by John Jakes
“Gentlemen, are we ready to commence?” Nods, grins. “Ought we to start by singing a hymn? Better still, maybe we should pray for the soul of one about to depart—whether to the nether regions, where all good Yankees go, or merely to the land of the cripples, it is not ours to know just yet.”
Following his cousin’s example, he seized Billy’s hair, yanking his head far back, till he saw Billy grimace. Vesey bent to within three inches of Billy’s face.
“One thing sure, boy. You’ll never forget the ride.”
Billy poked his tongue out between cracked lips and blew spit. This time he didn’t miss.
Vesey slammed his head against the spoke, then ran around to the near horse. “Two miles down the road and back, Crawford.” He whipped off his cap and lashed the horse, spooking it to greater effort with a long rebel yell that wailed against the noise of the caisson gathering speed.
No matter how determined Billy was, no matter how he braced himself, his body was yanked away from the hub, then hurls back against it as the caisson went over each hump in the road. Being tied horizontally created disorientation; his left eye saw the sky, his right the brown road flying by beneath.
Vesey’s cousin whipped the team. “Come on, you nags, do your duty!” Billy’s face mashed into a spoke. The inside of his cheek split. Blood began to fill his mouth. A bruise appeared on his temple as it repeatedly hit the wheel. Vesey had known exactly how loosely to tie him, the bastard.
He got a little relief when the team slowed to turn around. But he had been bashed so hard, jerked so violently, that starting up again was twice as bad. His head buzzed. He had a feeling they would break half his bones at least. His emotional control started to slip. He pictured Brett’s face. That helped.
The return trip seemed to last much longer. Billy sailed beneath a few winter clouds, watching them expand, shrink, blur. Blood ran from the lower corner of his mouth. Pain spread from his belly, hit repeatedly by the hub, to skull and toes. The caisson slowed, then, mercifully, stopped.
“Well, cousin, what d’ye think?” asked Crawford, scratching, himself.
Vesey strutted back and forth where his victim could see him “Oh, I think he’s enjoying himself too much. I see not the slightest sign of repentance for his heathenish behavior. Let’s untie him and turn him over with his back next to the hub. And, Crawford this time go all the way to the covered bridge before you turn. That’s at least a mile more each way.”
So it started again, Crawford driving up the road as if charging to battle. Billy’s middle jackknifed out, then back, the hub battering his spine. Wind-whipped blood trailed away from his upper lip, stringing out behind his head like periods in the air. Finally ashamed but powerless to stop, he cried out.
And blacked out.
The doctor, a sixty-year-old hack, heavy tippler, and native Virginian, happened to despise the young warden of Libby Prison He stomped into Turner’s office late next day, informing him that prisoners from the third floor had brought him a man, one Hazard, whose body was cruelly battered. A man who could not stand, or speak coherently; a man lying this moment on a cot in the surgery, his life in the balance.
“His back isn’t broken, but it’s no thanks to whoever beat him.”
“Just return that Yank to decent health, and I’ll root out the person or persons who did it and discipline them,” Turner promised, voice tremoring. “However, Dr. Arnold, we may find it was an accident. A slip on the stairs, a tumble—some of the prisoners get pretty weak, and there isn’t much I can do about it. Yes, sir, I’ll wager an accidental fall is the answer.”
“If you believe that, you’re even stupider than I thought. He could have fallen out of one of those reconnaissance balloons and not be hurt this badly.” The doctor laid his hands on the desk and pushed his plum nose toward the warden. “You’d better remember one fact, youngster. We may be at war, but we are not on the staff of the Grand Inquisitor of Spain. These are Americans locked up in this building—and Southern honor still stands for something. Find the culprit or I’ll go to President Davis personally. I’ll see you cashiered.”
That might have been the outcome, except for the commotion caused by the great escape.
The escape took place on the ninth of February. A Pennsylvania colonel named Rose had climbed down a prison chimney and discovered an abandoned room in the cellar. There, he and others worked in shifts for several days to tunnel under the wall of the old warehouse. The tunnel they dug was almost sixty feet long. They broke ground and ran, a hundred and nine of them.
