Andersonville

by MacKinlay Kantor

  His stubbled face broke into a smile. My dear, you appear comely, especially comely.

  She came flying, running across the room, dropped down, buried her face in his lap, hugged his legs convulsively.

  Is it Cousin Harry?

  The fair head nodded violently.

  I take it he’s declared himself?

  Again the furious nodding.

  Now, how dared he do so? He has not spoken to me.

  Her head was motionless, her face burning against him.

  But do you wish me to forgive him?

  Once more the nodding, more rapidly than ever.

  Are you happy, my dear?

  Oh, Poppy, she mumbled.

  In that event I shall embrace Cousin Harry with fatherly affection when he appears, and we shall take a glass of wine together.

  They did in fact do this; but Elkins suffered the guilt which he had not suffered when lying with Lucy. He spilled his silver cup of wine—Sutherland’s cup—before it was half empty, temporarily miserable. He thought that he should confess the enormity of his sin. Almost he struggled to speak awful words, to ask forgiveness of this wronged father; then the whole wide picture of agony near which and in which they had lived, rose before him. It was a persuasive mural in which life and death were elementals and essentials—not the practice of morality or of social or religious custom. He thought, Come, come, don’t be a child about this matter. He and Ira shook hands fervently on separating. Harry went to his room and slept with more bliss than he had known in sleep since first he sought duty at Andersonville.

  The Reverend Mr. Cato Dillard took delight in publishing the banns according to elderly Scottish procedure; this practice was approved by the presbytery. Cato almost regretted that he might not cry Lucy and Harry indefinitely; but rules said that they were to be cried on three successive Sundays, and that was enough; so he made the most of it. The Dillards approved contentedly of the match. Effie foresaw pleasant future episodes wherein Harrell Elkins might instruct her in medicinal procedures. Even so she rankled a little when she recalled his sport about toad ointment. . . . Cato Dillard gave opinion that each of the young pair was an excellent Christmas present to give to the other, albeit a trifle in advance of the season. Banns were cried on the twenty-seventh of November, on the fourth and eleventh of December. Cousin Harry entered a plea for a wedding on the twelfth, but Lucy said that they must wait until Wednesday the fourteenth. That was her mother’s birthday. It would give her the feeling that her mother was somehow part of this solemn joy, that Veronica Claffey was no longer a forlorn shrunken monster to be shuddered away from in thought.

  The Dillards arrived at the plantation Tuesday evening, accompanied by Laurel Tebbs, who had acquired the art of blushing whenever spoken to. She carried with pride a puckered bag of black silk, complete with drawstrings. This feminine delight had been given her by one of the neighboring Dennards of Americus, who found it among the effects of a recently deceased aunt. It now contained a pocket handkerchief actually dampened with cologne, and a square looking glass which said on the back: Compliments of Beglois & Sons, Cotton Brokers, Savannah, Ga. These things were Laurel’s personal property, she would not have parted with them under any circumstances. She had also a pill-box containing seven imitation garnet buttons which had come off an old gown of Mrs. Effie’s, and were a present to Laurel’s mother. Laurel was driven in style to the Tebbs place. Mrs. Dillard refused to allow her to spend the night there: she was sure that the widow must have retrogressed since October, she said that someone would call for Laurel at eight. . . . With Laurel safely bedded in Moses Claffey’s old room, the rest stayed round the fire a while. Cato Dillard quoted liberally from the Directory For Worship.

  Marriage is of a public nature.

  In her heart Lucy did not agree: she thought it rather a private affair.

  The welfare of civil society, said Mr. Dillard, fraying his whisker tufts between his fingers as he beamed, the happiness of families and the credit of religion are deeply interested in it.

  Well they should be, his wife agreed.

  Therefore, the purpose of marriage ought to be sufficiently published a proper time previously to the solemnization of it.

  I think that it has been sufficiently published in our case, Cousin Harry murmured sleepily. Three mortal Sundays.

  It is enjoined on all ministers to be careful that, in this matter, they neither transgress the laws of God nor the laws of the community.

  Cate, said Effie Dillard, you are an old blether! Away to bed with you. Away to bed with all of us.

