Death on the River

by John Wilson

  A rumble of complaint rises from the men, but Wirz ignores it, turns his horse and rides out the gates.

  “What does he mean?” I ask Billy.

  “The Regulators must have taken more than a hundred Raiders. I reckon old Wirz don’t want the trouble of lookin’ after them or decidin’ what to do with them, so he’s just throwin’ them back and keepin’ the six worst so that he can claim he’s doin’ somethin’. Word is, he’s already got lawyers and such, and a jury of new men all lined up. At least it should be some entertainment this afternoon.”

  I sit for the rest of the morning chewing thoughtfully on the coarse corn bread. It gives my stomach cramps, which are eased if I eat slowly. The salt pork I wolfed down before I was even halfway back to our shelter. Billy is off somewhere.

  I’m confused. On the one hand, I’m doing well. I have a shelter, I’m fitter than most of the men in Andersonville and I’m sure Billy and I can survive one way or another. On the other hand, my dreams are getting more complex and disturbing. And what if Billy had killed the crazy man last night; will that be something else on my conscience?

  But it’s Nathaniel who really bothers me. Nathaniel and Jim. Jim would never have let Billy kill the kid. But I’m not Jim, and Jim never knew what Hell is like. Decent human beings don’t live long here. You have to be tough to survive, and I aim to survive.

  “Come on, stop moping about. The fun’s about to start.” Billy slaps me on the shoulder and stuffs a bundle of sticks inside the lean-to.

  “Where did you get that?” I ask, pulling myself out of my self-pity.

  “Traded the crazy man’s buttons fer it,” Billy says with a smile. “Now come on, they’re about to let the Raiders back in, and the Regulators got a welcome party fer them.”

  All the way down I want desperately to ask Billy if he killed the crazy man last night, but I say nothing. I want even more not to know. That way, the ghosts in my dreams can’t blame me.

  Most of the camp is assembled on the hillside by the main gate to see what happens when the Raiders are let back in. Billy and I find a spot near the dead line where we have a decent view.

  The Regulators, and some who just have a grudge against the Raiders, form two long parallel lines stretching away from the gate. Everyone has a weapon—usually just a rough stick, but many have vicious-looking clubs that I suspect used to belong to the men who are about to have to run that gauntlet.

  We wait for a long time as the anticipation mounts for either vengeance or a spectacle to break the boredom. Eventually, the gates are thrown open and, one by one, the Raiders are forced into the compound.

  The first man, a large brute with a face that’s been in many fights already, takes a moment to realize what is expected of him, spits derisively, puts his head down and runs forward. The clubs and sticks rain down, but the man keeps going. Many of the stick-wielders seem intimidated by the man’s size and contempt, and hold back or only hit weakly. The man staggers and falls twice, but each time he gets up and continues. At length, bloody and bruised but still defiant, he reaches the end.

  The next man is small and skinny. He looks horrified at the spectacle facing him and begs to be let go.

  “I didn’t do nothin’,” he pleads. “I weren’t no Raider.”

  “Yes, you were,” a man in the line shouts. “You and Mosby stole my watch. Beat me unconscious. It’s your turn now.”

  The skinny man, encouraged by the guards’ bayonets, starts off down the line. He doesn’t run fast and moves from side to side, increasing the distance he has to cover. He’s down before he’s gone ten yards. He struggles to his feet and pleads with his attackers to stop. His screams and his weakness just seem to encourage the crowd and they attack him with much more vigor than the big man.

  The skinny man goes down four more times. The last time he doesn’t get up, just lies there, curled into a ball with his hands over his head, letting the blows rain down. I hear a loud crack, which is probably a bone in his arm breaking. He’s not even screaming anymore.

  Another man is pushed through the gate, and the crowd’s attention is focused on him. The skinny man manages to crawl through the surrounding men’s legs and escape.

  So it goes on all afternoon. Some men race down the middle, others try to break through the lines at each side. I count a dozen men who are beaten senseless and at least three who are probably dead.

