Andersonville (3 page)

“Fresh fish! Fresh fish!”

It was the same call as before, the same man, and Barclay saw him now, a smallish fellow with a head of tightly curled red hair and a bushy beard in an artilleryman's uniform. Among his fellows, he seemed positively glowing in health and, though filthy, did not have the same look of malnourishment and sickness.

He had his hands in his pockets and went among the white newcomers, talking loudly, asking questions and barely waiting to hear the answer before he moved on to the next man. He spoke like a New Yorker.

“Hey, Jim, what regiment? What news of Sherman? They impeach Lincoln yet?”

The questioned prisoners would stammer out their answers, and the redhead would nod and smile and say things such as “Fine, fine, that's fine,” and “Okay,” but Barclay sensed that he seemed to be looking for someone or something in particular.

He seemed to find it in a young sandy-haired infantryman, a mooncalf of a fellow in a relatively clean and new uniform with a bindle over his shoulder.

“Say there, my boy. What outfit?”

“190th Pennsylvania,” said the younger man.

“Where'd they get you?”

“At Cold Harbor. I got separated.” He blushed a bit. “Well, that is, I got lost. Rebs found me.”

“Ain't that a sorry state of affairs?” The redhead grinned sympathetically. “They rob you?”

“Naw, bastards took my watch, but I hid my money in my shoe.”

“Good boy. Shame about the watch, though. Hey, you wanna buy a new one?”

“You mean you got one?” The Pennsylvanian chuckled.

“Sure I got one,” said the redhead, pulling a tarnished watch from his pocket and dangling it before the kid's face. “Take a look.”

The kid obviously wasn't interested but out of politeness took the watch and made a show of examining it. He flicked it open, and the face tumbled out along with a shower of cogs.

“Hey, what the hell you doing, buster?” the redhead said angrily.

“It was broke already,” the Pennsylvanian protested.

“Like hell it was,” said the redhead, stooping to retrieve the pieces.

The younger man got down to help him fish the cogs and the face from the mud.

“Look, I'm sorry. Let me help you.”

“Help me hell!” the redhead grumbled. “You wanna help me, pay to have it fixed.”

“Who's gonna fix it in here?”

“We got a watchmaker,” the redhead said as if the question were offensive. “We ain't uncivilized.”

“Well, I mean…” the Pennsylvanian stammered, handing over the muddy bits of tiny clockwork.

“Well, you mean what?” the redhead demanded, snatching them away. “You broke it. It's only fair, ain't it?”

“Look, all right, don't be sore. Show me to this watchmaker.”

“That's more like it,” the redhead said.

Barclay missed what happened next as a hand touched his elbow.

He whirled. He knew how things worked in these places.

But it was only Charlie.

“Hey,” Charlie said. “You and me ought to stick together, Barclay. I mean, you owe me, after all.”

Barclay looked over the slight little man. More likely he wanted somebody strong to intimidate any thieves or roustabouts.

“Yeah,” Barclay said. “I guess so.”

“Come on; let's go stake us out a place.”

They walked aimlessly. The pen was divided lengthwise by two broad makeshift streets. To the south, the creek Barclay had seen passing into the pen nursed a putrid strip of sand and marsh. That was the low point of the stockade. The terrain to the extreme north and south rose into barren hillsides clustered with tents and hole dwellings. The prime real estate, no doubt. They wouldn't find anything there.

After a half hour of wandering around they began to think they wouldn't find any place at all. Every inch of ground was occupied with men.

They finally found a bare space toward the east wall.

“What now, though?” Barclay said. “We ain't got no blanket or nothing.”

“When they told us we were leavin' Libby, I left my old blanket there,” Charlie said regretfully. “I thought we were bein' paroled. Didn't know we were comin' here till I got on the train.”

“What're you two doing?” croaked a voice from somewhere around their ankles.

They looked down and saw an emaciated naked figure with a dirty blond beard stained with blood staring up at them with bug eyes. He had crawled out of a burrow in the ground nearby like some kind of hollow-eyed mole. His skin was so crowded with angry red mosquito bites, he looked like he had the measles.

