Ashes (8 page)

Wilkie could barely speak. "He crossed the dead line, sir."

Wilkie's eyes crawled from the officer's face to the corpse on the ground below. Flies had already settled on the wounds, their wings bright blue in the sun. Eggs would soon be laid, and maggots would be born in the man's rotting meat. Some of the larvae would crawl through the shallow grave dirt and make their way back here to continue the endless cycle.

"Good man," said the lieutenant, though his expression was of sorrowful weariness. "The war's over for one poor fool, at least."

Some of the prisoners below were mumbling. The lieutenant leaned over the sentry box. "Any man crossing the dead line will be shot," he said in a commanding voice.

The rumbles of discontent continued, but no Yankees approached the fence. Wilkie stared at the corpse until his vision blurred. He felt the officer's hand on his shoulder.

"Reload, private, then come with me." The lieutenant ignored Wilkie's tears.

Wilkie knelt in the sentry box and rubbed at his eyes. He opened them and let the heat dry them. Even staring at the clouds, he could still see the corpse, as if the vision had been burned into his retinas. Wilkie tried to tell himself that it wasn't his shot that killed the prisoner, but he knew he had aimed true for the chest. Then he grew angry at himself and rapped the gun with his knuckles, letting the pain distract him from such thoughts.

He climbed down the ladder, the musket cradled across one forearm. Guards opened the front gate, and a second private joined Wilkie and the lieutenant. They walked the no-man's-land between the wall and the dead line, eyes straight ahead, not acknowledging the watching Union soldiers.

"If I had a gun," said some brave anonymous soul.

"You'll get yours, Reb," said another. The lilting opening notes of "Amazing Grace" issued from the lips of a third.

When the detail reached the corpse, Wilkie and the other private rolled it over, so that the dead man was staring sightlessly at the sky. The lieutenant stood some distance away, talking to a Union officer.

"He just up and ran," Wilkie said to the private. "I had to shoot him."

"Hell, you're lucky you found a good reason. I seen 'em killed for less." The private spat a stream of tobacco juice to the ground. "Chamberlain, over in Second, tossed some bread scraps over the wall just down the foot of the dead line, then sat waiting for some Yankee to reach for it."

The private folded the dead man's arms over his chest and grabbed the shoulders of the bloodstained tunic. Wilkie balanced his musket over his arm again and grabbed the man's ankles. Pale, wrinkled toes poked from the boots.

"Boots ain't worth stealing," said the private. "Lately the dead have been just about worthless."

Wilkie said nothing, surprised by the dead man's lightness as they lifted him. He must be hollow, Wilkie thought.

"Except I hear the prisoners are selling rights on the corpses,” said the other soldier. "First out on burial detail get the best trading, you know."

Wilkie nodded, grunted, hoping to hurry the private along. The lieutenant finished with the Union officer and joined them.

"Tibbets," said the lieutenant. "Eighty-Second
New York
."

Tibbets. Wilkie tried the name on his tongue, pushed it against his teeth. Tibbets, a man with family somewhere, a man who may have enlisted under the same sense of duty that had brought Wilkie to their shared destination. A man. A name.

A corpse.

Flies buzzed about them. They reached the front gate and laid the corpse out in the line of the twenty other fresh dead just inside the wall. Tibbets would rest there until the morning, feeding flies in the company of his cold comrades. Wilkie and the other Confederates left the compound as the Union soldiers dispersed. A single death was not the subject of much rumination, not when thousands had already made their final exit through those gates.

Wilkie had grave detail the next morning. He had slept fitfully, his dreams haunted by Tibbets's rigid face. He waited by the wagon while Union soldiers tossed the corpses as casually as if stacking cordwood. Another fifty had died during the night, and the air was ripe with disease. When the first wagon was full, it began its trip to the dead-house, where the corpses were counted.

The Union volunteers marched in the wagon's wake, Wilkie bringing up the rear. When they reached the dead-house, the corpses were unloaded and brought inside for identification. This gave the prisoners a little free time. Some sat against trees, smoking, but a few slipped into the bushes surrounding the dead-house. They were the hucksters, ones who smuggled goods inside and profited from the hardship and deprivation of their fellow soldiers.

Guards were scattered around the grounds, and escape was rare. The Confederates turned a half-blind eye to the trading. An unwritten rule was that a huckster had to share a portion of his trade goods, slipping some eggs, tobacco, or the occasional greenback to the captors. It was a system that worked well, the kind of thing befitting a civilized camp. Except for those on the inside who had no money or barter.

Wilkie went into the shade of the woods and rested his musket against an oak. To the left of him was the mass cemetery, a long shallow ditch waiting for the day's dead. The thin layer of loose clay over the bodies did little to quell the stench of decay. Five thousand were already buried here, according to the corpse counters.

Wilkie lit his corncob pipe. The tobacco was stale, but at least it burned the smell of death from his nostrils.

He heard a rustle in a nearby laurel thicket. "Is that you, Yankee?" he said, to warn the prisoner not to attempt escape.

