The Tinsmith

by Tim Bowling

  Without analysis or logic, with the deepest call of instinct, Anson understood that he had been chosen to provide it, if not by some divine power, then by the ineluctable and curious justice of circumstance. The dead Latin stirred in his blood, sprang to life on his tongue. But it was plain English he uttered.

  “Let’s go, John. We have work to do.”

  II

  September 18, the battlefield at Antietam

  Alexander Gardner studied the mutilated body for a moment, and stroked the forked end of his beard as he considered whether such a gruesome corpse—and of a civilian too—could be of any artistic or commercial use to him. It would be one thing to display photographs of dead soldiers in a New York gallery, quite another to exhibit a large stereo view of some farmer who’d had his manhood hacked off. Then again, war was war, business was business, and there was no telling what the public might stomach, or, indeed, even relish. As for art, well, Gardner understood the perils of playing that game too cannily. Best get to work and think about art, the public, and the other incidentals later.

  He lowered himself to his haunches and made a small frame by placing his hands around his eyes. A disbelieving voice sounded from above him.

  “You canna be serious, Alex. For Christ’s sakes, man, leave it alone.”

  “Jim, you surprise me. I dinna peg you for a maidenly sort.” Gardner flashed his assistant a big grin, just so he wouldn’t take offence. He knew James Gibson was a touchy one, but he also knew there was no one he’d rather have with him in the field. Gibson was a gifted man with the camera, and no mistake. And he could work quickly with the plates too, which was even more important. His assistant didn’t know it yet, but Gardner aimed to take most of the studies; he had to be the one behind the lens. There might never come another chance like this.

  Gardner handled the body by the legs, not wanting to touch the head, which was grinning and greasy as a gargoyle soaked in oil, and hoped that his fellow photographer would rise to the challenge. He was no more maidenly than a Glasgow publican, after all.

  “Come on, Jim. They’ll be back for it soon. I only want to shift it a little ways. Till the sun’s up.”

  For the truth was, Gardner had seen a mass of dead rebels not too distant. He realized that he and Gibson could dump this body among the rebels and nobody’d be certain to come near it, at least not for hours. By then, there’d be light enough. And he’d have his first prize stereo of the great battle: Slave Owner’s Terrible Last Moments. Or something akin to that. It wasn’t the time for thinking up fancy titles.

  Gardner noticed Gibson look past him. His eyes measured the progress of the light. All around them in the large, churned-up field, the low groans and gasps of wounded men broke into the monotonous droning of the flies, faded away briefly, then started up again.

  “We’ll be seen,” Gibson said. “And if we’re caught, Alex Gardner, you’ll no ee get any studies of dead soldiers. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

  “Ach, you’d think you were the dapper Brady himself with your fussing and worrying. I’ll do it myself. Just bring up the wagon, will you. There’s little doubt the Rebels have gone, what with all that ruckus in the night, but we’d better be sure before we go any closer to where the worst fighting happened.”

  Gardner could see his assistant’s nostrils flaring, but he suspected that the quiet all around them, not to mention the dead, checked his tongue against a slanderous rejoinder. He only grunted and pointed to the horse. “And what about that? Just look at the animal, kneeling there like it was in the stable at Bethlehem. You’d no ee take it for dead. That’d make a fine study.”

  He was right, of course. It was a handsome white charger, its front legs gracefully tucked under its blood-soaked body, its noble head turned to the side. The poor creature looked to be living still, unlike the hundreds of others scattered around, most of them tangled in their reins so tight that they might have been tangled in their own bloody guts. But Gardner hadn’t time for dead horses now, no matter what they looked like.

  “They willna move the man’s horse,” he said. “It’s him they’ll soon be after. And they can have him too, just after I get my study.”

  Gardner quickly looked around. It was still dark enough for cover and he wouldn’t need more than ten minutes. Keeping his hold on the legs, he dragged the body toward the dead rebels, deliberately avoiding its ghastly expression. If not for the heavy smell of blood, he thought the corpse might open its mouth and shout at any second.

