Yes, said Laurel, tis your turn, Flory. Go get some wood like a good boy.
Well. . . . Generously he offered an entire stick of the brown candy to his sister, and she crushed it with her little teeth in rapture.
Reckon, said Flory, speaking casually from the doorway— Reckon I’ll be going for a soldier.
Reckon you’ll shit, said his brother.
Coral, you forget I’m a lady! came Laurel’s thin moan. Ma won’t tolerate no such talk from you. She’ll give you a whipping if’n I tell her, crutch or no crutch. What makes you think they’d take you for a soldier, Flory?
Hope to shout they would. I heard them soldiers a-telling of it. Down to Uncle Arch’s just now. Said they had them new regiments name of Georgia Reserves, and they’ll take any number of boys my size. So I reckon I’ll go.
Well, you get that wood first, dad blast you, cried Coral.
Intoxicated by notions of military accomplishment, Flory obeyed. He would not have responded to a just and deserved summons at any other time, but he was entranced by the thought that soon he might be marching and fighting in gray. No longer a child, no longer creeping in the guise of an outcast from even a portion of his own family. . . . Soldiers owned money. They must own it, else how could so many of them visit Flory’s mother? She did not give her female valuables away: she sold them. (Had Floral but known it, he was contrived from a gift. His father had tried to sell Dr. Krieder’s Ague Pills to Mrs. Dickwood Tebbs; his father had failed in the attempt simply because Mrs. Tebbs had no cash with which to buy pills, and said that she would rely on soot coffee, as most people did, for the ague. But she liked the blond limber-tongued young ignoramus who came soliciting her. He offered also a panacea for looseness of the bowels which he called Mother Felch’s Blackberry Balm. . . . Blackberry?—repeated the woman. We got a sight of blackberries in our lane. Come nighttime I like to have myself a little stroll, and nibble at them blackberries. . . . Reckon you’ll be strolling amongst them blackberries tonight? . . . Could be, Mister. . . . She strolled, he was waiting, they rolled in illicit rapture. The salesman went drifting away with satchel and pack, with glib speech and limited jokes; he left the ripe seed which was Floral within her body.)
Flory had heard soldiers speak of chicken-guts. In time he’d have chicken-guts upon his sleeves.
Old pistols? No. A navy revolver, captivated off of the Yanks.
A horse. He’d never ridden a horse, but— He’d ridden a lame mule when they owned one. A horse—
We jumped them Yankees nigh side of the stream. They was shooting our asses off. I got turkey bumps all over my blame body.
Right oblique—hah!
Pre-sent—hah!
Rear, open order—hah!
Would they actually pay him eleven dollars a month? Even Secesh?
Flory brought in the wood, he brought in three armloads of wood. I declare to God, said his brother.
Floral Tebbs felt his way in darkness to the remains of the stable—half of the roof still hung there, but badly supported—and found that Captain Oxford Puckett’s mule still chewed at old corn-shucks. Quietly Flory crept to the doorstep of The Crib. He hunched, entertaining fancies. At the house he’d gathered his section of blanket, he’d twisted the rag around him, it gave him as much warmth as he needed. The entrance to The Crib was on the south side and out of the wind. From within came muffled exclamations, the grunting of weight on bed-ropes, a faint light through cracks, and suddenly the caroling of the old music box. The instrument played well despite the grim treatment it had suffered. It had been kicked and dropped, ignored, wound up hour after hour, not oiled for years, oiled too lavishly and with the wrong sort of oil. The spiny cylinder turned slowly, and some of the spines were worn or broken away, but tunes had an elfin tinkle about them despite gaps and cluckings.
Inside the building, Captain Ox Puckett spoke loudly as if come to a sudden decision. Ma’am, you got all the smart out of my marbles. Reckon I’ll head for that blame camp.
We drunk all the pine-top, honey?
Sure enough.
Oh, I do hope you come back to see me again.
Surely will, when the spirit starts a-working. Here’s them two greenbacks, and I wish they was more, but also I got to live. Hain’t many Yanks come in with cash in hand; the bulk is from Danville or Belle Isle, up Virginia way, and they got cleaned long ago.
