by John Wilson
“We’re going home, Jake,” he says with a broad grin.
“I reckon,” I say non-committally.
“But I got a problem, Jake.” Sam pulls aside the blanket that’s covering his feet and I recoil in horror.
“They ain’t pretty, are they?”
Almost all the flesh from his toes has rotted away, except for a small pad at the end of each. I can see the bones and the ligaments that are holding everything in place.
Sam holds up a pair of dull, rusty shears. “Can you cut my toes off?”
“No,” I say instinctively. “Go to the hospital and have one of the doctors do it.”
Sam shakes his head. “You know the chances of coming out of that place is slim, and I don’t want no Rebel butcher messing up my feet. Besides, there ain’t time if we’re to be leaving this afternoon. I can’t walk like this. The toes don’t hurt much no more, but if I try and walk, I trip on them and then my whole foot pains me like the devil.”
“I can’t,” I say helplessly.
“Oh, come on, Jake,” Sam whines. “They’re my toes and I want them off. Take the shears and cut them. You wouldn’t deny me the chance to go home, would you?”
I take a deep breath and grasp the shears he’s holding out. The snipping is remarkably quick, although some of the tendons are tough. There’s no blood and my operation doesn’t seem to hurt. In a minute there’s a pile of toe bones on the ground.
“That’s better,” Sam says. “Daresay I’ll have trouble with balance for a day or two, but I won’t care about that when I’m home, and I won’t never have to worry about corns. Thank you very kindly, Jake.”
I nod acknowledgment and return to the lean-to with another burden of memory that I’ll never be able to share with anyone outside this place.
SEPTEMBER 1864 TO APRIL 1865
FIFTEEN
Long before one o’clock, everyone is collected by the main gate. Most are carrying their pitiful belongings wrapped in whatever they have that passes for a blanket. The assumption seems to be that the gates will just be flung open and we will all just stagger out and go home. After what seems like an interminable wait, the gates creak open. Like a single creature, the crowd tenses and leans forward. But it’s only Wirz on his pale horse.
“I zee you are ready to go home,” he begins. Something like a moan runs through the crowd. “Vell, ze ships are vaiting in Savannah. I tell you how it vill be. Detachments vun through tventy, zat is tventy thousand men, vill be exchanged. Ze trains for detachments vun though five wait now at the ze station zis afternoon. Ze rest tomorrow. Farevell.”
That’s it. Wirz turns his horse and rides out the gate, leaving twenty thousand happy and a few thousand despondent prisoners. I don’t know which to be. My choice has been made for me. Billy and I are to stay.
“I told you Wirz was lyin’,” Billy says cheerfully.
“What do you mean?”
“He just wants to clear out the camp, make it respectable lookin’ fer Sherman comin’. Do you really think there’s a Union fleet big enough to take twenty thousand men sittin’ in the Savannah docks?”
“I suppose not.” I’m uncertain though. Detachments one through five are already filing out the gate, and the rest of the compound is a hubbub of conversation. Those chosen to stay are busy writing letters to family and persuading those about to leave to take them with them. Those leaving are loudly swearing that they won’t rest until everyone else is exchanged as well.
“Come on, Jake. We got work to do if we want to live like kings until Sherman gets here.”
Billy and I increase our store of sticks and tent material through bartering with the men leaving. We even move up to an open area higher up the hill and take over a bigger, more secure shelter. It’s dug into the ground about two feet, which helps keep it warm. Two sleeping benches are formed a few inches off the ground, and a ditch to carry away any water that collects in the bottom, helps keep us dry.
A week after Wirz’s announcement, there are only about six thousand men left in Andersonville. Few apart from Billy are happy to be left behind, but conditions improve dramatically almost immediately. There is enough stuff left lying around for everyone to improve their shelter significantly, and it’s now possible to walk across the compound in more or less a straight line without wending a tortuous way between closely packed tents and lean-tos. The air suddenly seems cleaner and even the creek shows signs of improving, although anyone with any sense still drinks only rainwater.