  No one saw him as he moved slowly toward his goal. He knew then, with Lee reportedly in retreat and the sun rising, that fortune was truly on his side. It would be a bonny day, the exposures would be wonderful. Even here, in a position behind the front lines, and in the grey dimness, he could see what a terrible carnage had occurred. It did not leave him unmoved. But sentiment, for a soldier or a photographer, was a luxury to be enjoyed when the work was done. And his was only starting. Fast work it would have to be too. With the Rebels gone, the army would waste little time in clearing its dead from the field. Already Gardner was gagging on the stench. It hung so putrid and solid that he knew no burial party would linger over their duty.

  When he reached the sprawl of dead rebels, he paused for a while to consider them. Already some were bloated, their hands and feet twice their usual size, their faces black as any negro—one wore a fountain of bloodstains from throat to forehead, another, likely caught in the act of preparing to reload, had the end of a cartridge clamped between his teeth.

  The light came on steadily. Gardner hesitated, one hand on the rough bottom of his long beard. He thought it an odd matter that this same sun, responsible for blotting out all traces of individuality from a man, for staining and corrupting his face, should also be the agent for preserving his last earthly appearance forever. He placed the body carefully between two rebels, building a sort of breastwork of their corpses to hide the civilian from sight. Then he turned to the east and squinted at the wagon’s ponderous approach. A low, broken mist like a ghostly fence wreathed the torn earth. Except for the groans of the wounded, all was still. Then Gardner realized why his assistant moved the wagon so slowly. Even from many rods away, he could hear the faint clinking of the glass bottles of chemicals inside the wagon—it was a shivery, graveyard sort of sound, and for a moment it unnerved him, even more than the piteous complaints of the wounded.

  The moment passed. Gardner deemed it advisable not to remain near these particular dead. In an hour, he and Gibson could begin in earnest. But he knew there were portions of the field that contained more dramatic photographic possibilities. It was, after all, extensive, covering over a square mile from the woods and fields in the north to the fight at the creek bridge in the south. The day before, watching from the hillsides, he had seen that the fighting had been fiercest along the pike, in the vicinity of the little whitewashed church. And early reports had mentioned a great slaughter in a cornfield as well as along a sunken road. Later, should time permit, he would return here to make a study of the mutilated slave owner. Ha! If this day did not mark his break from that popinjay Brady, it would be no fault of Providence! Here was glory worthy of any man’s craft. And yet, when he considered the violations performed on this body, when he regarded the bloody pulp at the groin, all thoughts of glory seemed meaningless. But he who lives by the cruel hand dies the same.

  The shadow of Gardner’s horse fell on the dead man’s face, turning it as black as his Rebel comrades’.

  Jim whispered down. “If you’re quite finished rearranging bodies, Alex, I could use a last cup of coffee before we start.”

  Gardner nodded. By the time Jim had had his coffee, perhaps back at the hospital where the cooks would doubtless have pots on permanent boil, they’d know for certain that the Rebels had retreated. Then it would be time enough, and light enough, for glory.

  After walking a hundred yards south, the two photographers came upon a grim scene. Gardner was thankful for the slow appro
ach of the light, else he might have been duty-bound to record the misery of that foul barnyard. The wounded and the sleeping lay mixed in among the dead, so closely that the bodies formed one large body that groaned, wept, snored, vomited, cried out in agony—no foot of earth was uncovered but for the area around the surgeons’ tables. Large canvas tents greasy with shadows stood in the field outside the barnyard fence. Several wagons were being emptied of supplies—blankets mostly, but also bandages, bottles of pills, and liquids. Apart from the surgeons, the few men who were moving at all were moving slowly, as if fighting through molasses.

