The Blank Flag of Arthur Kerry
By Kristopher Reisz
Copyright 2013 Kristopher Reisz
Originally published in Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War, edited by Steve Berman
Arthur felt the other prisoner’s nose crunch under his fist. The pollywog dropped fast, squirming and squalling while the guards ran up. Arthur raised his hands over his head, but a guard still bashed him in the temple with his club. All Arthur could hear were screams. Gull screams, caws hardened into nails of pain hammering through his skull. Arthur tasted bitter iron in his mouth. He crumpled to the muck to beg angels or devils listening to let him lay in the dirt awhile. But the guards heaved Arthur up. They dragged him toward the sweatbox…. Or maybe they’d only shoot him this time.
He glanced up to see, instead, two men in blue officers’ coats standing there. At first, all Arthur could focus on were shining gold buttons. Then one of them said, “Arthur? Is that you?”
He would have known that voice anywhere. “Boone.”
His old friend embraced him, then moved aside the greasy hair around the swelling on Arthur’s temple. “Guards, what did you do to this man?”
“Had to sock him one, sir. Fighting.”
“Uh-huh. And starve him half to death, too?”
“Gets the same rations as the other prisoners, sir.”
Arthur noticed how the guards kept calling Boone “sir.” He chuckled, “So, you’ve really signed on for this war?”
Boone nodded. “And you’ve joined the rebels?”
Arthur shook his head, which swept fresh pain across his skull. “Just ran the blockade a few times. A job, like any other. Ever since they—since you—established a blockade around the southern ports, the rebels pay by the double-fistful for whatever odds and ends they need. Hardly even haggle anymore.”
“Odds and ends?” The man with Boone had a voice like oak and more trinkets on his uniform. A captain. “Those odds and ends were rifles. Gunpowder used to murder brave young men.”
Arthur shrugged. “Just a sailor, sir. Not my place to inspect the cargo I haul, just to haul it. Besides, it wasn’t all powder. Southern popinjays’ll pay top dollar for any little thing you say is from France or England. Last trip, we ferried a whole crate of ladies hats. Just hats!”
“I see. And your share for these smuggling trips? Is it still the traditional thirty pieces of silver?”
“Fifty,” Arthur grinned. “Fifty pounds sterling cash in hand. What do your navy boys get? Ten a month? Fifteen? If they get paid at all. It’s just business, sir, don’t take it personal. If the Confederates ever establish a blockade around your ports, I’ll run that one too for fifty pounds sterling.”
The captain puffed out his chest. “Come along, Mr. Boone. We have work here.”
Boone didn’t move. “Captain, we came looking for blockade runners.”
“But this fiend is beyond remorse. Besides, he’s nothing but bones. Even if we could trust him, it’d take a fortnight just to get him healthy again, and we don’t have time.”
“Time for—?”
Boone spoke over Arthur. “Captain, I promise this man is a sailor to his bones. He’s not a navy man, but isn’t that what we need?”
“Need for what?” Arthur asked.
“Enough, Mr. Boone. We’ll find others.” The captain started walking away. Grabbing Boone’s arm, Arthur stammered, “Wait, wait, what do you need? Boone, can you get me out of here?”
“Not without Captain Holloway’s say-so. I’m sorry.”
“I saved your life, Boone! You owe me.”
“I know,” Boone said and pulled Arthur’s fingers away, but Arthur wouldn’t let go. With the prospect of freedom suddenly dangling over him, his last shreds of dignity vanished. “Do something. They barely feed us. We’re eating rats to survive. That fellow I fought, he was trying to catch one of the gulls to eat.” Arthur pointed to the two fences that circled the prison, one inside the other. Between them lay a stony dead zone, and any prisoner spotted there would be shot on sight. Several seagulls made their nests in the dead zone. The other prisoner—Arthur never knew his name—had been trying to lure one of them through the inside fence. Arthur babbled, “It was an honest fight, but the prison commander, he’ll put me in the sweatbox anyway. He’ll leave me there for days.”
