Through dusk of earliest September, Floral Tebbs walked a beat immediately outside the headquarters of the post commander. While he was there certain momentous tidings penetrated to even his stunted intelligence. He heard a dispatch being read aloud and commented upon. Flory had no idea what Atlanta was like. It was a place. Savannah, Macon, Richmond, Washington, Americus, Albany, Milledgeville: these also were places, he had heard of them. The Government was there, he supposed, in any or all of those places. He had no idea what Sherman was like or how many troops fought under his command . . . Sherman was a Yankee. Flory supposed vaguely that Sherman commanded all the Yankees in the world (in this way there was a confusion of Sherman with Lincoln) but on overhearing the conversation of officers, and finally paying heed to it, Flory stood aware that Sherman was in Atlanta.
He brooded over this. He said nothing to comrades later, when they were eating bread and bacon, and trying to boil crust coffee in a leaky pail. Flory desisted from spreading the news at this point chiefly because he feared that the rest would not believe him—being jealous, as is humanly common, of the individual who possesses factual information unpossessed by others. Nevertheless Flory desired to cry disaster from his own private housetop. But he would want no one to press him for details, since he was not sure whether Atlanta was the most important city in Georgia or not. He was not sure where Georgia began and ended. He was not sure whether or not Atlanta might be the capital of the whole Confederate States and possibly some Yankee States as well.
Some people had talked jokingly of Sherman’s having a tail. Some said that General Sherman had hoofs on his feet, that he galloped on all fours, bore sharp spreading horns, raped every Southern woman he came upon. Some said that he was a Negro in disguise. This might lend credence to the legend of wholesale rape, since all blacks were believed to be lusting secretly after white women (had Flory been certain just what lust might be, and how the deed of rape was practiced, he would have been more comfortable).
After the meager supper there came a change of guards On Parapet; Flory was told off to Post Number Four. He climbed to the platform and stood shivering and a little feverish with a cold which had been irking him. He dreamed of a vast Atlanta studded with domed buildings such as he had seen in the few magazine and newspaper illustrations which came his way, in the fewer books he’d ever peeped into. Through this cartooned ornate metropolis rioted columns of armed Yankees, and at their head loped the rapacious Sherman with six pistols on his belt and a knife clamped in his fangs. Yankees were bursting buildings apart, playing ball with babies tossed from bayonet to bayonet. . . .
The eight o’clock call came droning from stations beyond. It was relayed immediately from Station Number Three on Flory’s right. Station Number Three, the guard called, eight o’clock and all’s well. Flory stood with feet apart, frail hands clenched around his musket barrel. He put a special agony into the news he squawked abroad: Station Number Four, eight o’clock, and Atlanta’s gone to hell!
Bewilderment of the next sentinel on platform Number Five (he was so astonished by Flory’s squeal that he failed to respond vocally) went unheeded in the hubbub which burst beyond the deadline. It was as if Floral had jerked the cork out of a bottle from which acid froth, invisible but sputtering, fumed high.
Did you hear that, did you hear that? The guard called it! Yep, I heard. Hell, you can’t trust those snot-nosed brats. But— Heard it . . . Atlanta’s gone to hell! Must mean Atlanta’s fallen to the Federals. . . . Weak cheer here, louder stronger yip in another direction. A deeper manlier yell spread from a hundred nearer shebangs and scraped-out pits, it blended up, spreading wider. It seemed that the entire aggregation, the compressed city-full of depraved tramps, was roaring. Flory might not know it, but he instigated numerous prayers—many spoken, many unvoiced, some pronounced formally and accompanied by hymns, by such people as Frank Ives and his devout circle.
(And by a man named Boston Corbett, who had been captured in Virginia and who entered the stockade on July twelfth. Boston Corbett was as staunch a patriot as he was a religionist. He prayed hourly that he would survive this ordeal because he wished to go on serving the Nation. He did not know that he would survive this ordeal, but he would survive it; again he would walk in blue uniform instead of this sloven’s attire which dressed him now; and in a future hour a man would slay the President, and Boston Corbett would slay the man who slew the President. He would become a subject of fame, contradiction, praise, censure, envy, perplexity, abuse. He would stand serene in the same faith which prescribed a Holy prayer when he heard of Atlanta’s fall.)
