Andersonville (89 page)

There’s a nigger wench along that road up northwest of the depot, said Mackey. But they say this white lady is better. But you better have that five-dollar shinplaster handy. I still think I’ll win that dollar off’n Irby, sure enough.

They started down the tracks. Flory stood fastened to mud and gravel between the ties. After a few minutes he could not make out the slight shapes which were his companions, going on ahead with the tinkling lantern, seeking the lane which led to the Widow Tebbs’. Flory trembled in momentary spasm, a taste of his supper came into his throat. He had a wish to put his head upon his mother’s lap and cry and cry and cry. Sometimes he had done that, when he was little, when he was hurt; he had done that when he was bitten by a stray dog, he had done it when he was watching workmen on this railroad and a stone flew from under a pick and hit him on the cheek. When he was hurt, his mother had been kind to him, often. She’d say, Now, you hain’t kilt. Just stop that bawling, baby boy, cause twon’t get you no place. You want bread-and-lasses? Well, I’m a-going to fix you some right now, and she had been tender if coarse-spoken when her flabby hands lifted her apron or petticoat and wiped his face.

Irby and Mackey were gone ahead into the night. It was not far to the side lane. Once they seemed to halt, as if waiting for Flory. They moved on after calling some taunt intended for his ears. Flory turned toward the north. For a time he tried his old trick of walking on the rail but he kept falling off. He trudged on, and then there were men with guns immediately ahead of him. He toppled into the ditch and lay motionless until the men had vanished. It could have been that these were sentries patrolling the area of stores and offices. No lights in any of the buildings by this time. Even Uncle Arch’s store was dark when Flory reached the depot’s vicinity. He walked wearily into camp, slipping past guards who were probably asleep. Before he reached the wall tent which was Home he could hear old Duckworth’s snores.

Mackey Nall was not so fortunate. When later he and Irby Flincher tried to creep to camp they were challenged. Irby made his escape among trees, but Mackey was seized and a pass was demanded of him. He had no pass; thus he was marched to the guardhouse. . . . Irby crawled into the tent as silently as he could, a few minutes later, and when Flory coughed the other boy could tell by the manner of his coughing that Flory was awake.

You little prick, muttered Irby.

Just bet I ain’t. Want me to come over and rub your eye out like I nearly done afore?

Leastways you never have got you a Yank, and I did, by Jesus God.

Irby. Did you—? Whereabouts is Mackey?

He got cotched and jailed. I damn near did too.

Irby, did you—do that—? Poking that lady—?

Hell, we never got no chance. Blame yard was just full of folks a-waiting their turns.

The bulk of their company drew Parapet the next morning and marched straggling along the gummy road toward the east, and deployed by uneven files down the path which led from station ladder to station ladder. When he had climbed in his turn Flory found himself on the platform of Station Number Forty-one, and saw that Irby was a few rods distant on Number Forty-two. Irby Flincher’s inherent viciousness had resolved itself into a combined hatred of Yankees, superior officers, comrades. Honestly Irby could have told no one which he loathed the most (because in fact he despised himself most of all; and thus like all who find themselves despicable he turned the weapon of revulsion out and away, waved it blindly, brandished it at God and Nature) but he seemed declaring in each twitch of his moody eyes or his blobber-lip that Flory was less worthy than dung, less to be admired than a maggot. Irby’s studied contempt reached along ninety feet of jagged post-tops even when it was unvoiced. When it was voiced it took the form of rusty barbs, fish-hooks twisted through Flory’s skin.

—Whyn’t you hold your gun proper?

—Hey, you Flory! Lost me a dollar, you did!

—Shouldn’t never have bet you could get it up.

Sergeant Sinkfield, swaggering in the path on a round of inspection, looked up and told Irby to shut his trap. This rebuke administered to his tormentor should have delighted Floral Tebbs but he was plunged too deeply into the pitch of despair. His nostrils were raw and dripping, his soul was sodden as the mat of motionless gray clouds overhead, he had had no appetite for breakfast. He gazed stupidly at hobbling currents of prisoners, unable to sense their demented activity or inquire about it, unable to ask a question of himself.

