Ashes

by Scott Nicholson

  Margaret leaned back against the marker. Her shoulders trembled and thin lines of tears tracked down her cheeks. Ellen stopped teasing. With invisible playmates, you always felt what they felt.

  "I'm sorry," Ellen whispered.

  Margaret was bone silent.

  "Hey," Ellen said. "Now who's the gloomy Gus?"

  She poked Margaret in the side, feeling the hard ridges of her friend's ribs. It was funny how invisible friends could be solid, if you thought of them that way.

  "Sometimes it's hard to remember," Margaret said, sniffing. “You know. What it was like.”

  Ellen poked again. “It’s not that great.”

  Margaret twitched and tried to hold back her smile. Then the laughter broke and she blinked away the last of her tears. They watched the moon for a while and listened to the rush of the passing cars.

  "I miss summer," Margaret said.

  "Me, too."

  "You don't have to go back."

  They could play hide-and-seek all night and never have to hide in the same place twice. A few gnarled trees clutched at the ground with their roots, perfect for climbing. Honeysuckle vines covered the walls and gates, waiting for summer when they would again sweeten the air. Best of all was the quiet. Here, no one ever yelled in anger.

  But Ellen didn't belong here. Not yet.

  "I'd better get home," Ellen said. "I'm going to get my hide tanned as it is."

  Margaret tried a pouty face, then gave up. All playtimes had to end. Ellen waved good-bye and started back over the stone wall.

  "See you tomorrow?" Margaret called after her.

  Ellen turned and looked back, but her friend had already vanished.

  Margaret's voice came from everywhere, nowhere. "It won't hurt."

  "Promise?"

  "Even if it did, I would tickle you and make you laugh."

  "Good night."

  Ellen paused at the edge of the highway and waited for the next car. She could step out before the driver even saw her. Margaret had promised it wouldn't hurt. But maybe dead people always said that.

  A car came over the hill, its engine roaring like a great beast, the headlights prowling for prey. Ellen ducked into the ditch and waited. Five seconds away, maybe. One jump, a big bump, and then she could be with Margaret.

  Her lungs grew hard and cold, she couldn’t breathe, and the car was maybe three seconds away. She told herself it was only another game, just hopscotch. She tensed. Two seconds.

  Margaret whispered in her ear. “I lied. It really does hurt.”

  One second, and the car whizzed past, its exhaust lingering like a sigh.

  “ See you tomorrow?” Margaret said, sitting on the stone fence, pale under the scant moon.

  “ I guess so.”

  “ You get this way,” Margaret said. “When you’re dead, you want to play games all the time.”

  “ I guess I’ll find out someday.”

  Ellen crossed the highway and tried to drift through the trees the way Margaret could. But it was no use. She was too solid, too real, she belonged too much to the world with its hard wood and hard people and hard rules. If only she were someone's invisible playmate.

  But she wasn't. She forgot games, laughter, the red sweater that Margaret had been buried in. Her thoughts were of nothing but Mom and home.

  Ellen moved onward through the night, only half-dead, not nearly dead enough.

  THE ENDLESS BIVOUAC

  The day that James Wilkie killed his first man dawned hell-hot and humid, and didn't get any better as the hours dragged on.

  He'd just gotten over a touch of the bilous fever, and sweat clung to his collar and soaked through the brim of his cap. Wilkie had seen what happened to men who took the fever, and a few days in the sentry box was better than some extra bed rest. In the makeshift field hospital, bed rest often turned out to be permanent.

  Wilkie was a private in the Third Regiment Georgia Volunteers. Back home, all his friends had talked about was glory, honor, and the freedom to keep working the coloreds. Wilkie was from a family too poor to have slaves. But he'd joined up just the same, even though he was only fifteen. By the fourth year of the war, recruiters were enlisting men and boys alike with no questions asked.

  Wilkie wasn't sure how he would react to battle. He'd heard tales of the blue-bellies who would cut you down and then stir in your guts while looking you dead in the eyes. They were devils, rapists, the worst kind of trash. So he had been relieved when he was assigned as a guard at the prison camp near Andersonville. Except he didn't see how this duty could be worse than that of the front lines.

