Andersonville

by MacKinlay Kantor

  How far do you make her?

  Sixty-six feet, by cracky. Allowing for the curve in the slope, that’d bring her nigh the stockade or past.

  Judah and Willie had saved their rations of bacon to eat for strength in the new day. Now they sat at the edge of the shebang, munching without more words for a while. The other York State men were spooned behind them (the rain had been unseasonably cold after the seasonable scorcher on the previous day, and men sought one another’s warmth). Over in Willie’s own shebang his comrades were still tented silently, none stirring. Close at hand Old Bush drove oxen in his sleep, as he did now with increasing fanaticism. Ho, he chirped, Bright . . . gee . . . he spoke to Bright more often than he did to the other ox of the team; apparently Bright had given him more trouble at home . . . gee, Bright!

  Old Bush don’t sound able to go down, Jude.

  Wouldn’t keep digging for more’n ten minutes if he did go. Tain’t his turn, anyway. Whose chore is it?

  Willie pointed. Lew Ammons’s. But I reckon he’s over in our shebang all twisted up. He’s got the scurvy badly. I trust I don’t get it that badly.

  They chewed the last pulp of raw pork; it was called bacon, it was nothing like bacon except that now and then you found brownish gristles of lean amid the curdled fat. You hunted it over for worms, and pulled out those worms you could see; then you shut your eyes and popped the pork into your mouth, and chewed and chewed to get it down, and it hurt to chew if your mouth was getting the way Willie’s mouth was getting.

  Judah rose up on his haunches. I’ll go down.

  No, no. You did one spell at six, another around ten.

  That was only part of an hour whilst you went to the sink.

  Then you did a full hour in the middle of the night. Two or three o’clock.

  Finished up at three.

  Jude, you’re doing a lion’s share and more than a lion’s share. There isn’t any call for you to dig the whole tunnel.

  Judah set his wide thin jaw. I feel rested like.

  I’ll go down myself.

  What in tunket! You just finished your chore.

  What about Eri?

  Not till he gets over that looseness, if he ever does.

  You can go for half an hour, said Willie with finality. Just let me take a breathing spell, and I’ll be down to spell you.

  William, we got to keep digging while we got our strength. If we tarry too long, we won’t never get out.

  I know. And I’m bound to get out.

  So’m I.

  That’s why we’re killing ourselves, Jude. But his fierce small face was grinning. We’ll make it, comrade. Just think of that: sixty-six feet!

  Judah Hansom made his way into the tunnel and set to work. He moved the last disturbed earth left by Willie; he filled two bootlegs with it, and then he fell to with his twin spades, shaving at the tunnel’s face. He felt again, as perpetually, the dread of small space, close walls and roof, the pressure coming about him.

  Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

  In the York State shebang, not in his own hut, Willie Mann stretched his brief narrow length and rested his cheek against his bony arm. Katty, are you there, are you somewhere? Ja. He liked to imagine that he heard her replying to him thus in a whisper; but he had forgotten what her whisper sounded like; he knew that she would often say Ja or Nein, but he couldn’t remember how she sounded when she said it.

  Considerable disturbance began growing, over around the deadline and stockade to the west, and now the dawn was strong enough for one to see the pen in all directions, to see filmy figures moving in a thin slow shuttling mass among planes and angles of the shelters. It seemed to Willie that he had heard, remotely, some sort of thud and squeaking—the squeal of wood on wood as if one heavy timber trembled in sliding across another.

  Considerable disturbance. Of course the prisoners always made a noise, but this was a noise of wonder and speculation; a good many men seemed peering and pointing. Willie braced himself on his elbows to watch. Suddenly he got up and ran toward his own shebang as fast as his sore joints would let him.

  Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.

  There came the Adirondacks, rolling upon Judah Hansom. The deadfall log was made of mountains, and he was the pine marten beneath. He recalled lovely golden tones of a fresh-killed frozen marten’s thick fur when he lifted the log which had crushed it.

  Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day.

