Crossing the Deadline (14 page)

“That's enough,” Mrs. Gardner says, entering with a tray of mugs. “The water bucket's empty. Fetch some from the pump.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Belle says, and leaves.

“How are you feeling?” Mrs. Gardner asks.

“Fine,” I say. “Feeling much better, thanks to you.”

“I think it's time for you to head back to your friends in the Castle.”

“Why?” I ask.

“I need to make room for others. I hear there are more on —”

“No,” I interrupt her. “Why are you helping Union soldiers? You have a good reason to hate us.”

“What can be done to bring my son back, Stephen? Nothing. I can't make decisions for others. I can only control my own thoughts and actions.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

December 20, 1864

When I return to the prison, a group of men are sleeping beneath the rug from Mrs. Gardner's living room. Every window in her house is bare. She's taken down each curtain and given them as well.

Nobody's immune from the bitter cold. The guards may get enough to eat, but they pace back and forth, their arms wrapped tightly across their chests, or rub their hands together briskly. The Deep South is not a harbor from cruel temperatures.

By mid-January, rations trail off, and we're only getting a pint of cornmeal a day. Most of it is padded with ground corncobs. We're lucky to get a quick bite of pork. The only times we feast are at night, in our dreams.

“What did you have to eat last night, Stephen?” Big
Tennessee asks one morning as we're still lying in the roost.

“That's an easy one. But you have to guess it in ten tries,” I tell him.

“Plant or animal?”

“Plant.”

“Garden?”

“No.”

“Dessert?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it can't be pumpkin pie because they come from gardens.”

“Correct.”

“Shrub?”

“No.”

“Tree?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have apple pie last night?” Big Tennessee asks with a wide smile.

“You are correct.”

“That's one of my favorites,” he says. “I dreamed of venison stew with carrots, potatoes, and biscuits.”

“No butter?”

“Always fresh butter,” he replies. “That's understood, isn't
it? I dreamed I walked all the way home and when I got there, I didn't even hug my wife and kids. I headed straight for the root cellar and ate every potato we stored for the winter . . . raw.”

“Would she recognize you now, you think?”

“I doubt it,” he says, lifting his shirt. “She might mistake me for one of our two scarecrows and make me stand out in the garden.”

“There's something I miss almost as much as food or Mother,” I say.

Big Tennessee turns over onto his elbows and looks at me real serious. “There's something you miss that much?” he asks.

“My bugle,” I say softly. “Music was an escape. It took me away from all my troubles and worries.”

“Like what?”

“My father getting sick and slowly dying, my brother Robert's death, and my uncle beating me. The songs I played carried me away from all that and filled my mind with joy, at least for a while. I guess that's why I got so good at playing it. Then, when Henry Dorman died holding my bugle, I thought I'd never want to touch it again or play another note.”

“Why?”

“It caused his death.”

“It didn't cause Henry's death, Stephen,” Big Tennessee says. “Henry wanted to die. He said so before he walked toward the middle of the fort. You know that, right? I was there and heard him.”

“I know that now, after I've had so much time to think about it. But that's not how I felt at the time. I left the bugle on the ground at Sulphur Branch and walked away from it. I wish I had it back now.”

* * *

As winter marches on, a bitter cold swallows the prison, and more and more of us get sick. Corporal Horton Hanna spends three weeks in
the hospital and comes back looking better than he ever looked in camp. “At least it was warm there,” he says. “Out of the cold with a roof over my head made all the difference. It almost makes me want to get sick again.” He sounds half serious.

One Ohio man lacks the strength to turn over or sit up on his own. His breathing is shallow and quick. A sergeant comes over with a few buddies to see if they can take him to the hospital. “Leave him where he lies,” his friend demands. “He does not want to be taken to the hospital.”

“He'll die for sure if he's left here,” the sergeant insists.

His friend covers him with another blanket. “Philip, do you want to go to the hospital?” one of them asks. He puts his ear near Philip's mouth in order to hear his reply. “He says no. He doesn't want to go to the hospital. He stays right where he is.”

We often pass the time by betting on lice races. We take a silver plate and set it on the ground. We put three or four of the critters in a cup and on the count of three, the cup is turned upside down over the center of the plate. When the cup is lifted, the first louse to reach the edge is declared the winner.

We sprinkle their backs with different colors. We grind charcoal, cornmeal, and dried leaves to a powder. It's entertaining to see those small specks of black, tan, and orange race for the edge of the plate.

“I bet a piece of cornbread on the black one,” a man might say.

“My shirt says the tan one will whip,” another will answer.

“Gathering wood on the plain one,” a third man may yell.

Today, betting is at fever pitch. A man places the plate
near Philip's head, inches from his nose. “Philip, you want to watch?”

Philip nods ever so slightly.

“One, two, three,” the sergeant counts, and turns the cup upside down onto the center of the plate.

“Before I pick the cup up and release the critters, which one do you pick, Philip?” the sergeant asks.

“Tan,” Philip manages to say as he lifts his head.

Sergeant lifts the cup, and the lice crawl around in circles for several seconds before heading toward the rim. Eventually, the tan one crosses the edge and falls to the ground.

