Andersonville
Page 43
There was a Turk who had worked in a zoological garden; he understood wild animals; he knew that there were nights when lions walked unceasingly, when mothers carried their cubs into farthest corners and lay licking them, when big fierce faces rubbed against the bars. He knew that there were nights when a rumbling growl came without a reason which could be guessed, yet the growl sounded and was coughed and grunted from cage to cage. No lightning trickled above the horizon, no storm approached across the peasantry beyond the town; but electricity occupied the air. Animals smelled stronger on such a night, and this was such a night, Andersonville smelled stronger now.
MacBean said, Going to turn in, Brother Nathan?
Somehow I am not sleepy.
Lieutenant Davis, Wirz’s deputy, swung sock-footed legs off his hot bed and groped around for his boots. The officer who shared Davis’s quarters mumbled, Going to check the Posts?
Reckon I’ll take a look around.
Not time for regular check, is it?
No, but I just can’t sleep no way.
And there was a man who had spent much of his youth in fishing for mullet. He recalled the glassiness of pools amid mangrove islands, and how on a still day there might be no mullet; then suddenly the treasure would be leaping, drove after drove plunging up out of the water, throwing themselves with curve and flip, thousands of pounds of mullet racing under shallowness which had been quiescent and now so quickly was torn. In this man’s thought the prison was a bay and prisoners were fish. What might occur to set them into antics beneath the salty surface, ripping out with their burnished heads, arching in long thrusts of purplish silver, high and wet, jumping by hundreds, the sun sharp upon them? Something in secret avenues of shell and sands, something moving fiercely; a summons and threat among mullet; there was something. . . .
Now, the mayor he knew Brennan. And, I think, says he,
Your name is Willie Brennan, ha? You must come along with me—
Devil suck you, Sarsfield! Tis Willie Collins, never Brennan.
Way I heard twas Brennan.
Och, nay, never! It’s myself who trained my kiddies to sing it different. Give heed:
Your name is Willie Collins, ha? You must come along with me—
Oh, Collins on the moor, Collins on the moor!
Fuck Willie Collins! Laughter, laughter. . . .
Now what rat has thieved my bottle of bingo? Hand it over, or I’ll tear the wattles—
They were gathered in and around the tall conical tent of Mosby the Raider (seldom called Mosby at this late day, called Willie Collins by most). The roll was a roll of the damned and damnable, the rich, the blind uncaring cruel, the selfish, the powerful, the exalted of this place. The sailors Munn and Rickson, Patrick Delaney of the Dead Rabbits, Curtis with brick-red brow and brick-thick bone above the brow, John Sarsfield the renegade hero from the One Hundred and Forty-fourth New York: these were the leaders. If a roll of colossi had been called they would have answered Here; Willie Collins would have roared his response along with theirs. Turbulence possessed them, they drew together, drank pine-top, sent underlings with loot to the deadline to bargain for more. They said, These greenbacks are enough, and be after telling that snot of a guard I’ll never pay more for a gallon; and he’s to let it down in buckets with no leak to them.
