Andersonville

by MacKinlay Kantor

  Even before Judah could open his mouth and ask, Where did you hear that?— Before Judah Hansom could say a word, up spoke Benny. He was sitting close to the forge because he had chills much of the time, and he wore his blue overcoat even when other folks had their sleeves rolled up against the springtime sun.

  Not him, chirped Benny Ballentine. Might get shot.

  Usually they were a talkative group, there at the smith’s—the lame and old and idle. But now they didn’t utter anything, and just went on chewing their tobacco and playing with nails. Judah felt his face go red as the forge. He didn’t dare to look at Benny. From the remembered influence of his father, Judah had absorbed the notion that the war was somehow brought on by a group of capricious political bosses whose dupe Lincoln was. No sane person ought to support the war in any way because it might eventually ruin the country; banks would close, prices paid for lumber would go down, people wouldn’t be able to pay their interest.

  Might get shot.

  He could hear that echoing tartly as he drove to the farm, he could hear it from afar in the protestation of sheep which his two hired men, and temporary assistants in the shape of three young boys, were dipping. The ewes seemed quacking in the nasal tone of Benny Ballentine. There had promised to be a great deal of money in sheep, for markets needed more and more wool, now that no cotton was forthcoming. Judah acquired a promising flock, pastured on hills cleared by his own axe. This day the smell of the dip nauseated him, and he regretted ever having bought the flock. Baaaa. Might get shot. Baaaa.

  All night long he heard the sheep and he heard Benny, and as soon as he finished choring in the morning he sat down on the wash bench and made a list of things which he must do that day. His eggs grew cold upon his plate, his cakes steamed no longer, Aunt Annie called in vain. Judah saw his hired men disposed for the day, and then he hitched up and drove to Herkimer. The bank had been open only forty-five minutes when he got there. Jude did some business at the bank, and then he went to Mr. Endicott’s office and made his will. He left five hundred dollars to the Congregational church, five hundred dollars to the one surviving cousin in New Hampshire (this cousin he had never seen, but he did it from a sense of family duty) and he provided for Aunt Annie through whatever years might remain to her. He supposed vaguely that you might term the rest of his property to be a backlog. Lawyer Endicott kept taking off his specs and putting them on again, and then losing them amid the papers on his desk. Obviously he thought that Jude Hansom was crazy, and maybe Jude was. Baaaa. Might get shot.

  Judah drove directly—not home, but to the village of Bindale. It was an hour past dinner time when he walked into Mr. Whiteman’s smithy. Benny Ballentine been here? No, Ben don’t usually appear before mid-afternoon.

  Judah didn’t go to the Ballentine house because he wanted to tell Benny right there at the blacksmith’s, right in front of that same crowd, right in the middle of the hot smells and tobacco juice and horse smells and scorched parings of the hoofs, and fumes and heat. He had some business to do at the local bank and with a couple of folks whose property was mortgaged to him, so he went and did it. He hadn’t eaten a bite all that day, and began to feel weak although he wasn’t truly hungry. He went into Wilkins’s and bought some crackers and cheese and salted codfish, and sat in his buggy beside the free-flowing town trough while he ate. It was shady there under the elms, and it was a good place to eat a luncheon however belated. He could drink from the wet-moss-draped old pipe, drinking from the stream before it fell into the stone trough below. Providently Judah always carried a nose-bag under the buggy seat, and he had brought along oats for Molly . . . she tossed the nose-bag contentedly while Judah munched as if it were a duty, and it was one.

  About three-thirty Judah Hansom had done everything which he must do, so he went back to Whiteman’s. He dropped Molly’s block on the ground and snapped the catch against her bridle; this was merely a gesture, since Molly was docile and wouldn’t have stirred unless too badly fly-bitten. Judah walked inside the smithy and found Mr. Whiteman busy shoeing Reverend Hathaway Burgess’s old horse. The Reverend himself was there, chewing stick cinnamon instead of tobacco, and there were the regulars: Captain Mattice, Grandpa Corning, Lame Peter Jones (he was the only Negro in the community, and insisted that his father had once belonged to a British general) and a couple of little boys. And Benny Ballentine. Benny was sitting on a flat-bed wheelbarrow; of course he wore his army coat clinging around him. Everybody stared when Judah came in and walked to confront Benny. Mr. Whiteman dropped the horse’s hoof to the cindery ground with a thud. The forge sent out its cherry-colored glow, and surprisingly the scorched odors were appetizing.

