by Tracy Groot
“It is a hateful turn of events,” Rosie said stoutly.
“I wish for revenge,” Posey said.
“We will miss the dance out of love for you,” Daisy said. At Rosie’s nudge, she added, “And ’cause of starving Yanks.”
Because he sat at her side, Dance could see that Violet had clutched the fabric of her dress into her fists. “Did they not understand the handbill?” she said, a slight waver in her tone. “Was I not clear?”
“You were perfectly clear,” Dance half growled.
He wished he had been at the church this morning. He realized he’d bent his fork in half and went to work straightening it.
“I suppose you feel mighty justified,” Violet retorted, half glancing at him. “This town is—”
“That’s not what I meant. Well—it is. But that bill—”
“He means nothin’ whatsoever has changed, Miss Stiles,” said Emery Jones placidly. “Come Tuesday, we will hold the meetin’ as planned, and get on fine with whomever the good Lord sends. Don’t you worry. You wrote a fair piece, and it’ll speak to them as has ears to hear.” It was as if he’d blown a soothing wind over the table. He buttered his bread. “Miss Posey, can I trouble you for that jam? Or should I call you Traitor Christian?”
Those smooth words served up on a plank of blue-eyed Alabama charm didn’t fool Dance. One by one the family resumed eating, and when all were fully occupied Emery slid him a look. Oh, he had something up his sleeve, all right. Dance could hardly wait to find out.
Violet looked at her plate. After a moment, she took her fork.
Mrs. Stiles, grateful, looked at Emery and cast about for something to say. “Huntsville, Dr. Stiles says. I don’t know anyone from Huntsville. What is it like, Mr. Jones?”
“Same as here, ma’am.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Good people, good place. I was raised by my uncle and aunt on a small sugar farm, just outside Huntsville.”
“What happened to your folks?” Posey asked.
“Well, Miss Posey, my mama took sick and died when I was just a baby, and my daddy took sick in his heart. One day he got on a ship and just sailed off. Never heard from him again.”
“That is tragic.” Posey stopped eating. “How come he didn’t take you with him?”
“I expect he didn’t know how to take care of a little one. Maybe he was too sick in his heart to try. But I’ll tell you what. I reckon I had no better fetchin’ up than with my aunt and uncle. They are quality down to the ground.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Posey said earnestly.
“The mule, now . . . he wasn’t quality. I cannot say in polite company what he was.”
“What mule?” she asked.
“Well, my uncle owns a sugar mill. Do you know what I was forced to do at your age?” He shook his head. “I can scarcely tell it for shame.”
“What?” Posey asked breathlessly.
“Well, we had this mule to power the mill. We’d harness that old thing up and he’d walk round and round and round and so grind up the cane. Now that mule, who lives to this day from sheer hate, refused to budge one inch unless yours truly was sitting on him. Out of all the kids on the farm, that mule picked me for a childhood of misery. Starting when I was four—” he held up four fingers—“until I was eight—” he added four more—“I had to ride that thing for hours on end or he would not budge.”
“The devil,” Posey breathed.
“How do you think I felt when friends would come fetch me to fish, and there I was, trapped on that pitiless crank ’cause he would go for no one else?”
“Your childhood was stolen.”
“It could rain like peas, and I had to lay on that wide stinkin’ back and turn round and round or there would be no sugar, and my family would starve.”
“I hardly know what to say. You’ve had it rough.”
“Well, I’ve come through. It had to be borne.”
“It had to be borne.”
“There’s nothin’ we won’t do for our families. Am I tellin’ the truth?”
“Nothin’.”
Dance wished he could think of something clever to say. Posey was his, not Emery’s.
“Did you ever get in trouble for things?” Posey asked.
“Some things ain’t fittin’ for mamas to hear,” Emery said out of the side of his mouth, with a little move of his head toward Mrs. Stiles.
“I wish to hear of battles,” said Rosie, putting down her milk.
