by Неизвестный
He and his compatriots were given eight tents and a tiny spot of ground near the swamp on which they would live until the war’s end. If they lived.
The first days were excruciating, thirty-seven men trying to make a camp for themselves amid the stench and squalor without losing the little they’d been allowed to keep by the guards – canteens, boots, tin cups, belts, caps. One particular horde of inmate marauders, nicknamed the “Raiders,” had survived by perfecting their thieving. Wielding clubs, they attacked anyone who had something they wanted, and either scared it out of them or beat it out of them.
Oliver earned a brutal scar on his left leg when the Raiders attacked their pathetic little campsite by the swamp on the third day. He had given up a small tintype of his mother (why the Raider had wanted it, Oliver couldn’t fathom, except perhaps the grizzled man had merely enjoyed the pain he saw in Oliver’s eyes when he snatched it and stuffed it into his trousers), two cans of tinned salmon, a dented pot he’d been given when assigned the job of master cook for his company, and the extra pair of socks he’d darned just before the Mansfield battle.
* * *
In the room below Oliver’s, old man Johnson and his wife were snoring. The sounds were nearly as loud as the wind outside. It was curious that they were able to sleep through each other’s snorts and rumbles. Oliver wanted to stomp on the floor to make them shut up, but he knew the effort would be wasted and only make him more tired, more angry.
Licking his dried lips, he stared at his socked feet. The socks had holes in them, but he didn’t have the energy to darn them. They were threadbare, ready for the dust bin, yet they were the pair he’d been able to keep in Andersonville prison. The ones the Raiders hadn’t stolen. They were the ones he’d worn the day of his release seven months earlier, the ones he’d worn on his long trip North.
Not a journey home to his mother and father in Ohio, oh, no, but one to Philadelphia, following the butcher Doctor Marcus Calhoun. Calhoun, who had served in the Army of the Confederacy on behalf of his Georgian family but when the war ended, had relocated to Philadelphia.
“Maybe you left Andersonville, Doctor Calhoun,” Oliver swore each night before he fell asleep in his little boarding house room, “but you cannot leave behind what you’ve done. What I’ve done. I will seek you and we will both pay.”
Oliver put his face in his hands but didn’t weep. Weeping was worthless, and his tears had dried up many months ago.
* * *
The first week in the prison had ground down into the second and a third, then April into May and May into June, more hot, humid, and foul with the passage of time. On the battlefield, Oliver had seen men bleed out in minutes and succumb to infection or disease in a matter of days. He’d seen men spent and suffering from not enough rations. But he had no idea how quickly a man could become an unrecognizable creature from intentional starvation and dehydration. He watched as Richard began to fade away from fear, limited rations, and fouled water. And Oliver himself, who had been a stouter young man at the beginning, was soon able to wrap his fingers around his wrist, and he wore his belt at the tightest notch so as not to lose his pants around his ankles.
The armed Confederate guards, high in their pigeon roosts, took sport in watching some of their imprisoned enemies devolve from robust, honorable men to thieving gangs who threatened and beat one another to steal clots of molded corn pone and tattered scraps of blankets while others become shambling, disoriented, stinking ghouls whose ribs and hipbones pressed against paper-thin flesh. Sometimes Oliver could hear the guards laughing high up along the wall, and the sound was that of crows waiting to pick away at carrion. Sometimes Oliver dreamed he had a fine hunting rifle, like the one he’d owned as a boy back home, and one by one picked the guards out of their roosts to the cheers of the other prisoners. When he awoke from these dreams he cursed and spit that they were not real.
Twice a week two guards and a prison doctor condescended to walk out among the prisoners, collecting those they would put into their ox-drawn wagon and take to the prison hospital outside the stockade. How they made their selections was a mystery. They might scoop up a few living skeletons and several men with severe stomach pains or festering sores, yet not come back for others as bad or worse. Ambulatory prisoners, some with shoes and some barefooted in the muck, upon seeing guards and the physician in their midst, would swarm the wagon with demands. Hands would reach up and out, clutching, begging.