In Athol there lived a man named Jerry Lanagan;
He battered away till he hadn’t a pound—
Their cohorts sat or lay, attendants encircling the captains. The cooks cooked late, a smell of fried meat came up to vie with the wide mat of ordinary stench (and other prisoners watched this convention of monsters from a distance they hoped was safe; on scenting the meat and watching the orange reek of flames they thought of Hell. The meat of sinners was burning). Edward Blamey had learned to drink unmeasured quantities of sorghum whiskey. He was become the first drunkard in uncounted generations of stiff New Englanders, Old Englanders, Norman French. His eyeballs were laced with pink veins like silken thread tangled on oystery whiteness, but his fantastic vision still served . . . excepting in nighttime, then it did not need to serve. One of the homosexuals crawled close to importune him. This fellow had been hounding Edward Blamey for some time. Edward kicked out with a strong sound stolen boot, the homosexual screamed like a frightened spinster and told Edward that he was perfectly horrid. Where was The Wrath To Come? Out yonder—oh, out yonder—stalking through the spread of tremulous hours. The Wrath To Come was kept at bay, Willie Collins could keep it at bay forever. Edward Blamey grunted, belched, rolled over on his blanket, rested his untidy head on a bent elbow, slept immediately. But he had a nightmare wherein the leaky baptistry of his Rhode Island boyhood was filled with pine-top, and Willie Collins said, Delaney, you rubber-legged louse, it’s you must drink it up. Edward Blamey set to work laboriously to remove planks which formed a lid above the immersion tank; first he had to shove back the old oak pulpit, and that was a job; next he had to roll the faded greenish carpet, with its worn place where the preacher always stood; next he had to lift the planks one at a time. And when he had raised the last plank, and peered down into a dim splashing interior, there sat his own father, totally naked, bathing himself in raw burning whiskey. Mr. Blamey rolled his cold narrow gaze toward the frightened son crouched above him and said, But if thine eye be evil—
Edward awoke yelling. No one paid attention to him. The leaders were drunker than ever, they were boasting what they’d do if any self-appointed police came against them.
By God! That joskin Key. I’ll tear his pecker off.
And the other—?
MacBean? Also a printer.
Take him at the back, Johnny boy. I’ll take him in the front, same time.
Ah, but give me a chance at that Jew-boy, the Plymouth Pilgrim, him with the pointed stick!
Hell, you had your chance, and he beat you out!
Why, you son of a bitch, I’ll— So he beat me, did he? Why—
Pass that canteen my way—
Coarse laughter, the bellow bursting out, uncaged cats sitting large and two-legged, the hoot and lashing of them.
Now, Brennan is an outlaw, all on some mountain high.
With infantry and cavalry to take him they did try.
But he laughed at them and he scorned at them—
Ha, and what are you saying there? Collins, you bastards. Collins! Collins is an outlaw, all on some mountain high—
Oh, it’s Collins on the moor—
Bold gay and undaunted—
He batter’d away till he hadn’t a pound—
Take your God damn hand off my—
Edward Blamey slept again, he slept a better sleep for a time; then he saw his father, but it was not the face of his father after all; it was the body of his father, but the face was the face of a fellow Rhode Islander whom Edward had observed in June, digging a hole and secreting something therein. Acting on this observation, raiders circled promptly to dig up the hole again and take what it contained. It contained a tiny miniature painting of the boy’s mother (his branch of this Rhode Island family was well-to-do) in a gold frame set with pearls. The boy strove to defend his property with his life, and so he did until his life was taken from him along with the miniature in its frame. Edward Blamey saw his face, somehow it was the same face, both before and after what occurred; and how could that be when a two-hundred-pound man had stood upon that face and stamped it with cavalry boots?
Oh, it’s Collins on the moor, Collins on the moor!
Bold, gay and undaunted stood young Collins—
Other men did not think of buffalo or blackbirds or mullet or city crowds in this midnight, because they had no knowledge of these creatures; but there was a quiet boy from a quiet shore who thought of seabirds he had seen when he walked the coast at evening. Gulls roosted far out on an island little more than a shoal, for the sea was calmer than usual and th
ere was dry space for them to roost upon. They settled in white and dark and golden throngs as the last sun caught them (the boy thought of angel throngs). He looked away from the sea and island and sitting gulls, and progressed homeward along the shore path . . . it was like a moorland of his ancestors’ past, with wraiths to be avoided if one traveled when the fog came in. The boy walked on, carrying his heavy wooden tool-kit slung by a wide strap over his shoulder, for at seventeen he was close to being an expert at his craft, and had been repairing a dory that afternoon. Again he looked to the east, and there they were, there they were, rising. Some matter had caused dissent or alarm among the gulls, they boiled up like masses of dark leaves flung in October. Sun was down and hidden, no longer were the seabirds colored or angelic with natural cream or ivory. They flaked in a storm-cloud of black fragments, whirled in a peevish choir, their penetrating squall came across the crush of waves on rocks. Oh, what had caused this uneasiness and hurled them into the wind again? Something, something.
