Andersonville (30 page)

No. Scarcely. You didn’t feel like cheering for the Red, White and Blue when your teeth were coming out, or threatening to come out, and when your shebang leaked dolefully (By Mighty, said the scarecrow Sergeant Colony, we got more rain than roof) and when Si Wingate whined with fever for three days and nights and was then carried to join a row of fat-eyed motionless people near the gate, and when Tup Wingate squatted in agony with his ragged pants pulled down and bloody stool dripping from his haunches.

Got to look after Number One. Well—

Weavers, malleable iron workers, machinists, railroad men, printers, tanners, shoemakers—oh, above all shoemakers in this nearly shoeless domain!—Rebel emissaries appeared, guarded, every day or two. Any millers, saw or grist? Oh, shoemakers. . . . Who’d like to work in Macon? All you got to do, Yank, is sign this here little old piece of paper; make your mark if you can’t sign. Yes, sir, Yank, I got a golden opportunity for you: any man who knows the cobbler’s trade! Nice boarding place, good bed to sleep in, that old lady sets a fine table, and wages on top of it. You boys
are
tight run here, sure enough. But I reckon you can see which way the cat’s jumping now. Just chew on it, Yank; don’t need to make up your mind today; I’ll be back a Friday, and I’ll tell that old lady to put on a mess of pork and turnips against your coming. . . .

Aw, dry up.

That old lady got any
young
ladies with her, Mister?

Any
young
ladies in that good bed you was talking about?

I hate turnips! Tell her to cook some nice green peas instead.

Can’t read nor cipher, so
you
make my mark for me—great
big
mark.

Hey. Go stick a weasel up your ass. Right beside the cobbler’s bench, Mister Monkey!

The bulk of the men knew that in cutting shoe-leather or in reaming bolts or in tanning hides or in mixing mortar or in baking bricks for anyone in this bleak hated region, they would be fighting for the Bonnie Blue Flag (where was it? They had never seen the enemy with a Bonnie Blue Flag; they had seen him with the diagonal cross and stars on his red battle flag) as surely as if they rode with Forrest or marched in Hood’s columns. The bulk of the men resisted these commercial missionaries as they resisted the gangling lieutenant with his claptrap chatter about Adequate Apparel and Conclusion of Hostilities.

The bulk of the men, again. . . . There was the silent haggard louse-ridden harness-maker from Indiana; people in his mess referred to him as Fort Wayne; he disappeared one day, and folks said that they had seen him near the South Gate; and other folks said later that they had heard Fort Wayne was gone to Albany to fashion the tug-straps which were his specialty. His mess argued about it.

A parole is just a parole, after all. What difference whether you’re paroled to work Outside, taking care of mules, or whether you’re paroled to work in Albany?

Plenty difference!

Bet your life. One way you’re just here at the stockade, same as if you were on the Inside. Other way, you’re helping the Reb artillery to shoot your own God damn brother.

Well, Fort Wayne had three kids to home.

Do tell. I got
four.

A Pittsburgh printer vanished, so did a stationary engineman from Schenectady: one was said to be working in Macon, the other in Savannah. . . . No one knew. The men were gone; not many of them went; perhaps seven or eight went in March out of the whole stockade. More than seven thousand others stayed and drank the water or didn’t drink it, and popped the lice like popcorn from their frayed jacket seams when they held the jackets over blazing pine scraps. The pine scraps were fewer now, you couldn’t just pick them up, you had to bargain for them. A lean Scandinavian corporal called Nellie Bly because his name was Nels—he cut his wrist deliberately with a piece of tin and died quietly at sunrise, saying nothing. Adoniram Kempley insisted on taking off what remained of his clothes and sitting naked on the edge of the marsh, day and night; he said that he was waiting for somebody, he would not utter the name of the person he was waiting for; he perished within the week. An artilleryman they called Indian Giver was throttled in broad daylight by one of Curtis’s Raiders because he refused to part with his pocket comb. Paul Hexley tore his heel on a crumpled cooking pan, and soon he had no heel, nor any foot to have a heel on; soon he had no life. An undersized sixteen-year-old musician called Wabash huddled around, unable to play the fife with which he had entertained his fellows earlier. His gums looked like spongy rotten plums, they thrust oozing far out of his mouth, his lips spread back to let the gums protrude, it looked as if he were holding a bit or a gag in his mouth, a bit or a gag heavy and purplish and artificial.

