Andersonville (118 page)

And their king it is who tolls.

Who was king of the Ghouls? Wirz? He was unfit to be a king, he must be a courtier.

Noyes left off examining the queer little gaud and stood stroking the child’s hair. Still she would not look at him. Her face was pressed against her father, she had squeezed her eyes shut.

Madam, he said again to the mother. Let me repeat: I know of no particular charges having been filed against your husband—no bill of particulars, so to speak. It is merely that the general wishes to question him concerning his role as superintendent of the prison. Also— He turned back to Wirz. We are to carry along all records in your possession. They must be examined.

Ja.
The books, I have them.

And loose papers. All papers. My men brought carpetbags for the purpose.

For many bags it will not be necessary. So few records were kept by me. Many are by the Winders, somewhere— I have copies from my reports—

We have already requested the hospital records, said Noyes, again in the most reassuring tone he could muster. He wrinkled his nose. There is a delicious smell in your house, Madam.

Corn bread, said Wirz behind him. Every day we have him.

Elizabeth’s trowel was shaking. She looked down, saw the trowel, saw her hands a-tremble. Gradually their shaking ceased. She had willed that she make it cease. Noyes felt a sudden respect for the woman. She was made of good stuff.

She said, Our repasts are extremely simple, sir, but I believe things are soon going onto the table. Eve has not yet rung the bell. Will you join us?

I’d be delighted, if I shouldn’t be putting you out.

No, no, said Elizabeth rapidly. There is a sufficiency—I mean for you. I fear we cannot offer your soldiers—

They have their own rations, said Captain Noyes.

The simple luncheon—mainly corn bread and bacon, with a few green things from the garden—was eaten in silence. There was an undercurrent of sniffling from the daughters. Before the end of the meal, Cornelia jumped up suddenly and ran from the table. She burst into tears in the hall; they could hear her tears; they rattled their forks, broke their bread, pretending not to notice the young girl’s departure as she went rushing to the second story.

Wirz felt an inexpressible tenderness for his family. There was nothing now which he could say to Captain Noyes. Oh please, he thought, dear God, do make him understand, make the general understand also, when we arrive in Macon. Make them understand that I am a soldier, I was a soldier. One does one’s duty. When the prisoners were bad, they were like naughty children, and naughty children must be punished. So I punished the prisoners. I am not a bad man. Dear God, make the Yankees who have now triumphed over us, make them understand that I am a good man! I am not wicked, I have done nothing wicked. That old General Winder (and dead he is now, and a good thing for all that he is dead), he would not coöperate. He was relentless; he did not wish to have the hospital moved to the Outside, and it was a very wrong thing to have the hospital on the Inside. Very little food could we get for anybody! Yes, the prisoners were crowded. I could not conduct a neat and efficient prison; all the time they kept sending more prisoners—trainload after trainload. More, more, more! It was wrong of the authorities to do this. Oh, dear God, please to make the Yankees understand how handicapped I was! And my arm: how it pained me constantly; it is paining now, with little hopping monsters therein begging to be freed. I should have let those surgeons lop it off in the first place; but I thought that in time I could be healed; I did not wish to have but one arm, I wished to serve the South. I was kind to many of the prisoners. Yes, yes, I shall tell the general how kind I was to them! They wanted clubs to hunt down the raiders, so I gave them clubs. They wanted to hold a court; they asked to have attorneys, so it would be a proper trial, and I let them hold court, let them appoint attorneys. They wanted lumber for a gallows; I gave them lumber. And what did they do with it? It melted away as the fence melted away—seven hundred and eighty feet of fence, and all in one night. Most of them could not be trusted, so I did not trust them. Many broke their paroles, they ran away. There was no fair play about it! They ran off, and some of them managed even to elude the dogs. They were devils and they were bears, worse than the bears in Bern! This also shall I tell to the Federal officials, and make them understand the scorn and unfair treatment received by me. The Yankees threw mud, they called me evil names. They were recalcitrant, disobedient; so I was compelled to enforce my discipline with the stocks and the chains. They were dreadful prisoners, those Yankees. They would not submit, they would not obey my rules. They were very, very dirty. They even killed each other! And the Northerners must understand the worthlessness of the guards foisted upon me: old men and little boys. They were no fit soldiers; they did not know how to be soldiers. The Northerners must understand that in my heart I am a very kind person! If I were not a kind person, I would not have been kind to Little Red Cap. I was very good to Little Red Cap, and he, at least, could be trusted not to run away. Why, my Ilse even gave him gingerbread! And little Coralie trotted after him when he came here to my house to perform errands. I have seen them sitting together on the bench yonder—there is the very bench, out through that window, beneath the chinaberry tree—and I have heard Little Red Cap teaching a song to my Cora.

