The Last Confederate (27 page)

The Union Army finally moved out, and Thad’s mind was filled with fear as he recalled all the stories he had heard of the prison camps in the North. When they stopped, he and the other prisoners were put in an old barn, and all night long he kept thinking of the company, wondering if Dooley were alive—and wishing that he’d been with them when they charged up that hill!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A MATTER OF BLOOD

The day after the battle of Malvern Hill, General Lee withdrew to Richmond, and Thad was taken with the other prisoners to Harrison’s Landing by McClellan’s army. As the prisoners were herded onto a gunboat to be taken to prison, Thad heard the lieutenant in charge argue with the sergeant, who claimed they had beat the rebels.

“Beat ’em? No! We’re running for Washington just like the Army of the Potomac always does—like a yellow cur with its tail between its legs.”

“But—we must of kilt half the rebs in Lee’s army yesterday!”

“I heard the general say that we lost 15,000 and the rebs lost 20,000—but the thing is—now we got to do it all over again.” The lieutenant cursed and added, “We got the right
cause,
but the rebs got the right generals. If we had
one
man like Jackson or Lee, we’d be in Richmond right now—but we don’t, so now we’ll go back and McClellan will build up another army for the rebs to bluff again!” He saw that Thad was listening and said, “Don’t get proud, Reb. You’ll probably be rotting in a prison for the rest of the war.”

As they made their journey north, Thad heard more about the terrible conditions in the prisons. A middle-aged private named Jake Hill had been a prisoner in Elmira, and he gloomily shared his memories with Thad and the others.

“Nothin’ but swill to eat—and sometimes not even that,” he complained as they huddled in the tiny room on
the gunboat, suffering from the suffocating heat. “And talk about vermin—you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! It got so bad they had to make a daily haul to get the bodies of those of us that died in the night.”

“They’ve fed us pretty well so far,” Thad mentioned.

“Ah, these is Regulars,” Hill stated. “The prisons are run by civilians or else them that just signed up for prison duty service to git out of fightin’. Scum of the earth, most of ’em!”

They were on the gunboat for three days, learning on the way that they were headed for The Old Capitol, a Yankee prison in Washington. From the gunboat they were transferred to a train and packed like sardines into boxcars. They were forced to stand up, but it was a short ride, lasting only three hours. Falling out, and put in a rough marching order, they shuffled their way down the streets of Washington. Their ragged appearance was a spectacle many citizens stopped to peer at as the unkempt group made its way through the burning July sun.

Someone said, “There it is,” and Thad looked up at a tall, faded red hulk of a building, rambling in several directions, with a series of connected structures. He discovered later that after the British burned Washington, the prison had housed Congress, and afterward it had become a boardinghouse. As they marched into the main gate, a handsomely arched entranceway, he saw many boarded-over openings, and a line of barred windows with gray faces staring out and clenched hands against the barriers.

The prisoners were shoved inside one of the largest buildings, and Jake Hill commented, “This sure weren’t built for no prison, but it beats Elmira all hollow!”

They filed down a short passage, then up a stairway to a dark hall. The warm, fetid air struck them with smothering force, and the sheer size of the place was staggering. Everywhere there were prisoners crowded into the frame of crumbling brick, broken walls, and worm-eaten wood. Rough boarding had been nailed across many doors and windows;
from other creaking doors hung large piles of rancid clothing, mingled with an all-pervading odor of bad drainage. The building was incredibly dirty—spider webs in the corners, unswept floors and accumulated piles of filthy cloth, paper and other debris.

As they entered a large room, the armed guards yelled, “Hold up!” They stopped abruptly, nearly fifty men, and waited. Finally a door opened and a short, thick-bodied man emerged and stood before them. He had the red face of a drinker, and small piglike eyes set deep in his skull.

“I am Superintendent Josiah Dickens,” he announced in a hoarse voice. “I want to give you some good advice on your first day at Capitol.” He paused and let his eyes run over the prisoners, then began to pace back and forth as he spoke. He had very short legs, and rolled from side to side, in a bearlike manner. He had large yellowish teeth, and bared them in what he evidently thought was a smile as he continued. “You will make life easy for yourself if you keep
The Rules.
” When he said
The Rules,
it was as if he had changed to another language. They were soon to learn that Superintendent Dickens thought
The Rules
were handed down by Moses along with the Ten Commandments.

