The Black Country (12 page)

A
NDERSONVILLE
P
RISON
,
C
ONFEDERATE
G
EORGIA
, 1865

C
al? Calvin Campbell. That you, boy?”

Cal didn’t look up. He stood still, staring at the louse wriggling between his fingers. He frowned. The voice had interrupted his count. He cursed and poked the louse into his mouth, crunching it between his teeth. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he jerked away, his body tensed for a fight.

“Cal, it’s me. It’s Joe Poole.”

The name stirred shadows in his memory. Joe Poole? Cal still didn’t look up, but he struggled to remember. There had been a kid in his regiment, a cheerful lad of no more than eighteen or nineteen, with curly red hair and an infectious grin and a habit of winking when he talked, letting you in on some private joke, even when the subject was dead serious. Cal shook his head and his long matted hair brushed against his face.

“Joe Poole died at Gettysburg,” he said.

“Well, that’s news to me, friend. I’m here, same as you, and I ain’t dead yet.”

Cal finally looked up. Far away, in every direction, were the high wooden walls of the prison. Thousands of men squatted between the walls in the thick mud. Cal could count the ribs of every one of those men. Their faces were sucked tight against their skulls, dead eyes under heavy ridges.

Cal was younger than most of the others, but larger, too, tall and broad-shouldered. Like the rest of them, his beard had grown out. He was one of nearly fourteen thousand British citizens who had enlisted to fight in the American Civil War. He had joined the Union army for the same reason most of his American friends had joined, and he had fought bravely alongside them until he was captured by Confederate soldiers and eventually taken to Andersonville Prison. Everyone here was a soldier, but there was no order.

The remains of Cal’s torn and dirty uniform hung loosely on his body, but he counted himself lucky to have clothes at all. Smaller, weaker men routinely had their shirts and trousers stolen and then had to make do with scraps. Joe Poole was still wearing his blue Union jacket. It was soiled and the cuffs were frayed, but it was valuable and Cal knew it would be taken from him. He glared at Joe.

“You made me lose my tally,” he said.

“You don’t look so good,” Joe said. But he winked when he said it, showing that he meant well, that there were no hard feelings.

“Go away.”

“Good Lord, Cal, how long you been in here?”

“Sixty thousand. Almost sixty thousand. I lost count just now.”

“Sixty thousand what, Cal?”

“Lice. I get them and I count them. Five hundred every day. I stop counting when I get five hundred.”

“You pick five hundred lice offa yerself every day?”

“Not today. Lost count today.”

“You pick five hundred lice offa yerself every day and you got fifty thousand.”

“Sixty. Sixty thousand.”

“How many days that make?”

“It hardly matters.”

“That’s too tough for me to figure. I don’t do math.”

“It’s a lot of days.”

“Everybody here have lice?”

“Haven’t talked to everyone here yet, so I don’t know.”

“Cal, ain’t you happy to see me?”

“Not especially.”

“I thought we was friendly.”

“We were. That’s why I’m not happy to see you here.”

Joe Poole stopped talking. Cal saw something white glistening in his arm hair and grabbed it between his long fingernails. He brought it up and looked at it more closely. It was a maggot, not a louse. It had rained the night before, and all the waste holes the prisoners had made, the holes they’d scraped dirt over, had burst open and boiled over with maggots. Cal didn’t count maggots. He only counted lice. He popped it into his mouth and returned to searching himself for lice.

“It don’t look so good here, Cal. This place? Seems real bad.”

Cal ignored him.

“You got one of those?”

Cal looked up again and saw that Joe was pointing at a shebang. There were hundreds of shebangs spread out between the prison walls, makeshift shelters scrabbled together from pieces of old tents, tattered clothing too far gone to wear, sticks, mud, dried feces, and blankets. For a second he saw the place anew through Joe’s eyes and he was horrified. He shook his head and sniffed and plucked another maggot from his arm.

“Cal, don’t eat that. Quit eatin’ them. It’s a bug.”

“Bugs are food, too.” Cal tried to laugh and choked. He coughed and heaved, his empty stomach cramping. After another moment, his body settled. It took too much energy to vomit.

When he had stopped gagging, he held the maggot up in a mock salute. He stuck out his tongue and placed the maggot on it and drew his tongue slowly back in. He could feel the maggot blindly writhing across his tongue. He closed his lips and crunched down on it, releasing the tiny bit of precious liquid at its center. There was a spark of salt and it was gone.

“Oh, God, Cal, stop doin’ that.”

“How long have you been here, Joe?”

“I just now got here. Got captured at Chickamauga and moved around a bit, here and there. Thought I was lucky to see a familiar soul here, but it don’t seem like it so much now.”

Cal noticed that Joe didn’t wink at him this time. Cal’s stomach turned again, and he knew the sensation didn’t come from eating the maggot. He had eaten too many of those now. It didn’t bother him the way it had a couple of months ago.

“I’m sorry, Joe.”

“Gosh, no, Cal. I’m glad to see a friend.”

“I don’t think I can be your friend, Joe. Friends are a bad idea here.”

“Seems to me like this is the place you need a friend more than anything, Cal. More than anything.”

Cal barely heard what Joe said. He turned his head and waved his arm:
Go away.
It was too hard here. There was no room for friends. Cal had made a friend his first day in Andersonville, and the man had died in his arms two weeks later, foaming at the mouth and bleeding from his ears. Cal had carried him to the wagon they brought through to collect the dead, and the man had weighed no more than a child. He had taken the man’s blanket before giving him over to be taken to one of the mass graves outside the wall. The blanket was infested, and that was the night that Cal had begun counting lice.

Having a friend could only hurt a man in Andersonville.

“Cal, I don’t know what to do.” Joe’s voice had become small and sad, like an echo. “I’m lookin’ at this place and I don’t see what there is for me here.”