  As Gibson hitched their horse to a rail and headed toward a leaden-faced negro cook stirring a pot, Gardner stepped up to one of the operating tables. A ragged, pointy-jawed soldier lay there, his eyes like raisins pushed into lard. His thin lips either trembled or muttered a prayer, Gardner couldn’t tell. A sort of cone was placed over the soldier’s nose and mouth and some liquid dripped into it. Then the surgeon, a bearded man of middle years with a strong nose and prominent brow, both already besmirched with blood, took a double-edged knife from between his teeth and bent closer to his patient. Soon the surgeon’s head and that of his assistant, a very tall, long-limbed soldier in a ripped uniform, hovered so close over the anaesthetized figure that Gardner could not be sure who held the knife. Even when the sawing of the thigh began, it seemed that both men moved the implement. Gardner didn’t hear them speak at all. But when the sawing was done—a dull, disturbing sound that made Gardner grit his teeth—the surgeon and not the assistant turned with the leg in his hand and looked straight at the photographer.

  Ah, had he been beneath the cloth at that moment, with enough sun to let it stream through both lenses, Gardner knew he’d have captured a face that revealed the very meaning of warfare. True, it was an ordinary enough face in respect to the features—the nose and brow, though fine, were not exceptional, and sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes were sadly familiar in most men of the time. But the feeling behind the eyes, the sense of a barely controlled agony, made all the more remarkable because the eyes did not seem to take anything in! Oh, what a stereo he’d have made from that face. Though the surgeon looked right at him for several seconds, Gardner was convinced the man was not seeing him. He drifted like a sleepwalker to a tall pyramid of bloodied, fly-greasy limbs and rested the leg on top as if careful to maintain the balance of the whole. When he drifted back, he limped slightly, perhaps out of sympathy for the soldier whose leg he’d just removed. Gardner decided, then and there, that he’d find this surgeon again, either this day or the next, and get him to pose. But the dead had to come first.

  This thought brought the stench in even more powerfully. Over by the tents, a sound of retching, deeply drawn out, almost made Gardner ill himself. He pulled his flask from his hip pocket and took a long slug of whisky to cleanse his palate.

  He heard the drummers begin to call the troops to the day. Their rippling rhythm straightened the gravediggers up and stirred the able-bodied soldiers, who rose like spirits among the dead and wounded. Despite the preparations, Gardner heard rumours from hopeful soldiers that Lee had indeed retreated in the night. He found Gibson and said, “Let’s start here. We’ll just go back, take a few studies of dead soldiers and that unfortunate property owner, then go up to the front with the burial parties. I’m sure we can ask them to stop their work long enough to get our exposures.”

  Gibson grumbled something about wasting time, but Gardner ignored him. Maybe it was the whisky, or the rapidly improving quality of the light, but his confidence was riding high. Conditions could not have been better. No man in the country—certainly not that half-blind Brady back in New York waxing his moustache tips—was better qualified and ready for this chance. Except maybe Gibson and Timothy O’Sullivan, but they were both taking Gardner’s orders here. He knew, as well as Robert Owen himself had ever known the devilish machinations of the leisured classes, that he had enough time for everything if he just put himself in harness and set to work.

  Even so, Gardner started that ripe morning in haste. Gibson, now that he’d had his fortifying coffee, proved every bit as eager, and together the two men were like children after butterflies in a meadow, except these butterflies were already pinned and still. Gardner decided right away to use only his stereo camera. That way, the gallery would have the most options for selling prints—stereo views, cartes de visite, and the big Imperials Brady’s nobs liked so much. And Gardner didn’t intend to take more than a single exposure from each angle; there was just too much ground to cover.

  As soon as he’d settled on his first study—a Reb officer flat on his back with the brains spattered over his blackened face and his belly swollen like an observation balloon—he set Gibson to sensitizing the plates. Gardner knew it would be at least seven minutes before his assistant threw back the big tarp and scrambled out of the wagon, so he had just enough time to pick up a nearby rifle and stick it in the officer’s open hand. He couldn’t get the officer’s fingers closed around the stock—they were too stiff—but it was a useful touch nonetheless.

