Woolstock quit uttering invocations because Gusset would not heed them, and soon did not even hear. Gusset ate less and less of the gnarly brick of corn bread which came his way each day. At last he ate none at all, he did not rise from the ground. The treasured implements of his saddler’s career were stolen, and he did not care. The miner died, the baggage-handler died. Woolstock himself nursed a scratch on his arm and feared gangrene, and quickly saw and felt and smelled gangrene developing, and knew in last brilliant agonizing that now he too was doomed.
New prisoners, horrified and frantic at what they found here, shoved into the shebang and occupied mud where the Ohioans had suffered. Oh, they were new, not yet emasculated, they pitied Tom Gusset, thought it ghastly that a man nearing sixty should be in that place, thought it ghastly that anyone should be there, thought it a diabolical conspiracy on the part of the Confederacy, and on the part of the Union as well, that there should be such a place. They gave Tom Gusset his ration, they scraped away other mouldering rations which he had abandoned, they began to bet on how long he could live without food.
In fact he lived a surprisingly long time . . . day by day he shrank. It was discovered that he was dwelling in Ohio. He was living with his first wife, Lennie, who had died in early middle age after bearing Tom nine children. His second wife, Ada, was a vicious little shrew hated by her entire neighborhood. Tom had left his harness shop and joined the cavalry in order to get away from Ada. Not even in final insanity could he wish to rejoin Ada, but Lennie became a warm, good-scented vision. Of course he saw her always beaming at the end of the supper table, or rising to whisk more muffins from the oven. Little faces turned admiringly toward Tom all along the board. Olinthus boasted of the groundhog he had dug up, Eva and Leora giggled about a hair-pulling which had ensued at their Sunday School pic-nic, Willis begged to go and spend the night at a favorite cousin’s. Tom Gusset, proud of his family, proud of his pink-cheeked wife and also proud of himself, spooned up the meat and gravy which his toil had provided.
Tommy boy, he’d say to his eldest, you better take some more pigeon pie.
God, said newcomers in the shebang, there the old bastard goes again. This time it’s pigeon pie.
Now, Eva, don’t say you don’t like bean porridge. You know your Ma makes the best! It’s from Granny LeMay’s own receipt.
Artie, help yourself to another chunk of squash and please to pass the plate.
Think I’ll take a little more of that hot slaw, Hiram. But help yourself first. Right in front of you.
The prisoners screamed, God damn you, old man, dry up!
He sat in mud, his thinning fingers no longer skilled and active, but frittering about with splinters, garbage, or even with rolls of mud which they took up and wadded. The splinters were Scotch scones, the garbage became tasty buttered onions with plenty of salt and pepper on them, the mud was cream pie.
Lowell boy, do have another fish ball. And Maudie’s plate is nearly empty. Pass her some more of that boiled tongue and some of them parsnips.
Help yourself to another nice baked potato, Hiram.
The prisoners tried to stop their ears. I swear, they cried, if he don’t cease that craziness I’ll go crazy too. I swear, they cried, I got a notion to lam him over the head with this pole. Finish the old relic off! . . . Oh, leave him be, Mansfield. He’s old, he hain’t got long. . . .
He had far too long insofar as these new prisoners were concerned. Ain’t this nice tenderloin, Linthus? Do take that last piece for yourself; now, hush, the rest of you—Linthus is titled to it, he split all them kindlings for his Ma while Hiram and Artie snuck away to play ball. Lowell, don’t take that cold rusk; Ma is bringing some hot ones right now—better for you hot. Leora, you and Maudie got to toss a penny to see which one wipes the dishes. Here, I got two pennies right here in my pants; I’ll give each of you a bright new cent, and you can match. Don’t know how to match? Well, Pa’ll show you. Watch careful.
I tell you, Lennie, you’ve baked some mighty good nut loaves in your time, but I never saw the beat of this one. Tommy boy, you spread that butter thick on your nut bread, for Granny always said there wasn’t nothing like butter to put flesh on young bones. Eva, pass your saucer and I’ll ladle you some more of these fine stewed cherries.
