“He has five children, ma’am,” Big Tennessee offers. “All boys.”
“Five? My goodness,” she says. “There’s five blessings right there.”
Sergeant Survant chokes back tears but manages to say, “Yes, ma’am, I miss them terribly.”
“I’m sure you do,” Mrs. Gardner says, smiling. “And, Stephen, you have to get better too. You have a mother waiting for you at home.” She turns to Big Tennessee. “Finish your tea. The two of you need to head back. Henderson granted me permission to take in a few guests in dire emergencies. A full hospital fits the bill, I’d say.”
Sergeant Survant notices something across the room.
“May I ask who that is?” He indicates a picture of a soldier on the mantel.
“My son,” Mrs. Gardner says. There’s a tinge of pride in her voice.
“Where is he?” Big Tennessee asks.
Mrs. Gardner pauses before answering. “He’s gone. He was nineteen when he was taken, almost three years ago. May ’62.”
“Where, ma’am?” Sergeant Survant asks.
“Near Richmond,” she says. “He was killed near Richmond.”
Big Tennessee lays his cup on the table. “I’m real sorry, ma’am, for your loss. I’m sure he was a brave and capable soldier.”
“And a fine son, ma’am,” Sergeant Survant adds.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice dropping off. “I’ll have Stephen back to you as soon as I can. He’s going to be fine.” Mrs. Gardner closes the door behind my friends and turns to find me staring wide-eyed at her. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Mama sent my shirt to you.”
Mrs. Gardner nods. “Colonel Jones wouldn’t allow shipments from the north into the Castle, and nobody knew how long he’d be in charge. So I had her send a couple of things to me.”
“It’s my favorite shirt.”
“Is it?”
“You told Mama,” I say.
“Told her what?” she asks, squinting like she’s puzzled.
“I’m here. I’m okay. That we needed clothes.” It takes a lot of effort, and I’m exhausted from fighting to get that many words out.
“Of course,” she says.
“Even though your son died in the war?”
“Stephen, worry about resting, getting better. Don’t concern yourself with what goes on between two mothers. Leave that for the two of us,” she says.
“My brother died in Kentucky, so she’s lost a son too. Just like you.”
“I didn’t know that,” she says. “She only mentioned you in her letter.”
* * *
Over the next week, several other men arrive at Mrs. Gardner’s house. She and Belle nurse us in her living room and kitchen. “Captain Henderson arranged for a steamship to deliver clothes, blankets, and shoes to Cahaba yesterday,” she tells us one afternoon as she passes through on her way to the kitchen.
“He seems to be a good man,” I tell her.
She stops for a second. “He is.”
Belle, standing at the end of the sofa, crosses her arms firmly. She glances toward the kitchen to make sure her mother can’t hear. “The shipment won’t help much.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Have you seen what the guards wear?”
“Not really.”
“They haven’t had new uniforms in months. They’ll end up with much of what was delivered.”
“How?”
“They’ll trade coats and shoes for rations. Your buddies from the north don’t know how cold it can get here.”
“It’s cold now.”
“It’ll get worse. Right now your friends want food more than warmth,” she says. “But when the weather turns—”
“That’s enough,” Mrs. Gardner says, entering with a tray of mugs. “The water bucket’s empty. Fetch some from the pump.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Belle says, and leaves.
“How are you feeling?” Mrs. Gardner asks.
“Fine,” I say. “Feeling much better, thanks to you.”
“I think it’s time for you to head back to your friends in the Castle.”
“Why?” I ask.
“I need to make room for others. I hear there are more on —”
“No,” I interrupt her. “Why are you helping Union soldiers? You have a good reason to hate us.”
“What can be done to bring my son back, Stephen? Nothing. I can’t make decisions for others. I can only control my own thoughts and actions.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
December 20, 1864
When I return to the prison, a group of men are sleeping beneath the rug from Mrs. Gardner’s living room. Every window in her house is bare. She’s taken down each curtain and given them as well.
Nobody’s immune from the bitter cold. The guards may get enough to eat, but they pace back and forth, their arms wrapped tightly across their chests, or rub their hands together briskly. The Deep South is not a harbor from cruel temperatures.
By mid-January, rations trail off, and we’re only getting a pint of cornmeal a day. Most of it is padded with ground corncobs. We’re lucky to get a quick bite of pork. The only times we feast are at night, in our dreams.
“What did you have to eat last night, Stephen?” Big Tennessee asks one morning as we’re still lying in the roost.
“That’s an easy one. But you have to guess it in ten tries,” I tell him.
“Plant or animal?”
“Plant.”
“Garden?”
“No.”
“Dessert?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it can’t be pumpkin pie because they come from gardens.”
“Correct.”
“Shrub?”
“No.”
“Tree?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have apple pie last night?” Big Tennessee asks with a wide smile.
“You are correct.”
“That’s one of my favorites,” he says. “I dreamed of venison stew with carrots, potatoes, and biscuits.”
“No butter?”
“Always fresh butter,” he replies. “That’s understood, isn’t it? I dreamed I walked all the way home and when I got there, I didn’t even hug my wife and kids. I headed straight for the root cellar and ate every potato we stored for the winter . . . raw.”
