The Tinsmith (6 page)

The flies buzzed, louder and louder. The officers' horses flicked their tails rapidly.

Anson stared after the contrabands, seeing their faces hanging like charred petals at the edges of every important and unimportant movement of the troops. The faces were always there, present but forgettable, linked like a chain that had risen out of the soil to attach itself somehow to the army, a chain of faces—desperate, hungry, miserable, yet somehow radiant with hope—that seemed to grow as silently and inexorably as the stars at the onset of dark. And though Anson had never really focused on any one face in particular, its look was familiar to him, with its almost unbearable aura of suffering mixed with resolve. Suddenly, with a shock of recognition, Anson knew that he had focused on that aura, that he had seen it and identified it and yet not comprehended the truth of his own senses and instincts. He looked at the tall soldier.

The man stood as if guyed to the torn earth, except for the one arm that he kept lifting from his side and gazing at, turning it like meat on a spit. Flies crawled over the blood on his forehead and one stuck like a hardened tear to one eyelid over one slightly bulbous eye. But the tall soldier did not brush the flies away.

From far inside the earth Anson could hear the contrabands' shovels turning the bloodied ground. Then the scraping sounded across the horizon and he looked for the source of it without success. But when he brought his gaze back to the tall soldier at last—who still hadn't brushed the flies away, who wore them just as a scarecrow wears its stitches—Anson heard the scraping again. And he knew it for the terrible longing that it was, not for the peace of the dead but for the struggle of the living.

The sergeant scowled. “We'd better find that body, lieutenant. Or find out for certain what happened to it. There'll have to be a report.” He spat again, then nodded at Anson while raising a hand to his bandaged shoulder. “Perhaps this was some of your work. I don't wish to keep you any longer from continuing it.”

Now Anson himself couldn't move. But it was a kind of exhilaration that paralyzed him. He forgot the ache in his spine and in his swollen feet because now he understood more than the guilt of the tall soldier standing at his side. In the foul, clotted air of the slaughter of two great armies, Anson suddenly tasted and swallowed the truth, which wasn't only a window flung open on the battle's murk and smoke and blood, but a window flung open on the depth of his own commitment. And when he finally moved closer and looked into the soldier's eyes, his open, unblinking eyes set in the scarred and dirtied face, the man's expression had truly become a reflection of Anson's own. All at once, Anson saw that he and the soldier were not separate at all, except that one face—in the slightest jutting of the lower lip, the slightest bulging of the eyes, but more in the sheer terror of the expression—was negroid, another link in the war's great dragging, breeding chain. Now the abstract cause assumed a living form. And that form needed protection.

Without analysis or logic, with the deepest call of instinct, Anson understood that he had been chosen to provide it, if not by some divine power, then by the ineluctable and curious justice of circumstance. The dead Latin stirred in his blood, sprang to life on his tongue. But it was plain English he uttered.

“Let's go, John. We have work to do.”

II

September 18, the battlefield at Antietam

Alexander Gardner studied the mutilated body for a moment, and stroked the forked end of his beard as he considered whether such a gruesome corpse—and of a civilian too—could be of any artistic or commercial use to him. It would be one thing to display photographs of dead soldiers in a New York gallery, quite another to exhibit a large stereo view of some farmer who'd had his manhood hacked off. Then again, war was war, business was business, and there was no telling what the public might stomach, or, indeed, even relish. As for art, well, Gardner understood the perils of playing that game too cannily. Best get to work and think about art, the public, and the other incidentals later.

He lowered himself to his haunches and made a small frame by placing his hands around his eyes. A disbelieving voice sounded from above him.

“You canna be serious, Alex. For Christ's sakes, man, leave it alone.”

“Jim, you surprise me. I dinna peg you for a maidenly sort.” Gardner flashed his assistant a big grin, just so he wouldn't take offence. He knew James Gibson was a touchy one, but he also knew there was no one he'd rather have with him in the field. Gibson was a gifted man with the camera, and no mistake. And he could work quickly with the plates too, which was even more important. His assistant didn't know it yet, but Gardner aimed to take most of the studies; he had to be the one behind the lens. There might never come another chance like this.