That’s scurvy, said Edward Blamey, and I got a touch of it. He lay alternately perspiring and shivering until the eastern sky grew murky instead of Stygian above obtruding sentry stations. Then he took silent terrified leave of companions who did not even sniff, who thought that he might have gone to the sinks. He crossed Stockade Creek and crouched down within a pole’s length of the unearthly root-and-oilcloth-and-log-and-blanket structure known as Collins’s Castle on the South Side. Later he was challenged by hangers-on; he stood with docility while they ripped out his pockets and found nothing except an uneven set of small flat grayish stones which he used to play checkers with, with Sergeant Colony. The roughs threw the stones away, biffed Edward Blamey until his ear rang and seemed deafened; they swaggered off toward the gate. After nine o’clock in the morning Willie Collins emerged from his castle, a furry half-naked trunk, the walking trunk of a ginger-colored tree, yelling for someone named Donner: where the hell was that meat he was after frying? Edward Blamey went to the ruffian’s side at once. He could not feel his feet touching the ground in their broken-soled shoes. But still The Wrath To Come was a long way off, he could not hear its roaring.

Member me, Willie?

Agh. . . . The giant rolled his red-rimmed eyes, yawned, snorted. What want ye with Willie Collins?

I got a sharp pair of eyes. You called them ogles . . . made me a kind of proposition. Member?

That I do. Inside with you, Rubber Legs. He took Edward Blamey into the wide cave above ground, the cave half in the ground, and it was warm inside, whatever uncertain springtime chill and wetness ruled elsewhere, and it smelled of fried food and vomit and dirty males and liquor, and oh Heavenly Father it smelled of food, and oh Heavenly Father there was a fire beaming on the baked mud hearth, and oh Heavenly Father don’t send The Wrath To Come.

Look you. There’s a shebang yonder, name of Parker House. Artillerymen, so tis said.

Nigh the North Gate, Willie? I think I know it.

That you must. Striped blankets on the roof? Twould be the one. Watch you well this day, and run to me the first minute there’s not more than two—mark you, kiddie, I said
two—
of
the Sams inside. We’ve tried them before; they’re hell on wheels; but they’ve greenbacks buried there. Mark well, or I’ll tear the velvet from your head! Not more than
two.

Willie . . . what’s velvet?

Your red tongue, you addle cove! I’ll rip it out of your throat with these fingers if there’s more than two men in that shebang when we hit the place.

He gave Edward Blamey some fried potatoes and onions, gave him half a cup of pine-top on which the Rhode Islander choked, but which coursed like fury through him. Ed Blamey wandered idly afield, selected a vantage point, watched with care. The Boston men might never dream that he was observing them. He counted carefully: there were six about the place. Two went away, another left later . . . he couldn’t be certain . . . by noon there were but two about? Suddenly he saw three men standing in front, talking; then one picked his way toward the North Gate; the other two went back inside the Parker House. Blamey shot himself into the presence of Willie Collins like a misshapen bowlegged projectile. Five minutes later the yells had gone aloft. Raiders! had been cried to no effect, for the other partners in the Parker House could not reach the scene in time. A thatch was torn aside, a tin can of currency was gathered up, blankets were pulled from the roof. One of the two defenders lay gulping spasmodically, holding his abdomen where kicks had smashed his bowels; the other defender lay unconscious, his head cracked, bystanders had heard the bone crack when he was clubbed.

