Crescent City (47 page)

“Here, get in. I’ll hoist you.”

“Elmira,” someone says. “Had a cousin there. Alabama boy, my mother’s kin. Died there last winter, too.”

“Likely froze to death.”

“Snow gets up to your belly button, I’ve heard tell.”

“Shucks! And I forgot my winter overcoat.” That’s the humorous one; Gabriel remembers him from when they lay in Fredericksburg that first night. Sounds like him, anyway. Not more than seventeen, with a high, still-girlish voice, cracking jokes to keep from crying.

“Winter? It’s only May! You don’t think we’ll still be there by winter?”

Nobody answers.

Where once a sweep of grasses, succulent and high, had covered it, the red Georgia earth lay bare, brick-hard, and brick-hot under the broiling sun. Within the stockade no tree gave shade to comfort a man’s head. No brook ran to cool a man’s feet. There were no tents into which men might crawl to seek relief, only for some the meager shelter, self-contrived, of a torn blanket stretched on four weak sticks.

In one of these David Raphael had established a claim to his share of space, about six square feet to a man, he estimated. Humanity swarmed and overlapped like clustered beetles. He fancied that if one could view the scene from above, it would appear as a single solid mass of flesh.

When he stretched his legs for length, they touched another man’s back. It didn’t matter, because the man scarcely felt the touch; he hadn’t moved all morning and would soon die, might be dead already. In that case one hoped they would pick him up soon. The cart would be coming by sometime before noon, and if they should miss him then, they wouldn’t take him away until tomorrow, God help us.

Someone stirred on his left, mumbling a question.

“Talk louder, I can’t hear you.”

“Turn around, then.”

“I can’t.” It was too great an effort to turn.

“I said, I asked, where did they catch you?”

“Wilderness. Battle of the Wilderness. I blundered into the wrong lines in the dark.”

“How long you been here?”

“Couple of months, I guess, if this is July.”

“It’s July.”

Silence. The fellow stirred again, clumsily shifting. He sounded young. David sighed. It was too much effort to talk, but maybe the boy needed to talk to somebody.

“I’m David Raphael.”

“Tim Woods. Artillery. And you?”

“A doctor.”

“Oh. I’ve a wound. Fleshy part, back of the knee. How do you know when there’s gangrene? I’ve heard—”

Oh, my God, son, how do you know. By the stench and the pain, enough to send you through the ceiling, if there were a ceiling—

“Don’t worry, you haven’t got it. You’d know if you had.”

“I know I haven’t yet. But will I get it?”

“Oh, I’d say not. Youth is on your side, you know.”

No harm in a lie, and maybe some temporary use.

“They live long in my family. My grandfather was ninety-eight. I suppose that’s a good sign.”

“The best. Heredity is what counts.”

“Say, Doctor, what do you think our chances are?”

“For what? Getting out of here?”

“Yeah. What do you think?”

“Oh, not long. War can’t last much longer.”

“God, this heat! How do folks live here?”

“They do.”

They live in shacks under the trees and sleep in hammocks in the shade. Or they live in tall rooms on
verandahs with palmetto fans and drinks in cold glasses.

“I’m from New Hampshire. We have hot summers, but this …” The voice trailed away. Suddenly it resumed. “This leg hurts me like hell.”

“Don’t talk, then. It tires you out. It’ll heal better if you try to sleep.”

“Thanks, Doctor, I’ll try.”

And now the wind, such as it was, a hot wind like the blast from the open oven when the meat is roasting, veered abruptly to blow the fetid air from a corner in which someone had vomited or soiled himself again. It brought a stench not like the natural smell of a manured field, which, though hardly perfumed as it steams in the sun, is yet so natural as to be almost inoffensive, but a stench so nauseating that the contents of the stomach must rise to the throat.

What contents? Moldy bread, some slops, indistinguishable warm grease, and yet, not enough even of these.

We are starving, David thought. He moved his teeth with his tongue. He had already lost three by last count. If he had some lemons, it might not be too late to save the rest. Or limes. His tongue moved over his gums, feeling the wet, clean sting of lemons. Or limes.

A man screamed. “Shit! Oh, you darling—”

“Shut up! Shut up, you crazy bastard!”

“Oh, you darling!”

