“That sounds mighty good. If a man could just stay healthy it might be possible to wait it out now. But that’s easier said than done. If only there was a little food. I think I could put up with the boredom and the other hardships if I just had something to eat.”
“Are you married, Tim?”
“No, I’m not, thank God. My ma died when I was born so it’s just Pa and me. I worry that he’s thinkin that I was killed maybe. I always wrote regular so he has to know by now that something has happened. You have to bribe the Rebs to get a letter mailed and not too many have the price. I feel sorry for the men that do have wives and children.”
“I wrote to my wife a week ago. I hope it isn’t an eternity until I can write again. This war has got to end soon . . . it’s just got to.”
“Listen, James, my tent mate died a few days ago. It’s just a hole in the ground with an old piece of canvas over top but if you want to share it you’re welcome.”
“I’m much obliged.”
Tim led the way between two rows of gopher hole shelters and when James got a look at his new home, the reality of his capture sunk in deep. He had no tolerance for self pity but he had finally gotten to the point where he had to ask God why he had come to the end of the earth at Andersonville. Maybe his luck had completely run out. He climbed down into the five-foot deep cavern, sat down, propped his elbows atop his knees and let his face drop into his hands.
“It happens to everybody in the beginning, James. I’ll leave you alone for awhile.”
James didn’t answer or even look up. Tim disappeared beyond the top of the hole. One word entered James’s head, lodged there, and took root; escape.
For the next two months, he spent the daylight hours walking the perimeter of the stockade for two reasons. The first was for the exercise and the second was to search for some weakness that he could exploit. He knew that time was working against him, tapping his strength, diminishing his chance of finding a way out. His tent mate, Tim, had fallen to the next stage of his incarceration. Sores dotted his thin body; teeth fell from rotten gums. He rarely left the hole anymore except when chased by his dysentery; sometimes he didn’t even bother then. He was decaying before James’s eyes and there was nothing James could do but watch him die. He knew that the same would eventually happen to him. By now his face was covered with beard; his hair was touching his shoulders and he was filthy from living in dirt. He had long since traded the brass buttons from his ragged uniform for a few small bites of something edible.
One small thing James did to help keep his sense of awareness intact was to follow the days and the months on a crude calendar carved into a piece of wood. On the morning of the last day of March he awoke from his usual restless sleep. Waking up in Andersonville, merciless as it was, proved even worse on that particular morning; first because he had been dreaming about having breakfast at home with his family before the war, and second, after looking across the gopher hole at Tim, James realized that his friend was dead. Another life carelessly thrown away, he thought, another young man who should still be alive but was not.
Tim was from New York. He had lived there with his father on a small dairy farm. Now he was just filler for another unmarked hole in the ground hundreds of miles from home. James made a mental note, optimistically promising to someday write to Tim’s father so that the man would at least know what had become of his brave soldier.
He scrounged a scrap of paper and wrote Tim’s name and home state on it. Then he took part of a shoestring from the dead man’s dilapidated brogans and tied the tag to a protruding toe. After the minimal preparation, he recruited another man to help bear Tim’s body to the dead house, which was right outside the stockade wall. As usual there was a line of men, two live with one dead in between, waiting for the guards to open the gate. Carrying out the dead was the only time a prisoner ever saw the free side of the stockade wall. Once, James watched a man who had helped carry out a body, lose his head at the sight of the open field and take off running. The Rebs shot him to pieces.
When the gate opened, the procession moved out toward the dead house. After delivering Tim’s body, James was on his way back when three men on horseback came across the bridge spanning the filthy creek that ran through the prison. Two of them were soldiers and the third was a coarse looking man in civilian clothing who was carrying a sawed off shotgun in his right hand. Waiting for the horses to pass in front of him, James stared at the civilian as if drawn by something familiar. Suddenly he knew what it was; the eye patch. The man wore an eye patch; the former overseer, the villain Tim had told him about. It was Farley Tabor.
