Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War

A Novel of the Civil War

Jeff Mann

Published by Bear Bones Books (Lethe Press) at
Smashwords.com

Copyright © 2012 Jeff Mann.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.

Published in 2012 by Bear Bones Books,

an imprint of Lethe Press, Inc.

118 Heritage Avenue • Maple Shade, NJ 08052-3018

www.lethepressbooks.com • [email protected]

www.BearBonesBooks.com • [email protected]

Print isbn: 978-1-59021-375-9 / 1-59021-375-0

E-book isbn: 978-1-59021-403-9 / 1-59021-403-x

Interior design: Alex Jeffers.

Cover design: Niki Smith.

This book, in whole and in part, is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, clubs or organizations, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.

_

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data

Mann, Jeff.

Purgatory : a novel of the Civil War / Jeff Mann.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-59021-375-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Gay military personnel--Fiction. 2.
Soldiers--Fiction. 3. Erotic stories, American. 4. United
States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3563.A53614P87 2012

813’.54--dc22

2011048680

Also by Jeff
Mann

Poetry

Bones Washed with Wine

On the Tongue

Loving Mountains, Loving Men

Ash: Poems from Norse Mythology

Essays

Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear

Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the Mountain
South

Short Fiction

A History of Barbed Wire

Novel

Fog: A Novel of Desire and Reprisal

_

For John Ross, my favorite Yankee, who has shown this
gray-bearded Confederate sympathizer remarkable patience. Long may
we roam Civil War battlefields together.

For the people of the South: past, present, and
future.

For my ancestor, Isaac G. Carden—West Virginia Pvt
Lowry’s Btry VA Lt Arty Confederate States Army—who fought the good
fight and lived to tell of it.

_

Many thanks to Steve Berman, Ron Suresha, and Tiffany
Trent for their advice and support. Thanks to Cynthia Burack, Laree
Martin, Frankie Finley, Bobby Nelson, Donnie Martin, Ken Belcher,
Darius Liptrap, and Kent Botkin for their friendship. Many thanks
to Alex Jeffers and Niki Smith for creating such a handsome
book.

_

Portions of this novel appeared as “Sarvis” in
Special Forces: Gay Military Erotica
. Ed.
Phillip Mackenzie, Jr. San Francisco: Cleis, 2009.

Portions of this novel appeared in
Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel: Contemporary Appalachian
Writing
#14.

“But Lucy Dare was a Virginian, and in
Virginia—except in the brief, exalted Virginia of the
Confederacy—the personal loyalties have always been esteemed beyond
the impersonal.”

—“Dare’s Gift,” Ellen Glasgow

Table of
Contents

Title
Page

Also by Jeff Mann

Dedication

Table of
Contents

Chapter One - start
the novel

Bibliography

About the
Author

CHAPTER
ONE

_

Amid the whizzing of Yankee bullets, there’s a sharp
gasp at my elbow. “Ian, I’m hit,” Sam groans. Our black-haired
color bearer is bent at the waist, as if bowing to some spirit the
rest of us can’t see. Then he straightens, clutches his chest,
stares over at me, and grimaces. Before I can do anything, Sam
staggers, gets caught in the ragged folds of the flag he’s
carrying, spins, and falls, the Stars and Bars wrapped around him
like a huge red-and-blue bandage.

“Ian. The flag,” Sam moans, blood spilling from his
lips. The flag’s red is brighter now, as his wound wells. Inside
the blue stripes, the white stars flush scarlet. “You got to save
the flag.” He heaves himself onto one elbow and starts tugging at
the fabric swathing him.

“No! I don’t want to move you,” I say, easing him
back against the muddy wall of our rifle pit. “You’re tangled in
it. Easy, Sam! Lie back.”

I’m about to examine his wound when a roar fills my
ears. I rise long enough to look over the breastworks. Across the
field the Yanks are pouring toward us through gray sheets of
falling sleet, unloading their rifles into our thin line. My God,
there are so, so many of them. It’s like a damned deep-blue tidal
wave. Despite the brim of my cap, my spectacles are spattered with
wet, making it hard to see. Still, I swallow hard, aim at the
Federals, and fire. The rifle-butt slams my shoulder; the smoke
fills my nose. Far in front of me, to my pleasure, a foe screams
and falls.

“Damn you,” I sigh, less in anger than weariness,
“why can’t y’all just go home?” Tearing open a cartridge with my
teeth, I load up again. I’m about to aim when a Union ball chunks
into the mud to my right. I duck, falling to my knees. When I look
down, Sam’s eyes are dull.

“He’s dead, Ian. Leave him! Leave the flag.” Sarge’s
voice is even, his hand heavy on my shoulder. “It’s over. The
Valley’s fallen. If we don’t move fast, we’ll be captured.”

My uncle’s face is set, his gray eyes bright over the
silvery flare of his moustache. He points to our left. He’s right.
Mounted Yanks are breaking through the trees, about to flank us.
“And Early’s leaving.” Now Sarge points behind us. There, atop a
low hill, wild-bearded General Jubal Early and his staff are
mounting up to flee.

“Rockfish Gap! Retreat!” Sarge shouts to the remains
of our little company, all huddled here together in icy water
behind the breastworks. “Let’s go, boys! We’ve got to get over the
bridge or we’ll be cut off!”

We sprint west, through the town of Waynesboro.
Around us Yankee balls are flying. Behind us are booms and shouts.
Here are our horses, in a little stable owned by an old friend of
Sarge’s. We have few mounts, this late in the war, so we double up,
as usual in times of crisis. Sarge’s helping me up behind him when
a young black woman appears beside us. She’s shivering, a shawl
over her shoulders, a dirty bonnet on her head. Her face is a shiny
brown, her cheeks hollow.

