Riding from Memories

by Jim Cox

  “I ain’t hungry, Buck. Maybe I can get some coffee down later on.” After the men had sat in silence for a time, Joe managed to rise up on one elbow and said, “I ain’t for sure I can go on, Buck. If I ain’t up to it come morning, you need to head on out without me.”

  “I’ll not hear you talk like that, Joe. You’ll get to feeling better. It’ll just take some time.” After a pause, Buck purposely brought up a happier subject. “We were lucky today, Joe. It was a miracle we were able to steal those horses with full saddlebags.” He didn’t expect any comment from Joe and none came. Buck picked up the remainder of his sandwich, knowing it was important for him to eat even though he wasn’t hungry, threw his lukewarm coffee against a tree, and went for another cup. The coffee steamed when he poured it.

  After eating another couple bites of his sandwich, he carried the saddlebags close to the fire for light and reexamined their contents. Buck concluded there was enough food to last for several days—maybe two weeks. He was especially happy to find two maps. One was a detailed regional map of the three surrounding states, and the other was a map of the entire United States. The maps were in the same bag he’d found the handgun, which probably meant the mount belonged to an officer of high ranking. The regional map showed camps, roads, and trails with strategic locations of both the Union and Confederate troops.

  Each saddlebag held a change of clothes. A shirt, pants, and a set of newfangled underdrawers—both the upper and lower parts with the drawstring at the waist. Of course, the clothing was Confederate and of various sizes, but Buck figured some of the clothes would fit him, since he was an average size man, at least when he was filled out. He hung the clothing on tree limbs to air out and went back to his log beside Joe with coffee in hand.

  When Buck sat down, he assumed his friend was sleeping because the firelight reflected off closed eyes and a slow rise and fall of his chest. He was taking his last swallow when Joe spoke, “Where’s home, Buck? I know you’re from the South because of the way you talk.”

  The question took Buck by surprise. It made him aware that he and Joe had not talked very much about personal matters, even though they’d been friends since the first day Buck entered the prison. Joe had already been captive for four months when Buck arrived.

  “I was born and grew up on an eighty-acre cotton farm in south Alabama,” Buck said. “It weren’t very far from Enterprise, just short of a day’s ride. The house ain’t much, but it’s where my pa and his pa were born, and I wish I was still living there with my family.” Buck had to pause for a few seconds. “Ma and Pa got married in 1830, and in March fifteen years later I came along. They named me Josiah Johnson after my great-grandpa. I was the youngest of three sons and two daughters and grew up to be the shortest of the lot except for one of my sisters. I suppose we were like most families with our ups and downs, but we were happy most of the time.” Buck paused. “Pa died in ’57 when I was twelve, and my oldest brother took over the family.

  “There weren’t much change to our work habits after Pa died. My oldest brother knew cotton farming about as good as pa, and we young ‘ins had been helping Pa plant and tend the cotton fields since we were knee-high, girls included, chopping weeds and doing the picking. My job was mostly hauling the cotton to a neighbor who had a gin. He ginned and sold our cotton for a third of the money. We got the seed back for next year’s planting.”

  Buck paused, recalling good memories when Joe asked another question. “How come you joined up with the Union instead of the Confederate Army, Buck, you being from the South?”

  Buck went for coffee, which gave him time to consider Joe’s question. When he returned, he answered Joe. “My brothers and friends accepted the South’s way of thinking that slavery should be allowed, but it didn’t seem right to me. I’ve never been able to figure out why some folks think skin color makes a person better or worse, whatever the case might be. It’s not the way God created the human race.”

  “Didn’t your thinking give you trouble with your friends and family?” Joe asked.

  “It sure did,” Buck answered. “I often felt like a stranger in my own house, like I was being shunned. Most of the neighbors didn’t like me either. In fact, that’s how I got my nickname. Some folks said I was bucking the Southern lifestyle, so they just shortened the saying and called me Buck. Others called me Buck to match what they called young black men.”