As Tabor passed by, he stared back at James with a look of genuine hatred in his expression, but James did not know if Tabor recognized him. It had been over four years since they had seen each other and James looked very different now in his unkempt, undernourished condition. Seeing Tabor at the prison was unexpected but certainly not surprising. In fact, if James had held the responsibility of finding a place in the war that was suitable for Tabor, he couldn’t have thought of one better. With the slaves gone, he undoubtedly needed someone else to abuse.
James went back to the gopher hole and sat in silent resignation. He felt that he was ready to succumb to his circumstances. Even the thought of Polly and little James was failing to strengthen his will to go on. In spite of his lackluster spirit, he believed that any day the war could end and how sad it would be to die just before the final shot was fired.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Nine Lives
Just when hope had all but expired, a desperate opportunity came from the most unlikely source that James could have imagined. Late in the afternoon two guards entered the stockade, walked up and down between the rows of tents, peering into each one as they went. When they came to James’s hole they stopped. “Would you be Langdon?” asked a skinny farm boy in gray who was no more than sixteen. James nodded without looking up. “Come up outta that hole.”
“What for?” said James, still looking at the ground.
“Commandant sent us to fetch you.” That was odd, James thought. There was never any reason for Wirz to send for a prisoner, no reason at all. The Reb repeated the order and tapped James’s shoulder with the bayonet on the muzzle of his rifle. Passing on the notion to refuse and force the guard to shoot him, he crawled out of the hole and walked toward the gate ahead of his escort. When they got outside, there was Farley Tabor, sitting on his horse, grinning like Satan on Judgment Day. James saw something else he recognized: a coiled bullwhip hanging from a leather strap on his saddle.
To the farm boy Tabor said, “Get yourself a horse, Private, you’ll be comin with me.” Then he spoke to James, “Captain Wirz is tired a eatin army rations. I promised him squirrel stew for supper tonight. I ain’t got time to sit and wait for em so you’re gonna climb some trees and shake a few outta their nests.”
James knew immediately that it was all a lie. Prisoners were never let outside the wall for any reason except to remove the dead, and even if it were true, he was certainly in no condition to climb trees. James knew that wherever Tabor intended to take him he wouldn’t be coming back.
The farm boy soon returned with a mount. James was ordered to walk ahead of the horses, down the road, and into the woods. Glancing toward the treetops he saw many squirrel nests, but they passed them by. He kept on walking and before long, they had covered perhaps two miles.
Finally, Tabor called a halt and James turned to face him and the farm boy private. The black-hearted masochist lounged in the saddle and stared down at James as if he were setting the stage for a big performance. At length he said, “I got a little story to tell you, Private. I worked for many years as the overseer on Langdon Plantation. The owner was John Langdon, a good man and a good Southerner. Like all good men, he put his family first; gave them everything they needed and everything they wanted. He had this son that he treated like a king would treat a prince. He taught him all the things a boy needed to know to grow i
nto a fine gentleman. He saw to it that the boy had a good education. Because of John Langdon, his son would one day inherit a wonderful future. Now you would think that this boy would repay his father with loyalty and respect. You would think he would give his life before turning against his family.”
“I reckon I sure would have,” said the private.
“You and me both,” Tabor replied. “I never even knew my old man and my ma raised me in the same room of the Louisiana whorehouse where she did business, and I still stood by my homeland when trouble came. But this rich boy, this ungrateful son of a bitch, he turned traitor to his family and his country. He sided with what should have been his nigger lovin enemies. He ran out on his father when he was crippled, which, by the way, worried his mother into an early grave.”
Tabor was trying his best to get at James’s insides and he was succeeding magnificently. Technically, much of what the man said was true; deep in James’s heart, it was not. Still, it hurt and he wished that if Tabor was going to kill him that he would just shut up and do it.
“What would you do with a piece of shit like that, Private?” said Tabor.
