South by Southwest

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Hey, what you got in that jar?” One of the soldiers handed his musket to the man standing next to him and ran over, snatching the glass that had dropped beside Ebenezer’s feet. Zeb sat there, not saying a word, just staring at those muskets pointed at him.

  “Hey!” The soldier licked his fingers. “It’s molasses.”

  A burly man with stripes on his sleeves hurried over and swiped the glass from the younger soldier’s hand. “I’ll take that, Harker,” he said.

  “Aww, Sergeant . . .”

  “Back in line.” The sergeant could scarcely get his thick fingers inside the lip of the jar. As he licked the last of the molasses, he looked down at Zeb Hogan and said, “I warrant the war’s over for you, Reb.”

  “I’m no Reb,” Zeb Hogan said.

  The sergeant snorted. “No, I reckon you ain’t. Not no more. You don’t even have a gun.”

  “Must have lost his cannon, Sergeant,” a red-bearded man said.

  “Yeah, that’s right, Hopkins,” said another. “Rebs ain’t got no fight left in them.”

  Another Federal picked up the haversack, tossed the map aside, and shook the empty haversack before dropping it to the dirt in disgust.

  “I am an escaped prisoner of war from the Florence Stockade,” Zeb said, but nobody seemed to hear or care what he said. “You with Sherman?”

  The sergeant threw the empty jar away and fished a piece of jerky from the pocket of his light blue trousers. As the big sergeant bit into the jerked beef, he tapped Zeb Hogan’s shoulder with the barrel of his musket. “On your feet, Reb.”

  Zeb grunted, but stood, still proclaiming that he wasn’t a Rebel soldier.

  “You’re wearing Secesh britches,” the red-bearded soldier named Hopkins said. “Artillery britches. And you’re traveling with your chattel.” He hooked his thumb at Ebenezer.

  “I tell you,” Zeb said, “I escaped from the Stockade. This slave . . . he’s a runaway . . . helped me to escape.” A sudden desperation appeared in his face, in his voice. “You’ve got to tell Sherman about the Stockade. It’s in Florence, maybe seventy or so miles east of here. You’ve got to free our boys up there. It’s wretched. It’s terrible. Thousands of our men are there. Hardly any shelter. Disease. Our men are dying there every day.”

  “Uncle Billy knows all about that Florence prison,” Hopkins said.

  “It ain’t no Andersonville,” Harker said.

  “It’s worse!” Zeb snapped. Frustration accented his voice. “I tell you I’m with the 16th Wisconsin. I was captured after Atlanta. Who are you with?”

  Hopkins said they were with the 123rd New York.

  About that time, Ebenezer found his voice. “He’s telling y’all the truth!”

  They all studied the black then. Unable to match their stares, Ebenezer looked down at his muddy brogans.

  “Where’d you enlist?” the sergeant asked.

  “Madison,” Zeb said.

  “Where’d you fight?”

  “My brother fought at Pittsburg Landing and Corinth,” Zeb said. “He was furloughed, and . . . well, I taken his place after he caught some sickness and died. I took a steamer to Clifton, Tennessee, then marched to Georgia. Come on, guys . . . you gotta believe me. I was marching with you boys.”

  “Which brigade?” the sergeant asked.

  “First. Under Force. Third Division. Seventeenth Corps.”

  Silence. Harker looked at the sergeant, his eyes full of questions.

  “We might as well take him back to Columbia, Sarge,” Hopkins said finally. “Tell the captain we didn’t find no Rebs on this road. I mean, there ain’t no sense in us missing all the fun that’s gonna be had back in that town.”

  “Yeah,” another one said. “We can lock him up in one of them churches.”

  “That big brick one we passed,” Harker said.

  “Fetch somebody from the 16th Wisconsin,” Hopkins suggested. “They’ll recognize him, or he’ll be on his way to one of our prison camps.”

  “All right,” the sergeant said. “Let’s march.”

  When Ebenezer started to go with them, Redbeard pushed him aside. “Not you, boy.”

  Hopkins stared at the slave, no friendliness in his face. “We got enough slaves following our Army. Run along, boy, you’re free. But you can’t come with us.”

