Stop killing that poor cripple, cried a shocked voice.
Try and stop me. He got our friends on the chain gang!
The youth awarded several more kicks, and so did the man beside him. Ebe Dolliver did not kick, but he approved the treatment, shocking as it might have seemed to him when first he was captured. They went away and left Chickamauga, who began to sob stupidly as soon as he had enough wind.
Some kind men were nearby, and they stood appalled at witnessing what seemed to them such unprovoked viciousness, yet they were not strong enough to interfere. They helped Chickamauga to stand up, they wiped blood from his mouth; one prisoner who professed to a knowledge of anatomy felt along the unhappy creature’s ribs and assured him that they were not broken—only bruised. These benefactors even offered him a jacket at the edge of their shebang where he rested for a time. But it was growing dark, and there was not room for him there. People were settling down, tightly packed in spoon fashion, to spend another May night and to pray for August. (In July they would pray for November, in February they would pray for June.) Chickamauga could hobble, though stiffly. He traveled to his own shebang.
A stranger was there, and he was more powerful than Chickamauga, crutches and all.
This here’s my shebang.
Do tell. It’s mine now.
I’ll larrup you with this crutch—
I don’t know half what you’re saying, but I’ve moved in here and I’m going to stay.
Chickamauga begged and cajoled, he asked for people in nearby shelters to aid him in expelling the intruder, but deaf ears were turned to him: he had won no regard from any by his previous conduct. Justly or not, this claim-jumper was going to stay. It was very chilly for a spring night. Chickamauga suggested that it would be warmer for two of them than for one; so the man agreed to share his stolen couch with the true owner. They lay together, shuddering . . . the other man had been drinking, and where had he got liquor? After an hour or two he became nauseated, and staggered off in search of water. He did not return, probably because he was unfamiliar with the lay of the land and could not find his way. Chickamauga took down the wisp of overcoat and wrapped it around himself. He could not sleep for a long time, his ribs hurt him terribly. Sniveling and mourning, he fell asleep and dreamed about his father. He was a little boy again, his father was drunk and chasing him with a strap. Chickamauga awakened in tears, but slept later and dreamed no more.
Morning came with sun, but it was misery for the lame man to haul himself up on his left foot. Knives were thrust into his side, a hammer had mauled his jaw and left it out of shape. But he hungered. He took stock of his stores . . . only salt, and not more than a few cents’ worth. However, no one of the playing cards had been lost when he was beaten the previous evening, and thus he might hope to earn a breakfast at even this early hour. Fearing the Fifth Iowa boys more than he now feared the New Yorkers, he picked his way past the sinks over to South Street and solicited for an hour or two without success. His voice worn shabby by repetition of his slogan, Chickamauga was squatted alongside a temporarily deserted shebang when two men passed; they were not strangers, they were men he knew.
News traveled like birds in that community, and a rumor flapped its wings. The men were talking close at hand as they dawdled painfully along . . . one was bent forward with scurvy. They did not see Chickamauga beside them, though he could have reached out and touched them with his crutch.
Hear about the cripple?
Heard he give away about a tunnel on the North Side—
So he did; he told Wirz. Well, one of them Iowa boys was shot last night on the Outside, trying to Take Leave from the chain gang. You know that fellow they call Big Mizzoo: he just tolt me; and he had it that them Iowa boys are hunting all over hell and high water for old Poll Parrot, and I reckon they’ll make him sweat. The men moved on, their voices weaker in the camp’s noise.
Wirz, Wirz. Wirz was the only hope now. Drooling, perspiring between his shiverings, Chickamauga set out for the South Gate as fast as he could travel. He had only twenty rods to go. As he approached the deadline and dead-row he saw a wagon drive in belatedly for a load of bodies, and Henry Wirz rode behind the wagon on his gray horse. With an armed guard near, the wagon guard, Wirz did not feel menaced and alone.
Wirz recognized an essential nastiness in this mutilated gabbler and dreaded encountering him, despite the various traitorous services Chickamauga had performed. Gentle and tired with age, the white-gray mare shied away from the figure which came humping. Wirz, an awkward but determined horseman, brought the beast under control with strong use of the bit.