The bushes shimmied and the waxen leaves parted. A man in a shabby Union uniform stepped out. Wilkie first saw the toes protruding from the boots, then his gaze traveled slowly past the bloodied rips in the tunic to the man's face. The top of his skull was peeled away, but Wilkie knew that face, those eyes.

Tibbets.

Wilkie grabbed for his musket, accidentally knocking it to the ground. As he fell to his knees and scrabbled for it among the leaves, the boots approached, crackling in the dead loam and forest detritus. Wilkie gripped the musket and brought it to bear. What good was a musket ball against a dead man?

Tibbets stopped several feet away. His hands were spread wide, palms up. The dark eyes were solemn, the lips pressed tight. He was waiting.

"I . . . I didn't mean to kill you," Wilkie sputtered.

Tibbets said nothing.

A single sentence flew out from the chaos of Wilkie's thoughts: You can't talk when you're dead.

But neither could you walk. Neither could you stand there before the man who had shot you and make some silent pleading demand.

Tibbets raised his arms higher, then looked briefly heavenward. Wilkie followed the dead man's gaze. Nothing up there but a rag-barrel's worth of clouds and the screaming orange eye of the sun.

When Wilkie looked again at Tibbets, the corpse's hands were full of goods. Eggs, squash, a small rasher of bacon. And soap. Wilkie hadn't seen soap in six months.

Tibbets held his hands out to Wilkie. The meaning was clear. The goods were a gift to Wilkie. He set down his musket, trembling, and reached out to the corpse.

The eggs were cool to the touch, cooler than the dead fingers. The bacon had oozed some grease in the heat, but hadn't yet spoiled. The squash was shriveled but whole. And the soap . . .

Wilkie put the soap to his nose. The scent made him think of Susan, her clean hair, the meadow behind her father's cornfield.

Wilkie gazed gratefully into the dead man's eyes. "Why?" he asked.

The pale lips parted, and Tibbets's words came like a lost creek breeze. "You cried."

Tibbets turned and headed back toward the stand of jack pine.

Wilkie bit into the neck of one of the summer squashes. It was real. The impossible had become probable, and all that was left was for Wilkie to accept the evidence of his eyes, ears, hands, and mouth. "Wait," Wilkie called after Tibbets.

The dead Yankee paused, tilted his head as if heeding some distant command, then slowly waved for Wilkie to follow. Wilkie looked back toward the stockade, where nothing waited but the duty of another day's death watch. He peered through the branches to the dead-house, where maggots roiled. When he looked back, Tibbets was gone, the pine limbs shaking from his passage.

Wilkie stuffed the food and soap into his pockets. Leaving the musket, he slipped into the pines and wandered until he saw Tibbets far ahead. Wilkie walked, occasionally breaking into a run, never gaining on Tibbets. His limbs were heavy with fatigue, his uniform soaked with sweat. A blister rose on his big toe. Surely he had followed for hours, yet the sun still hung high in the sky.

At last he heard the soft twanging of a mouth harp, the duet of a banjo and guitar. Laughter came from behind the next stand of trees, and wood smoke filled the air. Someone was broiling meat over a fire. The clank of flatware and tin was accompanied by the rich aroma of brewed coffee. An unseen horse whinnied.

Wilkie burst into a run, using the last of his strength. He fought through a tangle of briars and scrub locust, kicking at the vines that kept him from those delightful sounds and smells. Finally he fell from the grip of the forest into an expanse of twilight. The air had gone crisp with chill. Campfires dotted the horizon as far as he could see. Around them huddled groups of men, joking, eating, drinking, writing letters or playing music.

Rows of tents stood lined in uniform rank, not a rip among them. This had to be a Union camp. If so, he would gladly surrender for just one good meal and a chance to hear that peaceful laughter and camaraderie. Wilkie approached the nearest campfire.

Two men rose from the log they were sitting on. One was dressed in a Union cavalry uniform, bright with polished leather and buttons. The other was Tibbets, in his prisoner's rags. Tibbets made a motion with his hand for Wilkie to sit. Wilkie nodded to the cavalry officer and sat rubbing his hands before the flames.

"This is Wilkie," Tibbets said.

Wilkie glanced up, about to ask the dead prisoner how he knew Wilkie's name. But in the land of the impossible, why shouldn't he?

The officer gave the open-handed Rebel salute. "Welcome."

Wilkie wondered why no one brought weapons to bear on him. Then he noticed that none of the men were armed. He studied the men sitting across the fire from him. They wore gray Confederate jackets. One of the men had cornbread crumbs in his beard. The soldiers nodded in greeting, then turned their attention back to the warm pork that filled their hands.

"Where do I go to surrender?" Wilkie asked the officer.

The officer's mouth fell open, then, after a moment, a laugh rolled from deep inside his chest. The other men around the fire joined in, along with several groups from nearby campfires. When the officer regained his composure, he said, "You don't have to surrender, son. Why, the war's over."