“I reckon I’d shoot him,” was the reply.
“You ever shoot a man, Private?”
“No, sir. I only been in the army for a year. They stuck me here as a guard. Never got a chance to fight at the front.”
“Then I guess it would do you some good to shoot this traitor, rid the South of one more enemy.” The young man hesitated for a moment before saying, “Yes, sir.” He didn’t sound sure.
“Problem is, a bullet would be too quick and easy. I heard that the soldiers who caught this lowlife wanted to shoot him, too. Then they got a better idea. They brought him to Andersonville. Well now, I got a better idea. Seeins how he sides with the niggers, I figure he should be punished like a trouble makin nigger, and a trouble makin nigger gets this.” Tabor untied the leather strap and held the bullwhip out for James to see. “I’m gonna whip this traitor and if there’s anything left when I’m done, you can put a bullet in it.” Tabor got down from his horse and rummaged in his saddle bag for a length of rope. The farm boy sat his horse with a rifle across his lap.
James knew that he could not survive a whipping and even if he did he’d be finished with a bullet. Tabor advanced toward him. “You got anything to say before I carry out the sentence?”
“I won’t defend myself to the likes of you. Do what you will and get it over with.”
Tabor was not satisfied. He obviously wanted James to plead for his life. Maybe there was some advantage in that. “I think you talk so much because it helps you to forget your cowardice, Tabor.”
“What did you say to me?”
“You heard me. Beating on someone whose hands are tied makes you feel strong. Hunting an unarmed man with guns and dogs has you convinced that you’re brave. But you’re just a gutless coward. That’s why you are not at the front. That’s why you weaseled your way into that human pigsty, to fight against men who wouldn’t have the strength to fight back.”
The ploy worked. Tabor lost his self control and his judgment. He stood six feet away, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. Suddenly he threw his right fist into James’s jaw. The blow knocked James to the ground. By now it was dusk and very nearly dark in the woods. As James lay in a heap, Tabor drew back the whip. He snapped his wrist; the crack sounded like a gunshot, but it missed its target by a foot. Cursing profusely, he cracked the whip again. This time it struck James’s right hand but before Tabor could pull it back, James grabbed the end, wrapped it around his fingers and held on tight. With all his reserve, he yanked the whip and Tabor, whose grip also held firm, stumbled forward. A dead tree branch got tangled between his heavy boots. At least sixty pounds overweight, Tabor fell hard; face down on the ground. Ignoring the farm boy, James crawled on his hands and knees as fast as he could, climbed on top of the prostrate man, and wrapped the whip tightly around his throat.
Tabor kicked wildly and dug his fingers into the ground but the fall had knocked the wind out of him. If not for that, he could have rolled James off his back easily. Unable to fight back, in just minutes, he died by the whip he had lived by. James quoted the bible, saying, “The light of the wicked shall be put out.” The night was all dark for Tabor now.
James sat back and relaxed his grip. It was only then that he remembered the farm boy. He looked over and saw him silhouetted against the night sky. He was sitting perfectly still. Why hadn’t he joined in? Why hadn’t he shot James, saving Tabor’s life? James stood up and waited a moment for his knees to stop shaking. As he walked over to the silent soldier, he heard something hit the ground. The young man had dropped his rifle. “I hope you won’t kill me, mister.”
His voice quivered and James was pretty sure he was sobbing. “Of course I won’t kill you but I can’t help wondering why you didn’t kill me.”
“I couldn’t do that. I guess I’m the coward here. I ain’t never shot a man and I never want to. I was forced to join the army, that’s why I’m here. I just talked tough earlier because Tabor expected me to. I’m glad it didn’t come down to him makin me shoot you.”
“Not wanting to kill doesn’t make you a coward. It proves that you are a decent human being and that is something far more difficult to find these days. I’m very sorry that I had to kill Tabor.”