Get away, you— You frighten my horse!
Captain, please, please, Captain, I want to go Outside.
It is nonsense. Why you go Outside?
This was a dilemma. Had the lieutenant told the captain of Chickamauga’s recent service to them? If Chickamauga mentioned it now, it would come as an assertion of guilt to all ears listening nearby.
Because—there’s bad men here. They beat me last night. Captain, they beat me! I didn’t do nothing bad. They—
Such stories I do not wish to hear. Go away, you damn Yankee!
The boys—the men—they made up lies about me! They—they hit me and knocked me down and kicked me— God’s sake, Captain Wirz, they’ll kill me unless you take me Outside!
Now you get away from my horse.
Chickamauga tottered forward, hand straining for a grasp on the stirrup. Wirz kicked out with his boot, he drove him off. You damn fool son of a bitch, you get away from my horse or my pistol I take and shoot you dead!
Men were close, herded close to the deadline, and many as always had petitions for their keeper. Aw, get out of that, Poll Parrot, somebody yelled. The Flying Dutchman don’t want you.
Outside! Captain, please—they’ll kill me—
Wirz took the mare past him, and Chickamauga toppled fairly against the scantling which ran on deadline poles. Tears were spurting afresh . . . oh, not again, he wailed within his soul. Not to be hit and kicked again, kicked until I die of it.
...The deadline! He said either My God or Mother—those closest could not tell which words he uttered, or whether it was only a discordant mumble of M-sounds. Chickamauga adjusted his crutches, bent down deliberately and placed his hand on the scantling. In a tumbling tilting maneuver he got his crutches over the scantling, and used them as vaulting poles to hop his left leg across. He stood poised on forbidden ground.
You damn fool son of a bitch, get out from that deadline! the superintendent screamed.
Chickamauga faced him. No, I won’t, he said more distinctly than he said most things. Not unless you take me Outside.
Wirz swore in German and drew his revolver. Come out, or I kill you dead.
Then kill me, God damn it.
Light was spreading behind Chickamauga’s tight-shut eyes, light was battering with a sound against his brain. That’s what you want to do, a voice rang at him, and not a voice from any human. It said, Stay. It said, They’ll never dare shoot you. They’ll let you go Outside.
He spoke again, with something close to clarity, I won’t come out unless you promise—
Wirz took aim, then lowered the weapon. He turned his thin bearded face upward and began to berate the sentry. My job is to keep these damn Yankees, never to shoot them, you lazy, you! Your job it is to do that. That Yankee is inside the deadline. Shoot him!
The sentry was a sixteen-year-old from the Twenty-sixth Alabama named Ben Drawhorn. Had he been one of the Fifty-fifth Georgia, Chickamauga would have been dead in a twinkling; but the Alabamans were schooled to hold their fire better than the Georgians. Ben held his old Queen Anne musket, it was loaded with buckshot, the muzzle went from side to side and up and down in an extravagant circle.
I can’t shoot that man, Captain—
I fix you, you bad sentine
l, you! Now (to the prisoners closest to Chickamauga) you get that damn cripple out from that deadline! You I will not shoot! Wirz put away his revolver.
Promptly fellow prisoners dragged Chickamauga back to safer territory despite his struggles and strident protestation. Wirz was at the gate, he was beating and hallooing to have the portal swung, and slowly the hinges began to squeal. Wirz rode out with intent to discipline the reluctant boy on the parapet, the private who had disobeyed an order from a captain.
Look at that bastard.
A solitary voice said it, and then there came a dozen concerted yells mingled with laughter. Chickamauga had crept back inside the deadline, once hands released him, and while all attention was directed to the exit of Henry Wirz.
Again the white-faced boy lifted his Queen’s-arm. It was one of the ancient pieces altered for percussion. His act, as well as the hullabaloo within the stockade, told Wirz what had happened.
He screamed beyond the wall. If that damn bitch cripple is again in the deadline— Shoot him! Shoot, damn you, like I command you shoot!