“There are some among you who, no doubt, are troublemakers, but we have ways of dealing with those. I am a fair man”—he bared his yellowish fangs again—“and so long as you keep
The Rules,
you will find me most understanding.” Then he jerked to his full, though stunted, size and aimed a blunt forefinger at them, his voice rising to an incredible roar.
“But if you break one of The Rules, you will wish you had died on the battlefield!”

For the next thirty minutes, he continued pacing back and forth, threatening them, and at the same time yelling that he was a fair man. Having finished, he abruptly wheeled and left the room.

“All right, down the hall,” the guard commanded, and they filed down a narrow hall until the guard stopped, consulted
a piece of paper, and called out four names: “Adkins, Simms, Alberts, and Rosner—number 12.” Another guard opened a door and the four men entered; then the door was shut and bolted. The rest moved slowly down the hall, and the guard read out: “Peterson, Novak, Willis, Brown—number 18!” Thad followed the other three into the room, and the door slammed behind them.

The room was about twelve feet square, with four double-decked bunks on either side. In the center of the outer wall was a barred window with no glass. The furniture was sparse—a battered table and three chairs in the center of the room; another smaller table braced on the outer wall with a small mirror fastened to the wall just above the table.

Two men were lying on their bunks, and one of them got up, saying, “Welcome to The Capitol, boys. I’m Sam Little.” He was a tall, thin man with a cadaverous face and not a tooth in his head. “That’s Beans Melton—but he’s ailin’ a mite, so just excuse him.”

The newcomers introduced themselves: Roger Willis, a thirty-two-year-old blacksmith from Tennessee; L. C. Brown, a young farmer from the same state; Giles Peterson, a forty-five- year-old musician from Helena, Arkansas; and Thad.

Peterson asked immediately, “What time is dinner served at this hotel? I’m plumb hollow!”

“Sorry, you missed the main meal,” Sam Little grinned. “That comes near noon. They’ll be around with something ’bout dark.” He waved his hand around the room. “Take your pick, gents. You git all the livestock that comes with any bunk you chooses.”

Thad was exhausted and flopped on one of the bunks. He closed his eyes and fell asleep instantly. He woke up some time later when the door slammed and somebody called, “Novak—suppertime.” He rolled out of the bunk and saw that a large black pot had been placed in the middle of the table. Sam Little grinned at him. “Here’s your plate and hardware. Come and git it!”

A deep tin plate and a pewter spoon had been issued to each man, and Little picked up the pot and poured some of the contents into each of the bowls that were on the table. Thad picked up one of them, and Little said, “Break yourself off a piece of that loaf, you fellers.” They all got their food and three of them sat down in the chairs while the others sat on their bunks. Thad tasted the stew, which was mostly rice with a few pieces of strong-tasting fish. It was not as bad as he had expected, and he wolfed it down, ate the bread, then took a long drink out of the single bucket, using the dipper attached to the pail with a cotton cord.

“I’ve had worse,” Giles Peterson stated, licking his spoon. “When I was with the Stonewall Brigade we would have thought we were eating at the Planter’s House in New Orleans if we’d gotten grub this good.”

“Well, this is a little better than the usual,” Little replied. “But on the whole, I guess we git better than the fellers at Fort Delaware. Friend of mine was there. Said they had to eat rats.”

After the meal the men sat around while Little told them about the prison.

“How about the escape?” L. C. Brown asked.

Small shook his head vigorously. “You might get through the pearly gates, boy, but you ain’t gonna get through the gates of The Capitol. Why, there’s guards here that’ll shoot you on a whim! It’s Superintendent Dickens’ boast that no man ever got away from him. That’s right enough in a way—but he don’t tell ’bout them that die in here—and the twenty-two that’s been shot down tryin’ to run off.”

“Guess we’re here for the rest of the war,” Willis grumbled. He looked down at his huge hands. “Sure hope it don’t last long. I ain’t never been locked up before.”

