Andersonville (4 page)

Won’t you light? The widow asked it a second time, as the Dillards sat in silence, pitying her. Effie Dillard’s bark was savage at times, but she did not even know how to bite.

No, thank you, Sister Marget. We stopped by to offer a small gift; but it is a long homeward journey.

The Widow Tebbs brightened at the thought of a gift. Probably she thought of ribbons. She said, I do implore you not to call me Sister, Parson. Puts me in mind of Pa, and he was so cross all the while.

She came forward eagerly as she spoke, her soft red mouth spreading in a smile which enhanced her degenerate beauty.

Paint, said Mrs. Dillard, and lifted an accusing bony finger of her mitted hand.

Whereabouts?

On your face, woman. On your very lips.

Oh, no, Ma’am. This is red off of a candy stick. I keep it special.

Effie groaned. Cato Dillard bent his head to conceal his own amusement; he knew that he was transgressing mildly in finding any glee in the situation, yet he could not help himself. He reached beneath the seat and brought out a solid weighty bag of soiled cotton cloth. Tis meal, he told the widow. A member of the congregation brought us a generous gift from his mill this week, and I’m sharing it with you, Marget.

Perhaps she would rather have had a wornout bonnet or the feathers or flowers from it, but Mag was grateful. Why, Parson, I give you thanks. Times are so hard with—

She was about to say, With so many menfolks gone to the army, but innate and unsuspected delicacy restrained her. Instead she said after hesitation, With things the way they be.

What about the boy’s foot?

It’s gone complete. Marget blinked more rapidly than ever, and tears were spilling. Poor little Coral—it was only his third big battle. He got a ball right through the foot, and them surgeons hacked it off. He said they held him down a-doing it. Always cutting. All a surgeon knows how to do.

Effie declared that they might be losing a second foot in the family unless precautions were taken about Flory. She produced a bottle of green ointment of her own manufacture, one of several medicines without which she would seldom travel abroad. She made Flory fetch a cup, and measured a portion of the medicine. Enthusiastically she recited the recipe while Flory listened with horror. Good refined turpentine and lard, also honey and beeswax; these had been melted together with a bit of finely pulverized verdigris stirred in. Did the widow have any beeswax? She reckoned there was some around, somewhere. . . . Well, Effie was determined to enter the house and prepare the poultice herself—or rather a little tent, stiffened with warm beeswax and worked into the oozing wound—but the widow said that her fire was cold and it would take time to build it up. Effie extracted a promise and had to be content with that. Flory still clung to the gig wheel and sucked on the second lozenge which he had wheedled out of the minister by mere exercise of longing in his pinched face.

While they were thus engaged, the whistle of a train sounded, and Blackie’s ears arose and Blackie’s feet spread apart, and Cato had to climb down and take Blackie’s head and speak soothingly. The others watched the train come lurching, smoking past. The engineer managed a couple of extra whistle-toots when directly in front of the cottage; he knew the widow well, and always saluted her. There were a few soldiers guarding the burden cars—foodstuffs for the army, probably—and they waved and shouted pleasantries which could not be understood. The widow waved urgently in reply.

Just as last cinders were flying and while Blackie still snuffled, a thin youth progressed slowly around the corner of The Crib. He stopped when he saw the gig, then came on, looking at the ground beneath and ahead of him. He swung his body from side to side, pivoting on the homemade crutch, putting his right foot forward, hopping the pole of the crutch into a new position . . . thus he traveled. His pant-leg flopped in rags around the stump where his left leg had been severed at the ankle. Coral did not resemble his mother in appearance, and bore no resemblance to the other children. His black hair was shaggy, his thick black brows pulled together in a hairy scowl, his cheeks were darkened with young untrimmed beard. In his right hand he carried a shotgun with a mended stock, and Cato Dillard rejoiced to see that a quail—no, two—hung suspended from Coral’s belt.

I see you did well, my boy. Dillard spoke with enthusiasm as soon as Coral was within hearing.

Got two.

I never did hear that old gun at all, said Floral in surprise.

