I began to think about going to a Union prison. I’d heard a lot about them, for soldiers who’d got out of them told stories to the newspapers. They were pretty terrible—jam-packed with prisoners sleeping in cabins or even tents all through the winter. Or if they were lucky, locked in some kind of old factory or warehouse, where you had to take turns crowding around the stove to stay warm. The food was the worst kind of stuff—rotten potatoes, hardtack with maggots in it, and not much else. Worse, there was a good chance you’d take sick and die. They died like flies in them prison camps: froze to death, starved, or died of the chills and fever. Every morning they’d carry bodies out, dozens and dozens of them. Oh, they were terrible places, all right.
We had our own prison camps, that was true. But ours weren’t near as bad as the Northern ones. At least that’s what our newspapers said.
It plain hurt to think about being sent off to one of them prison camps, for as far as Ma and Sam and Sarah went, it was the same as if I was dead. Ma’d have to cut the wood, plant, hoe, and all the rest. I just didn’t see how she could do it herself. How was she going to plow and haul wood up from the woodlot without the mules? Probably Mr. Reamer’d come up and plow for her, but that wasn’t going to get the wood out, the corn planted, the hay cut, raked, and brought up to the barn. The truth was, she couldn’t. Of course, with no mules to feed, she could trade the hay off to somebody who still had livestock to feed—get some wood cut, or some such in the bargain. But it wouldn’t hardly be enough. There was no way around it: they were going to be hungry and cold next winter, and likely to take sick themselves. Making it worse, they wouldn’t know if I was alive or dead, and would be down on their knees praying for me morning and night, the way we did for Pa.
Picturing them on their knees shivering and hungry, praying for me, I blame near busted out crying. I didn’t deserve no praying over. I didn’t deserve no better than to be stuck away in a Northern prison to eat rotten potatoes and shiver with the cold. I whispered, “Forgive me, Pa, I was a blame fool.” Then I said the Lord’s Prayer a couple of times in hopes it would ease my conscience, but it didn’t.
The only thing that would do that, I reckoned, would be to get back home safe with the mules and the wagon. I had to get away; I just had to. I took a quick look over my shoulder at Private Turner. He wasn’t paying attention to me but was looking around at the sights. There was a good deal to look at—a capsized wagon by the side of the road, a house with one side of it blown off, so’s you could see the rooms upstairs and down—sofa, bed, carpets, piano, pictures on the wall. Maybe while he was observing the sights I could catch him off guard, grab Great-grampa’s sword away from him and stab him with it. Then what? I could try to make a break for it, but there were Federals all around the wagon and they’d shoot me dead before I got ten feet.
What was the chance of the Mosbys coming back with extra men and rescuing us? I gave it some thought. It seemed reasonable. They wouldn’t have liked it none getting beat that way, and most likely would want to get even. Maybe they were out there that very minute rounding up reinforcements to save us. Or maybe we’d bump into a passel of some other Southern troops who’d chase the darky Federals off. This war wasn’t laid out neat and clean, with us over here and them over there and a line down the middle. Instead both armies were chasing each other around, like two dogs in a fight trying to get an angle on the other. Either side might pop up anywhere. So there was always a chance of bumping into our own troops.
But it wasn’t nothing I could count on. The Mosbys might be itching for revenge; on the other hand, they might have done all the fighting they cared for right then and didn’t want nothing but to hole up in front of a nice fire and dry off. If anybody was to save me, it would probably have to be me. I’d just better put my thinking cap on and come up with something. Otherwise I’d spend the rest of my life with Pa hanging over my shoulder, looking grim and sorrowful.
But I couldn’t come up with any plan, and after a while I got tired of thinking. To take my mind off it, I took out my little book of psalms and began to read them in a soft voice to myself. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters . . .”
“Who you talking to?” Private Turner said suddenly.
I turned around again. He’d left off playing with Great-grampa’s sword and had stuck it in his belt. It made me mad to see it there. “I wasn’t talking to anybody. I was reading the Psalms.”
He stared at me for a minute. Then he said, “Someday I’m gonna learn to read. Just wait and see. Soon as the war is done and the colored is all free, I’m gonna learn to read.”
“Why would a—” I started to say, but stopped myself in time. “Don’t be too sure the Yanks’ll win. You haven’t done it yet. You been trying to bust into Petersburg for a year now and into Richmond a lot longer than that, and you haven’t done it.” I got sick of looking at him with Great-grampa’s sword in his belt and turned back to my Psalms again. “He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me—” I read.
Again Private Turner interrupted me. “You really readin’ that? You ain’t got it by heart?”
I swung around again. It was cheering me up a good deal to realize I had one over him. “Sure, I can read it. I can read anything—the Bible, newspapers, even big fat books.” I stopped to see how he was taking it. “I can do sums, too, and say the times table.”
He frowned. “Someday I’m gonna learn all that, too.”
I was glad I was making him feel bad. “I had a lot of schooling when I was little. I studied geography and history and a whole lot of stuff. I can name the capitals of all the states and all the countries of the world, too.” As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. I knew all the capitals once, but I wasn’t sure I remembered them anymore. But then, it didn’t seem likely he knew them, neither.