Edward Blamey drank deeply of pine-top that night, trying to forget the thing that had happened, the thing which he had brought about. Och, what a pair of ogles! cried Willie Collins. And there was a hundred and twenty-nine dollars in that wad! Cookie, break open another box of biscuit for our friend Delaney, and where’s that cheese, and what came of that tin of mushroom pickles? Sure and I feel a song coming on.

In Athol there lived a man named Jerry Lanagan—

Is it a song you can sing me, Delaney? A good melody to tickle the heart—

No, said Edward Blamey, I can’t. Can’t sing a note.

 XIX 

O
ne bright morning at the end of April late sleepers awoke to find both South Street and Main Street tenanted by recumbent bodies on which fresh sun shone brightly blue, from which fresh sun tore spasms of gilt where buttons spangled or where patent-leather chevrons reflected. Hundreds of new prisoners had been herded in through both gates during the night, and they bedded in those streets because they had nowhere else to sleep and feared to go wallowing in the dark.

Well, by God, these are the freshest fish that ever got hooked.

Fresh fish, hell! Looks like the Rebs gobbled up a brigade of major-generals.

Looky. Silk chevrons on some.

Patent-leather. . . .

Looky that gang. Got feathers in their hats, I swear.

Hey, there, Yank! If you be a Yank. What you from?

A man roused slowly as if he had drunk himself to sleep on liquor, as if his head puffed and rang, as if he saw rats gnawing close. He gazed at the blackened hairy skeletons a-crowding. Huh?

I said, What you from?

Hundred and Third Pennsylvania.

Where you get grabbed?

Huh?

Whereabouts were you captured?

Oh. Plymouth, North Carolina.

Plymouth? You must be Pilgrim Fathers for certain. Hey, Pee-leg, come take a look at these Pilgrim Fathers!

The term Plymouth Pilgrims would cling to them throughout their captivity; it would be a short captivity for many. They awakened in the pit squarely beneath a privy used by devils, the shock numbed and dumbed them, the devils’ evacuations poured over them, they were mired, they were suffocated, they drowned, they died.

For most their war had been a light and easy war until the seventeenth of April. These regiments dwelt at quiet if important forts along the coast all the way from Fortress Monroe to Beaufort, and good food came in on supply ships, and the quarters of such garrisons were dry and clean. On a Sunday you might attend services at Grace Church. . . . Off duty, a man could lie along old pilings and whip a line around his wrist, and toss the plummet and baited hook out into shifting water, and prepare for a striped fish to flap and lunge and delight him. . . . The Eighty-fifth New York, the One Hundred and First Pennsylvania, the One Hundred and Third Pennsylvania: every man waited contentedly for boats to bear the regiments northward. It would be a lark, sailing for home on a veteran’s furlough. Instead came a powerful ram called the
Albemarle,
and three brigades of troops attacking by land. Cannon thudded from the forts, the
Albemarle
ripped past unscathed and sent the
Southfield
rolling into the sea and pounded the
Miami
into flight. Federal troops on land held out for two more days, then they surrendered to what seemed like a million polite North Carolinians who did not even search their knapsacks.

Looky, Charley, at them bureaus.

I swan. Member when I was a new recruit, I packed one of them big bureaus off to the front. How it like to gauled the shoulders off of me. Hey, Yank, what you got in your bureau? Got any spare crackers to swap?

I’ll warrant you he’s got everything but the kitchen stove.

He’ll have that under that big feathered hat of his.

You actually tried to fight a battle in rigging like that? No wonder you got grabbed.