The devout man named Frank Ives said, Sleep’s impossible. Are you awake, Brother Ellicott?
Yes, Brother Ives. So’re Berwick and Harper.
Dunlop, over there? Are you awake, Brother Dunlop?
Brother Dunlop squeezed the swollen fingers of his left hand with the unswollen (yet soon to be swollen, soon to be decayed) fingers of his right hand. I’m here. Shall we pray?
I had been thinking that we might read in response. Been thinking of Second Corinthians, also First Thessalonians.
We got sufficient light, Brother Ives?
Private Harper said eagerly, I’ve a lot of pine splinters left, wrapped in my jacket.
Pass them over. Ah, there’s still a coal or two.
I’ll blow, said Ellicott. Soon there was flame showing, soon there was enough light to read by and would be for some time if splinters were fed into the blaze with care. The men of this shebang pushed in a wad around the bright tiny wavering flare, and Frank Ives turned to Page Sixty-three of his ragged Hymnal, whereon one of his favorite Readings was printed. Move your head a little, Brother. No—this side—put it under Alex’s arm. Now we can all see.
I know Corinthians and Thessalonians practically by heart, all four books of them, said young Percival Berwick. Don’t need to see. Read away, Brother.
For all things are for your sakes, that the grace, being multiplied through the many, may cause the thanksgiving to abound unto the glory of God.
Chant of response, tuned in that lower octave used by congregations, the same sound as in a Mass, the same faith as in a Mass, the faith to make gangrene of secondary importance, faith to make a soul exult and feel that it was hung on an accompanying Cross, and would soon be with Someone in Paradise. Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.
The starving Frank Ives read serenely, For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.
Low concerted murmur of the response, the S-sounds laving as it were read in the village churches most of these people had known before they came to endure Andersonville. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Their neighbors—some of them—had catcalled before, then had grown tired of jeering when they learned that they could not affect the radiant purpose of these consistently practicing Christians. Neighbors tolerated songs and services, or else paid no attention; some neighbors died, some moved away; one was now a convert and living in this shebang. He was Dunlop, the man with the gangrened hand. He would speak Salvation as long as breath was left to him, with the ardor which only newly made zealots may know.
Outside the fence a patterned scrap of brown light moved reluctantly along the hard-trodden path communicating from sentry station to sentry station. In some instances Lieutenant Davis went to the trouble of swinging his heavy body up the ladder-rungs and standing beside the guard for a while, staring down at the interior, rubbing his chin whiskers as he gazed. Then down the ladder again, and on to the next station, carrying his tinkling lantern, walking with the flap of his holster unbuttoned and often letting his hand slide around the revolver butt to find reassurance. Close, so close to the angry beasts, close to storied crocodiles. They were lying in their mud only a couple of rods away. They could do anything. Think how they had melted away that old north fence on the night of June eighteenth. If they could nibble a pine wall—timbers twenty feet tall, including the portion dug out of the ground, and extending seven hundred and eighty feet from east wall to west wall— If they could chew that to vanishment in a single night, what might they not now effect if they chose? Look sharp, there, his heavy voice drawled to the perched sentries in those instances where he felt too weary to climb. Hear me, now. You watch sharp, you hear?
Yes, sir.
You see anything queer, anything different?
Well, sir, they seem to be doing an awful lot of circulating.
What you mean, there, circulating?
Kind of keep moving about.