Libby was thrown into an uproar, Turner into dire trouble. Special inspectors from Winder’s office prowled the area at unexpected hours of the day and night, spying on prisoners for signs of suspicious behavior and insuring that the general’s order to double the number of guards on duty had been carried out. Turner, meantime, desperately wrote reports to shift blame for the escape and save himself from charges. All the while, Billy lay on the cot in the surgery, too deep in pain to remember he had been invited to join the escape.
Tim Wann visited at least twice a day. Asked questions of Dr. Arnold, one more than others: “Who did it, Doctor?”
“I can’t find out. I’ve tried like hell, but the guards in this place are a foul breed. They protect one another.”
Tim suspected he knew the ringleader. He said, “Someone carried him off in the middle of the night. I was asleep—I never woke up.” Pale with guilt, the Massachusetts boy looked at the puffed discolored face on the thin gray pillow. Even sleeping, Billy occasionally winced in pain.
“No one else in your room saw anything?”
“They say not. It was late. Dark. Those who took him must have worked quietly.”
“Goddamn us all for what we do in the name of patriotism. They did a job on him, all right. Something a lot worse than beating with fists, though I still can’t figure out the method.”
“Can’t Billy tell us? Give us the names or at least the descriptions of those responsible?”
Billy thrashed, arched his back, cried out softly. His left nostril began to ooze blood. The doctor bent to wipe it, giving Tim bleak look.
“If he lives,” he said.
Sunset. Sea birds circling. The air was calm and cold, though in the north massive cloud banks were building rapidly. Over on the Battery, windows glowed and the last daylight touched roof peak and steeples. Bundled in his caped greatcoat, Cooper noticed mist forming on the water.
George Dixon finished his survey of the harbor and pushed the sections of his brass telescope together. “The mist will help. We have an ebb tide to assist us when we’re ready to start back. It’s our best opportunity thus far. I think we’ll go.”
He pivoted and called to the mate. “Mr. Fawkes? Rig the torpedo boom, if you please. I want to get under way promptly.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” said the former Alabama soldier. All of the landsmen had learned nautical ways with speed and relish. Having survived the underwater test, they took pride in behaving like experienced tars.
“Which of the ships will be your target?” Cooper asked.
“I think it’s best to determine that once we’re past the harbor bar.”
“I intend to row over to Sumter to watch.” He held out his hand. “Godspeed, George. I’ll expect you back by midnight.”
“By all means,” replied the young skipper with a brief smile “I’m very proud to be taking her out. You should be proud, too. If we succeed, this night will live in history.”
“You’ll succeed,” Lucius said, hovering behind his superior.
“Well—good-bye, then,” Dixon said, striding down the pier as confidently as any master who had first gone into the tops as a boy. “Careful with that powder, lads. It’s meant to sink a Yankee, not us.”
A shiver chased down Cooper’s back—a reaction not at all connected with the plunging temperature. This moment made all the peril, the worry, the pleading with Beauregard—even the coldness of his wife, who simply did
n’t understand him or the importance of his work—worthwhile.
Lucius climbed into the boat first. Through thickening mist, they rowed hard for the landing stage of the shell-blasted fort, halfway there, Lucius pointed over Cooper’s shoulder. “She’s leading out.” Cooper twisted clumsily on the thwart, barely in time to glimpse a red-orange glitter on the iron hull. Then the dark clouds closed. The slight bulge on the surface of the water disappeared.
From the seaward side of Fort Sumter, they watched darkness and mist rapidly hide the blockade fleet. Only a few signal lanterns showed where the vessels lurked. The night remained very quiet, very cold. Cooper grew nervous. He had just checked his watch once again—8:47 P.M.—when fire and noise erupted in the offshore mist.
Cooper caught his breath. “Which ship is it?”
“Housatonic,” said the major from the fort who had come up to watch with them. He passed his telescope, which Cooper peered through just as a sheet of flame carried pieces of timber and rigging skyward. The roar came rolling in over the harbor bar.