Thad felt the same way, but Little said gloomily, “Since McClellan got run out of the Peninsula, I don’t figure it’s gonna be over no time soon.” He took a plug out of his pocket, bit off a small bite, then waved his hand at the sick man in the
bunk. “They’s a lot of men gonna die like Beans there.” He saw them look quickly at the still figure, and added, “Oh, he can’t hear me none. He give up two days ago. Won’t eat nothin’, won’t even answer. I seen it happen before. Man jest can’t take this place and plain gives up. He’ll go pretty soon—maybe tonight, but in a week for sure.”

“Isn’t there any hospital?” Peterson asked.

“Oh, they’s a hospital, all right, but they don’t take men who’s got what Beans has,” Little answered. “Guess there ain’t nothin’ they could do for him, anyways.”

“Men don’t die from just wanting to,” Peterson argued.

“Oh yes, they do!” Little countered, nodding emphatically. “You’ll see it enough in here. Thing to do is don’t think ’bout
tomorrow.
That’s what pulls a feller down. If you git to thinkin’ ’bout bein’ here for five years, why it ain’t cheerful. Thing to do is jest think ’bout
right now.
”

Thad thought about Little’s words a great deal the next two days. The food was the same at every meal, and he grew tired of it, and knew that he would despise it in a week. They were taken out once a day to the exercise yard—which was nothing but a narrow alley and packed with so many men they saw nothing but brick walls and a patch of sky.

Beans Melton was slowly dying, and there wasn’t much anyone could do. He refused to eat, even if Thad and Willis did their best to get some of the stew down the man. He never spoke, though L.C. tried to talk to him about the Lord. “He shouldn’t be let to die without gettin’ ready to meet God,” he said to Thad. For many hours Brown read to the dying man from the grubby New Testament L.C. carried, praying over him several times. Once Brown asked the others to pray, but only Willis responded. Peterson, Little, and Thad all stood back while the two men prayed.

On the third morning, after the new prisoners had arrived, when Thad woke up, Little said, “Poor old Beans—he was took last night. I guess he’s at rest now.” He informed the guards, and a pair of them came with a stretcher and removed
the body. They left his things, and Little said, “He’s got a wife and baby in Georgia. Guess we ort to write an’ tell ’em ’bout Beans. I don’t write so good myself.”

“I’ll do it,” Thad offered when nobody else volunteered. He found it harder to write than he had thought, however. He tried to be as gentle as he could, and added a line that was not quite honest, but which he hoped would give some comfort.
He went easy, and he died hearing the Bible read and with men praying over him.

After Melton’s death the monotony of life bore down. For the next three weeks, nothing varied for Thad. He read the two books in the cell that had been worn thin by many readings until he knew them by heart. One was an American history book designed for children; the other, a British novel
The Royal Slave,
a strange book about a slave who had been captured in Africa but rose to become a part of English aristocracy. It was a foolish book, but he found himself reading it out of sheer boredom.

He also read Brown’s New Testament all the way through during those weeks, then started over. Most of it was a mystery to him, especially the book called Revelation. He loved the Gospels, and spent many hours dwelling on the life and activities of Jesus.

But he was tormented by dreams of Belle Maison; and by the end of the third week, he was fearful that he would lose his mind. He was often seized with the impulse to throw himself at the guards when the prisoners were taken to the yard, although Thad knew that a bullet in the brain was the inevitable end of that.

He lost weight on the skimpy diet, and saw in the mirror that his eyes were larger in his thinning face, and held a glassy look he didn’t recognize. Once Little said to him, “Thad, you’ve got to settle down. You ain’t been here a month, and you’re already crackin’ up. If you don’t jest block out thinkin’ ’bout gittin’ out, you’ll be took out of here like poor ol’ Beans.”

But Thad found it impossible to think positively, and by the time August came he was worse. He had fits of trembling that he could not control, and once during the night he had suffered an uncontrollable crying spell. He was sure the others heard, but they said nothing about it. After that he prayed to die, for he could not endure the place any longer.

He was lying on his bunk staring at the ceiling when the door opened and the guard called out, “Novak! You got a visitor!”

He got up quickly and followed the guard, his mind in a whirl. None of them had had a visitor, and he couldn’t think of anyone who would visit him. Following the guard down the narrow corridor, he was led down the stairs to another hallway, and finally the guard opened a door, saying, “In here.”