The newcomers explained haltingly that since they stood in momentary expectancy of sailing north from Plymouth, they were wearing their best new uniforms at the time the Confederate onslaught began; after that they had no chance to change, they never even thought of changing their clothes. They fought from the seventeenth until the twentieth of April and then were captured in finery. Along with the veterans’ brigade were the Sixteenth Connecticut Infantry, the Twenty-fourth New York Independent Battery, a company of the Twelfth New York Cavalry, and two batteries of Massachusetts heavy artillery. Two-thirds of these captives arrived on this day; the rest reached Andersonville on May third. Not a man of them had ever envisioned a place like Andersonville in his ugliest imaginings. The immensity of smell, the shrunken limbs, the pot bellies of the dropsical, the oozing mouths of the scurvy-ridden— Blackened masses of faces which pressed close with hungry eyes staring— The bundles of lousy hair bristling out, wads of lousy beards a-stringing—

There they sat with freighted knapsacks, the heavy oblongs with good rolled blankets atop, and stuffed with every civilized comfort known to the easy regime of garrison troops—troops who’d never marched a thousand miles or (many of them) even a hundred miles— There they sat, with sun glittering on their niceness. They could not arise from the ground.

How in tarnation did they ever get in here with all that truck? It’s a sight for sore eyes.

You know the answer to that one. Guarded by Regular troops instead of these chicken-shit Home Guards!

Hey, Corp. You with the fancy mustache. Swap you two good blanket poles for that canteen? You got to have blanket poles or else you got no shebang to dwell in. Come along, old top, I’ll show you what I mean—

They moved in stricken daze, their eyes saw things, the brains behind them would not believe. Raiders began swooping down, the moment individuals were separated from the mass which might have given protection—and did, for wiser ones, for a time.

Wiser and more resilient than many of his fellows loomed a broad-shouldered young man of twenty-three with a well-trimmed mane of black hair and ears wide and outstanding. His mouth was full-lipped, his brown eyes brooding and thick-lidded, and he had the Semitic nose fancied by cruel cartoonists and seldom seen in fact. His name was Nathan Dreyfoos. He was well at home in the world although never had he thought to find himself domiciled in a roost such as this. Born in Boston, he had spent most of his life abroad, traveling from country to country with his father and mother, taught by English tutors the while. His father was a purchasing agent for merchants in eastern American cities, buying everything from tweeds to olive oil, and back again to watches and Parisian perfumery and Bavarian china and Flemish glass. Nathan was tri-lingual as to English, French and Spanish, speaking also subordinate dialects of the latter language. He spoke a good deal of Yiddish and some German, Italian and Swedish. He owned no ambition in life except to worship the better elements of the past and (in some vague manner as yet undecided) to acquaint people with lessons and glories of the past, to the eventual comfort and enrichment of humanity.

Abroad when the war began, Nathan Dreyfoos felt no upsurge of nationalism. His parents were barely removed by one generation from their separate European backgrounds, and thus had returned easily to Continental attitude and thought. The young man heard about the burst of civil warfare with disquietude and regret, because wars inflicted miseries, and he was benevolent of heart and did not wish to have miseries inflicted. He liked Boston, New York, Philadelphia; he grew momentarily and remotely saddened at thinking of Bostonians, New Yorkers, Philadelphians being slain in battle. He liked Charleston and New Orleans; was it not a horrid thing that people from South Carolina and Louisiana must now die or be mutilated? He would have felt a personal concern of infinitely greater depth if he had learned that in Madrid they were raising an army to invade France, or that the Dutch were assembling a navy to sail against England.

When again he walked an American street he strolled in citizen’s clothing tailored by Desborough. One evening he stood sipping wine in the public room of the Astor House when two young officers of the Eighty-fifth New York moved close to him and, having absorbed more drink than their heads could carry, felt it incumbent upon them to discuss in clear ringing tones the worthlessness of well-dressed stay-at-homes who permitted braver men to go out and do their fighting for them.

Present company excepted, said Lieutenant Corley elaborately.

Oh, yes, indeed, said Lieutenant Stevenson. As a matter of fact, my dear Tom, I’ve heard that our Hebrew brethren are disinclined to violence of any kind. A fellow couldn’t hold them responsible. . . .