Gardner handled the body by the legs, not wanting to touch the head, which was grinning and greasy as a gargoyle soaked in oil, and hoped that his fellow photographer would rise to the challenge. He was no more maidenly than a Glasgow publican, after all.

“Come on, Jim. They'll be back for it soon. I only want to shift it a little ways. Till the sun's up.”

For the truth was, Gardner had seen a mass of dead rebels not too distant. He realized that he and Gibson could dump this body among the rebels and nobody'd be certain to come near it, at least not for hours. By then, there'd be light enough. And he'd have his first prize stereo of the great battle: Slave Owner's Terrible Last Moments. Or something akin to that. It wasn't the time for thinking up fancy titles.

Gardner noticed Gibson look past him. His eyes measured the progress of the light. All around them in the large, churned-up field, the low groans and gasps of wounded men broke into the monotonous droning of the flies, faded away briefly, then started up again.

“We'll be seen,” Gibson said. “And if we're caught, Alex Gardner, you'll no ee get any studies of dead soldiers. That's what we're here for, isn't it?”

“Ach, you'd think you were the dapper Brady himself with your fussing and worrying. I'll do it myself. Just bring up the wagon, will you. There's little doubt the Rebels have gone, what with all that ruckus in the night, but we'd better be sure before we go any closer to where the worst fighting happened.”

Gardner could see his assistant's nostrils flaring, but he suspected that the quiet all around them, not to mention the dead, checked his tongue against a slanderous rejoinder. He only grunted and pointed to the horse. “And what about that? Just look at the animal, kneeling there like it was in the stable at Bethlehem. You'd no ee take it for dead. That'd make a fine study.”

He was right, of course. It was a handsome white charger, its front legs gracefully tucked under its blood-soaked body, its noble head turned to the side. The poor creature looked to be living still, unlike the hundreds of others scattered around, most of them tangled in their reins so tight that they might have been tangled in their own bloody guts. But Gardner hadn't time for dead horses now, no matter what they looked like.

“They willna move the man's horse,” he said. “It's him they'll soon be after. And they can have him too, just after I get my study.”

Gardner quickly looked around. It was still dark enough for cover and he wouldn't need more than ten minutes. Keeping his hold on the legs, he dragged the body toward the dead rebels, deliberately avoiding its ghastly expression. If not for the heavy smell of blood, he thought the corpse might open its mouth and shout at any second.

No one saw him as he moved slowly toward his goal. He knew then, with Lee reportedly in retreat and the sun rising, that fortune was truly on his side. It would be a bonny day, the exposures would be wonderful. Even here, in a position behind the front lines, and in the grey dimness, he could see what a terrible carnage had occurred. It did not leave him unmoved. But sentiment, for a soldier or a photographer, was a luxury to be enjoyed when the work was done. And his was only starting. Fast work it would have to be too. With the Rebels gone, the army would waste little time in clearing its dead from the field. Already Gardner was gagging on the stench. It hung so putrid and solid that he knew no burial party would linger over their duty.

When he reached the sprawl of dead rebels, he paused for a while to consider them. Already some were bloated, their hands and feet twice their usual size, their faces black as any negro—one wore a fountain of bloodstains from throat to forehead, another, likely caught in the act of preparing to reload, had the end of a cartridge clamped between his teeth.

The light came on steadily. Gardner hesitated, one hand on the rough bottom of his long beard. He thought it an odd matter that this same sun, responsible for blotting out all traces of individuality from a man, for staining and corrupting his face, should also be the agent for preserving his last earthly appearance forever. He placed the body carefully between two rebels, building a sort of breastwork of their corpses to hide the civilian from sight. Then he turned to the east and squinted at the wagon's ponderous approach. A low, broken mist like a ghostly fence wreathed the torn earth. Except for the groans of the wounded, all was still. Then Gardner realized why his assistant moved the wagon so slowly. Even from many rods away, he could hear the faint clinking of the glass bottles of chemicals inside the wagon—it was a shivery, graveyard sort of sound, and for a moment it unnerved him, even more than the piteous complaints of the wounded.

