by Tracy Groot
There were not a few of these corpses in and about the pine-bough structure. There were over a hundred, all of them in various forms of the same condition. Every one of them a Union boy. Every one a beloved son, or brother, or husband, or father.
“I don’t wanna die like that,” a man quavered. “Someone shoot me first!”
“You’ll have your chance for that, Billy Yank,” one of the guards taunted. “It’s called the deadline. You jist give ’er a try.”
“Close your mouth,” Drover snapped.
“Simon, if I go like that,” a young man earnestly entreated his friend, “don’t tell my mama.”
The lines of the marching men slowly bent left at the T, every man among them staring at the grim sight as they passed.
“You tam Yankees! Tay in rank! Close up, dere—back in line!”
A Confederate guard rushed past, likely on his way to the privy. Likely gone a little mad, too, for Lew heard him say, “Violet! Violet, where are you?”
—
The innocent world of Violet Stiles came to a close.
She had seen the men gathered at the south gate, saw from a distance they were sick, knew her father might be among them, and headed there directly instead of following the prisoners.
If not there, Papa would be in the hospital. The hospital must be on the other side of the great, long fortress. She saw only a few buildings on the hill, with a few cannons pointed at the stockade. She frowned. That wasn’t a very friendly way to treat their guests, and guests, however Yankee they were, is what they were, just temporary visitors. She determined this was how she’d think of the prisoners, on behalf of the one good Yankee. It wasn’t a particularly new thought; Hettie Dixon, Mother’s oldest and fiercest friend, had “got hold” of the Scripture that spoke of prisoners, and sought to memorize it upon the Knitting Brigade. While Violet had felt it was a trifle overrighteous because they were Yankees and the Scripture did not seem to apply to Yankees, she now decided—
Violet stopped. She didn’t know what she was seeing.
She was close to them now, those at the gate, but did not know what she was seeing. Her mind could not close upon anything familiar, could not affix the sights to comprehension.
Her eyes fell at last upon a long gray pile of sticks some ten feet away, and she determined to stay with these sticks until they made sense. The sticks were moving somehow, moving while still, and bit by bit it crept into her consciousness that vermin covered the sticks so completely they were like an animated garment. Bit by bit it crept into her consciousness that the sticks were a man, and the man was living. Bit by bit, she comprehended dull blue eyes in a shrunken face.
The eyes were glazed with misery. Violet saw down into a soul where the man lay at bottom, caught fast in suffering. He was there, he was trapped, and he was alone.
She could not move.
He saw her. Something in the blue eyes responded. Something answered at the bottom of the well. A light came. He tried to open his mouth, like a dying fish on a riverbank. He tried to speak with gray, cracked lips. He tried to lift his head, scattering flies in the attempt, but it proved too much. His fingers twitched, and he moved his hand toward her.
Violet put out her hand and started for him.
“Violet, no!”
Someone pulled her back. She pushed him away, and continued for the man, hand outstretched.
“Violet, you can’t be here!”
The man waited for human touch. It was all he needed, more than food or medicines, for he was long past that. All he needed was for someone to know he was there. More forcefully, she shoved away whatever kept her back.
“Oh, Violet! Violet!”
Someone picked her up.
“No, no . . .” Frantic, she fought to get back to him, but she was caught in a tide that bore her away. She twisted and caught a last glimpse into the blue-eyed well.
The hand dropped, the light extinguished, and the dull glaze returned.
—
Foreboding filled Emery. What he had witnessed was not the outcome of war. Something far more insidious was at work. Those poor wretches had died not of decent battle wounds, but of starvation. Most had signs of fearsome disease. Many were naked, and any clothing was in shreds.
They had whittled away to nothing.
How could this be?
And if those were the dead, what did the living look like?
Heavy gates swung open on iron hinges. The prisoners began to file into the holding pen.
Emery held Lew back long enough to unsling his haversack and shove it into Lew’s hands. He took it without protest. Emery tried to say good-bye, but words failed.
“Stop looking like that,” Lew snapped. “Whatever is on the other side of that gate is not you, and therefore is not the South. And . . . well, I’m not laying down for anything, but if you make it up to Ezra and I am not there, do me a favor. Learn the name of Little Mite. Then one of us will know.”
“Get moving!” a guard shouted at Lew.
“I don’t want to shake hands lest things go badly for you. Take care of yourself, Emery Jones.” A quick smile, and Lew was gone.
The heavy gates closed, and a guard turned the iron key. He signaled to the man in the sentry box, who signaled to someone in the holding pen.
Emery stood motionless, staring at the massive wooden doors.
Then he raced to the ladder of the nearest sentry box and went up as fast as he could. He came out to a platform and hurried to the rail overlooking the pen.
The sight took his breath, and he grasped the rail for the momentary vertigo.
A milling gray mass of thousands upon thousands opened to his eyes. In some places they stood so close that not an armspan separated them. There were a few tents spotted throughout, but no barracks. At the bottom of two slightly inclined opposing banks, a brown, slowly moving stream stretched across the stockade from east to west. It was less populated near this stream; surely from this area rose the putrid smell that was now past description.
