The Black Country

by Alex Grecian

  “Hammersmith! Nevil!” Day’s voice echoed and bounced around him, frightening in its starkness. He could hear panic rising in it.

  The sergeant’s voice floated down to him, amplified by the well, so that he might have been dangling on another rope next to Day. Or even waiting for him somewhere down below. “I’m here.”

  “Thank God!”

  “I haven’t left. But I haven’t been able to see you in quite some time.”

  “You’re looking?”

  “I am, but it’s no use.”

  “I can’t see you looking.”

  “Do you see my head at the top of this thing?”

  “No.”

  “I’m here,” Hammersmith said again.

  “I must be deep if you blend in with the daylight up there.”

  “Do you want to come back up?”

  “No,” Day said. He wasn’t sure he could climb back up if he tried. His arms hurt and his chest felt tight. He had assumed that Hammersmith would help get him back to the surface by pulling on the rope, but now he wasn’t sure Hammersmith would be strong enough to do the job. Perhaps if the well weren’t so deep and the sergeant weren’t so sick. Still, there was no point in stopping. They would figure out a way to get Day back up when he was all the way down.

  He slid his back against the wall and let more slack go through the loop, lowering himself again.

  “Keep talking, Nevil,” he said.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Anything, man, just give me something to concentrate on aside from this hole in the ground.”

  “I’ll do my best.” There was a long period of silence, and Day thought that the sergeant had misunderstood him. He didn’t want to have to ask Hammersmith to talk again. It would make him seem weak and frightened. Then: “Sorry,” Hammersmith said. “We’ve been joined by others up here. People from the village.”

  Day was overwhelmed with relief at hearing Hammersmith’s voice. He grinned and spoke to the tiny circle of light far above him. “There are still people in the village?”

  “Apparently not everyone is sick.”

  “How many up there?”

  “Three,” Hammersmith said. “Two strong men, both of them miners, and a woman. They heard us out here. Curious about what we’re doing.”

  “Did you tell them?”

  “A bit of it. Not much to tell yet.”

  “Not much to do yet, either, but don’t let them leave.” Day took a deep breath and blew it back out through his mouth. Now there were people who might be able to help Hammersmith pull him back up. A lucky break. He took another deep breath and noticed a change in the air. He could smell something. Water? Decay? Something organic at any rate, something aside from cold stone and his own sweat.

  “I might be reaching the bottom of this thing, Sergeant,” he said. His voice moved around him, back and forth against the stones, loud and hollow and eager-sounding. “It feels warmer down here.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Just wait.”

  He opened his hands a fraction and moved faster down the well until he felt his palms burning through his gloves. He tried to clamp down on the rope, but he was falling too quickly. He pushed his feet out and caught the opposite wall, but slipped and fell farther, his head now below his feet, traveling upside down toward the bottom of the well. He panicked and lost his grip with his left hand, grabbed at the stones beside him. There was no purchase to be found there, and he plummeted faster. The vertical tunnel vibrated with a deep roaring noise, and some small part of him realized that he was shouting.

  There was no one to help him.

  It was the realization that he was utterly alone in the dark well that brought him back to his senses. The rope was still looped around his right hand, zipping out below and above him. He kicked out his feet again and pushed against the wall and tucked his chin against his chest and slammed his back into the stones behind him. At the same time, he clenched his right fist and found the rope with his left hand, wrapped it around his forearm, around his elbow, back around his hand another time. His descent slowed and then suddenly halted, yanking his arm up and out. There was a jolt and a flash of pain in his shoulder, and Day gritted his teeth, braced himself sideways against the walls of the tunnel. He concentrated on catching his breath. One in, one out, one in, one out. He could hear his heart beating. And he could hear Hammersmith’s voice, small and tinny, from somewhere far above him, no longer amplified, too distant to have been audible above his own howling.

  “Sir? Sir, are you all right?”

  “I’m here, Nevil!” He had to shout to send his voice hurtling upward toward that pale little spot that represented the sky.

  “What happened?”

  “I decided to take the express route to the bottom!”

  “Can’t hear you well, sir! I’m coming down there!”

  “No, Nevil! Stay where you are!”

  “You’re okay?”

  “I’m fine, I think! Fell and hurt my shoulder, but I’m okay!”

  “Is it broken?”

  “I don’t . . . Wait a moment!”

  He repositioned himself, made sure he was wedged solidly, feet against one side, back against the other, and let go of the rope. Immediately, his hand felt cold and his shoulder began to throb painfully. He tested it, moved it in small circles, back and forth. Agonizing pain, but nothing broken, so far as he could tell.

  “It will heal, Nevil! I’m going on!”

  “Carefully, sir!”

  Of course, carefully. “Yes, thank you, Nevil!”

