Andersonville

by MacKinlay Kantor

  ...Miss Veronica.

  Yes, Miss Benham. And a curtsy.

  Please to recite the statistics on Milledgeville.

  Milledgeville, Baldwin County, is the capital of the State of Georgia. According to the most recent census there are in Milledgeville a total of one thousand five hundred and ninety-nine souls.

  That is correct. How many white and black, Miss Veronica?

  There are whites to the number of eight hundred and thirty-one, blacks to the number of seven hundred and sixty-eight. There are attorneys to the number of twenty, there are—uh—eight physicians—

  Six.

  Six physicians, twenty-one merchants, nine innkeepers, two joiners, six bootmakers, uh—six tailors—

  Eight.

  Eight tailors, four silversmiths—

  (Veronica had no intention of going to the Senate, nor the desire to go. She thought of herself as marrying eventually a man quite unlike her father; yet she knew that it was wrong in her to wish to marry a man quite unlike her father. Honor Thy Father.)

  Sixteen shopkeepers, five blacksmiths—

  That will do, my dear. Well done, on the whole.

  Eight children, seven dead. Not well done, my dear, on the whole. But in the individual parts—

  Like her daughter, Veronica had recurrent dreams, similar in general and sometimes identical in detail. They were not erotic dreams. Thought that she had ever indulged in the act of copulation was increasingly repugnant to her, and thought of the variations of this art which she and Ira had practiced (and which they did for entertainment, for sinful pleasure, not in the doleful dedicated solemnity of Begetting) was worse than repugnant. It outraged not only a code of personal conduct but all religion, all philosophy, all virtue.

  Her dream recurred not only when she slumbered, but with increasing persistency when she was erect and seeming to be awake: saying, Ninny, you neglected the vessel in the room where Mr. Dillard slept on Tuesday night. It is smelling. Attend to that at once, do you hear? Saying, Naomi, we shall have beaten biscuits to our luncheon. Saying, So Deuce is dead. So he’s gone too. I ask you to save his collar—

  Her dream swept her into a flat bare neighborhood and along a straight road lined with high stiff cedars or yews, very like the cypresses she’d seen in Europe when the Arwoods went abroad, a year or two before Veronica met Ira Claffey. She walked and walked, holding her shawl about her against an increasing chill, and soon she met a stranger who said not a word, but pointed to the left with his stick. Obediently she turned to the left and passed through a gateway; sometimes she turned to look back at the stranger, sometimes not, but whenever she did look back he would be gone. Down a slight slope, turning to the right again . . . grass over which she wandered was cropped close, as if sheep had been keeping it down—or deer, in an English park . . . presently she reached a place made of white stone. It was not marble, it had not the sheen of marble; could it have been granite, was there white granite?

  Come in.

  But the iron door of the structure stood open already, she did not need to turn the knob.

  Come in. It was a throaty voice, it might have been a man speaking, or more likely a contralto with a very deep voice, far in lower registers.

  She glanced at the western sky. It was orange, the cedar-yew-cypresses inked black against the color.

  Veronica went inside, after passing down three or four steps to reach the door. This building was half above ground, half buried. It seemed to continue indefinitely, reaching back into the hill which now appeared swelling above—

  She went inside, and there the sarcophagi were spaced; but there were more than seven, many more than seven, they stretched on and on, on both sides of the room. And the voice echoed, echoed, echoed—the voice which had said, Come in—distantly through space of the room until it lost itself in a single sostenuto organ tone—

  She went inside. Somebody, a stranger dressed in white (never a child of hers), sat up suddenly in one of the open coffins.

  She came from her dream.

  XII

  On the evening of Wednesday, February twenty-fourth, they sat in the library, playing a game. The three: Lucy, Ira, Cousin Harry.

  They were continuing a gentle rite established a few days after Harrell Elkins arrived. In conversation Ira quoted from The Bard; he said: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. Instantly his daughter responded with, We shall grow old apace, and die before we know our liberty.

  She said, Shakespeare for you, Poppy.

  Herrick for you.

