by John Wilson
It’s raining steadily, and every little while I take off my shirt and wring the water out into a large tin beside the lean-to. This is how we collect drinking water. Lice get wrung out too and scoot around on the surface. I’ll fish them out before I next drink.
“Come on, Jake, boy. We’ve got a job.” Billy beckons me from down the hill. I carefully place the needle to one side and stand up. It’s a painful process; my joints hurt and I feel dizzy from the effort. It’s the first sign of scurvy. I need to get some fresh food soon.
“This’s a bad’un,” Billy says when I join him, “but I got me a plan.” He winks at me with one large sunken eye. “And look what I got to trade.” Billy holds out his hand. In the palm is a shiny quarter.
“Where did you get that?” I ask in awe. This is the most valuable thing I’ve seen in weeks.
“Found it down by the swamp,” Billy says casually. “Lucky, eh?”
I don’t believe Billy, but I don’t push it. He won’t tell me. The quarter, like the other things Billy shows up with occasionally, is stolen. Maybe someone even died for this. I don’t ask because I don’t want to know. If Billy doesn’t tell me where things come from, then I can pretend his stories about finding them are true. I don’t want to feel guilty. I want fresh food.
Partway down the slope, we come to a small lean-to. The body is lying outside. I recognize it. About two weeks ago a squad of cavalrymen came in with a new batch of prisoners. Most were wounded somewhere, but the sergeant was the worst. His right arm had been taken off above the elbow and his chest was cut up quite badly. He’d been to our hospital outside the stockade and they had cleaned him up as best they could, but there are no bandages here, so he was sent into the stockade with his wounds open and raw.
I saw him the first day he arrived, and already the flies were hovering in a black cloud over his wounds. Now he is dead, and his stump and chest are a seething mass of pale gray maggots. As Billy has said, this is a bad one.
I crouch by the body and begin brushing the maggots off.
“Leave them,” Billy says.
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
A man crawls out of the lean-to. “You gonna take him?”
Billy nods.
“All right then,” the man says. “Here’s the paper.” The man hands over a grubby scrap of paper with a name written on it. Billy takes a piece of thread and ties it to the dead man’s toe.
“You take the head end, Jake,” Billy says.
I hesitate; the sergeant’s a new arrival, so he’s not as skinny as some. To lift him I’ll have to put my hands under his armpits. One side’s okay, but the other’s a mess of maggots. Most of the flesh from the stump of the man’s arm and the right side of his chest is eaten away. Through the moving mass, I can see the white gleam of exposed bone.
“It’s not far to the gate, Jake. And it’ll be worth it, you’ll see.”
I’ve grown into the habit of not questioning Billy, and in any case, I don’t have the energy to argue. I grit my teeth and lift, trying to ignore the maggots that wriggle onto my hands and arms.
Billy grabs the legs and we set off.
“Some say them maggots is good eating if ’n you fry them up over the fire,” he says cheerfully. “Me, I ain’t got quite that hungry yet.
“Now, Jake, when we get to the gate, you push the side with the maggots good and close up to the guard and let me do the talkin’.”
At the gate we ignore the pile of bodies and go straight up to the guard. Like all of them now, he’s just a kid.
“Got a bad’un, here,” Billy says as I move the maggoty corpse close to the boy. He draws back in horror. “Reckon we’d best take him straight out to the buryin’ ground. I sure wouldn’t want this thing lyin’ aside me fer the rest of the day.”
Billy pretends to stumble and the sergeant’s stump brushes against the guard, leaving a smear of pus and wriggling maggots on his trousers. The kid brushes at them wildly. He looks as if he’s about to throw up.
“So, we’ll just take him on out then,” Billy says.
“Yes,” the guard says in a strangled voice. “Open the gate.” The small door set in the main gate creaks open, and Billy and I and the dead sergeant slip through.
“Let’s get rid of him and get down to business,” Billy says as we head over to the graveyard.
This is the third time I’ve been outside the stockade on some errand, and it’s still hard not to just stand and gawp. There’s so much open space and trees, and the crude wooden buildings look like mansions. Even the rain seems less heavy out here.