  Occasionally Billy whispers a man’s name, but the only one I recognize is his old tentmate, Sam. He runs hard, cursing loudly as he goes, and escapes with not too severe a beating.

  Men drop out of the lines from exhaustion, but there are always others ready to pick up their bloody clubs and continue. Oddly, the crowd’s greatest fury is focused on the weakest. They seem to hold back when a large defiant man runs between the lines, but if someone shows the least weakness by pleading or whining, they show no mercy and go at him like a pack of wild dogs.

  “Glad I weren’t part of that,” Billy says after the spectacle is over and we are heading back to the shelter.

  “It was brutal,” I agree.

  “But ’tain’t nothin’ to what they’ll do to Mosby and the other five. They best hope Wirz and his lawyers and jury decide on a hangin’. Least that’d be a quick end.”

  JULY 1864

  TWELVE

  “It’s hangin’ day.” Billy sounds almost gleeful at the prospect. “Won’t be long now.”

  I scratch at the latest crop of louse bites and crawl out into the morning air. Soldiers and prisoners always have lice, but the crazy man’s blankets and lean-to are louse heaven. Ever since Billy and I moved in, we’ve been eaten alive. We’ve killed hundreds of the little blood-engorged creatures by running candle flames along the seams of our clothing or just holding our shirts and pants over the fire. The lice make a satisfying crackling pop, but there are always thousands more. We try not to scratch our skin raw, but the itching is unbearable.

  I look over the compound. Across the swamp, a gang of prisoners is busy putting the finishing touches to a scaffold. It’s a simple affair: a long stout beam has been set up about fifteen feet above the ground and six noosed ropes thrown over it. Below the nooses, a narrow platform made of two planks spans the distance between the uprights that support the beam. The planks are balanced on wooden cleats notched into the uprights. A crude set of steps leads up to the platform.

  Men with hammers stand beneath the platform, one on each side. When they knock the cleats out, the platform will drop and so will anyone standing on it— at least as far as the rope around their necks will allow.

  Mosby and the other five have been found guilty and sentenced to death. The trial was held outside the compound, but the men had lawyers selected from among the prisoners. Every day there was a line of men at the gate waiting to give evidence of what crimes they say Mosby and the others committed. By rights, I should have been with them, testifying about what happened to Nathaniel, but that would just put Billy on the scaffold with the others and then I would be alone.

  The jury was made up of men recently arrived by train. The idea is that they will not be biased, but every evening they are sent back into the compound, where they are surrounded by prisoners seeking news of the trial and where the Regulators make sure they know exactly what will happen if they don’t find Mosby and the others guilty. The trial finished yesterday, July 10, and today is hanging day.

  “Wonder what’ll happen to all that good timber after they string them up?” Billy ponders.

  “Do you think the Raiders will try and stop the hanging?” I ask.

  “If they’re real stupid, they might,” Billy says.

  “Stupid? There’s a hundred of ex-Raiders in the camp. Enough to overwhelm the guards at the scaffold.”

  “Look.” Billy points to the hillside up by the train station.

  I haven’t looked outside the stockade, but Wirz has been busy. All along the tree line, he has set up cannon facing down into the compound.

  “I
’ll wager those guns is primed with canister shot and grape,” Billy goes on. “If there’s a general riot, which there surely will be if the Raiders try anything, Wirz’ll give the order to fire. Least it’ll solve the overcrowding.” Billy laughs harshly.

  Quite a few local families are arriving on the hillside and setting up picnics where they can look in at us and the hanging. It’s almost a festive occasion.

  A commotion at the gate distracts me. The men are being led in, surrounded by armed Rebel guards and followed by Wirz on his white horse. The crowd surges forward amid shouts of “Hang them!” The guards force a way forward.

  Mosby looks completely unconcerned, glancing around and waving to friends in the crowd. The other five look terrified, staring wild-eyed at the scaffold.

  All of a sudden, one of the condemned men bursts through the line of guards and runs down the hill. He pushes surprised spectators aside and crashes through tents and lean-tos.