  They giggled, and Elkins was puzzled. I’m sorry, sir. . . . Lucy explained the pastime of rhymes and quotations which had been their custom before the war, in family recreation.

  I’m afraid I don’t understand. That grating voice was become strangely a joy to her hearing. Mr. Claffey said weeds. Shouldn’t you have begun with the letter S?

  Oh, no, no. It’s simple as simple can be. The next player begins with the first letter of the last word. And you should be able to identify the previous quotation, or it’ll be a Black Mark.

  I fear I would have many Black Marks.

  Oh, come, sir. Come, Poppy. It’ll be just like old times. Do let’s try—

  At first it was difficult, with the boys gathered close. Furthermore it turned out that Cousin Harry was either martial or morbid in his selections, and very often both. He apologized. He said that when he was a boy he had visions of himself as a soldier, but had never believed that he would be one in fact. Strutting through the hours, harassed by self-abnegation but determined to play alternately the part of Hector or Patroclus, he had read brave chants before a glass, he had put on a casque made of newspaper, had dragged his grandfather’s sword.

  ...Very well. What was your last, Miss Lucy? Shyly he clung to this formality.

  She addressed him in comparative intimacy for the first time, and her father grinned within to hear her. —Before we know our liberty, Cousin Harry.

  Liberty, liberty. Ah. . . . Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone, and o’er his cold ashes upbraid him.

  There was silence. I give up, said Lucy. So do I, said Ira.

  It’s a quotation from Charles Wolfe. The Burial of Sir John Moore. It might be that I wasn’t playing correctly?

  No, no, Cousin Harry. You were quite correct. Poppy, it’s your turn next, so you must accept the Black Mark.

  Very well. The boys were still lounging close, but their shades were good-tempered and warming. He is gone on the mountain, he is lost to the forest, like a summer-dried fountain when our need was the sorest.

  Oh, Poppy!

  It’s a Black Mark for you, Miss Lucy, cried Harrell Elkins gleefully. That’s Sir Walter.

  Raleigh or Scott?

  Scott, you benighted wretch, said Ira. Thus they played willingly. Ira did not again stray into the cemeteries mourned over by Cousin Harry, but gave himself up almost completely to Shakespeare and the Psalms. Lucy roved among her favorites: Herrick, Wordsworth, Keats. Elkins would have been sonorous, but his tone was incapable of the designation, with Ah! no;—the voices of the dead sound like a distant torrent’s fall, with, My love is dead, gone to his death-bed, all under the willow tree, with, When the goodman mends his armor, and trims his helmet’s plume. Lucy looked at his earnest face, the round chunks of glass holding back the candlelight, the round ears standing out, and thought, He recites of heroes and is loath to admit that he is one. So were the boys, so was—Rob. But they are no longer in the flesh; and here we sit, playing at being the children they were.

  Hours passed in concert were not all decked with such simplicity. They held conversation, often quite bitter, about the conduct of the war. Knowing that he could find trust in his faith and sympathy for his opinions, Elkins was outspokenly bitter against President Davis. Ira welcomed this expr
ession of opinion as a man does when his own views are reflected, and presented perhaps with more authority than that with which he can present them.

  If Fate had given us Stephens—

  With that I’m not wholly in accord, Coz. I’m a respecter of Mr. Stephens, not a worshipper.

  Nor am I, sir. But our President is scorned by many in the army. When General Toombs—

  Oh, Poppy knows Mr. Toombs very well indeed, cried Lucy in interruption. And Mr. Stephens also—he’s known him practically since boyhood.

  Ira said in deprecation, Not since boyhood. It happened that in his youth he acted as tutor in a family with whom we were acquainted.

  And Poppy pulled that brute of a Judge Cone off of poor sickly Mr. Stephens when he sought to cut Mr. Stephens’ heart out, at the Atlanta Hotel. Didn’t you, Poppy?

  Did you indeed, sir? Suth never told me.

  Oh, said Ira, I happened to be standing near when the attack occurred. Several of us jumped to the rescue.