Chickamauga was a good three yards within the line. No man could reach him to draw him out without exposing himself to that musket.
People understood him to say with stubbornness, I want to go Outside. There’s some bad folks—
Young Ben Drawhorn stood with open mouth and bowed shoulders, but he was aiming the musket. He pulled the trigger. The cap did not explode.
God damn you! They heard Wirz’s boots clumping on the ladder outside. I come up there and show you—
The explosion of the powder charge interrupted his cry. Ben Drawhorn had re-cocked his musket and this time the cap did not misfire. The buckshot tore Chickamauga’s lower jaw into a loose red spray and went deep inside him, to rest in his breast somewhere. He fell, jaw-less, blood spurting wide. Up on the sentry’s platform Ben Drawhorn dropped the musket and staggered back with both hands forced against his face, covering his eyes, but if he exclaimed no one heard him. Wirz soon appeared beside him on the box; he scarcely glanced down at the fallen Chickamauga, but instead began a violent accusation of the silently sobbing boy.
Someone called up, Can we carry him out? and Wirz told them to go ahead. They picked up Chickamauga and bore him off a little way, and then put him down to die. Though he could not speak without that lower jaw, his tongue was still active, and waved violently as he tried to talk. People wondered later what he would have liked to have said. On the whole there was little regret at his passing, but men laughed about that stoutly wagging red tongue in its crimson nest. It haunted some of the more sensitive in their sleep and for long.
XXII
It had been early in May that Ebe Dolliver, the Iowa bird-lover, first munched a ration of cooked bread. This came about a day or two after certain men were detailed to go Outside as bakers. The prisoners looked for a grand improvement in their rations as a result, but did not find it. As the novelty of a loaf instead of loose meal wore off, they realized that cobs were being ground along with the corn, and that the resulting cake was nearly as hard as hickory and scratched a man’s bowels to the quick as material passed through. People complained in communication to folks Outside, and the reply came back that the Outside men’s job was not to grind the corn, only to mix paste and bake the pones. In grinding quantities sufficient (or insufficient) to feed twelve thousand prisoners many cobs found their way among the kernels through accident, more through carelessness on the part of stupid blacks and shiftless whites, and still more through deliberate criminal neglect. From being a wealth and a much-sought-after currency, which the bread was at first, it changed to garbage. People went around with the stuff in their pockets, offering to trade; there were few takers among the old prisoners, but some among new ones until they became prison-wise.
You began to find slabs of uneaten corn pone among personal effects of the dead. Soon you began to see chunks of the stuff lying outside doors of shebangs—unwanted, cast aside. Wood was a treasure compared to bread, for you could cook other things over wood if you could secure other things to cook. The character of the morass along Stockade Creek changed in color; it was no longer composed solely of feces and organic slime; there was now a brownish yellowish crust, a flotsam of corn bread in every stage of spongy decay. Great metallic flies, frightening in burnished brassy armor, whirled above with a humming louder than bees. Some few prisoners might have had bowels of iron: they ate the stuff stoically, it did not rake their insides, the blood did not appear.
In revulsion from this stony ration, Eben Dolliver considered meat. Adjusted to the protraction of his starving, he did not beguile himself with discussion of Moon Hotel dinners and the like—with thoughts of his mother’s marble cake, fresh baked hermits, apple salad. Meat appeared as a medicine in his ideal, meat might have been bottled or put into pills, it might have rested in huge ornamented jars, well stoppered, on the shelves of some apothecary. Ebe tried to count the varieties of meat he had known, and sometimes in the middle of the night he thought of a new variety to add to his list. He tried to make up a hundred sorts of flesh which he had eaten in his young life, and was well on his way toward that goal. At first he said only pork, beef, lamb and the like, but soon recognized how different they were. Bacon was quite another thing from sausage, ham hocks were not to be confused with pork chops. Yet all came from the same beast. Eben argued with himself in detached philosophy on the subject, and at last yielded to his own importuning. Every variety of pork should be counted, and so with other products of other beasts. A catfish was not like a bass, nor was a wild goose like a tame chicken.
