I have been. That is all. But with you I will not be afraid.

Well, what in— What could you be feart of?

She looked up shyly, then the brown lashes came down. Maybe bears.

Naw! Haven’t been no bears in these parts for years and years.

Maybe a—wolf? Maybe wildcats? (There was still a touch of v in her w’s; it sounded nearly like
volf
and
vildcats,
and Willie loved her for it . . . he loved her for many things.)

He remembered the two lines going loose into Beverly’s Creek, and the way those lines broke at angles beneath the surface. The stream was brown and pale but you could see to a certain depth in the holes, and you could make out wide-headed shadows of catfish as they came to investigate the twin baits, and rejected them, but clung near, watching still, waving their limp feelers in derision. He remembered the unhappy turtle which did indeed bite hard on Katty’s bait, and so she squealed and fetched it up: she was so excited that she kept talking in German (that was the language the Fiedenbrusters used at home, naturally enough); and part of her hair came down while she was cavorting and exclaiming and waving her pole about. The turtle marched grimly over grass, trying to go back to his deep home; and now Katty was deploring all fishing and fishermen.

Ach,
and he has that cruel hook. In his poor mouth!
Ach,
Willie, it is so cruel. I cannot bear to see.

Naw, naw. It won’t hurt him a speck. Here, I’ll cut him loose.

Ach,
the knife! It must hurt him so— She buried her face in her hands.

...All done, Kat. See, he’s loose. Just look at them legs wiggle when I hold him up.

But he has the bleeding, Willie!

Just a trifle. His mouth is as hard as a rock—it’ll well up in no time at all. Want to put him back in the creek, yourself? No? I’ll put him in. In you go, Turt. Farewell, Turt.

He remembered great iridescent butterflies which whisked above a damp spot far in Beverly’s Timber—the small black-and-orange-and-white butterflies which sat tasting the shallow pool, and shot up when you came too close . . . they wheeled and sped faster than flies . . . and a strange tiny bird of purplish blue beyond, the shyest of the shy, and making soft his song before they alarmed him with their coming.

Willie. Worshipping whisper, the quiet curls and peachy skin and smell of her so close . . . his breath clogged in his chest. Willie, so beautiful a bird. What name?

Dog my cats, Katty, I don’t know. Never saw it before. Twasn’t a bluebird.