The food doesn’t improve in either quality or quantity, but the guards seem more relaxed and bartering for luxuries becomes easier.
But Billy is wrong in thinking that Sherman is coming to free us. As winter drags on, we wait, but one day is like the next. New prisoners brought in say they heard that a sergeant from Andersonville escaped to Sherman’s camp and pleaded for an expedition to free the prisoners before they all starved.
Story is that Sherman refused because thirty thousand mouths to feed and bodies to guard was a significant drain on the stretched resources of the Confederacy and would hasten its collapse. Can a man be so cold-hearted as to let such suffering as we see here go on if it is within his power to stop it? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just a story. But if it’s true, would it be any worse than General Grant sending us against the Rebel breastworks and guns at Cold Harbor with our names pinned to our backs?
It’s better with only five or six thousand of us in the stockade, but even the starvation rations are cut and the guards have less and less to trade. In fact, some of them look almost as starved as we do.
The days are the same—a hopeless, energy-sapping search for food, firewood and shelter. Through all the bleak winter months it rains endlessly. The only thing that changes is that we gradually get weaker and lose interest in everything. When I can be bothered, I wander around looking for scraps of wood or something I can trade for food. I have to sit and rest a lot. Sometimes, in the middle of the camp, I am completely overcome by an inexplicable, gut-wrenching sadness. I have to sit down and weep until it passes. At other times, something random, the way a starving man’s cheekbones stick out of his face or the green color of another’s gangrenous foot, will strike me as the funniest thing I have ever seen and I will laugh until I cry. I think I might be going crazy.
Billy is not much better. I think he might be going crazy too, but his madness has a mean streak. I have to be careful what I say so that he doesn’t take offence. More than once he’s threatened me with his blade. At other times he is almost frighteningly optimistic, swearing that he can hear Sherman’s cavalry riding toward us, or devising complex schemes for escape.
“The trick is to stick to the rivers,” he says one day as we sit lethargically outside our shelter on one of the few days when the rain holds off. “Wirz ain’t right when he says he can give any two men a twenty-four-hour head start and still catch them. Twenty-four hours is plenty time to make it to the river. Ain’t no hound born as can follow a man if ’n he sticks to water, and I’ll wager you could go all the way to Atlanta without puttin’ more’n a foot out of a river or creek.”
“Let’s ask Wirz if he’ll give us a start,” I suggest. Suddenly, the idea seems so funny that I burst out laughing.
“What?” Billy asks.
“There’s one problem with your plan,” I say between sobbing laughs.
“What’s that?” Billy asks indignantly.
“Wirz can give us all the start we want, it won’t matter. We haven’t the strength to reach the river in the first place.”
Billy looks angry; then he starts laughing too. “Reckon you’d be right there, Jake, boy. We’re a sorry pair and no mistake. But we’re alive and that’s worth somethin’. Ain’t too many here can say that. Must be twelve, thirteen thousand boys buried out in that cemetery yonder.”
I sigh and use my tongue to probe the hole where one of my teeth fell out three days before. A pair of swallows zoom no more than a couple of feet over our heads, ba
nk sharply and disappear over the stockade wall. “But we can’t last forever, and sometimes that’s how long I think this war’s going to last.”
“Naw,” Billy says. “Can’t be much longer. South must be just about done. New prisoners comin’ in is gettin’ fewer and fewer. That’s a sign that the Rebs ain’t winnin’ too many battles no more, and when new boys do come in, they got tales of victory. Why, that squad come in last month, the ones brung us the biscuits, they said Sherman took Savannah way back at Christmas and ole Lee’s bottled up at Petersburg. We ain’t gonna be here much longer.”
“That’s what you said back in September when Sherman took Atlanta, and here we are still.”
Billy’s sunken eyes flash with anger. “Well, if ’n you want to sit and feel sorry fer yourself, you go right ahead, Jake. Me, I prefer to look at the positives and I reckon’ we’ll be out of here afore you know it.”