“We're just settling in,” Charlie answered.

“Who is?”

“Me and him,” Charlie said, pointing to Barclay.

“My ass you are. I won't tolerate no nigger suckin' up the same air as me. Niggers landed me in this predicament. I'll be damned if I die in sight of one now. Y'all bed down here, I'm gonna crawl out and cut your damn throats while you're sleepin'.”

Charlie moved forward as if to kick the miserable creature, but Barclay held him back with his elbow.

“Leave it, Charlie. He's right. Man ought to die as he chooses.”

The man stared at them, then shimmied strangely backward into the mouth of his hole.

“Y'all get the fuck outta here,” he warned in parting, then disappeared in the dark depths of the burrow.

“Come on; he can keep this air,” Charlie announced loudly. “It stinks anyhow.”

“It stinks everywhere,” said a boy's voice.

They turned and saw a ragged, rangy kid of about fifteen in the remnants of a drummer boy's uniform that he had outgrown, his arms extending far beyond the cuffs, the seams popping in a few places. He had a mop of black hair and keen blue eyes, with a dirty red cap placed jauntily on his head.

“Y'all lookin' for a shebang?”

“A what?” Charlie asked.

“A shebang, you know, shelter.”

“What's it look like?” Charlie said.

“I know where there's one, just vacated. Got a roof even.”

“Oh, yeah? Just who're you, a goddamned speculator?”

“I'm Ranse Popwell. Folks call me Red Cap. Y'all got money? Greenbacks?”

Charlie looked at Barclay, who shrugged.

“What's it to you?”

“How much you got?” Red Cap asked.

“How much'll it cost?” Charlie countered.

“Most of what you got, probably.”

“So show us.”

“Show me the color of your coin first.”

Charlie frowned but got down on one knee and took off his left shoe.

The boy craned his neck curiously, but Charlie turned and knocked a few dollars into his palm. He peeled out one wrinkled greenback and put the rest away, then stuck the shoe back on his foot, turned, and flashed the money at the kid.

“All right, come on.”

He turned and went off through the rows of shelters.

“I got money, Charlie,” Barclay said. “Some, anyhow.”

“Good, 'cause I'm nearly tapped. Come on.” He looked around, bug-eyed, nervous. “But keep your eyes peeled; make sure we don't get jumped.”

They followed the kid north through the maze of ramshackle dwellings and bony men languishing out in the open, crossed one of the streets, and came to a row of dugouts covered with frame roofs of dirty canvas.

The boy turned and held out his hand.

“Five dollars,” he said.

“Five?” Charlie squawked. “I got two. Including what I already gave you.”

“It's five,” Red Cap said. He looked appraisingly at Barclay. “How about you?”

“I can cover that,” Barclay said, and leaned on Charlie's shoulder to slip off his left shoe.

When he had knocked the coins into his hand, the boy's face wrinkled.

“I said greenbacks.”

“Coins is just as good,” said Barclay.

“Gold ain't no good if it gets me killed. Where'd a buck like you get gold dollars, anyhow?”

“Is you gonna take it or ain't you?” Barclay said flatly, not caring for the kid's tone.

The boy sniffed, then took the coins and stuffed them into his shoe.

“Third one down on the right's all yours.”

He straightened and began to walk off, but Barclay seized his collar.

“Hang on, boy,” he said, and pushed him over to Charlie, who caught hold of his shoulders.

“What's the idea?” Red Cap said shrilly.

“Got to make sure we're satisfied with the purchase,” Charlie said.

“You paid your money and I showed you your place; now let me go!”

Charlie pulled the scrawny boy along to the shebang he had indicated, drawing a few curious stares from the waking neighbors.

Barclay hunkered down and pulled back the canvas flap. He immediately stumbled back at the cloud of stench and flies that wafted out.

Red Cap threw his elbow into Charlie's gut and broke from his grasp. He ran a few feet, then turned and called, grinning.

“All yours, boys! Don't bother goin' through their pockets. I already did. Welcome to Andersonville!”

Then he was off, weaving through the rows of dismal shelters and dodging the shambling inmates.