“All right,” he said. “If you’re so smart, what’s the capital of New York State?”
“That’s easy. New York City.”
“Well, it ain’t. That shows how much you know.”
I didn’t see how he could be right. “What is it, then?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said, “Well, it ain’t New York.”
“How come they call it New York, then?” I had him there and he knew it.
“Okay, Reb, what’s the capital of South Carolina? “
He had me there this time. The only place I knew of in South Carolina was Fort Sumter. Everybody knew about Fort Sumter, because that’s where the war started: the Yankees were holed up there and we kicked them out, and after that the war was on. It seemed like a good guess to me: they wouldn’t have started the war over some little bitty place, but over the capital. I took a chance. “Fort Sumter.”
He busted out laughing. “Why you don’t know nothin’ at all about capitals, Reb. It ain’t Fort Sumter, it’s Charleston. I know that because it’s where my pappy got sold off to. After he sold him, Marse Stevens told us Pappy was lucky, for he wasn’t going to no rice plantation in the middle of nowheres, but to the state capital.”
Well, I didn’t know if he was right or not. It was hard for me to believe that a darky could know anything about the state capitals, but if a white person told him, he might. To change the subject I said, “How come he got sold off?”
Private Turner shrugged. “The white massa do what he wants with the colored.”
“My pa was worse than sold off. He got wounded at Cedar Creek and come home and died.”
“His own fault,” Private Turner said. “He shouldn’t of took up arms against the Constitution.”
That made me bristle, all right. I wasn’t going to have some darky with no schooling and no brains tell me what the Constitution said. “You don’t know the first thing about it. It’s states’ rights. The Constitution says plain as day that the union was put together by the states and could be pulled apart by the states. Virginia had a right to quit, and the Federals didn’t h
ave no business coming down on us the way they did.”
“States’ rights ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. The war’s about some people bein’ held in bondage by other people. It’s in the Bible. ‘Ye are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.’ We all the same in His eyes and no one should be set over another.”
“Fat lot you know about it. You can’t read the Bible and I can. It says, ‘Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters.’” That shut him up, for he couldn’t be sure what was in the Bible, and I could.
But it didn’t shut him up for long. “The Devil can quote Scripture, Reb. It says in the Bible that God goes with the servants and will soon bring the day of jubilee. Pretty soon the North is goin’ to be master of the South, and us colored is going to have you buckras steppin’ mighty lively.”
Oh, did that burn me. I came near to jumping off that mule and going for him. But he knew what I was thinking, for when I swung around I saw that rifle pointed dead at me. My turn would come, I was bound and determined on that.
Then we hit a sink hole in the road. The two wounded fellas groaned, and I turned back to the road, so as not to bounce them again. The sun was pretty strong and I was drying out some. Jeb gave a little cough. “Hey, youngster, how about reading some more of that Bible stuff. It takes my mind off things.” So I began to read again, and we went on like that for quite a while until my voice got tired and I had to quit. I figured I’d read them some more as soon as my voice was rested, seeing as it made them fellas feel better. At least it made Jeb feel better; the other fella just lay there with his eyes closed, and I didn’t know if he was taking anything in. Besides, it reminded Private Turner that I could read and he couldn’t.
At nightfall the little wagon train pulled off the muddy road into a field. At least we were on dry ground. We circled the wagons around. The colored bluecoats put out guards to patrol the area, got their cooking fires going, and set up tents for the night. I got off Regis and stretched, glad to have a rest. Private Turner got down, too. “Don’t you try to run for it, Reb,” he said. “There’s patrollers out there that’ll shoot you dead at the first step.” Off he went. I set about unhitching the mules and tethering them for the night. I took some time to clean out their hooves, too, for they’d got clogged with mud.
What would happen if I made a break for it? There was still a little light in the sky to the west. When that went, maybe I could crawl out of there and be gone before anyone knew it. It might be worth the chance. But that would mean leaving the mules and the wagon behind.
Now I could smell beef cooking—the beef I was supposed to carry to Richmond, for all I knew. It smelled mighty good. I looked around. In the dim light I could see the black faces all crowded around fires. They stuck chunks of beef on their bayonets and were holding them over the flames. Oh, my, it smelled good. I hadn’t anything to eat since breakfast and had a pretty busy time of it since then. I was just about as hungry as could be. Plenty tired, too, but hungry most of all. I wondered if they meant to feed me. It didn’t look like it, but they might, after they’d got themselves satisfied. I climbed up on the wagon and sat there smelling the beef and feeling sorry for myself.
Maybe I ought to try to slip away. Maybe I ought to forget about the mules, wait until it got full dark, and then crawl away. Nobody was paying me much mind. Private Turner, he liked pushing me around, for he was a kid like me and probably didn’t get much chance to push anybody around. He’d be sorry if I disappeared on him. But none of the rest were taking much interest in me. I don’t think they cared a hoot if I skipped off.
Suddenly Private Turner was standing next to me. He said, “I reckon you’d like something to eat, Reb.”