It was a song he had learned at the North.

He would sing,
Auralee.

But he would make it instead
Coralie.
He would sing in his young soft voice—a mere boy’s voice, because he was a mere boy— He would sing,
Coralie, Coralie, maid with golden hair. Sunshine comes along with thee. . . .

Her hair, it is not truly golden—it is light brown. But, yes, I think it has a touch of gold in it. So he was right in calling my Cora a maid with golden hair.

Other songs I would sing myself to my little daughter. I have sung them often. Oh, I wish now that I were merely sitting with my child, singing to her the German! Honestly, I am a kind man. I love the old songs in the German! I love to sing:

Muss i denn, muss i denn zum—Städtle hinaus,

Städtle hinaus, und du mein Schatz, bleibst hier!

...Must I then to the city away . . . city away . . . and you, my love, stay here. . . .

...When I come, when I come, when I come back again, come back again, I’ll return to you, my dear. I cannot always be with you, still you are my only joy. . . . So must I then to Macon away! I am positive that General Wilson will understand. I am
almost
positive. . . .

Whatever Captain Noyes might do in ease of the situation, there were tears and wailing when Henry Wirz left the house. Wirz kept babbling about the hospital records: Dr. Roy, who remained there still, had said that the records were not complete, that the Yankees must send him some clerks in order to complete the records. This Captain Noyes promptly agreed to do. But still Wirz kept babbling about it.

Noyes had spent the previous night in Americus, because of lack of accommodations in the Andersonville region. Two of his men—a corporal and a private—had seemed eager to remain at Anderson. That was odd; but they were trustworthy men in whom Noyes had the utmost confidence, so he yielded to their whim. They seemed suffering from lack of energy on this day, but he could smell no liquor. He wondered idly what they had been up to. Noyes himself, and the remainder of the men, had come to Anderson Station on a freight train. He had arranged for a later train to bear the party to Macon with their prisoner.

Thus they reached Macon a few hours later, and at once Noyes escorted his captive to General Wilson’s headquarters. He was glad to be rid of this task; but a much more exasperating one awaited him some days later.

Orders came from Washington, requiring that Henry Wirz be fetched to the capital, bag and baggage, together with the records. General Wilson took advantage of the opportunity to send along a bundle of captured battle flags which he had taken from the Confederates during his recent campaign through Alabama and western Georgia. Captain Noyes was very glad to go to Washington; but was extremely annoyed at being burdened with the flags and with Henry Wirz; and still he did not know what was in store for him.

The trip had to be made through the central South, because of the more direct lines being out of commission. At Atlanta, Noyes permitted his prisoner to take exercise upon the station platform, guarded by Ewing and Nevis. He himself was in a toilet room when an unholy row burst forth on the platform. Noyes heard his soldiers’ voices, he adjusted his clothing and hastened to the scene. He found a small riot in progress. Ewing’s nose had been bloodied, Nevis’s jacket ripped. The young men fought savagely to restrain several purple-faced soldiers who struggled to get at the person of Henry Wirz. Even the sharpest tones of command were ignored. Noyes was compelled to draw his revolver before he could quiet the men.

When the party reached Chattanooga, Noyes concluded to take no further chances.

We’ll have to remain here the greater part of the day, Sergeant. There’s bound to be a post prison: take the prisoner there at once, because otherwise you’ll draw a crowd, and we may have trouble.

Yes, sir.

Guard him carefully. I don’t want him to be mobbed. And report back here with the prisoner at four o’clock.

Yes, sir.

When Noyes saw Henry Wirz again the brim of his hat flapped, his coat was gone, his shirt dirtied and ripped; even his trousers appeared to have been half torn from his body. Wirz himself was close to collapse. He jabbered in German, he was talking also about his little daughter, and talking about a little red cap. He didn’t even make sense.

What the devil, Sergeant Howe! I told you to guard this prisoner with care!

Well, by God, sir! Excuse me, sir— It’s on account of all these damn troops. Some of them were prisoners down there, and they kept yelling, Let’s kill the son of a bitch! Excuse me, sir. But that’s what they said—exactly what they were yelling. Christ sake, sir—excuse me, sir—but we were almost done in! I got knocked down, and finally had to fire a couple shots in the air!

