He was ugly. There was simply no getting around the fact that this man was the ugliest she had ever seen. Had she come upon him unawares, the sight of him would have provoked a scream of terror. He was huge. The hand he touched her with was almost as big as her head. His shoulders were twice the width of her own. And body hair. Dear Lord, he reminded her of a giant, hairy spider! With his sleeves rolled up, she could hardly see his skin for the thick down that grew all the way to the base of his fingernails.
She tried not to show her revulsion. Despite his raw, coarse appearance, she knew that he felt some pity for her plight.
He was obviously used to reactions like hers, for he laughed and murmured, “Yeah, I know I’m ugly, but you ain’t. I think you’re just about the prettiest woman I ever laid eyes on. If you were cleaned up, I bet you’d really be something to look at.”
She could not help but tremble at that. He was not only ugly, he could also frighten a person quite easily.
“You ain’t got to be scared of me, darlin’. I can think of other things to do with you besides hurt you. That’s why I’m so mad at these squareheads for treating you like they did.” He smiled, displaying teeth so decayed they were almost completely blackened. “Say, are you all right? Did they give you anything to eat?”
“Hell, yeah, we fed her!” the other soldier cried indignantly before April had a chance to reply. “Fed her good, too. Same as what we ate.”
Blackmon ignored him. “Now you ain’t got no reason to be scared, darlin’. I can feel you shaking. My name’s Blackmon, by the way. Sergeant Kaid Blackmon. And from now on, you got to do everything I tell you. Then there won’t be no trouble. You just remember I’m the boss. You mind me, and we’ll get along fine. You get sassy, and I got ways of making you wish you hadn’t. You understand?”
She could not speak but hoped the cold resentment she felt for this creature was mirrored in the hating glare she gave him. Evidently it was, for he gave her a hard smack across her shoulders with his beefy hand that almost sent her sprawling. “I asked you a question, darlin’. I expect an answer. You understand me?”
“Yes, damn you!” she hissed between clenched teeth. “I understand you just fine. Now where are you taking me?”
“See that wagon over there?”
She looked to where he pointed and gasped. It was a cage. That’s all she could call it. There were bars on all four sides of the wooden structure, which was drawn by two horses so wasted their ribs were sticking out pitifully.
“A cage!” she whispered in horror. “You’re taking me to that cage?”
He dropped a muscular arm across her shoulders and she had no choice but to allow herself to be steered along. With a lopsided grin, he told her, “Now you ain’t got nothing to be scared of, like I told you. Just follow orders, and me and you will get along real fine. I know I’m ugly, but I can be real nice to you, if you’ll let me.”
He punctuated his statement with a secretive chuckle, and she fought a wave of revulsion.
“Now what was it you was saying to me back there about a dog?”
She whipped her head around to stare up at him, feeling a sudden flash of hope. “I left my dog tied in a barn in the woods. Where are you taking me? Please…I can’t leave him tied up to just starve to death.”
“Well, no siree,” he chuckled again. “We sure can’t do that, ’cause I’m afraid you’re going to be gone for a mighty long spell. Those officers didn’t take too kindly when they heard what you done, and they’re sending you to Tarboro Prison for a long, long time. I’m not even going to tell you just how long, ’cause it’ll make it a whole lot easier if you just don’t think about it. Just take one day at a time. You know what I mean?”
He displayed the rotting teeth again, and she looked away in disgust.
Once more he slapped her shoulder, hard, and this time her knees buckled, but he reached down and grabbed her just before she fell to the ground. “Now you just quit acting like you’re gonna puke every time you look at me, darlin’. I can’t help being ugly, and you can’t help having to look at me. We’re gonna be together for a long, long time, just like I said, and you’ll make it a lot easier on yourself if you’ll just calm down.”