“He didn’t give you much choice. Maybe he had it comin. I seen him do some terrible things to the prisoners. My pa always said you reap what you sow.”
“Where are you from, Private?”
“Just outside Chattanooga. Pa and I raise hogs.”
“Well I am very thankful that I met you,” said James. “I consider that you saved my life. I have to get out of here. I’m taking Tabor’s horse. I’m afraid that I have caused you trouble though. What will you tell them when you get back?”
“I’m not goin back, I’m goin home. The war’s over. We get news every day. Gen’ral Lee is expected to surrender any time now. I reckon they won’t send anyone lookin for me. Why don’t you ride with me? You can stay with Pa and me til you get your strength back.” James thought it over.
“That’s a kind offer, Private.”
“You can call me Ely, Ely Anderson.”
“You can call me James. But the war isn’t over yet and you’re in gray and I’m in blue. That might cause a problem.”
“I got a flannel shirt and a pair of work britches in my saddle bag. You’re welcome to em.”
James realized that God had not abandoned him after all; proven by his escape from Andersonville. Meeting Ely was also a blessing. He changed into the civilian clothing and the two of them headed west. Hopefully, it would be some time the following day before Tabor’s body was discovered. By then they would be a long way from the prison. James was in desperate need of decent food and a bath, but the fresh air of the outside world was a vast improvement. They did not see a single soldier, blue or gray, during the ride to Chattanooga. It seemed like the war was already over.
TWENTY-NINE
Endings
It was mid-afternoon when they reached the farm where Ely lived with his pa. It was a modest little place but very well kept; even the hog pens sported a fresh coat of paint. Compared with much of the South, the farm seemed to have escaped the ravages of war.
Ely and his pa were good Christian folk and quite generous with their hospitality. Mr. Anderson was about the same age as James’s own father. He was a sinewy man with callous hardened hands and gentle blue eyes. But what impressed James the most was the older man’s reaction when he found out that his son had aided and abetted a Yankee soldier.
“I never did believe in secession and I don’t hold with slavery,” he said. “I am sorry for the man, Tabor, but my boy tells me that he would have killed you, James. You’re welcome here for as long as you like.”
It wasn’t hard to understand Ely’s temperament after meeting his pa. James found himself wishing that his own father shared some of Mr. Anders
on’s qualities. He had always believed that his father was a God fearing man but he also knew that the bible says man cannot serve two masters. That, James concluded, was the mistake John Langdon had made.
After a week of resting and eating to the point of feeling guilty, James was able to throw a respectable shadow again. He pleaded with the Andersons to allow him to work off his debt, but they would not hear of it. He relaxed on the front porch and wrote a long letter to Polly, which Mr. Anderson graciously offered to take to the post office.
On the 10th of April, after a hearty country breakfast, the Andersons set out for town to purchase supplies. By this time, James had become quite attached to his benefactors. As difficult as it was, he decided that when they returned, he would tell them he would be moving on. He had no idea where Sherman’s army was but he knew he needed to find it and rejoin his outfit.
James was in the barn tending to his horse when he heard the wagon coming down the road. Then he heard something else that made him hurry to the doorway to investigate. The horse and wagon were racing for the house like a fire engine heading for a blaze. Ely and his pa were whooping and hollering and raising enough dust for a stampede. James ran out to meet the two excited men without an idea as to what might have set them off.
The wagon had not come to a complete stop before Ely jumped off waving a newspaper, then holding it out so that James could see the front page. “Lee surrenders army of northern Virginia”, was the headline. James could hardly believe it was real. A warm, wonderful feeling came over him as he took the paper and read the whole story. Lee had surrendered to General U.S. Grant at a place called Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The ceremony had taken place at the home of Wilmer McLean. There were still Confederate armies in the field, the story related, but they were expected to capitulate soon. The Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis, and members of his cabinet had fled south and were being pursued by Union troops.
A Deeper Sense of Loyalty Page 26