The Forever Tree

by Bittner, Rosanne

  There was a little more, but she refolded the letter, for she knew it by heart. She put it back into her pocket and put a hand to her chest, taking a deep breath against the pain she felt there. It hit her whenever she realized that Will could already be dead and she wouldn’t even know it. The ache sent shooting pains throughout her, body, and she wondered if she would ever again know the happiness of their first years of marriage. Now, with her father ailing…

  Her thoughts were interrupted when Marcus Enders came into the study. “How is he, Dr. Enders?”

  The man rubbed at a several-days’ growth of beard. He looked older than his years, his face puffier and his eyes redder than ever. It had taken him a while to get there that morning, and as soon as he had arrived, Santana had known he had a terrible hangover. She had ordered men to douse him with water, fill him with coffee and food, and sober him up enough to get him to the house, for all that morning her father had had a great deal of trouble breathing. She’d wanted to scream at Enders for being so undependable, but when he was sober he did good work, and he had gotten her through four births successfully. He was the only person she could turn to for help, being so far from the city, and she did feel sympathy for him, knowing the sorrow that drove him to liquor.

  Enders shook his head. “Your father’s condition is not good,” he said, “but he’s breathing better now.” He stepped closer. “To the best of my knowledge, it’s his heart. I think it’s just gradually giving out on him. He will probably have spells when he feels better, and there is no way to predict how long he has, Santana. I wish I could be more specific, but it’s just a gradual process, a few good days, more bad ones. The best thing he can do is not overexert himself. He needs rest, and he really should stay in bed from here on, although knowing Dominic, he won’t do that. He’s too proud to lie around waiting for death.”

  Santana sighed, forcing herself not to panic at the thought of her father dying. It just did not seem possible. He had always been an energetic, robust man. “I will do what I can to keep him still and calm. I know that he worries about Will.”

  “We all worry about him and Gerald, Santana. I sincerely hope he comes home soon, and in one piece.”

  She looked back out the window at the rain. In spite of vowing not to go back to San Francisco again without Will, she had gone twice more, out of a need to keep busy and to check on Will’s many holdings there. The last time she was there she had gone to a rally of Union supporters. There were men there who had seen the war close up, wounded men returned home, one with a leg missing; another an arm; one with a horrible scar on his face from a bullet wound, one eye missing and sewn shut. She wished she never had gone. “Thank you,” she answered. “I know that you care.”

  “I like Will. He’s a good man, an honest one, and brave. He’s strong, Santana, and smart. He’ll do all right, I’m sure. He’ll come riding home any day now, I’ll bet. They say this war can’t last much longer. They’ve got the South in a rout now, and the Confederates are out of money and resources. It’s only a matter of time. In the meantime, I’ll do what I can to make your father comfortable and keep him alive. I know he’d like to live long enough to see Will again.”

  Pain swept through her heart. She knew what he meant. Dominic Alcala truly was dying, and Enders feared he might not even live long enough to see Will. Never had she felt so alone. Outside thunder rolled, and she thought how Will had written in an earlier letter that the sound of cannon and gunfire during battle was like a terrible thunder, a constant vibration that shook the earth and left a man nearly deaf for several hours afterward.

  “He will see my husband again,” she answered, needing to believe it was so. “You must be right, Dr. Enders. Such a terrible war cannot go on much longer. Surely God will end the bloodbath and bring my Will home to me.” She rose from the window seat and walked closer to Enders. “I am going to the chapel now to light another candle for Will, and one for my father. Thank you for your help.”

  The man reddened a little, running a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t much help today. I’m sorry.”

  Santana smiled softly for him. “You helped me deliver four healthy children, and you saved Will’s life more than once. You have nothing to be sorry about. I am the one who is sorry, for being so impatient with you. I understand there is little you can do about my father’s illness. Even so, I feel better knowing that you are here.”

  She left him, going into her bedroom and putting on a cape with a hood. When she walked past her father’s bedroom, she peeked inside. He was sleeping. That was good. She walked to the other side of the house, down a hallway to a large bedroom where Louisa and Delores played with the children, using building blocks and paints to keep them busy and quiet so that they did not disturb their grandfather. Rather than cause a commotion by going inside, she quietly turned away and went to the double front doors. She stepped into the portico, remembering the day Will had come storming through there and into the house to drag Dominic and Hugo into her father’s study, where he announced he would challenge Hugo for her hand in marriage.

  There were so many good memories in this house. Surely God had not brought Will to her only to take him away at such a young age. She was only twenty-six. Will was thirty-five. She remembered how at sixteen she thought that was old, but now it did not seem so. And Will had the body, energy, and spirit of a much younger man…at least, he had when he left. What was he like now? Where was he? How was he? Not knowing was such torture, and her only solace was to pray. She put up her hood and ducked out into the rain to walk to the chapel.

  Twenty

  September 1864…

  Will walked to the stream from which everyone at Andersonville drew his drinking and bathing water. Half the time the stream was just a trickle, so that a man could never get enough water to last even a day. With over thirty thousand men crammed into the prison camp, the water supply had gone down to almost nothing in the late-summer heat. The night before, there had been a terrific rainstorm, and the stream was swollen again, but now it was muddy.

