Andersonville (56 page)

Sure, you bandogs, and it’s men like us you think you can fright with your twaddle of hanging?

Let’s jump the bastards, Paddy!

Wait till we’re rid of these guards.

St. Sylvester, pray for them.

St. Gregory, pray for them.

St. Augustine, pray for them.

All ye holy Bishops and Confessors, pray for them.

Swarms of black-faced Yankees split and fell away from the cautious advance of Wirz’s mare, they did not wish to be stepped upon. Wirz traveled toward the gallows as directly as terrain and assortment of huts would allow; he bent past the mare’s neck, watching for wells or dangerous pits, he had no desire to be thrown. Father Whelan followed Wirz on foot. He had washed his old jacket and it was still wet from the washing, so he came in his patched shirt. A smelly breeze lifted from somewhere to sway the ragged hems of his stole; prisoners looked with interest at the pretty color, the pretty violet. Nowhere else within the stockade was there violet. There were so few bright colors to be seen except often the color of blood. Father Whelan carried his umbrella beneath his arm, he did not have it spread, fractured bones of the umbrella thrust out and dangled. The Ritual was clasped in the priest’s withered hand, his Crucifix was detected by glaring sun.

Wirz turned, motioned, jabbered an almost unintelligible order. Three or four Reserves moved forward hastily to open a wider path with their bayonets, and around the gallows area the hollow square of Regulators broke in obedience to Leroy Key’s command. Make way, hurry up, so’s we’ll get them inside. The procession came to a halt. Wirz nudged his mare to one side, the square tightened once more in additional security. Seneca MacBean was horrified to see that the raiders walked unbound; this was a most stupid oversight on the part of Confederate authorities. He muttered softly about it, and with Dreyfoos, Corrigan and Limber Jim he stepped closer. Ready with your clubs, boys, minute those guards go out.

Prisoners!

Wirz’s voice cut the fetid air, and as usual a few people on the outskirts began to mock his accent.

To you now I return these men, good as I got them. You say you try them yourself, you find them guilty. Nothing do I have to do with this—it is you, you prisoners.

The porcelain face of Henry Wirz was more drawn and gleaming than ever; he kept pausing in his speech, hunting for proper words. Those closest could see his pointed pink tongue coming out to moisten his lips under the ravelled beard.

Now to you I commit these men. Of everything with them I am washing my hands! Do to them what you wish, for it is you—you prisoners—who find them guilty.

He hesitated for another second, scowling, perspiring.

May
Gott
have mercy on them
und
you prisoners.

His wiry nervous voice went high. Guards, About—
Face
!

Lines swung into position with the click and thud of shoes and weapons.

Forward—
March
!

They went toward the gate. The square of Regulators squeezed closer, smaller, no longer a square, it was become a twisted circle under force of compression from the outside.

St. Benedict, pray for them.

St. Francis, pray for them.

St. Camillus, pray for them.

St. John of God, pray for them.

All ye holy Monks and Hermits, pray for them.

The manner of Wirz as much as the speech he uttered had its quick effect upon the six condemned. They looked at one another, they looked into hard faces of the Westerners who approached them cautiously but grimly. Had this been a threat, a kind of malignant jest? They’d sneered at the sentence when it was pronounced, boasted mutually of what they would do to the first person who put a hand on them, what they would do to the last person. They’d marched for long in the chain-mail of their established wickedness, bragged of their established wickedness; most of them had known little besides wickedness; they ate of it, drank of it, embraced and made love to a quaking rotting harlot called Wickedness. For what reason did there exist weaker mortals except to serve as foils, targets, scullions, spies?

Were they come to an End? They had never come to an End before. Their seizure and the comedy of court and trial were but a trivial interlude. Organ grinders had brought a Jocko or two to Andersonville in order to entertain them. Soon the monkey tricks would be finished, and somehow— In some way— By swindle, bribery— Through blow or cutting or strangulation the roughs would win back to the peerage they’d enjoyed, grown fat in, continued bloody-handed in.

Sarsfield gazed in disbelief at the gallows. His soldier’s eye took in the crude but solid construction, his criminal’s eye saw the nooses and rolled away from them and then came back to congeal.

He brayed, You don’t really mean to hang us up there?

That seems to be about the size of it.

They might roar now, at least all except Rickson were howling; yet they’d had their fun before. They had taken joy in tormenting Father Whelan. From the moment word reached him that the six were condemned to death, the priest burned with ardor. Never was such challenge offered him before! To Peter Whelan, the Devil was an entity as real as himself, real as Wirz or the last boy he’d shrived. The Devil had maintained strict possession of these six souls, obviously, through their lifetime. What a triumph for the Church could Whelan loose those tight slimy tentacles, cause them to unwrap, extract the bruised suffering souls and wash them to purity! Examination disclosed that all except the close-mouthed Rickson had, in dim forgotten childhood, partaken of some semblance of Catholicism, or admitted to a Catholic inheritance however remote. Sincerely the priest hoped to bring them to admission of guilt. This admission might be achieved properly only if the men recited transgressions in detail and came eventually to repent. Because of their mutual imprisonment in the stocks, the privacy of a Confessional might not be observed; but Peter Whelan would do his best. . . . None of the six could believe that they were to die, and this ceremony became a sport.