She took a deep breath and prayed that he would listen to her side of the story. “It isn’t like they say it is. I’m not a spy. I came here to see my fiancé, and—”
He covered her face with his hand, gently, but it was enough to cease her words. “Now I’m not going to listen to you going on and on about how you really ain’t guilty, Miss Jennings. I can’t help you, anyway, even if I believed you. I’m in charge of this special prison set up for women, and I was told to come get you and take you there. So you just get on up in that wagon, and we’ll have you tucked in your cell by noontime. I’ll see to it you get some extra rations for your lunch. Got a nice prison dress for you to put on, too. You like brown? I hope so. All your clothes from now on is gonna be brown. Just like all my women wear.”
Suddenly, she could stand no more. Maybe there was no chance of escape. Maybe she was no match for this gorilla-like man. But she could try. By God, she could try.
Suddenly she snaked her head downward to clamp her teeth in his arm at the same time she brought her knee up to his crotch. Then, expecting him to release her, she jerked around to be ready to run—where, she did not know—just run as long and as fast as possible and pray she could get away.
Sergeant Kaid Blackmon did not move.
She stared up at him in stunned disbelief. He was smiling as though she had done something really quite humorous.
“Now did you think a puny little thing like you was gonna hurt a big, ugly bastard like me? Darlin’, you got a lot to learn.” And he swung her up in his arms and started toward the wagon.
“If that’s all it took to catch me off guard,” he said matter-of-factly, “I couldn’t handle…let’s see now. I got twenty-two of you lovelies in my little home away from home now. Naw, I couldn’t handle all of you practically single-handed. The other girls know that, just like you will. But if you keep on trying, then I’ll get pissed off, and I’ll have to get a little mean. I don’t like to do that. I get carried away, and I don’t know when to stop, and I guess I don’t know my own strength.”
Effortlessly, he rolled her over and under to hold her with one arm while he opened the back of the jail wagon. Then he shoved her inside, closed the door and bolted it. “It’s not a far piece. Maybe a three-hour ride. Like I said, we’ll be there by lunchtime, and we’ll get you bathed and cleaned up and fed. I just know you’re going to be a pretty thing when you’re all cleaned up.” He winked and walked around to climb up on the seat.
She stumbled forward to clutch the bars immediately behind where he sat. “You bastard!” she screamed, squeezing the steel bars and attempting to shake them in her grasp. “You dirty, common bastard. You’re like all the rest. You won’t believe me. All I wanted to do was see Alton…tell him…oh, damn you, what’s the use?”
She slumped to the wagon floor and began to sob, hating herself for her weakness…hating him and everyone connected with her misery.
He popped the reins, started the horses lumbering forward slowly. Turning his head around to stare down at her, he casually asked, “Now where did you say your little dog was tied, darlin’?”
She lifted her face to stare at him incredulously. “What…what did you say?” she whispered, not sure she had heard right, or, if she had, wondering how he could play such a cruel trick as to make her think he would actually go after poor Lucky.
He laughed, enjoying her surprise. “I asked where it was you left your little dog tied. You said you didn’t want to go off and leave him to starve, didn’t you? Well, if you don’t tell me where you left him, then I can’t go get him to take him with us, now can I?”
“Oh, dear Jesus, if you mean that—”
“Of course, I mean it. Now where is he?”
She gave him the directions, her heart pounding.
Was it a trick? Lucky was just a mutt, a mongrel, but he was all she had, and he loved her and trusted her, and it was horrible enough that she was being taken to prison for a crime she did not commit, without having to bear the tragic knowledge that he would be left behind for God only knew what fate.
“Well, we’ll just go get him,” he drawled, winking at her once more. “I may be ugly, darlin’, but I ain’t altogether a sonofabitch.”
He turned the wagon, following her directions to Lucky.
Chapter Twenty-Four
April sat in the rusting tub of cold water, hating the feel of the harsh lye soap against her skin but knowing Kaid Blackmon would make good his threat to scrub her personally if she did not bathe herself. One of the first rules of “his” camp, he had said, was that each of the women prisoners would bathe daily.