Well, it’s an accomplishment, declared the minister. And working without a dog.

Coral glowered as if he’d expected the minister to say, Without a foot. He stopped near the steps and said guardedly, Old Zack got himself kilt whilst I was gone to— Just went to sleep on the tracks and let the cars run over him. Least that’s what they tell me.

Coral, cried his mother, come down out the gate and make some nice manners to the parson and the Mrs.

No, said the youth. He moved painfully up the steps.

You got no call to be so mean, sonny. And they fetched meal for us; and Flory’s saving you a candy.

Don’t want no candy. He was gone into the cottage.

I told you so, said Flory, and popped Coral’s designated wintergreen into his own mouth. He’s just poison mean.

You shut your trap, Flory. His mother struck at him but the boy dodged.

We must go. Dillard had climbed back into the gig. Marget, daughter, I merely want you to know that you are often in my prayers.

Thank you kindly, Parson, but I don’t want to be in nobody’s prayers. Had enough of prayers when I was little.

I speak now from the Larger Catechism:
We are by nature children of Wrath, bond slaves to Satan, and justly liable to all punishments in this world and that which is to come.
God bless you, Marget.

He began to turn Blackie away from the gate.

God bless you folks, too, and then Marget stopped in alarm at having been lured into saying it. She cried after them, I do thank you for the meal.

Save the poke, Effie Dillard yelled. Allow no one to make off with it. The dominie can pick it up one day.

Wait, the widow screamed. She sent Flory into the cottage to dump meal into a pan, and then he flew out again, waving the dusty sack in his hand. He hustled down the road at a limping gallop, and grinned shyly up at the pair when he handed them the bag. He breathed, Could I have just one more candy?

You’re a little pig. Effie spoke severely. You should save some for your sister and your baby brother. Cate, do you give me that comfit-box. She counted out three more lozenges while her husband sighed. One for you, one for Sister, one for Brother. Mind, now.

Yes, Ma’am.

And mind about that tent of green ointment, lest you be like poor Coral.

I’ll mind. Ma can fix it, soon as we get a fire going.

They looked back at the house. Zoral was emerging from his den under the house but the widow seemed to be paying no attention to the child. She kept waving earnestly at the Dillards until they were gone across the railroad. She could not hear him, but the Reverend Mr. Cato Dillard concerned himself audibly with The Gospel According to Saint John.

Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

Revelation comes later than yon, said his wife.
Mystery, Babylon the Great. The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.

Oh, Effie. I prefer The Gospel.
She said, No man, Lord. . . . Neither do I condemn thee.

Back at the Tebbs house, Floral worked reluctantly for a time, fetching wood and kindling of pine splinters which his mother demanded. Coral was hunched on a stool by the table, plucking the first bird. He had put the shotgun on its pegs, and hung the shot flask and powder flask where they belonged. Flory went to take them down, and his brother spewed out a stream of profanity and struck with his crutch. You leave them things alone, God damn you, you little squeak.

Now, you youngsters—

Tain’t your shotgun any more’n it’s mine!

Tis, by God!

I used it whilst you was in the army. I got some ground doves and—

Ground doves! No wonder I’m shy a foot! That’s the unluckiest thing a mortal can do: kill a ground dove. Any nigger in the county could of tolt you that. You hadn’t no call to use the shotgun. Tis mine; because I’m the eldest and a gun is handed down from a father to his eldest.

God damn lie.

You touch my gun again and I’ll beat the poop out of you.

Ah, you and your old crutch—

Coral hurled the crutch. It might have injured Flory but it only grazed his hip. Nevertheless the younger boy burst into squalls and hurried blindly out of the door, calling spitefully, You damn cripple! Crip, crip, crip, crip, crip, crip, cripple—! He tripped over Zoral below the stoop, and the stunted baby set up a bellowing. Mag flew to the rescue, calling loudly on the world to witness what troubles possessed her.