  “You were in the right,” Joe said. Then he turned to his side, leaving Buck with his memories. It was cooling off a bit, so he fetched a shirt and a set of Confederate underdrawers and put them on. After topping off his coffee and returning to his tree, he sat quietly, his mind drifting over the events of the past four years, four years that had changed him irrevocably.

  When the guns sounded at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861, men of all ages entered the fight. Some were mere boys in their early teens. Others were in their mid-seventies. Buck and his brothers were no exception. All three left home the same morning, leaving behind their bewildered mother and sisters. Buck headed to a Union camp and his two brothers reported to a Confederate’s, each expecting to return home within a few months. With any luck, the war would be ended in time for the fall harvest.

  Buck received very little training when he arrived at the Union camp. He was issued a blue uniform, given a rifle with shells, and assigned to a battalion under the command of Adam Strauss. Within days, his battalion was marching south of the Mason Dixon line toward a battlefront. At first, it was hard for Buck to shoot at a Confederate soldier, but as time passed he came to believe, it was kill or be killed. The days were long, they were bloody, they were degrading, and at the same time frightening. The reason for the fighting had become meaningless to many of the men, those of the north and the South.

  At the end of three months, Buck was assigned to a burial crew. His seventy-five-member crew dug huge holes for graves from first light until dark every day. During times of heavy fighting on the front line, hundreds of dead bodies were brought hourly and laid in the holes. Body parts were also received. Arms, legs, heads, torsos. The burial crew members never became accustomed to the sight. It was an experience they’d never forget. After a month of burial duty, Buck was reassigned to the front line where the shooting never stopped.

  The long grueling war days passed very slowly. Death was everywhere. The destruction of property throughout the South was extensive. Union soldiers set Southern crops on fire in an effort to limit the Confederate’s war funds. In particular, the cotton fields which generated a great deal of money from overseas sales. Railroad tracks, roads, and bridges were destroyed to curtail the movement of goods and troops. Houses and businesses were burned, leaving many people homeless and without jobs. Food and livestock were confiscated. Buck often wondered why the God over all creation would allow such misery. “Why, God? Why?” was often his prayer.

  Days became weeks, weeks became months, and months became years. During one of those tough times, he received a letter from one of his sisters, written nearly a year earlier, saying his mother had died and both of his brothers had been killed. She also wrote that the men she and her sister were engaged to had been killed. Subsequently, both sisters had moved to Montgomery, leaving the homestead vacant.

  It was during a conflict just before Christmas in 1864 when Buck didn’t hear a retreat signal from his battalion commander and was left behind in enemy territory. Within minutes he was captured and placed in the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia.

  When Buck was shoved through the prison gate, he couldn’t believe his eyes. The sight was horrifying, much worse than anything he’d seen on the battlefields. He stood bewildered, afraid of what lay ahead for him. Something worse than death he feared.

  Buck entered the Andersonville prison on December 21, 1864, and made his escape on April 10, 1865. During that one hundred-ten-day period, he estimated he’d lost over seventy pounds. His straight black hair now hung to his shoulders, his beard was long and
straggly, and he was naked. He’d made a few friends in prison. Joe was his closest and the only one still living.

  Their escape had been fairly simple. Every day for two weeks at one o’clock sharp, Buck and Joe had observed the removal of corpses. Six Confederate men holding guns would ride through the South gate in a large, high-sided wagon and park beside the fence of dead bodies. Two of the men gathered the bodies carelessly and threw them in the wagon, while the four guards stood at a distance paying little attention to what was happening. On the day of the escape, Buck and Joe had slipped onto the wagon’s driver seat when the men in gray weren’t looking and then crawled into the wagon among the cadavers. Pulling a few of the smelly, rotten, dead bodies on top of them for concealment. They lay perfectly still despite rats running about.

  After the wagon was filled nearly an hour later, it was hauled to a burial field a couple of miles south of the prison where the horses were unhitched, leaving the wagon of dead bodies behind. Buck and Joe heard the men say they’d come back in the evening when it had cooled off and bury the bodies.

