Whiter Than Snow (14 page)

A few of the soldiers read passages in their Testaments or bowed their heads in prayer, Billy Boy among them, and Minder wondered if his friend was thinking again that he might be a coward. Minder promised himself he’d be beside Billy Boy and watch over him—and keep him from running.

The battle commenced in the morning, and it was a strange time for Minder. Later, he would be a little embarrassed by his naïveté, but at the time he could only wonder. He had thought it would be a clean thing—men firing from behind trees or running in a straight line, with the killing swift and simple. But all was dark and confusion, with smoke rising up from the cannons and the guns and white puff s from exploding shells, until a man could hardly see, and the
ssst
of bullets, the scream of shells, and Minder was not prepared for all that. Within minutes, the air was so dense and the action so frenetic that he could not be sure who was reb and who a fellow Union soldier.

Then Minder saw the wounded, not cleanly killed with a single bullet to the head or chest the way you’d shoot a deer, but butchered like hogs. The men lay on the ground, blood and intestines and brains spilling out of them, most of them silent, but a few calling for help, for water, for God. Some tried to staunch the blood that flowed from where their legs or arms had been severed. One soldier looked at the bloody stump of what had once been his hand and cried, “Mother, I can’t milk the cow.”

The soldier beside Minder called out as he was shot in the stomach, and at first Minder thought the man was Billy Boy. But instead, he was Josiah Hatch, the Iowan who had taken them to the whorehouse. Josiah would never again seek horizontal entertainment.

Minder did not stop to help Josiah or any of the wounded, because he could do nothing for them. Instead, enraged at what had happened to his comrades, he was swept up in a desire to kill the traitorous Confederates who had caused the war, and he rushed forward with his rifle, shooting a reb who stood on the battlefield with his gun aimed at the Union lines. The man dropped as if he’d been a mule shot in the head, and Minder felt no guilt—no elation, either, but only a sense of relief: He had killed a rebel. He was as cool as ever he was in his life as he muttered, “Goddamn son of a bitch gone on down to hell.”

Minder dropped down to reload, tearing open the cartridge, then turned over onto his back the way the veterans did to ram the charge home. He got to his knees, firing again, and again the charge struck a reb. Minder heard someone cheer “Hurrah!” at that, and then he realized the shout had come from him. He turned to look for Billy Boy and almost didn’t recognize him, because his friend’s face was covered with powder from tearing the cartridges with his teeth. They grinned at each other. Then both of them picked their targets and fired into the enemy lines.

They fought like that, side by side, one of them moving a little when someone called “Close up the gap” or “Re-form the line,” but mostly, they stayed together, one shooting while the other reloaded. Once, Billy Boy shoved Minder’s head to the ground at the instant a minié ball whirled past where the head had been, and Minder knew that Billy Boy had saved his life. He did not feel fear even then, but only rage that the man had tried to kill him, and he raised his rifle, but Billy Boy had already shot the Confederate, who lay writhing on the ground. Billy Boy had raised himself up to do it, and Minder told him, “I guess you aren’t a coward.”

“I couldn’t let him kill a brave and noble soldier,” Billy Boy replied, and Minder felt a strange emotion that his friend would endanger himself to defend his pard. He understood now the bond among the old soldiers he had met in camp and felt a pride that he and Billy Boy felt that way about each other. They were closer than brothers, and Minder knew he would sacrifice his own life for his friend’s.

Then came the call to fix bayonets, and Minder attached his bayonet to the end of his rifle barrel, and with the others, he rushed the enemy. He thought he would thrust the bayonet through the first Secesh he reached, but instead he used the rifle as a club, striking the boy in the shoulder, then kicking him in the head as he went down. This type of fighting was satisfying to him, because while he had never shot a man with a rifle, he had been in many a fight, and hand-to-hand combat was something he knew. Minder was a rocky chunk of a man with solid fists, and many of the rebs were weakly fellows who could not defend themselves. Billy Boy, however, was not so well prepared to fist the enemy, and Minder found himself swinging his rifle butt against the rebs who swarmed around his friend. He figured he had saved Billy Boy’s life, and when the battle ended that day, he thought the two of them could call it even. He did not write Kate that he and her brother were nearly killed, but said instead that they had had enough glory for one day.