A fresh rumor of exchange had come into the stockade, it had been peddled by Little Red Cap. Promptly this rumor gave birth to many little rumors and they were waved, hugged, embroidered, waved hysterically again, as if no such gossip had ever been voiced to be accepted by the credulous, to poison them in time. New (and therefore vigorous) prisoners talked together volubly, slapped one another on the back, pumped one another by the hand, spoke of Akron and Fort Dodge and Mattoon and New Haven. Surviving veterans (therefore they were cynical men) who had managed to retain a fair portion of their strength, swallowed momentarily beneficent pills of legend which brought—momentarily again—vitality into frames and minds long clutched by the drug of cynicism. Their eyes shone despite any discipline they tried to impose in order to keep their eyes from shining; they went with briskness to shebangs of friends; they said, Have you heard? Well, I don’t believe it— But— Thought I’d tell you— Somebody heard Wirz talking in his office— Ten detachments going out right away. No, seven. No, six. It was a letter to General Winder from the Rebel war department. Everybody who can walk, going to Savannah. No, Charleston. Paroled. No, exchanged. Going to take them on boats to Maryland. They’re going to remove all the sick. No, it’s just us well ones. Have you heard—? Did you hear about—?

Men who were in the early stages of crippling illness arose and walked as if a gentle Stranger had strolled among their couches of rags and earth and had said, Walk; you can take up your bed if you want to, you can leave it behind. But— Arise and walk. Boys who lay infecting the spirits of the rest with slow or hasty decay— These boys got up on their haunches, they tried to stand and they could not stand but still they tried to stand. Ten detachments going out tonight! No, tomorrow. No, I got it from a feller who got it from a guard. Got it from a baker, got it from Lieutenant Davis, got it from— Going to take out all the cases that have to be carried and take them on a ship to New York— Take them to Philadelphia. Paroled. No, exchanged. Six detachments to be counted out, day after tomorrow.

Going to make an exchange at New Berne, North Carolina! Make an exchange at Norfolk. Cooking extra rations for eight detachments to take along on the cars. Sherman’s got too close. Sherman’s ten miles away, only thirty miles away, Sherman’s only a hundred miles away. Sherman sent a flag of truce and told the sons of bitches that he’d execute every Rebel citizen behind his lines if the Rebs open on this stockade with those damn guns. Lincoln sent a telegram to Richmond and told the Rebs that if they open on this stockade he’ll have artillery open on the prison at Rock Island, the prison in Chicago, Sandusky, Elmira, Point Lookout. . . . Five detachments going out tonight, twelve detachments going out tomorrow.

Boys who were crawling got up and hobbled on scurvy-tightened limbs, boys who were motionless began to crawl. It could have been that the dead already deposited in the dead row began to roll away from it . . . there seemed motion and flexing among stiff meager bodies on the hill yonder even as shovels tamped them down. It’s true, it’s honest. They’re going to nail up a notice this afternoon on the North Gate! A Rebel general’s coming inside to make the announcement. Two detachments going out every day from now on. Going North on the cars, going North on ships, going to Florida, going to New Orleans. All the sick, all the well.

Alice had been forgotten, Mother had faded into infinity, Etta had become too misty to be remembered, Sister Kate had become meaningless; so had Father, so had Brother Rufus, so had Shep, so had Muggins the cat. So had Home faded, so had ginger cake and cucumber pickles and the thud of the village fire gong and the bubbling laughter of a certain child. Amazingly these glories reappeared as the rumor went firing to the Island in the marsh, as it went banging against the far north wall, bouncing back to be reflected from the old raider area near South Street. Home became not only a long neglected, long vanished prettiness; it became a certainty, alive, resounding, tinted, embellished, you could taste and smell it. Prisoners gathered by dozens where before they had stood by twos and threes. Now they were pushing by hundreds in the wide rutted streets. A man went mad suddenly and ripped the blanket which was the roof of his solitary hovel, he said that he would need it no more; a boy went mad and sailed his precious half-canteen at a guard. Someone cried that an official notice had been posted on the inside of the North Gate, and throngs went loping or tottering to see the notice for themselves; although the gate had not been opened, no Reb of importance or unimportance had come Inside, no notice had been nailed.