Cal walked away from Joe Poole. There was nothing Joe could do for him except make him care, and caring was a dangerous thing to do in Andersonville. Here it was every man for himself until death.

As far as Cal was concerned, the sooner death came, the better.

—

“Cal! We got a problem!”

Cal looked up from the work he was doing on their shelter. A sudden squall the night before had ripped a hole in the side of the shebang he shared with Joe Poole. It had been three weeks since Joe had come to Andersonville, and Cal’s life had improved immeasurably. He still spent much of his day picking lice off his body and clothing, but he no longer counted them. He had other things to occupy his mind. He and Joe had built the shebang over a shallow hole they dug with their hands near the western perimeter of the stockade. They’d used bits of canvas tent material that they’d bartered for, sewn them over a framework of branches, and spackled it all over with mud. It wasn’t waterproof, but it was warmer than sleeping in the open the way Cal had been before Joe came along.

He stepped outside and shielded his eyes. The rain had come and gone, and now the sky was bright and pale, almost white. Joe was running toward him. He estimated that Joe had lost at least twenty pounds in the last three weeks. But without Joe and his eternal optimism, Cal was sure he would have died already.

“What’s the problem?” Cal said.

“It’s Duane.”

“Shite.”

Joe made a
come on
motion and Cal followed him at a trot. Running used energy they couldn’t afford to waste, but Cal could no longer see the point in being alive in Andersonville if he wasn’t there to help his friends.

Duane was one of a handful of new kids they’d taken under their wing. He’d been puny to begin with, and came into the prison without shoes or a hat. He told them he’d been grateful to be captured. His regiment had run out of supplies and had taken to hunting in the woods for squirrels and rabbits. Of course, squirrel and rabbit sounded like gourmet dining after a week at the prison. The only meat they got here was generally already rotting. Cal figured the boy had weighed maybe a hundred and twenty pounds when he’d arrived, and Andersonville certainly hadn’t fattened him up. There was a time when Cal would have been able to pick Duane up and sling him over his shoulder like a newborn calf.

He followed Joe until he saw other prisoners running and he joined them, losing sight of his friend in the crush of skin and bone. The crowd had gathered as close to the southern perimeter fence as it could get. It was the section of their little village where criminals were herded. Hundreds of prisoners surrounded a bare spot in the dirt where Duane was facing off against two emaciated men. The men were caked with dirt and their bones pressed against their flesh from inside. Their hair was long and dark and filled with mud and it swung from side to side as they moved. They were so starved that they moved slowly. But everyone was starved and everyone’s perceptions had changed. The action seemed quick to Cal. One of the two men had a stick that was sharpened to a point at one end, and Cal wondered, for just a moment, where the man had got a knife to sharpen it. He realized that the man had probably rubbed it against a rock for days on end and at the same time he realized that it didn’t matter. The stick was pointed at his friend Duane.

Cal glanced up at the guard tower that jutted out of the perimeter fence above them and to the east. The guard was close enough for Cal to see the color of his eyes: pale grey, almost as colorless as the sky. The guard’s rifle rested casually on his shoulder, but Cal knew it was a pose. Grey Eyes was ready to shoot the instant anyone stepped over the dead line onto the eighteen feet of bare earth that was off-limits to prisoners. Crossing the dead line put a man too close to the fence and guards were authorized to shoot, no questions asked. Duane and his attackers were within inches of that line. Cal searched the crowd for Joe and found him near the second of the two attackers, dancing around, out of reach of the homemade spear.

“Bring him back, Joe!” Cal nodded his head toward the guard tower. Joe winked back at him to let him know that he’d heard and understood.

Cal punched the nearest attacker in the ribs and the man staggered backward. Cal’s fists lacked the strength they’d had before Andersonville, but the other man’s rib cage was a xylophone and there was no padding of fat or muscle to protect him. He could tell the blow had hurt. From the corner of his eye, he saw Duane stumble and fall dangerously close to the dead line. And he saw Joe grab Duane’s feet and pull, dragging him slowly away from the line.

The second attacker had wheeled around and was approaching Joe with his spear. Cal reeled toward him, his adrenaline rush fading already and his energy reserves dangerously low. But as weak as he felt, he knew the others were faring the same or worse. He could see that Duane’s attackers were running out of steam now that they’d encountered resistance.

But Duane didn’t realize that the fight was winding down and he twisted away from Joe, staggering to his feet. He pulled his jacket tight around him and lurched across the dead line.

“My jacket!” he said. “Mine.”

The first shot hit Duane in the shoulder and spun him around. He went down on one knee, and for a split second his eyes met Cal’s. There was no understanding in them, just an unspoken question. The puzzlement of a loyal dog. The rifle report bounced off the high wooden planks of the fence, and the sound of the second shot was lost in the echo. The top of Duane’s head disappeared in a purple spray of brains and gore.

Cal looked up at Grey Eyes. The guard had already slung his rifle back over his shoulder and stood casually watching, leaning on the stock. When he saw Cal, he smirked.

Cal swallowed hard and looked around him. Everyone else—the attackers, the crowd, even Joe—had disappeared, had quietly slunk back to their shebangs and their chess games and their endless grooming rituals. Cal and Grey Eyes and Duane were three lonely points in a triangle.

Cal clenched his fists and looked down at Duane’s body. The boy’s foot still twitched. The jacket he had tried so hard to keep was drenched with blood and would be stiff and useless within a couple of hours. Cal couldn’t even move the body because it was over the dead line and out of reach. There was nothing he could do for Duane.

He turned and walked away, and he could feel those grey eyes watching him with every step he took.

—

The gates opened and the dead wagon rolled through at ten o’clock. Duane’s body had been stripped and he lay naked in the mud.