Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War (20 page)

In his hard grip, the bones of my fingers ache. The
cloth blocking his mouth and obscuring his words makes no
difference. His response is clear. “I love you too,” he says. I
wrap my body around his like a husk about a walnut, a shell around
a seed. I rock him in my arms till he’s fallen asleep.

_

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

_

I
 
’m up with reveille,
leaving my captive to slumber. Overcast skies, but warm. A flurry
of chickadees skirts me. Over the newly fed fire, Rufus is frying
hoecake. I’m pouring coffee when Sarge appears beside me. Unasked,
I pour him a cup. We sit side by side in sling chairs, sipping
while the hoecake cooks. I wait for his words, dreading them. An
ill wind blows no good, that’s what Aunt Alicia used to say about
him.

“Today, Ian, I’d like you to join the other men for
drill. Then help them complete packing. We’ll be leaving for
Lexington tomorrow after breakfast.”

“Yes, sir. What should I do with the prisoner? Won’t
he need to be guarded?”

“No need for you to guard him. He’ll be in full view
of all the men. I want him bucked and gagged in the middle of camp,
not by your tent. I’m sure you’re tired of watching him every day.
You’ve had to miss drill ever since we captured him. Bad for a
soldier to miss so much drill. Makes you dull and clumsy and likely
to fumble or fall in battle.”

Drew suffering in full view, at the mercy of any
passing man’s taunts or abuse? My belly’s a pang clenched around
coffee. It takes all my skills in dissembling to muster the sound
of gratitude. “Thank you, sir. It’ll be a relief to be free of him
for a while.”

“At night you may tend him in your tent. But
remember, once we reach Purgatory, he’s to be denied further
shelter. As I said, spring’s almost here, and soon frostbite will
no longer be a threat. Let the prisoner spend what time he has left
under God’s wide sky…as so many of our boys must. And if he can’t
keep up tomorrow, on our journey, I expect your pistol to send him
to his reward. If we’re on the move, no need to bury him. Just drag
him into the woods. Let the crows eat him. Fit fate for pigs like
him.”

“Here you go,” Rufus says. A square of hoecake steams
under my nose.

“Eat up, private,” says Sarge. “Lots yet to pack.
You’ll need your strength.”

I might as well be chewing dirt. Suddenly there’s no
taste to anything. Only swigs of coffee save me from choking on the
cornbread crumbs. Sarge finishes his coffee and hoecake; Rufus
fetches him more of both. I rise, poke at the fire, and turn toward
my tent. “I should get ready, sir,” I say.

“One thing, Ian. George spoke to me this morning and
told me something odd.”

Sarge’s tone of voice is sufficient to cause Rufus to
retreat. Now my uncle and I are alone by the fire.

“George said he couldn’t sleep last night and decided
to trade sentry watches with Travis. He said he heard talking in
your tent long after dark, along with a strange moaning. Why was
that, Ian? My order was to keep the prisoner gagged.”

I make a grand show of pouring myself another
half-cup of coffee. The words Drew and I exchanged last night make
me feel like an oak, with a taproot nothing can dislodge. Can it be
that the scared little boy is me is gone? No, I doubt he’ll ever
depart, but somehow there’s less of him now.

“Sir, the Yank needed water. When I ungagged him so
he could drink, he started to cry. He knows he’s likely to die
soon, so he broke down. I let him cry for a while; that must have
been the moaning George heard. Then the prisoner asked me to pray
with him. For a while I did, before he calmed down and I gagged him
again, as you’d ordered. I hope, sir, as a Christian man, you won’t
object to me permitting a prisoner to pray.”

“No, Ian. He has reason to pray, surely, for his
no-doubt myriad sins and for the rapidly approaching release of his
soul. All right. Buck and gag him over there”—Sarge points down a
line of tents to a clearing near his own quarters—“and then prepare
for drill. Don’t interfere if the boys have some fun with him.
That’s one of the reasons we’re keeping him, are we not? He’s been
kept sequestered and sheltered long enough.”

“Yes, sir,” I say. I drink the last mouthful of
coffee too fast. It burns my tongue.

“And Ian? Give him no lunch. For his dinner, all we
can spare is some hardtack that’s gone to the weevil. Don’t untie
him till he’s sobbing. You hear me? The men will savor his tears.
I’ll tell you when you may release him.” Sarge pulls out his pocket
watch. “About nightfall, I think. A good twelve to fourteen hours
should break that boy like a dry twig.”

