Andersonville

by MacKinlay Kantor

  A few people came from surrounding shelters and watched apathetically; they stood with rough hair fuzzy against the pink sunset. A neighboring New Yorker called out, If I see him I hope he’s not still sick. God, how he stunk. Hope you take him out of here tonight, Hay Rube.

  I’ll Hay Rube you, next time you get within reach of my club! Caldwell threw a stone which had braced the main pole of his shelter; he missed the New Yorker, but the little crowd dodged and scattered, and went back home.

  Leave us repeat the Lord’s Prayer.

  Garrett felt that this service was miserable and inadequate, whatever the intention. They mumbled through the Lord’s Prayer, and tied the dead man’s big toes together with a bit of hemp. Then the Vermonters tossed their penny.

  Caldwell stood musingly as he flicked lice out of his beard. Guess I’ll pack up and move. Moving day for me. Or moving night.

  Where to?

  Member there was four fellows from our battery living over on the North Side? They come down to see us last month. Well, I hear that two are still alive. You know how it goes: man doesn’t like to live alone.

  He worked Hyde’s body aside until he could remove the bark from their storehouse. They had some rice, a packet of dirty stationery imprinted with eagles and goddesses, a wad of soft soap in a rag, two pencils, a suspender strap, a few other odds and ends.

  Caldwell wrote on a torn envelope, Portland Hyde Battery E Fifth Maine Artillery and with another strand of hemp string they tied this paper around Hyde’s ear.

  I’ll bind these oddments up in the blanket, and Caldwell did so, folding the ragged edges tightly together so that nothing might be lost. With a last length of tent cord he tied the pack over his shoulder, and turned to shake hands with Adam. Drop in if you get up our way. It’s in the furthest northwest corner, right past the last big well. They got two gray army blankets on top, and old pine boughs around the edges. It’s about the biggest shebang in the neighborhood.

  You’ll still have to draw rations with your old Ninety, Adam warned him.

  But I can dwell happier up there with my Maine friends. Maybe I can flank into their Ninety one way or another.

  And get put in the stocks?

  It’d be worth a try. Come along, Jim Along Johnny.

  They lifted Hyde, Hyde made a belching noise; Caldwell had him by the feet, Johnny by the hands. We won’t take off his shirt and drawers till we get him to the gate. They carried the corpse into the gloom.

  Garrett cried while they were picking their way down the slope of the Island, Hi, Caldwell. Tent poles—

  You can have them, Adam. More than I can fetch now. I don’t want to come all the way back. His words floated faintly up the incline where tiny fires were glowing, with apes crouched above the colored flames, blowing in turn to keep the fire climbing through damp bits of splintered roots. For another minute or two Garrett could watch the two vertical shapes with that horizontal thing swaying between them; he lost them against deeper blackness of the marsh.

  Adam wrenched up the four tent posts which had supported the blanket roof above that abandoned hole. He brought also the stones piled for extra bracing. Air smelled better already, with Hyde carried away. The New Yorker had been right . . . it was just the way he said it.

  John came home half an hour later, picking his way stubbornly among shelters, and being roundly cursed when he stepped too close to any person or fire. You could follow his course up the low slope of the Island merely by listening to the oaths following as he moved.

  He did some cursing on his own account after he reached home. That plaguèd God damn bitchy dropsy! Hope to high hell and hellfire I never get it! Scurvy’s bad enough, but— Adam, I vow, I stopped down there in the creek and washed my hand a dozen times. Even them maggots smelt clean by comparison.

  What was it? Dropsy— You mean Portland Hyde?

  Damn, twas his hand. I mean the skin. We’d got his drawers and shirt off of him, and then we took hold to give him a heave across that little fence. I vow! The skin come loose from his hand like it was rotten cloth or something. Just peeled loose like a big glove. There he was in the row, and there I stood, a-holding onto the skin of his hand where it come loose on me. I like to puked my gizzard out.

  Garrett muttered.

  What say?

  I said, Glad that I lost that penny toss. You can have the blame shirt and welcome.

  I got it right here. Them three buttons will come handy, though one is split. What say? Want to turn in? Want some rations first?