  Day looped the rope around his left hand now, letting his tender right shoulder hang loose and naturally at his side, and walked himself slowly downward, scraping the back of his overcoat against the stones behind him. He was breathing hard again and grunting, and the sound was unsettling, but he was his only company. He could hear Hammersmith talking up above, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  A moment later, the seat of his trousers began to feel cold, and he gradually realized that he was wet. The thought crossed his mind that he had lost control of his bodily functions, but then the wetness spread out across his thighs and up his spine, and he realized that he had backed into a cold pool. He adjusted his grip on the rope and eased his legs down and splashed into the well water. He kicked his legs and windmilled his aching arm and let out a huge whoop of triumph. The thought crossed his mind that he was now trapped at the bottom of a well in the middle of nowhere, and he smiled to think that, despite his circumstances, he had never been so happy to be alive.

  “Sir!”

  “I’m all right, Nevil! I’ve reached the bottom!”

  “Is it iced over?”

  “Not at all! It’s still warmer than it is up there, but the water’s cold!”

  “Hurry! You can’t stay there!”

  “Are you sure? I’d love to stay!”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Nothing, Sergeant! A little humor!”

  He paddled around in the narrow space, taking care not to lose track of the rope. He bumped into something hard and felt its contours with his free right hand. It was the bucket. He used it to brace himself, which freed up his left hand. He kicked in a small circle, running his hands over the walls. The stones here were smooth and damp, polished by centuries of water. There was a thick organic odor wafting up from the water, like a warm stagnant soup. The bucket thunked into something, and Day turned toward it and reached out. His gloved hand brushed against a handful of moss and he spidered his fingers, feeling outward until he realized that the handful was too delicate to be moss. He groped at the object and felt a soft curve, a small bony ridge. The moss was hair, and there were pliable swellings under it. Day realized he was holding his breath, praying that he had found an animal of some sort, a squirrel or a badger tha
t had taken a tumble into the well. But as his fingers continued to explore, he knew what he had found and his heart sank.

  “Nevil!”

  “I’m here, sir!”

  “I think I’ve found him, Nevil!” Day said.

  He turned the object over in the water, dead and limp and yielding.

  Yes.

  “I’ve found Oliver Price!” he said.

  INTERLUDE 2

  ANDERSONVILLE PRISON,

  CONFEDERATE GEORGIA, 1865

  The dead wagon rolled out through the high gates of the Andersonville stockade. Calvin Campbell was in the bed of the wagon, jostled about along with four other prisoners. Cal was the only one of them still breathing. Shallow breaths through his mouth because the dead men had begun to ripen in the hot Georgia sun. One of the men had open sores on his arms and his throat, and Cal watched maggots writhe in and out of the wounds, slimed pink with blood over their pearly whiteness. He gagged and closed his eyes, concentrated on keeping his gorge down.

  After what seemed to Cal like most of the day, but couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes or so, the wagon stopped and the bodies were pulled out, one at a time. He listened to them thunk into the ground like so much meat. The man next to him, the maggot farm, was second to last out of the wagon. Some of the larvae were left behind, wriggling blindly on the bare planks. They would burn to a crisp in the sun and be buried under the day’s bread rations before long.

  Cal felt a hand close over his ankle, and then he was being dragged the length of the wagon’s bed. He braced himself for impact with the ground, but another hand grabbed his other ankle, and then someone had his wrists and he was being hoisted through the air. He risked opening an eye and looked up. One of the men carrying him was Richard Devine, a friendly fellow who had taken Cal’s shebang and his tattered clothing in trade for helping him hide in the wagon that morning. Devine saw him looking and gave him a slight curt nod. Cal glanced at the second man, but didn’t know him. A friend of Devine’s, he supposed. They carried him to the trench, the same trench where Joe and Duane rested, and they heaved him up and through the air. He felt himself start to tense and forced his naked body to go limp. His arms and legs flopped and he clenched his jaw despite himself, anticipating the coming impact. His shoulder hit the side of the trench and he bounced away, landed solidly atop a mound of skin and bone and mud. He was glad the trench was nearly full and he wasn’t one of the first to be thrown in a grave. A new trench would be much deeper, and the fall might actually kill him. His shoulder felt bruised, but nothing seemed to be broken.

  He laid still and listened, and after a few minutes he heard the wagon roll away. Far in the distance, he could hear soldiers laughing and birds calling. He heard a cricket chirping somewhere close by. He realized he was holding his breath and he let it out all at once. He had made it. He was outside the walls and he hadn’t been discovered.

  He took a fresh breath and immediately vomited into his beard. He felt the warm liquid run across his chest and down his arm.

  The trench was full of a week’s worth of dead bodies. Hundreds of them. And he would have to wait here among them until dark. At least ten hours. Once the sun went down, he would need to climb out of this hole and make it to the river without being seen. He tried to vomit again, but there was nothing left in his stomach. He hoped he would get used to the stench, but it seemed unlikely. The air was so thick he could see it, like a poisonous fog that crept across the top of the trench, thick wet tendrils, searching him out. Cal took another shallow breath through his mouth and passed out.

  —

  Grey Eyes dropped his cigar and ground it under his boot heel. He listened to the night: the river burbling below him, crickets chirping nearby, and a bat squeaking somewhere in the woods ten yards away from him. He squinted at the dark tree line and then up at the moon. It was a sliver, barely enough to light the way down to the water.