“She’s hulled on the starboard side,” Cooper crowed. “Just forward of the mainmast, I think. I can see men scrambling up the main and mizzen—oh—she’s listing already!” He fairly hurled the telescope at his assistant. “Look while you can, Lucius. She’s going down.”
New lanterns were quickly lit on other ships in the enemy squadron. They heard faint yells through speaking trumpets. The steam warship nearest the sinking vessel put down lifeboats while men from the Sumter garrison rushed out of their quarters, clamoring to know what Confederate battery had fired and mortally wounded the steam sloop.
“None,” said Cooper. “She was sunk by our submersible boat, Hunley.”
“You mean that coffin ship from Sullivan’s Island?”
“She no longer deserves that reputation. Lieutenant Dixon and his crew will be decorated as heroes.”
But they were slow to return. At eleven o’clock, Cooper and Lucius rowed back to the pier and kept a vigil that grew colder and grimmer by the hour. At six in the morning, Cooper said, “Let’s go back to Charleston.”
A haunted man, he trudged up Tradd Street and let himself into the house. No one in the city knew anything about the sinking of Housatonic, only that an explosion had occurred on one of the blockade vessels. Of the submersible there was no trace.
A few days later, following the capture of a Union picket boat, Cooper was able to confirm for General Beauregard that Housatonic had indeed gone down. He was disappointed to learn she had lost only five hands, thanks to the quick arrival of rescue boats.
“Two less than the number aboard Hunley,” he said to Lucius.
In the next few days, Cooper drank large amounts of whiskey and gin, hoping to induce heavy sleep. It refused to come. Every night he roamed the house or sat in a high-backed white-painted wicker chair, staring through the window at the garden drenched by winter rain. Of the garden he saw nothing. He saw instead his drowning son. Dixon’s brave face just before Hunley sailed at sunset. Strangest of all, he saw the darkness that had surrounded him inside the fish-ship during the test. He saw it, smelled it, tasted it, too, knowing fully, painfully, how Dixon and the rest felt as they died. During these reveries he heard the great bells from the steeple of St. Michael’s Church, though the ringing never seemed to coincide with the quarter-hours. All the clocks in the house were set wrong, he decided.
One night, nearly as exhausted as her husband by now, Judith brought a lamp to the room with the white wicker chair.
“Cooper, this can’t continue—sitting up, never resting.”
“Why should I go to bed? I can’t sleep. The night of the seventeenth of February was a milestone in naval warfare. I try to find peace in that thought, and I can’t.”
“Because you—” She stopped.
“I know what you started to say. I am responsible for that milestone. I wanted it so badly I killed seven men.”
She turned her back, unable to withstand his glare. He was right, though. She whispered to herself as much as to him, “You should have left her to rust. But you didn’t, and I wouldn’t have wished harm on any of those poor boys, but I’m glad Hunley’s gone. God forgive me. I’m glad. Perhaps it will finally purge some of the madness that torments you—”
His head jerked up. “What a peculiar choice of words—madness. I performed my duties to the best of my ability, that’s all. I did my work. And there’s more, much more, waiting. I will do it in the same way.”
“Then nothing’s changed. I had hoped—”
“What could possibly change?”
She raised her voice. “Won’t you even let me finish a sentence?”
“To what purpose? I ask you again, Judith. What could possibly change?”
“You’re so full of this awful rage—”
“More than ever. Poor Dixon’s life must be paid for, and the life of every man who went down with him.” His lips turned white. “Paid for ten times over.”
The shudder of her arm rattled the lamp in her hand. “Cooper, when will you understand? The South can’t win this war. It cannot.”
“I refuse to debate the—”
“Listen to me! This—dedication to slaughter—it’s destroying you. It’s destroying us.”
He turned his head, stiff and silent.
“Cooper?”
No movement. Nothing.
She shook her head and carried her lamp away, leaving him glaring at the rainy garden, the fury on his face digging lines so deep they were becoming permanent.
