North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  Still sweetly smiling, Vesey glanced at the hand with which Billy braced himself on his bit of floor while he spoke. Quickly Vesey shifted and stepped on the hand with his hobnailed boot.

  “I’ll have none of your arrogant college ways while I’m on duty.” He put more weight on Billy’s hand. “Clear, sir?”

  Billy clenched his teeth and squinted. Tears filled the corners of his eyes, and a little line of blood ran from under the sole of Vesey’s boot. “You son of a bitch,” Billy whispered. Fortunately Vesey was talking again.

  “What? Do I see the brave Yankee weeping? Excellent. Excellent!” He twisted his boot back and forth. Billy couldn’t hold back a low, choked sound. Vesey raised his boot, and Billy saw the gashes, the blood shining in the lantern light. “I must go on my rounds. But I shall be back often from now on. We shall have regular lessons in humility, until you learn your proper station Lower than the lowest nigger. Good evening, Hazard.”

  And off he went, humming a hymn.

  Billy blinked several times, tore a piece from his ragged shirt, and wrapped his bleeding hand. He sneezed twice. Men lay or either side of him and at his head and foot. He was certain they must be awake, but not one had stirred during Vesey’s visit. He didn’t blame them. He wasn’t sure he would risk his own chances of survival just to defend some other prisoner unlucky enough to draw a guard’s wrath.

  By early January Billy’s hand was infected and his cold much worse. Vesey sought him out at least once every night to abuse him verbally or force him to march up and down the prison staircase for two hours, or stand in a corner on tiptoe while Vesey sat on a stool, a bayonet on his musket and the steel tip held half an inch from Billy’s trembling back.

  “Confess,” Vesey would croon to him, smiling. “By now you must be cognizant of your inferiority. Your heathen nature. Your wrong thinking. Confess that you admire President Davis and consider General Lee the greatest soldier in Christendom.”

  Billy’s legs shook. His toes felt broken. He said, “Fuck you.”

  Vesey tore Billy’s shirt and raked his back once with the bayonet. Luckily the wound didn’t fester as his hand had; the hand was all yellow and brown with pus and scabs. “We shall continue this,” Vesey promised as his duty sergeant came looking for him. “Be assured of it, heathen.”

  Billy’s attitude about helping other prisoners soon underwent a change. Eight new men arrived in the top-floor room to occupy the space of a captain who had died in his sleep. One of the newcomers, a sallow, curly-haired youth with a high forehead, found space next to Billy. The newcomer’s name was Timothy Wann. He had enlisted at the end of his freshman year at Harvard and been brevetted to second lieutenant after three others holding that rank in his unit were killed one by one.

  On Wann’s second night in Libby, officers from another room conducted a rat raid. Billy woke out of his usual light sleep to see three bearded men carrying the Massachusetts boy toward the communal washroom. A fourth soldier, unbuckling Wann’s belt, said, “Skinny little ass on this chicken. But it’ll serve.”

  Billy knew such things went on, though he had never been threatened or been a witness. But he couldn’t tolerate such treatment for a young officer who was really just a schoolboy. He wiped his dripping nose, staggered to his feet, and wove his way through dozing prisoners till he caught up with the quartet carrying the round-eyed, terrified Wann.

  “Let him go,” Billy said. “You can do that in your own room if you must, but not in here.”

  The gray-haired man who had unbuckled Wann’s belt pulled it loose and stroked it, scowling. “Got some claim on this youngster, have you? Is he your pet bird?”

  Billy reached out, intending to pull Wann off the shoulders of the three carrying him like a side of beef. The other soldier, stepped back for room, then whipped Billy’s cheek with the belt.

  Sick as he felt—a fever had been on him for the past twenty-four hours—he found strength in his anger. He ripped the belt away from the older man, grasped both ends, looped it over the soldier’s head, and crossed his hands. The soldier gagged. Billy pulled harder.

  The friends of the strangling man let Wann fall to the floor. “Get back to your place,” Billy said to Tim as one of the raiders punched him. In the corridor, he spied a lantern.