The moment passed. Gardner deemed it advisable not to remain near these particular dead. In an hour, he and Gibson could begin in earnest. But he knew there were portions of the field that contained more dramatic photographic possibilities. It was, after all, extensive, covering over a square mile from the woods and fields in the north to the fight at the creek bridge in the south. The day before, watching from the hillsides, he had seen that the fighting had been fiercest along the pike, in the vicinity of the little whitewashed church. And early reports had mentioned a great slaughter in a cornfield as well as along a sunken road. Later, should time permit, he would return here to make a study of the mutilated slave owner. Ha! If this day did not mark his break from that popinjay Brady, it would be no fault of Providence! Here was glory worthy of any man's craft. And yet, when he considered the violations performed on this body, when he regarded the bloody pulp at the groin, all thoughts of glory seemed meaningless. But he who lives by the cruel hand dies the same.

The shadow of Gardner's horse fell on the dead man's face, turning it as black as his Rebel comrades'.

Jim whispered down. “If you're quite finished rearranging bodies, Alex, I could use a last cup of coffee before we start.”

Gardner nodded. By the time Jim had had his coffee, perhaps back at the hospital where the cooks would doubtless have pots on permanent boil, they'd know for certain that the Rebels had retreated. Then it would be time enough, and light enough, for glory.

After walking a hundred yards south, the two photographers came upon a grim scene. Gardner was thankful for the slow approach of the light, else he might have been duty-bound to record the misery of that foul barnyard. The wounded and the sleeping lay mixed in among the dead, so closely that the bodies formed one large body that groaned, wept, snored, vomited, cried out in agony—no foot of earth was uncovered but for the area around the surgeons' tables. Large canvas tents greasy with shadows stood in the field outside the barnyard fence. Several wagons were being emptied of supplies—blankets mostly, but also bandages, bottles of pills, and liquids. Apart from the surgeons, the few men who were moving at all were moving slowly, as if fighting through molasses.

As Gibson hitched their horse to a rail and headed toward a leaden-faced negro cook stirring a pot, Gardner stepped up to one of the operating tables. A ragged, pointy-jawed soldier lay there, his eyes like raisins pushed into lard. His thin lips either trembled or muttered a prayer, Gardner couldn't tell. A sort of cone was placed over the soldier's nose and mouth and some liquid dripped into it. Then the surgeon, a bearded man of middle years with a strong nose and prominent brow, both already besmirched with blood, took a double-edged knife from between his teeth and bent closer to his patient. Soon the surgeon's head and that of his assistant, a very tall, long-limbed soldier in a ripped uniform, hovered so close over the anaesthetized figure that Gardner could not be sure who held the knife. Even when the sawing of the thigh began, it seemed that both men moved the implement. Gardner didn't hear them speak at all. But when the sawing was done—a dull, disturbing sound that made Gardner grit his teeth—the surgeon and not the assistant turned with the leg in his hand and looked straight at the photographer.

Ah, had he been beneath the cloth at that moment, with enough sun to let it stream through both lenses, Gardner knew he'd have captured a face that revealed the very meaning of warfare. True, it was an ordinary enough face in respect to the features—the nose and brow, though fine, were not exceptional, and sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes were sadly familiar in most men of the time. But the feeling behind the eyes, the sense of a barely controlled agony, made all the more remarkable because the eyes did not seem to take anything in! Oh, what a stereo he'd have made from that face. Though the surgeon looked right at him for several seconds, Gardner was convinced the man was not seeing him. He drifted like a sleepwalker to a tall pyramid of bloodied, fly-greasy limbs and rested the leg on top as if careful to maintain the balance of the whole. When he drifted back, he limped slightly, perhaps out of sympathy for the soldier whose leg he'd just removed. Gardner decided, then and there, that he'd find this surgeon again, either this day or the next, and get him to pose. But the dead had to come first.

This thought brought the stench in even more powerfully. Over by the tents, a sound of retching, deeply drawn out, almost made Gardner ill himself. He pulled his flask from his hip pocket and took a long slug of whisky to cleanse his palate.