“I may be ugly,” he had said sardonically, “but I ain’t going to put up with them damn nits. Not on me, and not on my prisoners. So you can get used to scrubbing every day, like it or not.”
She had dared to complain about the lack of hot water, and he had laughed at her, saying she should be grateful that a tub was provided. “Otherwise you’d be washing in that creek back yonder.”
“Back yonder.” As she splashed the water over her body she could see out one of the two windows of the rotting log cabin. “Out yonder” was a wilderness. Trees in every direction, the trunks hidden by thick weeds and undergrowth taller than she. The clearing where the prison was located was hardly a clearing at all. There was a stump every few feet.
Tarboro Prison was appallingly isolated and small, even for a prison. The prisoners had just one cabin, the one in which she was bathing. Twenty dilapidated cots lined the walls with scarce inches between them. There were no sheets, blankets, or pillows. Only rotting canvas to lie on. A long, crudely constructed wood table sat at one end of the narrow room. The rusting tub and several chamber pots occupied the other end. There was one window on each side, and only a single door.
“Used to be a church,” Kaid had told her. “There weren’t many folks around to start with, and when the war came, these people moved closer to Fredericksburg, not wanting to be out here in the wilderness if the Yankees came.”
She had looked about her in horror and murmured, “This place isn’t fit for pigs.”
He snorted contemptuously. “That’s just about how the government feels about the prisoners we get here. Pigs. Animals. Lowlife. Scum. In most cases, they’re right. We got a rough, mean bunch of women here.” His voice softened as he suddenly trailed his stubby fingers down her arm in a gentle gesture. “I think you’re different, April. A cut above them others. I sure hope so—”
She had jerked away from him, rubbing the flesh he had touched as though to wipe away filth. “Just don’t touch me,” she bit out the words. “For now, I’m a prisoner, I know, but that doesn’t mean I have to put up with your abuse—”
He grabbed her so quickly she did not even see him move. “You listen to me, and you listen good, ’cause I’m getting tired of telling you. I’m boss here. Lord. Master. What I say goes. I touch you and anybody else, any time I feel like it. Now, I can be good to you, or I can be a real sonofabitch. It don’t matter to me.”
He gave her a sharp whack across the shoulders with the palm of his hand, propelling her forward. “Now you get inside and get that bath, and I’ll get your clothes for you. You can rest today, ’cause I know that was quite an ordeal last night in that pit, but tomorrow you’ll be out in the fields with the rest of the women—growing the food you’re gonna have to eat.”
Lucky had growled ominously at the roughness with which his mistress was being handled. Kaid paused to pat the dog on the head and say, “Now you just calm down, boy. Me and you are gonna get along just fine. I’ve been wanting me a dog. I think you’ll just stay with me in my cabin.”
April looked toward the edge of the clearing, and saw a fairly new cabin. Though small, it was, by far, much nicer than the prisoners’ cabin. On the other side, there was another structure, also made of split logs and just a bit larger.
“That’s my place.” Kaid had pointed to the smaller cabin. “My men stay in the other one. Don’t be so curious now, ’cause you’re gonna have plenty of time to get used to things around here.”
He had surprised her by leaving her alone to take her bath, taking Lucky with him.
She was grateful for the brief respite. The man puzzled her. He was ugly and ominous, true, but there was something slightly gentle about him as well.
She was drying herself on a scratchy burlap bag, the only thing available for a towel, when the door opened without warning. Gasping, she jerked the bag about her to cover her nakedness, thinking it was the sergeant returning. Instead, she saw a tall, skinny woman, her hair hanging limply about her pale, sallow face. There were deep circles beneath green eyes that once might have sparkled. Now they were dull, as lifeless and miserable-looking as her entire appearance.
“I heard Blackmouth was going after a new prisoner,” she said tonelessly as she walked slowly to a cot and lay down across it on her stomach, facing April. “My name’s Selma. What’s yours?”
April replied thinly, warily, “April Jennings. And who is ‘Blackmouth’?”