“Ah, hell,” Charlie said, peering in.

Two dead men lay side by side, yellow-skinned, with clusters of flies buzzing between their closed eyelids and dancing along their teeth and maggots packed in their nostrils and ears.

“Well,” Barclay said, shrugging. “I guess we take 'em to the South Gate and air this place out.”

They pulled the canvas covering free of the weathered pine poles, exposing the wriggling vermin to the morning sun.

The men had expired holding hands, and their stiff, bony fingers had to be pried loose before they could drag them out of the recessed pit and into the lane.

When they had cleared the worst of the mess, a tall, lanky man in red-striped artillery trousers and suspenders with a patchy brown mustache and long scraggly hair came out of the next-door dugout and stepped up to them, glowering at them with a set of dime-blue eyes.

“Just what in the hell are you two doing?” the man snarled.

“Now hold on, friend,” Charlie said. “Before you jump to conclusions, we found these men as is.”

“How do I know that,
friend
? I knew them. I don't know you two.”

A few other men began to emerge from the nearby shelters and crowd behind the tall man. Evidently he was the authority in this neighborhood.

“Scurvy got 'em, sir,” said Barclay. “You can see by their teeth and the blood.”

The tall man narrowed his eyes at Barclay.

“So what're you, the black surgeon general?”

A few of the men behind him burst out laughing.

“Turn out your pockets,” the tall man ordered.

“We ain't thieves.”

The tall man pointed down to the corpses.

“So where's their hen buttons?”

Barclay looked down. The brass buttons had been pulled off both of their tunics.

“That drummer boy must've took 'em off,” Charlie said quickly. “He told us about these two. We paid him to show us an empty shelter.”

“Drummer boy?” the tall man said, his knotted brow relaxing. “You mean Red Cap? Hell, you should've spoke sooner, buster. That shittin' kid's the old man of Andersonville. How much did he take you for?” But then he quickly waved off the answer. “Never mind; it ain't my business. I'm Sergeant Jim Laughlin, 76th Illinois. Most call me Limber.”

When they had introduced themselves, Limber said, “Well, I guess I'll show you boys what we do with our dead. I'll leave a man here to protect your investment. Come on; we got to hurry. Roll call starts in fifteen.”

He called to a large, broad-shouldered man named Big Pete in the crowd to come sit in their new shebang and discourage claim jumpers, and another man came forward to help bear one of the corpses while Limber took the feet of one and Barclay took the wrists.

“This is Romeo Larkin,” Limber said, introducing a stocky fellow with a prodigious mustache and short-shaved hair.

“Well be with you, gentlemen,” said Larkin, touching the cracked brim of his faded cap.

“Larkin used to teach English at a college in Ohio. He swipes much of his fancy talk from Shakespeare, so we call him Romeo.”

Larkin stood over the corpse for a moment and shook his head.

“Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death, and death will have his day.”

“Nice,” said Charlie, stooping to hoist up the corpse's hands. “You get his feet.”

As they bore their stinking burdens toward the South Gate, men gave them a wide berth, and those who had them removed their caps till the dead men had passed.

“You two bunkin' together, then?” Limber asked.

“We figured on it,” Charlie said.

“ 'Less it's a problem, sir,” said Barclay, knowing full well that a white man and a black man sharing space was uncommon.

“No problem with me. We all maintained unit cohesion best we could when we got here, but now space is space. Some camp together, some don't,” he said. “So long as you report to roll call with your own ninety, don't matter where you sleep.”

“Ninety?” said Charlie.

“Every sergeant's responsible for ninety men.” He nodded to Barclay. “Except for nigras. There's only about a hundred of you as is.”

He nodded in the general direction of the northwest of the camp.

“Up there you got the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters. They got took at Petersburg, most of 'em. Company K's all Indians. They even got an honest-to-God medicine man. But right past there you got the 35th and 8th U.S. Colored and the 54th Massachusetts.”

Barclay bit his lip but said nothing.

“Make no mistake,” said Limber. “You hang your hat where you like. I don't subscribe to that bullshit about nigras bein' the reason we ain't bein' paroled. Rebs goin' right back into the lines probably are just as much to blame. I only point 'em out to say you ought to go and report to Major Bruegel. He sorta leads the coloreds around here.”

