by Alyssa Cole
“It’s a rattrap!” someone called out. “Are you pulling our legs?”
Ewan held the trap up higher for everyone to see. “Yes. It is. No. I’m not.” He looked around at the gaunt men. “We eat rabbit, we eat squirrel, we eat possum—why not rat? It’s the only game willing to enter this reeking stockade.”
There was an uproar but Ewan could sense when the men began to think realistically about their situations. “Believe me, I’d prefer roast chicken to roast vermin. But this is a matter of survival.”
“And how much are you going to charge us for this survival?”
Ewan took a moment to survey the crowd. The interest that brightened the men’s eyes made his stomach turn. This was what they had been reduced to: eager to scrabble over rat soup. He stepped forward and handed the trap to the man in front of him.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean?” the man asked suspiciously.
“I’m not charging anything. Whatever you all have right now you probably need it a sight more than I do. So, I will give the traps freely to several men, with one caveat—they must be used communally. No one person can own the trap or the rats it catches. They must be shared.”
“And what if someone doesn’t follow those rules?” another man asked.
Ewan simply stared at him. He didn’t frown or smile or make any move of aggression. But he stared long after it had grown uncomfortable, until the man’s lizard brain kicked in and realized that it was in a predator’s sights. The man looked away.
Ewan turned to the crowd, and he let himself smile this time. “I assure you the greed won’t be worth having that question answered.” There were some grumbles, but no one challenged him. “Keeley, can you help me distribute these?”
“I can’t believe you’re giving our hard work away,” he grumbled. Ewan refrained from reminding Keeley that “our” was the incorrect pronoun, as Ewan had sourced the materials and constructed the traps himself.
“Good will is more valuable than greenbacks, these days,” Ewan said in a low voice. His intent wasn’t mercenary, but that didn’t make the statement any less true.
“What’s going on here? Prisoners aren’t allowed to congregate!” There was a ripple in the crowd as a few of the new guards began to push their way toward Ewan. Ewan surreptitiously handed out the last of the traps to one of the prisoners as they dispersed.
“Nothing going on here,” Ewan said, holding up his empty hands. One of the young soldiers ran up to him and grabbed him by the collar. Ewan, ever assessing, ran down the list of ways in which he could badly hurt the reckless fool—a quick turn to break his wrist, a chop to the throat to collapse his windpipe, a grab and reversal of that loosely held rifle. It would be so very easy to make the boy cry out in pain, but the easier something was to do, the more one should refrain from it.
“I never seen someone’s arm bend like that without breaking, but you got that Reb to talk. You’re a middling soldier, McCall, but it appears you can be of assistance to the Union in another way. . . .”
Doling out pain had come so easily to Ewan that the Army of the Potomac had seen it as the only worthwhile thing about him.
He held his hands up at his sides.
The boy sneered, grabbed Ewan by his left arm, and pinned it behind his back. It was a clumsy maneuver, and Ewan helped the boy, tucking his arm back, pretending to grimace in pain. No need to embarrass him—a man with wounded pride was likely to act out unexpectedly. The boy angled Ewan toward the watch house, and then he wished he had struggled. There stood Cahill, staring at him with the same disinterested hatred that he’d last seen when the Union medics had carried the bleeding man out of the interrogation room.
Ewan’s instinct was to stop struggling and meet that gaze, but he rejected that. “What’re you holding me for?” he asked the young soldier, playing at shaking off the guard who held him. If he had actually intended to, the boy would be on his back. “Can’t a man talk to his compatriots without being hogtied?”
The boy strengthened his hold and Ewan stopped thrashing.
“Cross,” Cahill called out. “Come report what just happened with prisoner . . .”
“What is your name?” the guard said with a nudge.
“Homer,” he said. “John Homer.”
The guard called out the name more loudly, and from the corner of his eye he saw Cahill nod and go back into the watch house.
The guard released his arms. “You done caught the attention of the wrong man,” he said with a coarse laugh as he pushed past Ewan.