Emery Jones was a natural raconteur. Off he went in stories of camp life and soldiering, beguiling the whole family except for Violet. Dance would feel a measure of satisfaction in this, except that her unbeguilement was linked to the thing that never left Dance alone. She poked at purple hull peas with her fork.
“So I says, ‘But that chicken was a Yankee spy! I had to take it into custody.’ Tasted good, even if it was a traitor.”
The family laughed, and Dance said very softly, “Violet, that bill was—”
“Did I not lay out the case?” she whispered. “Should I have been more descriptive? I did mention starvation, did I not? My heart is so heavy I don’t remember what I wrote.”
“Violet, you need a revelation. Not everything that interests you will interest others, no matter how shining good it is. That is the truth, but you do not believe it.”
“I don’t know what pains me more, their suffering or the fact that it appears this town won’t do anything about it. I close my eyes and I see . . .” She touched the edge of her plate. “It’s not as if they die from battle, but still they die from the hand of us Southerners, in a separate war, one with no nobility.”
“I see it daily.”
Violet looked at him. “I’d break in half.”
“Part of me has gone away. Else I’d break, too.”
“I wish you didn’t have to see it, Dance.”
“Better me than—” He looked away. He picked up his fork and idly stabbed his food. “As to your handbill, Miss Stiles—”
“Oh, I know what you think of that, same as everyone else. You think I’m foolish.”
“That time I got off easy,” Emery was saying. “I had to stand on a barrel and recite the Articles of War.” The family laughed. “I made a few things up to interest the boys.”
“For a tiny while you gave me hope for this town,” Dance said. “I let myself wander about with it, for I haven’t felt it in so long, and if I had it only for a time, it did me good.”
“Do you think anyone will show?”
“No. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a few. But I think the town has shown itself.”
“So do I.”
Violet slipped out of her chair and left the room. And the brave efforts of diversion were revealed as just that, for the table went silent.
—
Emery admired his fresh clothing. “I haven’t felt this clean since I left home, and that was three years ago. My aunt would want to thank you. It’s right kind of you, ma’am.” He nodded at Ellen, and she nodded back. She had brought a tray to Dance, Emery, and Dr. Stiles with cold tea and lemon meringue pie. She turned to go into the house, but paused in the porch doorway.
“We was wonderin’—can coloreds be Friends, too?”
At Emery’s blank expression, Dr. Stiles said, “She means the Friends of Andersonville Prison.”
“Elda Clem read dat bill and say we is bound to help, since dey down here fightin’ for us. I ain’t no spy, no more’n you, Docta, but us coloreds built dat prison. We didn’t knows we built it for mizry. Elda Clem say you need us, we stand by.”
“Sure you could be a Friend,” Emery said. “I reckon you could come to the meeting on Tuesday. Your whole church could come. What do you say, Mr. President?” He looked at Dance, but Ellen shook her head, incredulous.
“You ain’t got no sense, neither. I is the only one left. Lawd, have mercy, someone hold up dese arms. Dis battle gonna be long.” She turned into the house.
Dr. Stiles remembered the
day the children realized that Ellen was not a family member. In January of ’63, he had read the Emancipation Proclamation to the family, because however the war turned out, it was an historic document that would sooner or later change lives. It did not seem to mean much until Rosie said suddenly, “Is Ellen a slave? I didn’t know we had slaves.”
“Does that paper say she will leave us?” Daisy said.
“Ellen, are you a slave?” Rosie called to the kitchen, alarmed.
Dr. and Mrs. Stiles had exchanged anxious looks. They didn’t know what would happen when things came to this; on the crumbling institution of slavery, no one seemed to know the rules. Ellen had been Polly’s maid since she was a child, and had come to Americus with Polly when she married and moved from Augusta.
The three younger children had jumped from their chairs and run to the kitchen, while Lily and Violet hurried to the kitchen doorway to look on.
Rosie threw her arms around Ellen’s middle. “Are you a slave, dear Ellen?”
Daisy burst into tears. “Don’t leave us!”
“Don’t leave us!” Posey wailed.
“Jesus saves!” Ellen cried. “What is all dis fuss?”