  Will dreamed of bathing in the tin tub at home with Santana. He’d gotten to the point where thoughts of the tiniest pleasures were all that kept him going—a real bath in hot water with soap; cold, fresh water to drink; a good smoke and a glass of bourbon; his children’s smiles; the feel of his wife lying beside him, soft and beautiful, smelling like roses. He remained kneeling beside the stream, staring at the canteen, wondering if he would ever again know any of those things.

  There were no good sights or smells at Andersonville, only stink and ugliness and agony. The food was rotten, and there was little of it. There were no trees for shade. They sweltered under the hot Georgia sun, fought insects at night, fought insanity twenty-four hours a day. Men were crowded so tightly onto this barren piece of land that there was just enough room either to pitch a tent, using sticks, blankets, and pieces of clothing, or to dig a hole for shelter, covering it with blankets or shirts. Disease was rampant. Some men, including himself at times, spent half the day sitting on the latrine because of dysentery. Will figured any number of things caused the men to be almost constantly sick. It could be the food, the insects, the muddy water they drank. He guessed it was the water, because the long trench that had been dug for the latrine ran right alongside the very stream from which they drank, a stream that was called, ironically, Sweet Water Branch. Those in charge of the prison camp also used the stream as a garbage dump.

  Living at Andersonville consisted of only a couple of choices. To make shelter and try to survive, or to give up and die, either from thirst by refusing to drink the horrid water, or from dehydration brought on by dysentery because of the water. There was a shortage of everything—food, clothing, medical care. Many who were brought there were already wounded, wounds that were never tended. Mosquitoes, lice, and fleas were everywhere, and at night the air literally buzzed with millions of biting insects. Will estimated that just about every fifteen minutes another man died. In the mere fou
r months he had been there, nearly five thousand had died, buried without coffins, piled on top of other dead bodies in shallow trenches. Several times he had been assigned to burial detail, and he had learned to harden his heart against the sight.

  Right now men were dying at the rate of one hundred per day, yet in spite of the thousands who died, there never seemed to be any more room. Every dead man was replaced by a new prisoner, sometimes two. It made Will wonder how it could be true that the Union was supposedly winning the war. If and when this horror finally did end, he supposed there was one man who had better make a hasty retreat, for every man at the prison camp longed to kill him. He was Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of the camp, a native of Switzerland who had served in various European armies. What was so perversely ironic was that Wirz had actually been a physician at one time in Louisiana, yet now he let wounded men suffer and die with no help. He was a cruel disciplinarian, and Will supposed his mean temper and ugly attitude came from the fact that Wirz himself had been wounded at Seven Pines in ’62, leaving him with one useless arm and in constant pain. He was an angry man, whose voice everyone dreaded, and whose thick accent the men often mocked. They all hated him.

  Will had often thought about escape, as had everyone, but because of the layout of the prison, it was out of the question. The entire border of the compound was enclosed by two fences, an outer stockade fence and, fifteen feet inside that one, a simple border fence made of posts and a rail. That inner fence was called the dead line. The area between the inner fence and the stockade wall was well-guarded, night and day. The minute any man even went near the dead line, he was shot without question. Some had tested it, all had died. Because the compound was situated on a high plain with no trees or shrubs behind which to hide, and no buildings to use for shelter, it was also impossible for a man to try to dig his way out. Every movement could be seen. Will had considered trying to escape when he was on burial detail, since the burial grounds were north of the stockade, outside of the compound; but again, there were simply too many armed guards for a man already weakened from starvation and sickness to try to fight or flee.

  “Major Lassater!” A private by the name of Tim Sibly, a boy of only seventeen who had latched on to Will like a son, walked up to him, carrying his own canteen. “Here you are. I fell asleep.” The boy leaned down to fill the canteen. “Are you all right today, Major?”

  Will looked around at the mass of lean-tos and the men lying down in their meager shade. More men were lined along the latrine, sitting side by side, having long ago given up any sense of modesty. “As well as can be expected,” he answered Tim.

  “I shook out the blankets, sir, and I managed to swipe a couple of poles from a lean-to where two men had just died. I used them to prop up our cover blanket so there’s more fresh air and light in the hole, instead of it being so damn dark and stifling when we have to pull the blanket over it for shade.”

  Will grinned, thinking how the boy’s friendship had helped him bear this ordeal. They shared a hole in the ground, Will having decided that living under the earth was a better way to avoid insects at night. Among the prisoners there was an unspoken code of respect for each man’s shelter, so that no one stole blankets or other supplies when any man left his “home” for any reason. The only time men took from another was when someone had died and no longer needed his supplies.

  “Good idea,” he told Tim. The boy smiled, but Will could see the fear and loneliness in his brown eyes. Tim was from Ohio, a lanky young man who talked often about his family, his mother and his two brothers and three sisters, all younger than he. His father was a farmer, and Will could tell he missed the man very much. Will enjoyed Tim’s company, and they had had many long talks at night. It felt good to be able to tell someone about California, Santana, his children, the mills. Talking about those things gave him hope that one day he would be home.

