by Tracy Groot
The preacher nodded at the stretcher bearer, who pulled out Artie by his feet.
“Just you and me, now, out of the whole mess,” Lew said to Harris. A tear brimmed and spilled. “We’re all gone except us. We are blown off the earth.”
“This is no place for children! Lew, look to him—get him out of here!”
“Charley’s safe, Harris.”
Fevered eyes found Lew. “Safe?”
Lew nodded.
Harris sighed deeply, and lay still. “I could do for some water,” he whispered.
Lew looked at Andy. “What have we got to trade?”
Andy shook his head. “We got nothing left, ’less we call back Artie’s trousers. I reckon he won’t need ’em, but . . .”
“Will this belt do?” the preacher said, unbuckling it from his waist. Lew seized it and grabbed Emery’s tin cup.
—
Lew reported to his detachment for roll call, a tedious affair lasting over an hour, then fell out and went back to the tent to get the preacher. The fresh water from the nearby well seemed to have done Harris good, and he slept quietly. Andy assured Lew he’d look out for him while he was gone.
They first went to the southeast quadrant where Lew had found Emery, but Emery wasn’t there. There was nothing left to do but wait for rations, a few hours away. Lew took him on a tour of “Main Street,” the only avenue within the stockade that had some sort of order to it. It stretched from the north gate to the other side of the pen.
Reverend Gillette was amazed how a closer inspection of Andersonville revealed the aspects of true town life. There was a barbershop, a laundry, even a grocer’s stand. Some men came in with concealed Union greenbacks, worth far more than Confederate money; the number of greenbacks a man had in this place could mean the difference between life and death.
They passed a man who called out, “Onions and sweet potatoes! Get ’em at a fairer price than Fetchner’s! Main Street, west end! Onions and sweet potatoes!”
“How do they get the goods?”
“Some of the guards will arrange trades between them and townspeople. There’s the sutler’s stand, which is more of an official getup—if you want to trade a pair of boots for a couple of potatoes. They are thieves.”
They passed a place where a crudely lettered plank announced, HAIR CUTS. TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. WILL TRADE.
“I had an idea of men just standing around, hungry and waiting for parole.”
“Once you’re used to the idea that you’re a prisoner, you settle in to survive,” Lew said. “But I’ll not go near Fetchner’s for any price. It’s highway robbery for one thing; it’s demoralizing for the next. I saw a man starve to death right outside their booth. They have nothing but contempt for the beggars, and though I understand this thinking some, it is hard to watch men die from starvation with food in reach. The beggars are pathetic, to be sure—the whiny, grasping sort you’d just as soon knock over as help. But still. It is hard to watch. A man will get down low here, and your worst fear is you will become as such.”
“Blackberries!” a man cried. “Get your blackberries at Fetchner’s! Eggs! Marrow bones!”
“First and last time I got something from a sutler’s stand was two years ago. I was missing Carrie’s home cooking, so I bought a fried pie. It was cold, greasy, and the edges were wrinkled like corrugated tin to resemble a housewife’s crust—tasted like tin, too. I am a fruit farmer, and I couldn’t identify what that fruit filling was.” The preacher chuckled. “Never wasted my money on camp stores again. And here, it’s plain folly to go and be tempted unless you have a pocketful of cash. Harris traded his hat at Fetchner’s to fill his belly one time, and he has roasted in this life-sucking sun ever since.”
They skirted a man squatting in the middle of the street. The man’s action elicited calls of protest from some, indifference from others. Lew glanced at the preacher. “Half the time it’s involuntary, they just can’t help it—most of us have the quickstep; otherwise they just weren’t raised right. They get so down low they just don’t care. That is another hard thing to see—men giving up on decent order. Giving in.”
“No blessed wonder it is so filthy in here,” the preacher muttered.
“Anyplace you go, just take up a handful of dirt—you’ll find something squirming in it.”
“That so-called creek is a place I’d rather forget. Why are there no proper sanitation facilities?”
