Andersonville
Page 34
Chickamauga ventured near the sinks. His crutch-marks had long since disappeared in slime, but he moved here and there until he was confident that he had found the exact spot where he squatted the evening before, and thus could select the place where mysterious men had appeared to do a mysterious errand. Here it was and . . . ah . . . other places nearby. He balanced his weight on his leg and poked about with one crutch. . . . It would all sink down and disappear during the day, but these traces were unmistakable. Clay and sand, that’s what it was—clay and sand, and occasional shreds of brown wet roots too slender for use as firewood . . . a few pebbles. Earth, dirt, soil. Those men had fetched quantities of sandy soil in their pockets or in bags, and had stood sifting it into the bog so as to escape detection.
Who was digging that tunnel, and where was the mouth of it? Under a folded blanket and secreted planks or a lattice of brush, most likely—under the ragged roof of somebody’s shebang. Well, there were so many huts. Yes, and so many tunnels or attempted tunnels. His split mouth grinned, thinking of how the men would swear if they knew that he, Poll Parrot, knew their secret already or at least a portion of it. He knew that they were digging the tunnel, and they thought that neither he nor anybody else except the loyal workers themselves knew that they were digging a tunnel. And in time Wirz would know about it, too; and Wirz would give him at least jackass meat, or maybe even currency, or salt which he could trade, or a chance to go Outside for sumac berries. Shrewdly Chickamauga sifted a little of the brown-yellow-sand-clay into his pocket for a specimen, and then he went away: there was nothing more to be done here just now.
That day, after his Ninety had received their rations (each prisoner was given a quarter loaf of corn bread, weighing possibly six ounces, and a piece of smelly pork weighing a little less) and after he had eaten his, and had eaten the portions taken from the dead cavalryman’s pocket—after dining so, he crouched on Main Street and held up his ambrotype frame for sale. Soon a man came by who had been a jeweler when he was a citizen; when Chickamauga begged him to, the jeweler examined the frame and hefted it lightly in his thin hand, and scratched with a bent fingernail. It was, he said, merely gilded brass, just as the vendor feared. Well, the brass could be broken apart to serve for little tools or implements if no one needed it to frame pictures in.
Here’s where you get a nice daguerreotype frame, cried Chickamauga. Step this way, gentlemen, and see a fine frame, beautifully gilded, fit to put pictures of your loved ones in. He would have tried to pass it off as solid gold but knew that he could find no takers; also he might attract Collins, John Sarsfield or their ilk. Best to admit that the thing was merely gilded brass. Step up and see, step up and see. . . . Other voices contended against his: men selling rice, men offering tobacco, men with buttons to sell, and boiled potatoes; a man with a ragged Harper’s Weekly to let, another with a New Testament for sale. Right this way, a beautiful gilded frame to put your loved ones in.
A tall well-built youth with every look of fresh fish about him stopped to examine the merchandise. Chickamauga was excited. This man might be laden with currency.
What did you say this was?
Ambrotype frame! Beautiful! You got a picture to put in it—?
I can’t understand you, so quit trying to make me understand. The youth opened the frame, closed it again. How much?
Five dollars currency. Five dollars greenbacks.
The boy laughed, threw the frame at him, turned to go.
Wait, wait! Chickamauga was desperate. This was the first person who’d shown any interest. How much will you pay?
Fifty cents Yank.
Fifty cents Yank? for this fine gilt—?
The customer started away through the crowd, but Chickamauga hastened after him. Wait, wait, Mister. Give me seventy-five. Seventy-five. He kept repeating it until he was sure that he was understood.
Look here, Old Clatterpuss. I’m a watchmaker by trade, and I can do some tinkering whilst I’m in this prison pen. Got a few of my tools and— I could use that brass, but I’d have to cut it up—
In the end they compromised on seven dollars Confed, and now it was Chickamauga himself who went shopping. He bought nine small onions with one of the dollars, and a pinch of salt for fifty cents Confed extra, and later he traded two of the onions for a bit of raw meat and bone which the vendor insisted was veal but which was probably dog. He went back to his shebang and cooked a stew in the battered stew-pan he’d stolen two weeks earlier, using pine splinters he’d brought from the outside on his last berry trip. Once he bothered to look down the hill to see whether the dead cavalryman was still there; he was, but neighbors were complaining; soon some of the more able-bodied neighbors would carry him away. Chickamauga finished his stew with relish.
He spent on the whole a peaceful and satisfying day. He watched two fights from a safe distance, he saw a wounded man bleeding after he’d been stabbed, he stood in a circle of other rubbernecks and observed a priest from Outside administering Last Rites to a consumptive old man; for a time he followed the priest on his rounds. Wirz appeared in the sentry-box at Station Number Nineteen, accompanied by another Confederate officer with a gray beard, and was roundly screamed at by the inmates. A prisoner was shot and killed near the deadline of the east stockade; the guard insisted that he’d tried to cross the deadline; other prisoners said the victim hadn’t tried to cross—that he had been jostled. The guard was ordered out of the sentry-box afterward; there was a rumor that he was a patriarch eighty years of age, and how had his eyesight been good enough to enable him to shoot so accurately? Chickamauga attended also a prayer service conducted by an exhorter of the Methodist faith. He attempted to join in hymns because he enjoyed singing, but no one would ever let him sing—he made such a harsh noise—and this time was no exception. The prisoners manhandled him, hustled him, pushed him away, while the exhorter called warnings and quoted Christ in a loud voice. Vaguely Chickamauga felt a kinship with Christ, for He too had been pounded and scorned.