(Strangely he had never objected to killing chickens, and had killed many at his mother’s behest. He did not think of poultry as being birds: they were filthy and cannibalistic in their habits, they did not sing a dainty song, they did not enliven the hazel brush with miraculous flashes of blue and rose. They were wedded to the dirty ground where they fed, and he loathed their squawking; he was willing to kill them, for they were not a free wild glory which lifted him.)
The Moon Hotel mess clustered still in brotherhood, they tried to keep to their rules. Their effort at bathing was become a sorry thing. Hull of Michigan and Mendenhall of Pennsylvania were gone into scurvy: the linings of their mouths puffed and spotted, cords hurting in their legs. Still they made an attempt to speak cheerfully, to join in weak choruses. Everyone had heard the stories and anecdotes of the rest over and over again; yet now and then a man thought of something new to tell.
Mendenhall thought suddenly of a neighbor of his, a fat bachelor who did not have all his reason and was the butt of jokes. The man’s name was Johnny Jober; tales of Johnny, told in Mendenhall’s best Pennsylvania German style, enlivened the mess for days. The boys would say, Let’s hear it again, Mendy. Tell about Chonny Yober and how he put the shingles on his roof upside down. I like to split over that one. So Mendenhall would gather strength and tell again . . . the neighbor sat in his wagon and called to Johnny on the roof and said, Hey, ain’t it you put on them shingles ass backward? And how Johnny sat and gazed at the whole of that shed roof he’d shingled, starting at the ridgepole instead of along the eaves, and how he burst into tears and how he said—
People lay in shade of the shebang, tittering at these fine new stories of Chonny Yober, the stronger men breaking out with guffaws at the proper time. Other prisoners arose and came near, staring mutely, as if wondering what all the laughter was about, and yet not really caring. They drifted away slowly to be replaced by other mute watchers. The shuttle of this vagabond audience wove itself back and forth, flies hummed and bit, the blistering yellow stench of May sun was high. A wave of heat stole up to distort the looming fence and sentry stations, to turn them watery.
Often Ebe Dolliver drifted loose in thought from broken accents of Mendenhall’s recounting; he went off alone in his mind to dream of meat. Once, at play in the woods, he and little Neri had killed a groundhog; they h
ad butchered the creature and cooked it over a small fire, trying to live like wild men or outlaws in hiding. Had he counted the groundhog among his meats? He thought he had; maybe not. That would make eighty-three varieties of flesh, if he hadn’t counted groundhog previously. Eighty-two, eighty-three. . . . Had he counted the last buffalo killed in their section when he was a little tad? Roll Brewer gave a chunk of the meat to Joth Dolliver as he came past the mill. Ebe remembered how they gathered round when the roast was removed from the baking pan—rare lean meat looked like gigantic rare beef but more orange in color; the fat was yellower than beef fat. . . .
Forever, in time, he wandered to the birds. When wearied of enumerating medicinal meats, Eben found ease in following a ground-robin. He had heard that towhee was also a name for this bird, perhaps a name given by the aborigines. Black-white-and-bay, the industrious little folk scratched their way among old leaves in a silent place. Eben had lain motionless and watched their coming . . . sometimes walking like hens upon the ground, but prettier and more delicate than hens . . . no sound but the watery trill of a fly-catcher hidden in some ravine, no other sound except light wind making poplars tremble their coins of leaves in pride, and the ink, cheerink made by ground-robins themselves as they gossiped.
Again he saw his first indigo bunting. . . . He sat on a special hill said to have been once a place of massacre; larks rose and descended and rose with spirit again, giving out their long fluting . . . more of them, more out in the grass, they played pipes across the boundary where an ear could still hear them; and then the ear lost strength to pick up their piping, but somehow a sleepy brain knew that they were practicing by multitudes in remoter pastures . . . their sound was a wonder, a promise of brave simple measures to be rippled Up Yonder . . . or if on joyful wing, cleaving the sky . . . sun, moon and stars forgot, upward I fly.
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