Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War (6 page)

I can’t help but laugh. “So you have them too.”

“Have what?” He sounds indignant.

“Graybacks.”

“What?”

“Lice, Yank. Lice.”

“You Rebs got ’em?”

“
Hell
, yes. I’ve had the damn
things since early on in the war. Caught ’em, I think, from a
blanket I foraged from a Yankee camp after First Manassas.”

Drew sniggers. “A gift from Old Abe to you, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I can’t help but grin, scratching
my own armpit. “Got used to them, I guess, though at first I was so
ashamed I wanted to burn my clothes. Glad I didn’t, since clothes
got to be in short supply real fast. This is the only uniform I
have, and I’ve had to mend it too many times to count.”

“
I
ain’t used to ’em,” Drew
says. “They’re damned nasty. But at least I don’t have to worry
about infesting this blanket of yours, if you already got ’em.”

“Hmmm. Well, mine have C.S.A. inscribed on their
backs, so might be you’ll wake up tonight with a miniature war
raging over your chest and belly. And you might as well know that
blanket’s full of fleas too. We have damned big ones around here.
Why, just the other night, here in camp, I swear to God, one of our
good ole Rebel boys was fast asleep in his tent and some fleas got
hold of him, intending to drown him since he’d cussed them out so
bad, and had him dragged halfway to the river by the time he woke
up.”

I’m laughing; he’s laughing. A few minutes ago, we
were ready to choke one another. Now I’m lying here thinking about
the hair on his chest and belly, lice or no.

“Y’all have lice races?” I ask. “When we were in
winter quarters, we entertained ourselves some that way.”

“Ha! Yes! Kind of funny and kind of disgusting.”
Across the tent, the snickering and the scratching continue.

“Sarge used to say that Yanks at Gettysburg were as
thick as lice on a hen and a damn sight ornerier.”

I don’t know whether it’s the mention of Sarge or the
mention of Gettysburg, but Drew’s snickering abruptly stops.

“That’s enough talk of vermin. How long you been in
this raggedy-ass Rebel army, Ian Campbell?”

“Since the beginning. I joined the volunteer militia
that formed in our area right after that crazy old fool John Brown
did what he did, trying to lead a slave insurrection and slaughter
Virginians at Harper’s Ferry.”

The Yank begins his protest with “Now, look, Reb,
John Brown was—” but I cut him off.

“Right, right, to you Northerners he’s a martyr to
liberty. Shut up and let me continue.”

Drew coughs and nods.

“So, anyway, once war broke out in Virginia, our
little crew of volunteers decided to head over to the Valley and
join up with a band Sarge had gathered. Big farewell party in our
holler, lots of speeches. Left wearing a fancy uniform—after a
little parade and some preachers’ speeches—with a passel of local
boys, most of them dead now. We all were raring for a fight, eager
for some action, thought we’d whip you Yankees in a month. Dead
wrong about that, huh?”

“Where you from?”

“West Virginia. Southern part. Real mountainous.
Mighty pretty. Along the New River and the Greenbrier River.”

“Ain’t West Virginia part of the Union? Why you
fighting for the South?”

“It was county to county. A lot of West Virginia
boys—the damned fools—are fighting for the North, us smart ones are
fighting for the South. My part of the state’s Rebel country
through and through.”

“That’s going to make going back to West Virginia a
little uncomfortable, isn’t it? With all those triumphant Feds
waiting there to laugh at you once we’ve beat you, Jeff Davis is
hanged for treason, and you drag your whipped ass back home.”

“Change the subject, Yank,” I growl. “I just shared
my pissant-sized rations with you, so have some manners. You Feds
might be lucky enough to have decent provisions, but everything
here is in damned short supply.”

Drew clears his throat and scratches some more. “All
right. Uh. West Virginia…do you have slaves?”

“Lord, no. We can’t afford luxuries like that. Any
work that’s done around our farm, we do ourselves. Same for all the
hill-farms round about there. Hell, I hadn’t even seen black folks
till we visited Sarge—he’s my uncle—and Aunt Ariminta in the Valley
when I was ten. Their cook was a Negro. Her name was Sapphire. She
was fine looking for a woman her age. Always wore purple or red.
Sarge can be pretty mean—as I fear you’ve discovered—but he treated
her well. Don’t know whether it was because she was a good cook and
housekeeper or whether he felt like he ought not to misuse valuable
property. Either way, I liked her right much. She was mighty sweet
to me. And she made the best damned corn pone you’d ever sink teeth
into. Especially with butter and Damson preserves on top.”