“That hateful paper says you will leave!”
“Are you going to leave?”
Ellen gathered them in. “Mista Lincoln say I free, chile.” Black wrinkled hands smoothed flossy blonde braids. “So dat mean I free to stay. Where old Ellen go, if her fam’ly be right here?”
The three younger ones wailed louder for relief. Violet and Lily threw their arms around each other. Dr. and Mrs. Stiles sat at the table, holding tightly gripped hands.
“Why shouldn’t they come?” Emery said.
“Same reason Violet should not have posted that bill,” Dr. Stiles said. “All is tenuous. Come on, boys. Finish your pie. Then we’ll talk.”
—
Late in the afternoon Emery and Dance said good-bye to the rest of the family and left for a stroll with Dr. Stiles to the train depot. The last train for Andersonville left in an hour. They did not go through the town, but took the fields until they came to the train tracks, then walked along the tracks.
“Last night I had a visitor, boys,” said Dr. Stiles. “It was not a friendly call. Man by the name of Howard, works for General Winder. He warned me against having the meeting on Tuesday. Said there was time to put up a retraction.”
“Retraction?” Dance repeated.
“What did you tell him?” said Emery.
“I thanked him for his interest. He said, with a rather unpleasant smile, that it might be difficult to hold a meeting if no one showed up.”
Emery and Dance looked at each other.
“You think he’s behind changing the Millard date?” Dance said.
“Undoubtedly.”
“Does Violet know about this?”
“She does not.”
“Why would the Millards allow the date to be changed in the first place?” Dance said.
“I understand they welcomed it. They were in full agreement, to prevent the F.A.P. meeting.”
“What is wrong with this town?” Emery exploded. “Is this my country?”
“It is your country, son, winding down from a long and terrible war. There has been great loss, and unless Lincoln loses the election, the South is finished. Everyone knows it but Jeff Davis, and he will not be convinced. Americus has lost many sons, and we grapple with a broken dream of independence. We grapple with dwindling morale, patriotic lethargy. We are played out, and Governor Joe is tossed between sending more men and preserving them. What an unenviable position he is in. He only wants to save lives.”
“How does that justify Andersonville?” Emery said.
“I do not seek to justify. I wish for you to understand that you deal with a town that is weary of war, and filled with grief. Violet’s fiancé was one of the first to die. The Runcorns lost their firstborn. Judge Tate lost two nephews. And the Millard family—they lost their youngest. To put thoughts of charity to men who in their minds murdered their boys . . . it asks much of a beaten-down community.”
Emery stopped walking.
“You say all that, and all I see in my mind is a man eaten with maggots. I see another so starving he—it won’t come out of my mouth what I seen him eat. If the Cause is lost, so be it, but at this price?”
“I understand this town, son. I grieve for their losses, as much as I grieve their loss of sight.”
“Sir . . . what is this all about?” Dance said.
“The things Violet said about the government in that handbill, while truthful, came at a very tricky time for me. Dance, I’d like to ask that should anything happen, would you look after my family? I am not sure the town will remember who they are. They may forget that I am one of them, and they are me.”
“What are you saying, sir?”
Dr. Stiles resumed walking, and the other two fell into step.
“I’ve worked at the Federal hospital every Thursday since the end of March. I have a pass from General Winder. It must be occasionally renewed, and a few weeks ago, for the first time, he was reluctant. He displayed open distrust of me, and I finally saw the same paranoia others have. He is convinced of Yankee spies behind every bush. This same conviction attended him at Richmond.”
“My father said they ran him out of town,” said Dance.
“So they did. He had extreme distrust of the civilian population. Who knows but that this repeats in Americus. In Richmond, everyone had to have a pass, coming or going from the city. He had hired detectives from Baltimore to ferret out Yankee sympathizers—and the detectives themselves had an unfavorable reputation. Winder generally made himself a nuisance. Well, the city clamored for his removal, and he was relieved of duty. Sent to the field in North Carolina. He appealed to Jefferson Davis, and some weeks later, to the woe of all concerned, was appointed the post at Andersonville.”