It happened again at Nashville. For Henry Noyes it was from then on a sleepless journey. By this time, the dilapidated appearance of the captive would have drawn a crowd, even if he had not been recognized as being Henry Wirz. He muttered now about a place in Kentucky called Cadiz. He said that that was where he had met his wife, years before. He thought he had friends in Louisville. Perhaps they would supply him with clothing.

The friends were found at Louisville, and Wirz was garbed in a suit of black and given a beaver hat.

Shave off his beard, said Noyes.

Mein
beard, Captain? It is that I do not wish to be shaved! Always I have worn a beard.

Shave off his beard, said Noyes again. Wirz was taken to a barber.

When he returned his family would not have known him. And Noyes thought that his cavalrymen were escorting a stranger—even though he had ordered this alteration.

They had no more trouble after that. Soldiers trooped along the platforms, they passed the open window where Henry Wirz sat in dejection— They passed unheeding, although doubtless there were ex-prisoners from Andersonville here and there in the jingling throngs.

Smoke swished through the car, cinders settled. Wirz complained that his arm gave him anguish, it had been injured when the troops hustled him. He asked for sulphate of morphia, so a surgeon was found to furnish him with drugs, at Cincinnati.

The pain seemed to be somewhat relieved after this. But the freshly shaved mouth kept moving, sometimes soundlessly, sometimes making sounds.

What were you saying, Captain Wirz?

It is a song. It is from the German. I learn it in my youth. It goes—in the German: Must I then, must I then to the city away? . . . When I come, when I come, when I come back again, come back again, I shall return to you, my dear. That is the German:
mein Schatz. . . .
Captain Noyes, I tell you I am not a bad man. They should not wish to kill me! I was but doing my duty. And Little Red Cap: I was good to him. I was a kind man to many prisoners.

Then he fell silent and seemed to be in a stupor; but every now and then his thin hand stole up to clutch lightly at his throat.

 LXI 

A
round the walls of Ira Claffey’s chamber was built a moving frieze. It was like marbles of Mediterranean and Aegean temples, wherein men with horses and chariots made eternal progression out to war. But figments cut in relief beyond the whirl of Ira’s vision were parading away from a war.

They proceeded up out of a valley of death . . . they were moving, living. Confederate troops escorted them, first off; then came Federal troops into the picture. They were so fresh out of recent memory that Ira sat up in bed and swept blindly at his own eyes to wake himself, to get rid of the lurch and grinding. He could not drive them off, he wondered how long they would be sculptured before his gaze. Depart beyond recall! he tried to tell them. Yet that was sententious falsehood, truly he did not wish them to vanish, they must be accepted as reminder that some survived, some had been carried home. No chariots in this his frieze; but wagons, wagons, wagons with clean straw filling the beds, stretchers and blankets hoisted up, people saying, Now just hold quiet, old top, this is going to hurt a speck when we lift you. The weak shorn-off scream. Soon wheels jolting, rusty smoking engine waiting on the track beyond, Yankee sentries—
Yankee
sentries—strolling by the station where formerly Georgia Reserves had moved.

He thought he saw a Northern house. He was not sure where it might be situated; he had been in but two private houses at the North, and those were palatial. But small ordinary homes he had seen from the railway carriage—their gables peaked sharply, tiny porches, often the leaning plane of a cellar door to be seen. Ira counted it peculiar to think that there was a subterranean life beneath most Northern houses, and that most Southern houses had no cellars and were built high above the ground. . . . Such a house, then, and what shall we name the people sitting there?

A name came to him, echoed from a long-ago business transaction in New York. The name was Kearns.

The people are named Kearns—father and mother—they sit above the doorstep, it is late afternoon. Who comes creeping? A spectre wan, the loose jacket and trousers are too big for him, the head has been shaven, face and head are scarred. Bony hands slide from picket to picket of the white fence, the figure comes along. Who on earth is it? says Mother Kearns, and puts up her hand to shade her eyes against the lowering sun. The fence is perhaps a hundred feet away from the doorstep. Still she does not know, she does not know. . . .

Father Kearns sees blue cloth on the weak creeping figure, and he thinks sadly of Johnny who went off to war and perished there. Johnny vanished, they’d heard no more. Johnny has been dead, they believe, a year or two. Mr. Kearns sees faded cloth and says, Just some poor tramp, Metta, and sickly too; maybe one time he was in the army. Father Kearns fastens his pipe between his teeth and picks up the newspaper.