  Sometimes he felt that both sides were prisoners here. Rations were often short and the Confederate camp up the hill wasn't a whole lot better than the pieces of torn blankets and old coats that the prisoners rigged up for shebangs. Dysentery didn't respect stockade walls or uniform color. The heat stifled everybody the same whether they were twenty feet up in a lookout or huddled by the swamp relieving themselves.

  At least Wilkie could leave the endlessly sick and dying at the end of his watch. The Yankees were trapped inside with it, the groans of the starving, the septic stench of gangrenous flesh, the thick odor of human waste, the constant stirring of bottle-flies, the shouts and fights, the songs that the prisoners sang in the evenings that always seemed to find a minor key. They didn't look so high-and-mighty down there, unwashed and scruffy, thin as locust posts. Not like devils at all, though the prison was closer to hell than any place Wilkie had ever heard described in a sermon.

  But all Wilkie could do was his duty. Ten hours in the box, trying to breathe, fanning his cap to keep the fever down. He kept the musket in the shade so he could occasionally press the cool metal barrel to his forehead. It wasn't even his musket; the guards had to trade off at the end of the day since supplies were short.

  He was drowsing, so close to full sleep that he could see the dream image of the little garden back home, Susan sitting in the big oak tree, him with flowers in his hand. He was just about to say something kind to her, to lure her down from the tree and into his arms, when he heard the shouts. At first he thought it was part of his dream, just some raiders hooting drunk in town, but the shouts grew louder, a strident chorus. Wilkie's eyes snapped open and he looked down on the compound.

  The prisoner was running straight for him. Even from thirty yards away, Wilkie could see the wide, haunted eyes, the mouth torn open in a silent scream. Other prisoners were shouting at him, telling the crazed Yankee to stop. One man gave chase, but the prisoner was driven by some strange energy that belied his knobby bones and stringy muscles.

  The prisoner was making for the dead line.

  Captain Wirtz’s orders were clear: shoot any sorry Yankee dog that crossed the line. The single-rail fence ran about fifteen feet from the stockade walls. Not that any of the prisoners could scale the timbers before one of the boys put him down. But Wirtz said rules were rules and a civilized camp was in the best interest of both sides.

  Wilkie lifted his musket and stood on legs still trembling from sleep. "Hold it there, Yankee," he said, but his throat was so dry that the words barely reached his own ears. Still the prisoner ran, his ragged tunic flapping.

  "Stop or I'll shoot," Wilkie shouted, louder this time. The prisoner reached the dead line, vaulted the fence, and made for the wall. The man who had given chase stopped and backed away from the dead line. Wilkie felt a hundred eyes on him, and the shouts died away. Only then did Wilkie realize that half the Yankees had been urging the prisoner on, the other half yelling at him to stop.

  As Wilkie raised the musket and sighted along the barrel, he took a deep gulp of August air. He closed his eyes and opened them again. If he paused long enough, maybe one of the other sentries would pull the trigger first. But duty was duty, and the prisoner was halfway to the wall.

  It was no worse than shooting a rabbit or wild turkey, at least as far as aiming went. As the powder exploded, Wilkie thought he heard some other shots.
The stricken man fell to one knee, jerking like a toppled stack of kindling, then reached a hand toward the wall. An additional shot rang out and the man's skull shattered.

  Wilkie was sweating from more than just the fever. Prisoners crowded near the dead line like a harvest of gray scarecrows. One of the guards let out a whoop of triumph. A lieutenant ran from the officer's quarters and hurried up the ladder to Wilkie's sentry box.

  "What happened here, private?" The officer was a bearded man of about forty. He stood with his arms folded, tapping one of his knee-high leather boots. Union boots, taken from the last round of new prisoners.

  Wilkie could barely speak. "He crossed the dead line, sir."

  Wilkie's eyes crawled from the officer's face to the corpse on the ground below. Flies had already settled on the wounds, their wings bright blue in the sun. Eggs would soon be laid, and maggots would be born in the man's rotting meat. Some of the larvae would crawl through the shallow grave dirt and make their way back here to continue the endless cycle.

  "Good man," said the lieutenant, though his expression was of sorrowful weariness. "The war's over for one poor fool, at least."