  The wedding day dawned gray, murky, raw. There were to be few guests, there were few whom the Claffeys wanted for wedding guests. Elkins had been given leave of indulgence from his hospital duties for two days; he would not request more leave, though Lucy begged. He said stubbornly that he would not be happy for longer, he would be thinking of his patients, of what he might do for them. Of the fellow surgeons he invited only Dr. Crumbley, that slight brown-faced man with whom he had worked long, and who labored with earnestness approaching his own—not enforced by external strictness, but of the soul. Two loads of Americus Presbyterians came driving up in mid-forenoon. These were not people rooted deeply in affections of the Claffeys: they were merely people whom the Claffeys had known for long, and so a strong association was imagined if not practiced. Two of the younger women had gone to the Female Institute along with Lucy. There ensued a certain amount of embracing and tearful cooing . . . these social appurtenances were vague, meaningless. Lucy could observe them, they did not strike deep. She looked beyond the people, saw Harry’s luminous eyes smiling within their glass.

  That is all ye need to know, she misquoted gently when they were near each other again, ignoring the tangle of conversation.

  Truth is beauty, said Harry. God bless you.

  Bless you!

  He did that when He brought me to you.

  Shortly before the ceremony was to commence, the party received recruits. Ira it was who looked first through the window and saw them approaching: the stuffed rounded figure of a woman in ragged fringed shawl and broken-feathered bonnet, a woman dragging a small child in a cart which squeaked . . . the sullen black-haired youth teetering on crutches behind. The Tebbses! Ira whispered. Whom have we to thank for this?

  Lucy peeked with him at the window. I make no doubt, Poppy, that we have our dear Harry to thank. Remember his ministration to the girl? . . . She hurried out on the gallery.

  Miss Lucy, crowed Mag, we done heard about your going to get married! We do thank you, and the surgeon too, count of you all done so much for poor little Laurel. We hain’t got much to offer, but I made a wreath: wedding wreath, kind of. Twould be good for Christmas greens as well. . . . You Zoral! Let go that now!

  She snatched up a wreath which the boy had been plucking at. It was quite handsomely made, of dark holly with pine cones attached; the cones were tied with fragments of old ribbons.

  And Coral—he went and shot you a coon. They’re right good roasted now. Zoral, you yield up that coon, baby boy—tain’t your’n, belongs to Miss Lucy! Zoral screamed and struck when she took the dead raccoon from him.

  You’re much too kind and, oh so thoughtful, Lucy cried. I just naturally love roast coon! And such a pretty wreath! I declare, we’ve had no time to think of Christmas greens. . . . Ira came to make sure that Coral could negotiate the steps on his crutches. The three were escorted inside to become a portion of the Dearly Beloved Assembled.

  LIV

  The first memory which Meriwether Kinsman held was of a crooning. The song was played by a bird which adhered to topmost twigs of a vase-shaped elm which grew against a corner of the Kinsman cottage. The cottage was small, old, white-painted. The elm had grown large during years since the house was built, and swelling of its gray seamed trunk actually had pushed the cottage askew. Lichens were thick upon sh
ingles and on the north side of the elm’s trunk—it was hard to tell where trunk left off and shingles began. In this tree, almost a part of the house, the brownish-gray bird gave its fluting. A bird not only gray . . . tints of peach and blue . . . this was a mourning-dove which sang, although Meriwether Kinsman did not know its name, would not know it for years. The bird made promise of peace and strength intermingled; it blew upon an instrument, a wet wooden instrument. The boy was very young at the time, indeed it was his first memory. He was in bed, a ragged colored comforter over him. He remembered . . . he had been playing with the squares of material in the old crazy quilt. He bent and folded the cover in small hands, trying to match red with red, lilac with lilac. Then warbling came from on high.

  What is it? he thought. Oh, what is it?

  He was in his trundle bed, the quilt had been cut down to size. He rolled over the low edge of bed and ran to the open window, he pushed his tufted yellow head out of the open window, and looked up . . . space between the leaves, Merry could see all the way to the elm’s top because one branch had been broken in a recent storm. There lived the bird in earliest morning serenity against light sky. There it fifed its rich low tone. So it was his first memory. So Merry Kinsman would go fifing into Eternity.

