Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War (31 page)

Carefully I hug him closer, so as to avoid paining
his bandaged back. “I’d better get back to the campfire. The more
injured I appear, with any luck the less rush there will be to
leave. I’m sure Sarge will be back at some point to ask me about
last night, and he might be suspicious if he finds us together
again.”

“Ian? One thing before you go. I remember what I
forgot. I remember what George did to me before he knocked me out.
He did things that…” Drew falls silent, looks away, and squeezes
his eyes shut.

“What did he do? You mean besides what I already
know? The bucking, the cutting, the bayonet gag? What the hell else
did he do to you?”

“Not now, Ian. Tonight? Will you stay with me
tonight? Will you be able to? I’ll tell you then.”

“I will, by God, whether it makes Sarge suspicious or
not. But tell me now. Did he…did he…?”

I can’t bring myself to say it. Instead, I touch the
curved rear of Drew’s trousers, staring up at him, suddenly
terrified of the answer. I can feel his hard buttocks beneath the
garment, those pale mounds dusted with golden hair, that beautiful
place I’ve stroked, licked, tasted, and rested my cheek against.
“Oh, God, no, Drew. Did he…did he…”

Jeremiah’s voice is at the tent entrance. “Boys are
coming back, Ian. Better get on out here.”

“No, he didn’t,” Drew mutters low. “That gift’s still
waiting for you. But he… I’ll tell you tonight. Get out there and
look like the wounded war hero you are.” Drew pats the back of my
trousers with a crooked smile, then takes a handful of fabric.
“Skinny-assed Reb. Ain’t nothing to grab back there. What you
need’s a few months of regular biscuit breakfasts.”

“When I get you home,” I say, “I’ll bake you biscuits
myself. With all the honey you want. No more goddamn hardtack for
us!”

Leaving Drew in our tent, I take my invalid’s place
by the fire. Jeremiah, with a guilty crease to his brow, covers me
with a blanket. A few campmates return from the woods, shaking
their heads and muttering about damn Yankees. None is leading a
horse. Rufus reappears, giving Jeremiah and me a quick grin before
starting on lunch preparations. “Couldn’t find horse nor wheel. Too
bad,” Rufus says with a deep sigh for the rest of the camp and a
wink for Jeremiah and me. “But I did find these. More wild onions
to go with the last of these beans I been soaking to cook.” Rufus
stirs up the fire noisily, humming to himself. “Now you just
stretch out there and stay put. I’ll carry some victuals to your
Yank, don’t you fret.”

The afternoon following our soup-bean lunch I for the
most part lose. My head wound’s a good excuse to do something my
life as a soldier has rarely allowed save during the long, dull
days of winter quarters: I curl up under the blanket and I nap, I
nap, I nap. I’m deep inside the luxury of a cozy doze when a hand’s
weight falls across my brow. I open my eyes to find Sarge squatting
by my side. Even as badly as he and George have treated Drew,
there’s a quick pang inside of me for deceiving him this way. Lying
is not honorable, it does not agree with a man’s duty to country
and kin, Sarge would tell me if he knew my heart today. And much of
me would agree with him. I guess I’m learning love and honor can’t
always coexist.

I muster a smile. “Sir, what time is it?”

“Near evening, nephew. All of us just got back.”

“And did you find the horses?”

Sarge nods. His fingers probe my head and find my
wound. His touch is almost gentle, but I grimace nonetheless. “Yes,
Ian, it took all day, but we found them. The gunfire last night
scattered them far and wide. The cartwheel is still missing. I’ve
sent George on to Buchanan on his retrieved mount to see if a wheel
can be commandeered. How do you feel?”

“Really weak, sir. That Yank tried to stave my head
in.”

Sarge sighs, settling into a camp chair by my side.
He opens his flask, takes a long sip, shares it with me, then sits
back and sighs again. “This delay is very poorly timed. We have got
to get to Petersburg.” He rubs his brow. “The city’s still under
siege, and I fear it will fall before we get there. Not that a
company as severely curtailed in strength as ours will be much
help, but, still, we should be there. The thought of our men behind
those lines, in those trenches for months… God help us all.”

Abruptly he rises. “I know so many of them. I pray
for them every night. I pray for General Lee and for that beautiful
town. I pray for our nation. And I pray for you, nephew.” He
smoothes his gray moustache, gives me a faint smile, and looks into
the fire. “I want to hear from you what happened last night. But
not now. I’m weary to the bone. I’m just glad that you’re not
seriously hurt.” He turns away, then turns back. Running his hands
through his hair, he says, “I assume the prisoner is secured?”