“Would she recognize you now, you think?”
“I doubt it,” he says, lifting his shirt. “She might mistake me for one of our two scarecrows and make me stand out in the garden.”
“There’s something I miss almost as much as food or Mother,” I say.
Big Tennessee turns over onto his elbows and looks at me real serious. “There’s something you miss that much?” he asks.
“My bugle,” I say softly. “Music was an escape. It took me away from all my troubles and worries.”
“Like what?”
“My father getting sick and slowly dying, my brother Robert’s death, and my uncle beating me. The songs I played carried me away from all that and filled my mind with joy, at least for a while. I guess that’s why I got so good at playing it. Then, when Henry Dorman died holding my bugle, I thought I’d never want to touch it again or play another note.”
“Why?”
“It caused his death.”
“It didn’t cause Henry’s death, Stephen,” Big Tennessee says. “Henry wanted to die. He said so before he walked toward the middle of the fort. You know that, right? I was there and heard him.”
“I know that now, after I’ve had so much time to think about it. But that’s not how I felt at the time. I left the bugle on the ground at Sulphur Branch and walked away from it. I wish I had it back now.”
* * *
As winter marches on, a bitter cold swallows the prison, and more and more of us get sick. Corporal Horton Hanna spends three weeks in the hospital and comes back looking better than he ever looked in camp. “At least it was warm there,” he says. “Out of the cold wit
h a roof over my head made all the difference. It almost makes me want to get sick again.” He sounds half serious.
One Ohio man lacks the strength to turn over or sit up on his own. His breathing is shallow and quick. A sergeant comes over with a few buddies to see if they can take him to the hospital. “Leave him where he lies,” his friend demands. “He does not want to be taken to the hospital.”
“He’ll die for sure if he’s left here,” the sergeant insists.
His friend covers him with another blanket. “Philip, do you want to go to the hospital?” one of them asks. He puts his ear near Philip’s mouth in order to hear his reply. “He says no. He doesn’t want to go to the hospital. He stays right where he is.”
We often pass the time by betting on lice races. We take a silver plate and set it on the ground. We put three or four of the critters in a cup and on the count of three, the cup is turned upside down over the center of the plate. When the cup is lifted, the first louse to reach the edge is declared the winner.
We sprinkle their backs with different colors. We grind charcoal, cornmeal, and dried leaves to a powder. It’s entertaining to see those small specks of black, tan, and orange race for the edge of the plate.
“I bet a piece of cornbread on the black one,” a man might say.
“My shirt says the tan one will whip,” another will answer.
“Gathering wood on the plain one,” a third man may yell.
Today, betting is at fever pitch. A man places the plate near Philip’s head, inches from his nose. “Philip, you want to watch?”
Philip nods ever so slightly.
“One, two, three,” the sergeant counts, and turns the cup upside down onto the center of the plate.
“Before I pick the cup up and release the critters, which one do you pick, Philip?” the sergeant asks.
“Tan,” Philip manages to say as he lifts his head.
Sergeant lifts the cup, and the lice crawl around in circles for several seconds before heading toward the rim. Eventually, the tan one crosses the edge and falls to the ground.
“You win, pard,” the sergeant says, patting his sick friend’s shoulder. “You win.” Philip smiles, lays his head down on the blanket, and closes his eyes. He never opens them again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
January 18, 1865
Today we get word that prison command is changing immediately. Rumors spread quickly that some of our freedoms may be taken away. Will letters to and from home be stopped? Will Mrs. Gardner be told to keep her books at home? What about the food she occasionally surprises us with?
We are told nothing beyond “Captain Henderson has been reassigned and Colonel Jones is in charge.” Now the new commander is strolling the compound, a guard at each side. One escort signals toward the cooking area, but their words are too low for me to hear. From time to time the colonel kicks the foot of a soldier who is so still and lifeless, he appears dead.
A guard shows the colonel how the flow of water makes its way through the center of the camp and ends at the privy. They continue walking through the compound, and as they near me, I hear the colonel say, “It’s crowded, but I’d rather be here than in Andersonville, Georgia.”
“We get their escapees from time to time,” the taller guard says. “They’re happy when they end up here.”
“I believe it one hundred percent,” the colonel says.
The colonel makes immediate changes to the prison—for the worse. Shipments of clothes stop arriving. Those without shoes go barefoot across frozen ground. Mrs. Gardner no longer comes into the compound to see how she can be of assistance. It doesn’t stop her from meeting me at the hole, but that becomes infrequent too.
“He might forbid me from coming inside the prison,” she says one day as she passes pieces of pumpkin pie through the hole in the wall, “but he cannot control me outside those walls.”
“Aren’t you afraid of getting shot?” I ask.
“Humpth,” she answers. “I’m not afraid of the guards. Colonel Jones is as bad to the guards as he is to the prisoners.”
Under Colonel Jones’s command, we are colder, hungrier, and more ready for the war to end than ever.
