Andersonville (110 page)

Needn’t take it all to once’t. It hain’t all the milk in the world. Just one canteen-full, you hog.

Nazareth Stricker munched pork, potatoes, pone; he ate the rest of the peas, he scraped them from the log with dancing fingers. Throughout the madness of this meal he kept making little chirrups and moanings. Tears still flowed.

God damndest bawl-baby ever I see. Do all you Yanks bawl like that?

I don’t know, mourned Naz Stricker, I don’t know. But his shrunken stomach could not accept this load, could not retain it for long. He began to retch, his whole body was torn with the struggle, his shoulders went into spasm, he turned and bent away across the fallen tree, and lost everything while Coral sat scowling.

Too much, said Stricker when he could speak again, too much.

You hadn’t no call to go a-wasting it.

Know what?

What?

The Yankee spoke with the astonishing vigor of those stockaders who lay on the boundary of death. Men scarcely able to wiggle their fingers had at times crawled up and belabored each other with clubs; yet within hours they were collapsed, they were cold.

In the stockade there’s fellows go around—hunting for the stuff that—other fellows have thrown up. And what’s passed—through them. Passed through their bodies.

What they want to do that for?

To eat it, you damn Rebel!

Don’t you call me no damn Rebel!

Guess you are—are one, aren’t you? Or
were
?

They sat staring; and it was as if the food which Stricker had wolfed and then rejected— The food had, in some odd way and in a matter of minutes— As if it had given him strength. He emerged from the status of a beast into the ranks of humanity.

If they do that, said Coral Tebbs at long last, then they got mighty dirty ways. Like a bunch of birds after horse-apples.

Reb—what’s your name?

Coral Tebbs.

Did you say
Coral
?

Yes, I said
Coral.
Hain’t I got a right to my own name? Here I go fetching rations to you, and right off you start making mock of me.

I wasn’t making mock, Coral. It’s—kind of—unusual—for a name.

Well, so’s your’n.

Twas my father’s name before me, and my grandfather’s.

Coral imagined Naz Stricker’s father and grandfather, he saw them as bearded Pennsylvanians peering dumbly from red farmhouses, watching in alarm the Confederates’ advance, fearful for safety of their livestock; well might they be fearful.

How’s your belly feel, Nazareth Stricker?

Feels better. Might— Could I have some more milk?

Coral offered the canteen, but this time Stricker held it for his own drinking. He stopped suddenly, lowering the canteen and saying, Don’t you—want any?

I done made a meal.

Stricker ate again, he ate more slowly, there was painful leisure in his approach to the morsels which remained. He ate half of a boiled potato, two more scraps of the fried pork; he looked at the large chunk of corn pone which was left, then stuffed it inside his shirt.

I got some pie, said Coral.

I can’t believe— Ain’t any pie on earth.

Oh, yes, there is, and Coral exhibited in triumph the great crushed chunk of it.

Stricker shook his head wearily. Wish I could. But I can’t.

Well, keep it safe till you can, said Coral gruffly.

Already, and in this limited acquaintanceship, a meeting of witches, Nazareth Stricker showed himself as a soldier. A thing was there: it was for him, he took it. A thing was not there: he went without. He did not pry and examine, he did not query, he accepted. Coral Tebbs had not summoned him to a Stated Communication of the fierce new Lodge . . . the Lodge went into session, though no gavel fell, and a mystic unseen sentinel gave the requisite number of knocks on the closed door, and announced that there was a Brother who desired permission to approach. The Brother was examined, he gave the Grip (it was a Grip to be managed with but one hand or foot, or perhaps with no hands or no feet); he responded properly to silent questions; he was found to be a Mutilated Militant in Good Standing, or in Good Sitting.

You live around here, Reb?

Out yonder. My old lady’s got a little place.

Your wife?

Naw, naw, naw. My Ma! I’m scarce eighteen.

I’m twenty.

Yank, you got the shakes again. Here, I got this blanket roll . . . tain’t much of a coat but . . . and this here coverlid for to sleep in.

If I stay, the dogs might pick me up. But I can’t move. Yet.

I got to think about some other place for you. I’ll reason out a place. . . . Can’t take you to the house; Ma gets too many folks come a-calling. And then Flory trots himself over sometimes from the stockade. He’s in them Georgia Reserves. He’s my half-brother, the little scut. . . . Naz Stricker, I had a funny notion.

Such as?

Oh, spose like that smoke was all around, there by that wheatfield, second day of the battle. We was coming up on you, and you was trying to shove us back—

Guess I had the—same idea, Coral.