The men were filthy, ragged, and thin, many nearly skeletal, many so diseased and broken down that even some fifty feet away from the nearest soul, Emery could tell it was not long before they would join their comrades outside in the sick group—or in the dead. Many walked slowly, like old men, and so they appeared, yet the average age could not be above twenty-five.
He couldn’t even conjure an oath. It was past crying out with his mouth.
Movement down left caught his eye. Men began to pour out of the holding pen.
There seemed to be an invisible line between the new prisoners and the longtime inhabitants of Andersonville. They sized each other up until someone broke the momentary lull with a joke or a greeting. Soon the new-timers began to move forward, and were surrounded by the old-timers who called for news of the war, or asked for goods to trade, or offered to show them around and tell them the way of things.
“Lew!”
Lew looked up, put his hand against the sun, but couldn’t locate Emery. Maybe he was unsure his name had been called at all.
Emery leaned to bellow once more, but a grizzled middle-aged guard laid a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t wanna make his countrymen wonder if he’s a traitor.”
“He’s no traitor. He’s my friend.” Emery’s throat all but closed.
“Sorry to hear it, son.”
He watched until Lew stepped off into the milling gray mass and disappeared.
5
HER FACE WAS WET. Her hair was damp with tears. He couldn’t leave her. If he moved, she clutched his sleeve.
“Violet,” Dance whispered. “I need to get your father. You stay right here. You’ll be all right.”
They were a short distance from the stockade under some pine trees.
“I have to get back to my post.” He didn’t care about his post. He didn’t care what they did to him.
His arm was tightly about her, and she huddled close. If he loosened his grip, she clutched closer. T
hey sat next to each other on the pine-needle ground, and it was getting uncomfortable. But he didn’t care. He could hold her all day, shielding her from the sight of those walls.
“Violet, I’m sorry,” he whispered. He tenderly smoothed dark mussed hair, tried awkwardly to tuck it under her bonnet and straighten things. “Sorry you had to see such things. The man you saw will be gone soon. I’ve gotten so I can just about time it. Won’t be long, Violet. He’s not gonna suffer anymore.”
“What’s wrong with her, Pickett?”
Dance looked up. It was Sergeant Keppel. He peered down at Violet, concern mingled with dissatisfaction. He didn’t like surprises, and a girl alone on the grounds was a surprise.
“She took a turn.”
“Must be the heat. Who is she? What’s she doing here?”
“She’s a—cousin. Daughter of Dr. Stiles. He works in the—”
“I know who he is. Does she have a pass?”
“No, sir.”
“Then get her out of here.”
“Yes, sir.” He tried to stand, but Violet clung fiercely.
The sergeant bent to inspect her flushed face. “She don’t look so good.” He looked about. “You there! Yes, you—come over here. What’s your name, son?”
“Emery Jones, sir. Corporal, 22nd Alabama.”
“What are you doing, wandering around?”
“Just got here. Delivered a prisoner.”
“Headin’ back to Macon?”
“No, sir.” The corporal looked back at the stockade. “No, I am not.”
“I’m Keppel. You’re to report to me. This girl’s taken with the heat. Help that boy get her home.”
“I should let her father know—” Dance began.
“I’ll inform the doctor. You don’t bother him. He’s got a horse and buggy in town. Have Swedberg hitch ’em up and get her on home. Stop at the depot and get her some water.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll get someone to take your place. Get along, boys. Get her that water, first thing. Jones, report back to me this evening, I’ll get you assigned.” He looked once more into Violet’s face. “You just take good care of her. That there’s the daughter of Dr. Stiles.” His voice had the tone of someone who had taken off his hat.
—
They were halfway to Americus, an hour on the road, before it occurred to Dance to introduce himself to the corporal from Alabama. Neither had spoken much, and Violet had not spoken at all. The blond fellow drove, perched in the seat in front. He seemed as moodily preoccupied as Dance. It was a good thing Keppel had sent him along. Dance could not have managed both Violet and the horse.
All the way to the train station for water, and then to the corral for the buggy, Violet clung to Dance as if letting go meant falling off a cliff. Her shoulder just fit under his arm, and both arms circled his waist. It made for awkward walking. Once situated in the back of the carriage, she clutched his arm.
He knew what this clinging was; all had come apart at the seams, and she ran for safety like a deer from a forest fire, found it in the only familiar place around.
You are always certain of a dark motive in others, she had once accused him, and she was right. All this time he’d thought she knew how bad things were and had been playing a game of pretty ignorance. How wrong he’d been. The day he made Violet mad, he thought he had gotten to her core; now he knew he had not seen it until this day.
Sitting beside Violet, even in her disheveled, staring state, he knew things were right for the first time in a very long time. Right for her and right for him. For Violet was genuine. And if the ways and means committee that constituted a genuine Violet was too drum-banging and earnest for his taste, it didn’t matter. The anvil on his chest was gone, because she knew the truth of the prison, and he knew the truth of her.
“I’m Dance Pickett,” he said to the man with the reins. “And no, I am not.”
“You’re not what?”
“Related to George.” People were forever wondering, if not asking outright, whether he was related to the general who had led the ill-fated Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.