“Yes, sir, he’s cuffed and shackled still, in my
tent. Last Rufus checked on him—I haven’t had the strength—he’s
unconscious.”

“No matter,” Sarge says. “He’s of no consequence. If
anyone asks for me, I’ll be in my tent. With any luck, George will
find a wheel, or a new cart. He’s always been good at
requisitioning…both the living and the dead.”

I lie back, staring up at a purple sky gone wavy with
gusts of smoke coursing off the fire. I think about Petersburg,
smoke rolling off its damaged homes and church steeples, boys like
me sprawled bleeding behind the earthworks or thrown high in the
explosion that created the Crater, women in the town hiding in
basements, listening to the sounds of artillery day and night for
months, while I lie here, warm beneath this musty blanket, head
throbbing, thanks to my own careful plotting, and, mere yards away,
the man I love—safe for now, thanks to my scheming—sleeping
half-naked and entirely beautiful in his rusty bonds. I would
sacrifice the South for him. I would sacrifice the world.

_

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

_

I
 
stay by the fire till I’m
sure Sarge has retired. George, luckily, is still nowhere in
evidence. Probably off stealing a cart from a local while relishing
the permissive vicissitudes of war. When most of the boys have
retired to their blankets and the others are playing cards by the
ebbing fire, I rise, muttering, “I need to piss,” to no one in
particular, then, after relieving myself in the woods, make my
wobbly way back to Drew.

“Boy? You awake?”

“Yes, sir. I been waiting for you, Reb.” Drew’s just
a voice in the dark, then a big dark heap beneath a blanket, and
then fuzzy chest-flesh and hard arm-bulge beneath my searching
fingers. “Let me hold on you, hero,” he says. I acquiesce,
snuggling myself into the nest his arms make, letting him spoon me
from behind.

“Your poor head,” Drew says, kissing my scalp. “I
can’t believe you took a musket-butt to buy me time.”

“I’d do a hell of a lot more than that,” I say,
thinking again of Petersburg, and of how many years I’ve fought in
this war. “When we get to Purgatory, I’ve got a promising future to
insure. I’ve got Southern biscuits and Yankee butt to look forward
to.”

“Yeah, yeah, all this talk of my butt…” Drew
sighs.

“Better than talking about the bloody battlefields
we’ve both seen, right?” Drew’s body is here, between me and
Antietam, the Wilderness, Gettysburg, the sights I can’t forget,
comrades scattered in the ditches, pastures full of corpses, the
screams of the wounded caught in a forest fire. His furry,
famine-lean form is the only certainty I can grasp. “I save your
ass, I own your ass,” I say, just to hear Drew laugh.

“Yes, you do.” Drew obliges me with a nervous
chuckle. “I promised. Though now…” He shifts uncomfortably.

“What? What’s wrong? Did George do something that has
made you feel different about the way I…the way I want to love
you?” I turn in his arms to face him. “Tell me. You’ve put me off
too long.”

“Wait, Ian. First things first. First, I want to
say…I do realize what you’ll be giving up for me if you help me
escape as you’ve promised. I do. I know how much this war means to
you. I guess I have some sense, having fought you Rebs, well, I
guess I have some sense of how much you’ve given up, how long
you’ve fought and how fiercely, how much you’ve lost…like the
Valley I helped torch, God forgive me. And I want you to know how
much it means to me that you’re willing to try to get me free, even
if it means…”

“Leaving the war. Yes. Desertion. Leaving my friends
and kin.”

Neither of us speaks for a while. Drew pulls me
closer.

“I can do it. I will. I don’t know whether I’ll be a
better man or a worse for doing it,” I say. “I don’t know what’s
happened to my honor. It’ll feel like betraying my homeland. But I
love you. I can’t change that. If we stay in camp, soon you’ll die.
And I’ll do anything to save you.”

Another long silence. We shift around into our
customary position, with Drew’s back nestled against my chest. I
run my fingers through his hair, then I squeeze his firm rump and
say, “Back to your beautiful butt. Tell me about George, dammit. I
need to know what he did to you.”

“Yes,” Drew says. “All right. But…it’s shameful.”

“Drew, buddy, tell me. Why be ashamed? You were
certainly in no position to—”

“But I did fight him. I did! Didn’t you see his
eye?”

“The black eye? I wondered about that. What
happened?”

