Andersonville

by MacKinlay Kantor

  Face said, Here is a bit of raw potato. It would be good for you—raw sweet potato—if you can but get it down. Merry tried to gnaw the fragment, but another of his teeth came out and the contact hurt his mouth. He gave up with a groan. . . . Face had a knife, the knife scraped and scraped: you could hear the dragging sound of that blade on hard substance of potato. Shredded filaments were injected into Merry’s mouth; in this fashion he could swallow them. There came a noble keen spicy taste. He hoped that his eyes, though deeply receded in a swollen countenance, could look appreciation.

  Once he saw something else clearly. The face had withdrawn mistily, had become a bread board. That bread board stood upon a shelf in the Widow Kinsman’s kitchen. The old German lady, who tended Merry when his hand was frozen, had given it to Mrs. Kinsman. It was carved of pale wood—a perfect circle. It was really a plate to be put upon the table, with little flowers and vines growing in carved wood around the edge. The cut-out letters read: Gib uns heute unset täglich Brod, and that meant give us our daily bread, or something of the sort. It was the only German which Merry knew. He associated it in his mind because the wooden bread plate was round and the surgeon’s wafers of glass before his eyes were round. It was odd to think of scraped sweet potato as being daily bread.

  Merry became alert in imagination during his last hours. Because he had poetry in his nature, and the simple selfless courage sometimes evinced by good children who have a love of life, he could depart from personal tragedy and forget utterly the strain which disease put upon his carcass. He saw himself as a symbol of a proud manner of living. . . . Fifes were good, he thought, because of what they taught and the way they sounded. There needed to be no other reason for the existence of such music. . . . It did not occur to him that other boys in other lands had felt the same about their lands. Meriwether Kinsman’s honor and his faith were one with those of an Iroquois or a Delaware: he thought that his Nation was the best, that was all there was to it. It was the best because it was the best. Also because it abounded, or had abounded, in moose and wild turkeys, in mountainous wagons rumbling west, in long rifles to guard the wagons.

  In this time the world turned into a picture which Merry thought someone should paint, he felt that it would be painted in the future. Perhaps even now somewhere there wandered a young veteran like himself who ached with the same vague unreasonable impractical dream which had occupied Merry Kinsman since first he stood, jumped and ran within that Pennsylvania grove, since first he heard fifes and drums. It was a dream unfounded in necessity (he hated the idea of necessity because necessity had ruled his childhood) and would pay a penny to no one (he hated the idea of pennies because men like Mr. Adams were always counting them). His dream took the form of marching men, old and young, who hammered drumheads and blew upon a fife. One was of the stamp of the dearly recalled Abijah Parker; he was the tallest. There was blood upon a bandage, bright blood shed willingly as Merry had shed his driblets of blood above the soil of his native Pennsylvania. There was smoke of cannon, men came through it. Dead and dying were upon the ground, wreckage of war littered the earth, bullets made their harsh quick raahhhhh, screaming off into terrible space. Somewhere sometime an artist might paint this picture; never could he paint the sound; other men and boys would have to fight in other wars, in order to pick up the sound again. Will ever our dear fifes be silent? Merry Kinsman wondered . . . somehow weakly he feared that they would be. Brass bands, he thought. Too many folks like their noise; and also there are the music boxes. . . .

  But in distance were desert places and fabled mountains, so still the eagles and the hawks would cling to wild free air. They would hang high, wide of wing, angry of beak, ready to assault any force which came to threaten America. But— Why, he thought, I sought to destroy Americans by bolstering an attack with my melodies! And now, in captivity, Americans have destroyed me. I would weep at this awful knowledge, but somehow am too weak to weep. They have destroyed me—Southerners have killed me dead—Southerners, but still Americans. And how many bullets did the One Hundred and Forty-eighth Pennsylvania put into Southerners’ skins? Too many, he thought, too many; so they have taken revenge.

