by Tracy Groot
“Clearly you know him. Well, he is in trouble, some. I hope my father will get him out.” He crawled inside. “It took a while to get here, so we need to hurry. Burr is on duty another hour, and you must get to him before he leaves. We have to switch clothes.” He took off his hat and began to unbutton his shirt. “There is a new turnkey on duty tonight. He does not know my face. Give him your name, which is Dance Pickett, hold up this envelope, and tell him you got the signature for General Winder. He’ll let you through.”
Lew stared.
“Do I have to repeat myself?”
Lew nodded as he pulled off his boots.
—
Someone was coming up the ladder.
Pickett’s hat came into view, but it was not Pickett’s face beneath it.
“You must be Lew,” Burr said.
“A terrified Lew.”
“I heard you below. You did all right.”
“Good. I was nervous.”
“I am that, around Pickett. Well, what’d he tell you?”
“He said he was sorry, but he had no plan past getting me to you. He said maybe go see Ellen, a servant at the home of Dr. Stiles. Said her church stands by to help.”
“Yep. The coloreds round here got a system set up for escaped prisoners. ’Course, I don’t know anything about that. One thing at a time, and first we gotta land you safe to my place. This is a pickle.”
Lew started to apologize, but Burr waved it off. “I don’t mind pickles. But I got to think. I got to get you out as Dance Pickett. There is all manner of comin’ and goin’ at watch change. Dusk will aid us, but still, it will be a tricky time. Come stand by me and look out, like you seen us do, and I will think.”
“Where is Emery Jones?”
“That is a separate pickle,” Burr said softly, knowing what he did about good, bright boys. He’d lost his own early on, and today he’d lost another.
“One pickle at a time,” he said, and produced a smile. “Now, I saw you walk up to the gate, but Dance don’t have a limp. Hope you can manage to walk like a spoiled-rotten dandy for a spell.”
—
“That is not Lew. He is wearing Lew’s clothing, but he is not Lew.”
Andy roused from sleep. “What’s the matter, Martin? Stop that! What are you doing?”
“Knockin’ some sense into my head, like they tried to at Mosby’s camp. He is wearing Lew’s clothes, but he’s not Lew. I feel tricked.”
“Martin, stop it—it’s okay, all is well. Lew got out last night. Isn’t that fine?”
“Where did he go?”
“Outside. He’s gonna make it back to Sherman and give the Rebs a shellackin’.”
“What is outside this place again?”
“Well . . . same as inside. War.”
“I want to go where Lew is. We take care of our own.”
“We will, someday. But for now, we are going to make pretend that this man is Lew. We are even going to call him Lew.”
Martin shook his head. “I don’t like that.”
“Nevertheless, it is what we must do.” Then, “Lew told us to.”
“He did?”
“Yep.”
Martin rubbed his palm on his forehead. “Well . . . all right. I don’t understand it, but all right.”
“You’ll understand someday. I see you getting better every day, Martin, you know that? Now go outside and pick off lice. Don’t stop until you get to a hundred.”
“I can’t count that high. I used to.”
“Get some stones. Remember what Lew said? Each time you count to ten, set aside a stone. When you see ten stones, you will have counted to a hundred.”
“Andy, can a man eat lice?”
“No!”
“But I’ve seen—”
“No! We’ll never get down so low. Not here in Hotel Ford.”
Martin nodded. “All right, Andy. Not here in Hotel Ford.”
“Go pick ’em off and kill ’em.”
Martin crawled out. Andy nudged Dance. “Hey.”
“I’m awake.” He sat up and started scratching. “Not sure I slept.”
“You didn’t say much after Lew left.”
“I wasn’t much inclined.”
“My name is Andy Rogers.” He gave a brief history of Hotel Ford and its lodgers. “What worries me is Martin. He’s on the simple side, if you haven’t noticed. Best we could tell, he ran with Mosby’s gang early on. We think he went mad, and they kicked him out. Or they kicked him out, and he went mad. Lew took him in when Artie died. Our policy is four men in here at all times, because it is not in our conscience to take up all this space for less. But this time we’ll wait for a fourth until you leave.”