“Do you like ’em?”

“What? Who? Corn pone?”

“Negroes. Some of ’em want to fight with us
bluecoats, but we white boys won’t stand for that.”

“You abolitionists seem mighty confused to me,” I
snort. “You want the slaves all freed—after you Yanks sold ’em to
the South for decades, I might add—but you don’t want to fight with
’em or live near ’em. Hell, I heard Old Abe wants to send ’em back
to Africa.”

“I’m no abolitionist! I don’t care about Negroes.
They scare me, to be honest. Those black, shiny faces… I saw them
in Harrisburg every now and then. I ain’t fighting this war for
them! I’m fighting it to keep this country together!”

“And I’m not fighting it for them either. Like I
said, my people don’t have slaves. I’m fighting it to keep you
damned invaders out and to keep our liberties! I—”

“All right,” the Yank groans. “On to other topics of
discourse.”

“Yes. Gladly.”

“Tell me, uh, what family do you have?”

“Father and mother. We have a little hill farm near
the Greenbrier River. My older brother Jeff…” I don’t really want
to think about Jeff. “You? Where you hale from?”

“Pennsylvania. Central mountains. West of Harrisburg.
It’s…beautiful there.”

Another bout of silence. I know what the big torn-up
Yank is doing right now. I know it as well as if he were saying it.
He’s thinking about home, aching a little before he starts up
again.

“So, Ian, you’re a farm boy? Then you should see our
farm. I’ll bet you’d be mighty impressed. Lord, it was looking good
when I left; that was September of ’63. Big fields of potatoes and
corn. My family puts on some big meals. Do you have scrapple in
those Rebel-lousy mountains of yours? Or pickled beets? Damnation,
I could do with a big breakfast of fried eggs and scrapple!”

“I could too. This company’s been subsisting on next
to nothing for a long, long time. We’ve been back in the hills so
long mail doesn’t catch up to us, so the packages of food my family
used to send—oh, pies and jam and potatoes, that was all so
good!—they don’t get to us any longer. The beef ration we get’s
downright mean; might as well be mule like those poor folks were
reduced to eating down at Vicksburg, thanks to that son of a bitch
Grant.”

Drew warns, “Now, Reb, you said we shouldn’t talk
about—”

I choke back my anger. My country’s lost so much,
it’s hard for me not to wish every Yankee straight to hell. “Right.
Yes. Well, at any rate, I don’t know how long that impressive-big
frame of yours, spoiled as it is on Federal food, is going to hold
up on the few rations we’ll be able to spare you. But, back to your
question, yes, we eat all those things, pickled beets and scrapple.
Sounds like you Pennsylvania farmers may have been stupid enough to
vote for Lincoln but smart enough to run a fine farm. Are you Yanks
smart enough to bake biscuits? That’s what I miss most about
home.”

“Not so much biscuits as homemade bread…with butter
and honey, since we have a few hives…”

“Oh,
that
sounds good. We
raise bees too. And tap sugar maple trees. And make preserves from
berries. Always loved me some sweet. I’m always hankering after
sweet.” I rub my belly, wondering why boys with so much in common
are enemies.

Drew sighs. I sigh. His belly rumbles.

“So what about your family?” I ask. “Talking about
the war just makes us angry, and talking about food just makes us
hungry, so let’s discuss something safer.”

“Well, my mother and father are still alive, and I
have three older brothers. They’re all in the U.S. army, still
fighting, last I heard. Two sisters at home…sweet, pretty little
things, both younger’n me. I—”

A bout of campfire laughter interrupts Drew. When he
begins speaking again, his deep voice shakes. “I miss my mother.
She cried a lot when I left. She’s not too well, either. I wonder
if she’ll pass on before the war ends or if I’ll survive to get
home. One of your Confederate bushwhackers almost got me in the
head last week. Now I’m here in shackles. My family’s going to be
so ashamed, especially Father.”

What’s youth worth when it’s wasted on war? The
sorrow in his voice makes me want to reach across the gap between
us and comfort him, but that impulse is one I resist. Kindness is a
trap, Sarge always says.