To this trotting and outcry the ears of Floral Tebbs might have been sealed, his eyes stared unseeing. He did not comprehend or even observe. A waif conceived in misery, born in misery, chewing misery for a ration, he appeared to shrink within himself while his scrawny structure remained immovable. He was blighted before he began, yet this blight was unrecognizable and so could not be cured; he felt the blight but could not name it. Bruise of stone, no meal in a lean season, dog bite, nail in his foot, Coral’s crutch lamming into his back, nose running now, Sinkfield’s wide hand slapping and slapping, bellyache from eating green peaches, wet and weak in the rain, not enough cover on a cold night, no pennies for candy when he craved pennies for candy: these had made his life, a life marred in the making. It seemed that his slight rubbery soul left his body with the explorative dash of a rat emerging from its hole—uncertain dash toward the chicken-coop, dash toward the swill barrel—ha, is that a step, a threatening sound, a smell? Then dart to the burrow again and hide. But while his soul was free and vibrating aimlessly it looked back and saw Flory’s shape upon the sentry station, and noted with disgust how bedraggled was that shape, how leaking the nostrils and hacking the cough, how filthy the hat and coat sleeve . . . ha! Into the rat hole again. Tattered rat soul scooting into tattered rat body.

Irby Flincher twisting every device for torture.

—Hey, you Flory. Want to go a-poking tonight?

—Fraid to get grabbed by the sentries like old Mackey.

—Hell, yes. Reckon you’re scairt of your own farts.

—No guts. Never will have.

—Hain’t got guts enough to shoot a Yankee.

The voice of some unknown ancestor lifted in strength from the past, rang out from an unknown unmarked grave (or perhaps it was a genteel grave with a good name on it, guarded by marble) and spoke one word to Flory, and he heard. The word was
Assert.
He did not know this word, had never used it, but it commanded him and he obeyed.

His bony pallid left hand tightened around the wood and metal of musket barrel and stock. He lifted steadily with his left hand, and his bony pallid right hand slid down to clamp below the gun’s lock. He strained upward with both hands and tilted the barrel until the butt was at his right shoulder; then he pressed it back, tighter and tighter, until he held notion that he was grinding flesh and little sinews there. Pick out a big one, he told himself. By God, yes, biggest damn Yankee in sight. Now his left hand was far forward, the first finger of his right hand curling past the trigger guard. His thumb wrenched on high to heave against the hammer, he saw the cap exposed on the tube, saw the open rear sight. Slice of the front sight moved into its groove in gentle and orderly fashion. Twin sights strolled here and there, settling first on one man, then on another; and Irby Flincher was hullooing from Station Number Forty-two and another guard was hullooing from Station Number Forty. Also prisoners had seen Flory aiming the gun, and they began to run, to duck and dodge. A tall dark-haired prisoner, a very tall very dark-haired prisoner, turned quickly from the group with which he had been conversing and stood rooted in one fatal fractional second of immobility. The sights were roosting on his face, and he was not more than thirty yards away, in a bee-line, in line of bore and line of sight.
Poom.

 XLVIII 

O
h, ho, ho, ho.
Flory was halfway down the ladder when his arms dissolved, seemed to lose connection with his trunk; he fell the rest of the way, he lit on his side but with those useless arms stretched above his head, and so he did not break one of those loose useless arms. His cheek was mashed against the butt of the gun which had drifted from his hands while still he wavered upon the platform and thus he arose with blood upon him. He did not understand, he did not know that it was his own blood, he thought it was blood from the tall prisoner which gushed to that supreme height as thrown by the nozzle of a hose (once he had seen Mr. Claffey spraying fruit trees—the hose stretched out, and two slaves worked the handles of a pump which brought solution from a tank upon a wagon, and another slave dragged at the hose, and the masked Mr. Claffey himself held the nozzle, directing poison against trees. The masked Mr. Claffey was terrifying, utterly. Floral cut for home).

As now he ran.

Yells of other guards, the demons’ yells from within the pen, were no deterrent; they were a wind propelling him. He blew before it like a wisp of cotton blowing, forgotten cotton spilled from cart or picking bag in the earlier childhood of Floral Tebbs when cotton was raised in those parts . . . but the long white wisp would soon find lodgment against a weed, Floral lodged nowhere.

Palisades were behind him, rifle pits were behind, the star fort loomed on the left. Someone grabbed at Flory’s arm but he tore his arm away. Hey there, Sojer! Bubby, what the devil—? His calico hat was gone. Drip from his nose ran over his blubbering mouth and tasted salty, and went dripping off his chin. Sheds and tents of the south camps lay to the right, a detail of guards marched in the narrow road directly ahead. The boy swung blindly and darted between tents, and then the long shape of the guards’ hospital was before him, and the railroad stretched behind it; soon Flory’s feet found the ties although he could not feel his feet striking anything, not even when they blundered against the rail and when they were tripped by the rail and when he fell across the rail, and then arose and went jogging. He did not feel his body striking the railroad track when he fell, he did not feel himself getting up and running on.
Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho.