  They were young, they were insistent, Ira had to relate each detail again. Lucy had heard the story more than once, she had heard it a dozen times; but always it gave her excitement and the kind of delicious horror contained in threatening fairy tales (since everything came out well in the end).

  Harrell Elkins said meditatively, Hearing such an experience recounted by an eyewitness— It offers us obscure folk a kinship with the great.

  No one might ever presume to term as obscure a gentleman who has commanded a company of the Sixteenth Georgia, Cousin Harry.

  But, Lucy, I— Miss Lucy, it—

  Thus he floundered, rustic and bashful, and Ira Claffey let him flounder, he spoke no word of rescue. He thought, Let him learn. He’s a man. Let him admit it. In time I trust she’ll teach him. Indeed he was a man, and Ira could not believe that in any face-to-face encounter Elkins would come off second best. He recalled how, on the third or fourth evening of his stay, Cousin Harry came from deep thought to ask, Sir, have you chanced to meet up with a Captain Winder? It’s under his supervision that the stockade has been built.

  Ira thought of the surveying party in long ago October. Captain Sid Winder. I’m afraid I don’t care for him. If recollection serves, I met his father also, during the Mexican War. He was an extremely courageous man, unfortunately as ill-mannered as they come.

  I met him today, said Harry. Captain Winder.

  Ah?

  Slowly the story came out. Elkins was interrupted by Lucy’s coming into the room, and postponed the telling until her departure, since it was necessary for him to use profanity in quoting accurately.

  ...He said, Captain, will no barracks be constructed before the arrival of the first prisoners?

  ...Winder said, That’s none of your damn business, Surgeon.

  ...Will you permit me to quote you verbatim in my report?

  ...We didn’t build any barracks, I have no intention of building any barracks.

  ...Will any shelter of any sort whatsoever be erected?

  ...Not by me.

  ...Then why, for God’s sake, did you cut down all the trees? At least trees within the area might have afforded a certain degree of shelter to the inmates, protecting them from the sun.

  ...Why protect them from the sun?

  ...Because direct exposure to the sun’s rays, in this climate, and especially during the summer months, may cause a high degree of mortality.

  ...I hope it does, Surgeon, I hope it does. What the hell’s the use of coddling a pen full of Yankees? I’ve got a pen here that ought to kill more God damn Yankees than you ever saw killed at the front.

  Harrell Elkins arose from his chair and moved restlessly across the room. He stood looking out of the window, though it was dark, though panes shone back at him, though nothing could be seen.

  What was your reply?

  Oh, I asked him how many Yankees he had seen killed at the front.

  And, Coz?

  He said that he had a good notion to call me out. That he would call me out, if I weren’t bespectacled.

  And then?

  Oh, I said that I wished that he would call me out, since as the challenged party the choice of weapons would rest with me. Informed him that I would select cavalry sabers at two paces.

  What said he to that?

  Oh, he kind of barked. He rode off.

  For a moment Elkins and Claffey gazed blankly at each other; then their shouts arose. It was long since such lawless laughter had sounded within that room. Should it come to such a pretty pass, said Ira between gasps, I would be most proud to officiate in your behalf. In the kitchen servants heard the laughter and came creeping through the hall to listen closer, to wonder at the laughter, to grin and giggle in distant fellowship without knowing why. In Moses Claffey’s old room Veronica heard the laughter. She arose, the candlelight making a nervous vulture of her shape upon the wall, and she crushed a pair of baby boots in her cold hands and said, not aloud, How dare they? In her own room Lucy heard the laughter and she sat with uplifted hair brush, smiling at herself in the mirror. She remembered how, when she was younger and before war overwhelmed them, it had seemed natural as life to have Ninny brushing her hair each night. But now Ninny, Extra, Pet and Naomi must do all the work of the house, which meant all cooking, baking, washing, sewing, mending, dyeing, weaving, spinning, soap-making, candle-making . . . the list stretched on. In these activities Lucy was mistress, driver and participant, much of the time. At night she slept as soundly as any of the black people, with as good reason to sleep. She brushed her own hair, one hundred strokes each night, even when she was really too tired to do it.