Billy gets laboriously to his feet and stretches. A swallow narrowly misses his head. “Damn those birds,” he says, shaking his fist at the air. Then he stops and stares out over the camp. Swallows are darting low over the whole scene.
“What d’you reckon them birds is doin’?” he asks.
“Feeding,” I say. “Must be a good crop of fat bugs rising up off our sorry carcasses. Enough to keep a swallow or two happy, I should think.”
“We still got that piece of nettin’ them sailors brung in back in January?”
“Yeah,” I say. “We use it to keep our food off the ground and away from the rats. Or we would if we had any food anymore.”
“Bring it out,” Billy says. “I’m gonna find me a couple of nice rocks.”
In a daze, I do as I’m told. The net’s torn in several places and ragged along one edge, but I’ve never seen the need to mend it. It can’t keep you warm and there are no fish here.
Billy returns with two medium-sized stones. With some difficulty, he ties them onto two corners of the netting.
“Watch this, Jake, boy,” he says and stands looking out over the camp. Two swallows dart over toward us and Billy hurls the stones up. He mistimes his throw and misses by a fair bit, but I get the idea.
“Give me one of the rocks,” I say.
We miss twelve times, but on the thirteenth, a swallow becomes entangled in the net and Billy whoops with glee as it falls to the ground. He grabs the panicking bird and wrings its neck.
“We’re gonna have soup tonight,” he says. “Help me catch another couple.”
We’re so engrossed in our new sport that we don’t hear the message being shouted over the camp. We’ve just caught our third bird when I hear a voice shout, “Richmond!”
“I wish we had some vegetable to go with these,” Billy muses as he wrings the bird’s neck. “Remember those sweet potatoes we got fer that quarter. I wish…”
“Shut up,” I say harshly. “Listen.”
“Richmond’s fallen!” The word is spreading across the camp like wildfire. Figures are dragging themselves out of shelters all over and staggering upright.
“Richmond’s fallen!” A ragged cheer echoes over the camp. Someone starts singing “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” Someone else begins “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”
“Richmond’s fallen!” I slump down, suddenly exhausted. Can it be true or is it another vicious trick?
“I told you, Jake, boy,” Billy says. “We’re goin’ home soon.”
APRIL 1865
SIXTEEN
“Ain’t no guards!”
The cry wakes me from a fitful sleep and dreams of Nathaniel and food. I have no idea what it means, but whatever it is, it’s not worth expending the energy required to crawl out of the shelter.
What day is it? I begin my morning ritual of working out the day and how long I have been in here. It is the only way I can convince myself that each day is not the same as yesterday and that time is actually passing.
It’s April 9. No. That was yesterday. It must be April 10 today. April 10, 1865. Now for the hard bit.
“They’re gone. Every one of them.”
What’s going on outside? I wish everyone would shut up, so I can work out how long I’ve been here. It’s hard enough to focus without all this shouting.
It’s April 10, 1865, and I arrived here on June 28, 1864. That’s eight, no, nine months to March 28. And how many days? Ten in April now and the three after March 28. That makes thirteen. Nine months and thirteen days in Hell.
I feel ridiculously happy that I have worked it out again, that I am still alive to work it out.
It’s three days since the news was passed around that Richmond had fallen. That night was like a huge party in the camp. We sang every song anybody knew, and those that could danced while the guards watched us sullenly from their towers.
Billy and I feasted on swallow soup. We threw them into the pot and ate them, skin, guts and all. It was a feast all right. Trouble was that it gave me the runs so bad I was at the latrine all next day with the cramps. Since then, all I’ve eaten is a rotten corncob.
“They truly are gone.” Billy rips the tent door open.
“Who’s gone?” I ask.
“The guards. Ain’t a one of them left on the stockade. You got to come and see.”
I want to ignore Billy, but he grabs my arm and hauls me through the tent door. I struggle to my feet and look around.