Nathan Dreyfoos strayed deliberately into remembered satisfactions with his good mind; old Tom Gusset strayed on whatever scraps of wounded fancy could still support him. The house rose before and around him, the small light green house overflowing with Gussets, the house which had supplanted the log house of Tom’s father (the house of squared logs had been moved back to serve as woodshed, dairy, cob house, general domestic repository. The children gave shows there; the minister thought it wrong for them to engage in theatricals; Tom Gusset shook his finger at the Reverend Mr. Sifert and said that his children could give all the blame shows they wanted to).
Gol damn, cried out one new prisoner in the shebang, think I ain’t lonesome for my own wife and folks? Think I don’t wish I was back in Frenchtown with Amy and Lily and Byron? Why the devil have I got to listen to this, night and day?
Oh, hang onto yourself, Melvin. He ain’t got long.
Day after day Artie was offered his asparagus, Leora her buttered onions, Tommy boy his ham. Tom Gusset had been declared killed in battle through some misinformation by an alleged eyewitness. The evil-tongued Ada sold his harness shop and settled down to live comfortably in the old green house—peeking from behind curtains at the two young girls across the way, poisoning dogs, throwing boiling water at cats (which managed fortunately to elude her), shrieking at children to stay out of her yard. Naturally none of her stepchildren or stepgrandchildren ever came to see her. Thus the news that Olinthus was killed near Atlanta and that Hiram was captured and sent to a pen in Tyler, Texas— These griefs brought her no grief. . . . The silver hair and beard of her husband crawled with lice, the prisoners declared that he had a gallon of lice on him if he had a gill, he seemed thinner than paper, you could actually see his bones through transparent begrimed hide. His raw voice cackled without let, his eyes saw fairest and dearest forms, his shrunken nostrils smelled them out of the past.
He tried to get up a while ago and just couldn’t.
That’s what I been waiting for! He tried to resist us before, but I don’t think he can resist us now.
Hospital! Good idee.
Next morning old Tom Gusset was carried to the South Gate; they carried him there before dawn so that the press would not be too great, so that they would not hear the No More Today, No More Today blasting hope that they would be rid of this nuisance once and for all.
Their luck took them to Contract Surgeon Number Six, one of the most humane and resolute of the eleven contract surgeons working at the gate. When the Yankees brought up Tom Gusset in their turn, this surgeon, a bearded little wren named Crumbley whose home was in Albany, had already sent to the hospital the three patients whom he was empowered to assign there on this day. For some mysterious reason there had been but thirty-four hospital deaths since the previous day; hence ten of the contract surgeons might each designate three prisoners—and the eleventh, four—to fill the vacancies. Dr. Crumbley begged the attention of another surgeon whose allotted vacancies were not used up, and as a result Tom was carried into a wall tent and placed with seven other patients. Four of these were in the two beds, or rather shelves with which the place was furnished; the rest lay upon the ground in trodden pine straw saturated with qualities unmentionable. From this low couch Tom’s dramatization of recreated joys reached any ears willing to listen.
This was a rich and beautiful way in which to die. For he had no recognition of pain, stench, wail or ordure. He dwelt in an established past which was as good to his demented soul as was the cold compress to the feverish, the oven-baked flannel to the chilled. He dwelt in that content without chronology, he needed none. His conscious brain was rupture
d, his cracked voice talked ahead. Tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Lloyd—your boy Fred has owed me for them collars nearly two years now. Now, if you’ll pay both bills—yours and his—today, I’ll let you have that buggy whip at cost—just what it cost me. Thank you very much, Mr. Lloyd—you have been a good customer for years, but I just can’t carry a heavy load of old Accounts Due. Yes, you bet— Thank you, Mr. Lloyd. Good day to you.
A ghoul crept in at night to rob the dead and the sick too; he stepped upon Tom Gusset’s hand and broke the weakened bones, but Tom did not mind the crushing, not for long. He gave one bleat, and then muttered about it for a time, and then was beaming in his village again. Eva, you are a mighty good little currant picker! Ma told me about it, and it was a good thing you got them before the birds did, and I’m going to give you a dime all for your very own. May basket night? I thought I smelt taffy when I came in. How many baskets are you going to hang, Maudie? Eight? Ain’t that more’n last year? And last year you got ten hung to you. Looks like you’re a very popular young miss with your feller scholars!