But Rex is lying on the door-mat, Rex pricks his ears.

Oh sad, sad, thinks Mother Kearns, a-rocking and a-rocking. She will not even lift her apron to cry into it, she has wet so many aprons in the past. . . . But still that stubborn figure worries along the wooden sidewalk, still its hands go from picket top to picket top, holding on. He must not fall again, he fell twice on his way from the depot.

The dog stands, his ears are high. He stretches up, his nostrils work, he begins to whine.

Now, Rex, says Mr. Kearns, don’t go to barking, that fellow won’t hurt no one. The figure halts at the gate and stares at them. Rex dives from the porch. Johnny, Johnny, they are screeching a moment later. Rex is bounding wilder than any wild animal, jigging on hind legs, leaping, trying to tell them that he knew all the time, from the very first, he knew, he alone. . . .

There was a Johnny in each of those wagons which went shuddering from hospital to depot. There were many Johnnies in mendicant columns which prowled forth from the gates in their last Georgia excursion.

Ira got up and dressed, he could sleep no longer. Silence battered his ears. No rifle shots puncturing the night, no yells from a bottomless pit of gangrene and decay; no burble, no mass of human poultry roosting in hospital or stockade. Ira went down into the library and warmed a bent candle in his hands so that he might straighten it before he lit the candle. He began to read his Bible. He’d tiptoed on the way, no one must waken Cousin Harry. Coz had earned his good long sleep, earned it a thousand times over. . . . In her arms, thought Ira. Oh, long may he deserve such sleep, and in my Lucy’s arms, and she in his. I would not be surprised but that she owns a secret. I think the secret shines from her eyes, comes up out of her heart and through her eyes. She has told me nothing. He smiled, then tried to put his attention to Scriptures; but problems of Lucy and Harry seemed to come first. For his part Ira would have been happy to have them make their home permanently at the Claffey plantation. He had never enjoyed a harmony greater than his harmony with Lucy. Nor could he imagine that contention might ever rise between himself and Harrell Elkins, since each bore such respect and affection for the other, since they held a common pride and humor. But he knew that young men and women should make their way, a separate way from that of each elder generation, they should have their own roof-trees. As he grew older Ira might not find undiluted contentment in observing his own ways and manners tailored to needs of the young. But he knew that Harry did not have a dime, nothing but a faraway family patch where springtime weeds were tall and windowpanes were broken out of the house, where shutters were sagging, and steps gone, not a plow or a cart or a Negro or a mule on the place.

It would take doing but there would come a way, in time there would come one.

Again Ira hunted for specific reassurance amid the fine print held before him. He could find nothing at the moment. Vaguely he was reassured by the feel of the Book in his hands, by thought of young strength and intimacy above stairs.

It was almost full daylight at last; he should be out and doing. No Leander left to rouse the hands . . . he himself should ring the bell.
Clong. Clong. Clong
. He heard the notes echoing until they were swaddled in stronger silence rising now like a wall from Andersonville. The silence hurt to excruciation. Its very fact reminded you of the noise which had lived.

Ira put Coffee and Jem to their work. The Tebbs boys had arrived, and Ira instructed them in the art of setting bean poles and planting beans. Then he went off to make sure that Jem was not hoeing too closely to young cornstalks, that Coffee was using only old dried guano at the bottom of the cucumber hills.

Just as he had feared! . . .

No, that must be taken out, Coffee, and done over.

Mastah?

It’s my own fault: I neglected to make it plain to you. The dry manure is in the smaller bin, not the larger. Remember when you scraped the floor of the hen house? Now that stuff’s been bleaching and drying long enough, and will serve.

Old chicken shit better’n fresh chicken shit? Coffee asked in puzzlement.

Exactly so. With this fresh manure the plants would die out. Get rid of it, and use only old and dry.

As he came back to observe Coral and Floral he heard an altercation in progress. Before he reached the scene he saw the older youth strike at the younger with a bean pole. Dad blast you, you little scut! You won’t do half what you’re tolt to do.

You ain’t my sergeant, yelled Flory in rage.

Let us have no more high words, said Ira sharply. What seems to be the trouble, boys?