What was you a-shooting?

Springfields. Regular bullets, paper-cartridge type.

Reckon that’s what hit me. See, you could have fired, I could have fired, did fire, practically the same second.

It’s—unlikely.

But it could have happened.

Yes. Could.

Yank, you live in a brick house? When you’re to home?

Yes, I do.

Got one of them big funny barns out behind, sticking clean over the hillside?

No, we haven’t much of a barn. We—live in a little town. We’ve only a stable and buggy-shed, and the shop. Out back.

What kind of shop?

Where Father works, and Uncle Asaph.

Asaph? Dad blast these Yankee names!

Father’s fond of telling—how Uncle Asaph got his name. Twas a few days after his—birth—and they didn’t know what to call him. He was having his didy put on him, and he—kicked out, like babies will. Kicked over a pewter cup, and it—fell on plates and things. So they fell, all—a-clatter. And my grandfather said, It says in—the Book of Chronicles—it says, Asaph made a sound with cymbals. So we shall call him Asaph. You see?

I don’t see no way. What they make in that shop?

Coral, I’m—tired. Want to go to sleep.

Then get back in that brush, where you was when the hawk fell down. Here. I’ll help you fetch this stuff.

They staggered and mauled their way to the center of the thick-clad little island.

You—asked me something.

Oh, twas just talk.

Asked me what they make in the shop. And I—used to help. I—grew up in the shop. Ask me again, Coral.

Well?

Ask me—again.

I’m a-asking.

They make feet. And legs. Legs and feet.

Coral Tebbs crowed wordlessly.

As God’s my witness!

Oh, they do, do they? They make them any hands too?

Usually just—hooks. But Squire Barth lost his hand in a sawmill, and they made him—a hand. Just for show. Twon’t work. It’s got a glove on it, with the fingers kind of—folded. Natural as life. But twon’t work.

Coral Tebbs sat talking with Naz Stricker until the Yankee, a thin bent ragged seed within the pod of coat and comforter, became voiceless. His breath blew out noisily as he slept; Coral watched him; sometimes he gargled and groaned and gave little squeaks; once he said something about Uncle Asaph. Coral watched him for what seemed an hour, it might have been longer. Then Coral made his way home and dropped exhausted upon his bed and found his own sleep, disturbed by nightmares as was Naz Stricker’s slumber. One trip into the marsh, a trip home, the trip back to the marsh, laden with haversack and blanket roll, his crutches slipping and catching . . . he had fallen twice, with those burdens . . . the trip back home again.

But in the middle of the night he sat upright, eyes staring into gloom, ears hurtfully alert. Dogs. The dogs were out. That free running pack, bound to hunt Naz Stricker in his lair, the catch-dogs bound to seize him when trail-dogs had smelt their way to the island. Then Coral laughed hoarsely, and lay back, head cradled under his arms. The dogs were over east, winding and tracking and baying across the Claffey plantation. Some other escaped prisoner must be their immediate quarry, not Nazareth. And it sounded as if the dogs were a solid mile and a half away from that sacred island, and going farther all the while. Coral reached out, got this trousers, found his plug, bit off his chew, and worked the spittoon out from under the bed. He propped himself comfortably on the bed, wishing only that his shoulders would not ache so strenuously, gnawed as they were by merciless wooden jaws of those crude crutches. Faintly he heard the music box playing in The Crib, and smiled to hear it, but he could not pick out the air. Those were all old foreign tunes on that spindle—someone had said that they were German tunes—and Coral did not know their names because the list pasted inside the music box lid was long defaced, and anyway the list was printed in a strange higgledy-piggledy script, and anyway he could not read well.

Zoral woke up in the next room and said, Maw.

She ain’t here.

Mawwww!

She’s over to The Crib, you blame grasshopper!

Jink.

Well, if’n you want a drink you come get it your ownself.

Jink.

You heard what I said, you Zoral. I ain’t toting no water to you, not this night. You’re big enough to wait on yourself. I hain’t your nigger.

It was doubtful whether Zoral understood half of what was said, but finally he came into the room, trotting slowly, and made his way to the water bucket, and drank deeply, squinting over the gourd at his half-brother while he drank. Then trot, trot back through the shadows; and a train went past, and again Zoral started to make train sounds until Coral roared at him to shut up.