Something ugly and violent rose in Ewan, the urge to run up on Cahill, to hurt him—again. It seemed Ewan hadn’t exorcised himself of that particular demon, the one that was summoned by the sight of heartless men who had no qualms about destroying everything good in this country. Some in the Confederacy were motivated by their own twisted logic, but others, like Cahill, simply sought a venue to cause pain.
Perhaps you should sell mirrors instead of rattraps. Sometimes he hated his sensibility, wanted to rip it to shreds along with everything else, but that was why the same sensibility was so necessary. The uncomfortable itch that had tormented him since childhood stirred in his brain in a maddening whisper that presaged nothing good.
Ewan balled his fists at his sides and turned on his heel. He had no time for anger or what could come of it. It seemed his timetable had just been sped up: Cahill either already knew who Ewan was and that he was lying, or would figure it out eventually. He hurried across the yard, heedless of the cool spring rain that sent men scurrying for cover. The officers’ quarters, where he should have been staying instead of in the tents with the enlisted men, loomed up before him. He’d avoided any mention of his actual standing and didn’t intend to reveal himself, but he needed a quick change. If the guards were on the lookout for a bushy red beard later, and he knew there’d be a later, it would help to be clean-shaven. It wouldn’t buy him much time, but every bit would help.
He walked in. “I need a shave,” he said to the man who operated the rudimentary barber’s chair in the corner of the room.
“This is for officers only, boy,” the man said, a frown pulling at his jowly face.
“I know rank is quite important to a certain type of man,” Ewan said. “But I’m going to have to be quite rude and inform you that I outrank you. So much so that I could make things very uncomfortable for you if necessary. All I’m looking for is a shave and I’ll be on my way.”
The man looked at him hard, and Ewan let everything inside of him go still, like he had when serving his country, by giving up his very humanity. Let this bastard deny him a shave—
Ewan closed his eyes against the buildup of anger and frustration. He thought of his mother’s warm smile.
Breathe in. Breathe out. That’s it, my boy.
He thought of Malcolm spinning a tale. Of Donella looking up at him with pride when he’d donned his Union blues. Of Marlie and her bright two-tone eyes.
He heard the sound of a chair being scraped back. “Have a seat.”
Ewan sat, and the man began gathering his makeshift barber’s tools.
“I’m guessing you don’t feel inclined to tell me who you served under or what battles you been a part of,” he said. Ewan had passed this man hundreds of times in the prison camp, but now the man narrowed his eyes as if really seeing him for the first time.
“No,” Ewan said. “I’m not much for small talk.”
The barber nodded, a grim smile on his face. “Your kind usually aren’t, I suppose. I have to say I’m surprised to see you at this place if you’re what I think you are.”
“Small talk,” Ewan said, and the barber began silently clipping.
Ewan thought about the man’s insinuation as the dull scissors tugged at his beard. There was no good reason for him to still be at Randolph. He could have escaped if he wanted—he had before. But he’d been in various Confederate prisons for over a year now. He supposed it just went to show that he reall
y wasn’t cut out for war. That had to be it—there was no other reason for a man capable of escape to rest on his laurels while his country had need of him. None at all.
He closed his eyes against the sense memory of the shock that jolted his leg when he slammed his boot into Cahill’s knee. He could still feel it, and the vicious pleasure he had gotten from it, if he thought about it too hard.
He focused on the room around him. A pile of muddy clothing was heaped in the corner. There was dirt caked deep under his barber’s fingernails, despite the clean scrubbed skin of his hands. He heard the clomp of boots as a warm towel went over his beard; it didn’t have the fresh barber scent he was used to, that was for certain, but he could bear it.
“We’ve done it,” the officer who entered said jovially, performing a little jig, clapping the barber on the back. He recognized the man as the one who had been talking to Marlie’s Tobias—as one of the officers who had quarreled over the shovel during the construction of the pipeline.
