A Deeper Sense of Loyalty (33 page)

“Stand him up. I want him to show me some respect. Stand him up.”

Like lifting a sack of grain, they hauled James to his feet and threatened to beat him if he didn't stand up straight. “You are from Georgia but you fight for the Union?” said Wirz. James did not answer so Private Jake stomped on his right foot almost hard enough to break bones. “Can you answer now?” said Wirz.

“Yes, sir.”

“Why did you turn your back on your country?”

“I didn't, sir, the Confederacy did.”

“That is a good answer. I don't like it, but technically it is a good answer. We did pull out of the Union; we felt we had the right. Do you believe in human rights?”

“I believe in the rights of all humans.”

“All humans?”

“Yes, sir, all humans white and black.”

“Again a good answer. Again, an answer I do not like, but technically good. But we are the Confederate States and we are at war. You are not only the enemy, but as you like technicalities, we also see you as a traitor. I have the authority to hang you if I wish but I believe
that
punishment would be insufficient so I will let you rot in my stockade. Should you make any trouble for me I will hang you straight away. Take him to the front gate, soldiers, and have him admitted.”

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

 

The Deadliest Battlefield

 

 

The gigantic main gate swung open and before James was the living hell that all referred to as Andersonville. For as much as he had heard about the place, even from men who had spent time there, it was still far worse than words could describe. It was a huge open mud pit covered by thousands of tents constructed from sticks and scraps of canvas or blankets. Beneath many of the tents, the ground was dug out, resembling something like a gopher hole. The stockade held an enormous collection of withered, emaciated creatures covered with long hair, beards, and the tattered remains of a uniform.

Most of the inmates seemed to be milling around aimlessly as if they had no earthly purpose. But even if they had the strength, what was there to do? The only true activity was waiting; waiting for liberation or waiting to die. It was a fact that more men died of disease than of battle wounds.

James felt a pang of anger toward General Sherman; he had been so close. The army had marched two hundred and seventy-five miles from Atlanta to Savannah with no real opposition except for Joe Wheeler's cavalry. Why didn't they swing a little further south and open the gates for these poor forgotten souls? Was Sherman too busy hunting glory? Would he have looked upon these helpless, starving men as a burden like the thousands of slaves that followed after him? Certainly it would not have been difficult to overpower the small Confederate force that guarded the prison.

For a time, James simply stood and stared at the inmates as a man might stare at any tragic scene. The awfulness of it grabbed his attention making it difficult to pull away. The men could have been categorized by stage of health and appearance, ranging from those recently captured to those who had been there for many months.

Eventually he was approached by an inquisitive corporal who, from the looks of him, had been there for some time. “Welcome, friend. I'm sorry to see you here,” said the corporal.

“No sorrier than I am to be here,” James replied.

“You think you're sorry now, just wait til you've been here for a couple months. This ain't no prison. It's a death camp. Ever since they stopped the prisoner exchange, the Rebs just lock you up in here and take bets on how long you'll last. It would be more humane to shoot us than take us prisoner. If the war doesn't end soon, we'll all die in here. I guess it really comes down to the individual; some will just naturally last longer than others. There's no safe water to drink except rain water, when it rains. There's no proper medical care and no decent food. Unsifted corn meal filled with husks and eaten raw is every man's daily portion. Every single day we carry out the dead. Most die of disease and malnutrition, some give up hope and cross the dead line.”

“Dead line?”

“Yeah. See that single rail fence running the whole way around, a few feet from the wall?”

“I see it.”

“That's the dead line. Cross it and they'll shoot you down.”

“How long have you been here, Corporal?”

“Name's Tim Fallon. Been here four months now. I got here just before they hanged the raiders.”

“My name is James Langdon. Who were the raiders?”