  “What’s the commotion? What’s happening in there?” Vesey appeared, lantern held high, side arm in his other hand. Billy released one end of the belt. The gray-haired officer stepped away, rubbing his red throat. “This crazy loon attacked me. Started to choke me to death—just ’cause we were in here speaking to friends and he said we disturbed his sleep.”

  “Your accusation doesn’t surprise me, sir,” Vesey replied with a sympathetic nod. “This officer is a violent man. Constantly provoking trouble. I shall take him in hand. The rest of you go back to your quarters.”

  “Yessir,” two of the raiders muttered. None wasted any time leaving.

  “What are we to do with you, Hazard?” Vesey managed speak, sigh, and smile at the same time. “My lessons up here have failed to bring an end to this constant rebellion. Perhaps one conducted in the fresh air would be more effective.”

  “I want my shoes if we’re going out—”

  “March,” Vesey said, yanking his collar. Billy had a glimpse of heads raised here and there in the room. Then they sank down again, and he wondered why he had been so stupid as to help Tim. The young prisoner started to get up. Billy shook his head and walked out of the room ahead of Vesey.

  On the river side of the building, Vesey handed his lantern to the guard at the door, then prodded Billy down the steps and pushed him to his knees. Vesey proceeded to lash Billy’s wrists and ankles together behind his back, pulling the ropes steadily tighter until Billy’s shoulders bowed with strain. In a matter of seconds, his leg muscles were aching.

  Light rain began to fall. Vesey shoved a foul-smelling gag in Billy’s mouth and secured it with a second rag tied around his head. While he worked, Vesey hummed “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

  By the time Vesey was finished, the rain was falling hard. Cold rain, freezing rain, Billy realized. He sneezed. Corporal Vesey ran back up to the shelter of the doorway.

  “I shall return as soon as I find my overcoat, Hazard. It’s nippy out here, but I must watch you undergo your punishment for while. If we can’t break your spirit, perhaps we can break you spine.”

  That night, miles away in Charleston, Judith said, “I don’t understand you any longer, Cooper.”

  He frowned from the other end of the dining table. Wearing a loose silk shirt, he hunched forward in his customary tense posture. His untouched plate had been pushed aside.

  “If this is another of your complaints about my failure to perform my husbandly duties—”

  “No, blast you.” Her eyes glistened, but she fought herself back to control. “I know you’re tired all the time—although it would be nice if you treated me like a wife at least occasionally. That was not the reason I said what I did, however.”

  A breeze from the walled garden fluttered the candles and played with the curtains of the open French windows. “Then it’s the test,” Cooper said suddenly. “Damn Lucius for drinking too much claret.”

  “Don’t blame poor Lucius. You invited him again this evening, you poured all that wine. For him and for yourself as well.”

  He answered that with unintelligible sounds. Out of sight in the parlor, Marie-Louise began to play “The Bonnie Blue Flag” on the pianoforte. At Judith’s urging, she had taken the Mains’ frequent guest into the other room after he inadvertently blurted a remark about the test now scheduled for Monday of next week. Cooper had withheld all mention of it from Judith, hoping to avoid tiresome reactions—bathetic tears, moralizing—which would in turn require him to waste energy dealing with them.

  Looking hostile, he asked, “What did you mean about not understanding me?”

  “The sentence was plain English. Is it so difficult to decipher? You’re not t
he man I married. Not even the man with whom I went to England.”

  His face seemed to jerk with a spastic fury. He locked his hands together, elbows pressing the table so hard it creaked. “And I remind you that this is no longer the world in which either of those events occurred. The Confederacy is in desperate straits. Desperate measures are required. It’s my duty to involve myself in this test. My duty. If you lack the wit to appreciate that or the courage to endure it, you’re not the woman I married, either.”

  “Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern rights—hurrah!” sang the adolescent girl and the guest in the parlor. “Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!”

  Judith brushed back the dark blond curls on her forehead. “Oh,” she said, with a small bitter twist to her mouth, “how you misunderstand. It isn’t the risk to yourself that’s upsetting me now, though God knows that kind of upset has become a constant of life here. I object to the callous way you’ve pushed this infernal fish-boat project. I object to your insistence on another test. I object to your forcing seven innocent men to submerge that iron coffin once more because you think it must be done. There was a time when you hated this war with all your soul. Now, you’ve become some—some barbarian I don’t even recognize.”