  Judah turned around to Reverend Burgess and said, I left five hundred to the Congregationalists, and then he turned back to Benny.

  I provided for my relatives. You’ll get the backlog.

  What?

  I just call it the backlog. It’s the bulk—what Mr. Endicott calls the residue. Pa’s place—my place—the farm and all. It goes to you, in case; and I calculated you might wish to know.

  Benny’s mouth was open, and he had a sudden coughing fit. No one else could speak a word; they were gagged with amazement. Reverend Burgess went and got a dipper of water from the bucket and put his arm around Benny Ballentine’s shoulders, and offered the dipper. Benny sipped some of the water and got control of his fit.

  He asked of Judah, What in conscience are you talking about?

  I made my will today. Might get shot.

  He went out of the smithy, unsnapped the catch from Molly’s bridle, picked up the block and tossed it into the buggy, got in and drove home. He arranged with the eldest hired man to bring his wife from Bindale and to live at the farm with Aunt Annie and to farm the place on a moderate share; but all disbursements and receipts were to be handled by Mr. Endicott at his office. . . . Aunt Annie said nothing, in her usual fashion. She cooked an especially fine supper for Judah; she went out to the garden and pulled a big dish of radishes, because Jude was fond of them, as also he was fond of chicken pie, and she had that, with plenty of mashed potatoes; she gave him also cold roast lamb, flint pickles, and opened her last jar of quince preserves. They ate in silence, they and the two hired men; but this was not the dull ordinary silence of people who are too tired physically to talk, and honestly have little in common to give them mutual pleasure or annoyance, and who do not even bother to speculate about where some neighbor was bound when he drove past that day. It was a silence laden with emotion and a sense of change, desperation, hazard, alteration, and some fear.

  Judah ate well, however, and when he got upstairs to his room he was so stuffed that he couldn’t even read his Bible. He lay back across his bed, and the world whirled high and far and speedily; he thought he heard a tree coming down, he thought he heard his father speak gruffly. He awakened hours later to find the lamp chimney burned black, and a horrid odor of coal-oil filling the chamber. He tiptoed down the stair, washed at the bench, and went upstairs with another lamp newly filled. He packed his satchel, being in much doubt as to what he should take. He thought of taking his favorite axe, but decided against it; they would have plenty of axes in the army, but perhaps he might be given no opportunity to use one. He packed his Testament. Judah felt slightly annoyed at finding how few things he owned or even wished to take with him; he even put in one of the Rollo books he had been given when he was a little boy. His Bounteous Harvest at the moment seemed to have run mainly to land, sheep, mortgages and cold cash. He was taking but fifty dollars with him— Mr. Endicott could send more, when and if he needed more, but Judah understood that everything was furnished in the army—you didn’t have to pay for your food—maybe you had to pay for your uniform, or did you? It was a puzzle. He packed an extra pair of pants, and four more handkerchiefs.

  Aunt Annie heard Judah moving about in his chamber, so she rose earlier than usual; the hired men, in accord, began their chores
in the murk of dawn. One would need to drive Judah to Herkimer, and thus some hours would be lost from the work-day; it was best to be early birds. Aunt Annie cooked her usual platters of ham and eggs, and stood in dark gingham by the stove, cooking flapjacks as long as there was need for more.

  Jas Wilkins said, Want me to hitch up Molly?

  Judah nodded. I’ll be ready in a trice.

  Aunt Annie came and sat at the other end of the table, glad to be removed from the wood-range and its heat. They were alone in the long kitchen when Judah arose. She looked up at him, teacup in hand, and her small black eyes held a light.

  You know, Jude, I’m nigh onto seventy. I was elder than your Pa.