We carry the sergeant past the ramshackle building that is the Rebel’s excuse for a hospital. It’s hideously overcrowded and has a death rate higher than within the compound. Even so, there is never enough space to take all the sick who line up at the gate every morning. The ones who get refused are probably lucky. Few come out of the hospital alive.
We set the body down beside a long trench. A group of prisoners is busy extending it at one end, while more cover over the bodies lying in the other end.
“Name’s on the toe,” Billy says to the guard who’s leaning on his musket, looking bored. “We’re just goin’ to pick up some scraps of wood over by yonder stumps.”
“You reckon?” the guard says, standing up straighter.
“I reckon,” Billy says, producing two brass buttons from his pocket and slipping them into the guard’s hand.
The guard nods and resumes his bored vigil.
We wander over to the edge of the trees and pick up what few twigs and chips from the cut stumps that we can. It would be easy enough to slip off into the trees, but what would be the point? We’re so weak now that we wouldn’t get far, even if we could get away from the hounds Wirz would send after us. His boast is that on Friday night he could give any two prisoners a twenty-four-hour start and still have them back in time for roll call on Monday morning.
I’m beginning to wonder why Billy went to all the trouble of using the dead sergeant to get us out just for the sake of a few scraps of wood, when a guard steps out of the trees. I expect him to order us back to the stockade, but he steps forward and nods to Billy. I notice he’s carrying a sack over his shoulder.
“What you got, Yank?” he says.
“I got this, Reb,” Billy says, showing the silver quarter in his open palm.
The guard’s eyes widened noticeably.
“I reckon we can get some pretty fair victuals fer this,” Billy says. “What you got in that sack?”
The man looks around, crouches down and opens the neck of his sack. I almost faint at the sight of such a possible banquet. There are potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and bags of beans and flour. My mouth begins to water uncontrollably.
“Well now.” Billy flips the coin and places it back in his pocket. The guard never takes his eyes off it. “I reckon we’d be entitled to a whole parcel of this.”
The guard doesn’t say anything.
“I’ve al’ays been partial to onions myself,” Billy says, “so we’ll begin with those four big yellow ones there.”
The guard takes the onions out and places them on the ground.
“See anything you take a fancy to, Jake, boy?”
I can’t possibly choose. Everything looks so wonderful. I nod dumbly.
“Seems like my partner here’s a bit overwhelmed. Well, I’ll just have to decide fer us both. Sweet potatoes.”
The guard takes out all the sweet potatoes and piles them beside the onion. There’s enough to fill a small bucket. “One more thing,” he says.
“Better make it that bag of beans then.”
They join the pile. The guard begins to close his sack.
“Cabbage,” I manage to blurt out. I know I’m getting scurvy and that any fresh food will help, but I remember reading somewhere that the explorer Captain James Cook fed his sailors cabbage and not a one of them ever got scurvy. Both men stare at me.
“Reckon my part
ner don’t think we’re done yet,” Billy says with a smile. “Add that nice big cabbage.”
The guard hesitates. Billy pulls out the quarter and holds it up. The cabbage joins the pile. The guard takes the quarter, examines it closely and puts it in his pocket.
“I’m only doin’ this ’cause the South’s beat now,” he says.
“Pleasure doin’ business with you,” Billy says, “but the South’s al’ays been beat.”
“Sherman’s in Atlanta now,” the man adds.
We both stare at him. Atlanta. Sherman. “That true?” we ask stupidly.
“True as I’m standing here,” the man says. “Atlanta fell and there ain’t much stoppin’ Sherman marching all the way to Savannah and splittin’ the South in two if he’s a mind to.” He lifts the sack and disappears into the trees.
“The boys must be only thirty or forty miles from Macon. They could be here inside a week,” Billy speculates.
I feel a surge of happiness. We could be home for Christmas. To celebrate we eat an onion each, right there by the trees. My tears are only partly from the harsh vegetable, the rest are from sheer joy.
We stuff our treasures into our pockets and I hide the cabbage under my shirt as best I can. On the walk back to the stockade, my joints hurt much less than on the way out.