Coral explained in indignation: He won’t plant them poles nor beans proper. I mind what you said—put them in before planting, stick them deep and firm in the ground so’s they’re maybe ten foot long. And not more’n five or six beans to be put around each pole, and not more’n an inch and a half deep, neither!

That’s exactly the fashion. And, Floral, let me tell you this: Coral
is
your sergeant in this case. I am captain over both. Proceed according to orders. Silence in the ranks, he cried over his shoulder as he went away, and was rewarded by a faint giggle from the two.

Silence in the ranks, silence in the valley, silence in the marsh. All quiet along the Sweetwater branch . . . all quiet along Stockade Creek.

Many hours later Ira walked hesitantly into the pen alone.

He stood in that infrequent but dread state of knowing that he had observed history with his own eyes, even that he had helped to make it or had attempted to unmake it. As a very small child he first became aware of the immutability of inanimate objects. He had looked upon them with grave suspicion because they were such blocks and hulks, unfeeling, uncaring, unknowing, left to sit and stare stupidly after the humans were borne off. There had been one of the numerous deaths in the Claffey family: Ira came into the room where the person had lain sick and finally had died (he could not remember which relative it was, it didn’t matter) and there was that dresser near the bed, the dresser on which bottles and glasses had stood, on which pewter spoons had been placed with puddles of unabsorbed medicine congealing in their bowls. This debris was removed, servants were carrying out featherbeds to beat them in the sunlight. But the dresser stood; it was there; same knobs, burns on the scarred oaken surface, the split in the wood where some artisan had poked out a primitive keyhole with too heavy a hand. Ah, and clothing was removed from drawers, hung up, given away; a cousin had the handkerchiefs in her own drawer now, a slave named Aba had been given the stockings, a slave named Esther had filched the tippet. But the dresser stood. The dead person was gone with all her appurtenances. The dresser stood. The same piece of broken crockery lay shoved beneath a leg to fill in a depression in the uneven floor. Did the dresser feel? Nay, nay . . . when wood was alive in trees the wood had felt; trees had sorrowed, chuckled, breathed, dreamed. Ira Claffey squinted his eyes and shook his head, recalling this first shock of particular knowledge, particular realization (which brought enduring pain as all wisdom brings pain because the man who acquires wisdom may only watch and try to understand; he may not select, manage, alter). That was Ira Claffey’s name in the original Hebrew. Ira: a watcher.

He stood watching.

Or was he engaged in mere observation, evaluation, estimation? You could watch an occurrence, a happening—you were said to be watching when events moved before your eyes. This place, however ruined and despoiled, was become static. Silence smoked up from the offended earth and struck your ears with force. Birds refused to visit here. They were occupied with family cares, with feeding in woods past the fence . . . Andersonville. They’d have none of it. . . . Ira moved his shoe and hoisted a dripping wad on the toe of his shoe and let the wad fall off. Declare it to be blanket, jacket, jeans, shirt, drawers in its origin; it was none of these now, it was reek endeavoring to be made into soil. Try once more. A sandal—someone had constructed it painstakingly—it was carved from leather scraps, the scraps had been stitched together (could it have been fabricated by a middle-aged saddler from Ohio? Somewhere good food was being cooked. Its scent came from the past and titillated Ira Claffey’s imagination; yet he had never known a man named Gusset, he had known none of the prisoners excepting Nazareth Stricker). Take a homemade broom and with it throw the queer sandal aside. And why a homemade broom, with shavings cut into a bunch and tied with a thong? What might anyone sweep in this wide wild den, what manner of housekeeping had been carried on? Tin receptacle crude and long and flat—ho, he’d heard of those, Colonel Persons had told him a year earlier. They are very ingenious, Persons said. Like all prisoners in all times and places the Yanks are forced to make do with what they have. Some of them were confined in an old warehouse in Richmond before they came here, and those sheets of tin— Something to do with tobacco presses— They filched them and made them into cooking pans— Serve fairly well, or so the prisoners say. Which is fortunate, since we have no pots or cutlery to give them.

Rags, rags, what had they been? Trampled deeply into clay to spoil there, or lying dried by sun, wetted by many rains, dried by numerous suns again. Whittled ladle and broken cow’s horn (powder-horn, drinking horn, horn to blow a blast upon? You couldn’t tell: it was a scrap of horn) and half-canteen, and tin fork with one of the tines broken off and one sticking east and one sticking west, and wooden bucket with the bottom splintered out of it. These things wounded Ira not in their ugliness but in their silence and lack of life.