For a few minutes, we leave off speech. I mull memory
and regret, and I have no doubt my Yankee captive’s doing the same.
It’s part of what comes of being a soldier so far from home. I
think about my mother’s gray hair and lined face, my father turning
over earth and following the plow-horse along furrows. I wonder how
their health is, how the farm’s coming along without me, what my
father’s planted yet. I think about the old orchard, the way wasps
swirl about rotting windfall apples in autumn. I remember the
wildflowers down by the banks of the Greenbrier in spring—dog’s
tooth violets, bluebells, the elfin umbrellas of mayapples, the
snow-white blossoms of bloodroot and the gold-green fronds of
ferns. I hear the sparkling gush of swallow song, smell the rich
dark of the smoke house with its curing hams. I see the ramshackle
barn, feel the nest of loft-hay I made every summer just under the
tin roof, where I could lie listening to storms and drowsing to the
patter of rain, where I lay with Thom at last.

I’m just about to drowse off when the Yank shifts,
emits a hoarse groan, and says, “You still awake, Reb?”

“Yep.”

“Thinking about home?”

“Good guess, Yank. Yep.”

“Me too.”

“So how’d you end up a prisoner anyway? None of the
boys told me how Sarge caught you.”

“I was part of a patrol west of Staunton. We knew
your General Early had evacuated the town a few weeks back, so some
of us Federals were sent to clean up any lingering Confederates,
maybe watch the railroad.”

“How long has your detachment been in the
Valley?”

“Since…since right after those burnings you
mentioned. I’d taken mighty ill about then, last fall it was—the
flux, camp itch, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t aim my pistol worth a
damn I had the shakes so bad, plus I’d lost my mount—so some
higher-placed kin took pity on me and had me transferred. Wintered
near Winchester. Anyway, we’d seen some Rebel skirmishers on a hill
near Staunton, so we headed after them. Last thing I remember, my
borrowed horse was shot out from under me and I hit the ground
hard. Must have knocked me out. When I came to, I was surrounded by
gray uniforms, my hands were tied, and your Sarge was pouring cold
water on my face. Why is your crew of Rebels in this area anyway? I
thought we’d cleaned up…I mean, I thought, after the battles last
fall, that you Rebs had about abandoned the Valley to Federal
control.”

“Well, after we lost that battle at Cedar Creek—”

“You fought at Cedar Creek?” Drew sounds excited.

“Yes. Terrible rout. Everybody in our company barely
escaped capture.”

“I was at Cedar Creek too.”

“Hell. Really?”

“Yes, I was part of that great counterattack behind
Sheridan. We really sent you butternuts flying.”

His obvious pride makes me grit my teeth. “You know
why you whipped us so bad?”

“Yes, I do,” Drew says softly. “I’m sorry. Didn’t
mean to rile you. I heard about you poor bastards and the
food.”

“Did you now? You with your well fed muscles and good
looks? What did you hear?”

“Look, Reb, I apologize. Would you give me a drink of
water, please?”

“What did you hear? Tell me, and I’ll fetch you that
water.”

Drew shifts on the cot, groans, then says, “All
right, we outnumbered you bad, but you might have tore us Feds up
despite the odds, but…I heard you were hungry and so you
didn’t…”

“We didn’t pursue you fleeing fools because we were
starving.”

“Yes,” Drew murmurs. “That’s what I heard afterwards
from some of the Confederate prisoners we took that day.”

“If we hadn’t stopped to plunder your all’s
camps…”

“You crazy Rebs might have won. I admit it. You’re a
bunch of savage bastards, that’s for sure. That cry you Southern
boys give—like a wolf’s howl, or an owl’s—always puts a shiver down
my spine. I was running full out that day, with all my buddies in
blue, before Sheridan turned us around.”

I rise, fetch my canteen, and hold it to Drew’s
mouth. He gulps and gulps. He lies back. “Thank you.”

I return to my smelly nest of blankets and curl up
against the cold, remembering that October day. “I hadn’t eaten
anything but parched corn for a week before that battle. And, as
much as I hate to admit it, a rat my messmates and I shared.”

“A rat? Good Lord. Were you Rebs that bad off?”

I snort. “Yes, thanks to Mr. Lincoln and Generals
Hunter and Grant and—

“All right. Don’t start up. What’d rat taste
like?”

“Like young squirrel. We caught it in a barn and
roasted it over the campfire. Better than bullfrog.”

“Ack,” says Drew.

“But, damnation, what we found in those Yankee camps
of yours…my hands were trembling that day from sheer starvation,
hard for me to load my damned rifle, and then there you Yanks went,
retreating in total confusion, and we thought we’d beat y’all, and
officers begged us to pursue y’all, but we just couldn’t stand to
pass up those victuals. It was early, you remember? Just after
dawn, and the Yankee campfires smelled of breakfasts just prepared,
standing ready to eat. Bacon and flapjacks, dear Jesus…”