The killing did not bother Minder, but the wounding did. In the night, he heard the piteous call of the dying asking for help, asking for water or “Mother” they would have been better off if they had been killed at once, not left like that on the battlefield to suffer. He heard the chaplain moving among them, listening to the wounded men cuss, and knew the preacher would write their wives and mothers that in their last breaths, the dying had said they were happy to have been called upon to give their lives in the cause of the Union. He wondered how many of their families would believe that. Minder slept intermittently that night, awaking once and crying, “We got to close their sight. We got to put nickels on their eyes.”

The harsh voice of another soldier replied, “There ain’t enough nickels in the whole world for that.”

“They died for a noble cause,” one of the officers remarked the next morning, but Minder saw nothing noble about the slaughter, and he wrote as much to Kate in the following weeks. His letters to her became more solemn now that he and Billy Boy were in the fighting. Sometimes, Minder poured out his agony to Kate, as he could not to Billy Boy or any other soldier. He still wrote about the jokes the soldiers played on one another and the adventures of camp life, but increasingly the letters described the battles and the death. And sometimes he drew pictures of the fighting. Minder did not know that such information was not appropriate for a young girl, because he had no sisters. But he had the need to tell her. Writing to Kate kept him sane. Sometimes he thought he was fighting the war for her. He cherished her letters, reading them over and over until he knew them by heart.

During the next months, in which he turned into one of those weary veterans, Minder became inured to death. Sometimes he was assigned to gather the dead, to shroud the bodies and build boxes for them, or, more often, line them up in a ditch for burial. Seeing the rows of dead soldiers did not affect him. The dozens and dozens of bodies meant little more than piles of fence posts, but if he recognized one of them as a friend, saw the flies and worms feeding on his wounds, Minder turned away and vomited. From time to time, he said a prayer, although he was not sure he believed in God. Still, there might be some power out there that could keep the dead men from taking the horrors of war into eternity with them. Often he carried his rage into the next day’s battle, and so he developed a reputation for nerve and daring, because even after months of fighting, he still did not know fear.

Minder and Billy Boy never fell in battle, were never even nicked by a bullet, but in the course of time, they were captured by the Confederates, and that, Minder thought, might have been worse than dying. A Union officer ordered both of them to go in search of his horse, which had not been properly picketed and had wandered away, and the two walked into a nest of Secesh who were spying on the Union camp. It was a fool thing, and Minder was a little ashamed that they had been taken that way. The rebs were decent-enough fellows. They relieved the pair of their weapons and coins and gewgaws and Billy Boy of his gold watch, but they let the two prisoners keep their Testaments. And they shared their supper, which was mostly a cornmeal gruel seasoned with grubs. Then the two captives were marched through miles of rain to a railroad line, where they squatted in the mud with other prisoners to wait for a train.

When the train arrived, the prisoners were herded on board like cattle, so crowded into the boxcar that not all of them could sit. Minder and Billy Boy took turns standing.

The train ride was the beginning of the worst time Minder had encountered in his young life. It seemed they rode forever in the car with its awful stench, for one end of it had been designated a sink. Some of the wounded prisoners died during the trip, but their bodies were unloaded only at intervals. Minder thought he would die of thirst before they reached their destination. None of the men knew where they were going until the train stopped and the doors were opened, and the word went from man to man that they were assigned to Andersonville, the worst of the prisoner-of-war camps.

“It can’t be so bad as they say,” Billy Boy told Minder, and he was right. It was worse. As the men dragged into the compound, the other prisoners called them “fresh fish” and gathered around. Some asked for information about how the war was going and if the Union was winning. But others eyed the newcomers, looking for the weakest of them, the ones who could be picked off the easiest. As they shuffled through the camp, one of the soldiers was shoved to the ground and cried out, “My shoes!” But he was too late, and his footgear had disappeared. Minder clutched his coat and looked around fiercely to let the others know he wouldn’t be taken without a fight. When one prisoner, toothless, with hollow eyes and yellow skin, clutched at Billy Boy, Minder told him to let go or take a beating. And because the newcomers were stronger and healthier, they were left alone—for the time being, at any rate.

Minder knew their survival depended on cunning, and for the first time in his life, he was grateful for his father’s viciousness, which had taught him how to protect himself. He saw a dead prisoner being carried out of a mud and stick cave known as a shebang, and he claimed it, pushing Billy Boy inside. “That boy died of dysentery,” a prisoner warned him, but Minder didn’t care. He knew for certain if they slept out in the rain and snow, both he and Billy Boy would catch pneumonia, and that was as sure a way of death as any.

