Andersonville (54 page)

Father Whelan lay like that same effigy again in hot darkness, rude-shirted and bitten by bugs; he lay in temporary death; there was no one to see him unless saints peered through split shakes of the shed’s roof. Sometimes he ran as a youth in beech woods again— There was a path which went to old Brigid Shachlin’s house, and she would roll a hot potato from the ashes to thank him for the fish he’d fetched her—

The Church was greater than sun, moon and stars; because God had made these, but the Church was God’s extension in time.

Quid petis ab Ecclesia Dei? Fidem.
What to ask, indeed, of the Church of God? Faith, nothing but faith.
Was begehrst du von der Kirche Gottes? Den Glauben.
(As learned by Henry Wirz, as learned by the boy named Ernst Kamphoefner who now lay Exchanged in a ditch to the north— Why, his illusion had been correct; there was Exchange, he was now at the North with a vengeance.)
Que demandez-vous à l’Eglise de Dieu?
Respond, André Fromentin, and say
La foi.
Ah, if Father Hosannah came from Spring Hill College—the Jesuit school— He could speak many languages, not merely the Latin and the English and the Gaelic like Father Peter Whelan. He could Baptize any converted soldier of the polyglot Forty-eighth New York, and in the vernacular; he could Baptize a Bohemian.
Co
od Církve Boží? Viru.
He could Baptize a Pole.
Czego ż
a
dasz od
? Wiary.
The
Church was taller than MacCillicuddy’s Reeks, taller than the Rocky Mountains were said to be; because God made the mountains, and God founded the Church, and the Church was God’s action extended from eternity into time. . . .

Pilgrims went barefoot to Lourdes, pilgrims crawled on stairways, they crawled up hard brown rocky hills to pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the
Virgen de la Cabeza.
Lame pilgrims crawled the gray-green rocky cone of Puig above Pollensa and planned to leave their crutches at the top. The servant girl wept in the Confessional. The beggar stole silver from the poor box and thus he became a thief instead of a beggar; but he could be forgiven, he could do a penance, not necessarily was he deeded to the flames. The sickly child in Seville—sickly, but with a face like a rock-rose—shivered and danced when
pasos
went swaying past, when drums rolled hard, when gypsies wailed from the balconies. ¿
Qué pides de la Iglesia de Dios? La fe.
The
Church was more majestic than blue sky or dun sky or black sky, for God had made the sky of whatever color.
Che cosa chiedi dalla Chiesa di Dio? La Fede.
The
old Italian was trodden to death by a crowd pressing forward to see the Pope.

Through endless dusty muddy decades nuns went walking to beg, nuns lifted the heavy stinking sick, nuns put gruel into sagging mouths of the idiots they tended, nuns unwound the swelling abraiding bandage and put on the newer sweeter kinder bandage, nuns sponged the soiled buttocks, nuns changed the bed. The monsignor stole the orphans’ money, the cardinal employed the assassin, the priest seduced the sniveling young lunatic put into his care. The Church was greater than any force or inhuman beauty dreamed or named by man or men because the Church was above these wickednesses. The knife of perfidy could not disembowel the Church, worms of jealousy could not gnaw its structure, the powder of hypocrisy could not explode to shatter its columns.
What doth faith bring thee to? Life everlasting.

In the morning Father Peter Whelan arose again. He prayed. He washed himself at a wooden bucket, and shaved in cold water, and cooked a bowl of mush and another of peas; then he was fed sufficiently until night. He rid himself of as many lice as he could. He walked the long hard hot distance to Andersonville, walking in broken shoes which he himself had tried to sew together, walking under the ruin of his umbrella.
Salvum fac servum tuum.
Sun hurled itself against him, against the prisoners; the thick stench came to meet and claim. He would not come dragging out through that gate until dusk; another day would have passed, he would be a year older. Still he would serve.

 XXXII 

J
ohnny Ransom, the twenty-one-year-old from the Ninth Michigan Cavalry, scrawled his scrawl. The farther advanced the summer, the death rate increases, until they die off by scores. I walk around to see friends of a few days ago and am told, Dead. Men stand it nobly and are apparently ordinarily well, when all at once they go. Like a horse, that will stand up until he drops dead. . . . Was ever before in this world anything so terrible happening? Many entirely naked. . . . Sores afflict us now, and the Lord only knows what next. Scurvy and scurvy sores, dropsy, not the least thing to eat that can be called fit for any one, much less a sick man, water that to drink is poison, no shelter. . . .

He knew whereof he wrote when it came to scurvy. Johnny Ransom was barely able to walk; he had been unable to participate in the raider fight however much he applauded the Regulators.

