Andersonville (19 page)

Four days since his last message to Day, and Barclay had received no further word.

A priest arrived at the prison. Father Peter Whelan was a stubby, kind-eyed, ugly old white-haired Irishman all in black who apparently had come from Savannah specifically to minister and deliver the Extreme Unction to the dying Catholics.

Barclay had, like John Brown, begun to question the piety of any self-professed man of God who supported the southern cause, but there was no denying the priest's commitment. He took up residence in a shack a mile from the prison and rose every morning in time to be at the stockade at the end of roll call. He would hold a morning Mass on the stump at the head of Market Street, and then he spent the rest of the daylight hours visiting the prisoners too sick to rise from their shelters, shuffling back to the wicket and departing only when it was too dark to read his Bible. His first morning, thousands crowded his makeshift pulpit, instantly converting to Catholicism when he completed the transubstantiation and began to dole out communion wafers. The next day, he had none to give and attendance dropped accordingly.

The population increased daily as more living arrived than dead departed. Barclay wondered how they could possibly be winning the war with so many new prisoners constantly arriving. As if to exacerbate things, the Georgia summer reached its zenith, the sun becoming an unbearable nemesis to any who ventured out of the shade. The death toll rose. In the evenings the banks of the putrid creek were choked with the bodies of wretches so desperate to escape the heat that they had dared to drink and wallow in the swampy water.

Limber and his Regulators stepped up their resistance to the Raiders, instituting an organized alarm system around the camp by which men would call loudly the name of their regiment or neighborhood when being attacked, allowing the Regulators assigned to defend that area to respond.

The Raiders responded by trying to assassinate Limber, who they rightly perceived as the main instigator of the resistance. Mosby sent three men with bowie knives to kill him one night. No one witnessed the skirmish, but somehow Limber managed to kill all three with his club, drowning the last one in the creek.

Watt and Chester were apprehended by Big Pete and Romeo Larkin while trying to shake down a newcomer. Barclay assumed that Sarsfield had been there with his two cronies but had escaped. Watt and Chester had one-half of their heads shaved to mark them. They were beaten severely and left in a broken, whimpering heap near the sutler's shack. In the morning Watt's swollen corpse lay among the dead at the South Gate. Chester was nowhere to be seen. It was assumed he had limped back to the Raider encampment in the night.

The Raider chiefs became scarce, retiring to their tent headquarters. Barclay never saw Sarsfield or Mosby or the rest. Muir especially was kept out of sight, though at night his name wended its way around the campfires north of the creek.

For his part, Barclay spent the time trading. He gathered berries and kindling while out on work detail and worked his way through the labyrinthine bartering system to the sutler, purchasing what amenities he could for himself and Clemis but also securing a number of mundane ingredients that he squirreled away in his corner of Bruegel's tent along with the grave dirt and Wirz's fingernail parings. What sort of spell he intended to work he hadn't decided, but he traded his goods and shopped with a hoodoo eye, bringing home things that Clemis proclaimed as worthless but that he knew could come in handy at some point.

To keep in practice, he fashioned a simple protective mojo hand, wrapping the charm in a bit of old red flannel. That opened a floodgate for him. The old ways of his father's conjure and his mother's mambo spells coursed through him. He made another bag for Clemis, instructing him not to let anyone else see or touch it lest it lose its potency. Then he began to work little tricks, grinding powders and roots, making a kind of emergency travel bag of anything he might deem useful down the road.

A week later he began to worry about Day's lack of a response.

From Callixtus, who had begun working as an orderly in the prison hospital, he learned that Lieutenant Day had gone on leave to Americus to see his ailing father. That calmed his fears a bit. He knew Day had no father and so must have gone with some purpose related to their mission.

But very soon afterward his fears were renewed when on work detail he nonchalantly asked after the absent Sergeant Turner and learned he had departed not long after Day on some unknown errand.

Had the conspirators tripped to Day's purpose? Was he in danger?