Without each other, they might have died. Minder had his coat, and at night he put it over both of them as they slept spoon-fashion to keep warm. He scavenged scraps of wood, which they used to make the shebang tighter. Billy Boy acquired a deck of cards, and the two played bluff, or poker, as some called it. As they had nothing to bet, they put up anything they could think of. Minder won the President’s House in Washington off of Billy Boy, then lost it after Billy Boy made him put it up against the Capitol Building. Billy Boy bet a herd of elephants and Minder a peck of monkeys. They won and lost General Grant’s horse and Abraham Lincoln’s hat, the Comstock Lode and Pike’s Peak. The game helped them while away the hours of boredom, which were almost as deadly as the disease and lack of food.

They tried to keep themselves clean, because Billy Boy was of a mind that health depended on cleanliness, but it would be only a matter of time until one of them came down with one of the diseases that pervaded the camp. And strangely enough, it was the stronger of them, Minder, who began to complain that his legs were drawn up and his gums sore. His skin turned a sallow hue, and a tooth popped out. They both knew it was scurvy, and Billy Boy tried to get his friend a place in the hospital. But the wards were full. The only time a place opened up was when someone was cured or, more likely, died. And then the bed was assigned to the sickest man. The only cure for scurvy was fresh vegetables, but where could one find a carrot or a turnip in Andersonville?

“I reckon I’m getting ready to go to sleep for good,” Minder said one day when he could no longer stand up.

“You’ll not die,” Billy Boy told him fiercely. “You’re my pard, and you’ll not die. Kate’s told me I can’t go home if I don’t take you with me.” He smiled at the little sally, his attempt to keep up Minder’s spirits. Minder knew his friend tramped the camp, searching for something to treat the scurvy, but he also knew it was hopeless.

Then one day, Billy Boy returned with a sack of onions under his jacket.

“Where’d you get them?” Minder asked, because finding a single onion, let alone a sack of them, was nothing short of a miracle.

“I traded my gold watch to a reb,” Billy Boy replied as he cut the first of the onions in half with a strip of metal they used as a knife. Each day, he gave Minder half of an onion, and in time, the symptoms of scurvy abated.

It was only later, after he could walk again, that Minder realized Billy Boy wore no shoes. At first, Billy Boy said he was saving them, but when Minder remembered that the rebels who had captured them had taken Billy Boy’s watch, his friend admitted he’d traded the shoes to a Confederate for the onions, a good trade, a satisfactory trade to both sides, he explained. “The reb had enough to eat but no shoes. He said he’d always fancied a pair and was willing to pay high for them. It’s near spring, so I don’t need the shoes. We’ll beat the Secesh before snow falls,” Billy Boy said. “And if we don’t, why then I’ll take one of your shoes, so we’ll each have half a pair.”

In March, the prisoners were told to ready themselves for an exchange. They would be sent to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and from there, they would go home. Some of them cheered and carried on, but Minder and Billy Boy sat quietly. “Was it worth it, the war?” Minder asked.

“We freed the slaves.”

“I don’t care much about Negroes.”

“We saved the Union, then.”

“I don’t care much about the Union, either.”

“We saved each other, then,” Billy Boy said.

Minder nodded. Perhaps it had been worth it for that. He was glad he’d joined up. He’d survived. He’d met Billy Boy. And there was Kate. He knew his life was better than if he’d stayed on the farm.

The prisoners were released, sent by train and steamer from Georgia to Jackson, Mississippi, then marched the miles farther on to Vicksburg. It was not an easy march—walk was more like it, because Billy Boy had caught pneumonia and was feverish and weak, and Minder had to help him along. Still, they were in good spirits. They were going home—to Billy Boy’s home. Minder had not written to his home folks since he’d joined up. They didn’t know if he was alive or dead and wouldn’t have cared, so he saw no need to inform them. But he’d inform Kate. He’d write to her as soon as he got to Vicksburg and tell her that he and Billy Boy were on their way. He’d tell her he had something important to ask her, too, and he hoped she’d want to go west, but he’d stay in Iowa if she was of a mind to live there.