“You find that answer, Preacher, and you will have unveiled one of Andersonville’s great mysteries.” He pointed over the top of the stockade to a distant hill. “Look at all the pine trees about. Wish I could get my hands on this place. I’d send out work crews. Half of these men are going mad for lack of anything to do. I’d have ’em build barracks, I’d drain that fetid swamp. I’d get the water running clear again—I’d relocate the cookhouse and the Confederate camp, as all their refuse goes into the creek before it comes here.”
The preacher shook his head. “Mr. Gann, I am truly appalled.”
It did something to a man to be listened to.
“I wish more of you would come. Some men are so constituted as to attribute any hardship they endure to malicious intent. It is the way they will see things. But if they met folks like you, they’d see you are regular human beings like us. They’d see you as themselves—ordinary, and caught in war.”
“Well, Mr. Gann, on that note, I do think I have observed enough. I have enjoyed our conversations. I see no reason to wait for ration time, and my wife must be anxious. I’ll stand at the gate and call for General Winder.”
“I’d dearly hoped to get you out without a ruckus.”
“Oh, it is a ruckus I aim to cause.”
“What will you tell him? I don’t want trouble for Emery. He did what he did not just for our sakes, but for yours.”
“Don’t worry about your friend.”
For all his disheveled appearance from a sleepless night in the deep, a light stood in the man’s eyes, maybe because he was a preacher, maybe because he had the wild edge of a prophet or a reformer. You could never tell with God men. Sometimes that wild light was just good, old-fashioned good.
“I’ll come up with something, Mr. Gann. I am, after all, Little Mite Badger.”
—
“I’m turning myself in,” Emery said.
Dance had gotten permission from Keppel to trade duties for the morning shift so he could work with Emery at the Federal hospital. Today, Emery was assigned wards one through five. When a man died, they were called in with a stretcher so full of holes that they had to lay the body just right so it wouldn’t fall through. Emery worked at fixing it now, tearing a pair of faded kersey trousers into strips and weaving the strips into a lattice.
After a quick glance around, Dance said quietly, “What about your plans for a prison break?”
“If I can’t get a single Rebel out, how do you think I’ll fare with lots of Yanks? I’ll turn myself in, confess all, and they can get up a manhunt for the preacher.”
“What about your Lew Gann?”
Emery stopped the feverish weaving.
“What would Hickory Shearer say about your oath to get him out?”
“I ain’t done with that! Just leave me be. I’ll get him out. I gotta sit with things for a while.”
“But how will you get him out if you turn yourself in?”
Emery threw down the stretcher and grabbed fistfuls of Dance’s jacket.
Dance grabbed him back. “Stop acting as if you’re the only one in trouble, you Alabamian martyr!”
“You ain’t in trouble, you Georgia dandy! It was my idea!”
“You were supposed to have him out at rations yesterday,” said a calm voice behind them. They let each other go. It was Sergeant Keppel. “Just a little eye-opener, you said. A little stroll. So I looked the other way.”
Emery looked at the ground. “Sir, I am prepared to—”
“He’s been found?” Dance said over Emery.
“Oh, he’s been found. Yes, he’s been found.” Keppel had an odd look, one Dance had never seen. “A man presented himself at the north gate and demanded to see General Winder. He was half-naked. Looked like some of Mosby’s old gang fell upon him.”
Dance closed his eyes. Emery groaned, and put his hands on his face.
“So I took him to see General Winder, and there I was treated to the solitary best moment of my entire life. Thank you, boys. I owe you a mighty debt.”
Dance opened one eye. Emery looked through his fingers.
“‘My name is William Gillette,’ says he; ‘I am an adjunct officer with the Confederate Civilian Sanitation Commission. I have finished my surprise inspection of your prison.’” Sergeant Keppel broke into a smile, a thing of which Dance never knew him capable. “Then he digs into his pocket and pulls out a foul old wad of corn bread and peas. Smacks it square in the middle of Winder’s desk, and says, ‘I will not leave until you eat that.’” Then Sergeant Keppel burst out laughing, another unprecedented event. “I will not leave until you eat that!”
Dance couldn’t move.
Awestruck, Emery asked, “What did Winder do?”