Ox, bless you, I do love that extra greenback.
Fitten you should have it.
Floral listened to Captain Puckett getting into his clothes and stamping in his boots. Prompted by a vague shame, Floral arose and walked to a respectable distance. He stood, palpitating with illusions, until the door of The Crib opened and Puckett was revealed with the shine of candlelight on white beard and hair. He was creasing his old slouched hat, smoothing out the brim preparatory to wearing the hat.
Captain, sir, said Flory.
Ox Puckett squinted into the gloom. Sakes, Flory, is that you?
I want you should tell me something.
Come here to the door, you Flory.
The Widow Tebbs appeared behind the man, pulling a ragged be-ribboned wrapper around her. Flory, child, you ought to be abed.
It hain’t late. Captain, I was scheming to go for a soldier.
Puckett laughed shrilly. God, you got the milk still wet on your mouth, bubby.
But I was down to Uncle Arch’s and I heard them soldiers a-talking. They call it the Georgia Reserves; and tis said they’ll take folks my size.
Ox Puckett said judiciously, Well, I know of four regiments of Reserves they’re planning to muster, and maybe there’s many more. But that hain’t no life for a soldier: the lame and halt and blind. Course, you’re just a mere child.
The widow cried, He hain’t but twelve.
That’s a no count lie, yelled Flory. You know well enough I’m growed to thirteen, nigh onto fourteen.
Looky here, Ox, said Mag fervently. What befell my eldest? Skun away to the army when he weren’t more than fifteen, and now he’s got to hop on a crutch for the rest of his days.
The bearded captain turned, leaned toward her, whispered something. Floral could not hear what he said.
Do tell? Just guard duty?
The captain whispered again.
And they do get paid?
Oh, like all armies. When and if.
But they get their provender?
Field rations. Keep soul and body in the same piece.
Floral stood ragged and wispy, barely within the vague spot of light which fell from the open door. With that cape of blanket hooded over his close-cropped head and around his weak shoulders it was hard to tell whether he was boy or girl. He was all of five feet tall. My, said his mother, Government must be hard up for soldiers if they’d take Flory.
Captain Ox Puckett fastened his belt buckle. You give forth a mouthful, lady. Where’s the flower of the South? It got scythed down. We won’t never have the Nation we had before. But if ever we’re to whip them Yanks, the boys and old folks got to help. Take my regiment or take them Alabama troops alongside us, measly as they be: we got experience in the field. We could be used in the field. Even a younger size of Flory could stand up on that parapet over yonder and keep an eye on them prisoners so’s they wouldn’t bust loose.
Well, I never.
You hear that, Ma? cried Flory in delight.
Yah, yah, yah, I heard. Now you cut for bed.
Captain Ox, please, sir. Do you know any generals?
Puckett put his heels together. Bubby, you can’t serve in two wars and not know some generals. More’n once I’ve stood as close to General Lee as I’m standing to you. And once I fit along of One-eyed Jeff when you couldn’t tell beans from musket balls count of the powder smoke.
One-eyed Jeff?
President Jefferson Davis, if you like. Twas
in Mexico.
Captain Ox, please, reckon you might fix it up for me to get in the army?
Just in them Georgia Reserves, Flory.
But ain’t they going to be a army?
Oh, kind of. Hell, I weren’t much bigger’n you when first I went hunting for a yard of skirmish line.
Well, I never, said the Widow Tebbs. Flory, you cut for bed like I bid you.
Flory cut. Half the night he shivered restlessly beside the snoring half-brother who hated him, and whom he hated. His thin brain rattled with shots, bugle calls, orders, cannon rumblings, stirrup squeakings, the clangor of bayonets. By God, he thought in a last succumbing to weariness, I might even get to shoot a Yankee. . . . Poom.