“You win, pard,” the sergeant says, patting his sick friend's shoulder. “You win.” Philip smiles, lays his head down on the blanket, and closes his eyes. He never opens them again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

January 18, 1865

Today we get word that prison command is changing immediately. Rumors spread quickly that some of our freedoms may be taken away. Will letters to and from home be stopped? Will Mrs. Gardner be told to keep her books at home? What about the food she occasionally surprises us with?

We are told nothing beyond “Captain Henderson has been reassigned and Colonel Jones is in charge.” Now the new commander is strolling the compound, a guard at each side. One escort signals toward the cooking area, but their words are too low for me to hear. From time to time the colonel kicks the foot of a soldier who is so still and lifeless, he appears dead.

A guard shows the colonel how the flow of water makes
its way through the center of the camp and ends at the privy. They continue walking through the compound, and as they near me, I hear the colonel say, “It's crowded, but I'd rather be here than in Andersonville, Georgia.”

“We get their escapees from time to time,” the taller guard says. “They're happy when they end up here.”

“I believe it one hundred percent,” the colonel says.

The colonel makes immediate changes to the prison—for the worse. Shipments of clothes stop arriving. Those without shoes go barefoot across frozen ground. Mrs. Gardner no longer comes into the compound to see how she can be of assistance. It doesn't stop her from meeting me at the hole, but that becomes infrequent too.

“He might forbid me from coming inside the prison,” she says one day as she passes pieces of pumpkin pie through the hole in the wall, “but he cannot control me outside those walls.”

“Aren't you afraid of getting shot?” I ask.

“Humpth,” she answers. “I'm not afraid of the guards. Colonel Jones is as bad to the guards as he is to the prisoners.”

Under Colonel Jones's command, we are colder, hungrier, and more ready for the war to end than ever.

“One heck of a ‘summer war,'” Sergeant Survant says in a
rare lighthearted moment. “It's been four summers now, and we're headed for a fifth. Nobody thought the Seseches would last this long.”

“Word is the blockades are working,” says a fresh fish.

“Makes sense. We're getting less and less food,” Big Tennessee offers. “Less food for the guards means no food for us.”

He's right. Six months of almost no prisoner exchanges have meant the rebs have more and more mouths to feed.

After William Peacock's recent trip to the hospital, many of us have taken him under our wings to make sure he gets home alive. “If I die, my parents will have lost all five sons to the war,” he said today. “We lost two of my brothers the first fall, another the following spring, and then a fourth last summer.” He's so thin, I can barely remember the stout boy he was a year ago in Indiana. He says he weighed one hundred eighty pounds then and was strong as an ox. Now, in late January, and after three trips to the hospital, he's as helpless as a newborn calf.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

March 2, 1865

March brings warm temperatures to Cahaba, along with rain. The storms begin slowly, like a pot of water wanting to boil. First, a fine, misty rain soaks everyone to the bone. Rain soaks everything: the ground, our skin, clothes, and fires.

The rains become steady, and cooking is impossible. We huddle over the wood and do our best to light tiny pieces of dried grass and leaves to start the fires. The wood's too wet. The ground inside the prison turns to mud. Castle Morgan becomes a pigsty. Our feet sink into the ground up to our ankles, and our legs feel as anchored as fence posts.

Nobody moves in the compound unless absolutely necessary. Some choose not to move even when necessity calls. We answer nature's need where we are or trudge
only to the trench and let the flow take it on out to the Alabama River.

After three straight days of rain, rats start abandoning their holes along the riverbank and make their way inside Castle Morgan. The rats zigzag past groups of prisoners, dodging attacks as the men try to catch them for supper. Six months of rancid pork and thin corncob mush makes me look at the rats in strange ways. The mud slows them down a bit, and we manage to catch a few. But even with the windfall of fresh meat, we pray the rain will stop. The water chills us through.

The one silver lining in the sky of gray is that the lice are held in check. By the fourth of March there are no signs of graybacks in Castle Morgan.

Sergeant Survant sees the Alabama River is rising within feet of our eastern wall. When night falls on March fourth, the river is inside the compound and captures the privy, the lowest point in the prison. The roosts along that wall are threatened, too.

By morning the river has seized half of our ground. Men sit hip-deep in water as it passes slowly over their legs. The water swirls past shivering soldiers and flows out the southwestern wall.

The top levels of the roost are crammed with men because they are the only sections that remain above water. Not an inch of air can be found between anyone there. The sick, too ill to stand, are now forced to muster enough strength to sit up or drown.

Thick raindrops pelt our heads, making it difficult to hear. One guard yells at the top of his lungs, “You can cross the deadline and rest against the wall. Don't lean on the gates.” We prop the sickest against the walls, shoulder to shoulder so they won't fall over.

“Would you ask Colonel Jones if we can leave for higher ground?” Sergeant Survant asks.

By midafternoon, a concession is made. Private Johnny Walker, from the Ohio 15th selects a team of eight men to gather timber and scraps of wood. They grab everything they can get their hands on and bring it inside the prison.