He wrote: A new prisoner fainted away on his entrance to Andersonville and is now crazy, a raving maniac. That is how our condition affected him. My pants are the worse for wear from repeated washings, my shirt sleeveless and feet stockingless; have a red cap without any front piece; shoes by some hocus-pocus are not mates, one considerable larger than the other. Wonder what they would think if I should suddenly appear on the streets in Jackson in this garb. Would be a circus; side show and all. The Glorious Fourth of July. How shall we celebrate? Know of no way except to pound on the bake tin, which I shall do.

In fact it was the Glorious Fourth of July, and raiders knelt in subjugation. Solemnly the bent scurvy-racked Johnny Ransom beat upon his bake tin.

He wrote: The men taken outside yesterday are under rebel guard and will be punished. The men are thoroughly aroused, and now that the matter has been taken in hand, it will be followed up to the letter. Other arrests are being made today, and occasionally a big fight. Little Terry, whom they could not find yesterday, was today taken. Fought like a little tiger, but had to go. Limber Jim is a brick, and should be made a Major General if he ever reaches our lines. . . . The writer hereof does no fighting, being on the sick list. The excitement of looking on is almost too much for me. Can hardly arrest the big graybacks crawling around.

John Ransom was loved and tended by a mighty Indian from Minnesota named Baptiste, called Bateese by all. You get well soon, said Bateese. He brought to Johnny the potato parings which his industry had purchased. Like Seneca MacBean the Indian conducted a laundry of sorts, and said that he had no time to fight, must wash. But he would grunt his approval when he saw the worst of the raiders suspended by ropes.

The young diarist traced his words with slow devotion: Have taken to rubbing my limbs . . . badly swollen. One of my teeth came out a few days ago, and all are loose. Mouth very sore. Bateese says, We get away yet. Works around and is always busy. If any news, he merely listens and doesn’t say a word. Even he is in poor health, but never mentions it. An acquaintance of his says he own a good farm in Minnesota. Asked him if he was married—says: Oh, yes. Any children? Oh, yes. . . . Is very different from Indians in general. Some of them here are despisable cowards—worse than the negro. Probably one hundred negroes are here. Not so tough as the whites.

Stub pencil fell from weakened fingers, the hurting head came forward and lay on Johnny Ransom’s arm; Johnny dreamed of the Pepys whom he had read avidly and strove to emulate. He dreamed that he would survive agonies to come, and in some fine fair future hour would journey through that gate. His diary, his precious stained scrubby notebooks saying
Ledger
and
Day Book
and
Cash Receipts
and
Pickell & Co.—
These would accompany him.

He stood in the office of a publisher, the publisher was portly and sagacious. What cash down payment would it be necessary for us to put forth, Mr. Ransom, in order to secure the highly estimable privilege of printing your remarkable diary? By Heaven, young man, what a ghastly experience you have passed through—and yet, memorable, memorable indeed. And to think that you are one of the few survivors! Yet the vast American public should no longer be denied the cultural advantage which will redound and we are prepared to lay a goodly sum on the line, Mr. Ransom, a goodly sum.

The publisher toyed with his thick gold watch chain, the fraternal emblem dangling there was diamond-encrusted. So if you would venture to suggest an appropriate sum, to serve as binder for our agreement—?

Frankly, sir, I’d thought in terms of one thousand dollars.

One thousand dollars? Perfectly preposterous, young man, pre
post
errrruss!

But, sir, I—

It would amount to an insult to my professional integrity, Mr. Ransom! A thousand dollars? Humph, I’ll pay you a hundred.

But, sir, one hundred dollars—

I didn’t mean one hundred dollars! I meant one hundred
thousand
dollars! Beamingly the publisher opened his desk, scratched around here and there, and then began to toss small bags filled with gold coins, to toss them at John Ransom. John dodged and ducked, the plummets fell faster, one struck him in the eye and he yelled with the grief of it. A horse-fly had bitten him on the right eyelid. He sat awake and scorching in the dry bath of the shebang. Bateese came near to feel the back of Johnny’s neck, to feel fever there, to say, I bring water.

July 5, wrote the young man a day later. Court is in session outside and raiders being tried by our own men. Wirtz—

(Never could he spell this name correctly.)

—Has done one good thing, but it’s a question whether he is entitled to any credit, as he had to be threatened with a break before he would assist us. Rations again today. I am quite bad off with my diseases, but still there are so many thousands so much worse off that I do not complain much, or try not to however.

Boiling hot, camp reeking with filth . . . men dying off. . . . Have more mementoes than I can carry, from those who have died, to be given to their friends at home. At least a dozen have given me letters, pictures &c., to take North. Hope I shan’t have to turn them over to some one else. . . . Rebel visitors . . . look at us from a distance. It is said the stench keeps all away who have no business here and can keep away.