“Emery Jones, 22nd Alabama Volunteers.”
“Georgia militia. Feel free to despise me.” The army regulars hated the militia, especially the volunteers. Joe Brown’s pets, they called militiamen. If that was the case, being the son of J. W. Pickett made Dance his lapdog.
“I don’t despise you,” Emery said absently. “I don’t know you yet.”
He checked Violet, because her grip had loosened. The carriage, an expensive affair which had splendid suspension, swayed gently on the road. That and the rhythmic clop of the horse’s hooves and the darkened interior had put her almost to sleep.
“What happened there?” Emery asked, his voice hollow. “That ain’t us.”
“It’s some of us.”
“The fellow I was escorting, I told him it wasn’t true, all the rumors about Andersonville. It made a liar out of me.”
“You weren’t even in the pen. That’ll make Beelzebub out of you.”
Emery wore a red-checked shirt tucked into brown trousers. His slouch hat sat back on his head. Blond hair nearly tipped his shoulders. His feet rested on the board, and his boots were worn through in places. All of him stood in need of laundering, like any soldier. He was maybe Dance’s age, maybe younger. What set him apart from other soldiers was the thoughtfulness on his face.
“How long you been there?” Emery said.
“Mid-March.”
“What happened to that place? Moreover, how do you stand it?”
“Listen, Alabama: I don’t want to talk about it because you really don’t care. All you regulars do is see how fast you can get reassigned, and that is your singlemost distinct and enviable advantage over militia. So don’t ask me how I can stand it, because you won’t be around long enough to see.”
Emery didn’t answer, and Dance grimaced. He could already see this man wasn’t like the others. The worst would say the Yankees were getting what they deserved. The best said nothing at all. Along comes this fellow, who asks questions. Who did that? No one.
Dance toyed with the end of Violet’s bonnet string.
“The three W’s. War, Winder, and Wirz. That’s what happened to Andersonville.”
“Spread that on the table for me.”
Dance studied him. “What sort of regular are you?”
“An irregular one.”
“You a Yankee spy?”
“Nope.”
“All right then. Here is what happened to Andersonville. First, war. This one has dragged on too long and at this point our resources are played out. We are hard-pressed to feed our own troops, much less our prisoners. Second, Winder. Some idiot made him a general and put him in charge of Andersonville. Third, General Winder appointed Captain Wirz. While Wirz is not a particularly cruel man, he is not a good one either. And Andersonville did not need a good man. It needed a great one.”
“You’ve had time to think on this.”
“No one has asked me this. I have saved up for just such an occasion. I will now present my summation. Andersonville is the way it is because of people like Wirz and me, people faced with problems they do not know how to fix. People turned back at every try because of a stupefying governmental bureaucracy as filthy as the inside of that stockade. Lastly, and this drives it home: Andersonville is the way it is because of the town we are heading for: Americus. They are indifferent. Men die, and Americus sleeps.”
“Reckon someone better wake ’em up, and that right quick.”
“You wanna stir up the devil, have at it.”
“The devil ain’t in Americus. He’s back at that pen.”
“An emphatic ‘No, he isn’t’ to that. He’s in that town, root and tree, and they spread themselves beneath his bounteous shade.”
Emery’s lip rose in disgust. “You owning their inaction to the devil?”
“Emphatically not.”
&nb
sp; “Good. ’Cause I’ve heard that tack, and them as do are cowards.”
“I am merely pointing out that his crowning achievement is a blindfold. Only the devil could blind good people to such evil.”
Emery considered it, and shook his head. “I’d say it’s trickin’ them into thinkin’ they can’t take it off.”
Dance fell back on the luxurious leather seat. He stared at the quilted ceiling. “This is the first decent conversation I have had since my posting.”
“Glad to accommodate. You have a philosophic bent, just like the man I turned in. Wish with all my heart I hadn’t done that. Wish I’d turned him loose.”
“You were just doing your duty.”
“How many men have died, people just doing their duty?”
Dance’s breath caught. “Thousands.”
Emery looked at him. He turned back to the road, face grim. “I was bound by oath to deliver him. What is better? Keep an oath, or save a life?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Neither can I.”
“I can’t answer anything these days.”
They drove for some time.
“Well, I’m gonna get him out.”
He said it as easy as “Pass the peas.”
“Is that so. Two guards were arrested last month for trying the same.”
“I expect they were militia.”
“Another time, I’d laugh. What happened to keeping your oath?”
“Kept the first. That’s done with. Made another, back when we passed under that water oak. Hickory Shearer says that’s the best time to make one.”
“Suit yourself. It’s your lily-white neck, not mine. One of those guards was hanged.” Dance closed his eyes. “And in case you think to, don’t ask me for information about the prison.” He settled to a doze. Violet’s hand had slipped from his arm; he put it back and held it there.
—
It was a comfortable house with a comfortable porch, clapboards painted gray, all else trimmed in white. Dr. Stiles had put up an iron rail next to the steps for Grandma Wrassey, who passed in ’61. His wife sometimes hung herbs to dry from the rail when other places were taken. Little bundles hung there now, tied by colorful scraps of yarn.