  Icy, he asked, “Are you finished?”

  “I am not. Cancel the test. Don’t gamble with human lives to fulfill your own warped purpose.”

  “So now my purpose is warped, is it?”

  “Yes.” She struck the table.

  “Patriotism is warped, is it? Defending my native state warped? Or preventing this city from being burned and leveled? That’s what the Yankees want, you know—nothing left of Charleston but rubble. That’s what they want,” he shouted.

  “I don’t care—I don’t care!” She was on her feet, weeping. The patriotic anthem had ended in mid-phrase. “You are not the sole savior of the Confederacy, despite your attempt to act like it. Well, go ahead, kill yourself in your holy cause if you want. But it’s hateful and immoral of you to demand that other lives be sacrificed to appease your anger. The old Cooper would have understood. The Cooper I loved—I loved so very—”

  The broken words faded into silence. Out in the garden, palmetto fronds rattled in the wind. Like some long snake uncoiling, Cooper rose from his chair. His face blank, he said, “The test will proceed as scheduled.”

  “I knew that. Well, commune with yourself about it from now on.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you may take your meals in this house, but don’t expect me to be present when you do. It means you may sleep in the extra bedroom. I don’t want you in mine.”

  They stared at each other. Then Cooper walked out.

  Judith’s façade gave way. Voices reached her from the parlor: the first one—her husband’s—curt:

  “Lucius, get your coat. We can still accomplish a good deal tonight.”

  Marie-Louise, vexed: “Oh, Papa, Mama said we’d all gather and sing—”

  “Keep quiet.”

  Judith put her head down, pressed her hands to her eyes, and silently cried.

  91

  FOR DAYS AFTER HIS ordeal—Billy had been kept kneeling in the sleet storm till morning—he hobbled rather than walked. Most of he time he curled on the floor, hands locked below his pulled-up knees in a futile effort to stave off chills that would abruptly change to fever and set him raving. And every night Vesey was here—to insult him, to prod with a musket, to lift his boot and nudge the hand that would be forever nail-scarred.

  Vesey, a farm boy from Goochland County who had achieved sudden and unexpected importance because of his absolute power over prisoners, reminded Billy of an Academy upperclassman George had mentioned a few times. Some fat fellow from Ohio who had pitilessly deviled his brother and Orry Main and all the other plebes in their class. Billy had never been much for contemplation of philosophic issues, but the fat cadet and Clyde Vesey convinced him that there was indeed such a thing in the world as the person with no redeeming qualities.

  On the credit side of the ledger he placed the Tim Wanns.

  The Massachusetts boy, though not sturdy, was quick-witted. Under Billy’s instruction he rapidly learned the tricks of survival. Because Billy had gone to his rescue, Tim became Billy’s devoted friend, eager to share anything he possessed. One thing he possessed, which Billy didn’t, was greenback dollars. About twenty of them. The money was in his pocket when he was captured, and two of the dollars had persuaded the check-in guard to let him keep the rest.

  With money, little luxuries could be obtained from the more cooperative guards. Frequently, Tim urged. Billy to let him buy him something, whatever he wanted. Tim said it was small payment for the bravery that had earned Billy punishment and a persistent influenza that left him feeble and frequently dizzy.

  Billy said no to the offers until one longing grew too strong.

  “All right, Tim—a little writing paper, then. And a pencil. So I can start a new journal.”

  Tim put in the order ten minutes later. Delivery was made at nine that night. Tim objected.

  “This is wallpaper! Look at all these bilious blue flowers. How is anyone supposed to write on this side?”

  “Ain’t,” said the guard selling the goods. “But if you do want to write some’pin, you write it on that or nothin’. Jeffy Davis hisself can’t get anythin’ better these days.”

  So Billy began.

  Jan. 12—Libby Pris. I vow to survive this place. My next, most immed. aim is to send a letter to my dear wife.