  Some of the prisoners below were mumbling. The lieutenant leaned over the sentry box. "Any man crossing the dead line will be shot," he said in a commanding voice.

  The rumbles of discontent continued, but no Yankees approached the fence. Wilkie stared at the corpse until his vision blurred. He felt the officer's hand on his shoulder.

  "Reload, private, then come with me." The lieutenant ignored Wilkie's tears.

  Wilkie knelt in the sentry box and rubbed at his eyes. He opened them and let the heat dry them. Even staring at the clouds, he could still see the corpse, as if the vision had been burned into his retinas. Wilkie tried to tell himself that it wasn't his shot that killed the prisoner, but he knew he had aimed true for the chest. Then he grew angry at himself and rapped the gun with his knuckles, letting the pain distract him from such thoughts.

  He climbed down the ladder, the musket cradled across one forearm. Guards opened the front gate, and a second private joined Wilkie and the lieutenant. They walked the no-man's-land between the wall and the dead line, eyes straight ahead, not acknowledging the watching Union soldiers.

  "If I had a gun," said some brave anonymous soul.

  "You'll get yours, Reb," said another. The lilting opening notes of "Amazing Grace" issued from the lips of a third.

  When the detail reached the corpse, Wilkie and the other private rolled it over, so that the dead man was staring sightlessly at the sky. The lieutenant stood some distance away, talking to a Union officer.

  "He just up and ran," Wilkie said to the private. "I had to shoot him."

  "Hell, you're lucky you found a good reason. I seen 'em killed for less." The private spat a stream of tobacco juice to the ground. "Chamberlain, over in Second, tossed some bread scraps over the wall just down the foot of the dead line, then sat waiting for some Yankee to reach for it."

  The private folded the dead man's arms over his chest and grabbed the shoulders of the bloodstained tunic. Wilkie balanced his musket over his arm again and grabbed the man's ankles. Pale, wrinkled toes poked from the boots.

  "Boots ain't worth stealing," said the private. "Lately the dead have been just about worthless."

  Wilkie said nothing, surprised by the dead man's lightness as they lifted him. He must be hollow, Wilkie thought.

  "Except I hear the prisoners are selling rights on the corpses,” said the other soldier. "First out on burial detail get the best trading, you know."

  Wilkie nodded, grunted, hoping to hurry the private along. The lieutenant finished with the Union officer and joined them.

  "Tibbets," said the lieutenant. "Eighty-Second New York."

  Tibbets. Wilkie tried the name on his tongue, pushed it against his teeth. Tibbets, a man with family somewhere, a man who may have enlisted under the same sense of duty that had brought Wilkie to their shared destination. A man. A name.

  A corpse.

  Flies buzzed about them. They reached the front gate and laid the corpse out in the line of the twenty other fresh dead just inside the wall. Tibbets would rest there until the morning, feeding flies in the company of his cold comrades. Wilkie and the other Confederates left the compound as the Union soldiers dispersed. A single death was not the subject of much rumination, not when thousands had already made their final exit through those gates.

  Wilkie had grave detail the next morning. He had slept fitfully, his dreams haunted by Tibbets's rigid face. He waited by the wagon while Union soldiers tossed the corpses as casually as if stacking cordwood. Another fifty had died during the night, and the air was ripe with disease. When the first wagon was full, it began its trip to the dead-house, where the corpses were counted.

  The Union volunteers marched in the wagon's wake, Wilkie bringing up the rear. When they reached the dead-house, the corpses were unloaded and brought inside for identification. This gave the prisoners a little free time. Some sat against trees, smoking, but a few slipped into the bushes surrounding the dead-house. They were the hucksters, ones who smuggled goods inside and profited from the hardship and deprivation of their fellow soldiers.

  Guards were scattered around the grounds, and escape was rare. The Confederates turned a half-blind eye to the trading. An unwritten rule was that a huckster had to share a portion of his trade goods, slipping some eggs, tobacco, or the occasional greenback to the captors. It was a system that worked well, the kind of thing befitting a civilized camp. Except for those on the inside who had no money or barter.

  Wilkie went into the shade of the woods and rested his musket against an oak. To the left of him was the mass cemetery, a long shallow ditch waiting for the day's dead. The thin layer of loose clay over the bodies did little to quell the stench of decay. Five thousand were already buried here, according to the corpse counters.