A boy young enough to be Tom Gusset’s grandchild lay beside him. He was mainly unconscious (this was good, since his lower bowel was in shreds, and some of these shreds protruded from his body), but at times he emitted little owlish cries. Queerly enough Tom was aware of these sounds, and ascribed them to a June dusk when his children marched purposefully along the street and he and Lennie sat on the bench he had built under the ivy. Screech owl, they call that one, dearie. Funny they call it screech. It’s just as soft as the cooing of a squab. I do like to set and listen to it. I suppose he’s calling to his mate. Listen to them kids—that’s Willie’s voice—guess he’s captain of his side. Listen to them signals. Danger, he’s calling. Danger! Bet that means the other side is getting further and further away. It’s an old trick—we kids used to do it when we was little. Cept we called it Old Wolf, the best I can recall, instead of Run-Sheep-Run. There they go pelting off. Listen at them! Run, Sheep, Run! Old Wolf’s going to get you!
We were lucky, Lennie. Think how our own kids all got through the diphtheria all right, and the Billingses lost two.
You know what I’d like, right here on this scrapple. Some of that sweet pepper hash. Well, I must be getting blind—didn’t see it on the table, and here it was right in front of me all the time. Try some, Lowell, do. It just spices up this good scrapple to perfection. Yes, yes, that’s Granny LeMay’s old receipt also. . . .
First complaint I ever had, Mr. Conrad, that my workmanship was unsound! Sure, I can see it’s broke, tore squarely in two. But it wouldn’t tear like that unless you’d put undue strain on it. Ain’t any journeyman harness-maker in the world could make a tug that bad out of such good leather. And I ain’t no journeyman—I’m a master, as any other person in this community will bear witness. Fact is, Mr. Conrad, I think these two busted ends parted company during the runaway, and not before. Couldn’t have been a busted whiffle-tree on that there ancient vehicle of yours that caused it, now could it? . . . Lennie, he looked like he could have gone through the floor. Don’t know when anything has struck me so funny. He just slid out of the shop—you know, kind of mumbled something—and then skedaddled. I just set there and laughed till I shook.
Tom Gusset’s vocal machinery was pulled apart by undue strain, as his good sound harness had been pulled. On the next day you would have had to bend close to his ghost’s face to hear him speak (except that no one would have wished to bend close to such crawling ugliness, and there was no one to bend close). Lennie, dearie, don’t turn your face away. Ain’t nothing to be ashamed about. Everybody does it—married folks—and now we’re married. Wasn’t it funny, way they tied all them old shoes and pots and things on behind the rig? My, what a racket that made until we’d outdistanced them all, and I could get down and pull that blame stuff off of there. Lennie, dearie, let me kiss you again. You know what? That’s a real pretty nightdress you got on. All that stuff around the top—what you call it? Yoke? Sounds like twas meant for oxen, now doesn’t it? Cept you ain’t no ox. You’re just the sweetest prettiest little thing that ever. . . .
Artie, said the wispy raw voice, do have some more beans. Best you ever tasted, I’ll be bound.
Tom spoke in this way until there was no mechanism left for speech, no germ to sustain the flower of life. Eventually mules took him away, he lay at the bottom of the load. Twas funny, said one of the black men who’d shoveled earth over him by indifferent spadefuls. They all smell pretty bad. Seem for a moment that this old one didn’t smell so bad. Seem like I smell a nice place, with good things cooking.
How you talk, Jeff. Ain’t no good things cooking round here.
XLIV
Lucy cuddled upon an old cushion beside the gallery pillar. She gazed, not at Elkins and her father above and beyond her, but into dusk which seemed to flow and falter with a visible tide of sound and smell.
She asked, Have you spoken to any of your superiors about this matter?
I have made verbal suggestions to the Chief Surgeon.
From his own portion of dusk, Ira spoke. What did you tell him, Coz?