“Here, sirs,” she says. “Missus said you could do
with these.” She proffers a poke. I grab it. “Said you soldiers
needed it more’n we.”

“Thank y’all kindly,” I gasp. Now get inside.” As if
to highlight my words, a bullet sings through the air between us.
The servant gives a little shriek, turns, and disappears into the
stable.

“Git!” Sarge goads his horse, and we’re off, through
the gray town, over the bridge, through a fresh fall of sleet, and
onto the road up into the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a sad rout,
our little band fleeing as fast as we can. I almost lose my cap in
the rush. One arm around Sarge, one clasping my hat on my head, I
look around as the wintry landscape rushes by, grim fields turn to
forest, and we ascend the steeps toward the gap. Sam, damn it. Poor
boy fallen in the folds of the flag he’s carried so proudly for so
long, the Stars and Bars become his winding sheet. But the rest of
us Rogue Riders, yes, there’s that shabby George, grimacing as
usual, with one of the twins mounted behind him. And Jeremiah, my
handsome buddy from back home, black shaggy hair flying in the
wind, with scruffy Rufus clinging to his waist.

Behind us, the report of rifles continues. By the
time we’ve reached the mountaintop, however, there are no sounds
but horse hooves, men panting, and wind whistling through the gap.
We’re atop the narrow ridge now, winter-gray mountains rolling out
around us as far as the eye can see.

“The boys without mounts are prisoners by now,” Sarge
says, and spits. There’s General Early, on a rocky ledge, staring
down into the valley with his spyglass. He curses, cocks back a
flask, and curses more. Sarge dismounts, hands me the bridle, says,
“Check on the boys,” and strides over to Early. They begin to
confer, Sarge’s voice low and even, Early’s occasionally rising
into sharp profanity. God knows what’s next for us. Months of
trying to defend this valley, but there are just too few of us now.
We’re whipped. I’m feeling what most of us are feeling, I suspect:
part of me wants to fight on defiantly to the end, and part of me
wants to throw down my gun and head home to my family.

I’ve just dismounted and am about to check the
contents of the poke the slave-girl gave me—I sure as hell hope
it’s food, because we soldiers are always starving—when a hand
grips my shoulder. “Hey, Ian.” It’s Jeremiah, brushing the hair out
of his eyes. His face is thin, his features sharp. He’s lost his
cap. “Sam?”

I shake my head. “He’s gone, Jeremiah. Fell with the
flag.”

Jeremiah sighs. “Oh, no.” He looks down the mountain
toward the town. He hugs me, quick and hard, then steps back. “And
are you sound? Were you wounded? Me, I almost caught a ball
in—”

Rifles below. Closer. “Boys! Yanks!” Sarge shouts and
points. I look down the road, and there’s a little group of damned
bluecoats heading up the hill.

“Shit!” Jeremiah mutters. We load fast, what’s left
of our little band. “Fire!” Sarge and Early shout simultaneously.
Shoulder to shoulder, we pour fire down the mountain. A few
answering guns, and the Yanks retreat. I guess they figure we’re
not much of a threat anymore, no longer worth their bother, and I
guess they’re right. Maybe they’ve had enough of a sweeping victory
for one day. If Stonewall Jackson were still alive, or my hero,
that magnificently bearded Turner Ashby, leading his wild horde of
cavalry, we’d tear their Yankee asses up, but those days are long
gone. It’s March 1865. Jackson’s been dead nearly two years, Ashby
nearly three.

Day’s about done, but we wait, arms at the ready,
lined up along the wooded ridge, waiting for further attack. When,
a few hours after dark, it seems clear that the Feds are probably
settling into their luxurious meals by the fire—those lucky
bastards and their long supply trains—we Rebs settle in, starting
our own campfires and preparing what pissant rations we have
remaining.

Sarge, striding around to check on things, counts us.
Twenty-three left. Five missing, fallen, or captured back in
Waynesboro. He shakes his head and chews his lower lip. “No need to
pitch tents. We’re moving on tomorrow,” he announces before
returning to General Early’s campfire.

I sit on a log beside the fire and count them, my
remaining messmates. Jeremiah, with his kind eyes and patchy black
beard, has somehow, miraculously, retained his banjo in the rout
and is tuning it up. He grew up just a valley over from me along
the Greenbrier River back in West Virginia. We got to be pretty
good friends at community events like corn-shuckings and molasses
stir-offs, even working some fields and garden plots together in
between trips to our favorite swimming hole. For a moment I feel
some of that old desire for him I knew back home. I always feel a
flicker of it in the mornings, when I see him bare to the waist and
bathing, splashing water on his face, his lean chest and belly
coated with black hair. Ever since my first youthful infatuation
with him, I’ve always loved hairy men. One of the reasons I so
doted on Thom, God help me. Not that I’ve shared that fact with any
of my fellow soldiers, of course.

Here’s George, a mousy little man from the Valley
who’s always smelling of tobacco. Behind his back, I call him
Weasel-Teeth, not only because of his ugly maw but his vindictive
nature. George is spitting into the fire, jaw working his customary
plug. He broods, no doubt over today’s rout, his lip curling every
now and then to flash sharp teeth. There’s a Bible in his hand, but
he doesn’t seem to be reading it. Instead, he stares into the
flames or into the dark forest. We used to be civil. He used to
look at me, I think, the way I used to look at Jeremiah, but the
combination of his perpetually sour moods and his Bible rants have
made his presence increasingly obnoxious. More and more, he spends
time with those redheaded New Market twins. I think he enjoys
bossing them around.