Keppel wiped his eyes. “He stared down at that pile like it’d eat him. I can still see the worms.” Helpless laughter erupted. “Oh, I can’t start up again. Oh, my sides ache. . . .”
“What happened?”
He did his best to contain himself. “Well, now. Wirz was there, and he hurries over and cleans up the mess while General Winder just stares murder at that preacher. ‘You will hear from us,’ that half-naked man said, and he storms out of that office while Winder hollers at Wirz to look up the Confederate Civilian Sanitation Commission.” Off he went in another round of laughter. “Oh, it hurts. I thought I’d die holding it in.” Keppel blotted his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Boys, I am in your debt.”
Debt? Dance said quickly, “Say, Sergeant Keppel—do you think we could get a pass for the F.A.P. meeting in Americus tonight?”
“Certainly. We’ll manage it. Wish I could go myself. Well, go on now, get back to duty. Drover! Zeeff! Get over here. You gotta hear this. . . .”
They left him laughing.
—
A man stood at the door, hat in hand. “My name is Lucerne. I got some information, Mr. Howard. I got a pass to come give it to you.”
Detective Joseph T. Howard hated the room Winder had given him. It was in the back of the Americus depot, and it was little bigger than a wallet. Investigation into covert Yankee activities was an unappreciated patriotic duty appointed small consideration and even smaller remuneration. He lit his cigar and drew upon it several times. He’d be in Richmond, if things weren’t so hungry there.
“What information,” he said.
“’Bout the missin’ preacher.”
“The missing preacher is found. He was in the prison. It was only a lark.”
“Wudden no lark. It was them as call themselves the F.A.P.”
Howard stopped mid-draw. He blew a cloud, and set the cigar on a tin plate.
“What have you got to say?”
“Well, I am one of the turnkeys. And that boy from Alabama came to me and—” His eyes narrowed. “I ain’t sayin’ more. I want a barrel of whiskey and a monthlong furlough. And when I come back, don’t want no more shuck-about duty. I want a picket-line postin’. And I want it wrote on paper.” He pointed at papers on Howard’s desk.
A civil investigation into prison conditions, Gillette had said a few hours ago, when Winder sent Howard to track him down for questioning. He was an adjunct member of a new committee called the Confederate Civilian Sanitation Commission. No, it wasn’t government. No, the provost marshal didn’t know about it. It fell under civil auspices and fell in with his duties as a minister of the gospel. He quoted the Bible a few times.
Traitors could quote the Bible.
This came on the heels of the Stoneman raid. What if . . .
What if it wasn’t a kidnapping at all?
Howard reached for a pencil and paper.
What if they were connected, this and the thwarted Stoneman raid? What if this F.A.P. had scouted out the land for Stoneman and his cavalry? What if the F.A.P. was in the prison for the express purpose to scout out weaknesses for another raid like Stoneman’s, and what if this time it was successful?
Maybe the old man wasn’t so paranoid.
Of course, he didn’t connect these dots; that was Howard’s job, Howard the unappreciated.
He looked at his pocket watch. The F.A.P. meeting was two hours and change away. Was it time enough to assemble witnesses?
Howard smiled until his lip disappeared. “I believe we can make a few satisfactory arrangements, Mr. Lucerne. And yes, you will have it in writing. Now. Sit down, Mr. Lucerne, pull up a crate. You are one of the turnkeys. . . .”
13
ON JANUARY 19, 1861, Georgia was the fifth state to secede from the Union. The date was considered a day of independence, and in ’62 and ’63 Americus had noted the occasion with speeches from local potentates and songs from the Americus Brass Band. This year, the date had passed unmarked. It was an odd thing to come to mind, Violet reflected, as she helped Mother plate the gingersnaps.
“How is Papa?” Violet asked carefully. Mother was in an unpredictable state. She either very much wanted to be asked her mind on things, or not at all. Starting out with Papa was a safe approach.
“He is preparing a speech, though I told him to make sure he had a prison bag prepared as well,” she said. She fanned the gingersnaps into a decorative pattern on a serving plate, didn’t like the result, and started over. Two more hurried attempts failed to produce satisfaction, and she gave up and pushed the plate to Violet.