“A bunch of scum who banded together and survived by robbin and killin the new boys when they got captured. There was about a thousand of them; mostly misfits and bounty jumpers. When new boys came in, they usually had full haversacks. The raiders would attack em, steal their food, clothing, blankets, everything. They ate good while the rest of us starved. Anything they stole and didn't need they would trade to the Rebs for things they wanted, like whiskey. They killed quite a few men in the doing. One day the boys decided they'd had enough. They attacked the raiders and rounded up the leaders. That bastard Wirz actually agreed to let us put them on trial. We had a prosecution and a defense; we had witnesses and a jury, just like in a regular courtroom. We found them guilty and hanged the six ring leaders. After that, things got more peaceful in here if nothing else.”

“What are the chances of escape? I know that some have managed it.”

“Now and then a lucky few are able to tunnel their way out but it ain't easy. The digging's hard and if you
do
get outside the wall you better be sure you can give yourself a good head start. The Rebs got themselves a pen full of bloodhounds and they will track you down if you don't have a lot of distance on them. Besides that, the son of a bitch in charge of trackin escaped prisoners is a real crackerjack at his work. They say he used to be an overseer on a big plantation and he's got a lot of experience runnin down escaped slaves. He's not only good at his job, but if he catches you, he don't bring you back until he's enjoyed dealing out his own brand of punishment. Sometimes he don't bring back the men he catches at all. As long as no one gets away, Wirz don't ask for explanations.”

“Yes,” said James. “I've heard terrible things about this place. It has quite a reputation. Now that the Confederacy is so near to collapse, I suppose that our suffering is all they have to look forward to each day.”

“You really think it will be over soon?”

“Yes, Tim, I do. I was with Sherman before I was caught. I saw what he did to Georgia, now he is headed for the Carolinas. Grant is closing on Richmond and when Sherman gets to southern Virginia they'll have the Confederates in a vise. It can only be a matter of months.”

“That sounds mighty good. If a man could just stay healthy it might be possible to wait it out now. But that's easier said than done. If only there was a little food. I think I could put up with the boredom and the other hardships if I just had something to eat.”

“Are you married, Tim?”

“No, I'm not, thank God. My ma died when I was born so it's just Pa and me. I worry that he's thinkin that I was killed maybe. I always wrote regular so he has to know by now that something has happened. You have to bribe the Rebs to get a letter mailed and not too many have the price. I feel sorry for the men that
do
have wives and children.”

“I wrote to my wife a week ago. I hope it isn't an eternity until I can write again. This war has got to end soon . . . it's just got to.”

“Listen, James, my tent mate died a few days ago. It's just a hole in the ground with an old piece of canvas over top but if you want to share it you're welcome.”

“I'm much obliged.”

Tim led the way between two rows of gopher hole shelters and when James got a look at his new home, the reality of his capture sunk in deep. He had no tolerance for self pity but he had finally gotten to the point where he had to ask God why he had come to the end of the earth at Andersonville. Maybe his luck had completely run out. He climbed down into the five-foot deep cavern, sat down, propped his elbows atop his knees and let his face drop into his hands.

“It happens to everybody in the beginning, James. I'll leave you alone for awhile.”

James didn't answer or even look up. Tim disappeared beyond the top of the hole. One word entered James's head, lodged there, and took root; escape.

 

For the next two months, he spent the daylight hours walking the perimeter of the stockade for two reasons. The first was for the exercise and the second was to search for some weakness that he could exploit. He knew that time was working against him, tapping his strength, diminishing his chance of finding a way out. His tent mate, Tim, had fallen to the next stage of his incarceration. Sores dotted his thin body; teeth fell from rotten gums. He rarely left the hole anymore except when chased by his dysentery; sometimes he didn't even bother then. He was decaying before James's eyes and there was nothing James could do but watch him die. He knew that the same would eventually happen to him. By now his face was covered with beard; his hair was touching his shoulders and he was filthy from living in dirt. He had long since traded the brass buttons from his ragged uniform for a few small bites of something edible.

