by Tracy Groot
“I think you are unhappy, Mr. Pickett, and have been for a very long time.”
“Yes!” He pointed at her. “Clever girl.” He drew himself up with as much stately dignity as he could manage. “You have found me out.”
“Why are you unhappy, Dance?”
“Say again?” He cupped his ear. “No ‘Mr. Pickett’? Our relationship has advanced. You must define: Was that a brotherly Dance, or was it something altogether more interesting?”
“Dance?” said Papa, coming up the walk. “Violet? Is everything all right?”
“Ah, Dr. Stiles! Look to her—the lovely goddess of the porch! Not to worry.” He made a motion to button his lips. “A bastion of ignorance she remains.”
“Papa, he is drunk. It’s that Linney.”
“No! I’ll not hide behind the skirts of any Linney. I am fully cognishent it is I who . . .” He paused. “Cognish . . . ? I am sensible it is my doing. It was an experiment, Dr. Stiles. It didn’t work.”
“Come with me, son,” Papa said gently.
“Wait! I may yet have something to say which I will regret. Ah, there it is—my father wouldn’t put up with this! ‘They are only Yankees, Dance, and God hates Yankees. You will not shame the name of Pickett. You’ve shamed it quite well, right up to the steps of the governor’s mansion. I was Joe Brown’s confidant, you know! His personal friend, his intimate acquaintance. Why, he consulted me on matters of state and you . . . have ruined everything.’”
He fell silent. “I don’t know what to do, Dr. Stiles. One day you and I must have a frank talk, for—” his breath caught—“I don’t know how to help them. And I don’t know how to stand and watch anymore.”
Dance released the magnolia limb and stood in the slanting rays. His clothing was disheveled; his usually tidy hair, uncombed.
Dance Weld Pickett was a university man. He was very clever, and proud of his cleverness. Cynical of everything, and proud of that, too. For his wit and charm and courtesy, and especially for his teasing, he was the favorite Sunday dinner guest of the entire Stiles household. This was a Dance she’d never seen.
He lifted stained eyes to her. Violet took an involuntary step forward.
“Come along, son,” Papa said, putting an arm about his shoulders. “Easy does it.”
“It was just an experiment.”
“Of course it was,” Papa said soothingly.
“It didn’t work.”
“I’d expect not.” He led Dance away.
—
Sometimes in their travels Emery made a show of Lew being his prisoner. He’d give him a little prod with the rifle butt, or speak to him rough. When any interest in the two men subsided, so did Emery’s vigilance, and they settled down to companionship once more. Here at the Andersonville station, vigilance could not be laid down. There were too many Confederate officers and soldiers about, regular army or reserves.
Dozens of prisoners arrived at the depot all afternoon until they numbered in the hundreds, and they fell out in groups all about the tiny town, waiting for the arrival of Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of the interior of Andersonville Prison. Some prisoners slept; others played cards or smoked pipes or traded with Rebel guards. Some inquired about rations, of which, they were told, there were none. Negroes moved about with buckets of water, and that was all the ration they’d get this day, as the warehouses at Andersonville were behind on shipments from the commissary stores in Macon and Albany. So the Federals at the Andersonville station would go hungry today, but they were soldiers and settled down to it with no more than a few sullen grumbles. Some had hardtack or dried meat or fruit to fall back on, some looked wistfully at the sutler’s stand set up a small distance from the depot, but many of the prisoners had no money, and if they did, would likely find a Rebel sutler’s price to be just as sky-high as a Yankee’s.
After reporting to the assistant provost marshal, Emery was informed that Wirz was at the stockade and would be along soon. He was ordered to fall out with his prisoner until Wirz arrived, then wait until the prisoners were sorted into divisions and escort them to the stockade with the other guards. After that he was to report to Wirz, by signed order of Captain Graves.
“Let’s try behind the warehouse, blue belly,” Emery said, shouldering his musket and nodding where Lew should walk. They went behind the building, but the expanse behind it, all the way to the well on the edge of the property, was full of men.