(All except Ira Claffey, who appeared on a sentry platform daily. Guards begged tobacco from him, he tried to remember to carry a plug at all times; though often he would forget, he used tobacco so rarely himself. He looked down and saw Newgate, Bedlam, and camps where he had heard that Spanish torturers herded the rebellious in colonies of New Spain. He watched the pen where Andy Jackson had suffered and sickened when he was a boy, when the spunky Andrew refused to clean a British officer’s boots. He observed the misery of Seminoles, saw Osceola dying in filth and stony pride. Here was an inclusion of every indignity and deprivation which a captor might visit upon those he’d shackled. Shackles? So identified: Ira saw the chain gangs dragging as he walked back to his plantation. He marveled how Henry Wirz could sleep at night, he did not know that often Henry Wirz never slept.)

At the end of the week, first decisions of the court trying the raiders were written out on a sheet torn from the manifold order book (captured: a Federal manifold order book) which had been donated by Wirz for judicial purposes. This paper was posted upon the South Gate. Many crowded there to read it; the news spread far within minutes, and was the signal for congratulatory hullabaloo.

Willie Collins, Patrick Delaney, John Sarsfield, Charles Curtis and the sailors Munn and Rickson had been sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead. Seventeen other men were sentenced to floggings, buckings and to the stocks or chain gang for various terms.

The court’s deliberations were still proceeding when Henry Wirz sent for Leroy Key and Seneca MacBean. The two were conveyed to his office under guard.

The Gate pen I got to have back!

Captain, you told us we could have it to keep our prisoners in, to use for the trial—

Ja,
how many days you have it now?

Key still objected, MacBean said nothing. Seneca had deplored the leisurely garrulous aspect of the trial; he thought that it was a mistake to lean over backward in selecting a court of thirteen sergeants, all of whom were recent arrivals at Andersonville. He supposed that this was a weakness inherent in American institutions; he called it creaky justice. It had worked to the Nation’s detriment many times before, and no doubt would until the end of time. Those new-come sergeants had no true conception of what occurred within the stockade during raider-ridden months. They had but academic secondhand knowledge of the fear which had gripped, hands which had gripped, the rupturings and burstings and fracturings so commonplace. MacBean would have been perfectly willing to place any and all of the captured roughs before the muzzles of a firing squad. He would have been willing, if not eager, to stand with that squad. But the dubious chimera of fair play fogged the scene. Cogitations and ramblings of witnesses and counsels alike had long since passed the point of practicality.

You God damn Yankees got lead in your ass, Wirz was screaming. All day you take to tell one man you hang him, one more day you take to tell one more man! Maybe a year you take for the rest, hah?
Gott,
I must use my gate. Those damn prisoners I put back Inside!

Wirz granted but an hour’s grace, and said that he would turn the remaining prisoners back into the stockade, using bayonets if necessary. The Illinoisans were dismissed with a few more execrations, but MacBean lingered, even when a guard jerked at his sleeve.

You go when I tell you, you bad sergeant!
Oder
you also I put in the stocks!

Captain, one thing: we’ve got to have some wood. Planks, timbers, plenty of ropes—

For why should I give you those things, God damn?

Can’t hang the guilty folks on thin air. We can’t make a gallows out of our shebang poles.

All you damn Yankees thirst for blood!

MacBean stood grinning with saturnine calm, and let Wirz brandish his fist until the arm tired and the fist fell. He saw fierce darting pain in the captain’s face, and was annoyed to find himself pitying Wirz. Resolutely he put the pity down.

Going to be a good fellow, Captain, and give us a nice sound gallows? We got hundreds of qualified carpenters who’d be willing to work without pay—

He won the promise of adequate materials for the execution, to be delivered—on loan, not as a gift—within the stockade on Monday morning. Wirz had shrieked that the hanging should occur the very next day. MacBean pointed out that the next day was Sunday, and thousands of prisoners might object to a sextuple execution on the Sabbath. It wouldn’t matter to him, he said.

But you might get a riot, Captain.

At that dread word the superintendent winced and agreed that Monday would be best. MacBean went back to the cubicle, provoking guards to rage by his sauntering, and found that the six condemned hooligans had been placed in stocks to await their death. Key adjourned court permanently. The seventeen men already sentenced were herded off to punishment; but more than a hundred others still sat with bound hands (the feet of the more recalcitrant were also bound).

Can’t turn them back inside, MacBean told Key, without taking off those ties. They’d be torn to death instanter.

The innocent along with the guilty?

Hell’s bells, they’re all guilty.

Word of the intended repatriation of untried, unconvicted raiders had seeped into the pen; prisoners were roaring. Many, who had been reluctant to assist the Regulators until tide of battle turned in their favor, were now vociferous in declaring their hatred of the accused. They brandished cudgels, declared that they would pound the accused to a pulp the moment they appeared.

A hasty trip through the wicket convinced Key that the danger was real and not fancied. He sent another appeal to Wirz but it fell upon deaf ears. Several squads of guards with fixed bayonets entered the enclosure through its outer gate, and Key shrugged hopelessly.