  He lay quietly, hearing nothing of the mutter and squeal beneath that canvas and sagging scraps of pine, until the surgeon came again.

  So you’re still with us, the queer voice came down to Merry’s ears.

  Yes. He could let a whisper steal from his rotting mouth. He wanted to add something about, I’m still here but shan’t be for long, but could not find the words, could not summon strength to send forth the words. He felt that familiar solution of vinegar and salt wetting the great black mass of tissue from which his teeth had fallen out. Trickle found its way into his throat, there was a taste, he swallowed, it tasted good. Oh, how good it tasted. Chore name? he asked. It was his way of saying, What is your name? and it was strange to think that he had never asked before, he had never considered that Face might have a name.

  My name, lad? Elkins. The surgeon floated away.

  Merry Kinsman stood motionless upon a formless plane. Now, he thought, I am removed from the earth, am here with the eagles. He looked down and saw a crowded mass of filthy skeletons, young and old—most of them were young skeletons—with blackened hide drawn tight, hide still trying to cover the bones and not always succeeding, for some of the bones had broken through the hide, and were oozing and raw. Up with the eagles, he said. He heard a rush and snap of their wings. He looked down and saw the surgeon return, saw his own shape lying, saw the surgeon bending, saw him straighten and turn and summon an orderly. Together surgeon and orderly picked up the wisp of Merry Kinsman, a piece of canvas was slid beneath; they carried the wisp out from under the sagging canopy; later two other ragged orderlies carried it still farther; but the watching Merry had lost interest, was turned away, did not care where they carried it.

  Jefferson and Liberty, said the unmistakable voice of Abijah Parker beside him.

  I hain’t forgotten!

  Six-eight! The drums’ll catch us.

  Merry’s fife was pressed into his hands, his hands were grown strong again. Uncle Bijah played the first three notes alone, then Merry joined him. They strode off together through the smoke, drums thudding and booming beside and behind them.

  LV

  Late in the autumn of 1864, John Winder had established his headquarters at Millen, Georgia, rather than at Florence, South Carolina. His new title of commissary-general of all prisoners east of the Mississippi brought with it a complete assumption of command, giving him full latitude. As he had told Henry Wirz in early September, the designation of the new prison at Millen was Camp Lawton. Here the superintendent, a lieutenant named Boyce, held some misguided notion that Yankees could make pretension to the estate of Man. In vain did General Winder attempt to dispel this idea: Boyce was a gentleman. John Winder would have loved to remove him, but literally there was not another officer to take the post.

  Mortality at Camp Lawton was enormous despite improved internal conditions. Prisoners died of wounds, they died because Andersonville had wounded them. . . . Within the stockade nothing was known concerning Sherman’s advance. No fresh fish came to carry news; no fish had come excepting unfresh fish from Andersonville. Winder established grotesque but effective penalties, forbidding the circulation of gossip on the Sherman situation to any of the prisoners. Therefore they were not hard to handle when, at three o’clock of a drizzly morning in late November, the first detachments were routed out and herded to the cars. Within a day or two the entire living population of the stockade had been removed to Savannah. At first it was thought that they could be left there with safety. This was not to be: Sherman aimed at Savannah.

  General Winder traveled up to South Carolina as speedily as possible. There, with the Florence superintendent, he arranged for eventual reception of Andersonville-Millen prisoners. Without difficulty he infected red-headed Lieutenant Barrett with his own vic
iousness. This was simple to accomplish: Barrett had practiced cruel arts since he was a child.

  Barrett’s latest exhibition of native tolerance and charity concerned a rumored tunnel. The tunnel could not be found, but Barrett was convinced that it was there. General Winder filled his subordinate’s ears with mumblings concerning successful tunnels at Andersonville, by which means allegedly hordes of Yankees had crept forth to despoil the Confederacy. Barrett ordered all rations withheld from the stockade’s population until the tunnel-makers should voluntarily give themselves up to justice. After several days of enforced starvation (during which many of the more sickly were released from pangs by the most obvious means) sturdier Unionists banded together and selected four tunnel-makers by lot. In the interests of community survival these four marched to the gate and were delivered to the tenderness of the red-haired Lieutenant Barrett. His charity was exemplified promptly: he hung them by their thumbs for only two hours. He might have kept them hanging for five hours, but after two hours even he had become wearied of their yells.