“A major? I thought officers got sent to separate prisons,” Charlie said.

“Not no white officer taken in charge of Negroes,” Barclay said.

“That's a fact,” Limber said. “Confederates don't recognize Bruegel's rank. They treat him like a common soldier. Worse. When he arrived, they took him to the hospital to fix a belly wound. Surgeons refused to treat him. Sent him back. He ain't got long. But he's the highest rank we got here.”

“I reckon I'll see him,” Barclay said.

A little farther toward the South Gate, they crossed paths with a wiry man with deep red sunburned skin and a long beard and hair. In his shredded clothes, he looked like some kind of island castaway. He was dragging a heavy iron ball by his skinny ankle, and he stared at them as they passed.

“Runaway?” Charlie asked when he was out of earshot.

“Best runaway we got,” Limber told him. “Skinny Hank Wilderbeck. Think he's from Delaware. He's busted loose four times. The last time he made it all the way to Macon before they brought him back. Some think he's some kinda spy. Most think he's crazy.”

“How'd he get away all those times?” Charlie asked.

“A stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron,”
said Romeo.

“Best not to think on it, soldier,” said Limber. “Next time he tries it, I got a feeling it'll be his last.”

When they reached the South Gate at last, they found a sizable array of corpses already laid out. Their feet were uniformly bare, the big toes tied together and hung with a tag bearing the corpse's name.

They set their burdens down nearby, and Limber removed the shoes.

“These look about your size, Barclay,” he said. “You want 'em?”

“My own shoes are fine,” Barclay said.

“Never hurts to have a spare. You can trade the leather, too.”

“All right,” he said, taking the shoes.

“You boys are lucky Red Cap didn't make off with these,” he said, grunting and tossing the second pair of shoes to Charlie. “Knock the maggots out before you try 'em on.”

A Confederate guard standing near the pile came over with a pair of tags and a pencil, which he passed wordlessly to Romeo, who wrote down the names and then pinned them to the dead men's clothing.

Romeo tied the big toes of each man together, and finally they dragged the corpses next to the others.

Barclay glanced at the corpse next to the newcomer and stiffened.

It was the same boy the redhead had tried to sell the watch to earlier that morning.

He was staring at the open sky, a bloody slit gaping under his smooth chin.

“Somebody you know?” Limber asked.

Barclay shook his head.

“I seen a man this morning try to sell him a watch.”

“That didn't take long,” Limber said grimly. “There's a bad element in camp. Raiders. Mostly New Yorkers. Bail jumpers and substitutes, you know, signed on for the money, tried to skip out, got caught up in the war. There's a couple different Raider gangs, but they're all run by an English fellow calls himself Mosby—real name's Willie Collins.”

He straightened and nodded to a large tent enclosure on the hill in the southwest corner of the stockade. It looked to be a kind of communal warren draped with the components of numerous tents. Barclay wondered how many of them had been voluntarily donated and how many forcibly taken.

“That's their headquarters, where they sharpen their razors and count their loot. Those boys are sons of bitches of the highest order. No loyalty but to their ill-gotten gains. Stay away from there.”

“Hell is empty and the devils are here,”
Romeo said by way of agreement.

“Man I saw was kinda short, had red hair,” Barclay said.

“Yeah, that'd be John Sarsfield, one of Mosby's lieutenants.”

“Hey, Sergeant,” said Charlie, “is there a man named Rickson in with these Raiders?”

“I don't recognize the name. It's possible,” said Limber. “Who is he?”

Charlie shook his head, staring intently at the southwest encampment.

“Just somebody I knew at Libby.” Barclay heard a series of authoritative shouts sound through the camp and watched as the half-dead men began to shuffle into a weird semblance of an orderly formation, situating themselves at attention in front of their shebangs if they had them.

There was a shout from the wall near the North Gate and a clatter as the wicket swung open and Wirz rode in on his horse with a retinue of guards.

“Turn out, boys,” said Limber. “Roll call.”