I hated to admit anything to him, but if I didn’t I’d go hungry. “I wouldn’t mind a little bite of something. Not that I care much one way or another.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. But he didn’t leave—he went on standing there by the wagon. He wanted me to beg.
But I wasn’t going to. “Well, I reckon I could manage to swaller down a little something.”
“I reckon you could just choke down a nice piece of roasted beef all dripping with juice,” he said.
Before I could catch myself, I licked my lips. I was blame sorry, but I couldn’t help it. “I wouldn’t mind.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. “Well, I tell you what, Reb. If you was to learn me to read a little, I might just be able to scrape up a nice hot chunk of beef. And a pull at a jug of cider, too.”
That sure surprised me. Why in the devil would some darky, who probably wasn’t smart enough for it anyway, want to learn to read? I sat there, thinking about it. I didn’t much like the idea of it. In fact, you weren’t supposed to teach darkies to read. There was a law on it. It just gave them big ideas. They thought it put them on a level with white folks, and it wasn’t right for a white person to help in that. “Why’re you so hot to learn to read? What use is reading to nig—colored folks, when like as not most of ’em won’t never do anything all their lives but hoe corn and pick cotton?”
“That’s that meaning of it, right there,” he said. “I sure ain’t gonna spend the rest of my life plowing, planting, and picking for somebody else’s table. I done that since I was six years old. I’m gonna get some learning and kiss that old plow good-bye for good.”
I still didn’t see how any darky had enough brains to learn to read. I knew I better not put it that way, though, no matter what my feelings were. I said, “I still don’t see the use of it. You got to plow to eat.”
“Mebbe not,” he said. “Mebbe I be a schoolteacher when I grow up.”
Well, I near busted out laughing. It was the funniest thing I ever heard of. Of course, I couldn’t laugh, except to myself. Besides, that beef smell was tickling my nose. I could near taste it, and I licked my lips. “I still don’t see the use of it.”
“Suit yourself, Reb. You won’t learn me, I get somebody else.”
Then an idea began to creep into my head. What if I pretended to teach him to read? What if we sat around going over my Psalm book and I showed him a few words? Why, we were bound to get to joking around a little, and by and by we’d get friendly. Then I’d tell him I was going to take the mules off to water them in some little stream we were passing—some kind of excuse like that. And then I’d make a break for it.
Besides, I didn’t have to teach him right, did I? How would he know? “All right. I’ll do it.” I wasn’t in any rush, though. All I wanted right then was a piece of that beef. “Too dark now,” I said. “I’ll start to learn you when we get a chance tomorrow.”
Chapter Seven
I slept in my wagon alongside the two wounded men. It was pretty crowded with three of us in there. They groaned and kicked around all night. But it was better than sleeping on the cold ground and waking up covered with dew.
We got going again before sunup and traveled all morning along rutted roads. The ground was drying now, and pretty soon instead of mud there’d be dust. But at least we were warm and dry.
Around noon we came to a place where a creek ran through the woods by the road. It was a chance to water the animals, so we swung off there. Private Turner went off to get us some food. I unhitched the mules, led them out into the water, and let them drink. They lay down on their backs in the stream, wriggling and kicking their feet around, having a great time of it. Mules just love to scratch their backs. After a few minutes Private Turner came back with some chunks of bread and dried apples. “Here,” he said. “Now we got time for a reading lesson.”
I took a piece of bread and chewed off a hunk. “Soon as I finish this I’ll get my Psalm book.” I wasn’t going to be in no hurry about it.
“No,” he said. “I want you to learn me this.” He took a bitty piece of paper out of his breast pocket and handed it to me.
It was a story clipped out of a newspaper. The headline was “ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG BATTLEFIELD.” “No, I’m not going
to learn you this.”
“You got to. I seen to it you got something to eat.”
“I never agreed to read this.” I shook the paper at him. “Here. Take it before I lose my temper and crunch it up.”
“You better not, Reb.” He grabbed hold of his rifle like he was going to unsling it from his shoulder. He was serious, all right. That little scrap of paper meant a whole lot to him. Abraham Lincoln was like Jesus Christ to him, and that piece of paper was holy, like a Bible or a gold cross was to some people. If I crunched it up, I didn’t doubt but what he’d try to stick me for it. The whole thing brought me up short. Could a darky have holy feelings about things? I never knew any darkies real well, for nobody up on our mountain kept any. But I’d dealt with ’em often enough. Some of the people down in the valley I teamstered for kept slaves, and they’d help load up the wagon; and there was likely to be slaves working in the mills and warehouses where I delivered goods. I got to know some of ’em a little. It never seemed to me they had much by the way of holy feelings. They were always chattering and joking—never took anything serious as far as I could see. Even in their churches they sang and danced like they were at a party.
And here was this Private Turner all serious and holy about that bitty piece of paper. It didn’t make sense; it didn’t fit. The only explanation for it I could think of was that he was different from the rest of them. Of course, if he had any brains, he’d know there wasn’t nothing holy about a speech by a cheap politician like Abe Lincoln. But he didn’t, and to him that paper was holy.
Still, I could see that if I was to cozy up to Private Turner, I had to go along with him. “All right. If that’s what you want.”
He gave me a hard look. “That’s what I want.”
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