  Like Andersonville the prison at Florence was a parallelogram composed of pine trunks. Prisoners declared that the Confederates were the God damnedest people to go around standing logs on end. Fifteen acres of ground were enclosed by the palisade, including the inevitable creek, swamp, deadline area. No sentry stations bloomed atop the fence: there were only platforms for cannon at four corners. Earth had been shoveled against the outside of the pen in a high embankment; along this elevation guards walked their posts, beating a deep path into the mound. It had been difficult for John Winder to hoist himself to the eyries of Andersonville. Here there were easy twisting trails by which he might ascend. So he could stand, top of the stockade breast-high against his thick body . . . he could rest stained hands on the axed ends of logs, and peer down at the seething shivering herd.

  Sir. They resemble a bunch of rats, don’t they?

  A slippery sucking voice had spoken beside him. The general twisted his head, glowered. Who’re you?

  Excuse me, sir! I’m afraid I shouldn’t have intruded on your thoughts. I apologize humbly.

  ...He had the manner of a pawnbroker. Or he was a man with something to sell . . . you did not know what he was selling . . . manner of a pawnbroker. Or else the manner of the weakling who approaches a pawnbroker, trusting to receive more than the pledging of the trophy is worth, knowing that he will never redeem it . . . perhaps he has stolen it. . . .

  Here was the man who would bring John Winder to his end.

  He was Sammons Kight, native to the Florence region. His miserly father and elder brother kept this incompetent on short fare. Sam Kight was forty-one, he looked older. His shoulders slumped, arms were limp, his belly jutted under the shabby long gray winter coat.

  God damn it! Can’t you answer with civility? I said—who are you?

  Captain Kight, sir. Excuse me—I assist your adjutant—

  Without saluting or assuming the semblance of military posture, Kight removed his crushed felt hat. You could see his bald tight scalp glistening even in steady wind of February. Tendrils of brown hair lay brushed silkily across his bald head, brushed laboriously. Kight had a flat nose with hollow fuzzy nostrils; he wore a shaggy mustache; his mouth and chin disappeared beneath the mustache. He wore greasy spectacles, glasses cut into flat ellipses within brass frames; the window caging the right eye had been shattered, glued together again.

  Captain Kight was married to a wisp of a woman whose father had married her off to him because of his own father’s wealth. None of the wealth had come their way. This woman drudged through cares of a numerous household aided only by two bungling Negresses, one of whom was quarter-witted. Rooms of their cavernous home were encrusted with religious mottoes. Bible reading occurred night and morning, Grace was spoken before each meal, Thanks rendered afterward. Agony rose from the Kight place on Sunday afternoons when one child or another was discovered in some activity deemed detrimental to the Sabbath, and was flayed accordingly. Mr. Sammons Kight held an office in the Baptist church, he was superintendent of the Sunday School. He respected the term Loving Kindness which he mumbled as a single word. He droned it long, pushed out his small lips under brindled hair whenever he spoke the term.

  What you want with me? Hey?

  Nothing, General Winder. . . . Nothing at all. . . . I was off duty . . . merely looking . . . at the prisoners.

  Kight put his life into his throat.

  General, allow me a question? One can see that most of them are villains—shockingly depraved— And yet— Would it be possible for the Word of God to lighten their souls?

  He went on eagerly: A service of prayer, perhaps even a sermon attuned to their needs? I would be willing to volunteer! I know of others who—

  No God in any of their souls! They haven’t got any souls! Now you go way!