Floral retreated into woods behind the privy and solaced himself with a wad of pine gum. It occurred to him that if he carried a heavy club, and crept up silently on a covey of quail without disturbance, he might be able to get a bird for himself by flinging the club, much as Coral was forever hurling his crutch. Flory had tried unsuccessfully before with rocks, never with a club. He hunted around for a suitable bludgeon, found one, and tottered off among the trees. He played that the stick in his hands was a gun. Not just a shotgun, but a regular military musket. Maybe even a modern rifle. Maybe even a modern Henry rifle, a repeater with copper cartridges; he had seen such weapons carried by soldiers on several occasions when soldiers called upon his mother. Such weapons were captured from Yankees.

He played that he was killing a Yankee. Hold still there, you Yankee scum. You heard me. Don’t move or I’ll blow your guts out handsome. Hold right still, don’t try to get away, you Yankee bastard! Look sharp; I warned you.

Flory lifted the stick to his shoulder. His face was contorted and he squeezed his eyes shut as he fired.
Poom.

 III 

A
t this same hour in Paris a rain came blackly. It was mid-afternoon in Georgia, evening in the region near the old Medical College where the good Dr. Cordier had lectured hoarsely above his cadavers more than twenty years before. The good Dr. Cordier was long since in his tomb, but at a favorite café two of his former students now sat with wine. There was a tablecloth of flowered green, the crusty bread lay broken upon it, the big shiny casserole still stood on its seared frame above a burning lamp.

Dr. Bucheton reached over and selected a mushroom which had eluded him in gravy; he speared it with surgical precision, ate it, put down his fork and nodded across at his companion.

You see how it is, Henry. I not only take some pride in myself as a gourmet; I’m also a glutton. He patted the belly which stood out under his tight white waistcoat.

The bearded Henry Wirz said, I am a dyspeptic. He was a round-shouldered thin-faced man, past forty, sallow of skin, and with blood vessels apparent in his pale eyeballs which suggested constant pain, sleeplessness, a constriction of various forces clamoring for release. His French was spoken shrilly, almost explosively, with a pronounced German accent. Many people took him to be a Jew, but he was not a Jew. It was as if he sought to relieve the somber acids moving through his digestive system and in his leaden blood, by gauding himself in tints commonly worn only by younger men. His jacket was saffron, his shirt of checkered cambric, his stock of Stuart tartan silk. His right arm rested in a black sateen sling, and the arm was giving him misery this night; he kept groping across the tablecloth with the fingers of his left hand, and caressing and kneading the slim bandaged bulk within the sateen.

You still have the sulphate of morphia? In your lodgings?

The devil—yes. I have plenty. But I can’t take too much of that stuff. Henry Wirz had something else in his lodgings in the Rue d’Assas: he had it hanging in the big wardrobe: a uniform of Confederate gray.

Be sure to reduce the dosage by degrees.

You don’t have to tell me that. But you don’t understand how it is with us in the Confederacy, Pierre. These things are unprocurable. The blockade is tighter all the time.

Dr. Bucheton nodded sympathetically, and filled Henry’s wine glass, then his own. I don’t pay much attention to what goes on over there. My dear friend, you’ll forgive me when I state a simple if unpleasant professional fact. Between my own patients and what goes on at the hospital and my lectures at the school— Well, my wife tells the children not to run shrieking to their nurse that a strange impostor has forced his way into the house, on those rare occasions when I do appear. As for my mistress—

He shrugged. I should not beat her if she began to dally with a younger and more light-hearted man. It would be only justice if she did. Thus I cast my speeding eyes over the printed page, and I see that your Mr. Mason and your Mr. Slidell are still on this side of the Atlantic, and I wish them well, and I also would like to have you shipping to us cotton and rice and tobacco and other good things, but I don’t want to go to war with the Americans about it. And I assume also that when the old friend of my student days appears, and lo and behold he is
Captain
Henry Wirz— I assume that he has possibly some business with Mr. Slidell in France? But I don’t give it more thought than that. It’s a physical and mental impossibility. Do you forgive me, Henry?

Wirz nodded. My arm is particularly troublesome tonight.