  He rested the barrel of his rifle against a river birch and unbuttoned the fly of his standard-issue grey uniform trousers. A moment later he felt the release of pressure in his bladder and he sighed.

  Four feet to his left the water erupted, and Grey Eyes turned as something huge, a dark shape against the darker sky, moved toward him up the riverbank. He let go of himself, letting urine stream down his leg as he reached for his rifle, but the shape was on him too fast and he felt rough hands grab him and spin him off balance. The other man—it was clearly a man—pulled Grey Eyes backward toward him, one hand against the guard’s forehead, pinning the back of his head against the other man’s chest. Grey Eyes reached across his body for the knife on his belt, but the other man already had it.

  Dry lips rasped against Grey Eyes’s ear, and a low voice whispered, “This is for Joe Poole, you cold-eyed bastard.”

  Before Grey Eyes could call out, he felt the tip of the knife puncture the thin flesh of his right cheek. He felt warm liquid flow down his jaw and he grabbed for the other man’s arm as the knife was dragged across his face. There was a split second of resistance and a slight pop and his lower lip fell free and slapped against his chin. There was a flash of blinding pain and Grey Eyes saw bright pinpricks of light. The other man let go of him, and Grey Eyes sank to his knees and toppled forward into the river with a splash. He heard footsteps in the grass, someone running for the tree line, and he wondered whether his attacker had kept his knife. It had been a gift from his father when Grey Eyes had joined the Confederate Army two years ago. It occurred to him that he might never see his father again. Darkness washed over him and he began to sink into it, but then he felt cold river water flowing over and through the wound in his cheek and the pain abated enough that he regained his senses. He rose slowly, fighting the pull of the current, and crawled up onto the bank. The pain in his cheek returned, but he used the pain to help him focus. A prisoner had escaped, had meant to slit his throat, but had missed. Had the knife gone in two or three inches lower, Grey Eyes knew he would be dead.

  He moved forward, one hand held out in front of him, until he found the river birch. His rifle was still there. The other man hadn’t seen it in the dark. Grey Eyes smiled and nearly passed out from the pain. He would have to remember not to smile again until his cheek healed. He rose to his feet, dripping river water and blood, picked up his rifle, and walked to the tree line.

  He paused there and looked back at Andersonville. Once he stepped into the trees, Grey Eyes knew that he would be counted AWOL. The army didn’t have the men to pursue him, but it went against his grain to abandon his post. It was a matter of honor. His father hadn’t raised a quitter. That was one more thing his unseen attacker would have to answer for when Grey Eyes found him.

  The thing to do would be to go back to camp and raise the alarm, muster a force to search the woods. But that would take time, and the man in the dark might get away.

  Grey Eyes shouldered his rifle and slipped quietly into the woods. He would find that other man, even if it took him the rest of the night.

  Hell, even if it took the rest of his life.

  WEST BROMWICH, THE MIDLANDS, 1871

  The girl could not have been older than seventeen, and so Cal tried to ignore her. But she had come to the pub every night for the past week, and every night he had been there, too, at the same table in the corner, nursing his whiskey. It was evident that he had caught her eye because she had passed by his table several times every evening, and each time she passed, she lingered a bit longer in front of him, swirled her skirts a bit higher, and batted her long lashes in his direction. He supposed he stood out as a stranger in the village, something new and perhaps even exotic, and he felt certain it was time to move on. She was a pretty girl, but he preferred to keep to himself. She was too young for him and likely to want something lasting, besides.

  Cal Campbell had not stayed in the same place for longer than a month in the last six years. He had struck out north from Andersonvil
le, begging and borrowing food and clothing, stealing when he had to, and had booked passage on a British supply freighter as a deckhand.

  He had landed in Liverpool and made his way to Maidenkirk, staying long enough to assure his family that he was alive and reasonably well. His father had given him a purse containing two hundred pounds and suggested that Cal move on. He understood. He was practically an American now, an embarrassment to his father.

  At the train depot in Dumfries he had seen a man from a distance. The man’s teeth had been visible through his cheek, and there was something familiar about him. He wanted to get close enough to see that man’s eyes, to see the color of them, and when he realized that he expected them to be grey, he knew he had been followed.

  Grey Eyes, the terrible guard from Andersonville, was alive. He was alive and he had followed Cal all the way from America.

  Cal had hopped the first train going south and had changed trains three times that first day. He had been careful not to leave a trail and had watched behind him at every station. Grey Eyes was conspicuous and Cal didn’t think the guard could surprise him, but if he had followed him this far he would not easily give up. Still, Cal could lead him on a merry chase.

  By the time Cal arrived in West Bromwich, he had lost track of the number of cities he’d lived in. The Black Country village was just another stop in the peripatetic life he now led. He planned to stay there for a week, perhaps two, then move on again. He wouldn’t stay anywhere long enough to give the grey-eyed American a chance to find him.