Coral considered the swamp, and considered Naz Stricker, and thought of the Union army coat and the green and white comforter, now touched with muck, but covering Naz Stricker, shielding his weak body, helping to keep warm the wizened stump of his left arm. He thought of Flory, and his grin spread. Flory would puke. Thirty dollars a head . . . Turner and his dogs, Harris and his dogs . . . Captain Wirz, sir, I got this here Yankee. Give me thirty dollars, please . . . Coral slept.

...But awakened once more (and long after the widow’s callers had departed, and after she was bugling in the next room) to take notice of his own confusions, recollections and the hard stolid body of a single ambition which stood like a segment amid these other riffraff. A
foot
. Nazareth Stricker—in awful weakness, but mumbling still the answers which Coral sought—had said that they used special kinds of wood. One kind came from some foreign land, and it was light but strong, not weighty to tote around. It was costly. Couldn’t find any wood like that around here. But— Gum, tupelo, oak, pine, magnolia, haw? Sure enough, what about haw? Coral could— No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t cut down a haw tree by himself. But he might go over to the Claffey place and say, Mr. Claffey, sir, it might be that you’re pestered with chicken hawks? Well, I aim to rid you of them hawks. Set out still as a stump until Old Hawk comes, and then blast the daylight through him. But— Mr. Claffey, sir, if’n I’m successful a-doing it, it might be that one of your niggers could cut down a tree for me? Teeny little tree, not much account? That’d be one way to get haw-wood, if haw-wood could serve. Maybe peach, maybe apple? Ma had a rolling pin made of apple.

The rolling pin took him on the trail of a more magnificent idea. He saw a kind of rolling-pin thing, sticking up out of grass. Saw it clearly. But where? . . . It was in dry grass and blackberry spines, over next door on the Granny Rambo place. Granny Rambo’s house had burned down, burned to smithereens, the winter before Coral went to the army. Folks thought she must have put hickory in her fireplace, and hickory sparked like mad, and maybe that was what caught the bedclothes afire, and Granny sick beneath them. Black smoke boiling high, and men flocking with yells from the railroad train when they came past and saw the smoke and stopped to fight the fire. There wasn’t much use a-fighting it. They dragged Granny out, what was left of her, and got out a few pieces of furniture; then the roof caved in, and the woodshed and old smokehouse burned up too. Nothing left standing on the place except the privy with blackened pines towering sad beside it. . . . It was there that Coral had seen that big kind of rolling-pin-shaped apparatus, sticking up out of the weeds.

And the privy.

Nobody went there; no longer was there a path; the fence was down, hungry whips of berry vines extended over the deserted soil and made new bushes like a barrier. And you couldn’t see the privy from the railroad, couldn’t see it from the Tebbs place.

You needn’t worry about black people straying in that direction, for all of them believed that Granny Rambo walked the jungle which had been her dooryard for twenty-odd years, walked at odd seasons and in odd guise. . . . Saw her in her bonnet. She had that old shawl a-folded across her shoulders. She had a basket on her arm. She walked young as once she had been, with golden curls showing, and in a white gown, and she carried her youngest child in her arms. She walked old, she leaned on her cane, her face was hateful and hating.

To tell the truth, Coral Tebbs had first heard these tales when he returned in the fall of 1863, and had more or less believed them. But his honest memory of Granny Rambo was of a gentle little body who made gingerbread men to give to hungry children when she had the wherewithal. He did not believe that she would actually harm a soul, whether she walked or whether she didn’t.

He wondered if Naz Stricker was afraid of ghosts.

Nowadays Coral himself feared few things. Scorn or pity directed at himself: these he feared and resented. And he was afraid of bad dreams, echoes of
nrrrrwhuck
and himself hooting under the knife and saw.

Coral had another nap (brief deep rewarding nap, a soldier’s sleep). He went prowling round the yard in the first hollowness of dawn. Maybe it was warmer in the swamp than it was here, warmer where wind could not reach so easily. He searched in ordinary places: in the broken hogshead lying on its side; in a mouldering wagon box; he searched behind sheds and under dry vines, he peeked at nests of leaves and straw and pine straw. No one had gathered eggs the previous evening, or possibly for two previous evenings, so now he found eight eggs. Coral built a tiny quick fire under the kettle and boiled all of the eggs. Zoral awoke and came running out in his shirt, he dripped lather as a dog might drip. Coral gave him an egg, and gave him corn bread. Coral was kind enough to offer milk to this loathsome mite as well, but the milk had turned sour, and Zoral upset his mug on the floor. Coral struck at the child but missed. Zoral fled shrieking to his mother’s bed. The Widow Tebbs awakened.