Guards were more suspicious than the men they guarded. Many refused to believe this news until they had checked with sergeants when sergeants appeared on their next rounds . . . even until sergeants checked with officers and came back to report between tobacco spurtings, yep, twas true: the story was all around the camps. Sherman had pounded into Atlanta. The Reserves might be manning these local embrasures any day now. The news was in such general circulation by the time Floral Tebbs came off duty that men forgot the fact that he had been the first to cry those tidings aloud; he was disappointed, tried to brag shrilly, was ignored.
The next day Flory’s contingent was ordered On Picket instead of On Parapet; they spent doleful hours shifting about in the rain. It was customary for Sergeant Jester Sinkfield to seek the driest spot possible under these conditions; he apportioned duties to his men, and then went to sleep in the smokehouse on the Bile property, where he had cowed the black caretakers into submission. Once he was vanished the pickets knew that they would be safe from observation for many hours. They left the road and scooted for the trees. Flory, as junior of the lot, was made to walk through rain to a point of roadside vantage every now and then, in case an officer should decide to ride in that direction. Mackey and Irby had been told off into another detail. All of these fellow pickets in this detachment were taller, stouter, older, rougher than Flory Tebbs. Chill of the thick steady rain, slippery clay underfoot, the motionless dripping pines all spooky, and seeming lifeless in their very height and aloofness— These evils increased Flory’s sensation of futility, of Not Belonging. He had not felt like this since first he was enlisted, he had not felt like this after gouging and biting his companions and winning the accolade of devil-festered little runt. If a stray Yankee had appeared before him on this day, Flory would have shot the Yankee instanter.
Flory, you go take a look.
Ah, I just took one.
No, I reckon not, not in an hour surely. Officer comes along and we get tromped on in a hurry. Now you go!
So once more down the path, once more scrambling on a short cut to the road’s edge and the curve of the hill . . . wet and spineless, knowing he had no spine, not even wishing that he had one. God damn it to hell, those guards On Picket over next the depot got all the hats, fast as any prisoners got off the cars; and nowadays fewer and fewer Northerners came with hats. Here was this saturated ruin of quilted calico dripping its hated streams down Flory’s neck, down his front. No longer was there a decent hat within the stockade which might be traded for; they were gone; if you were a baby guard you wore the calico monstrosity which had been given you by the Government, you could get no other. Twice Flory had attempted to steal felt hats from fellow Reserves; once he was detected in the act of thievery, once afterward. He got a beating on both occasions. Anybody could whip Floral Tebbs except Irby and Mackey Nall; and now, since they were exalted beyond him by their recent accomplishments, he feared that they would try to whip him again. Flory’s nose was running, the steady bathing of the rain did not help his nose at all. He mourned wordlessly, he wiped his nose on the cuff of his jacket where he had wiped it before.
Got to do it. Got to.
There would be no peace or security for him on earth unless he did.
Whom should he shoot? Where? When?
Next time he went On Parapet—
Donner? Donner was the cook of the late Willie Collins. He it was who’d fetched, in payment for saleratus, the buttons with hens on them which now adorned Flory’s makeshift uniform. Donner had not died with the ringleaders, he had been sentenced to the chain gang, had served his sentence, was now become a sniveling beggar, lethargic, dropsical. Once he had been savage, surly, once he had overawed the other prisoners, had preyed upon weak ones. Now he tottered toward his doom unwashed, unfed, unfeared, unloved. Sometimes his wheezing voice reached to the hearing of Floral Tebbs when Flory stood on his platform. Hi . . . guard . . . member me? Donner? Man who got you those buttons . . . you member . . . with eagles, like you wanted? Please . . . give me . . . give me . . .
Yank, said Flory haughtily, what you got to trade?
Me? I got . . . nothing . . . please . . . give me a gristly bone, maybe? Or you got . . . lard, like?