_

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

_

The drill goes on and on, as tedious as usual. A
couple of hours in the morning, a break for lunch, then another two
hours in the afternoon. The maneuvers blur in my mind; my rifle
grows heavier and heavier. I keep thinking about Drew, how he fell
to his knees in front of me, clasped my legs with his cuffed hands,
and buried his face in my uniform jacket before I led him from the
tent to be bucked. I keep thinking about the scared little whimpers
he made, so quietly only I could hear, as I bound him in the
clearing and tied the stick in his mouth. I keep thinking about how
I had to leave him there, as vulnerable as an infant, the morning
after the night I told him I loved him. I keep thinking about how I
looked back once, to find him still staring after me, blue eyes
wide and wet.

Drills over, packing begins. Now’s the perilous time,
when men whose presence up to now had been required at drill
disperse to their different tasks, some of them drifting in Drew’s
direction. I concentrate as best I can, helping Rufus load up camp
chairs, leftover firewood, cots, and canvas. From here, where we’re
loading the cart beneath the tree where Sarge whipped Drew, I can
see smoke rising over the few tents but can’t see the clearing
where he waits. There’s an occasional laugh from that direction,
but not the moans of pain or the muffled protests I dreaded. He’s
either been left unmolested— highly unlikely, against all odds—or
he’s biting down on his bit and trying to be brave while my
company-mates abuse him.

It’s the latter, I know in my gut. Even from here, I
can feel his pain and his yearning, invisible but tangible, like
this soft breeze on my face, in the same way that I could almost
feel his agony as Sarge bullwhipped him, as the lash slashed his
back and breast. It’s as if a rope still joined my fist with the
collar locked around his neck, as if our bodies were somehow still
tethered together. He’s aching not only to be freed from a position
of long humiliation and agony but to see my face.

I stop lifting boxes of hardtack into the cart.
Panting, I wipe my brow. I stand still, staring in Drew’s
direction, feeling for him in the distance. A breeze catches dead
leaves, spinning them into frantic little circles before they slow,
eddy, and descend. Cloud shadows and sunlight drift their dispute
over the camp. I look up into the sky, and there’s a hawk drifting
over, riding a current of air down into the valley. I rub my chin,
lift my hand to my nose, and breathe deep. My lover’s scent is
faint but warm, his body’s musk lingering in my beard and on my
fingers.

It’s all so clear now, as if the winter sun were
burning doubt from my vision like frost melting off windowpanes.
Drew’s here, inside me, blood oozing from his wrists, his face
bruised from the blows of fists, the stick-bit cutting his mouth as
he mumbles my name. Christ, how blind I’ve been. Why has it taken
me this long to recognize a miracle, sent by a God far kinder than
He who brought on this war? Two foes, both so far and so long from
home, have found some semblance of home in one another’s arms and
in my musty little tent. Christ, what a coward I’ve been. Why has
it taken me this long to realize that saving Drew is worth any risk
or consequence?

By the time Rufus and I have the cart packed with as
much as it will hold, the sun’s slanting over the camp, pale orange
of late afternoon. I try to take my time, approaching Drew’s
clearing, eager to see him but fearful of what I’ll find. Veering
around a tent, I almost run into George. A smile creases his face,
showing off the sharp brown teeth. “Your friend’s a fine
entertainment,” he says, snickering. “He’s been snuffling and
mewling like a brat for a good hour now.”

“Motherfucker,” I snarl, giving him a hard jab in the
ribs with my elbow as I pass. As much as I’d like to slam his face
into a stone until the skullbone’s exposed, getting to Drew is more
important now.

Drew’s alone, hunched and bent by the rod and rope
that bind him into the tight package that bucking makes of a man.
But there’s plentiful evidence of recent company. The strong smell
of piss pervades the clearing. Fresh piss streaks his back, darkens
his trousers, bedews his boots, and puddles about him. There’s
telltale tobacco juice in his hair and across his shoulders. His
bandages have been torn off, making little piles of stained
cloth—red-brown of blood, yellow of piss, dark brown of
tobacco-spit—all around him. When he lifts his head, he’s staring
at me with one eye only; the other’s blackened and swollen
shut.