  Stunned, Ebenezer watched them march down the road, muskets still trained on Zeb. For a moment, he couldn’t move, trying to let Hopkins’s words sink in, not believing them, but fear struck him as the Federals, and Zeb Hogan, started to disappear. He fetched the map they’d left on the ground and stuck it in the haversack, which he tossed over his shoulder, and then he took off, following the soldiers and their prisoner at a distance.

  * * * * *

  Columbia was nothing like Ebenezer remembered. He recalled the state capital as elegant. Real pretty—hilly, blue skies, and rich gardens. What he saw that day sent a shiver up his spine. In the gloaming, one Federal soldier galloped right past him, dragging a pig behind him and brandishing a silver plate in his free hand, his haversack bulging with who knows what. Ebenezer hurried to catch up with those soldiers of the 123rd New York, but before he could get close, a bunch of Negroes caught him and threw him against a stack of smoldering cotton bales in the middle of the street.

  “The jubilee!” cried a bald man whose breath reeked of rum.

  “Massah Abraham, he made us free!” yelled a younger man.

  “Let go of me,” Ebenezer said. “I need to catch up to those soldiers!”

  “You gonna j’in the fight?” a third person said, and Ebenezer realized this was a woman. She smiled and held out a brown jug. “This here boy’s gonna j’in the fight. I reckons he needs some courage to celebrate.”

  About ten men—though to Ebenezer it felt like a dozen times that number—encircled him. The woman came closer, giggling, her breasts about to come loose from her blouse. Two men grabbed Ebenezer’s arms, pinned them behind his back, while another took hold of his head and pried his mouth open. Ebenezer tried to shake his head, tried to scream, twist, bite. Yet that jug of rum came closer. They had let his legs free, however, so, as much as he hated to do it, Ebenezer kicked out at that smiling woman, spilling the rum, and her along with it.

  That tore it. She let loose with a curse, and the big bald man sent his fist right into Ebenezer’s face, splitting his lips. Rough hands threw him onto the cobblestone road. The heavy jug flew, caught him in the head as he tried to regain his feet. He saw a flash of colors—red, orange, white—as he fell on his face. The jug shattered, and he heard the freed, drunken slaves shouting, cursing, closing in. Biting back the pain, he rose on unwieldy legs and took off, weaving down an alley.

  He quickly discovered the slaves weren’t the only ones drinking, celebrating, becoming more and more unruly. Ebenezer hid when he spotted some Bluecoat soldiers coming out of a house. One of them waved a torch in his right hand and a quarter-full bottle in his left, singing:

  Hail, Columbia,

  Happy land.

  If I don’t burn you,

  I’ll be damned.

  The man tossed the torch back inside the house, and Ebenezer took off running, his leg muscles now cooperating with the rest of his body. Everywhere he turned, he saw cotton bales aflame and the fires spreading as the wind kicked up. A girl, maybe six years old, stood on the corner, crying for her mama, her papa, holding a doll in her hand. No one stopped to help her. Ebenezer wanted to, but he knew better, knew his place. A black boy helping a white child? The citizens of Columbia would have killed him. Maybe the Union soldiers would have, too. Besides, he had to find Zeb.

  He kept looking for a brick church. At one corner building, he saw a frightened man passing out pails. He thought those containers would be used to help fight the fires, but no. Instead, while two big slaves were being forced to hold whiskey barrels on their shoulders, the Bluecoats, singing and laughing, were using the pails to dipper out the whiskey.

  Madness, Ebenez
er thought. Everyone here has gone mad.

  Finally Ebenezer saw the church steeple, ran up to the building, only to slide to a stop when he spied Union soldiers, carrying torches, surrounding a man on the doorsteps. It was a brick building, but these soldiers hadn’t been the ones who had captured Zeb Hogan.

  “We aim to burn the church where you traitors signed the articles of secession!” one soldier yelled at a man on the ground.

  On his knees, shaking his head, the old man clasped his hands as in prayer. A Union soldier pressed a bayonet against the old man’s throat, and the white-haired man in black broadcloth begged, not for his life, but for the church to be spared.

  “This is not the church, men! The Baptist church you seek is on the next block. Please . . . for the love of God . . . I beseech you, don’t do this! Don’t burn our new church.”

  “Which church is this?” the Federal with the bayonet demanded.

  “Methodist,” the old man answered.

  The soldier lowered the big blade. “Criminy,” he said, “I’m Methodist myself.”