Can’t make no trade less you got something to trade.
Got . . . maybe . . . bacon? One day . . . seen you eating a chunk of pork up there. . . .
Now, listen, you old greasy mechanic you— Get away from here fore I take a pot-shot at you!
The brim of the quilted hat was folded under clogging rainfall, it was like an old woman’s sunbonnet, heavier than any old woman’s sunbonnet, more grotesque. Distantly Flory heard the creaking of wagons on an adjacent road beyond the trees, the creaking of wagons being hauled up the hill with their loads of dead bodies. Rain seemed thinner now, you could hear things, you couldn’t hear the mutter of Andersonville and it seemed good to get loose from it; but you observed the faraway snap of a whip, you heard the driver ordering his team, Now you boys walk off on your tails!
—Donner. Why not shoot Donner, next time he came doddering around?
—Shoot somebody.
—Some damn Yankee, some old bastard Yankee.
—Or just fire at random, maybe somebody would get hit? If Captain Wirz demanded to know why Flory had fired, he could say, Twas an accident. That old hammer just cotched on my clothes, sir. It did.
No! For the other boys had fired deliberately, they had aimed at specific individuals, had picked them out in their sights. They had stood like soldiers defending a barricade (and certainly they were in an act of defense, as sworn to serve. They were defending Georgia against the horde of hated savages within that fence). Mackey and Irby had done a studied purposeful thing; each of them had; they won praise for it. Floral Tebbs might never hold up his head beneath its sagging soaked drippings of calico, he might never claim to be a man until his finger squeezed the trigger and the charge split the air and split an enemy’s body. . . .
What you see this time, Flory?
Never saw nothing. Heard some wagons yonder.
Must have been on the graveyard road.
By Jesus God, Norrel, I did think I smelt something for sure!
Hain’t you ever been On Picket hereabouts before, Barty? You ought to been here on a hot day like a couple weeks since. By God, them damn Yanks did stink meaner than a bucket of turds.
You know, they ought to plant them deeper.
Sure ought. You hear how them hogs got to rooting?
How I would hate to have a hog of mine feeding off’n Yanks. Twould poison the fat on his back for sure.
O laughter, and rain renewing again, and wind beginning to stroke the treetops; the clay slippery as lard beneath your sorry shoes when you walked on it; and awareness of long shallow trenches beyond the pines, and the thought of what lay compressed there.
The storm developed, beat, lifted, went away. Pickets straggled back to their proper station. They lounged, chewing quids until Sergeant Sinkfield appeared headachy and sullen because he had slept too long. Everyone’s spirits, except the spirits of Flory Tebbs, rose when they had marched back to camp. Under a dripping tent fly sat that rarest of his species in any army—a paymaster. Several delighted old men assisted him in counting out that portion of the Confederacy’s substance which might accrue to this command according to whatever records were kept in the frightened town of Macon.