Close after him bayed every wolf of which he’d ever heard, close crept every rattlesnake and mad dog and varmint of fact or fancy. The tall Yankee trotted in the pack, shooting out his blood at every pace; and there were Irby Flincher, Sergeant Sinkfield, ghosts from a graveyard, gators from the marshes. Woogums trotted there.

When he was very small he’d played with some of the blacks from the Claffey and Bile plantations. Long since they’d all been sold away— Hector and Isaiah and fat brown Brutus and the rest—but terrors they’d contrived were here pursuing, skeletal hands were reaching.

We not go no further down this way, Mass Flory.

Nossuh! Not down them dead trees, all that black water—

Huh, nig? Why not?

Woogums get us sure.

Huh, nig? What’s Woogums?

Close they pushed together and the smell of their color was around him as he listened, and as he cried loud scorn and said that there were no such critters as Woogums in the swamp.

...Yes, boy! The truth, yes, it the truth, Mass Flory! Woogums all live down there, I hear growed niggers tell bout Woogums— And my old lady, she belong Mistuh Ganwood fore she belong Mistuh Ira Claffey, we both belong Mistuh Ganwood, and she say I not never go down them bog ways, for Woogums get me sure. All the Ganwood niggers tell bout Woogums. They got eyes red like coals’ fire, and big long teeth like bobcat, and they hands they come from the grave, all bone, just bone.

...Old Woogum he come in cabin at night, he get real hungry, and he like eat baby— Baby girl he like pretty well, but baby boy he relish lot more! He like white meat pretty well, like black meat better! Old Woogums they live in hollow tree yonder, and they got big cave place back behind all that black water; big storehouse like place, all just smack full dead children they keep for they dinner. Woogums they howl in the nighttime, sometime howl all night long. Well, I hear Woogums howl in the daytime too, you Brutus. You hear me, Hec—

...Woogums got long nail on they dead bone finger like great big cat claw, and they reach right through and rip out you belly. Hi, that truth! And old Woogum he all gray like death. Death gray color. They keep old buzzard in cage for have cage-bird, and they teach old buzzard how sing like lark.

And Woogums teach old buzzard how howl, too! Like Woogums.

And Woogums grow real tall—

Yes, boy. Yi! And make himself small like mouse, so he get in your cabin; then he get big again. And he eat you, he
pick your bones.

Out of the dreariness of six long years the mysterious voices talked in Flory’s memory; so there were Woogums behind him now, along with the Yankee whom he’d shot, and the other masses of mad Yankees whom he’d guarded . . . ghosts his half-sister had told him about . . . every terror which could creep or dance or gnash its teeth.
Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho.
It would seem that he had no breath left for sobbing, no breath left to feed his body while he ran; yet he sobbed still, he ran.

Ma, he tried to shriek as he staggered into the dooryard past leaning vine-draped palings. Ma . . . he made but a drawn-out M sound, a Mmmmmm, a mumble barely heard. Zoral had gathered mule-apples left by some mule belonging to a customer, and this dung was upon the step. Again Floral slipped and fell. Again he did not feel the hurt; he bobbed up, gasping, went through space, struck the side of the open door with his shoulder. He staggered back against the door and it crashed shut under the impact. Then Flory was in the bedroom. Laurel was not there, Coral was not there, the Widow Tebbs was not there (oh, faintly, distantly tinkled the music box; she was in The Crib). Flory rolled under the wide disordered bed and pushed his way through lint until he lay against the wall, he lay shivering, trying to draw more tightly against the wall. His foot jerked out spasmodically and upset the chamber pot. His ears listened to liquid go trickling away, draining down through cracks of the floor. At last it quit dripping. His ears heard nothing, there was nothing for them to hear but that frenzied explosion of the musket and the squawk of death following.

After a long while there did come another sound: a scratching at the outer door of the cottage, was it wolf, Yank, or Woogum? Something was coming, some small shape approached the bed, trot, trot, trot. No word was spoken through otherwise unyielding silences, no bay went up, there was no snarl of threat or upbraiding. A tiny hand lifted the hanging bedclothing draped over the edge, and Zoral squatted there. He peeped in at his half-brother, and the half-brother turned his head and saw him.

You get out of here, you Zoral, was the thought which crawled in Flory’s mind, but he could not speak. Beady eyes looked into Flory’s; then the queer pinched face grinned. In that grin was awful understanding—the age-old wisdom of the dwarf, the cretin.