They threaded through the men to the three buildings opposite the well, but it wasn’t much better there. The name GENERAL JOHN WINDER was tacked to the door on the first building. The second looked like a dry goods place, from what they could see between milling men. They went around the first building and came out to a nearly empty area. A corral lay far on their right, and the good horsey smell was much better than the persistent stink near the depot. Emery motioned to some trees on the left of a large woodpile.
Lew eased down, resting his back against a tree, stretching out his healing leg. Emery tossed down the haversacks between them and gratefully took a tree himself. The planked seats in the boxcar had no backs.
“I am thinking this,” said Emery quietly, his voice set only for Lew to hear. A squad of six or seven prisoners had followed them, under guard of two Confederate soldiers, and threw down their things behind the dry goods store, some ten yards away. “I got some tobacco left, and some dried meat.”
“Dried mule. I’d rather eat horse. Mule is grainy. I wonder if it is because it cannot reproduce. Perhaps that also explains the odd flavor.”
“Shut up and listen: I want you to take it. You’ll have something to trade with in the pen.”
“Not doing so. You’ll have nothing left.”
“I intend to marry your sister if she is as pretty as you say, and I will not have my betrothed accuse me of not taking care of her brother.”
“I’ve told you, she’s engaged.”
“You keep saying that and I keep trying to find its relevance. Besides, if her intended is in the war, he’ll likely die in battle.”
“If you are her unintended intended, do unintendeds not die?”
“My argument is she’ll forget all about him once she sees me. I have an effect on women you have not yet learned. Lew—is it affect or effect, with an e?”
“Well . . . I’m not sure.”
“The word stumps me. Also, diarrhea. I spell that different every time.”
“That you would have multiple occasions to spell it at all amazes me. But I am not—”
“Shut up and listen. Once I have delivered you safe to the pen, I have orders from Captain Graves to report to Captain Wirz who will, God willing, send me back to my regiment as Graves specifies, and that’ll be somewhere near Atlanta where I will personally lick Sherman. God not willing, Wirz will conscript my services for his own garrison, as commandants are wont to do if they are low on men, at which point I will certainly relieve you of my provender. I will hunt you down for it, in perpetuity. No terms except an unconditional—”
“One of these days I want you to come out and say you admire Grant.”
“Lew. My kinsmen are right over there.”
“Well, I admire Bobby Lee.”
“What is not to admire? But you’d not say that if we were in the North and I was your prisoner with your kinsmen nearby. I do regret to inform you he’s gonna lick Grant at Petersburg.”
“Have you learned nothing from Vicksburg?”
“Well, now—he wasn’t fighting Bobby Lee, was he?” Emery beamed a wide, comical grin, and Lew chuckled. Emery took his knapsack and began to rummage. “Lew, we don’t have much time left. Does anything remain unsaid?”
“Your oath to that Captain Graves.”
“Remains unsaid. ’Til I meet your sister.”
“An oath made on my behalf is something I feel I have a right to.”
“How do you feature? I made it, it’s my business, and there’s the end of it.”
Lew drew up his leg and un
pinned the flap to examine his wound. The Negro woman in Atlanta had given him a pin to close the ragged gap made by the bullet. From what Emery could tell, the wound was healing well. She used a greasy concoction that seemed to speed it up.
Lew refastened the flap. “There is one subject we haven’t spoke on. I didn’t want to court your ire. But it bothers me some, and when this is said, all is said. It is on the subject of slavery.”
Emery sighed. “Wish we could leave that alone. We’ve done all right without it. Well, let’s have it then.”
Lew adjusted himself to fit the tree better. “Well, Em, here it is: we had an escaped Negro following our camp. We had to saw a neck iron off him. Tricky work. As we did so, we observed his condition, and it was bad. Had a cut-off ear. Had a brand on his thigh, made by a hot iron. And his back . . .” Lew shook his head. “You are the South to me, and I know you don’t have it in you to treat a man like that. So I want to know why you fight for those who do.”