The barber gave the new arrival a quelling look and silently shooed him away, before adjusting the towel to block Ewan’s view. Just before his sight was blocked Ewan took in the mud caked on the man’s boots and pants, his hands dyed red with clay.
Ewan smiled beneath the towel. It was the little details that made all the difference.
CHAPTER 5
“What do you mean you can’t go back to the tent? The temperature is dropping and it’s gonna be colder than a witch’s tit, spring be damned.” Keeley handed Ewan his haversack, as he’d been asked, then shoved his hands into his pockets and shuddered.
“I’m afraid I can’t hang about here any longer,” Ewan said quietly from where he squatted beneath one of the lone remaining trees. Campfires opened up spots of light in an uneven pattern across the yard and he backed farther into the shadows as he checked the sack for the only item he’d really wanted: The Enchiridion, with Marlie’s letters folded safely between its pages. Keeley had nothing else with him, which concerned Ewan. “I think some officers are going to scarper tonight, and I intend to join them. That’s why I told you to bring your things, too.”
“You make it sound as if leaving is a simple task,” Keeley said.
Ewan wouldn’t call escaping simple, exactly, but it was certainly manageable. He simply hadn’t tried too hard, for reasons he couldn’t examine too closely. He was getting out and returning to his duty now, though. That was what mattered. Keeley would join him.
“What if these men are caught, and you’re caught with them?” Keeley asked. He stopped, and his thin frame was wracked by an awful, phlegmy cough. “Besides, we have a pretty good thing going. We can ride out the war and—”
Ewan’s firm shake of the head stopped the man’s wishful thinking. “Whatever you’re saying right now is motivated by fear, not logic. Be sensible, Keeley. You’re sick and getting sicker.”
“When the darkies come back, your freak-eyed lady can give me something to make everything right. They have to let them back in sometime, right?”
Ewan gritted his teeth against the way Keeley blithely dismissed the people he expected to provide his salvation, and against the thought that if Marlie did return, he wouldn’t be there.
All for the best, his mind said, but his chest cramped in a way that belied that.
“Keeley, there’s no guarantee of their return or that she’ll be able to help you if they do,” Ewan said, but he saw his answer in Keeley’s dull eyes and closed-off expression. “Or of riding out the war here, for that matter.”
“Well, there’s no guarantees out there, either,” Keeley said, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. He shrugged. Twisted his lips.
Ewan sighed. His mind was spinning counterarguments, but common sense was no match against stubbornness and Keeley was as stubborn as they come. “You can have my tent and bedroll. Dig into the ground at the head of the bedroll and you’ll find a metal tin with some greenbacks to use if these guards ever come to understand that their purpose here isn’t to kill us.”
Ewan didn’t have much hope in that coming to pass, but he’d taken out what he thought he’d need for safe passage and could only hope that Keeley would be able to make use of the rest of it.
Keeley nodded, then reluctantly stuck out his hand, which Ewan grasped firmly.
I wish he would . . . I wish . . .
He stopped. He’d learned long ago that wishes were about as useful as a holey fishing net. Wishes hadn’t kept his mother and siblings safe from his father. Ewan’s logic had done that. And though he should have regretted how things had turned out back then, the day his father had taken his rifle, walked out into the woods, and never come back had been one of relief for him.
“Be safe, Red.”
Ewan nodded but didn’t offer the same platitude. He knew Keeley was already searching for the next man who could be useful to him instead of thinking of how he could be useful to himself. Ewan didn’t judge him for his weakness—not much at least.
Keeley stumbled off, and Ewan felt a pang of guilt as the man stopped and looked helplessly about him, then continued on until he melted into one of the clusters of prisoners. Ewan pulled his gaze away; he had to keep track of those who held the key to his success, not those who wouldn’t even believe in the possibility of their own.
The barber and the other officer sat around a nearby fire, close to the darkness that rimmed the yard. Two other officers sat with them. He could hear their crude jokes, and then the songs they sang, but as it grew closer to time for everyone to retire—and for the nightly shift exchange for the prison guards—he noticed first one face disappear from around the firelight, and then another.