  Wilkie lit his corncob pipe. The tobacco was stale, but at least it burned the smell of death from his nostrils.

  He heard a rustle in a nearby laurel thicket. "Is that you, Yankee?" he said, to warn the prisoner not to attempt escape.

  The bushes shimmied and the waxen leaves parted. A man in a shabby Union uniform stepped out. Wilkie first saw the toes protruding from the boots, then his gaze traveled slowly past the bloodied rips in the tunic to the man's face. The top of his skull was peeled away, but Wilkie knew that face, those eyes.

  Tibbets.

  Wilkie grabbed for his musket, accidentally knocking it to the ground. As he fell to his knees and scrabbled for it among the leaves, the boots approached, crackling in the dead loam and forest detritus. Wilkie gripped the musket and brought it to bear. What good was a musket ball against a dead man?

  Tibbets stopped several feet away. His hands were spread wide, palms up. The dark eyes were solemn, the lips pressed tight. He was waiting.

  "I… I didn't mean to kill you," Wilkie sputtered.

  Tibbets said nothing.

  A single sentence flew out from the chaos of Wilkie's thoughts: You can't talk when you're dead.

  But neither could you walk. Neither could you stand there before the man who had shot you and make some silent pleading demand.

  Tibbets raised his arms higher, then looked briefly heavenward. Wilkie followed the dead man's gaze. Nothing up there but a rag-barrel's worth of clouds and the screaming orange eye of the sun.

  When Wilkie looked again at Tibbets, the corpse's hands were full of goods. Eggs, squash, a small rasher of bacon. And soap. Wilkie hadn't seen soap in six months.

  Tibbets held his hands out to Wilkie. The meaning was clear. The goods were a gift to Wilkie. He set down his musket, trembling, and reached out to the corpse.

  The eggs were cool to the touch, cooler than the dead fingers. The bacon had oozed some grease in the heat, but hadn't yet spoiled. The squash was shriveled but whole. And the soap…

  Wilkie put the soap to his nose. The scent made him think of Susan, h
er clean hair, the meadow behind her father's cornfield.

  Wilkie gazed gratefully into the dead man's eyes. "Why?" he asked.

  The pale lips parted, and Tibbets's words came like a lost creek breeze. "You cried."

  Tibbets turned and headed back toward the stand of jack pine.

  Wilkie bit into the neck of one of the summer squashes. It was real. The impossible had become probable, and all that was left was for Wilkie to accept the evidence of his eyes, ears, hands, and mouth. "Wait," Wilkie called after Tibbets.

  The dead Yankee paused, tilted his head as if heeding some distant command, then slowly waved for Wilkie to follow. Wilkie looked back toward the stockade, where nothing waited but the duty of another day's death watch. He peered through the branches to the dead-house, where maggots roiled. When he looked back, Tibbets was gone, the pine limbs shaking from his passage.

  Wilkie stuffed the food and soap into his pockets. Leaving the musket, he slipped into the pines and wandered until he saw Tibbets far ahead. Wilkie walked, occasionally breaking into a run, never gaining on Tibbets. His limbs were heavy with fatigue, his uniform soaked with sweat. A blister rose on his big toe. Surely he had followed for hours, yet the sun still hung high in the sky.

  At last he heard the soft twanging of a mouth harp, the duet of a banjo and guitar. Laughter came from behind the next stand of trees, and wood smoke filled the air. Someone was broiling meat over a fire. The clank of flatware and tin was accompanied by the rich aroma of brewed coffee. An unseen horse whinnied.

  Wilkie burst into a run, using the last of his strength. He fought through a tangle of briars and scrub locust, kicking at the vines that kept him from those delightful sounds and smells. Finally he fell from the grip of the forest into an expanse of twilight. The air had gone crisp with chill. Campfires dotted the horizon as far as he could see. Around them huddled groups of men, joking, eating, drinking, writing letters or playing music.

  Rows of tents stood lined in uniform rank, not a rip among them. This had to be a Union camp. If so, he would gladly surrender for just one good meal and a chance to hear that peaceful laughter and camaraderie. Wilkie approached the nearest campfire.