Dance glanced around ruefully. All this space. It was hardly five feet square. Not much bigger than a sentinel platform.
“When do you plan to get out of here?” said Andy.
“Same as you.”
“I don’t follow. I’m waiting for exchange or for the war to end.”
Dance shrugged and nodded.
“You came in here with no plan to get out?” Andy said, incredulous.
“If I get out now, I’ll be court-martialed for treason. But if the North wins like all signs say, then they’ll sort me out with the rest, and I will eventually get out of this with no lasting consequences.”
“Well—you got anyone on the outside to keep you living? You won’t last long on what they feed us.”
“I hope a guard at the north gate will slip me something now and then.”
“I see you have not thought this through.”
Uneasily, Dance said, “What do you mean?”
“You can’t go to the north gate. You can’t go anywhere. You are known. Anyone who sees you living among us will think you came as a spy. They’ll think you’re here to report tunneling or other nefarious activities to Wirz.”
“How am I known?”
“How are you—? You’ve been on the north gate since I came! Sometimes other spots, but mostly there. You can change your clothes, but you can’t change your face.”
“So you have seen me . . . and I have not seen you.” Dance chuckled bitterly. “I am Americus.”
“I imagine we are a lot to look at. It would be interesting to see us from high up.” He motioned outside with his head. “Listen, Martin could be a problem. I can keep you secret. We’ll keep you in here as sick, and you can move about at night. I’ll fetch your rations during the day for roll call, and my sergeant won’t question it right away. We’ll get by a few days that way, until we figure something else out. But Martin worries me.”
“If I am discovered . . . will they do anything to you?”
“I don’t care to think that far.” He studied Dance. “Why did you do it?”
Dance scratched beneath his collar, then sent a squint of disgust down his shirtfront. “I don’t know.” He let his shirt go. “It makes sense if I don’t have to say it.”
“I’ll say this: I like Lew. You picked a good man to do a good turn.”
“I didn’t do it for him. That I do know.”
—
Martin did not find the ten stones where he had left them. Likely they had been stolen. He picked his way along, collecting new ones. Soon he found himself in a place he did not want to be, and that was near Mosby’s old gang. Most of the bad ones were dead, as they strung up six of ’em. But some weren’t strung.
He about-faced to scurry along for Hotel Ford.
“Say, there! Wait up, old Martin!” It was Elliott.
“You are looking fine these days.” It was Stern.
“Lew got me new clothes. I need to get back to Hotel Ford.”
“What else did Lew get you?”
“Nothin’.” He tried to sidestep, but Elliott moved with him.
“You sure about that? You got new clothes, you put on weight—no one does that here. This Lew must have something he can contribute to the Fund.”
“What fund?”
“My fund.”
“Well, Lew’s not here anymore,” Martin said, and it felt fine to say.
“Where’d he go?”
“He’s gone to give the Rebs a shellackin’. We got a new man. He wears Lew’s clothes, but he ain’t Lew. But Lew wants us to call him Lew.”
Elliott and Stern exchanged puzzled looks. Elliott shrugged.
“I reckon this man can contribute to the Fund on Lew’s behalf.”
Martin said unhappily, “Maybe.”
“Why don’t you take us to Hotel Ford and we’ll see. If he doesn’t have anything, he doesn’t have anything. Right? We won’t hurt him.”
“You won’t? ’Cause we take care of our own, there.”
“We ain’t like Mosby was,” said Stern.
“You didn’t see us hang, did you?”
“Well . . . okay. But make sure you call him Lew.”
—
“What do you think, Elliott?”
They didn’t get much of a look. But it was enough to prod a sleeping fire in their bellies. Andersonville was all about survival, but now and again came a chance to remember they were soldiers first, and not mere survivors.
“He’s from the north gate, all right.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“That smug Reb thinks he’ll just come in and roust out tunnels for Wirz like he’s some kind of Southern Stoneman on a raid. Like Wirz is his Sherman.”