On the whole however it was a good sunny day, beginning with his discovery of the ambrotype frame in the dead man’s jacket, and on through his examination of guilty sand deposited near the sinks, and on through all the rest. The events proceeded as on many other days, but sun shone for hours, a pleasant relief from the chill soaked skies which had clung recently.
That night he posted himself on a route where he might detect the sand-distributors passing, but rain swept down to drive him to cover. The next day Chickamauga shook with the ague for hours and lay miserably in his shebang; he took down the remnants of overcoat to wind around him. He still had currency, and bribed a neighbor to fetch rations. The man brought corn bread and a cup of coffee made from roasted okra seeds; Chickamauga paid more currency to have the coffee heated up. Gradually he regained sufficient strength and initiative to resume his detective operations.
On the night of Tuesday, May tenth, he followed the sand-carriers to the door of their shebang. It took him several hours to accomplish this feat, but Chickamauga felt that luck was with him, and relayed himself, as it were, from man to man through the sleeping, waking, growling, snoring, praying, gasping populace. The shebang was a large one, solidly made—there was even one whole rubber blanket incorporated in the roof. It was tenanted by a mess of Westerners, most of them Iowans. This information Chickamauga pumped from not-too-close neighbors the following morning, by means which seemed to him shrewd.
That morning Chickamauga was at the South Gate long before even the orderlies had arrived to examine prisoners who pleaded for hospitalization. He did not wish to meet the orderlies; he sought Captain Henry Wirz himself. When Chickamauga could get a sentry to heed him, he was stunned by the news that Wirz was sick abed. He moped about . . . should he approach the Officer of the Day or should he not? Wirz might pay better. He wanted to be certain that Wirz knew the source of the information which would be whispered, so that he might appreciate C
hickamauga in the future; Chickamauga had no currency, but maybe the Officer of the Day was also flat of purse; certainly some food should be forthcoming; Chickamauga had fasted the day before; he suffered diarrhoea following his ague, and feared to eat corn bread because it irritated his intestines; how could he wait for Wirz and the next day? Perhaps someone else would stumble upon this tunnel project in the meantime and retail the information to guards, and Chickamauga’s hopes would be dashed because he had delayed. It was this latter consideration which kept him hanging there, and finally sent him bounding toward the officer, the moment that familiar soiled red sash came in view.
Please, Lieutenant— Please—
What’s ado? The Officer of the Day happened to be a plump oyster-eyed man named Gholson, resentful at serving as a lieutenant in middle age when people with half his years were sometimes captains, majors, even colonels.
Outside, whispered Chickamauga, bending close with wretched breath.
The lieutenant drew back in disgust. What the hell do you want to go Outside for?
I got some information. He had to repeat it two or three times before the officer made out what he meant. I don’t want to talk in front of all these prisoners. Please—Outside—
The lieutenant turned pompously, called up to the parapet to have the wicket opened; and, squeezing his gray shape through, he beckoned for Chickamauga to follow. At that moment a shower of rain came down; it had been threatening since daylight, and the Officer of the Day directed the cripple to follow him under doubtful shelter of the nearest sentry-platform. Here they stood screened from all eyes, with outer gates of the protective cubicle closed firmly beyond them.
What do you know? The officer turned down the brim of his old yellow hat.
Chickamauga had no hat or cap. Water pearled on his bald head and pinched beardless face, it dripped from his bent nose. Please, will you pay cash? Cash?
Gholson put his hand in his pocket, then took it out again. He said, lying obviously, Left my purse in my quarters. I hain’t got no cash to pay you. Speak up.
Please, sir, just a little something to eat. Maybe you could get hold of some meat?
Meat. Everybody dreamed about meat.
You stay here. As a gesture the lieutenant unsnapped the flap of his holster, and then walked over to the outer gate and knocked loudly, calling for someone named Sipes. The wicket opened, a face appeared, and Chickamauga stood chilled and dripping but watching eagerly.
Sipes, send up to the kitchens for a dish of them nigger-peas. And a spoon. Make it lively—I hain’t got all day.
Big dish, Lieutenant?
A can full will do.
In the background Chickamauga jiggled on his crutch, eyes swelling out as he thought of hot peas.
There was a degree of shelter beside the outer gate, for rain was driving from the west. The fat Gholson lounged there while leisurely he cut a chew from his tobacco plug, put the plug and pocketknife away, and began to roll the fresh chew about in his mouth. He called through moist brown lips, You better have that information, crip. I’m wasting a sight of time.