  Judah in confusion observed a clear portrait, in memory, of Benny Ballentine. The portrait was clearer than a miniature painting, clearer than any type of photograph now prepared by modern methods: ambrotype, daguerreotype, wet-plate photograph, any modern thing he’d ever seen. Might get shot. But I didn’t, Benny, didn’t, never did get shot. What? Judah Hansom tried to speak to himself. What is this? What happened? In spite of the fears he’d hoarded, he was surprised to desperation . . . he heard his axe clanging as he stroked it, he heard a raven in fine fair winter woods ahead.

  For now should I have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept: then had I been at rest.

  Shoving dangerously near to the deadline, Willie Mann and lame Lew Ammons and a growing congregation from that section— All stood gazing up at the stockade. Two posts had pitched down and in—it was at a point perhaps a rod past the nearest sentry station—and rapidly sentry stations were thronged with more than their usual complement of guards. The two posts had dropped a yard or more, and the third, the tilted one, had dropped at least that far. No one of that immediate crowd except Willie and Lew knew exactly what had happened; but it would not take the guards long to decide, and then of course they would come hunting for the tunnel’s mouth.

  How high is our tunnel roof, Willie?

  A yard and more.

  Who was down there, Willie?

  Jude. I should have been.

  Why, you barely finished. . . .

  Lew! Let loose of me, get your claws out of my hide! I’m going down the well, and see—

  Twon’t do no good.

  Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.

  Willie went scrambling down the old well shaft, he lost his hold and fell the last several feet, landing on his face and knocking out two of his loosened front teeth. He went back into the tunnel as far as he could crawl, and with bleeding mouth he called Jude, Jude, Jude, until more earth came sliding around him as if responding to his cry. He had to snake backward out of there, rapidly, in order to avoid those developing cave-ins. He examined the ragged rope with his hand, on the way out, counting knots; he might have missed one or two. He told his companions, once he was come up to the surface, that he had been able to penetrate the tunnel only to a distance of approximately forty or forty-five feet. Beyond that point the ground had settled, and directly beneath the stockade it must have settled more quickly and tightly than anywhere else. What would one of those pine logs weigh? Maybe a foot to a foot-and-a-half in diameter; and they were said to be twenty feet in length, though but fifteen feet in height showed above the ground.

  There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

  There the prisoners rest together.

  Willie Mann and Eri Gaines went down into the well and, working with the speed born of acute necessity, managed to close up the mouth of the tunnel. It was not an especially good job, and would not have defied close scrutiny. Still, the guards never found it. They were too incompetent, too old, too young, too impatient, they moved too rapidly about their search. Eri Gaines would die in Andersonville, Willie Mann would not, Lew Ammons would die in Andersonville, Old Bush would die in Andersonville, Willie Mann would not. Benny Ballen
tine would live to be eighty-six.

  XLVI

  ...Soldier, do you hunger, are you sickened by the bitter fare they give you, the bitter fare withheld? Would you dine again on fresh plucked quail and baked potato? Sit down and place the wooden trencher across your knees, and—mind! the potatoes are very hot, they can burn your fingers; and the birds are scarcely cooler. . . .

  So once more Nathan Dreyfoos strayed from Andersonville, and higher, higher he was riding: no more Moorish towns streaked in white along the precipices, no more farms. Stony watercourses (all dry as toast because the upper snows were long since gone, and so the water of snows’ melting was gone) enfolded each its treasure of pink and green, the dry hills squeezed their pink and green, the pink oozed luxuriantly from watercourse crevices as if the hand of the hills had pressed it from a tube, and its name was oleanders. A billion oleander blooms to tickle the soul . . . how long, asked the boy, have they grown here? Did Carthaginians plant them, did Phoenicians scatter the seeds? Nay, magpies and nightingales must have let the treasure fall from their beaks when this wild portion of the planet was still cooling.

  Out into the path the squat charcoal burner marched, and held up his hand in a manner of defiance, halting Nathan, halting the little mulo in his tracks.

  Good afternoon.