“The whole town is flooded,” one of the men reports upon his return. We drag everything they collect to the center of the yard and create a shallow island. As long as the river stops rising, one large group of men can sit on the pile of debris to stay dry.

By evening, every inch of land is covered by a foot of water. The only places to get out of the cold water are on
the top shelves of the roost or on the makeshift island.

Those on the island sit up, back to back, or risk slipping into the water. In morning's first light, the men in the roosts rotate. Men elbow one another and punches are thrown to gain one of the spots where sleep can be peaceful. In the daylight we can see that the river has risen more. Now, at its lowest point, the water in the prison is knee-high.

Some are exhausted to the point that they can no longer stand. Sitting means only our shoulders and heads are not submerged.

“We'll get the colonel to let you out until the water recedes,” the sergeant of the guards says.

“Where will we go?”

“There are a couple of hills two hundred yards southeast of here,” he explains. “They will hold all of you.”

When the sergeant returns, he looks pale. The expression on his face says it all. We know the answer. “I'm sorry . . . ,” he begins. “The colonel denied the request.”

Caleb Rule, who was with us at Sulphur Branch Trestle, tries to reason with him. “If you opened the gates and gave us permission to walk home, none of us could do it. Heck, we're in no shape to walk to Selma.”

The guard nods. “I know,” he mutters. “I know.”

“Did you tell the colonel that?”

“Yes.”

“And . . .”

“He said every last one of you could die in here, for all he cares. I'm sorry. Fifty guards signed a petition for you to be moved, and he still refused.”

We appreciate the guards' kindness, but it feels like the last breath of air has been sucked out of us. Caleb Rule flashes the palm of his hand to thank the guard, and walks away.

Early the next morning we hear horses neighing just outside the prison wall. We watch as, one by one, each guard leaves his post from around the top perimeter. We hear the horses ride off.

“Guess they don't think we have the strength to escape,” someone offers. “No guards. No deadline. And nobody cares.”

Thirty minutes later we hear horses again. And ten minutes later they ride off.

“How many horses were there?” somebody calls out.

“Couldn't tell. Twenty or more.”

“What are they doing?”

Nobody has a reasonable guess.

Near noon, the gates slowly open. A stack of wood, as tall
as a Conestoga wagon and twice as wide, is piled a few feet from the opened gate. It includes logs from full-grown trees and boards of freshly cut lumber. Just beyond the pile I see the river has swept into all of Cahaba, including the porch line of Amanda Gardner's house.

The sergeant of the guard rides five feet into the prison. “I'm calling every Confederate guard away for several hours,” he yells. “We have a very important meeting.” He spots Caleb Rule and says in slow, measured words, “If we come back and every scrap of log and limb happens to have floated inside, I'm sure none of the guards will be upset.”

“What about the deadline?”

The sergeant looks down from his mount. “I don't see one, soldier.” Then he turns to a guard behind him. “Sergeant Williams, do you see a deadline?”

Sergeant Williams shakes his head. “No, sir. Haven't seen one of those for days.”

“What about Colonel Jones?” a prisoner shouts.

The sergeant produces a slow smile. “The colonel was called to Selma for the day,” he says.

The guards pull their reins and slosh away. We are left totally alone, the gate standing wide open. It takes four hours for able-bodied prisoners to drag the wood inside the prison.

We pile it crisscross fashion into small islands all around the camp. Sleep is once again possible for many of us.

Nobody stands for roll call the next morning. We simply stare up at Colonel Jones when he appears. He paces back and forth on his perch, seemingly unable to begin. He glares at the islands of logs scattered before him.

“Something's up,” comes a voice from behind me. “He's never this quiet.”

Colonel Jones coughs to clear his throat. “Sergeant Rufas, I gave orders for the prisoners not to leave.”

“Yes, sir, you did,” Sergeant Rufas replies.

“And yet, they did,” he barks. If I were closer to him, I'm sure I'd see the veins popping across his forehead and neck.

“No, sir, I assure you the prisoners never left their area. They are all accounted for, sir. We checked last night, but we can count them again if you like.”

“Then explain to me, Sergeant Rufas, what are some of the prisoners sitting on, when the ground should be covered in two feet of water?”

Sergeant Rufas leans over the wall and peers down at us. He studies the scene for several seconds, perhaps unable to make eye contact with the colonel. “It appears to be timber, sir,” he finally says.

“Timber?” the colonel yells. He pauses, then steps closer to Sergeant Rufas. “And how, if they did not leave, did it get inside the prison?”

“That, sir, is easy to explain. The wood floated along the Cahaba and Alabama Rivers with the floodwaters.” I see.

“Yes, sir. The logs piled up against the gates, and . . . I . . . ah, opened them to release the pressure. If it hadn't been for that, the force would have torn the gates plum off their hinges, and every single man would certainly have escaped.”

I start smiling and turn to look at Sergeant Survant. He's buried his head between his legs and is laughing so hard, his shoulders are bobbing up and down.

“So by opening the gates and allowing the logs to float in, you prevented the prisoners from escaping?”

“Yes, sir, I believe so. And it worked, sir, because all the prisoners are still here this morning.”

“I see,” the colonel mutters.