  I glance nervously up at the loaded cannons pointing at us and hope the officer up there is calm.

  The escapee doesn’t get far. He keeps just ahead of his pursuers until he arrives at the swamp. He plunges in, but sinks up to his thighs. A couple of Regulators grab him, hit him a couple of times and drag him back to the line.

  “Be a man,” Mosby shouts at him and the others. “Did you think you was goin’ to live forever?”

  At the foot of the scaffold the procession stops and Wirz addresses the crowd.

  “Here iz your men back, as I found zem. I have nossing more to do viz zis and vash my hands. Do viz zem az you vish.” He turns his horse and rides out of the compound, followed by the armed guards.

  The crowd lets out a low moan and surges forward.

  “They’re gonna tear them apart,” Billy says under his breath.

  But the man who led the Regulators to the Raiders’ camp climbs onto the scaffold steps.

  “Easy, boys. We want this done right. These men are guilty as hell and we have the trial to prove it. Now, we are prisoners, but we are still Union soldiers and we’ll act as such. Much as you all want your pound of flesh from these devils, we must hang them according to law. We ain’t savages.”

  This calms the crowd somewhat and they allow the men to be led up the steps. The legs of the man who ran don’t seem to be working too well and he has to be almost carried up.

  Eventually, the six are lined up on the board beneath the hanging nooses. A chaplain climbs up and begins reading something about leaving the cares of this world behind and preparing for the next, but no one pays him much attention.

  “Any last words, boys?” the Regulator leader asks cheerfully.

  Mosby remains silent, but the others shout out for mercy and forgiveness. All they get in return is abuse and curses. The man who had tried to run is sobbing uncontrollably and pleading for his life.

  “I hardly done nothin’,” he says.

  “You slit my brother’s throat for twenty dollars, you filthy scum,” a man in the crowd shouts to a roar of approval.

  “Enough,” the leader says.

  Six men step forward and tie the condemned men’s hands behind them. Then they slip coarse cornmeal sacks over their heads, slide the nooses down and tighten them. Everyone but the six leaves the scaffold.

  The crowd is silent, the only noise being the muffled sobbing from some of the men on the board.

  The men below hammer on the cleats and jump out of the way, the platform falls and, accompanied by an involuntary gasp from the crowd, the six figures drop.

  What happens next startles everybody watching. The drop is apparently not enough to break anyone’s neck. Five men strangle slowly, kicking and twisting grotesquely. The sixth, Mosby, proves more than his rope can bear and with a sharp snap he lands in a crumpled heap on the ground. Two men run forward, undo the noose and tear off the meal-sack hood.

  “He’s out cold but he’s still breathing,” one shouts.

  “Bring him round and do it again,” the leader commands.

  The crowd’s restless. They hadn’t expected this. I hear voices behind me saying, “It’s a sign” and “He ain’t meant to die.”

  Water is thrown in Mosby’s face and he opens his eyes.

  “Where am I?” he asks groggily. “Is this Heaven?”

  “You’re still in Hell,” someone shouts.

  Mosby looks up at the still struggling bodies of his companions and the beam where two men are busily rigging up a new noose.

  “Oh Christ, boys, don’t put me up there again.” All Mosby’s previous composure is gone. The man who terrified and murdered so many is a blubbering wreck, tears and snot pouring down his face, his neck raw from the first hanging. “God has spared me. Be merciful, please.”

  “God may not want him,” someone to my right shouts, “but Old Nick’s stoking the fires and sharpening his pitchfork. Make the rope strong this time, boys.”

  A few men laugh nervously.

  Mosby’s lifted back up onto the board and the new noose and meal sack placed over his head. He never stops sniveling and begging for mercy, even after his voice is muffled by the hood.

  This time the rope doesn’t break and Mosby hangs, twitching beside the others.

  With the entertainment over, men begin to drift away, but Billy makes no move. I look at him. He’s staring, wide-eyed, at the bodies turning slowly in the afternoon breeze.

  “You all right?” I ask.