“We gotta stop him.”
“He ain’t Stoneman,” Elliott seethed. “Ain’t fit to wear them boots.”
“You ever see so bold?”
“It’s bold of Wirz. He’ll just stash his man in a tent, let him run like a hound in our midst . . .”
“Well, he’s done it before. What are we gonna do?”
Elliott halted. He put up his hand. He looked at Stern.
“Let’s get up a council. Mosby ain’t here anymore, and he never was too smart. When he was hung, a lot of old bad things were hung with him. I want to do things proper.” He felt a fevered rush of nobility and put aside as trifling what had drawn him to Hotel Ford in the first place. “I want to do our duty as Union men.”
Stern nodded. “That sounds right. For the boys who perished tryin’ to get to us.”
“And for Stoneman.”
19
J. W. PICKETT had the matter in hand, but he had one thing against him, or rather, Emery Jones did—the presiding brigadier general did not like J. W. Pickett. He had tussled with the old man in a courtroom once before, in civilian days and in a place far away; he found Pickett’s manner insufferable then and found it intolerable now.
Most intolerable of all was to preside over this frittering affair while Sherman bore down on Atlanta, the hub of the South, the centerpiece clockwork of the Southern rails—telegraph wires crackled with news, and yet here he languished, listening in pain to J. W. Pickett.
Pickett was old, but he had not lost his fondness for superfluity.
“I rode all night to get here, for duty bade. I spent all morning in a dirty cell with Corporal Emery Jones, for duty bade. And I am deeply shocked that the men in this tribunal did not once think of Article 22, when duty bade. Why should it take an old country lawyer, past his prime and turned out to comforting pastures, to find therein—reclamation?” The word echoed.
The brigadier general rolled his eyes, covering for it by rubbing his eyebrows. He’d seen a copy of the telegram himself. It wasn’t J. W. Pickett who had thought of Article 22. He glanced around the courtroom; the boy who had wasn’t here. He was likely on duty.
“For this boy has been reclaimed!” Pickett drove a finger to the ceiling.
“Mr. Pickett, proceed to your point lest Sherman get to it before you.” A titter rippled through the courtroom.
J. W. Pickett put on his spectacles. He took two papers from the table, one for each hand, and read the paper in his right hand.
“A summation of Article 22 states thus: ‘No noncommissioned officer or soldier shall enlist himself in any other regiment, troop, or company, without a regular discharge—” he looked over his glasses—“from the regiment, troop, or company in which he last served. . . . And in case any officer shall knowingly receive—” he looked over his glasses again—“and entertain such noncommissioned officer or soldier, or shall not . . . give notice thereof to the corps in which he last served, the said officer shall, by a court-martial, be cashiered.’”
He raised the paper in his left hand and waved it.
“This order for Corporal Emery Jones, signed by Captain Russell Graves of the 22nd Alabama Volunteers, states he is to report back immediately to his regiment once he delivers his prisoner to Andersonville. Instead—Corporal Jones was detained. He should be standing in front of Atlanta as we speak, right beside my own son, defending this country from the gathering horde. Instead—this boy was unlawfully held back from his regiment and swept into that of another, conscripted if you will, not of his own accord, not of his doing, in direct violation of signed regimental orders—” he shook the paper—“with no notice given to the corps in which he last served.” He smiled a little and allowed the words to hang, admired. He consulted again the paper in his right hand.
“Now this boy is on trial for his life because he went to Americus without a pass. I will say again—a pass. His life, for a pass. A little piece of paper in his pocket. I understand the need for military order—I have two sons in the Confederate States Army. But this sentence of yours—” he looked at the council—“seems vindictive to the extreme, as we all know this boy merely wanted to do a good turn . . . so says Reverend William Gillette over there.”
“How it seems, vindictive or otherwise, is irrelevant,” said the presiding brigadier general.