  They decided to eat half the piece of pone they were saving, and reserve the other half for morning. They still had one onion, but it was keeping well; they had agreed to save the onion for soup, in order to flavor the next meat ration when and if it was forthcoming. Mosquitoes hummed thickly while the men ate. They lay down, spooned closely; each covered his head with an old leg-of-drawers.

  Garrett slept well, or at least better than usual; he dreamed of ferns. He tried to think of Hallie before he drifted into slumber; but rapidly she was joining the remote company of people in his past whom he could never reassemble, by voice or figment of face, no matter how earnestly he attempted to conjure them. He dreamed about a ravine of ferns below Black Mountain; it was summer, and there was agreeable coolness, and he walked through the bank of ferns. A woodpecker went down in long slicing flight from one tree and soared quickly up against another dead trunk, and clutched, hammering. Garrett didn’t know what kind of woodpecker it was. But he saw the ferns clearly, and someone said something about blackberries in plenty.

  Bam. Pam. Two shots woke them up . . . among mosquitoes . . . after midnight. The shots sounded like muskets but of different bore. There was a faint yell, whether the cry of the victim or a hoot of derision they did not know. A few voices called out the persistent litany of, Give the Rebel son of a bitch a furlough, then there was such silence as ruled—the wasting, crowded silence of mumbles and wails and snarls and hog-callings which went on forever, latticed like a visible structure beneath the stars.

  With sunrise the vast population began to own a dimension of activity as well as sound, with men kindling fires anew, men beginning to bargain for food, men beginning to fight and tussle, men squatting at the sinks, men foraging for water in the marsh, men unable or unwilling to reach the sinks and squatting along the swamp’s borders instead. Johnny was first out of the shelter, but he returned promptly and pushed his head back under the sagging overcoat with an expression of incredulity akin to amusement on his blackened face.

  I swear, Adam. Damndest neighbors we got.

  Adam Garrett joined him on hands and knees, and together they stared amazed at the transformation adjoining. When they went to sleep the night before, the dwelling-place which Hyde had relinquished through death and which Caldwell had given up as a matter of choice— The depression was a depression only, with no shred or twig to mark it. Now new poles had been put up, and a canvas cover which was close to being clean and white flaunted in the early breeze. The cover hung nearly to the ground on their side, but when currents of air twitched it, figures could be seen snuggled together in the scooped-out pit.

  Did you hear anybody move in? No more did I.

  Freshest fish in the ocean, I’ll be bound. See how clean that cloth is, Johnny?

  I’m going over. Appleby went away while Adam was still stretching and rubbing his eyes.

  John came back soon, babbling with gossip. It’s sailors, he announced in the gasping muted mumble with which they commonly maintained privacy when privacy was desired. . . . Two of them. Great big hairy fellow, big and fresh and strong, got meat all over his bones. Big old fellow, could be maybe of the age of thirty-five or forty. The other one is puny—just a boy fourteen or so. They’re newly took by the Rebs—only last week, or so I make it out. But the old chap is some kind of foreigner; I can scarcely catch a word he utters.

&n
bsp; Garrett’s brother-in-law had served in the marines, and he remembered talk of weird doings aboard ships. John. That sounds like a seaman and his chicken.

  Chicken? What in tunket is a chicken?

  A little boy. Cabin boy, most likely. He belongs to the big man, and that chap takes care of him and loves him. He pulled Appleby’s head closer to his, and lowered his voice to a bare whisper, and told more.

  I never heard the beat of it! Appleby cried out in horror. Never heard the—

  Mister, you’ve heard of corn-holing, hain’t you?

  Oh, yes. But just imagine. On a National gunboat or warship! You’d think the officers—

  I didn’t say all the sailors. I just said some of them.

  They soon heard it related that not one but three or four sailors had been accompanied by their chickens when the latest draft of fresh fish arrived. The Vermonters were busy with Hyde’s obsequies, and did not notice excitement at the North Gate which had attended incoming squads. For the seamen had, for the most part, retained their sea-bags. This came about because they were guarded by a detachment of infantry newly removed from some position of coastal defense, now journeying north to aid in the resistance above Atlanta.