Come, I’ve just ordered cognac.

I have no head for cognac. You should remember.

Well, perhaps we should call it the poor man’s sulphate of morphia or— Do you have cognac in the Confederate States, Henry?

Only what is left in a few people’s cellars. Some we get from the Yankees. Damn this thing, Pierre. I think you injured the nerves when you removed the
sequestra.

Hush, you very stupid fellow! The great Dr. Bucheton does not go about butchering nerves with his scalpel. Do you wish me to draw another diagram? Here, upon the tablecloth; give me your pencil—

Nonsense. I want no more of your diagrams. I want only for the pain to go away.

In time, Henry, in time. You must needs be patient. You’ve undergone a great deal of treatment—some of it very inept and messy, according to what I found when I got into that wrist of yours last Monday. This is merely Old Dame Nature’s way of saying, My God, I’ve been stabbed, I’ve been raped, I’ve been slaughtered. Watch closely. The drainage has already decreased to a bare trickle. The efflorescence has decreased as well. And the seropurulent matter which came out of there! Where did you say you got this wound? In the battle of Louisiana?

No, no, no, Louisiana is my
home.
Or was. The wound I received in the fighting near Richmond, our capital. That was a year ago last summer. They called the place Seven Pines. God damn the Yankee who did this to me.

The fortunes of war, Henry. You know, I did some soldiering myself in ’48. Have I yet told you about—?

Fortune of war or no fortune of war, may the good God damn the Yankee who did this to me. I say, Give him to me. Let me meet him face to face. Who are you, Yankee? Was it your fingers on the lanyard which did the wickedness? Show them to me; I will show you my hand, or my arm which you did such cruelty to; now show me, Yankee, your own evil hand which performed the act. So what is that hand like, and where is the Yankee? Is it a young man’s hand—lively, tanned, hairy, a strong right hand? Or maybe the Yankee was left-handed?

Henry Wirz was speaking with such passion that Madame bent down from her smoky perch under the archway and gave him a searching look. An idle old waiter had drawn near, in alarm at having to deal with a foreign inebriate; a party of students and girls from the half-world had given up all conversation of their own and were united in attention.

Henry, said Bucheton in disquiet.

I tell you, I should like to meet that hand, and the man to whom it is attached! Ah—

No doubt you should, no doubt you should. Here, waiter, we’ll both have another cognac. Immediately, if you please!

In his sudden outpouring of frenzy, Wirz had thudded his bandaged forearm against the table, and the act brought forth a single exclamation of agony. He sat silently, his glance turned down, the sweat standing like fragile pebbled topaz bulbs upon his high bony forehead.

Bucheton began chattering in rapid sequence punctuated by low laughter intended to be soothing. He spoke a string of gossip and reminiscence concerning their mutual student past. Not for one moment did he think that Wirz was imagining or magnifying the misery dancing amid the nerves of his right arm. Pierre Bucheton had seen the slivered radius and ulna exposed, and his own small bright tongs had tightened on crumbs of corroded bone which he found serrated amid the tissues of Henry Wirz. He was a companion of this patient a solid generation previously, but had not fallen in with him again until the current year. Ah, yes—in 1849 Henry had indeed sent him a letter; that was when Henry passed through Paris en route for America, his dead wife left behind beneath her slab in Zurich, his living children left with their grandparents. The note had reached Bucheton belatedly since he was gone with the army. So he had not encountered Wirz again until this modern time of 1863. He had never thought that Wirz would be one to bear adversity with the dignity which passes for serenity. Old Cordier and others had signalled their awareness that Wirz was a talented youth—alert in the extreme, but too taut for his own well-being. His mind was an engraver’s stone, ready to be saturated with the inks of acquired knowledge; but reasoning did not come to him with ease. There was no flavor of humor about him except the taste of humor which is found in most youths; maturity would dry it up—yes, and had.