He was coming in with the others from the day's labor. Clemis pointed out that the guard on the wall had been doubled.

“Wonder what's up,” he murmured.

They were let in through the wicket and found a crowd of men gathered just inside the gate, so many that they were massed clear back nearly to the far wall.

Limber stood at their head, and when they'd all entered, he addressed them in a loud voice:

“Boys, tonight we move against Mosby and his damned Raiders once and for all. You've suffered as much as any of us at their hands. If you would join us now, we have clubs aplenty.”

The black men looked at each other solemnly. No one made a move.

“Well, come on, step forward!” Big Pete shouted lustily.

“What for?” Clemis answered, to Barclay's surprise. “So y'all can throw us out in front and come in and clean up, take all the credit? I had my fill of takin' orders from the white man today. You boys go ahead. My black ass is tired. Y'all been sittin' around all day long. You jest go on and fight. I'm goin' to bed.”

He walked off toward his neighborhood, and most of the others fell in behind him.

Big Pete chuckled.

“Ain't that just like a nigger?” he scoffed, not so low that Barclay didn't hear. “Get fed better'n us, stay strong, and then won't pitch in.”

“They are hare-brain'd slaves,”
Romeo agreed.

“Well, come on, then, boys,” said Limber. “Let's go.”

He stalked off south in the direction of the footbridge across the creek, and the main body of men followed.

Barclay stood watching them for a while, not knowing just how he felt, only knowing he was angry and would welcome a good fight.

Callixtus was standing beside him, his fists balled.

“I ain't no slave,” he growled.

“No nigger, either,” Barclay said. “Come on, let's go have dinner.”

The younger man grinned and nodded.

Barclay slapped him on the back, and they walked off.

“Barclay!”

Barclay stiffened. He had hardly seen Charlie since the day he'd found her with Limber in the shebang. She was never far from Limber, but she had waited behind while her paramour rushed to the fray, and he supposed he knew why.

She stood there now, skinny and filthy, fighting sickness, maybe, but undoubtedly a woman.

“Go on. I'll be about directly,” he said, and Callixtus nodded and went off without him.

“What is it?” he said.

“You owe me, Barclay,” Charlie said. “You know you do.”

“I thought I paid that off,” he said.

“Well, you didn't. Yonder down across that creek is the man killed my husband.”

“That's your price? Why don't you have Limber kill Sullivan for you?”

“Limber's…” she began, then bit her lip. “Limber's caught up in all this. He wants a court-martial and a hanging and all the fixings. I want justice, Barclay. Help me. Please.”

She held out her club.

He stared at her. The weapon was making her arm shake. She was thinner than the last time he'd seen her. Sick.

“You're strong; take it yourself.”

“You can see I ain't. Please, Barclay. There might not be another chance.”

Her eyes swelled.

He felt the anger swell up in him in unison.

He snatched the club from her hand and momentarily considered putting it upside her head.

“Come on,” he said gruffly, and joined in the eddy of filthy, verminous men tramping south.

They broke into a jog. Some of the sickly men were so intent on joining the fight they didn't wait to cross the footbridge but splashed across the creek. Barclay was not quite so eager. He joined the jostling bottleneck across and felt Charlie gripping the back of his shirt.

When they had reached the far shore beyond the jakes, Barclay could see the southern encampment. It was a bustle of activity. The Regulators' attack would be no surprise. The Raiders were massed around their territory armed with clubs and stones, some with knives. Mosby and some of the other Raider chiefs, Delaney and Curtis, were running up and down behind the lines, shouting encouragement like proper field commanders.

Limber gamely led the charge, Big Pete and Romeo and Key roaring on either side of him.

The clash was titanic, like some epic melee out of the ancient world. The Raiders' sandy encampment was like a solitary island besieged by a tidal wave of men. To their credit, the New Yorkers held their line, but the sheer number of the outraged, bloodthirsty westerners broke it at last, and the fight became a chaotic entanglement, with the Rebels silhouetted on the pickets above it all like carrion birds waiting to pick the flesh of the defeated.