  Good afternoon, friend.

  Please, do you have wine with you? My bottle is dry. My wife should have brought me wine yesterday, but she did not appear. I have been drinking water but I fear to become ill because of the water.

  That is not true. The water in these mountains is pure. I have been drinking of it for two days.

  Ha. You are young. I have thirty-one years, and I have health because I drink much wine.

  Friend, I have two liters of wine with me, and I am happy to share with you. Nathan reached into the basket hanging behind him and brought forth a hide bottle which bulged like the udder of an unmilked goat. The eyes of the charcoal burner gleamed with joy, and blackened corners of his mouth twisted, and his sooty eyebrows went on high. God will reward you, he said. He tipped the bottle above his open mouth and the lovely purple stream spurted. He drank, swallow, swallow, long swallow, pause, long swallow, swallow, swallow, swallow. He lowered the bottle, not so bulging now, and said, Ah, in a rapture which echoed along the splintered chasms above.

  You dwell here alone?

  Through many days. It is necessary, because I am a charcoal burner, and must keep the fires going, and distribute the wood, and remove the carbón when it is charred. My wife lives with her father on the road to Gaucín; she cannot live with me here in my hut, because the place is too high for her. You know—women, with their infirmities? Or do you know? You are very young. How many years have you?

  Only fifteen.

  You are tall, hombre—taller than I, by far, and I am twice thy age. May I be permitted to have more wine?

  Yes, yes, yes—please.

  Again the thin pretty stream curving, the open mouth receiving. The urine of the gods, said the charcoal burner, and he and Nathan laughed at the ancient jest.

  Man, what name have you?

  Natán. And you?

  I am called Pepe. José Romera and Mancera, but of course I am called Pepe. Natán, can you shoot a gun?

  Yes, I have skill with guns.

  Can you kill birds?

  I have killed many birds. In France, doves; also here in Spain. In Scotland I have shot many grouse. In the United States of America I have killed many birds of the name of wild ducks—some are called mallards, some are called teal.

  Is that a jest? You have traveled in many nations, and you are so young?

  Nathan Dreyfoos felt uncomfortably ashamed, and felt also a sudden discomfort which did not stem from shame. Perhaps Pepe was acquainted with bandits, and would tell them that in these mountains and on this path there traveled a youth who had ranged far and wide through the world, and whose parents must be wealthy without doubt and able to pay a large ransom.

  But he felt also that he must not lie to Pepe. He had been taught that there was an infallible virtue in truth for its own sake. Solomon Dreyfoos said that even in business it was not necessary to lie. There were wiser and more diplomatic ways to avoid offending, or to convey an intended meaning; a man should cultivate these methods, and not burden his conscience with untruths. Nathan could not recall himself as telling fibs—not since he was six or seven, and stole comfits and barley sugar, and denied it, and got a thrashing.

  He said, My friend, it is a strange story, too long a story to be related now. But I swear it by the head of my mother.

  Natán, I have a gun, also powder and shot. In this upper valley are many cordonices but my eyes give me pain and I cannot see as well as I could when I was younger. Perhaps it is because I have filled my eyes with smoke for so many years, as a charcoal burner. I grow weary of baked potatoes. Do you like baked potatoes?

  Yes, very much. Especially with salt and butter.

  Salt I have, but no butter. But how should you like to dine on baked potatoes, dinner after dinner, luncheon after luncheon? Also for breakfast? I have bread and oil; but my bread is growing dry as a rock; my wife was to bring me fresh bread, and I pray that she is not sick. Natán, why should you not take my gun and shoot some quail? Can you afford to spend the time? I have wasted powder and shot, many times; as I informed you, my eyes are bad. It is early for quail, but certainly the chicks are now large enough to take care of themselves. Please?

  For reply Nathan brought his mule off the track and past the smouldering charcoal kilns, and up to the very door of Pepe’s hut. It was the usual habitation of shepherds or herdsmen in lonely places—a conical wigwam thatched with pine, floored and based with stones, softened with a thick bed of dry grasses.