While Lew was talking, Emery had pulled off his hat and made a game of winging it at a sapling stump a few feet off. After retrieving it twice, he dug in his knapsack for a fishhook and string, and attached it to the hat. He winged it at the stump and ringered it, then with some satisfaction, pulled in the hat with the string. Lew knew it was Emery’s way of listening.
“Don’t know how a nation can treat folks like that.”
“Well, Lew, the whole South ain’t that way, and a man can be against slavery without being Union. He can just love his home, and love his people, and fight because you are down here and we’re afraid of what you might do. You mustn’t believe the whole South would do for that man as was done—it ain’t right, and decent folks know it.”
“I have been ashamed at how some of our boys have treated the Negroes. We’re not all of us emancipationists. Some of our boys are ignorant and cruel.”
Emery reeled in his hat. “Decent folk, both sides; folk suitable for tar and feathers, both sides. That is the war in a percussion cap. On slavery itself, well . . . sometimes you go down a road a spell before you find it’s not the one you want to be on. At which time, a course correction is called for, only we kept on. This particular course correction came from the North. I hope you all don’t get uppity about it.” He winged the hat and ringered the stump again. He tried to reel it in, but it snagged. “Is all off your chest?”
“As I feel mostly relieved, I guess we can be quit of that topic. Yet there is one thing more.”
“Go on,” said Emery, patiently tugging the line.
“On June 28, I was due to muster out—the day after Kennesaw.”
Emery stopped pulling the line.
Lew forced a smile. “There’s a kick in the teeth, hey? Did my three years, all set to go home, and now this. Colonel Ford didn’t even tempt me with a reenlistment bounty. He was a Penn boy, too. He knew I did my part.” He picked up a twig and dug at the ground. “I miss my children, Emery. Miss my farm, my dogs. And I miss Carrie like . . .” He fell silent. He broke the twig into little pieces. “I’m a farmer. I’m not a warrior. I never figured on fighting a war in my lifetime. Never thought I’d miss three years of my children’s growing up. And that is all, Emery. That is everything.”
After some time, Emery pulled the hat line again. “You’ll get home, Lew. This war won’t last forever. And what about prisoner exchange? Always chance for exchange. You hang on to that.”
Lew scattered the broken twig pieces and sat back against the tree. He looked up at the leaves.
The day was sulfurous hot, but under this tree, next to this woodpile, it was nearly pleasant. It felt good to rest after one miserable conveyance on the rails after another.
“I have to tell you that Northern Negroes are different from Southern Negroes,” Lew said. “I found this out a few months ago when on campaign in Tennessee. It’s the singing. A group of ’em were following camp. One of ’em led off in song, then the rest joined in chorus, and I tell you, though I couldn’t understand half the words, yet I was drawn into that song and felt of it. Felt where it came from, and where it was going. All of us quieted down to hear it, and when it ended, felt like the sun went down and left the sky a thing of beauty. All was sad and quiet and good. Sure wish I could hear that again. I think the Northern Negroes would learn something from the Southern, when this is all done.”
Emery held up his hand.
“Is that a religious affirmation?” Lew asked. But Emery put a finger to his lips, and motioned to the squad of men behind the dry goods store. All of them were looking at something on the other side of the woodpile. Something dangerous, by their stares. Emery slowly stood and crept over to the woodpile. He raised himself up, and peered over.
It was a girl.
She had not yet noticed the squad of men staring at her, nor did she see Emery looking down. It was evident she was listening intently to the conversation on the other side of the woodpile, and soon it was evident that she wondered if she had been caught; then her eyes widened as she caught sight of the staring men across the way, and a blush leapt to her cheeks; and then she realized where some of them were looking, and slowly looked up.
A face full of blue eyes framed by dark hair and bonnet gazed up into Emery’s. His first thought was to bless her out for eavesdropping, but no one could take up with a face like that. Lovely cheeks, lovely lips, and eyes gone slightly wild with what Emery took to be fear, and fear in a woman got his gourd. The entire effect melted his perturbation like butter in the sun.
“How do,” he nodded.
She nodded back.