  He wanted to add that he had been asked to join the escape that was currently being plotted but decided he had better not commit that to paper in case the journal was found. Besides, he had so little to write upon—three sheets a foot square cost Tim three dollars—he must hoard the empty space.

  Every night that Vesey was on duty, he continued to show up to harass his favorite prisoner. But Billy managed to endure the pokes with a bayonet, the kicks with a hobnailed boot, the nasty remarks about his friendship with the Harvard boy—he endured it all until he wrote the letter to Brett.

  Tim insisted he be allowed to buy an envelope to hold the letter. What was supplied was greasy butcher’s paper, folded and held together with paste. Billy addressed it for maximum legibility and enclosed a small square of wallpaper carrying a brief, affectionate message: He was in fine health, he loved her, she shouldn’t worry.

  The envelope, left open for the censor, was handed to the proper guard at noon. Vesey brought it back that night.

  “I am afraid the censor refused to pass this letter.” Smiling, he opened his right hand. The envelope and its contents, all in small pieces, fluttered to the floor.

  Weak, dizzy, hating the feel and stench of the filthy clothes he removed each morning for the required lice inspection, Billy pushed up from his small section of floor, slowly gained his feet, and stood eye to eye with the corporal.

  “There was nothing illegal in that letter.”

  “Oh, that is for the censor to determine. The censor is a chum of mine. Some weeks ago, I asked him to watch for any letter you might write. I’m afraid none will ever gain his approval for mailing. Your dear wife will just have to go on suffering and grieving—” he winked, smiling “—thinking you dead in a heathen’s grave.”

  “The rules—”

  Vesey’s hand flew to the back of Billy’s head; twisted in his long, matted hair. “I told you—I told you,” he whispered. “There are no rules here except mine. I hope your wife’s grief grows unsupportable. I hope she develops a violent aching in her female parts. A desire so fierce, so insistent—”

  He leaned closer, face huge, china-blue eyes gleeful.

  “—she’ll be driven to fornicate madly to relieve it. Maybe she’ll fornicate with some white tramp. Maybe she’ll pick a buck nigger.”

  Billy was shaking, trying to hold back, not see the looming face or hear the whispering.

  “Just imagine one of those
big coons—your equals, aren’t they? Old Abe says they are. Think of him humping and sliding all over your wife’s white body. Pushing his blackness into her tender orifice so hard she bleeds. Think of that along with what you’d like to say in all those letters you’ll never get past these walls, you heathen, godless—”

  With a cry, Billy struck. When three other guards with lanterns rushed in to pull him off, he had Vesey on the floor, pounding his head with both hands. One of the guards hauled Billy up by his jacket. A second kicked him in the crotch, twice. Coughing, he pitched sideways and crumpled. The third guard said, “You all are in for it now, Yank.”

  92

  ALTHOUGH LIGHT REMAINED IN the west, Cooper saw only darkness and winter stars out toward the Atlantic. Would he see the sight again? His daughter? Judith? The moment the questions came, he drove them out as unworthy sentimentalities.

  Lucius Chickering had come down to the dock along with Alexander, the machinist. The young man shook Cooper’s hand. “Best of luck, sir. We’ll be waiting for your return.”

  With a brief nod, Cooper glanced at the small crowd of soldiers who had gotten wind of the test and gathered to observe it. Mingled with them were a few villagers from Mount Pleasant. One stared at Cooper in a manner that could only be characterized as pitying.

  Alexander went down through Hunley’s forward hatch. Once Cooper had secured Bory’s permission for the test, the machinist had insisted on taking part. It was his right, he said; it was his submersible.

  Stepping from the pier to the hull, Cooper bent over the hatch. “Ready for me to come down, George?”

  “Ready, Mr. Main,” Lieutenant Dixon replied in his customary drawl. Cooper lifted a long leg over the coaming with its quartet of small, round windows set ninety degrees apart. He lowered himself into the dark interior while a crewman reached up to close the rear hatch with a clang, screwing it down tight. He squeezed past Dixon, who remained at the instruments: a mercury depth gauge and a compass for steering underwater. In a niche between these, in a cup, stood the lighted candle that measured the air supply and provided the sole illumination.