Bucheton had been willing—even keen—to benefit Wirz with his skill and experience in surgery, and with no mention of a fee. Academically he regretted that Henry must suffer this persistent pain; but as a truth Bucheton had never suffered any great physical agony within his own experience; he had only seen others suffering. He knew that physical anguish was bad; he was sorry that it must occur. But he could dismiss it, since the ache did not lie within his own experience or within his own flesh.

A last draught of cognac?

No.

They went outside into a dark city fresh washed, but it was raining no longer. Bucheton’s coachman hurried up to the next wide turning to bring the doctor’s chaise. You’ll squeeze in beside me, friend Henry, and I’ll set you down at your lodgings.

I will walk through the night air. It is chilly, and a stroll may help to clear my poor head and make me forget this.

There are purse-snatchers about. We’ve been warned.

Even in this quiet area? Well, I have very little money.

They made their goodbyes, Wirz gave his thanks for the dinner, Bucheton cautioned him about the reduction of the sulphate of morphia dosage by measured degrees, he set a day and an hour when Wirz should appear for his next examination. He dared not insult the Herr Doktor Wirz by instructing him about dressings, though he longed to. But Wirz said that the young son of his
concierge
was a tractable youth, and had been taught to hold the basin and bind the ends of linen—so—and now and then got a franc for his trouble.

Bucheton embraced the captain perfunctorily, and then drove off in his chaise. Wirz strolled, rigidly round-shouldered, beyond the Boulevard St. Germain; he held his gold-headed walking stick gripped tightly in his left hand, and it was a heavy stick, and would offer punishment to any slovenly mendicant or possible footpad who approached him. Yes, be he pickpocket or ruffian, Wirz could lift the stick and bring it down hardily.

Be he a Yankee— The pale knuckles grew paler.

Through the cool glistening, Wirz walked homeward slowly. Later he crossed through a corner of the Luxembourg gardens, and two be-caped policemen strode toward him, bearing their batons, and one was carrying a lantern. The lantern was lifted, Captain Wirz spoke a salutation, the policemen gave him their respects and marched away. His arm shriveled, grew cold, grew hot, grew fatter; it was at times made of iron; it was at times an elongated toad which squirmed; always it was an irritant, sometimes a beast.

—Very well. So if you’d undergone an amputation—

—But my hand.
Ach.
It is my hand which I need to retain— Condemn Bucheton and his smugness! If I’d but owned three hands I could have used two of them to operate on myself—

—But you have been your own surgeon at times. The first pink scraps, when they came near the surface; the older more recent bits, turned black as coal, and honey-combed— You worked in sweat, the bottle of whiskey beside you, the scalpel cleanly wiped, the tufts of lint soaking up the liquid— You worked methodically and well, and even on that night when you were home, and your wife was ill with the female curse, and Cora had the croup and was gagging with it— You worked as your own surgeon, with a Negro bug-eyed beside you—

—But still the leaping pain, the nerves like frogs in their jumping, the frogs bounding and saying, Let us out or we’ll burst your skin.

—Ja.
Frogs.

With discipline he sought to break his recollection away from the concern it held with his wound. Libby—he saw the desk, he put muster rolls into the narrow pigeon-holes when they had been checked, he heard the slam of guards’ musket butts on the stones when they halted outside the door—not his door, the other door . . . sat outside the office of Mr. Seddon’s deputy, he sat there during three whole forenoons and two and one-half afternoons, he sat motionless or nearly motionless, with his beard neatly brushed and his small gray cap held upon his knee like a bright-beaked bird he had trapped. Then he had his appointment.
Inspecting Officer of Prisons.
That sounded very well indeed.

Special Minister Plenipotentiary in Europe.
That sounded even better. Of course he wasn’t the only one, and also he was on leave of absence officially.

And why had they not made him a colonel? They had promised that he should be a colonel. Here he was now, doing a man-sized task with only boy-sized rank to wear. A captain!—no wonder he was treated like an errand boy. Actually he had never laid eyes on Mr. Slidell (though he pretended to Bucheton and others that he had). A secretary came into an anteroom on both occasions—once to accept the dispatches which Wirz had brought; the other time to give him an envelope of instructions.