“The Raiders stole three days of my corn pone ration, sir! I’m going to perish like the others!”
“We got to get some fresh water, sir! My tongue’s swelling up like a fat catfish and I can hardly swallow!”
“Please, doctor!”
“Listen sir!”
“Have pity!”
“Shoot me, sir!”
“Put m’ buddy out of his misery, sir! He’s in so much agony!”
And thus life in the prison dragged on.
It was a fateful day when Oliver bargained for help for Richard. It was mid-June. Richard was lethargic and only able to hold down a few bites of the corn pone that Oliver tried to feed him. He could only lie silently in the stinking tent by the swamp, waiting to die, his chest heaving, flies rimming his eyes.
Oliver pulled himself to his feet and went after the wagon. He grabbed the ox’s harness and pulled the animal to a halt.
“Sirs!” he called. “My friend needs the hospital real bad.”
One guard shoved Oliver back. “Move on!” he snarled. “Can’t help all you damn Yankees. Now get out of our way.”
“My friend is quite sick!”
“Pfft, aren’t you all?” asked the doctor.
“Please.”
“Move away or I’ll knock you away,” said the first guard.
“Or shoot you down,” said the second guard.
“I…” began Oliver. The lie then tumbled out of his mouth with ease. “I’m trained in medicine. Take Richard to the hospital and I’ll come, too. I’m quite skilled. I can help there, when I’m of no help here in the compound.”
The doctor, a tall and imposing man with black eyes and a white beard, took a step toward Oliver. “You’re a doctor, you say?”
“I know a great deal about treating the sick and injured.”
“Push him back,” said the first guard. “He’s wasting our time.”
But the doctor rubbed his beard and said, “We could use another pair of trained hands.”
“Doctor Calhoun…”
The doctor considered Oliver. “What’s your name, son?”
“Oliver O’Donnell.”
“From New York?”
“Ohio.”
“Got an aunt and uncle in Ohio.”
“It’s pretty land, Ohio,” said Oliver.
The doctor tapped his front teeth with a finger, and then looked at the guards. “We’ll take him with us. Never hurts to have an extra pair of hands that know what they’re doing.”
“But you must take my friend, Richard, too. That’s the bargain.”
One guard stepped up and slapped Richard so hard he fell back into the mud. “You don’t dare bargain with us!”
“Let him be,” said Doctor Calhoun. “Get up, boy. Where’s your friend? We’ll put him in the wagon with the others.”
And so it was that Richard and Oliver left the main stockade and went to the hospital. Where Richard died. Where the nightmare to Oliver’s nightmares began.
* * *
It wasn’t long before Doctor Calhoun realized that Oliver had no medical training. He watched Oliver carefully with pursed lips and an arched brow, though he said nothing. Oliver had little choice but to continue the ruse, observing and imitating the actions of the doctors and assistants as best he could.
The hospital sat in a small field just south of the stockade, and consisted of numerous tents, three or four tents together creating “wards” in which men of various conditions were tended. Oliver had been assigned to the ward of the dying. No hope fo
r these men, who had been transferred from other wards to get them out of the way and clear spaces for more patients. The staff in the dying ward was limited, and they feigned at care, cleaning up the fluids that leaked from boils and festering wounds, patting down foreheads with damp rags, though offering no food and very little water to drink. There were no bandages for these men, in fact, few bandages for anyone in the hospital, but to cover wounds of those who had no chance of recovery was considered folly. The dying men’s grave injuries, rather, were covered with frantic flies and swarming with maggots. The men moaned and writhed on their blankets on the ground, begging for someone to help them. When no one was watching, Oliver poured turpentine into these men’s wounds, which caused them to hiss and clench their teeth, but which killed the wriggling worms for the time being.
Doctor Calhoun, one of the hospital’s five surgeons, always visited the death ward as the last stop before he retired for the day. The old physician seemed to be intrigued by the dyings’ mental states as much as their physical conditions. He would hold a man’s hand and ask, “How’s the pain?” And then, looking more closely into the man’s eyes, he’d whisper, “Are you afraid to die? Do you imagine you’re heading to Hell as reward for those you killed in battle?”