  His mother was a widow, a bakeress, proud of telling how she was forty-two years old when her son Meriwether was born; she had not expected that she would ever have a child. Merry’s father died when the boy was a baby, died because he was drunk and caught his clothing ablaze in the middle of the night when he sought to prepare an oven fire. Promptly Mrs. Kinsman took over the full task of baking in which she had merely assisted before. The child’s next memories were of yeast and flour and dough—always dough—and great heat. And awareness also that in summer the Kinsmans had more money than in winter, because many wives of the village refused to bake themselves along with their bread; although they preferred to make their own bread in cooler weather.

  Merry went to school only until he was eleven. Then Mr. Adams, the miller at the edge of town, refused to let Mrs. Kinsman have any more meal or flour until her debt was paid, and Merry went to help at the mill. . . . There were sacks of grain stored in an upper story of the mill, and the sour-faced Mr. Adams instructed Merry to fetch the grain down to a lower floor, to pile sacks near the hopper. After dragging down only one of the lubberly sacks, and falling on the stairs and nearly breaking his back, the boy began to speculate upon some other method. The water gate was closed, the mill was not turning, Mr. Adams had gone to vote. Merry rigged a competent trough out of smooth-sawn planks and extended this trough on a slope from the upper story to the lower. He arranged an open sack at the bottom end, and began pouring grain into the trough above. By this means the entire burden was conveyed soon to its proper destination. Merry ran down to cord up each bag again when it was filled. Miller Adams returned at the moment the child was tightening the last sack in triumph. He did not praise Merry for his ingenuity. He said that the boy had demonstrated how lazy he was, and Mr. Adams would tolerate no lazybones about the place. He slapped Merry, to make him remember; then ordered him to drag all the sacks up the stair to their original position, and bring them down again, as he had been told to do in the first place. He said that this was a lesson which Meriwether Kinsman would not forget. It was in fact a good lesson: it taught Merry to avoid fiends in human form, such as Mr. Adams, whenever he could.

  Mr. Adams was a part of America . . . Merry preferred to forget that portion of America. He thought that America should be constituted of men and objects deserving of veneration. Some children worshipped guns which hung in their homes, and guns were a good thing, they were part of the Nation, a sustaining part; but Merry had something which he adored more. Toby Rambler bragged about his father’s rifle with its tawny maple stock, and stars and crescents of brass; and in Micah Jones’s house there was a Queen’s-arm above the fireplace. But neither these boys nor others owned a fife, and Merry Kinsman had a fife. It had belonged to Aaron Briggs, his mother’s father.

  He found the fife several years before—he was seven at the time, he was hunting peppermints. His mother had bought him peppermints as a Christmas treat. They were delectable wafers, odd as to shape, but bearing the same pink beauty and same pink taste. She said that Merry must not eat them all at once, he must save some for a rainy day. Well, a January thaw had set in, and this was a rainy day, with dark water drilling steadily into big pocked drifts around the cottage. Mrs. Kinsman was busy over pies, and no one restrained Merry as he explored for mints. Several high shelves hung on brackets in a corner of the parlor, and Merry had observed that often things were put up there to be kept out of his reach. He labored to put a smaller chair upon a larger chair, and then a hassock atop this structure. By such means he could clamber aloft, his seven-year-old eyes and fingers might proceed with their examining. He did not find the mints but he found something else. It was a stained tube of pale brown wood with a peculiarly-shaped hole cut near one end, and six smaller holes piercing the tube farther down. Rims of metal were inlaid at either end of the thing. It was a fascinating object, he did not know what it could be. It seemed that one might play upon it . . . he tried to blow in the end but no sound issued.

  Merry teetered on his crazy structure for too long. The hassock began to slide. Merry came down abruptly, chairs and all, in noise and pain. He howled, but the strange implement was unhurt in his hand. His mother rushed to see that he was not killed, then she gave him a spanking. Often she spanked him when still she had flour on her big angular hands; often his breeches were white on the seat, a fresh spanking would dust flour into the air like smoke. Merry roared until punishment was concluded, then forgot it promptly in wonder of the thing he had found.

  Ma, what is this?

  Tis Pa’s fife.

  What’s a fife?

  It makes music. My Pa—your Grandpa—played that when he was fighting gainst the British.

  I want to play music on it, Ma.

  Well, I don’t know how. But you can play with the fife, if you mind and keep it careful.