“Oh, buddy…oh, goddamn.” When I touch his shoulder,
his face crumples. He breaks down, sobbing and shaking. Then he’s
jerking his head at me, pointing one index finger back the way I
came.

“You want me to go? You want me to leave you like
this?”

“Uh huh. Uh huh.” Drew nods emphatically. He points
again, then bows his head between his arms to hide his damaged
face.

Something shatters inside me. Old promises, old
faiths. “I’ll be back at nightfall to release you. Tonight
I’ll—”

Greenbrier’s coiled in my gut and knotted around my
tongue. Turning on a heel, I stride off. Two of my company-mates
pass me, smiling: those redheaded twins from New Market. Hardly any
beard yet; they can’t be more than eighteen. Yankees burned their
home last fall, so, like George, their hatred is especially deep.
Behind me, sounds of them taking their fun: something hard striking
flesh, Drew’s groan, a boy’s laughter.

In my tent, I press my face into a blanket so no one
can hear me weep. Then, spent, I sit on the edge of the cot, clean
my pistol, sharpen my Bowie knife, and wait for nightfall. I see a
way home now. The next chance I get, I need to study Sarge’s
maps.

_

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

_

When Drew’s sobs subside, I unlock his shackles. It
takes a long time to tug his smelly boots off, his piss-soaked
trousers and drawers. Their bitter odor fills the tent. Again,
after so many hours bucked, he can barely move. How he’ll recover
fast enough to keep up tomorrow only God knows. But now my battered
Yankee lies entirely naked, save for collar and cuffs, in the light
of the candle stub. He is, of course, as beautiful as ever, despite
the blood and bruises, but I keep my lust to myself for now. The
lover can come later. Right now, what’s needed yet again is the
healer. I roll and heave him this way and that, soaping, scrubbing,
kneading, salving, bandaging, doing what I can to reverse the
damage of the afternoon. His breath catches, as if hung on
something, then sluices out of him in great sighs. He’s stunned,
unresponsive, a great stone I move up and down, back and forth.

What I can’t salve, of course, is his pride. Hours of
painful bondage and abject humiliation at the hands of my
company-mates, those facts mere soap and water can’t erase. It was
full dark when Sarge gave the order to release Drew. By then, both
his eyes had been blackened by my compatriots’ fists, his mouth
chafed bloody by the stick-bit, his wrists chafed bloody by the
ropes. By then, my Yankee Achilles had been used as a piss-pot and
a spittoon by half the camp. And, after fourteen hours bucked, he
was sobbing without check, uncontrollably, in so much pain he’d
lost all caring or awareness of what his many jeering witnesses
might see or hear. He cried harder when I unbucked him and helped
him stretch his limbs. He kept crying as Rufus and Jeremiah helped
me drag him to my tent.

Now he’s quiet, lying on his back atop the oilcloth,
beneath the quilt I brought from home, blond head propped on my
haversack. His eyes are closed, both swollen shut. The weevily
hardtack Sarge ordered me to feed him I’ve soaked in cold coffee
till the bugs floated to the surface. He tried to eat it, got down
a couple of bites, then gagged and threw it up. I’ve managed to get
only a few sips of whiskey down him. This does not bode well for
tomorrow’s relocation. He’ll be not only stiff and sore from
today’s long restraint, but he’ll be weak from lack of food. If he
collapses, if Sarge commands me to kill him, well, someone will die
indeed. I won’t know until that moment, if it comes, whether it
will be Drew or Sarge.

I sit on the cot, chin in my hands, elbows on my
knees, and study him. His face is a little boy’s bruised up after a
brawl. I try to imagine him as a child, a farm boy in Pennsylvania,
smiling as he climbs a tree or greedily gobbles a piece of pie. I
try to imagine us meeting somewhere else, in some other time, some
decade less full of cruelty and death. I try to see him limping
into the new campsite, safely arrived at Purgatory. I try to see
him home with me in West Virginia, cuddling against me in my old
bed.

My hands, I realize, are wringing one another the way
my mother’s used to when she was anxious, the same gesture she used
to twist rags dry. I wash them in the rapidly cooling water with
which I bathed Drew—smells of sweat, piss, blood, pain, and
chaw-spit. He’s snoring softly by the time I’m done, exhaustion
swallowing him like a hill-gap at day’s end does the sun. He’ll be
safe enough here, while I visit Sarge to express interest in our
coming remove and to study his multitude of maps.