  The sun crept over the nearby tree line now, gushing light over the field, so Gardner fixed the camera and aimed it at the body. Then, with a long breath to calm himself, he stepped under the cloth and focused.

  And there the dead officer was, black-faced and swollen, his dirty grey uniform open at the breast, the rifle in his hand. Only, of course, he was upside down, and it seemed for a few seconds that the dead officer floated out of a torn cloud, a terrible vengeance in his cold rifle.

  Gardner ducked out from the cloth just as Gibson stepped backwards from the wagon with the plate fixed in its wooden holder. He shut the door and hurried over, his face tense.

  “Come on, man!” Gardner urged, knowing full well that even an extra second could dry the collodion and render the plate useless.

  “Do you want me tripping, Alex? I canna go any faster.” His voice was a strained rasp already, and Gardner thanked the Lord for it. Say what he would about the man’s cussed cantankerousness, James Gibson cared as much as Gardner did about getting the job done.

  Gardner took the plate holder from him. Then he moved the focusing frame out of the way and put in the holder—it took him a little longer than usual to attach it to the camera, his hands trembled so. But he drew another deep breath and slid the front panel out of the holder, exposing the plate to the inside of the camera. Now came the moment of truth! He removed the two lens caps and he almost swore that he could hear the light flooding through—it was like a torrent of water every time, though he knew well enough that he heard only the blood pounding in his temples.

  If the battlefield had been still earlier, it was frozen now as Gardner counted out the exposure. One, two, three . . . slow down, easy . . . four, five . . . go even, Alex, boy . . . eight, nine. Those fifteen seconds were the longest of his life. When the last number finally passed his lips, he replaced the lens caps and the holder’s front cover. Then he looked up.

  “Jimmy! Are you set?”

  It was a foolish, unnecessary question, but Gardner put it with a smile. In fact, he couldn’t wipe the joy off as he strode to the wagon.

  “Don’t be so daft, man,” Gibson said. “Just give me the plate.”

  Gardner handed it over carefully. “We’ll have to sink them all in glycerin till tonight. There’s no ee time to heat them now.”

  “Aye.” Gibson plunged back into the wagon, yanking the tarp behind him. Gardner could hear his assistant cussing a blue streak as he tied the tarp strings to his ankles, but he wasn’t worried. Gardner knew that safelight couldn’t be any safer even if he himself was the man working in it. Besides, he had to move the camera.

  So an hour passed, unchanged but for the increased activity in the field. Several burial parties—a few consisting of negroes—dragged Gardner’s potential studies away and placed them in shallow graves; individual soldiers out searching for comrades sometimes found them, picked them up, and moved away s
oberly to find whatever better resting places might be available. The photographer rushed from one body to another, all the while thinking that everything was happening too fast, that he couldn’t delay going to the front lines any longer—there were bound to be even better studies there—but how long before the routine procedures of the army destroyed them? In his excitement, he took little interest in the activity around him.

  Sometime before noon, however, Gardner witnessed a strange scene. A dozen yards to his left, a man in a fine suit and bowler, his hands in white gloves, was being threatened at knifepoint by a monkey-faced little fellow naked from the waist up. The two stood over the dead Rebel officer whose study had begun Gardner’s day. Cautiously, he moved closer.

  Monkey-face’s lips pulled back to reveal mostly gums. A lock of oily hair hung over one yellow eye. He held the knife in his fist. “You git yore dad blamed paws offa this one. It’s mine. Touch it again and you’ll be dead on the ground too.”

  The gentleman yawned as he reached into his breast pocket and removed a small pistol. His neat moustache quivered slightly. He held the gun straight in front of him, his arm fully extended.

  “I strongly suggest, my good man, that you find another officer.” He sniffed, and scowled. “There are certain to be plenty for all. But this one’s now the property of the Horace Greaver Embalming and Fine Casket Company.”

  Monkey-face brought the knifepoint so close to his face that it seemed he planned to put his own eye out. He squinted. “Greaver, you say? That the feller with the humpback? In the tent yonder?”