  Yes, General. Yes, yes. Of course—

  The captain went gliding along the sentries’ path. . . . He had seen Winder many times across the breadth of a room. He had risen, bowed, smirked, had been ignored. Nevertheless he felt fearfully that something was now accomplished. Winder at least knew who he was.

  Meat supply dwindled in the Kight family. It was decided to do a certain amount of butchering in mid-winter to supplement sides and hams still remaining from the first butchering of the season. Accordingly six hogs were chased and roped in woodland adjoining the country homestead of Sam Kight’s father. A single carcass fell to the share of Sammons Kight.

  Even this was enough to awaken excitement in his spindly children when they heard the good news.

  Mr. Kight, asked his wife drearily, Is your Pa giving us a whole hog, sure enough?

  So he says. Sam drank dregs of grain coffee.

  I am glad! All the little ones have just been a-begging and a-begging. We’re so shy of meat these days.

  A great hope had risen within Sam Kight—a brilliant idea with which he was toying. Through natural inclination and sad experience he had grown to accept the truth: value and importance could not be gained in this world without the coöperation, even the benevolence, of higher stronger authority. Sammons Kight was mightily afraid of God, he believed that other men awarded veneration to God solely because also they were terrified by Him. In turn Sam was afraid of his father. Early in life he had learned that his father would award him no benefit unless he was pleased with him . . . to this office of giving pleasure Sam obtained but rarely.

  He had hoped to be a minister. His father would not hear of it. Ministers earned but little money. . . . Sam studied long, he’d studied earnestly if ineffectually for the Law. He had failed each time he was examined. Old Kight roared, thrust him into the small ironmongery which he owned in Florence. Sammons had undertaken later to manage a tobacco farm belonging to his brother. He failed with one crop after another. Until this last winter of the war he failed at everything he undertook, except his superintendency of the Sunday School (in that also he would have been accounted a failure, had anyone been willing to consult the children). In 1862 Sam marched off to war, racked by ordeals awaiting him . . . he fell sick, lay near death. Eventually he was sent home, discharged as an invalid. Now in this fourth winter he was delighted to be addressed as Captain. The bottom of the barrel had been scraped. Sammons Kight was one of the scrapings.

  But suppose he reached a higher situation in the military establishment? Suppose he was awarded field grade? . . . Captains were a dime a dozen. There were even captains who could barely read! And he, Sam Kight, had read Law for a time in the office of a man who later went to the Confederate Congress!

  Suppose he were to be made a major? Generals had it in their power to award promotions. Suppose that Sam Kight pleased General Winder? He had scarcely been able to please anybody. . . .

  As kindling for fire of his plan he could assemble only a few shreds of conversation: laughing and rather scornful conversation which pa
ssed between the adjutant and Winder’s son, when one day that worthy sat beside the adjutant’s desk.

  But if the statement which he had heard were true . . . Sam became inattentive to clerical duties, he snapped at his children when they were restless during evening Bible reading at home (he was quartered in his own house, there was no other place for him). Later he took little Ocie into a bed chamber and whipped him with his belt: Ocie had sneezed repeatedly during the long prayer which followed Bible reading. Kight intoned a new prayer over the moaning child, put on his belt, went to the kitchen shanty to inspect a hog’s carcass which hung outside the door. It had been fetched, drawn but not quartered, from the senior Kight’s homestead that evening. Sam put his pale hand upon the pebbled clammy hide, he inspected the chopped ends of ribs, he thought of General Winder. He looked at scrubbed cloven hoofs, he thought of the Devil, he thought also of General Winder, he thought of pickled pig’s-feet.

  Captain Sam Kight was up betimes the next day, giving orders to a reluctant wife. He badgered her into acceptance of a task far beyond her strength and beyond the abilities of the two wenches.

  He was nervous through the morning, blotting reports which he copied. His hands shook. He dropped a sand-filled bottle which they used as a paperweight, and broke it . . . the adjutant spoke biting words. With his own hands Sammons Kight swept up the glass and sand; he did not ask a subordinate to do it, though there were two corporals in the office.