I beg your pardon, said Nathan Dreyfoos, but they pretended not to hear him, although most men in the place were turning to watch. Nathan paid for his wine, and stepped into the street. He had not long to wait in the reflected glare of gas. Soon the lieutenants appeared, flushed and talkative, bound for another bar-room. Politely Nathan invited them to step back inside and apologize to the company there—not so much for the insults directed at him personally as for the remarks about Hebrews. Corley, the broadest and longest, said that he would see Nathan in hell first. Very well, said Nathan Dreyfoos, let us go. By way of this alley.

In the alley he flattened Corley with his first blow, and Stevenson rushed upon him. Stevenson struck the cobblestones while Corley was rising and thus it went for a time, amid yells of servants and guests pouring from the Astor House. The two officers were alternately smashed and toppled, while Nathan received no damage except to his attire. Mr. Halliburton, his favorite tutor, was a Cantabrian athlete with not-too-thwarted ambitions as a pugilist. Once Mr. Halliburton cracked Nathan’s jawbone; then the guilty pair had to connive to keep this dark secret from the senior Dreyfooses. Nathan was a seasoned expert at boxing as well as a seasoned expert at fencing, and felt regret at what he was doing now. Yet, in some disquieting manner, this performance seemed called for. A policeman put a cautious hand on the young man’s shoulder while he was bending over the bleeding and amazed Lieutenant Corley, and told him that he was under arrest for brawling in public. Nonsense, said Nathan, and gave the policeman a five-dollar bill. With his arm around Corley and with Stevenson stumbling sore-faced against his right side, Nathan led the way to his own quarters upstairs, and of course they were handsome quarters. A doctor came with plasters, a mumbling Negro carried off the officers’ clothing to be repaired; more wine appeared, together with cold beef and chicken. The gentleman talked long. Corley and Stevenson spent the balance of the night in Nathan’s big bed and Nathan slept on the sofa. In this way the Eighty-fifth New York gained a somewhat poetic linguist who insisted on enlisting as a private soldier because he feared the responsibility of command.

...But, damn it, my dear boy! Your father must know heaps of men with influence, and you just heard what Tom said about
his
father and the senator. There’s bound to be a vacancy soon and—

Now, listen, old chap. I’m acquainted with Colonel Fardella
personally,
not just as a subordinate company officer. When once he hears that you can speak Italian—

In France, said Nathan, my best friend was my father’s coachman.

But a fellow of culture and—

In Spain, Nathan told them, Olmedo the gardener was my best friend. I knew poor people, I knew a charcoal burner in the hills, I knew bandits. I am very much at ease with such people.

Oh, damn it, Dreyfoos! We’ve got no charcoal burners, and not too many gardeners or coachmen, I’ll wager that. Our men are mostly young chaps, boys from good Christian homes— Beg pardon—

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you. . . .
Nathan smiled at Lieutenant Stevenson and put a hand on his throbbing arm. In Málaga I was accustomed to playing my violin for the monks. And I know the Beatitudes of your Faith. And I do come from a good home. I could be harmonious with the men in your command.

He served under First Lieutenant Corley and Second Lieutenant Stevenson and was promoted by rapid degrees to the rank of sergeant, with the approval of those surrounding him. In the attack on Plymouth both Corley and Stevenson were killed—the former by a shell from the
Albemarle,
the latter by a stray musket ball half an hour before the Unionists surrendered. During the days which followed his capture, Nathan walked with a heavy heart. He was disconsolate at losing his friends, yet he thought they had died for a sound purpose. That long ago night, in the Astor House, the ebullient youths grew articulate in stress of emotion following their thrashing. They had persuaded Nathan that since he turned out to be historically minded, he must look at the present conflict in the historical sense. The Nation had been founded in bitter conflict, and had achieved to world importance through further conflict and through its own crowding growth to the West. Broken in half, the impact of America on the world and on the future would be lessened; the United States and the Confederate States would resolve into puny second-rate powers. It was so throughout history . . . look at the federations which made strength; look at Grecian history, Roman, western European.