  The escapees had crawled out from under the corpses and were about to head out when Joe saw several burlap feed bags off to one side of a grave hole. Upon examination, they found the bags full of rotting body parts. The men eyed one another, then dumped two bags into the burial hole, and tied the empty bags around their naked bodies at the waist.

  Buck and Joe had kept their escape a secret, but a cantankerous man who had quarreled with Buck many time because of Buck’s Southern upbringing saw the escapees climb into the wagon. Minutes after the wagon left the prison, he became revengeful of their possible escape and alerted a guard.

  Buck’s memories were interrupted, and he was brought back to the present when a fire log collapsed sending up sparks. The fire’s small flames offered a dim light to the nearby surroundings. otherwise, it was inky dark under the canopy of tree limbs. The long strenuous day had been exhausting to Buck’s emaciated body. He was tired, and he knew he needed a good night’s sleep before tackling tomorrow’s unknown. The thought of sleeping under covers brought a smile. It had been a long time. He banked the fire with slow burning wood and fell asleep to the night sounds of katydids and crickets.

  Buck woke at the crack of dawn and put on a pair of Confederate pants, the smallest pair he could find. He used a piece of rope found in a saddlebag for a belt—otherwise, his baggy pants would have fallen down.

  When the fire was brought back to life, he went for coffee water. Afterward, he untied two of the five horses and took them to the creek. When all the horses had been watered, he sliced several pieces of bacon and hung them over the fire on the forked branch he’d used the day before. He laid two hardtacks on the rock by the fire to warm and started making coffee. By this time the water was boiling, so he spooned in the ground-up coffee beans, poured in a half cup of cold water to settle the grounds, and seconds later filled his cup. I’ll wait until the hardtacks have warmed and the bacon is nearly finished cooking before I wake Joe…he needs his rest.

  Buck put the two bacon-hardtack sandwiches on tin plates, filled coffee cups and went to his friend. “Wake up Joe. It’s time to eat. We have a long day ahead of us.” Joe didn’t move. Buck called out again, but Joe still didn’t move. Buck set the plates and cups down and leaned over his friend. Joe was dead.

  Chapter Two

  Buck pulled the gray blanket over Joe’s head and returned to where he had left the food. Sitting cross-legged on his log, he picked up his coffee, took a long swallow, and looked at the sandwiches. They had no appeal at all. Buck looked back at his friend’s covered body. It was so thin the blanket was nearly flat to the ground, only Joe’s head showed much of an indentation. Buck wiped away tears. He was my only friend left. Buck raised his cup for another swallow, but the cup stopped in mid-air. “I don’t have any kinfolk left either,” he mumbled. “They’re all dead except for my sisters, and most likely, I’ll never see them again.”

  In the distance a crow called out, bringing his mind back to the present. War was terrible, but it did have the good effect of teaching a person the need to make plans and be prepared. That philosophy had been drilled into Buck’s head so many times he instinctively started the planning process. First, he would eat, though he wasn’t hungry. He needed the nourishment. One sandwich filled him, so he sat the second one by the fire to stay warm. He’d eat it later.

  Buck was surveying the area for a suitable burial spot when he came across a small knoll overlooking the creek. Above the site was an opening in the tree branches allowing the sun to shine down on it. Buck nodded. This is a good place for Joe’s grave. He started digging.

  However, after digging for a few minutes, he was completely worn out. He wanted to continue, but his thin, withered, undernourished body was deprived of strength. The prison had robbed him of his endurance. Buck had to rest, so he sat propped against a tree and closed his eyes. Several minutes later, he woke to the sound of a crow’s call and struggled to his feet. Every muscle in his body told him to sit back down and rest, but he mustered up the strength to start digging again. It was nearly noon when Buck stood over his friend’s grave, saying words about their friendship and the sorrowful way his young life had ended. Buck thought of many other eulogies he’s heard standing by gravesides during the last four years.