It might be a lucky thing to lose your mind here. You wouldn’t know, then, that you were here. There’d be no past to remember.

So far David’s mind was sharp. Maybe abnormally keen, unnaturally acute? He worried, giving careful notice to a louse that crawled on the shoulder of the man on his right. That other man, standing up, had a dark patch of sweat on his ragged shirt. The stain
made a fish shape; there the fins, and there the tail, curving when the man bent over. Was it normal to notice things like that, or a sign that his mind was going? God knew, an hour from now he might start to rave, to see things that weren’t there.

That poor fellow in the hospital that time. I remember. The Christian chaplain tried to convert him before he died. Meant well but it didn’t work. If I die, I would like a Jewish chaplain to read services over me There never are enough of them. I had to read for so many Jewish dead myself. I think I am dying. Can’t last much longer like this. So filthy, I disgust myself.

Over the low drone and murmur of suffering came voices, not loud, but incisive, clear, and close by.

“Well, but Dr. Joseph Jones of our medical department spoke just last month about conditions here.”

On the left New Hampshire whispered, “Inspection tour, for what good it will do.”

With tremendous effort David raised his head a few inches. Two officers in gray and a man in civilian clothes were standing together. The blond civilian wore a suit of fine dark cloth. People still dressed like that and were clean. It was he who inquired how many there were in this place.

“About thirty thousand,” replied the elder of the officers.

“Well, I do appreciate your invitation. I was just passing through on business .… Curious to see … Still, quite terrible … Sorry I came.” The voice, borne to and fro by the hot wind, revealed distress.

“Well. A prison camp is hardly a pleasant place, I agree.”

And the man in the fine suit repeated himself. “Yes, sorry I came to see it.”

There was something familiar in the southern voice,
something from long ago. An easy grace. Sylvain? No, you killed him. Remember?

The men were still standing in the aisle.

“This heat is murderous,” said the man who was not Sylvain.

“But on the other hand,” the officer answered, “our men freeze in their prisons, in open box cars, in the snow, wearing cotton fit for New Orleans.”

New Orleans. If not Sylvain, someone else, then? Someone I didn’t like. Why didn’t I like him? I do know. I do know. He was dancing—somewhere—he was dancing—where was it? And Gabriel was there, and my sister. I always thought Gabriel was half in love with her, or more than half. He must be dead by now, and she and all of us must be dead, or will be soon. But this man, who was he? Where was it?

And raising his arm, he struggled, got up, and lurched, pulling the blanket so that the stick shelter collapsed upon the New Hampshire boy’s wounded leg. And at his cry the men, the officers and the civilian, turned around.

Look at me, David wanted to say. I’m not crazy, even though I know my mouth is bleeding, I’m only dirty, I’m disgusting, but look at me.

Instead he heard his own cry: “Raphael, David Raphael!”

On the bright, blond face of the civilian he saw astonishment. The man took a step, opened his mouth to speak, and was decisively pulled back.

“Not permitted,” said the officer. “Sorry, but absolutely not permitted.”

The three men moved quickly away.

And David sobbed now, crying over and over, “David, David Raphael. You know.
Kennst du mich nicht? kennst
—” At the same time he knew he was raving.

Ferdinand had insisted upon going with Miriam.

“It’s eleven miles to the store,” he had objected. “I doubt they’ll have much, anyway.”

She answered with firmness.

“We can use anything that’s there, since we have nothing. Thread. With any luck, some cloth. We don’t even have a scrap for a bandage. And quinine. Poor Fanny is coming down with a fever, I think.”

“You’ll never get quinine.” Emma was positive. “It’s worth as much as gold these days.”

Miriam did not say that she still had the few pieces of gold sewn into her dress. She said only, “We’ll try. Come along, then, Papa, if you’re coming.”

Ruts where successive armies had torn along the road were so deep and crooked that the horse had to zigzag and weave; its hooves sucked up the mud of the autumn rains. In a ditch lay a mule’s carcass being ravaged by buzzards; their naked black wrinkled heads buried themselves voraciously in the dead flesh. Through long stretches of abandoned countryside no other living thing, human or animal, was to be seen. Weeds stood tall in vacant fields. Trampled corn lay rotting. Only here and there was there a house fortunate enough, like Beau Jardín, to have been left standing.