“Just so! We shall then abide by Law, for therein we find comfort in its plumb line. Article 22 was violated before this boy had a chance to trot into town without that little pass—an item, by the by, which a Sergeant Keppel from Andersonville Prison said he’d have been more than happy to issue, had Corporal Jones asked. ‘Will a piece of paper save his life?’ said he. And he snatches a paper and writes out a pass and gives it to me with no small coloration of what he thought of the sentence handed down here days ago.”
“What the sergeant thought—”
“Yes, yes—irrelevant! Just so! We are perfectly agreed. I will tell you what is relevant.” He raised the Articles of War. “Emery Jones would not have been in Americus had the Law been obeyed. Article 22 states that Emery Jones was not in the wrong for being conscripted to duty at Andersonville—on the contrary; considering the chain of command, this immediate cashiering by court-martial of the officer involved in violating this law pertains to . . . well, you.” His eyes fastened on the face of the brigadier general.
A rustle sounded in the courtroom, from council and from audience.
“A court-martial for you?” exclaimed J. W. Pickett, fists on his hips. “Why, it is absurd!” He let the words hang. “As absurd as holding this boy back from his duty in Atlanta one minute longer.”
The brigadier general infinitesimally shook his head. If he had time, he’d blast that article so full of scatter shot—with some for J. W. Pickett, too—that it wouldn’t stop leaking for a century.
He had not the time nor the desire to mount a rebuttal. He looked at the manacled Corporal Emery Jones, staring at J. W. Pickett in something like dumbstruck hope, and just didn’t care what happened to the boy. He followed the boy’s gaze to J. W. Pickett.
He called for a recess, and the other four followed him into consultation in a back hallway of the Americus courthouse. He made a suggestion, and they concurred quickly—too quickly, and had to wait for an appropriate time before returning to the courtroom.
“With regard to the new evidence brought before this court, the sentence of death by hanging for Corporal Emery Jones is overturned,” said the presiding brigadier general, and he allowed for reaction in the courtroom, particularly from the family of Dr. Stiles
. “The court fully recognizes and upholds Article 22, and had Corporal Jones produced his orders early on, we all might have been spared a lamentable squanderation of much-needed time.” He raised a hand. “However . . .”
The room quieted.
“The court does not like what this man represents—an unmanly softness for the enemy, when softness does not win wars. Mr. Jones, you declared in front of several witnesses that the Yankee you delivered to that pen was a friend. Do you like the Yankees so much? Then go to them. You are forthwith dishonorably discharged from the Army of the Confederate States on the grounds of suspicious liaison with the enemy. You are forthwith exiled from the Confederate States of America, and should you ever set foot on Southern soil again, you will be executed.
“Major, make arrangements to have him escorted at once to Mobile Bay. If that is the last Confederate port open in the South, that is good enough for me—I’ll have you out on the next ship if it is a broken-down packet sloop or a slumgullion blockade runner bound for heathen lands. Atlanta is besieged, yet I am forced to put out brush fires.” He pounded the gavel. “This court-martial is adjourned! You all get back to your duties. Sherman comes.”
He lingered long enough to catch the falter on the pompous old face of J. W. Pickett. When Pickett looked his way, he said, “Was that vindictive?” and left the courtroom somewhat compensated.
—
There was scarcely time to say good-bye. The provost marshal allowed Emery ten minutes with those in the courtroom before they took him to the Americus depot. From there, he was under custody of the provost marshal until Andersonville, where arrangements were being made to escort him without pause to Mobile Bay.
Left in the room after the others filed out were the Stiles family, Reverend Gillette, Hettie Dixon, a grizzled guard from the stockade, and J. W. Pickett.
Mrs. Stiles set Posey free and she skipped down the aisle to him, hands in the air, dress flouncing. Rosie and Daisy ran behind her, jumping and laughing. Posey threw her arms around his middle.
“Hello, Traitor Christian!” said Emery.
“You shall not die, Emery Jones!” She looked up at him. “Where is Mobile Bay?”
“Why, it’s in my home state. I reckon they’ll give me a fine send-off. Brass band, dancing, fried chicken.”