  John cried indignantly, Just their damn good fortune! If they’d drawn a company of these volunteer Home Guards! I vow, it takes militia to comb you over.

  The huge sailor domiciled in the Caldwell-Hyde hole told them about it later, when they could understand his speech more ably. He said that he had a razor, he carried it folded in his sleeve, and he could flip it out, opened and threatening, in a manner to strike terror. After the incoming prisoners got off the cars at Anderson, and were standing in uneven ranks waiting to be counted again and marched to the stockade, two Reserves did in fact descend on him and demand his sea-bag, and the boy’s. The razor whistled close, the Reserves fell back, cocking their muskets. A voice snapped at them, an officer’s voice, and the Reserves were ordered away before they had a chance to fire. A few of the forty-odd navy men in the detachment lost their possessions, but most kept them intact. It was lucky for them that they arrived after the breaking of the raiders instead of before. People guessed that they wouldn’t have gotten halfway across the stockade with those bulging canvas bags.

  The mighty sailor had slit his own bag to make this fresh canopy, since he owned no blanket or overcoat. He and the boy had short-cut pea jackets however; these they used for bedding. The big man was Irish, speaking an almost unintelligible collection of syllables which he tumbled round and round, deep in his thick throat. When he gave his name, to Garrett’s ears it seemed to be Paydrog. Hence they called him Pay, and the other neighbors did too. He was a shambling, round-shouldered giant with a rim of cinnamon-colored brush shaped carefully down the boundaries of his cheeks and across his chin. Soon he gave up shaving, and used the razor for other purposes; then the razor was stolen from Pay one afternoon. He bellowed for a solid hour but it did no good: the razor did not reappear. Likely one of the New Yorkers got it.

  They called the little boy Chickie at first, but Pay showed resentment; it seemed that the term was for use only by the adoring partner, or in the third person. The boy was named Valentine, and he had been born near the wharves of the Delaware River at Camden, New Jersey, and had gone to sea when he was twelve or thereabouts. Val sported a spoiled, simpering little face, a mouth which could smirk out of all proportion to its puffy pink fatness, and polished eyes reminding Adam of nothing so much as the eyes of a trapped garter-snake. Val could curse—and did, hourly—in a manner to put any of the raiders to shame. But Pay he addressed in cooing accents to drive the neighbors mad. Val seemed trying to imitate a mourning-dove.

  Or a honey-bee, said Appleby in hate.

  They do live high. Whilst you were digging roots this afternoon, and whilst I was on guard, they cooked up a stew—I mean, Pay cooked it. It had salt, too; he’d been down and made a barter opposite Stockade Creek. Had salt, onions, potatoes, some of that there Rebel vegetable—what you call it, all squashy—?

  Okra.

  That’s the one. And two beef bones—reckon they’re mule, though—and a big piece of tripe.

  Tripe! Come along, I don’t like being played for a fool.

  Well, they had it. I set out there, and so did the New Yorkers, and that old saddler from Ohio. We set around on our marrowbones and watched them, and we could smell pretty good, too. They finished everything in that big pot, or pretty near, and Pay says to the lad, Did he want more? No, no, says Val, and made that silly face he’s always making.

  What did they do with what was left?

  Pay give it a heave. You heard me. He flung it out.

  Well, why didn’t you—? You can go dig roots tomorrow.

  I calculate to.

  Then Garrett felt that he had had enough sport with his friend, and lovingly he produced the two bones he’d salvaged. There was gristle along the sides, the marrow would be intact for they had not been cut open, and there was actually a wad of lean meat and glutinous fat around the end of one bone. The New Yorkers made a dive, he said, but this little Vermont apple-knocker got there first.

  The two flat hats, bobbing about next door, became a familiar spectacle, just as other familiar spectacles had existed before in the same locality during the tenancy of the Maine artillerymen, just as further familiar spectacles would in time supersede this one if the same eyes were there to witness. The flat hats bore in printed letters the words Sea Sprite but one day the bristly Irishman was not wearing his hat. He had sold it to a guard for brown sugar, a little envelope of brown sugar. Val had a sweet tooth.