This ruination silenced father and daughter. The sound, even of low voices, would have been too loud. As the least noise in an empty, dark house is eerie, so it was in this gray, empty land. Miriam glanced at Ferdinand’s pistol, which lay on the seat between them. She had objected to it, but probably he had been right to take it.

“Can’t be much farther,” he said at last.

“About a mile more after the hill at the crossroads. He used to keep a good stock, I remember.”

Her fingers felt the lump of the six coins at her waist. They had the shape and thickness of lozenges, and just as lozenges hold the expectation of flavor and juice, so did these hold a rich expectation.

“Place looks empty,” Ferdinand said.

At the foot of the incline stood a small building of unpainted board, surrounded by a yard and a couple of sheds. Now the horse, relieved of effort, quickened into an easy trot downhill and turned into the yard. Here, too, was a heavy stillness, as though a dome had lowered and enclosed the site. There was no one to be seen. The door was wide open.

Ferdinand forced a hello. “Is anyone here? No one here?”

Balls of gray dust ran like mice over the floor. Every shelf and counter was bare. Not a box, not a piece of twine or scrap of paper, were left to indicate that there ever had been anything on these shelves and counters.

“He’s left,” Miriam said disconsolately. “Given up and left or gone to the army.”

Suddenly from the yard came a screech and squawk. Jolted to the alert, they turned about to see a young hound chasing a scrawny solitary hen, which, flapping and bouncing, managed just in time to obtain a perch above his reach.

“Has to be somebody here,” said Ferdinand.

Around the corner of the shed there appeared a thin man, scrawny as the hen, and of no particular age. Removing his cap before Miriam, he spoke with a definite Scottish burr.

“You wanted something, did you?”

“Oh,” she replied somewhat ruefully, “we wanted everything! Anything at all, and everything.”

“They cleaned me out. Not that I had much to start with. Not Union troops, either. Scalawags. Women. I wouldn’t have thought women could be so—begging your pardon, ma’am—women could be so savage. They had guns.”

The sunken eyes made two dark holes in the grimy, unshaven face. One knew he had not spoken to another human being before now about this woe and disaster, and that he needed to express his anguish; out of compassion, courtesy, and the strength of the man’s need, they heard him out.

“Said crazy things. That the shortages were my doing! That I had stuff hidden away waiting for higher prices! Likely you think so, too.”

“No,” Miriam said, and then on the off chance that this frantic creature might just have something hidden away, she added, “Although we have gold to pay.”

“There, you see! You think so, too! But I have nothing! Nothing, I tell you! Everybody knows the South never had manufactured goods, everything came from the North, so how am I expected to have cloth or thread or medicines? Where would I get them out here in the middle of nowhere? Lucky they didn’t kill me or burn the roof over my head.”

Ferdinand said gently, “Of course, of course.”

“We came from North Carolina. I’m a Scot, but my wife was born there. She had the rheumatism, and the winters got too much for her, so we came here, and she caught the fever instead. Died of it last year. And
here I am. Here I am.” The voice cracked and the arms flung themselves up toward the gray, indifferent sky. “Scalawags! Scalawags! Between them and the Jay hawkers, what’s the choice? Attacking me, who never owned a slave in my life! I had all I could do to feed ourselves. Myself.”

As delicately as they could, they retreated, followed by his voice which floated after them halfway up the hill.

“Cleaned me out, they did! Cleaned me out!”

Now, after this, the stillness on the homeward journey seemed more foreboding. The tired horse moved slowly. Ferdinand let the reins dangle from one hand, while his other rested where the pistol gleamed dully on the seat.

Once he looked over at Miriam, saying with a failed attempt at good humor, “It’s a long time since I held reins in my hands. It reminds me of the old days, only in those days my wagon was full, and I wasn’t afraid of anything.”

Miriam had no answer. Her eyes, alert and quick, darted and scanned every line of trees; they reached down the road ahead and the road behind as she turned to look back.

A burnt-out mansion lay wrecked at the end of a long alley of chestnut trees. Its chimneys at this distance were a pair of gaunt giants, a threatening apparition in the wilderness.

“The Johnson Hicks place,” Ferdinand observed, stating the obvious.