  The Bluecoats turned as one, pushing Ebenezer aside as they moved on. When they were out of sight, Ebenezer went up to the old man and helped him to his feet.

  “I’m all right,” the man said, angrily brushing Ebenezer’s hands away. “Get out of here.”

  Backing away a few steps, Ebenezer stared at the church. This church had brick columns, and Ebenezer recalled it well, because this was where Mrs. Hall’s sister had been married back in 1862. He could remember sitting with the other Negroes on the balcony—this church had more Negro members than white ones—admiring the gas chandeliers and wondering how many folks this church would seat.

  “This is the Columbia Baptist Church,” Ebenezer suddenly told the man, who gave the black teen a look that told him he had better keep quiet, and not tell those Federal troops how they had been fooled.

  Quickly Ebenezer left.

  The darkening skies were heavy with smoke now, the streets full of wagons, cannon, men, women. Bells clanged, but nobody lifted a finger to put out the fires. What’s worse, Ebenezer had lost Zeb Hogan. A covered wagon almost ran him over, and he tripped over the root of a giant oak tree, scraping his knee so badly that he started limping. Lips split, pant leg torn, knee bleeding, eyes full of fright, he wandered through the bedlam.

  A woman screamed as two Bluecoats dragged her from her house, then began throwing bricks through the windows.

  Another soldier came by, wringing a chicken’s neck.

  Crazy. The whole world’s turned upside down.

  That’s when he recognized the soldier with the chicken.

  “Hey!” Ebenezer yelled, and the New Yorker named Hopkins turned around.

  “Yeah. What you want, boy?”

  “Where’s Zeb Hogan?”

  “I don’t know anyone named Zeb Hogan.” He started to walk away, but Ebenezer didn’t stand a chance traveling by himself. He needed help, and Zeb Hogan was his only chance. Or so he thought.

  Yanking Hopkins’s left shoulder, Ebenezer spun him around. The infantryman dropped the dead chicken, scared by Ebenezer’s bloodied face and the desperate look in his eyes.

  “Remember me?” Ebenezer asked. Hopkins showed no recognition. “The Wisconsin boy you captured. You thought he was a Reb. Where’d y’all take him?”

  “You’re free. You don’t . . .”

  “Where is he?” Ebenezer drew back his fist as if he planned on pounding him. Later he realized he might have struck the soldier if Hopkins, cringing, hadn’t cried out, “The church . . . over there! We locked him in the basement.”

  Ebenezer didn’t thank him. He just took off running, leaving Hopkins to his dead chicken and soiled britches.

  When Ebenezer rounded the corner, he saw the soldiers who had been about to torch the Baptist church leaving the Washington Street Methodist Church.

  In flames. The fire turning the dusk into high noon.

  “Oh, good Lord, help me and that soldier boy,” prayed Ebenezer as he ran across Marion Street.

  This church was brick, too, though not quite as palatial as the Baptist building the Federals had spared. Choking, thick, black smoke poured out the open door and busted windows. Brick might not burn, but the inside of God’s place had been turned into the pit of hell. The heat was so intense, Ebenezer had to shield his face as he ran along the sides, looking for a cellar door. At last he found it, grabbed the handle, and then saw the padlock. Leaning against the wooden door, pounding on it, he yelled above the roaring conflagration: “Zeb Hogan! Zeb! You down there? You alive?”

  Maybe he heard a reply. He couldn’t tell. He stood back, searching, thinking, and then heard a commotion across the street. A white woman holding a crowbar was chasing some laughing soldiers, although she wasn’t coming close since she ran with a limp.

  Ebenezer sprinted as fast he could across the churchyard and back across Marion Street as the soldiers raced down Washington. The woman had stopped, but she screamed when she saw this bloody black boy coming toward her.

  “Ma’am!” Ebenezer stopped a short distance from her. “Ma’am . . . please. There’s a boy trapped inside that church’s cellar. Ma’am . . . please, ma’am. I need that crowbar.”

  She stared at him, looked up and down the street, knowing the soldiers she had been chasing were gone, and then took off toward the burning building. Ebenezer followed her, watching in awe as she broke that padlock with the crowbar and pried open the door. She even scrambled into the pit, leaving Ebenezer holding the door open, while she dragged out poor Zeb Hogan. As soon as the woman and Zeb were clear of the danger, Ebenezer let the door slam shut. He took Zeb’s arms—him coughing, sweating, his face blackened by soot—then laid him down on Marion Street.