  The big sailor’s store of money ran out quickly. Then, article by article, Pay hawked away his fortune. He bartered extra pairs of blue pantaloons for meat, his extra pairs of socks . . . he sold his sailor blouses, he sold tough linen thread, big hanks of waxed cord, many of his needles. He’d had something to do with the sails aboard that sloop on which he and the chicken were captured. In time he even sold the gold-beaded Rosary that hung around his own neck. Val was the possessor of a fine wardrobe—little white sailor suits trimmed in blue, little blue sailor suits trimmed in white. These costumes had been hand-sewn for him, lovingly, by his protector. Not a stitch of the chicken’s possessions would Pay offer for barter—not until dire necessity on Val’s part forced him to it. Then he disposed of them to some of the elder guards who bought the clothing for their children; he sold them for rice, turnips, a half-rotten melon, rancid bacon, anything he could get. Of course he was cheated roundly.

  He had lost weight from the start, rapidly and visibly, as biggest men always did. It was as if a bony structure melted away beneath the stout countenance and let the exhausted cheeks and other features fall loosely, as they were a mask grown limp and hung upon a curtain rod. Folds of flesh around his neck drooped like cloth, then tightened up in a turkey’s wattles. The beard, no longer shaped, straggled out in tusks and horns. The ruddy skin became black as a miner’s . . . Pay spent hours with his head pushed down in pine smoke, blowing at reluctant flames of his cooking smudge.

  Also he washed Val’s clothes stubbornly, hunting for less pestilential pools of the morass, prospecting here and there, and finally going to work with ashes and muddy water—wringing, rinsing, twisting, pummeling sodden cloth with a stick and with his fists—striving to keep Val the mincing blue-and-white dainty thing he’d been before. The neighbors, most of them, were beyond the point of catcalls and ribaldry about this; they only stared in a manner of bored impudence and disbelief. Pay himself was far beyond the practice of sodomy or any other misshapen act, but he proceeded in a pattern long established: he owned an affection, it had come to rule him, he was selfless, savagely devoted.

  The silver-haired Ohio saddler, whose name was Tom Gusset, did a brisk trade in the repair of leather goods. He had managed to keep some of his knives, awls and the like, when he came in. Each day he
set up shop, now near the North Gate, now near the South, and cried his skills aloud. He would cobble a strap or a shoe or a leather cartouche flap—he could do such things soundly and speedily with the aptness which lived still in his fingers—but he worked only for currency or for some victual he fancied. One day there was excitement when a batch of freshies came in from some fort in the Carolinas, and one of them had smuggled a packet of candy: gaudy, viscous sticks striped with red and white. Promptly the candy was distributed to the four winds; the newcomer needed a blanket, a cooking can, things more imperative than candy. Gusset acquired one stick; it was stared at and coveted by all. The saddler limited himself to a half-inch at a time. After two days there was still a sizeable stub remaining.

  However, he found that the heat of his body was melting the sweetness as he carried it about in his clothing. Privately he dug a storage den, and buried the precious colored fragment. He’d put it in a chunk of hollow cane which he owned, and plugged up the ends. The chicken must have seen where the treasure was put away, though no one knew it at the time.

  The next afternoon Garrett was root-digging and Appleby housekeeping, when an explosion occurred in the Ohio quarters. Previously a fight had begun, across the swamp on the slope of the North Side, and most of the stay-at-homes were down there watching the fight. Three angry skeletons were engaged in a battle royal over ownership of an old boot; literally they sought to club or gouge one another to the death. Then came the outburst closer at hand, and Johnny looked out to see Val in full flight, with the old saddler loping after him.

  He told Adam, You should of seen it. Didn’t know that old rooster could move so spry. He had a big belt in his hand, and he was wheeling it like all possessed. The youngster legged it like the Old Harry was after him. He’d dropped the candy prompt when Gusset spied him in the act of thieving, but Gusset was bound to teach him manners. I calculate the chicken would of got away scot-free, but he was tripped by Pay’s own shelter-rope. That strap buckle sung out like it was a bullet, and it bit a piece out of his bottom. Should of heard him yip.