Passing the head of the stairs, Tim Wann noticed the motionless figure on the landing below. Tim looked a second time to be sure.
“Billy?”
The emaciated prisoner raised his head. Tim saw new streaks of white in the untrimmed hair. “Billy!” With a whoop and a slap of his leg, he bounded down to his friend, who supported himself with a padded crutch under his arm. “You’re all right!”
“Well enough to come back to our splendid quarters. There are still some ribs healing, and I’m not steady on my feet—you talk too loudly, you’re liable to blow me over. I’m a little slow getting around. It’s taken me ten minutes to come from the ground floor.”
“Someone should have helped you.”
“I guess Turner doesn’t believe in coddling his guests. You can help me the rest of the way if you want.”
Tim slid his arm around Billy, who put his across the shoulders of the young soldier. Thus they reached their room, where Billy was greeted by exclamations of surprise and shouts of welcome. Even one of the daytime guards said he was happy Billy had pulled through.
A lieutenant thoughtlessly slapped Billy on the back. Billy made a desperate stab with his crutch and prevented a fall. “Jesus, Hazard—I’m sorry,” the lieutenant said.
“’S all right.” Sweat showed in Billy’s beard suddenly. “I need to sit down. Someone give me a hand—?”
Tim did. Others crowded around. Billy asked, “Is it still February? I lost track downstairs.”
“It’s the first of March,” a man said. “They’ve doubled the guard force outside. There’s a column of our cavalry north of Richmond—practically on the doorsill. Three or four thousand horse. The rebs fear they’ve come to free us and raze the city.”
“Do you know about the escape?” someone else asked. Billy shook his head, and heard about it. More than forty of the prisoners involved had been recaptured; but the rest, presumably, were on their way back to federal lines or already across. He learned next that Vesey, demoted to private, had been transferred to less comfortable duty outside one of the main doors.
They asked questions about his treatment downstairs, how he had gotten hurt. He answered each question with silence or a shake of his head. When he said he needed to visit the lavatory, Tim and another soldier lent a hand.
After Billy gained his feet, Tim said: “It was Vesey, wasn’t it? Vesey tortured you and that’s why he was demoted and tossed outside. That’s rig
ht, isn’t it?”
Billy’s silence was already a matter of pride with him. “Never mind,” he said. “I know who did it, and if I get a chance, I’ll settle with him.”
He wobbled on the crutch, pale and too feeble to settle much of anything. Tim and the other man exchanged looks.
Tim had kept Billy’s improvised journal safe. That night, while distant cannon fire reverberated through Libby, Billy wrote with the pencil stub.
Mar. 1—Two remarkable circumstances. I am alive when Dr. Arnold, the old toper in the surgery, expected I’d die. Also—the reb who took it as his duty to injure me taught me a lesson so monumental I do not wholly grasp it yet. In here, forced to obey any order, no matter how humiliating or destructive, I at last understand how the enslaved negro feels. I have dwelt a while in the soul of a shackled black man and taken a little of it into my own, forever.
94
STANLEY FOUND IT INCREASINGLY hard to accept and deal with all the changes in his life. Pennyford continued to send monthly reports of the enormous profits earned by Lashbrook’s. Stanley read each with disbelief. The figures could not possibly be real. If they were, no man deserved such wealth. Certainly he didn’t. He found it hard to cope with the swift flow of public events as well. Weariness with the war now infected the entire North, the President having hastened the process with his proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction, announced last December. Lincoln proposed to pardon all rebels except the highest government officials and former army and navy officers who had defected.
The plan was not harsh enough to suit Wade and Stevens and their crowd, therefore not harsh enough for Stanley either. But what other kind of plan could one expect from a negrophile half mad from perpetual sleeplessness and depression? Instead of thinking rigorously about the enemy and the postwar period, Lincoln busied himself with trivialities, pious orations at cemetery dedications and the like. At Gettysburg last November he had delivered himself of one such anthology of homilies, to the monumental boredom of the crowd.