“That’s what we call Blackmon, because of his nasty rotting teeth. He opens that big mouth of his, and all you see is black teeth.” She propped her chin in her hands. “How come you’re here? What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” April replied bitterly. “They said I was a spy, but that’s not true.”
“Ahh, they think everybody’s a spy. That’s what happened to me. I was doing just fine till a pipsqueak captain screamed to high heaven that I’d given him the clap. So he had me sent off here. That was almost a year ago.”
April blinked in confusion. “The clap? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, honey, you are green, aren’t you?” Selma threw back her long brown hair and laughed. “You never heard of the clap? It’s the pox or whatever you want to call it. They got all kinds of names for it. Anyway, it wasn’t me that gave it to the little bastard. But he was yelling that I was a Yankee spy, sent south to give the clap to every Rebel officer I could get in my bed. Like I said, I didn’t give it to him. He was such a horny little creep that he’d lay with any woman who’d spread her legs for him. He had it in for me, ’cause I don’t come cheap. I charge plenty, but I do plenty, but then he really got mad when I wouldn’t do some of the weird stuff he wanted me to.
“So…” She spread her hands in a helpless gesture as a sad little smile twisted her lips. “Here I am for God only knows how long. The only good thing about it is that the guards believe I’ve got the clap, and they don’t mess with me.”
April clutched the burlap bag tighter around her nakedness as fright shot through her body. “You mean the guards—”
Selma interrupted with a high-pitched giggle. “Fuck you? Sure, they do. Anytime they want, which is all the time. There’s six guards besides Blackmouth. There’s twenty-two of us. Twenty-three now. So that means that sixteen of us get lucky every night and don’t have to roll with them sons-of-bitches till daylight. That’s all they got to do, anyway. They stand over us while we sweat in the fields all day, getting blisters on our hands. They just stand around, making sure we don’t try to escape, and when night comes, they flip a coin to see who gets who.”
“Oh, my God!” April swayed and sat down quickly on the nearest cot, the water from her body trickling down about her. “Oh, my dear, dear God.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Selma looked at her with genuine pity. “It’s gonna be rough on you. You’re younger than the rest of us, and you’re pretty. I can’t see much with that bag over you, but I’ll just bet you got a damn nice body, too. Those bastards are really gonna go crazy over you. But you’ll have a while before they pass you around. Blackmouth always gets the new prisoners first, and they don’t get passed around till he gets ti
red of them. I don’t imagine he’ll tire of you anytime soon.”
Tears of rage and desperation flooded April’s eyes as she stared at the woman in horror. “Just what kind of place is this? How can the Confederate government allow this kind of savagery to go on?”
Selma shrugged. “I don’t think anybody knows what goes on outside of our little ‘home’ here. You see, Tarboro is for women only—women considered spies and traitors by the South. They consider us outcasts of the worst kind, and they just want to get us out of the way. They don’t want to execute us, or do anything that would get them criticized. After all, we are women. So they just shuffle us off and forget about us. Blackmouth and his little army are perfectly happy with the setup. They not only don’t have to take a chance on getting their guts blown out in the war, they’ve got their own harem.”
“Actually,” she went on matter-of-factly, “it’s really not that bad. If it weren’t for having to work in them damn fields and thinking about all that money I could be making in the brothels back in Richmond, I wouldn’t mind the life. I hear some of the guards are pretty good, too. Some of the girls fight over them.”
April looked away, repulsed. “It’s horrible. I didn’t know such a thing could exist…”
“Oh, it can, and it does. Just make the best of it. If you’re smart, you’ll make Blackmouth as happy as you can, for as long as you can, ’cause, honey, once you start getting passed around, you’re gonna lose that innocent honeydew look of yours mighty fast.”
Neither of them had heard the door open. They did not know Kaid Blackmon had returned until his booming voice echoed from the rotting walls about them. “Selma, what’re you doing here? You’re supposed to be out in them damned fields. You want me to beat your worthless hide?”
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