  She did indicate the one hole which should be blown upon, but Merry could not sound a note. He had a strange sensation that some utter beauty, some almost religious joy was being withheld from him. Was there no one in the neighborhood, or perhaps in all of Pennsylvania or in America or in the World—no one to show him how? It seemed that there was no one.

  The next summer an event of patriotic interest was celebrated in a grove beside the Susquehanna. (Ah, he loved the sound of the river’s name, he loved all those names: Wyalusing, Towanda, Mehoopany, Meshoppen. Lovely places, he had heard of them, their Indian sound sent a prickle through his being, they had the accent of America; so did Tunkhannock and Wyoming and Minooka. He thought of feathers and paint, and moccasins made from deer’s hide; he thought of birch bark, arrows whistling, a gobbling yell going up. He thought of Grandma Rummer’s house on the edge of the village across from the mill. It was the oldest house in town: there were logs under modern siding, and the original door still hung upon its great hand-forged hinges, a door low and narrow—tall men had to stoop—but thick, strengthened with iron. There was a deep triangular gash driven into this thick wood, and children were fond of gathering on the step and poking their fingers into the cut. Everyone knew the story. Indians had come speeding along that road, long ago . . . just before dawn, it was said, of an autumn day. A tall Indian with a hideous face dashed up the path to the Rummer house and tried to push open the door. When the door would not budge he yelled, he struck with his hatchet. Here was the mark to prove it. Did the Indian run away, did someone shoot him as he threatened on the doorstep? No one knew, least of all Grandma Rummer. She was deaf, aging. . . . Oh, yes, children, she’d say, in answer to questions. Twas in Grandpa’s time, but he’s long dead. Twas when he was young. That’s just where that red Indian hit with his tomahawk. And then the townsfolk banded together and drove the vill
ains off, and I’ve heard tell some was killed on both sides. . . . This was something to think about, in autumn, in mornings when mists of night still made their curving pattern above the shining Susquehanna. Oh, there were other towns of which men spoke: a place called Blackwalnut, a place called Sugar Run; there were Luther’s Mills and Eagle’s Mere and Greene’s Landing. They were not Indian names; but somehow they sounded like Indians, like America.)

  His mother might not attend the patriotic celebration; but she said that Merry could go along with the Rambler family, and she provided him with crullers and pies. Merry might trade with other children, and thus come in for his share of chicken and salad and cold spiced beef. His mother gave him a half-dime. He could buy lemonade if it were being sold.

  He rioted round the grove with other boys. Life was not a pic-nic for Meriwether Kinsman; indeed he had seen little of pic-nics, so he enjoyed this one utterly. . . . A cannon which some young men had dragged there . . . when it went off, it sounded like the hills along the Susquehanna falling apart. With throbbing ears and starting eyes Merry Kinsman peered through smoke to see whether indeed the hills were blown apart.

  But greater delectation lay ahead, it came marching. Distantly above squall and chatter in the grove sounded a high-pitched round-throated wailing. This wailing was sustained by a grumble: old voices of the past talking together in slamming monotone, talking of wars, talking of something native and peculiar to the landscape on which people stood and stared. A rude platform had been erected to hold speakers and other dignitaries; but the program was not yet commenced, and Merry Kinsman and a troop of other boys trampled on yellow planks, cutting capers. He was on the platform when he heard the distant piping and spasm of drums which came along. Then he was in air, floating through air as he leaped from the platform, floating through space as he ran toward the cart path which wound from the main road into this oak and chestnut wood. A homely procession appeared. People said, My, just look at the old soldiers! There were seven of the old soldiers, marching with a few younger men in blue uniforms. The old soldiers were not in uniform, although Uncle Dan Ellis was among them, and he wore a strange-shaped cap which Merry had never seen him wear in his butcher’s shop. Judge Ephraim Knowles was one of the old soldiers; truly he was not so old: there was not a glint of gray in his hair, his luxuriant brown beard bristled with challenge. Seven of the old soldiers walking together . . . they had fought the British, their noses had sniffed powder smoke. Uncle Dan Ellis was glad to show any child the place where a portion of his ear had been shot away, and where an old blue-silver streak raked behind his ear, where thin graying hair would not grow.