Presently the wicket reopened and a small mess tin and a spoon were handed through to Gholson. The lieutenant signalled to Chickamauga, and the man came hopping across. Actually the nigger-peas were still warm, even in cold rain, and there were a few fragments of bacon in them. The lieutenant handed the treasure to the informer, saying, Just like the Planters’ Hotel in Charleston. You even got a spoon. What do you know? You can talk while you’re eating.
Chickamauga tried to talk while he was eating, but the officer soon stopped him. You cow-mouth bastard, I can’t make you out. Eat them peas, and then talk, and talk sense or you’ll go in the stocks.
Nothing had ever seemed so wonderful since the last dream of Königsberger Klops. Well, and he spooned up the last tasty drop of sauce, I know where there’s a tunnel.
He told all, he gave a clear description of the Westerners’ shebang.
Reckon I know that one. They got them a rubber blanket on the roof?
Yes, yes! Rubber blanket—
Chickamauga tried, again without success, to beg currency; then he asked for more peas or for an Outside pass with the next wood squad, but was refused. He began to cry. The lieutenant gave him a fair-sized piece of tobacco cut from his plug. Chickamauga did not chew or smoke, but this would be excellent for barter. He was ushered back into the stockade and went in, feeling that in some way he had been cheated. But Wirz might still let him go for berries when Wirz heard the tidings; anyway, another tunnel would be dug sooner or later. The memory of those heavenly peas lingered in his mind and on his tongue.
About forty-five minutes later a file of twelve guards followed Lieutenant Gholson into the pen. Ten of the men carried guns with bayonets fixed, and the lieutenant had his revolver out and cocked, carried dangerously in his hand. One of the men lugged a shovel and one a pick-axe. Gholson had no inclination toward the circuitous; he led his little army to the guilty shebang as directly as the crazy unsystematic arrangement of huts would allow.
The Westerners were lined up. Five had been caught at home, but two others escaped because they happened to be away. The five said that they were the only dwellers in that place; this they would still affirm, even in torture of stocks and balls-and-chains. They did not admit that people from adjacent shebangs had also helped in the digging (this was true of course). Away the prisoners were marched, to be put into a chain gang. Wirz regarded a prisoner’s attempt to escape not as a duty, a military obligation to his own cause, but as a fiendish effort to visit murder and rapine upon an innocent countryside. The shovel man and pick-axe man remained behind with Gholson still in command, breaking the ground around the tunnel’s entrance, and filling in the hole. A hundred silent neighbors stood and glowered. Others went about their ordinary affairs in an elaborately casual manner, fearing to be associated in any demonstration of sympathy or resentment. The tunnel itself was well-made and well-executed . . . it was rumored that the leader in the enterprise had engineering experience. The tunnel began with a vertical shaft, shored up in its more crumbly portions, and other people could only guess at its depth before the horizontal passageway began. As was usual, the opening had been concealed by a blanket near which a couple of men were forever lounging during daytimes.
Chickamauga kept away from the immediate neighborhood while the arrest and destruction took place. He ambled along Main Street, seeking the best possible rate of exchange for his tobacco, and he said, What do you know about that? when people discussed the tunnel and pointed to the little squad of prisoners being marched Outside for punishment.
Chickamauga made finally a handsome bargain in which he paid his tobacco as rent for a deck of cards; he would be allowed to keep the cards for twenty-four hours, but was instructed not to lose so much as a single card under penalty of having his parrot’s nose mashed flat. With these tools so necessary to the fortune teller’s trade, he went about through the afternoon with satisfaction and profit. He devised fortunes for a few cents here, half a spoonful of salt there. He encountered a prosperous newcomer who delighted in hearing that positively he would be exchanged within either three days, three weeks or three months (could it have been three years? the man worried later) and he paid Chickamauga with a wooden plate filled with freshly fried potatoes of which the newcomer had a supply. After delighting in these viands and others, Chickamauga turned in and slept until sunset when the sky was clearing.
He returned to Main Street, trusting to earn a supper by means of his art, and was calling for clients along the muddy strand when a hand fell upon his shoulder. He turned and looked into the narrowed eyes of a seventeen-year-old stripling whose muscles had not yet fallen into threads. Two other men, older but equally grim, were with the prisoner.
We’re from the Fifth Iowa, he said sternly to Chickamauga. You’re the one who give our friends away.
Hell you ain’t. You were all around there early today, asking questions about who lived in that tent—
No, I wasn’t! You let me lone—
Hell you wasn’t. Didn’t you say he was, Ebe?
Yes. One of the other men had moved around behind the cripple to bar his escape. I saw him and heard him.
The tall youth struck Chickamauga on the mouth and knocked him against Eben Dolliver; he would have fallen if Eben had not been there, and he lost his crutches. He tottered forward on his left leg as Dolliver shoved him away. The youth punched Chickamauga twice more—in the belly, and he doubled forward; then on the side of the jaw. The victim tried to scream but could make only guttural growlings and gaspings, for his breath had been nearly knocked out of him. He stretched his length in the greasy mud, he tried to roll away from punishment. The youth wore shoes, or apologies for them; and with these shoes he kicked Chickamauga in the ribs four or five times.