“These are the wages of sin,” Captain Holloway declared in his oak-staved voice. “You entered this war with nought but your own profit in mind, saluting any flag of convenience, and now you’ll spend it fighting over birds to eat. Surely you see the divine hand at work here? I sincerely hope this experience causes you to repent before you die.”
Arthur stepped past Boone and approached the captain. The guards grabbed him, pulling him back, but Arthur snarled, “I’ll never eat a seagull. I’ll eat rats, captain, and worms at the bottom of a tack barrel, but there is no hunger to make me forget seagulls carry the souls of sailors to Heaven. I was protecting the seagulls from that man, so they’d remember me when I die. It wasn’t the first time, either, ask these guards if you don’t believe me.”
Captain Holloway glanced at the guards. They shrugged and nodded. Arthur went on, “Even half starved, I’m twice the sailor anyone else in this prison is. And if that’s what you’re looking for, then surely you can see the divine hand at work here too.”
Captain Holloway frowned with thought. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped the sweat from his brow, then spent awhile contemplating the clouds drifting overhead. “You’re still an unrepentant smuggler, Mr. Arthur, a neutral.” He spit the last word out as if tasted like ash. “How can we trust you?”
Arthur considered all manner of chest-thumping and oath-swearing he could fall into, but he doubted the captain would buy his sudden conversion to the Union cause. Instead, Arthur shrugged. “You said it yourself; I salute any flag of convenience. And right now, saluting your flag would be incredibly convenient.” He saluted, blood from the fight congealing across his split knuckles.
Captain Holloway studied Arthur for another tick, then snorted a laugh and saluted back.
In the prison office, Captain Holloway showed a letter to the prison commander. Another letter was drawn up, and Arthur was told to sign. Boone said, “This guarantees a full pardon, enlisting you in the navy and placing you under the command of Captain Holloway.”
“Command to do what exactly?”
“Something better than rotting in this place, I promise.”
Arthur signed and recited the oath of allegiance. He was now a “galvanized Yankee,” a prisoner pressed into military service. That didn’t worry him much. As soon as Arthur was hail and free again, he’d jump ship and find a berth heading for Cape Horn or the Indian Ocean. He’d spend a couple years in Hong Kong while the Americans smashed themselves to pieces. Leaving the naval prison behind, Arthur and the two officers boarded a sloop-of-war named Kestrel. Nothing about Kestrel suggested it was a navy ship, though. It flew no colors and carried no cannon. Boone, Captain Holloway, and the other officers kept their uniforms packed away below decks along with a few rifles, and the crew were under orders to never salute. It wasn’t much of a problem since half the crew seemed to be blockade runners and privateers arrested by the navy, bonded out by taking the same foolish oath Arthur had taken.
Over the next few days, Arthur feasted on double rations and given leave to rest. He spent it watching the crew scrub Kestrel’s decks with holystones and paint her hull white. They hauled aboard huge tun barrels of brandy, filling the entire cargo hold. Arthur went belowdecks to examine the sloop’s engine. It was set up to burn smokeless anthracite coal. That, along with the white hull, would make Kestrel nearly invisible out
on the open ocean.
Climbing back into the sunlight, Arthur found Boone aft and sidled up to him. “This ship’s a blockade runner, isn’t she? You and Captain Holloway, you’re playing something sly on the navy, using their own ship to—”
“She’s not a blockade runner. We just need her to look like one.”
“Why?”
“Can’t say while we’re in port. One sailor gets drunk and starts flapping his gums? The whole mission’s ruined. Tonight, we take on one last passenger and set sail. Then captain’ll explain everything.”
They weren’t blockade runners, but they needed to look like blockade runners. That part rang true. Captain Holloway made no secret of his contempt for the sailors culled from the prisons—Judases who’d turned away from the shining cause of America’s war against the rebels. But he needed them. Whittling on the foredeck, Arthur watched Holloway talk to some of the crew. Junior officers clustered around him like baby bluejays. He questioned the
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