  Where is your gun? Where is a good spot for Tomás to graze?

  I have my gun in my hut, wrapped in a blanket. It has rust but it will serve. Is Tomás the name of your mule? He is a handsome animal. See—below here, immediately beyond those large rocks, there is still some grass—some of the grass is still green or partly green.

  I shall remove the saddle.

  Natán, allow me to assist you.

  ...High he went along the scar of a stream no longer a stream. He could actually hear birds piping ahead of him. The gun was a smooth-bore flintlock, very old, it had a loose stock, it would not do to load it with a heavy charge. It would be necessary to kill the quail at close range, he would need to shoot quickly as they rose. The gun’s lock had proved rusty and stiff, but Pepe used olive oil, working it into the mechanism with his thumb, holding the weapon aloft, turning it, oiling through gravity. Nathan examined the flint, didn’t approve of it, requested a fresh flint, which was found. He donned an ammunition belt—a kind of antique bandolier, dry and smelly, with pouches for shot, powder and a special fine priming powder. Nathan rubbed this latter substance in his palm, and sniffed it. Where had such powder ever come from; how had the lonely charcoal burner acquired it? It was fine, silvery, beautifully blended, crushed to infinitesimal particles, finer than the finest English powder; surely it would explode with a flash, instanter.

  High he went, there were plants like sage, plants like heather, surely they were sage and heather. Clumps of cobalt live-forever flowers tufted underfoot, the afternoon sun glinted on scraps of marble, two eagles swung challengingly. The first quail came flurrying up with a light roar; Nathan lifted his gun but did not shoot. He wished to grow accustomed to the feel of the weapon, to grow accustomed to the buzzing of quail’s wings and the sight of their feathers whirling, their wings blurring. Another bird, more birds . . . next time he would fire. Two feathery little bombshells went bursting up in a single second, and Nathan took the left-hand cordoniz of the brace; he longed for his own double-barrel. The fancy powder burnt with the flame of a star, the charge roared with a sullen gasp in the rusty barrel, the shot flew out, the b
ird came down. Nathan reloaded laboriously before he went to pick up his prize, and it was well that he did so: another bird flew out before he reached the dead one. In Scotland he had known an old gillie who called such a lonely lingering refusing-to-fly-until-the-last-possible-moment bird a jouck or jouk or joock—anyway it was rhymed with book or look. The jouck died in midair and fell near the other. Far down the glen Tomás brayed in annoyance each time the gun was fired. Nathan wasted but two charges on empty air; also he wounded one bird slightly, crippling it until the poor thing went hobbling into the shrubbery and he had to run after it and dispatch it with a stick. Otherwise he shot to perfection, and came back an hour later, glorying in splashes of oleander pink which burst from creased valleys far below. He lifted his voice in a homemade flamenco. His new friend Pepe replied in kind; he sang with a voice far more musical than Nathan’s; he confessed that he sang assiduously, beguiling his loneliness all day long and sometimes in nighttimes when he thought of his young wife. He sang now a saeta completely out of season. He sang that it was a long and dolorous road which Our Lord was compelled to walk . . . oh, dear Lord, the nails in his hands . . . so heavy the Cross. Pepe had drunk more of the wine and—wineless for two preceding days—was growing slightly tipsy. He had put several fat new potatoes to roast in the ashes of his kiln, and displayed proudly to Nathan a bottle of oil which he said was the best to be had in Andalucia . . . it was refined in Coín, highly refined . . . members of the royal family sent all the way from Madrid and Aranjuez for this same oil.

  Nathan came apparently empty-handed, except for the gun from which he now drew the charge for safety’s sake.

  What? No fortune? No quail? I thought you were an expert.

  See, hombre! For a trick Nathan had tied the dead birds to a cord slung down the middle of his back. He lifted the loop over his head and twirled the feathery burden to the ground in front of the startled charcoal burner. See. Ten birds. Sufficient? Roast them all and eat all you please, and keep some of them to eat cold at your next comida!