FOURTEEN
“I haff ze good news.” Wirz is sitting on his horse at roll call the morning after our excursion outside the gates. I’m feeling better than I have in weeks. We made a cabbage and bean soup last night, and no king ever enjoyed a banquet as much as we enjoyed that soup. The sweet potatoes we buried under the floor of the lean-to for later. Our neighbors watch us enviously but fear of Billy’s blade keeps them at bay.
“Zere iz to be a parole.” A buzz of excited conversation runs through the assembled prisoners. Parole home on a prisoner exchange is our dream, but the story is that General Grant has forbidden it because the Rebels refuse to include black soldiers in any exchange. Maybe he’s changed his mind.
“You vill assemble here zis afternoon at vun of ze clock. Ze first batch vill go to Savannah to get ze boats home.” Wirz turns his horse and rides out the gate. The buzz of conversation turns into a chorus of ragged cheers. Everyone disperses back to their shelters to prepare.
“We’re going home,” I say excitedly to Billy as we trek up the hill.
Billy just grunts. I’m annoyed that he doesn’t seem to share the general excitement.
“It’s great news. If we can get on the first batch, we’ll be in Savannah in a few days and home in two weeks. God dammit, Billy, be happy. We’ve survived.”
“I ain’t so sure. How do we know Wirz ain’t lyin’?”
“Why would he lie?”
“Look at this place, Jake. There’s thirty thousand dyin’ men packed in here as tight as those bodies in the grave behind the hospital. It’s Hell fer sure. Maybe Sherman’s on his way here already. Would you want to be caught as the commandant of Hell?”
“No.” I wonder where Billy’s going with this.
“So, if Wirz ships out ten or twenty thousand of us, those left would look much better.”
“Are you suggesting that we stay? That we don’t take the parole?” I ask in horror.
“Fer the time bein’, yes.”
“You’re crazy!” I yell. Anger sweeps over me. I can’t believe what Billy’s saying. “Staying here is committing suicide as surely as stepping over the dead line. Even if Wirz is lying, wherever they take us can’t be worse than this.”
Billy shrugs. “You make your decision, Jake. I’ve made mine.” He turns away. I grab his arm.
“Why, Billy?”
“Because this place will get better after a few thousand leave. Better the devil you know…”
“That’s no reason,” I rage. “You choose to stay, hoping that things will get better here, and maybe they will, but there’ll still be poisonous water, no food, cruel guards and a pile of bodies at the gate every morning.”
“And what if Sherman is on his way here?” Billy interrupts. “You walk out that gate, get on a train and in two weeks time your sittin’ in a camp just as bad as this outside Savannah awaitin’ ships that ain’t never gonna come ’cause Wirz was lyin’. Meanwhile, I’m sleepin’ ’tween fresh sheets in Atlanta with a couple of pretty nurses tendin’ to my every need.”
Billy attempts a smile, but it has no effect on me. I shake him to try and get him to see sense.
“I’ve been here almost three months,” I say. “Hasn’t been a day or a night that I haven’t dreamt of walking out that gate and never looking back. Here’s our chance.”
“I know what you mean, Jake. I have the same thoughts.”
“Then why stay?”
Billy looks thoughtful for a minute. “Say it is a parole,” he says, eventually. “What’ll you do?”
“What’ll I do? I’ll have a bath, put on new clothes, eat the biggest meal you’ve ever seen—”
“No. I mean after all that.”
“I’ll go home. Soon as I’m strong enough, I’ll let Ma fuss over me and Pa be proud. I’ll get my horse and ride around the farm, maybe go into town and just sit in the sun telling stories. And I’ll go fishing. There’s a big fish I promised someone I’d catch.”
Billy nods. “Home,” he repeats wistfully. “See, that’s where you and me is different. I ain’t never had one of them.”
“Everybody has a home.”
“Not me. My daddy drank hisself to death afore I can really remember him, and Ma took in ‘friends’ to buy food for me and my sisters. We moved around a lot, al’ays tryin’ to find someplace cheaper to live and stay one step ahead of the cops. Ain’t no place I got a yearnin’ to return to.”