  That was the greatest fear of every man there, that he might never make it back home, that this hellhole was where he would meet his inglorious death and be buried in a mass grave with hundreds of other bodies, never to make it home again, never to see his loved ones, who wouldn’t even know where he was buried.

  “We’d better head back,” Will said, rising. He and Tim both turned as they heard the guards shouting for men to get out of the way. More prisoners were being brought in. Wirz was already at the entrance to the compound, marching stiffly back and forth.

  “Let’s go greet them, see who we’ve got,” Will said to Tim. New arrivals were always a diversion, and every man in camp jumped at anything that broke up the monotony of the day.

  Will and Tim headed to where the newcomers had stumbled or been pushed inside the compound. Will counted ten men, many of them with bandaged arms or legs or heads. One of them stirred a feeling of familiarity in his soul, but he wasn’t sure how he might know him, since he couldn’t fully see the new prisoner’s face. Bandages were wrapped around the left half of his head, from under his chin and around the skull, covering his left eye, and there was an odd bulging scar across his right cheekbone, distorting his face. Still, his build, his mouth…

  Will walked closer, until a guard shoved a rifle butt against his stomach. “That’s far enough,” he ordered. Will checked his anger as he waited for Wirz to perform his almost-daily routine of informing the new prisoners of the camp rules. The man strutted and swore in his thick Swedish accent, telling the new men that “If you got-dam blue-bellies even go near the det line, my men blow you to hell. You learn the rules, or you get no rations. One blanket each man. You wounded ones, long as you can walk, you got no need for a doctor. My hospital is full. Can’t take no more. You all look well enough to me.” He ordered his men to give each prisoner one blanket, then told the prisoners where to go to get their first day’s rations.

  During the several minutes that Wirz spoke, Will kept watching the man with the bandaged eye, his heart pounding with a mixture of hope and horror—hope that it was who he thought it was, horror that if it was Gerald, he had apparently received a terrible injury. He handed his canteen to Tim. “Stay here,” he said.

  “But, Major—”

  Will ignored everyone around him, including the guard who had warned him not to go any farther. He had to know! Charging past the guard, past Wirz, he grabbed the arms of the wounded man. “Gerald?”

  He knew in an instant, by the look in the man’s good eye, that it was indeed his brother, but there was no chance to talk. He felt the blow to his lower back as a guard slammed his rifle butt into him. “What the hell do you think you’re doin’, blue-belly?”

  “Who is dat man?” Wirz demanded.

  “It’s that Major Lassater,” Will heard someone say. He dropped to his knees, the pain in his back making everything dark and confused.

  “My brother…” he mumbled.

  “Will! My God, is it you?”

  Will felt Gerald’s presence, but there was no time even to look up at him, to embrace him. Wirz shouted to the guards to “Teach those men a lesson,” then came the blows. Will could hear Tim somewhere in the background yelling at the guards to leave him alone, but it wasn’t his own beating that infuriated him. It was the fact that they must also be beating Gerald, who was already wounded and who had done nothing wrong. He covered his head and waited for the blows to stop, then heard Wirz telling the rest of the prisoners, “This is what happens when you go against the rules. Take your blankets now and make your shelters!”

  Will felt men mingling around him, heard Tim’s voice close by. “Major! Let me help you!”

  “Gerald,” Will muttered. He managed to get to his knees, his whole body in a rage of pain from blows to his back, his ribs, his stomach. He tried to focus his eyes and saw a man with a bandaged face lying beside him. He leaned over him, touching his hair, some of which was stiff with dried blood. In spite of the bandages and the ugly scar, he could see it was Gerald. “My God,” he groaned, bending over and pulling the man into his arms.

  “Will,�
� Gerald whispered.

  Will just held him, glad to know he was still alive. But for how long? What was the extent of his injuries? “I’ll take you to my shelter,” he said. “We’ll be all right, Gerald. God brought you here so we could be together, and we’ll get out of this place. We’ll go home together, home to California, to Santana and Agatha and our children. This is a good sign. A good sign. God has let us find each other.”

  Men backed away, leaving the brothers alone, but Tim knelt beside Will, tears in his own eyes at the sad reunion.

  “Tell…Aggie…love her…sorry,” Gerald muttered.

  Will’s whole body jerked with a sob, and he raised up to look into his brother’s one eye. He wiped at tears, forcing himself to ignore the pain that ate at every bone and muscle. It didn’t matter where they were, or that he’d taken a beating just because he’d recognized his brother. The important thing was that Gerald was there, they were together. “You’ll tell her yourself, Gerald, when we go home.”

  A tear slipped out of Gerald’s eye. “No,” he answered weakly. “Not…like this. I won’t go home…like this. Half my face…my eye…gone. I can’t ever…go home.”

  Will grabbed at his own ribs for a moment, taking a deep breath against the pain. “Yes, you can, Gerald. We have money. We’ll get you the best surgeons to fix you up.”

  “No doctor…can fix this,” Gerald answered, putting a hand to his bandages. “You haven’t seen…haven’t seen.”