XV
In one of his several military capacities (in this case in the role of provost-marshal at Richmond) John Winder had spent most of the morning in preparation for the calling of a court-martial and of inquiry. Also he had assailed verbally, with bellowing heard through four flimsy partitions, heard with fright by the five men and two women who waited his whim in the barren reception hall— He had assailed a Goochland County planter whose crime was not that of proven disloyalty but of anti-Secession sentiment uttered in his own neighborhood some three years before. The fact that the planter had since lost a son and a son-in-law at Cedar Mountain, and had had another Confederate soldier son crippled in a skirmish just before Second Manassas, did not serve as extenuation for his previous sin—not in General Winder’s opinion.
Denied recourse to any code of chivalry, the unhappy Virginian was compelled to stand like a criminal before the desk of a Marylander and hear himself likened to spies, hirelings, Abolitionists, nigger-lovers, Lovejoys, Butlers and Thaddeus Stevenses, each epithet hurled with its dressing of profanity. The egg-smell of sulphur was in the air of that office and of adjacent corridors. The planter stumbled out, hurt and maddened, fortunate at not being ordered into prison for the evil he had committed: requesting a pass through the lines for a sister who was married to a Pennsylvanian and had long sought to leave the Confederacy and join her sickly elderly husband at the North.
Old J.H.W. is raring, whispered a one-legged corporal to a palsied sergeant.
Lordy, yes. You got those letters of appointment and assembly duly copied?
Right here, but I don’t want to put my head through that door.
Better wait till he’s calmed, Joey.
If ever!
John Winder was in no hurry for the letters of appointment and assembly. He had formed a habit through his sixty-four years of life; he preferred to sit brooding silently on whatever foul nest he’d constructed with the beak and claws of his hatred. He would warm those tough little orbs of wrath, let them hatch logical fledglings when again his rage needed reinforcement. He sat nearly motionless, glowering at the present, resentful of the future, distasteful of the past. His untidy gray hair dripped in strings below fat crooked ears, there were ink stains and stains of age upon his fat crooked fingers, the scars of consistent bitterness came down between his bulging eyes. The scar where Amos the slave had wounded him with a razor last October— It was whitely apparent on the pulp around his compressed mouth.
He had witnessed his own red blood turning to black in the year of 1814, when he was fourteen. The blood had been black ever since; he knew it, waking or sleeping; he felt it moving like pitch through the veins tangled throughout his big body. When his skin was pierced and blood ran, John Winder was invariably surprised to observe its crimson, for truly it was acrid black, he must be color blind—the world must be color blind not to know—his blood had been black since that day on the oyster bar in Somerset County not far from Rewston where John Winder was born.
What my father said, said Gay Chastain.
That old Winder was a coward? asked Freddy Darlington.
Father said he should be shot because he let the British take Washington.
Freddy was nigh to sixteen in age and nigh to eighteen in size, Gay Chastain was even heavier and more dangerous if not so old; what might Johnny Winder do about this? Not one thing. What could he do? Nothing. The slur was there, the tale of his father’s inefficiency (at the best) or demoralization (considered possible in less charitable opinion) or downright cowardice and resulting deeds which named him as a traitor. It should not happen to you at fourteen, to have your father named as a traitor because he was held responsible for losing the fight at Bladensburg. It should not happen to you, it should not happen to a dog, not to the meanest slave in the parish, not to the most sluggish oyster crab, not to the wounded oyster eaten by the crab.
Johnny Winder stood rooted to the muddy bar, hammer in one hand, bucket in the other. It had all begun as a lark. He was glad that these elder youths had invited him to come oystering with them, for a lark like this might help him to forget the whispered odium newly attached to his father’s name. They had fetched crab-cakes and biscuits, they had filched Tipsy Squire pudding from a suspicious brown tyrant who presided over the Chastain kitchen and larder, they had ridden far in their cart, had prided themselves on the size of the oysters they would break loose in a secret cove.
But in this moment wine was gone from the strong cool wind, ragged waves of tidewater bit like rats at John Winder’s wet boots. He stood behind the shoreline thicket and heard his playmates turning themselves into torturers because they repeated some common gossip, and thought that John was fifty rods to the windward instead of prowling that same shaggy bar.