  “You poor, brave soldier,” the woman said, sitting on the ground next to Zeb. She was blue-eyed, auburn-haired, fairly plump, maybe in her late twenties. She kissed Zeb’s cheek. “There, there,” she said, “you brave Southern lad.”

  Southern! Ebenezer gave her an incredulous stare before he realized that she, like those soldiers from New York, had mistaken Zeb Hogan, wearing Confederate Army pants, for a Johnny Reb.

  Slowly Zeb sat up, shaking his head.

  The woman pressed her right hand on his shoulder and said, “Sir, it is not safe for you, or your boy here, to remain in Columbia.” Her breasts heaved with a sad sigh. “Columbia belongs to the enemy. What’s left of Columbia. You must run. Quickly.” She stood, lifted her skirt, reached inside her boot, and pulled out a brass-framed revolver. No wonder she had been favoring her left leg, because this wasn’t some hideaway gun, but a regular six-shot revolver. “My dearest Frank carried this with him till he fell at Kennesaw Mountain,” she said, and placed the gun in Zeb’s hand. “Be gone,” she said. “Hurry now.”

  She didn’t have to tell the two boys again.

  Chapter Five

  Shoving the revolver in his waistband, Zeb Hogan stood, and then he and Ebenezer ran down the street, away from the Southern lady, as fast as they could escape that inferno that had almost been Zeb’s grave. Would have been, Zeb thought, if not for Ebenezer Chase. That slave done saved my hide twice . . . no, three times, iffen you count him burying me outside the Florence Stockade. That rankled. Zeb had always been prideful, and he had never cottoned to owing folks. Maybe that was the real reason he had run off after his brother had died, his family always being poor, his folks struggling to pay the rent for that miserable shanty they called home.

  For certain, Zeb thought those Secesh trousers he wore would get him stopped, arrested, but nobody seemed to pay much mind to a couple of teenagers moving through the crowds. Columbia civilians and blue-coated Federals were too occupied. As they dodged among the people, Ebenezer clutched the haversack close to his chest. Church and fire bells rang out, and the sky turned blacker than midnight.

  Feels like we is walking through Hades, Zeb thought, and then he thought of something else, something even more frighte
ning. Maybe we are.

  Newly freed slaves stood on one corner, listening to a white-haired Negro preach at them. Down the road, a bunch of white women and children stood crying, watching from a distance as giant flames consumed a three-story brick building.

  “Oh, Mother,” one of the younger girls asked, “why, oh, why did those Yankees burn our convent?”

  “I don’t know,” a lady in a bonnet answered as she placed a handkerchief under her eyes.

  It struck both boys how crowded Columbia was. From all the traffic they had seen on the Cartersville pike, they had half expected the capital to be deserted. Instead, Southerners had moved into the city, swelling its population by thousands. They had fled the war, just hadn’t run far enough. Zeb felt sorry for them, watching their city burn.

  Down the road, Zeb and Ebenezer heard a Union lieutenant arguing with a man in a bowler hat and sack suit. The officer was laying blame for all this on Wade Hampton’s Rebels, saying how they’d set cotton and hay bales aflame before they’d fled the city, while the man in the sack suit was calling the lieutenant a blasted liar. Neither Zeb nor Ebenezer was sure who should be blamed for the inferno around them. Maybe the Rebs had started some blazes, but it had been Sherman’s Army that had almost roasted Zeb alive.

  The two boys just kept right on walking past the rubble, the ruins, the smoke, and flames. Walked right out of Columbia, South Carolina.

  Union soldiers had constructed pontoon bridges for crossing the rivers, and Ebenezer and Zeb had no trouble getting across. After leaving what was once the downtown of Columbia, they saw only one family, white farmers on the side of the road who, so intent on staring at the flame-brightened night sky, didn’t even notice the two wayfarers.

  * * * * *

  Sherman’s Army had been forced to corduroy most of the roads. Ebenezer had never seen such a road, which made Zeb feel smarter.

  “Road’d be too boggy to get an army through,” Zeb explained. “We’d cut logs out of the forest . . . you-all got plenty of pines out here. We’d flatten one side of them, fit saplings between them, make a good road for the wagons and such.”