Ewan crept in the shadows between fires, keeping his steps silent. For a moment, he was a child again, creeping past his father as the man stared bitterly into the distance. Those years of living like a skittish cat had trained him well—no one paid heed as he passed the various groups of prisoners. Men talked and bluffed and gambled as they did every night at Randolph. Guards lazed about, as drowsy and ready for sleep as those they kept watch over.
Ewan walked on, toward an area that made the best sense for digging an escape tunnel. It was one he’d scouted out himself, although digging out had been one of several plans he’d come up with. Each plan had its dangers, but digging had also required a group of conspirators and he hadn’t trusted anyone besides Keeley.
Trust?
Ewan’s trust only extended so far. Keeley knew nothing about him. If they were ever to meet again, the only thing the man who had been his closest friend in the prison would be able to recall was his name, maybe, and his restless energy. No one really knew Ewan, and that was for the better.
As he approached the looming wall of the stockade at the farthest point of the camp, he caught sight of shadows moving within shadows. It wasn’t a trick of the eye—it was the possibility of freedom.
The men had dug at the point farthest from the watch house. When the guard’s shift change occurred, they had their backs to this point for the longest period of time, and it took the longest for their replacements to arrive.
Well done, officers.
“And to think, I was worried about losing nearly a stone,” one man whispered. “But if it helps me shimmy through that tunnel, it’d be worth it. Come on, men. Abe’s waiting on us.”
Ewan crouched in the darkness, close enough to make out the men’s figures as the first man crawled down into the hole and began making his way through. A joke broke the silence between them every now and then, but not the tension. Forcing oneself into the earth driven only by the hope of emerging on the other side was a mad type of bravery, even for a man well-acquainted with the threat of death.
“Okay, who’s in next? Down you go, Hendricks.”
Ewan glanced about in the darkness, checking to see that none of the new shift guards had arrived early or none of the old shift guards had turned back. He was hoping the following men would move at a quicker clip, or he’d be in tro
uble. That was when he heard it.
There was a quick, sharp groan from the direction of the escaping prisoners. Not one made by men, but by wood. He heard something snap loudly—rope?—and then a more prolonged groan.
“Shit, it’s coming down,” someone shouted, fear overriding the imperative for quiet. Ewan couldn’t see it, not in this darkness, but he could hear the steady groan and the popping of twisted fibers and came to the only logical conclusion: A section of the stockade was falling. It appeared that although the men had had the sense to pick the perfect place to escape, they had chosen to dig near a point of support in the hastily erected wooden fence.
“Jesus. Run!”
There was an ungodly moan and then an impact that echoed through the camp loudly enough to wake the dead. Dirt and debris carried by the fence’s impact with the ground prickled against Ewan’s face.
The attempt was over, it seemed . . . or was it? The officers had scattered as soon as the fence began to fall, but now a section lay on the ground, leaving a wide-open path. A cool breeze pushed its way through the opening, cutting through the stench of the camp and funneling the scent of pine to Ewan.
He didn’t think. One moment he was crouching, the next he was sprinting forward, hopping onto the remains of the section of fence and running along it toward freedom. His execrable excuse for shoes tapped loudly against the wood with each long stride, and the logs rolled this way and that as he ran, forcing him to readjust his balance with every step. Behind him he heard a commotion. A gunshot rang out and he wasn’t sure if it was aimed at him or some other unlucky prisoner.
Think only of the next step. And then the next.
He hopped down onto solid earth, and relief shuddered up his leg at the contact. The ground was no different from what he’d just been crouching on, and he was still deep in Confederate territory, but he felt the fury of Athena springing from Zeus’s forehead surge through him as he leapt into freedom. He made no clarion call to the sky, however; he was no god or goddess, just a mortal who would now have to cower and crawl his way toward Union-held territory.