  Leaving the grave site, Buck went back to the fire, poured coffee, picked up Joe’s sandwich he’d left by the fire, and sat down on his log to eat and cool off.

  Buck had removed his shirt during the digging, but even so, the mid-morning temperature had warmed enough for him to work up a sweat. “I ain’t had a bath or beard and hair trimming since I was captured,” he mumbled. “I must look a sight and smell even worse.” He smiled. He remembered seeing a shaving kit in the officer’s saddlebag, and after finishing his coffee and sandwich, he made his way to the kit.

  Inside were scissors, a straight razor, a shaving brush, a six-inch square metal mirror, comb, and a bar of soap. He also found a rolled-up towel inside the saddlebag. Buck rose with a smile and headed for the coffee pot to heat shaving water. While the water was heating, he cut his long, dark brown hair and trimmed his beard to its normal length. Afterward, with soap in hand, he walked to the center of the stream and with some reluctance sat down slowly in the shoulder deep ice-cold water. The water was a shock at first and caused goose-pimples, but he soon became accustomed to the chill and remained seated while the flowing water washed away his filth. After a few minutes, Buck leaned back and completely submerged his head in the water. When he sat back up, he soaped his hair and beard, rinsed them off, then washed his entire body before leaving the water and toweling off.

  He put his underdrawers back on, combed his wet hair, and prepared to shave. After shaving off his mustache and the whisker stubble around his beard, he sat back looking in the mirror. He almost didn’t recognize himself. His face was extremely thin, with sunken black eye sockets and a beak-like nose much too large for his face. But in general, he was pleased.

  Buck was not in a hurry. His plan was to travel at night or at least in twilight to keep from being seen, which left the afternoon with nothing to do except to pack for traveling. He dressed in the smallest uniform he found, using the rope from a saddlebag for a belt. He wished he had boots to wear, but after thinking about it, he realized he didn’t need them. His feet were calloused and as tough as leather.

  The cold creek water had chilled his body, and the thought of a hot cup of coffee sounded good, so he brought the fire back to life and went to the creek with the pot for water. While waiting for the water to heat, he sliced and cooked an entire slab of bacon for future meals. There might not be a chance to have a fire for a few days, he thought. Besides, a sandwich along with my coffee will be good for me. Buck’s appetite was coming back, however, with it came stomach cramps and diarrhea. But in spite of the adjustments his body was going through, he ate constantly to get his weight and strength back.

  The re
st of the afternoon was spent packing. He had washed out the burlap bags that originally held the body parts and hung on tree limbs to dry, so after retrieving them, he put the food from all five mounts, along with one of the coffee pots and a cup, into the sack. His two sets of clothes and shaving kit was placed into a saddlebag. The second saddlebag held the handgun, shells, knife, flint, maps, and the other items he’d found that might come in handy.

  Then he went to his sitting log with coffee in hand to make plans. Several considerations had come to mind, but then one thought made him smile. I’ll need money when I get settled. Why don’t I take a second horse, all of the rifles, and a couple extra saddles along to sell? The extra horse can serve as a pack animal.

  The sky was turning to twilight when Buck rose and went for water to douse the fire. It was time to finish his last minute packing before starting on his westward journey. He saddled two of the three horses he was leaving behind and hung canteens on their saddle horns. And behind their saddles, he tied a saddlebag and placed the items he was not taking into it.

  Buck then turned to Black. After saddling him, he tied on two saddlebags and a bedroll with the four extra rifles rolled up inside. He also hung a filled canteen on the saddle horn. Afterward, he examined the remaining four horses and chose a sorrel mare to take along. She reminded Buck of a mare he once knew called Molly, so he penned the name on her. He saddled Molly, tied the second saddle on top of the first and the remaining two saddlebags to the back. He hung the burlap bag containing the food on the horn. Buck mounted Black, holding onto Molly’s lead rope, and rode to Joe’s grave where he sat in silence. After saying a few parting words, he turned north through the trees, heading toward the open land. The horses followed.