And at Post Number Forty he would hoist himself up the ladder again. He was a coarse lustful young man more or less popular with the troops he commanded, and hated not too cordially by the prisoners. When he became brutal he was brutal only through lack of feeling and not in a calculated fashion. He was the sort of man who might have found delight in the act of rape, if lured to commit it through a girl’s petting; and then he would have felt sorry afterward, and would have begged abject pardon . . . he would have brought the girl later some ugly but (to him) expensive gift. His small pale eyes protruded abnormally, his mouth was loose, he should have worn a full beard instead of chin whiskers to conceal his weakness from the world. He was not above taking bribes; on the other hand he declared loudly that it was a shame and a sin to see how these God damn Yankees were compelled to live. Man couldn’t keep no self-respect whilst living like a hog, no sir. Secretly he was very much afraid of the Yankees, especially afraid of the lean silent ones. Thus he swaggered, talked loudly whenever he entered the stockade, glared when Yanks came up to him with their petitions, pushed his eyes even farther out of his head and stood scowling while he listened, but he did listen. Often he granted the prisoners’ requests. Yes, he would ask Captain Wirz to release Willis Lowell, citizen teamster, from the stocks—Lowell had been there three days, that was sufficient punishment for his offense. Yes, he would permit three men from the Eleventh Kentucky Cavalry to go outside and pick berries—they had a touch of scurvy, but still only a touch, berries might save their lives. No, emphatically, he would not demand that Lucas Rensem, Fifteenth Missouri, be put into the hospital—that was solely up to the stockade surgeons, he could not go around interfering with stockade surgeons in their performance of their duties (besides, it would have been too much trouble for Lieutenant Davis).
He insisted that he had a bad heart, he could not perform any heavy work, any task too arduous. He took refuge in his disability the moment trouble loomed. Lieutenant Davis hated and feared trouble of any kind. He declared repeatedly that he was an easy-going man and he liked people to be easy-going. When Wirz screamed at him (as he screamed at anyone and everyone except his small daughter when he was in the mood to scream—which was every hour, and with increasing frequency)— When Wirz screamed at him, Lieutenant Davis’s fat face sagged in offended alarm, and he put a fat hand on the breast of his tight-fitting gray jacket and cried in an injured tone, Captain Wirz, sir, now you quit abusing me; I’ll enter complaint to the colonel; mind, now, I got a bad heart—
Ach, you and your bad heart! Also a bad brain you got!
Captain, mind, now— I ain’t a-fooling. Surgeon said I got a greatly enlarged heart, and can’t suffer such abuse no way. I warn you, I’ll just fall out!
It is I wish you would fall
out!
Just keep on like that if you want a corpse on your hands! Gluey tears seeped in Davis’s eyes.
What a fat lazy corpse I would have once.
He was lazy in truth, but also he held a certain addiction to duty (again, if the duty were obvious and apparent to all, and if any lapse on his part would be apparent to all). The threatening magic of these hours had drawn him from his cot, sent him patrolling, hauled him up to several of the platforms.
He went aloft for the last time at the southwest corner, breathing heavily from his mile-long journey and the climbings and descents. Davis eyed the high-blazing raider fires with resentment, and listened to the Brennan On the Moor, Collins On the Moor song and imprecations accompanying. Now you just bet they’re a-whooping it up.
Sure are, Lieutenant.
If twas solely them burglars from New York— He said this much aloud, and then realized that he should not reveal his perturbation to the round-shouldered child who leaned on his musket beside him. Davis descended, contemplating responsibility on every rung of the ladder, fearing as always that the ladder might break, feeling inexpressible relief when again he stood on the ground, and yet feeling a persecuted sadness that any momentous decision must be his. If he called Wirz from bed, and Wirz decided that nothing was wrong with the stockade’s population, Wirz would make him sweat for it. But if some conflict did develop during the remainder of the night, if the dreaded outbreak did occur, if twenty-five thousand brutes and cripples pushed against one of those gates, hammering even only with their heads and their fists— If they built a stairway of the dead, if they piled up only a thousand dead men and then twenty-four thousand living men mounted on their bodies to flow over the stockade in a filthy tide, as all had feared that they were capable of doing—
Davis heard the One o’clock and all’s well begin to wail along the parapet as his feet took the path toward headquarters. That cry decided him. There were several hours of darkness remaining; he could not shudder through those hours single-handed. Now he wished for Henry Wirz longingly. Even if Wirz cursed him, brandished his fists under Davis’s little knob of a nose, told him that he would see to it that Davis got no leave for six months at least— It would be near to a comfort.