  Judah stood behind his chair.

  Know who was President when I was born? George Washington.

  Since Benny Ballentine had so strongly altered Judah’s life, or maybe even taken it away from him, Judah was conscious of new emotions. He didn’t like these feelings. An almighty thickness swelled in his chest and throat, his heart beat hard.

  Never said nothing about it before, but if I’d been young and not a female, I’d have gone to fight e’er now.

  Uh. Why?

  Count of the Union. I mind Lijah used to fume about politicians, but the Union’s bigger than any of them. Bigger than any one man, anywhere. It’s got to be fit for.

  Maybe so.

  What was it altered your intentions, boy?

  Uh . . . a fellow said something. Made out that I was scared of getting shot.

  Ain’t you?

  I calculate nobody ever wants to get shot. Except maybe a crazy man.

  But you’re going. I mind my own Pa, your grandpa, talking about Grandpa Elza Hansom. That was his father. He got kilt at Bennington when they was fighting the redcoats. Had his face to the foe when he fell. You got plenty stockings in your satchel? I mind Pa always held that a soldier needs fresh stockings more frequent than most folks.

  These were more words than she had spoken to Judah or to anyone else in the past month.

  Before Judah got into the buggy and took up the reins beside Jas Wilkins, Aunt Annie came out on the low porch. She shook hands with Judah, and gave him a parcel wrapped in store paper. Here’s a luncheon to do you on the way. I put in a bottle of tea. It’ll be cold, but it’ll help to wash it down.

  Thankee. Clumsily, hastily, the first time he had ever done it in his life, quite without intention or expectation, Judah kissed her hairy wrinkled face. He scraped the off wheel against the gate when they drove out, because he was embarrassed and annoyed with himself for yielding to such display.

  He traveled from Herkimer to Albany; there he saw soldiers in the station, and asked them where he should go to enlist, and was directed properly. Five days later he was delighted to find that he should wear the crossed axes of a pioneer; he knew nothing of soldier life—except what Aunt Annie had told him about frequent changes of socks—but axes and other tools he understood very well indeed. Judah was helping to construct a log bridge in northwestern Georgia, more than two years after he enlisted, when a power of hoofbeats drummed on the pioneers’ hearing, and they were captured before they could fire more than half a dozen rounds.

  He spent blank appalling days after his arrival at Andersonville. As with so many of the incoming prisoners, Judah had no appetite and believed that God had forsaken him. Then his native tenacity and resource began a slow but growing assertion. He examined the lay of the land adjacent to the shebang which he shared with four other pioneers of his regiment, and decided after due deliberation that a tunnel was feasible. What Judah sought was freedom for freedom’s own sake. He was actuated by no particularly noble patriotic motive; Aunt Annie had died of a stroke, the previous January; he had no person to return to—no person with whom he was deeply concerned, unless it might be Benny Ballentine. If Benny had coughed his life away by this time, no one had taken the trouble to inform Judah. Judah was driven by no strong intention of revenge; not necessarily did he despise Rebels and wish to kill them, although in fact he had killed two—one by mashing his head with a piece of railroad iron. He yearned for peace, quiet, woodland space. This must have been a nice piece of woods, right here, before this dratted stockade was built. . . . Also Jude deplored the stench, the pushing bickering mass. Except for the constant presence of smells of sweat and smells of manure (and sheep-dip) his had been a cleanly life before he entered the army, and cleaner than most lives after he was in the army. He wanted to smell again the juices of trees after he had cut them. He held the clear odor of sap and crushed leaves mingled with his ideas of Paradise. People said that the streets up Yonder were golden, the walls of alabaster, but Judah was convinced that there were a lot of woods and hills as well, else no one should wish to go there.