One small thing James did to help keep his sense of awareness intact was to follow the days and the months on a crude calendar carved into a piece of wood. On the morning of the last day of March he awoke from his usual restless sleep. Waking up in Andersonville, merciless as it was, proved even worse on that particular morning; first because he had been dreaming about having breakfast at home with his family before the war, and second, after looking across the gopher hole at Tim, James realized that his friend was dead. Another life carelessly thrown away, he thought, another young man who should still be alive but was not.

Tim was from New York. He had lived there with his father on a small dairy farm. Now he was just filler for another unmarked hole in the ground hundreds of miles from home. James made a mental note, optimistically promising to someday write to Tim's father so that the man would at least know what had become of his brave soldier.

He scrounged a scrap of paper and wrote Tim's name and home state on it. Then he took part of a shoestring from the dead man's dilapidated brogans and tied the tag to a protruding toe. After the minimal preparation, he recruited another man to help bear Tim's body to the dead house, which was right outside the stockade wall. As usual there was a line of men, two live with one dead in between, waiting for the guards to open the gate. Carrying out the dead was the only time a prisoner ever saw the free side of the stockade wall. Once, James watched a man who had helped carry out a body, lose his head at the sight of the open field and take off running. The Rebs shot him to pieces.

When the gate opened, the procession moved out toward the dead house. After delivering Tim's body, James was on his way back when three men on horseback came across the bridge spanning the filthy creek that ran through the prison. Two of them were soldiers and the third was a coarse looking man in civilian clothing who was carrying a sawed off shotgun in his right hand. Waiting for the horses to pass in front of him, James stared at the civilian as if drawn by something familiar. Suddenly he knew what it was; the eye patch. The man wore an eye patch; the former overseer, the villain Tim had told him about. It was Farley Tabor.

As Tabor passed by, he stared back at James with a look of genuine hatred in his expression, but James did not know if Tabor recognized him. It had been over four years since they had seen each other and James looked very different now in his unkempt, undernourished condition. Seeing Tabor at the prison was unexpected but certainly not surprising. In fact, if James had held the responsibility of finding a place in the war that was suitable for Tabor, he couldn't have thought of one better. With the slaves gone, he undoubtedly needed someone else to abuse.

James went back to the gopher hole and sat in silent resignation. He felt that he was ready to succumb to his circumstances. Even the thought of Polly and little James was failing to strengthen his will to go on. In spite of his lackluster spirit, he believed that any day the war could end and how sad it would be to die just before the final shot was fired.

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

 

Nine Lives

 

 

Just when hope had all but expired, a desperate opportunity came from the most unlikely source that James could have imagined. Late in the afternoon two guards entered the stockade, walked up and down between the rows of tents, peering into each one as they went. When they came to James's hole they stopped. “Would you be Langdon?” asked a skinny farm boy in gray who was no more than sixteen. James nodded without looking up. “Come up outta that hole.”

“What for?” said James, still looking at the ground.

“Commandant sent us to fetch you.” That was odd, James thought. There was never any reason for Wirz to send for a prisoner, no reason at all. The Reb repeated the order and tapped James's shoulder with the bayonet on the muzzle of his rifle. Passing on the notion to refuse and force the guard to shoot him, he crawled out of the hole and walked toward the gate ahead of his escort. When they got outside, there was Farley Tabor, sitting on his horse, grinning like Satan on Judgment Day. James saw something else he recognized: a coiled bullwhip hanging from a leather strap on his saddle.

To the farm boy Tabor said, “Get yourself a horse, Private, you'll be comin with me.” Then he spoke to James, “Captain Wirz is tired a eatin army rations. I promised him squirrel stew for supper tonight. I ain't got time to sit and wait for em so you're gonna climb some trees and shake a few outta their nests.”

James knew immediately that it was all a lie. Prisoners were never let outside the wall for any reason except to remove the dead, and even if it were true, he was certainly in no condition to climb trees. James knew that wherever Tabor intended to take him he wouldn't be coming back.