  Billy shakes his head as if to clear it. “Ain’t never seen a hangin’ afore,” he says distantly. He turns to me. I’ve never seen him so serious. “I ain’t got but one fear in this world and that’s drownin’. Near enough the only memory I got of my daddy afore he drank hisself to death is the time our dog had pups.

  “She weren’t much of a dog, scrawny mutt with fleas, but I certainly loved that dog. When she had six pups, I thought we’d have a whole pack of dogs, but weren’t to be. One day my daddy took me and the pups down to the creek. Made me watch as he drowned the lot of them. I was cryin’ and screamin’ at him to stop, the pups were squealin’ and the old dog was whinin’ somethin’ fierce, but Daddy just kept goin’. He drowned them one by one, holding them under until they went limp. I could almost feel them little things strugglin’ to breathe with nothin’ but water all around.

  “Ever since that day, I’ve had a mortal terror of drownin’.”

  “Why is that bothering you so today?” I ask.

  “Because it struck me, watchin’ Mosby and the boys twitchin’ on the end of their ropes, that hangin’s much like drownin’, locked in the darkness of that hood with no air to be had. And I know well enough what wrongs I done in this place to survive. If I hadn’t met with you that day they attacked the Raiders, I could be swinging up there with the rest of them.”

  A shudder runs down Billy’s body. Then his mood passes.

  “Listen to me croakin’ on,” he says with a weak smile. “It’s done now.” He looks up at the dark clouds gathering to the west. “Looks like rain. Let’s you and me go and make up some cornmeal biscuits afore we get washed out.”

  He turns and strides up the hill, leaving me to think that he has human emotions after all.

  SEPTEMBER 1864

  THIRTEEN

  Billy and I learn a lot very quickly in Andersonville. I know Billy said he would teach me the rules, but those were the Raider rules. What we learn after the hangings are prisoner rules, how to survive on your own when people aren’t scared of you.

  First, never drink anything other than rainwater or water that’s been boiled. The water in the swamp is poison. More than a sip or two and you’re more than likely to die screaming as your guts turn inside out over the latrines. Diarrhea probably kills more men here than anything else. Fortunately, it rains a lot.

  Second, it’s impossible to survive on the rations that Wirz gives us. A piece of corn bread the size of a half brick and the occasional small piece of salt pork is not enough to keep a man alive. It will for a while, but then g
ums begin to bleed, teeth fall out, old scars open up and scurvy takes hold.

  Third, burn every scrap you can beg, steal or barter to make a fire as often as possible. This is not only to boil water and dry out occasionally from the eternal rain, but also to kill as many lice as possible. It’s futile, you can never get them all, but men who don’t kill as many as they can are more likely to get the shivering fever, and that’s a death warrant.

  Fourth, do everything you can to get a chore outside the stockade. That gives you a chance to barter with the guards or collect a scrap of wood.

  Dozens are dying every day, too many even for the dead carts. The bodies are simply dragged or carried down to the gate and dumped, naked, of course— clothes are too valuable to leave on the dead. What is important is to tie a note onto a toe with the man’s name scratched on it. That way, he will at least have a tombstone.

  Billy and I have quite a thriving business taking bodies down to the gate. Few want to use precious energy dragging a body all the way across the compound, so they are happy enough to let us have the corpse’s rags in return for placing a note on the toe and removing the body.

  The rags are valuable, as almost everyone who has been here over a few weeks is near naked now. Only new arrivals are well-dressed, and they are continually pestered by beggars and men wanting to trade for socks, a shirt or a jacket. Bargaining rarely works; new men don’t yet realize how valuable a handful of brass buttons can be.

  I’m sitting outside our lean-to, making a sewing needle. It’s a sliver of bone that I have been grinding on a stone for three days now. Tomorrow I will start the slow process of drilling a tiny hole in one end.

  Best part of a week to make a needle! Back home, it took a few cents and a minute of time to buy a good steel needle at the store in Broadalbin. It occurs to me that in here we are living like our caveman ancestors did thousands of years ago.