Oliver felt his stomach twist whenever he saw the doctor coming, but kept on dabbing, wiping, patting.
Richard was placed in the ward for those with dysentery. Oliver hoped his placement meant there was hope, but Richard was dead in eight days. He never made it as far as the dying ward. Oliver grieved mightily, weeping into his blanket in the hospital assistants’ tent at night, and thought in moments of dark weakness that he would prefer to up and die, himself. War was hell. Andersonville was Hell’s hell.
One afternoon, as Oliver helped another assistant drag one of the dead away from the tent and out toward the road to pile up with the other corpses to be collected by mule-team wagons, hauled off, and buried in mass graves, Doctor Calhoun grabbed him by the elbow.
“Let’s talk, boy,” the doctor said.
Oliver cringed and dropped the dead man’s legs. Surely it was time now that Calhoun would tell him he knew about his lie and would send him back to the stockade to face a dire punishment. Whipping perhaps. Maybe even hanging.
“Go on,” Calhoun said to the other assistant. “This dead man doesn’t weigh what a baby weighs. You can get him to the road on your own.”
The assistant nodded glumly and dragged the body off.
Oliver looked at the doctor, at the deep-set, unreadable eyes. “What do you want?”
The doctor smiled a dark smile. “In my tent, then we’ll talk.”
The doctor shared a large tent with the other physicians, who were currently out and about in the wards. Calhoun ushered Oliver into the mildewed and damp shadows.
Calhoun packed and lit a pipe. “So you lied to me, didn’t you, boy?” he asked. He was smiling a most bizarre, raptor-like smile.
“You know that. Why ask me?”
“How did you feel when you lied? Did you feel brave and compassionate, trading the truth for your friend, Richard?”
“I…” Oliver frowned. He could think of no man he hated more than Doctor Calhoun, but the man held all the power here. “Yes, I did. Of course I did.”
“I see.” Calhoun nodded, frowned, crossed his arms. “And then Richard died. Did you feel betrayed?”
“I felt he was gone.”
“Answer my question.”
“No. I didn’t feel betrayed by Richard.”
“Did you feel betrayed by God?”
“I am too tired to feel betrayed by anything or anyone.”
“Yes, all right, that makes sense.” The doctor nodded again, then said, “I could kill you for lying, you know.”
“I know.”
“I asked about you over in the stockade. I talked to some of your fellows in their site by the swamp.”
Oliver waited.
“They told me you were a cook for their company.”
“Yes.”
“And that you were a cook back in Ohio.”
“A cook of sorts.”
“You worked in a canning factory?”
“In Cleveland. For a year or so.”
“Indeed.” Calhoun’s lip twitched. He scratched at his beard thoughtfully. “What did the factory can?”
“Beef, mostly.”
“And you cooked the beef?”
Oliver stared out through the open tent flap. It had begun to rain, a steaming, foggy rain. The ox-drawn guard wagon pulled up to one of the main hospital tent with its load of the sick. He wondered if any of them were from his company. Samuel. Winston. George. He looked away, not wanting to know.
“You cooked the beef?”
“Yes,” said Oliver. “Why?”
Doctor Calhoun said, “Come with me.”
* * *
He woke with a start in his little cane chair near the window. The wind was still howling but the night was giving way to dawn, with faint sunlight bleeding in and onto the floor. Oliver wiped the crust from his eyes and pushed upward. His back ached, and his legs. They had ever since the war, ever since Andersonville, in spite of his young age. Torment and bad food and guilt will do that to a man.
Tugging on his trousers, shirt, suspenders, and shoes, and grabbing his jacket from the doorknob, Oliver made his way down the stairs to the first floor where Mrs. Warren was setting out the dishes for breakfast in the dining room.
“G’mornin’, Mr. O’Connell,” she said. “Up early, I see.”
Oliver nodded and slipped into his jacket.