  He and the other York State people pooled their resources and prepared to dig. They had some half-canteens and cups, but there were no shovels anywhere about. Judah decided that serviceable little spades might be whittled out of hardwood, and he roamed ceaselessly, hunting for the right sort of wood to purchase. He possessed thirty-six dollars in greenbacks which he had concealed inside the split covers of his pocket Testament shortly after being captured. A Reb took the Testament, leafed through it, gave it back to Jude and never observed where the covers had been sliced and stuck together again. Also some of his companions had a little money. With luck they discovered a Marylander who owned a hoe, or the remains of one: the handle was only about eight inches long, the rusty blade was split in two places; still it was a tool. The Marylander was ridden with scurvy, and perishing for vegetables. They offered six dollars Federal, he held out for ten; finally they bought the hoe for seven dollars, and acquired two thin dried shakes which seemed made of some sort of hardwood—Judah had never seen that kind of wood before. Now they needed to buy or rent or borrow a knife for whittling the shakes into spades, and they owned no knife. Rumor had it that one of the men in that shebang over next to the deadline—the one with a piece of oilcloth forming part of the roof— One of those men was said to own a good knife. Judah went over there, and all the occupants were gone bartering or root-digging except for the lone housekeeper who sat reading a stained and ragged Bible. He was a stringy little chap, not much bigger than Benny Ballentine at home. No, he didn’t own a knife, but it was true that one of his household did; the man would be coming back before long, so the little fellow bade Judah to sit down and wait. He reckoned that a bargain might be struck.

  Want to hear a Chapter?

  Don’t mind. What are you on?

  I just finished Nehemiah.

  Hard going.

  It is for certain, with all the children of Benjamin, and Levites and things. I read it through when I was just a little shaver, but now I swore to take her all the way through again. You a Baptist, by any chance?

  Congregationalist.

  And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.

  Don’t need to go preaching immersion, little chap. Not to me!

  Well, I’ll start on Esther.

  Good enough. I only got the New Testament by me.

  The youth began reading in a shrill wiry voice, and Judah Hansom sat in stinking shade, listening, with all the vast growl of the stockade muted somehow by heat, muted more in this mid-afternoon than at most other hours. The little chap’s name was Willie Mann, and he was a Missourian. Willie liked the part about the beds of gold and silver and the colored pavement, and especially he seemed to like the part about the wine served in vessels of gold, for he read that verse twice in a row.

  Ever drink any wine, Mister?

  Judah said, Had an aunt used to make it out of cherries. But she said it wasn’t an intoxicant. Tasted pretty good.

  Ma made grapejuice, but it wouldn’t keep none too well. I know some German folks that make beer at home. . . .

  Willie re
turned again to Esther, and then once more he and Judah fell to talking. Willie told about Providence Spring and how it had started up, right on top of him, when God seemed to smite the hill. Judah had heard about this miracle, and under the watchful eyes of police he had stood in line twice daily for water since his arrival.

  He said, I know where there’s a dry well.

  Where at?

  Right in the corner of our shebang.

  How deep is she?

  Calculate it might go to twelve foot or so. Hain’t no water in the bottom.

  You know, said Willie Mann, a sight of tunnels have been dug from some of those wells.

  They sat in considerate silence for a while, both thinking hard. Wirz had made good his threat to build a second stockade in order to discourage tunneling, and now in August the second stockade was a fact. Outsiders reported that it stood at a distance of perhaps one hundred and twenty feet, rimming completely the interior pen. Folks who had seen the fence said that it was not as high as the stockade proper, but still an effective deterrent to escape. Many believed, considering the Federal advance upon Atlanta, that this new work was as much a structure for defense as well as for restraint.

  That there well, said Judah Hansom. Not too far from the deadline.

  I know. But a hundred and twenty feet farther to go than earlier. Few boys have done much tunneling since July. Little profit in it.

  So I hear. Do you know anybody who ever made it to the Outside?

  Oh, I knew one fellow went out with that bunch of Buckeyes—guess twas a fortnight ago—but the dogs got him. But some have made it, folks do say. Course the Rebs found most of the tunnels and busted them in.

  Judah said, Think your tentmate would part with his knife?

  Not likely, but he’d rent it for a dollar, or so he has done before.

  Mind speaking to him about it? How big is the knife?

  A Barlow, about so big. Got two good blades on it still, and he keeps it well whet.