Major Lonny. The good-natured voice of the colonel. (The colonel was thirty years old. His voice held a drawling yet spirited quality. A pigeon-toed barefooted Afric in a gray jacket with gilt buttons— This proud small servant, whose name was Little Jolly, led the colonel to his desk, led him home, led him to the water closet. There had been a flash, a popping, a quick searing like boiling milk being poured over the colonel’s eyeballs— That happened more than one year before, when Captain Charles Whitlow Overcash of the Eleventh Georgia led his company across the Emmetsburg Road in Adams County, Pennsylvania; and now he was promoted, he served in the Georgia Reserves. Aha.) Major Lonny, I think it would be wise for you to take this money at once and pay our troops now on duty at Camp Sumter. Most of them have not been paid since May or June. The general declares (Colonel Overcash laughed lightly, always he laughed easily and lightly; he was glad to be alive, he had not expected to remain alive) that we are not in funds, shouldn’t spare a farthing for soldiers’ pay, and so on. But he has finally left the matter to my own discretion; and I am informed that additional disciplinary problems will face the commanders of these units unless the men have, very soon, something to chink together in their pockets. Excuse me, Major—did I say chink? Rather I meant something to wad and squeeze together in their pockets. General Sherman might greet us across the breakfast board some fine morning; and it’s better that the troops should have this prettily printed currency than that Sherman should. Goodness sakes, Major Lonny, Sherman doesn’t need the money! Why, he must be independently wealthy by now—he and all of his bummers. My own Uncle Billy—not Uncle Billy Sherman, most emphatically—has a nice place up in Floyd County. I mean to say, sir, he had a fine place. And he’s standing there in trepidation, watching the bummers go by with all the livestock, the few remaining head of livestock which the niggers declared they had hidden safe away in the woods, and naturally they hadn’t. Uncle Billy is fearing for the safety of his house, when up rides a good-looking Yankee on horseback and says, quick as scat, Insure your house for fifty dollars. Yes or no? . . . I’m afraid the answer must be No, says Uncle Billy, for I haven’t fifty dollars handy. Got thirty? says the Yank. You know how they are—very deft at business, most definitely shrewd, able to drive a bargain; unlike we lazy Southrons. Haven’t got thirty, says my unfortunate Uncle Billy. I am the proud possessor of sixteen dollars Confederate, and one handsome gold watch, a lady’s watch, designed for dangling on her pretty bosom, but now reposing in my vest pocket, sir; and formerly it belonged to my Aunt Jonnie Lee. Will that suffice, Mister Insurance Broker? Entirely adequate, says the Yank. You may now consider your house as fully covered by insurance. Well, that Yank posted two armed men at the front gate and two at the rear, until the bummers were gone from there; and thus they did not burn the house of my Uncle Billy, although they burnt the Izards’ and the Witherspoons’ and the Foxworths’, who were apparently improvident folk with straitened vision which did not permit them to see the wisdom of such a transaction, sir. Ah, where was I, Major Lonny? Digressing again, I fear. Digression is the curse of my life, sir. You will take this cash, proceed to Andersonville, and pay through the last day of the month just past. All ranks. That is an order. My adjutant will provide you with travel orders and, of course, the rolls. I think they are very long rolls indeed. That is a pun, Major, a gentle one. Long Roll, you see. I must repeat that to my wife this evening. Little Jolly, where are you?
I’s here, said the tiny voice from the floor beside him.
Little Jolly, what are you doing?
I’s playing with them big glass marbles you done give me, Mastah Colonel Charley, sir.
At long taw or short taw, Little Jolly?
Sir?
Merely a jest, Little Jolly. The terminology of marbles. That will be all, Major Lonny.
...And soon the colonel knew that it was growi
ng late, other people were leaving, he heard the jingle of sword chains, he heard goodbyes given at the end of another work-day, heard feet going out. And soon the black child led him through a door, down three steps, along a cool place where he could feel coolness, down six more steps, across a place, down five more steps; then the colonel felt bricks under his shoes. . . . Horse smell, the voice of Benjamin who served as coachman, the metal step, the metal rail to grasp, the squeak and settling of the decrepit vehicle under the colonel’s tall strong weight. Soon the colonel was at home, soon his daughters came to him. He played with their curly hair and he said, It’s Patsy.
No, I’m Ginny.
Nothing of the kind, Miss. Possibly you are Linda?
Ha, ha, ha, and gleeful shrieks coming up around him, as if he stood in the middle of a pleasant-smelling and pleasant-sounding bouquet of little girl shrieks. Ha, ha, ha, oh Daddy, we swapped, we changed, Ginny and I changed our ribbons, and Mother did Linda’s hair in pigtails just to tease you, Daddy.
Then the smell of meat and corn gems, and roasting ears also, and pungent taste of boiled greens, and ripe melons, and hot crust coffee. And chatter, and Sue reading the news to him, and there was so little of good in the news; yet somehow it seemed like good news even when it was bad. Later the yawning, and the saying that tomorrow was another day; and soon the long trip to the chamber, and preparation for retiring. The mutual prayer. At last the lying down in dark together . . . strange way which the blind seem to have, of detecting the difference between daylight and dark.
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