Those of the five thousand men left in the camp who can walk or crawl are headed toward the gate, where a sizeable crowd is forming.
“Come on,” Billy says, tugging my arm. “Let’s go see what’s goin’ on.”
I don’t want to. I just want to lie down, but Billy insists.
The crowd is standing at the dead line, staring at the gate and chattering.
“Is the gate locked?”
“Where are the guards?”
“What should we do?”
It’s Billy that decides.
“Ain’t gonna live forever,” he says and ducks under the line.
The crowd instantly falls silent. Billy takes a step forward and stops. Nothing happens. He takes another step. The crowd is looking at the stockade and empty watchtowers nervously.
“Hey, Johnny Reb,” Billy shouts. “You gonna shoot me?”
No one answers. I can’t even hear anyone breathing. The silence is almost solid.
Billy walks slowly forward until he’s at the gate. He grabs the iron bar nailed to one side and hauls. With a groan that makes everyone jump, the gate swings in.
Still, nobody crosses the dead line. Some adjust their position so they can see out through the widening gap as Billy pulls the gate open.
“Come on,” Billy shouts, turning back to us. “Ain’t no one here. You want to stay in this place forever?”
Someone pulls down the sticks that mark the dead line. We all shuffle forward and stare with disbelief at the world outside. There’s grass and trees and birds. Are we free?
In slow motion, the crowd spills out the gate. Stunned skeletal figures wander aimlessly off in all directions, unable to understand their freedom.
A burst of noise at one corner of the stockade makes everyone turn in fear. Five men on horses canter into view. They look so clean, fit and well-fed compared to the staggering corpses outside the gate. They look like gods. Only one of their horses would feed us all for a whole day.
I’m so overwhelmed that it takes a minute to realize that they are dressed in Union blue. The officer at the front canters forward and stops in the middle of the group. His face is a mask of horror.
“My God,” he whispers. “What place is this?”
I take a stumbling step forward and croak out an answer. “Andersonville. I’ve been here for nine months and thirteen days.” I don’t know why I tell him that. It seems important.
A vague thought sluggishly forces its way into my brain. This man is from the outside world. He probably knows what’s happening.
“How’s the war going?” I ask.
“War’s over,” the
officer says with a smile. “Lee surrendered to General Grant yesterday at Appomattox Court House. What happened here?”
A thin smile forms on my face as I answer. “We survived.”
SEVENTEEN
“Never thought army biscuits could taste so good.” Billy and I are sitting in the spring sun on the grassy slope above the stockade. All around, men are sitting or walking about. Some just stand and stare, still stunned by their freedom. Others are still in the stockade, too sick to move.
The cavalrymen who arrived this morning gave us all the rations they had. Fortunately, it wasn’t much, just some biscuits and dried meat. We would have eaten anything they gave us, and the doctor who arrived in the middle of the day said that too much rich food too suddenly could kill us in our weakened state. It would be cruel to die of too much food now that we are free.
Free. I still can hardly believe it. I can do what I want. Or, I could if I was strong enough. What do I want? I want to get my strength back and leave the war behind and go home. Most of all, I want to forget.
“We made it,” Billy says.
“We did that,” I agree. I’m happy that I survived, except for one thing.
Seems like every night I still see Nathaniel’s ghost. As soon as I close my eyes, he comes to me and just stands there, looking all pitiful and surprised, with Billy’s knife sticking out of his chest. He never says anything, but I know what he’s asking. Why? Why is he dead and I’m alive? Why didn’t I protect him?
I have no answers. In the daylight I can rationalize that Nathaniel was doomed from the start. He would never have lasted in Hell for long and all Billy’s knife did was shorten his suffering. But nothing I think of stops the nighttime visits from his poor, sad corpse. I’m haunted. I can go home now, but I fear I’ll take a part of Hell with me.
“A lot didn’t make it,” I say, thinking of Nathaniel but looking at the cemetery where the rough crosses mark the long mass graves.