“One heck of a ‘summer war,’” Sergeant Survant says in a rare lighthearted moment. “It’s been four summers now, and we’re headed for a fifth. Nobody thought the Seseches would last this long.”
“Word is the blockades are working,” says a fresh fish.
“Makes sense. We’re getting less and less food,” Big Tennessee offers. “Less food for the guards means no food for us.”
He’s right. Six months of almost no prisoner exchanges have meant the rebs have more and more mouths to feed.
After William Peacock’s recent trip to the hospital, many of us have taken him under our wings to make sure he gets home alive. “If I die, my parents will have lost all five sons to the war,” he said today. “We lost two of my brothers the first fall, another the following spring, and then a fourth last summer.” He’s so thin, I can barely remember the stout boy he was a year ago in Indiana. He says he weighed one hundred eighty pounds then and was strong as an ox. Now, in late January, and after three trips to the hospital, he’s as helpless as a newborn calf.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
March 2, 1865
March brings warm temperatures to Cahaba, along with rain. The storms begin slowly, like a pot of water wanting to boil. First, a fine, misty rain soaks everyone to the bone. Rain soaks everything: the ground, our skin, clothes, and fires.
The rains become steady, and cooking is impossible. We huddle over the wood and do our best to light tiny pieces of dried grass and leaves to start the fires. The wood’s too wet. The ground inside the prison turns to mud. Castle Morgan becomes a pigsty. Our feet sink into the ground up to our ankles, and our legs feel as anchored as fence posts.
Nobody moves in the compound unless absolutely necessary. Some choose not to move even when necessity calls. We answer nature’s need where we are or trudge only to the trench and let the flow take it on out to the Alabama River.
After three straight days of rain, rats start abandoning their holes along the riverbank and make their way inside Castle Morgan. The rats zigzag past groups of prisoners, dodging attacks as the men try to catch them for supper. Six months of rancid pork and thin corncob mush makes me look at the rats in strange ways. The mud slows them down a bit, and we manage to catch a few. But even with the windfall of fresh meat, we pray the rain will stop. The water chills us through.
The one silver lining in the sky of gray is that the lice are held in check. By the fourth of March there are no signs of graybacks in Castle Morgan.
Sergeant Survant sees the Alabama River is rising within feet of our eastern wall. When night falls on March fourth, the river is inside the compound and captures the privy, the lowest point in the prison. The roosts along that wall are threatened, too.
By morning the river has seized half of our ground. Men sit hip-deep in water as it passes slowly over their legs. The water swirls past shivering soldiers and flows out the southwestern wall.
The top levels of the roost are crammed with men because they are the only sections that remain above water. Not an inch of air can be found between anyone there. The sick, too ill to stand, are now forced to muster enough strength to sit up or drown.
Thick raindrops pelt our heads, making it difficult to hear. One guard yells at the top of his lungs, “You can cross the deadline and rest against the wall. Don’t lean on the gates.” We prop the sickest against the walls, shoulder to shoulder so they won’t fall over.
“Would you ask Colonel Jones if we can leave for higher ground?” Sergeant Survant asks.
By midafternoon, a concession is made. Private Johnny Walker, from the Ohio 15th selects a team of eight men to gather timber and scraps of wood. They grab everything they can get their hands on and bring it inside the prison.
“The whole town is flooded,” one of the men reports u
pon his return. We drag everything they collect to the center of the yard and create a shallow island. As long as the river stops rising, one large group of men can sit on the pile of debris to stay dry.
By evening, every inch of land is covered by a foot of water. The only places to get out of the cold water are on the top shelves of the roost or on the makeshift island.
Those on the island sit up, back to back, or risk slipping into the water. In morning’s first light, the men in the roosts rotate. Men elbow one another and punches are thrown to gain one of the spots where sleep can be peaceful. In the daylight we can see that the river has risen more. Now, at its lowest point, the water in the prison is knee-high.
Some are exhausted to the point that they can no longer stand. Sitting means only our shoulders and heads are not submerged.
“We’ll get the colonel to let you out until the water recedes,” the sergeant of the guards says.
“Where will we go?”
“There are a couple of hills two hundred yards southeast of here,” he explains. “They will hold all of you.”
When the sergeant returns, he looks pale. The expression on his face says it all. We know the answer. “I’m sorry . . . ,” he begins. “The colonel denied the request.”
Caleb Rule, who was with us at Sulphur Branch Trestle, tries to reason with him. “If you opened the gates and gave us permission to walk home, none of us could do it. Heck, we’re in no shape to walk to Selma.”
The guard nods. “I know,” he mutters. “I know.”
“Did you tell the colonel that?”
“Yes.”
“And . . .”
“He said every last one of you could die in here, for all he cares. I’m sorry. Fifty guards signed a petition for you to be moved, and he still refused.”
We appreciate the guards’ kindness, but it feels like the last breath of air has been sucked out of us. Caleb Rule flashes the palm of his hand to thank the guard, and walks away.
Early the next morning we hear horses neighing just outside the prison wall. We watch as, one by one, each guard leaves his post from around the top perimeter. We hear the horses ride off.
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