“Right after you left to prepare for that poor boy’s
funeral, George showed up here. He smelled like liquor. I was
alone, cuffed and shackled as usual. He had two of your camp mates
with him. They dragged me out of the tent into the woods and tried
to buck me.”

“Oh hell,” I snarl, gritting my teeth. “Why didn’t
you call for me?”

“I, I was too proud, I guess. I’m tired of being a
helpless maiden always needing to be rescued by my little Rebel. So
I gave them some fight. That’s when I caught George in the eye with
my fist. Damn, that felt good, after all the grief he’s given me.
But then one of his buddies punched me here”—Drew takes my hand and
lifts it to his puffy right cheek—“and then George, he pulled a
knife and held it to my throat, so I had no choice but to settle
down. That’s when they bucked me and tied that bayonet in my mouth.
When the other two left, that’s when George…”

Drew stops. When he begins again, his voice is shaky.
“He unbuttoned my trousers and pulled my cock and balls out, Ian.
He tugged on them hard. I begged him to stop. Then he played with
them with the edge of the knife, nudging them around. He…he told me
that, for a Yankee coward, I had a pretty big…set. He told me he’d
cut them off the next time he got hold of me. He pinched my nipples
so hard I bit down on the blade of that bayonet till I was drooling
blood just to keep from screaming. He told me the next time he had
me alone, he was going to poke me like a woman. He even…he shoved
his hand down inside the back of my pants and fingered me…my hole.
Told me after he was done using me, he’d find another bayonet that
would…fit me down there…would fit up inside me.”

A low sob breaks loose. “Then he took his knife to my
back, and it was all I could do not to cry, but I knew my tears
would give him more satisfaction, so I just bit down on that blade
and kept quiet as long as I could. When I decided I couldn’t take
any more and I started shouting for you, that’s when he hit me in
the head.”

“Oh, Drew, I should have been there. Oh God. I’m so
sorry.” I hug him closer, close to sobbing myself. “I let you
down.”

Drew clears his throat. “It’s not your fault, Ian. He
hates me because he wants me, I think. He hates himself for wanting
me. I think he wants me like you want me, like I want you.”

“Drew, you know that…that I would never hurt
you…here.” I stroke the curve of his behind through the threadbare
trousers. “That’s why I’m waiting. Till you’re ready. And till
we’re somewhere safe. I would never, ever hurt you. Please don’t
let George… don’t be afraid of how I feel for you, of how I want
you. God, yes, I want to lie with you, I want to…take you so badly,
but never, never against your will.”

“I know that, Ian. I do. I have to admit I’m a little
afraid, more than before, but…all jokes aside, you pretty much do
own me, after all you’ve done for me and plan to do for me”—his
hand takes mine, placing it on the iron collar locked around his
neck—“so, if the time comes that we’re safe and away from all this,
then…I’ll keep my promise.”

“I wouldn’t hurt you here either,” I say, taking one
of Drew’s nipples between thumb and forefinger. “God, I love your
chest. I love the strength of it, the thick hair. I cherish your
sweet little nipple-buds.”

Drew laughs softly. “Well, you’ve gotten a little
rough there—as I recall, you gave ’em a good chawing before you
sucked my prick—but somehow rough felt good. I know you won’t ever
hurt me. Your touch has given me nothing but wonder, Ian, and
delight.”

“God, we sound like folks out of the Song of Songs,”
I snicker, running my fingers over his belly, probing his navel.
“And I can never have enough of you, Yank. You’re like a feast to
me.”

“Wine and bread?”

“Yes. Or, better, buckwheat flapjacks and maple
syrup.” I smack my lips.

“Ummmmm,” Drew murmurs, sounding both sleepy and
hungry.

“Your body reminds me of a Roman god’s I saw once in
a book of myths. It’s as if you’ve fallen to earth, as if I’m
touching a god,” I whisper. “Or Christ’s body. I’ve told you this
before. When I see you tied and suffering, I see Christ. You’re
like religion to me. Your face and muscles and fur…you’re my
cathedral, my church.”

“Mmmmm. Southerners and their sweet talk…”

So drowsy, that mutter, pulling me from my romantic
reverie into wartime practicality. “As much as I’d like to taste
you all over again,” I say, gently squeezing the mossy swell of
Drew’s breast and nuzzling his neck through its veil of thick hair,
“it’s time you got your sleep, buddy. We’re likely to leave for
Purgatory tomorrow, if that vermin George returns with a new wheel
or cart, and, knowing his capacity for intimidation and thievery,
he’ll be doing just that.”