Asked him why the army didn’t send us all away!
Harry Elkins thudded his tired boots upon the porch. I said that it was useless for surgeons to exert effort, when the patients were starved down to begin with. If the prisoners were receiving the vegetables which they should have—and if the prisoners had more room—at least half of them could be saved. They need the right kind of diet, more than they need medicines.
Did you tell him about General Winder—?
Indeed I told him! I said that it would be possible to have a large supply of green things brought from this plantation alone. I know that I was not presuming on your generosity, Cousin Claffey: I said that things were spoiling in your garden, I said that you would send him vegetables without charge. They were going to waste, doing nobody any good. . . . If he would connive with me to have them admitted to the hospital, lives might be saved. He observed that he would like to have the garden stuff; then turned off and spoke no more about it.
He feared the wrath of Winder, Coz.
He did—and does.
Elkins got up, pulled from his chair by the extremity which overpowered him increasingly. I wrote a report, with recommendations. Entirely unsolicited. Should you like to hear it?
I’ll ring and have a light fetched, said Ira.
Sakes, I can fetch a light while we’re still striving to enlist the attention of Ninny or Pet! Lucy brought a shielded candle from a nearer room. By this small light Harrell Elkins knelt with papers spread upon his knee. His spectacles were silvered, his face looked like hardened leftover dough.
Lucy thought, It rules him. What chance will he ever have to own a softness? The thing is too big, too stern and vengeful. Harry must succumb beneath it, thus must I succumb. . . .
Elkins’s voice was grinding out the words: And to ascertain and report the causes of disease and mortality among the prisoners, and the means necessary to prevent the same, I respectfully submit the following. Causes of disease and mortality. One: The large number of prisoners crowded together. Two: Entire absence of vegetables as diet, so necessary in the prevention of scurvy. Three: The want of barracks to shelter prisoners from sun and rain. Four: Inadequate supply of wood and pure water. Five: Badly cooked food. Six: Filthy condition of prisoners and prison generally. Seven: Morbific emanations from the branch or ravine passing through the prison, the condition of which cannot be better explained than by naming it a morass of human excrement. . . .
There must be a fair place. . . . Again Lucy’s youth served her in struggling against resignation. She would not accept this ordeal as a mode of life—never, never. It was not for this that women carried babies in their bodies and endured the torment of expelling them. It was not for this that an orb was set in the sky, and pin-holes and studding of stars gave suggestion of great gl
ories, layer on layer, in regions outside the system of planets. Not for this did a purple bud rise gently out of compression against its stalk, and spread to make the rippled foil of a violet. Not for this did water set stones to grinding, nor did owls call, nor did warm rain spread and soak the ground. Not for this did tiny creatures work within the soil. . . .
Elkins read on. Preventative measures are suggested as follows. One: The removal immediately from the prison of not less than fifteen thousand prisoners. Two: The detailing On Parole of a number of Yankees sufficient to cultivate the necessary supply of vegetables; until this can be carried into practical operation I suggest the appointment of agents along the railroad line, to purchase and forward a supply of vegetables. Three: Immediate erection of barracks within the stockade, for shelter. Four: Let squads of prisoners proceed with axes, under adequate guard, to secure sufficient wood for their purposes, in thick forests nearby; and let proper wells be dug to supply the deficiency of water. A single bubbling spring, pure though it may be, cannot serve properly thirty-three thousand men. Five: Divide prisoners into squads, place each squad under a sergeant, furnish the necessary quantity of soap—which can be manufactured by prisoners themselves, working, again, under guard—and hold these sergeants responsible for the personal cleanliness of each squad. Six: Supply the prisoners with clothing at the expense of the Confederate States’ Government; and if our Government be unable to do so, candidly admit our inability, and call upon the Federal Government to send clothing. Seven: There should be a daily inspection of bake houses and baking procedures. Eight: Cover over with sand the entire morass within the pen, not less than six inches deep. Board the stream or watercourse, and confine the men—also the Georgia Reserves outside the stockade—to the use of their sinks. Make the penalty for disobedience inescapable and severe.
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