Barclay gave over to his frustrations as, he was sure, so many around him did. He struck about him with the club, knocking men off their feet, imagining Turner at the end of every blow. He smashed knees, snapped limbs, and swung and punched and struck his way through the crowd, brawling his way to the center. The big pavilion was pulled down, timbers cracking. He caught sight of Mosby and Limber clenched up among the ruins like archenemies as men ran to and fro with armfuls of the Raiders' goods. Big Pete swung a man by his ankles and flung him into a line of others. He saw Sarsfield pulled down, Delaney knocked senseless.

Then Charlie was screaming behind him: “There he is!”

Barclay whirled and saw Sullivan charging at him, the bowie knife he'd used to cut up Charlie's face slicing the air. There was a crazed grin spread across his face, and Barclay ducked under the knife and broke it with a swat of his club that caused Sullivan to spit teeth.

Barclay brought the club down on Sullivan's knife hand. He heard bones breaking, but Sullivan's elbow came up and jammed itself in his eye. He lost his club and got locked up with the big Irishman, who sank the last of his teeth into Barclay's shoulder.

Barclay howled, enraged, and drove his fist again and again into the side of Sullivan's head. The man stayed clamped down like a jack bull terrier. He slammed his knee in the Irishman's stomach, and when the air blew from Sullivan's lungs, he released him at last.

Barclay drove his forearm under Sullivan's chin and kicked his legs out from under him, sparing his face a kick as he fell.

The man landed flat on his back, out cold.

Charlie was right there.

“Kill him, Barclay!” she screeched. “Kill him!”

She sounded like an emotional mistress urging her pet dog on to some entertainment. He didn't like that.

He spied a flash of metal poking out of Sullivan's shirt and, ignoring the tumult around him, knelt down and snatched the locket and chain from his neck.

He held it out to her.

“Here,” he said. “This is what you really want.”

To his surprise, she slapped the necklace from his hand. It flew off somewhere into the fight.

“If you ain't man enough to do it, I'll do it myself!” she shrieked, pushing past him.

She descended on Sullivan's chest and put her hands to his throat, squeezing so hard that his tongue poked out of his bleeding mouth and he began to rasp.

Barclay stared in shock. He looked around at the others. One man was similarly astride a Raider nearby and was driving his bloody head again and again against a rock. As he watched, the Raider's skull came apart in the man's hands. Yet he kept up his mechanical action until the dead man's head jellied in his hands. On the other side, two men were kneeling on a third, holding his face in the mud, smothering him.

Why had he allowed himself to be caught up in this madness? The prisoners were dangerously close to slaughtering their miscreant comrades.

He reached down and grabbed Charlie by the nape of her neck, squeezing so hard that she gasped. He flung her off Sullivan.

He spied Sergeant Key nearby with another man, looking around, as bewildered as he had been a moment ago.

“Hey, Key!” he shouted. “Are we taking prisoners here?”

“Of course we are!” Key said, coming over.

“Then here's one for you.”

Key nodded and gestured to the man beside him. They picked up Sullivan and began to drag him from the encampment.

“No!” Charlie screamed, scuttling over on her hands and knees. “No!”

He put his foot to her shoulder and booted her on her side, allowing Key and the other man to take Sullivan away.

“Leave it alone!” he yelled. “That's enough!”

She lay there for a moment panting like an exhausted tiger, then scowled and spit at him before scrambling to her feet and stomping away.

He stared after her, then looked at the other men. The assailants he had seen had moved on, but the man with the smashed skull remained.

The priest, Whelan, was kneeling beside the body of the smothered man. He had on his priestly stole. He turned the corpse face up and tipped a bottle to his thumb, describing the cross on the dead man's forehead.

“Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.”

Finished, he stood up and went to the man with the crushed skull.

The fight was dying down. Raiders were putting up their hands, and miraculously, the Regulators for the most part were taking them into custody, marching them off to the gate.