Dr. Stiles paused to pull up a foxtail weed. He put it in his mouth, slid his hands into his vest pockets.
“General Winder looks upon any intended kindness as intended treachery. He is unreasonably distrustful. His temperament is changeable. He is not steadfast—except in suspicion.”
“Is the quartermaster related to him?” Emery asked. “Same last name.”
“Nephew, I believe.”
“Things are adding up,” Dance said grimly.
“Is the quartermaster rotten?” Emery asked.
“I don’t know as he is ‘rotten,’ but he seems to suffer from a common malady called Don’t Do Enough, as afflicts anyone in the orbit of Andersonville,” said Dr. Stiles. “Don’t care enough to do enough. Don’t have the canniness to do enough. It starts at General Winder, and flows down like oil from Aaron’s beard. He has profound fear of a prison break. Yet should he look into the stockade, which he actually prides himself on never doing, he would see no basis for his fears. How can such emaciated men rise up? For all of the challenges visited upon Andersonville, it needed a special commander. And that commander was not found.”
“You tell me of those challenges,” Emery said hotly. “For I wish to understand why those men are starving. Look around you! I see a cornfield right there, at my front and my back! Pinewoods abound, yet I do not see wood given to the men so they can cook their rations. How is it half the time they are issued raw cornmeal? And such cornmeal it is—peppered with flies! I’ve sifted through it and do you know what I have found? Ground-up cob!”
“You think we don’t know?” Dance scorned.
“I been here less than a week, Dr. Stiles—I can lay out solutions to those challenges before breakfast. What ties the hands? What prevents? That stinkin’ cesspool those men bathe, drink, and defecate in is a crime on humanity. Why ain’t it drained? Why ain’t there barracks? Why ain’t tents been issued? I asked the same of that quartermaster, and you know what he did? He shrugs.” Emery imitated him. “Just shrugs. Said things were mighty complex and no one understood how hard things were for him. Then h
e says he’s got to be someplace, and off he goes, to no place—for I followed him.”
Dr. Stiles had listened with concentration, letting him talk it out.
“Lord have mercy, the smell alone is thick as paste,” Emery muttered after a time, subdued. “I don’t know how y’all have stood it thus far. I got a friend in there, Dr. Stiles. I can’t have him be as those they carry out every mornin’. I counted sixty-seven yesterday.”
“Where are you posted, son?”
“Dead duty.”
Dr. Stiles looked at him, surprised. “They don’t usually assign newcomers to dead duty. And it’s usually Union boys.”
“I requested it of Sergeant Keppel. I’m assigned a squad. Gets me inside, where I can keep an eye on my friend.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Didn’t, until yesterday.”
“I’m surprised you found him at all. How does he fare?”
“Well. He’s only been there since Thursday. But I am glad he has a durable constitution.”
“That is good. It will serve him.”
“He is worried about his friend—man from his unit, got here a month before we did. Says he’s got a fearsome infection in his lip. Can you do anything for him? Lew says he won’t go to the hospital, and I think his chances better for that. I haven’t seen anyone come out of them wards yet but on a stretcher to the dead pile.” Emery shoved his hands hard in his pockets. His voice lowered. “I didn’t know the human frame could take so much.”
“The Federal hospital stores are played out. I dare not pilfer any more from the Confederate hospital.” Dr. Stiles sighed. “I’ve been concocting my own supplies, with Ellen’s help. I’ll see what I have. For the time being, have him keep it clean as best as he can. Have him find some clean sand and scrub it daily.”
“Ain’t no clean sand in there.” His voice was tight, and Dance and Dr. Stiles glanced at him.
He stopped walking and put his face against his arm. “I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed,” he murmured, blotting his face. He pulled down his hat and put his fists in his pockets.
Dance bent to pick up a rock. “Brand-new to Andersonville, on dead duty, and you are ashamed?” He sidearmed the rock and hit a tree. “You ought to be ashamed for being ashamed.”