Billy lets out a dry laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Well, all your talk of home. If I have to pick someplace that means somethin’ to me, it’d have to be here.” Billy swings his arm in a wide arc to take in the stockade.
“Andersonville?”
“I ain’t sayin’ it’s paradise. Nothin’ like the home you’re lookin’ forward to, with home-baked apple pies and fishin’ and such, but I’m somebody in here. When I was a Raider, folks respected me. I know it was ’cause they feared the blade and such, but respect’s respect, and I ain’t never had that afore. Ain’t never likely to again, I daresay.
“Now, I ain’t a Raider no more, but the blade can still get me some respect when I need it. And I’m survivin’. We’re survivin’. Survivin’ when a whole lot of folk ain’t. I’m good at survivin’, Jake. Ain’t never been good at nothin’ my whole life and, once I’m out of here, I daresay I won’t be good at nothin’ again, least nothin’ that will keep me out of prison or not lead me to a back alley with my throat slit. This is all the home I got, Jake. I’ll be stayin’.”
I look hard at Billy. How can anyone think this hell is home? I try to imagine what a life that can make Andersonville look good must have been like. I fail.
“But we’re a team, Billy. You always said that. We’ve got to stick together.”
“So stay with me, Jake. I ain’t askin’ you to think on this place as home, but don’t trust Wirz. This parole thing’s too easy. Life ain’t like that.”
“I don’t know.”
“So think on it. Ain’t no way Wirz’ll get all those he wants out today or even listed. Just hang back a little is all I’m sayin’.”
“Okay,” I say reluctantly. “I won’t rush to be at the head of the queue, but I’ll not miss my chance.”
“Fair enough,” Billy says with a smile. “Now, let’s see what we can get from them boys that’s keen to be the first to leave.”
The pickings are good as we wander round the hillside. Many soldiers are eager to barter anything they cannot carry with them. We pick up a good tarpaulin for our lean-to and some solid sticks that we can either use as supports or burn.
Billy is happy. “See, we can live like kings once these boys is go
ne. And the pickin’s is only gonna get better.”
I’m not so sure. In the short term we’ll be more comfortable because of what we’ve acquired this morning, but not comfortable enough to make me want to stay. But I’m confused. Billy has made what should have been simple—get on the train to Savannah and go home—complicated. What if it’s a cruel trick? And there’s more to it than that.
The home that I yearn for is a dream. When I sit and picture what going home will be like, everything is perfect—it never rains, every meal is sumptuous, Ma and Pa are always smiling. Sometimes I even imagine myself catching the big trout, and at those times it’s hard not to imagine Jim there beside me. I know it won’t be like that. Jim is dead and I have no idea how Ma and Pa are coping with the war, Jim’s death and my absence.
On top of all that, there’s what I’ll be carrying home with me. Nathaniel still stares at me accusingly in my dreams, and I carry around my neck the weight of all the things I suspect Billy has done to help keep us alive. While I’m in here, I can rationalize what we do to stay alive, but in the real world, where people don’t kill and cheat and steal to survive, how will I handle all of that?
What do I say when Ma makes me a perfect supper, ruffles my hair and asks, “What was it like in Andersonville?”
“Well, Ma, my best friend was a thief and a killer, and I held a kid while he stabbed him to death.”
It’ll all have to stay inside, and how hard will that be?
“Jake, can you do me a favor?” I look up to see who’s spoken. It’s Sam from the Raiders, who was with us when we killed Nathaniel and who was beaten running the gauntlet. He lives in a nearby lean-to and sometimes comes over to talk about old times. I remember him as a brutal, foul-mouthed man, but the beating and the starvation have mellowed him. Now he seems almost apologetic all the time and pitifully grateful for any favor we do for him.
“Can you help me,” he says when he sees me look at him.
I grunt and go over to where he’s sitting in the mud. Physically, he’s not in too bad shape, although he’s been complaining about his feet recently. Like everyone else, he’s almost delirious at the thought of parole.