Attack them with his oyster knife, with his hammer? No, they owned similar weapons, they were bigger than he, they were two. Run home, fetch his double-barreled pistol, lie behind the oak at Five Corners, shoot them down as they drove past on the homeward trip (and probably wondering what had become of John even as the round bullets flew through their young bodies)? One could not shoot down the entire county, not shoot down the Nation, all the States. (Or could one? Later he pondered. Ardently John Henry Winder welcomed the advance of Secession forty-six years later, even before his commission as a major in the Regular establishment had been signed.)
Nothing could be as black, nothing had ever been blacker . . . mud in empty shells, old housings of dead oysters, the mud was squeezed into ink, almost it dyed the wet skin when it touched the skin. He looked down through the smart of tears and saw cold jet dripping from his fingertips . . . jet, jet, his blood had turned, oh watch it dripping.
Somewhere between that awful island and the wilderness of low mainland John Winder dropped his oyster bucket with its carefully selected freight, and so the bucket must have been buried beneath Chesapeake tides later. But still he gripped his hammer; he found the small boat which belonged to Fred Darlington and which they’d used for many an expedition, and he burst the boat’s ribs, mauling away in blind fury; it seemed that he owned the bull strength of the most powerful blacksmith. He found Nap the pony tethered at a fence corner where they’d left him, and Nap belonged to Johnny Winder although the cart didn’t. He unharnessed Nap, he rode him home bareback, he left the others to guess, to grieve over the ruined boat, to walk all the way to the nearest plantation and borrow a nag to draw their deserted vehicle.
They sought John Winder later for questioning, they demanded that he give an account of himself, that he pay for the boat, that he apologize. Eventually he drew out his penknife. The Chastain youth gave him a thrashing and threw the knife into the inlet nearby. John Winder went home to load his pistol—his father found him, loading the pistol. He was reprimanded, threatened with the lash, exhorted to manly conduct, informed that an eventual court of inquiry would most certainly exonerate his father when those orders issued to his father by General Armstrong came to light. This prophecy was correct. General William Henry Winder was acquitted in the spring of 1815; he was reassigned to his command, but resigned promptly.
When John was a cadet at the Point three or four years later, he thought of that silly double-barreled pistol,
and how he’d intended to take the lives of young Darlington and young Chastain because of their slurs; he thought of it when his father expressed to him a copy of the Trials of the Mail Robbers, Hare, Alexander and Hare, published in Baltimore with his father’s pleas in behalf of the accused presented verbatim. What is the use of dangerous weapons which can occasion jeopardy of life? . . . The use of dangerous weapons, to produce fear of life may be very different from the use of dangerous weapons, to put life in jeopardy. . . . But certainly he, Johnny Winder, had intended to slay his quondam friends and thus get himself hanged triumphantly; he had not intended merely to frighten them. Ah, he would have accomplished his purpose if not restrained, for already his blood was black (he thought of the paint of oyster muck running down his hands) and it was a secret, naturally; but still it was odd that all might not see and understand.
Florida, Contreras, Churubusco, Mexico City. Consistently he exposed himself through those old campaigns. Twice came the brevets—once as major, once as lieutenant-colonel. No medals were offered, the brevet was sole recognition for a man who’d nerved himself to suicide when he was fourteen and had never recovered from the nerving. The National Government became a composite demon. It was like the demons who beset an uncomfortable childhood . . . composed of moonlight, sycamore shade, mists, the shade of other trees, the distant thin light of stray stars which vied with the moon. Amid tangles of garden or driveway John Winder had glimpsed demons when he was small; they attended him, labeled Federal Government or National Interest, through a military career which covered forty-odd years (if a man subtracted the four years he’d spent as a resigned lieutenant, and added the years when he was a cadet).
Federal Government. Ogre. Tarred his father, pilloried him before the public gaze, drove the son into a studied heroism amid powder smoke when he would have been happier in flight, turned the son’s blood to black.
John Winder had desired that children should be trained to scorn the National Government as he scorned it, to loathe the Yankees as he loathed them, to crush all supporters of that Faith as one would snap the shell of a cockroach with his boot sole and feel the shell pop, feel gush and squirting, find happiness in the smear made so.
Andersonville Page 19