“I saw him in his office. I think he was praying,” Violet admitted.
“I am deeply disappointed in this town,” Mother declared, lips trembling, earrings trembling. “To think that your father should be dragged down for questioning. I declare, it is irreconcilable to reason.”
“Judge Tate stepped in, Mama. Nothing will happen to Papa with Judge Tate around.”
“Precisely! If something could happen to your papa—your good, dear, devout, kind, Christian, upstanding papa—what could happen to Judge Tate? Clara must think the very same! What is happening to this town?”
“I wish I’d never posted that handbill. I only wanted to help those miserable creatures.”
Mother’s hysteria instantly quelled. She seized Violet’s hand. “Violet, dear, your father and I are desperately proud. Not another thought.” She squeezed her hand. “At least Reverend Gillette is safe. That is a comfort. Goodness, what events. A kidnapping that wasn’t a kidnapping.”
Violet brightened. “Lily said that Mr. Runcorn heard he is forming a commission to look into the conditions at the prison. Does that not hearten?”
But anxiety returned. Mother put a hand to her cheek. “Ravinia Runcorn snubbed me at the post office. Snubbed! Did you ever think the day would come? Mrs. Norton Stiles, an object of scorn. I am checkered.” She shook her head, dazed. “What will come of this meeting? To think I was nervous about the Knitting Brigade!”
Lily popped her head around the corner. “Dance and Emery are here! Their sergeant gave them a pass!” She disappeared.
“Well, that is some comfort. They are soldiers. If things get ugly, they can do . . . soldier things. Go receive them, Violet. I will deal with these snaps.” She laid a decorative sprig of lavender on the plate, and surveyed the result. “Something will be pretty today.”
—
“Why are you so gloomy?” Dance said.
“Why are you so cheerful?” Violet smoothed her skirts in precise movements. “My father brought in for questioning . . . Ravinia Runcorn, snubbing my mother. Our family is never snubbed. Nor do we snub. Except when it is deserved. And even then it is more of an instructive look. Purposeful. Meant to inspire corrective behavior.”
“Could you demonstrate?�
�� Dance asked.
Violet did her best, snubbing a tree, until she realized he was laughing. She scowled.
Dance and Violet sat in chairs on the edge of the lawn near the drive. They were posted to welcome folks when they came. Emery lay spread-eagled on the ground in front of them, staring at the sky. A look of ineffable peace was upon him. He had acted like a man apart, from the moment she’d first seen him.
“Look at that sky,” he said dreamily.
Violet leaned forward on pretense of adjusting her shoe and sniffed. She did not smell whiskey. Well, he was from Alabama. Perhaps his behavior was usual for Alabama. She did not know many out-of-staters.
“Violet, what are you all fuss and feathers about?” Dance asked.
“Dance Pickett, what is wrong with you? How are you both in such a fine fettle? Do you not feel the tension in the air? It is as the Knitting Brigade. We did not know what to expect, and things did get ugly. Well—not as much ugly as uncomfortable. And certainly revelatory. This is altogether different. Multiply yesterday by twenty.” She looked at Emery, and her voice lowered. “What of your . . . plans, Mr. Jones? Our plans. Have you devised any yet?”
“Oh, they’re comin’ on fine. I’m restin’ today. Appreciatin’ things. Tomorrow I will put all my faculties in it. Does anyone take time to notice the sky? There it is. There it has been all along. I am astounded.”
“Violet, here’s the truth,” Dance said. “We have a guest speaker coming later this evening. He was supposed to be at the Millard dance, but he has had a revelatory experience himself. He insisted on being here, not there, and this is yet another thing to give me hope for this town. He said to us, ‘Why should I bother with them? They will not hear. I will go where I will be heard.’”
Violet began to feel better. “Who is he?”
“It is a surprise.” Dance took some gingersnaps out of his pocket and flipped one to Emery.
“Oh, just tell me.”
“I hope he tells about the corn bread and peas,” Emery said.
“If he doesn’t, I will. Violet, do not trouble your heart. Things will turn out right. They generally do.”