  In a wine glass of water on her dressing table two violets posed for her. The violets were of different shape and color; one was much paler than the other, and curled its petals, and was bluer. The other violet, more purple, was of the crowfoot species.

  Where on earth did you find them, Cousin Harry?

  Twas inside the stockade, actually.

  Seems like it’s so early for them. Yet—no—Extra and I used often to find them there, sometimes even in January. I do thank you.

  I just happened to glance down—saw one first, then later the other one. I recalled that you said violets were your favorite flower.

  Surely they are.

  I presume these are the last violets which will grow in Andersonville. When prisoners are put inside, the place will be trampled flat.

  But it’s Anderson, Cousin Harry, not Andersonville. The station was named for Mr. John Anderson, of Savannah.

  So I’ve heard. And the official designation of the new post is Camp Sumter. But you know how troops are, Miss Lucy: forever applying a special name to something or other. They call the depot village Anderson, but they term the stockade Andersonville, to distinguish it. . . . His rough voice sawed on, and Lucy turned the fragile violet stems between her thumb and finger, and considered how she and Rob Lamar had gone violet-picking three years ago. She could pick twice as fast as could Rob—he was always hearing birds about, always calling to his dog. But between the two of them they’d gathered so many violets that her one hand could not enclose the stems.

  No longer did they speak of Rob Lamar, she and Cousin Harry. Elkins had known him barely, at college; he remembered going to a pic-nic party where Rob also was a guest. Just that one pic-nic, said Harry. I wasn’t exactly what you might call a social butterfly. And medical books and lectures do require a power of concentration.

  But apparently there had been time for him to apply that power of concentration to literature as well as to medicine. Cousin Harry could grasp and identify more quotations than either Lucy or Ira when they played their game. Thus far he was in the lead, with only nineteen Black Marks against his name on the torn sheet of gilt-lined notepaper they used as their scoring tab. Ira had twenty-six Black Marks, Lucy thirty-eight.

 
By the evening of Wednesday, February twenty-fourth, Harrell Elkins had left high-piled clods and blood-drenched claymores behind him. She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, for ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! This he spoke with enthusiasm. Ira Claffey found impish satisfaction in witnessing this slow fondness, grown obviously out of proximity and sentimental tragedy. Cousin Harry had announced that he must leave for Macon on the next day; his work was finished, his reports and recommendations needed amplification and resort to other advices at headquarters. Lucy received the news coolly; Ira observed her. She ate little at supper. When Pet took away her plate she mumbled in alarm, Miss Lucy, is you poorly?

  I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden;

  Thou needest not fear mine;

  My spirit is too deeply laden

  Ever to burden thine.

  On this evening of Wednesday, February twenty-fourth (it was after nine o’clock), Elkins sprang up in the middle of Ira’s deliberately wicked quotation of Shelley, crying, Beg pardon—looks like a fire! They joined him at the window: the entire valley to the north was colored brilliantly. The Biles’ house was much farther beyond, the Yeoman house farther to the west, the McWhorters’ farther to the east. Could the damp forest itself be burning, could the few sprawling houses of Anderson be alight?

  In glow the three left the house and hurried west along the lane. Ira led sharply to the right on a footpath worked out by slaves going to and from the village. Years before, he had had his people build a crude bridge with a handrail across the little branch of Sweetwater and squashy ground surrounding it at this point. Looking ahead through the trees as they hastened, they could see that the newly carved-out road was become a sluice of ruddy light. It looked as if bonfires had been kindled for a gay homecoming (except that no one was coming home) or some such festivity (except that there was little to be gay about). Stumps, roots, branches, tops and needles: the debris of slain pines was heaped regularly to illuminate the road. These brush piles howled and crackled on high.

  The snapping blazes revealed a train halted beside the Anderson depot; the train had been loaded with goblins, and several hundred goblins had trooped already from their box cars. Pine knots burned at intervals along the front and wispish lantern lights went scouting between ragged ranks, coming together again by twos and threes as if lightning bugs assembled for conference.