“Joining us for breakfast, I trust?”
“No, ma’am, I’m not hungry.”
Mrs. Warren put her hands on her ample hips. “Now, I’m not your mother but you must eat. You’re little more than skin and bones.”
Oliver buttoned his jacket.
“Molly and I are cooking eggs and potatoes, some bacon and some fine tinned meats.”
Oliver knew she hadn’t said tinned meats but she might have. She could have. His jaw tightened. “I’m going out, Mrs. Warren.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He left the boarding house, heading west toward Locust Street.
* * *
Doctor Calhoun gave Oliver his own small cook tent, back and away from all the other tents of the hospital, deep in the pine trees. The doctor used his authority to tell the other staff members that it was his own private tent and no one was to bother it under any circumstances. The doctors and assistants assumed Calhoun would use it for trysts with local and willing ladies, so left well enough alone. Oliver was also given a large cauldron, salts and spices, and implements for preparing meats for canning.
“My brother has a canning factory in Macon,” Calhoun told Oliver. “Meat’s scarce in the Confederacy, you probably know. And tinned meats can last more than a year.”
Oliver gazed at the little tent, the cauldron in the newly dug pit, and the tools placed out on a crude wooden bench.
“You will live here, work here,” said Calhoun. “I’ll get the unprepared meat to you, and you will prepare it. Then I will package it and send it to my brother.”
God, no.
“Not the truly diseased,” said Calhoun. “But the best bits and cuts that can be salvaged.”
I can’t do this.
Calhoun smiled and patted Oliver’s shoulder. “You refuse and you’ll hang.”
Oliver stared at the cauldron, then stared at Doctor Calhoun.
“How does it make you feel?” asked the doctor. “Are you conflicted? Are you shaking, trembling at the thought?”
Oliver said nothing.
“You’ll do it.”
Oliver bit the inside of his cheek until it bled. “I’ll do it.”
* * *
Doctor Marcus Calhoun had moved to Philadelphia easily. Though a Southerner, he had connections in the big city and had told Oliver that his loyalties la
y mainly with himself. The man had found a house and opened a practice, which appeared to be doing fairly well.
Andersonville prison was liberated by the victorious Union and closed in May, a month following Lee’s surrender to Grant. Some of the prisoners who were still alive were eager to testify against prison commandant Henry Wirz at a military tribunal. Wirz was found guilty and hanged November 10th. Oliver had no desire to testify against the commandant, though. His focus was Calhoun.
It took Oliver five months to make his way from Georgia to Pennsylvania, stealing, lying, and cheating to gain the money and clothing he needed. In Philadelphia, he secured a room in Mrs. Warren’s boarding house and a job on the docks then went about searching for the doctor.
At last he located Calhoun’s tidy brick house at the corner of Locust and Seventh Streets, and in the early mornings he watched it from the shadows, noting the man’s comings and goings. Calhoun lived with another man, a cousin, perhaps, and spent a lot of time in the house. Patients came to him, though on occasion Oliver saw him leave by carriage with his black bag in hand.
He needed a firearm. A pistol, something to hide in his coat, something Calhoun wouldn’t see until the last moment. And so he put as much of his earnings away, hiding the money in a dresser drawer, counting it each night.
And then he had enough for a Colt revolver. A weapon he knew well.
“At least take a biscuit with you!” Mrs. Warren called from the boarding house door as Oliver strolled off down the street. “Mr. O’Donnell?”
He pretended not to hear her. He had no appetite for breakfast nor for what he was going to do.
Though it had to be done.
* * *
Arms. Legs. Slices of thighs and buttocks.
He cooked them all in the cauldron over pine wood fires, boiling them down, seasoning them as best he remembered how to, letting them cool then wrapping the meat in bundles. He slept little and thought even less.
Feet, shoulders, bellies.
Once Doctor Calhoun brought over a head with the rest of the parts. When the man was gone, Oliver flung it far into the trees. That night he dreamed the head was making its way back to his little tent with its accusatory grin and blood-stained teeth.