He touched his forehead since he’d not reeled in his hat. “Corporal Emery Jones, 22nd Alabama Volunteers, Company C. Appreciate it if you keep quiet on anything you may have heard, ma’am.”
She nodded.
“Rather not have things go hard for me from simple misunderstandin’.”
“Of—” She cleared her throat delicately. She rose, and discreetly dusted off her backside. “Of course not,” she said, mighty dignified. “Besides . . . well, I do believe my thinking of Yankees may stand to be adjusted somewhat. Once I have time to consider it. It is a very new idea. You have startled me, right in the middle of this consideration, and I have not come to any conclusion.”
She lowered her eyes, and a blush pinkened her cheeks. Emery smiled.
“Attention!” called a man who came around the corner. “You boys gather up your charges and meet Captain Wirz on the east side of the depot. He’ll count ’em off into nineties, and we’ll walk ’em to the pen. Any of you headin’ back to Macon, check in with the provost marshal and get your passes. The rest, report to Sergeant Keppel at the stockade for reassignment to the garrison. Get going, now. Wirz don’t like dalliers.”
—
It was an ever-widening world for Violet Wrassey Stiles.
She sat very still at the woodpile, sorting through many heady impressions, two foremost in her mind.
First, the Rebel talked to the Yankee wholeheartedly, as if he were not a pillager, murderer, and defiler of Southern women, while the Yankee himself talked as if he were not. To consider a Yankee as something other than a hateful aggressor bound to brutally dominate the South was a terribly new and difficult thought. While it was perfectly acceptable to say out loud that at this point, the outcome of the war did not look good, and that General Cobb or Governor Brown might’ve done better than Jefferson Davis, it was another thing altogether to even think that the Yankees may have been a tiny bit (and the words tiny bit could not be more severe) misjudged, that the South had been perhaps misinformed as to the character of them all.
She could not bring these dizzying ideas to any sort of conclusion, so discomfortingly did they feel of treason. Yankees had done murder, and this was an indisputable truth. Many boys from Americus lay in far-off graves, and to think well of a Yankee was like killing them all over again.
The second impression was that the Confederate soldier was handsome. He’d certainly had an effect on h
er. Or was it affect . . . ?
Oddly, Dance Pickett came to mind.
And then came a different thought altogether, ousting both boys, and she looked to where the Federal men had filed away.
Papa worked at the Federal hospital at the prison. He’d forbidden her and the entire household from going near the prison, which was an easy thing to do since it was ten miles from Americus. He said it was not fitting for women to be around so many men. He said there were camp diseases.
She held very still, as if listening for something distant. Things about Papa and his volunteerism tried hard to make sense right now.
Tell your father he needs to be more careful.
The glorious Cause, which some hateful newspapers were now calling “lost,” had always seemed a little independent of Papa, which had bothered Violet—he was not as patriotic as she wished him to be, content to remain in a vexing state of even-keeled benignity. But Papa had changed in the last few months. He was quieter. His smile was quick and gone. He’d even cut off his beautiful beard, and the family had never known him without it. Lily had cried for two days.
Just before he cut it, Violet and Papa sat on the porch on a Thursday evening after he came home from the hospital. He was very tired and had closed his eyes, resting a spell before Ellen called them to supper. Violet took the chance to study him when he couldn’t see her concern. How pale he was. How puffy his eyes. How—and something moved on his beard.
It was a single, creeping, gray-colored vermin. She saw another.
Horrified, she tried to flick them away without disturbing Papa, but the hideous little things stuck fast. She looked about, then went to the magnolia tree and pulled off a leaf. She crept back up the stairs, and tried to scrape one off with the leaf without rousing Papa. He did rouse, saw Violet, and followed her eyes to the vermin. He calmly pinched it from his beard and flicked it away. She pointed to the other. He took care of that one, too.
“What are they, Papa?” she asked, nose wrinkled.
“Why, the first was Miss Mary, and the second was her beau, come courtin’.” He smiled tiredly, and patted her arm. “Not to worry.” And she wondered what she should be worried about.