Collins, man, you must go to confession. Our Lord is beseeching you to go.

Faith, I’ll be going.

I want you to make a good confession.

Sure, and Willie rolled puffy blood-traced eyes at Delaney and Munn in stocks beyond him.

When did you make your last worthy confession, Collins?

Twas in my mother’s belly.

The others guffawed.

Sins you shall confess in a good confession are the sins you have committed since your last worthy confession; but I’m praying, me son, that you will make a general confession.

What the hell might a general confession be?

Tis every sin of your entire past life you must confess, or at least the sins you may remember most clearly.

And why must I be doing this?

You are about to die, me son. They tell me that you’ve been found guilty— Oh, how I hate the word! Of
murder.
And
you shall be executed, you shall be put to death for
murder.
I am but a humble servant of the Church; still I’m striving to engender contrition in your poor soul. I’m striving to loosen the grip of the Devil; he’s had his claws upon you for so long, that he has.

What should I be after telling you, priest?

Call me Father, me son.

What should I be after telling you, Father? and Willie Collins winked so enormously that you could very nearly hear the snap of his eyelid.

Recite your past sins, and try to feel as much real sorrow as you’re capable of feeling.

Well— There was a priest in New York—

And was he the one who heard your last confession?

Shit, never! He was the one I killed!

May God have mercy on your soul—

Sure, I cracked his throat with this very hand! And after he lay dreaming, I tied him to the top of his altar. And then— I set fire to the church! What a pretty blaze it made!

Delaney twisted his head in the adjoining stocks. Willie, lad. Was that before or after you were raping of the nun?

St. Mary Magdalen, pray for them.

St. Lucy, pray for them.

All ye holy Virgins and Widows, pray for them.

All ye holy Saints of God, make intercession for them.

Confronted actually with a machine erected for the express purpose of wrenching their lives away, they felt that they had been tricked. Their unanimous reaction was a rage the more blinding because of its complete futility. How now, how now? They stood without a tie of restraint upon them—now they should lift their hands, they must grasp and tear—let feet and elbows go flailing into the rank of blank-visaged men pressing close.

But— But—

The joskin called Key stood beyond their reach, he stood— Nickey snatch the lot of us! He stood with a revolver in his hand! And that black Indian of a Limber Jim stood with a bowie knife exposed. A bullet could reach or a steel blade slice before a man might crack more than a head or two; and here formed a hundred or two hundred of the damnable police with hate freezing their faces.

Howl no longer, thought Willie Collins, as his whole awareness and minor intelligence went draining into his boots. Howl no more.

He gave a shivering gulp. Thick tears began to ooze. His voice was shaking, humble. He called through the almost visible spume of threats and curses, Be quiet, you bastards!

Strangely they became quiet. Their terrified calm went spreading like a cloud’s shadow through the population around them, and raced over the stockade as a moving representation of that same cloud, a brown silent formless wraith darkening the hill it passed across. The pen was more quiet than it had been, day or night, from the moment the first prisoners passed through the gate in that distant torch-lit February. At one end of the world sounded a locomotive’s whistle, at the other end of the world crows made their wah-wah-wah; slopes of staring people were unspeaking and uncalling in between. At last Willie Collins and the rest might seek the very help they had derided.

Be still, lads. Willie added, with that pitiful dignity achieved by the brutal when they have fallen, Let the priest speak for us.

Ah, prisoners, cried Peter Whelan. Soldiers, if you like. Hear me now, please to give ear to me words. Can you not find forgiveness in your hearts? Have you no pity and no mercy? Remember our dear Lord who died upon the Cross to save us all from shame and sin! What would our Lord say, think you now, if He were standing among us at this moment, with His dear face aglow with inner mercy, with the light of compassion shining from His dear eyes? Would He ask for blood? Nay, nay— He would be beseeching you to spare the lives of these, your fellow men—

No, said one flat voice in the nearer crowd.

Be merciful, spare them, O Lord!

Be merciful, deliver them, O Lord!

Be merciful, deliver them, O Lord!

From Thy Anger, deliver them, O Lord!

From the danger of death, deliver them, O Lord!

The dry shivering voice continued its plea. What will it profit you if you demand now the death of these six miserable men? Sure, they’re sinners. But aren’t we all, does not each of us here on earth have his faults, are we not mortal as these poor condemned men are mortal? Oh, lads, prisoners, men of the North— Will this gallows bring back from the grave the boys who’ve been done to death? Never. Can this gallows expunge, lads, the miseries which have been done, the pain that’s been inflicted? Never, never. A gallows cannot make, it can only mar. Search your hearts, now, lads— And find pity for these miserable sinners— And find mercy again in your hearts, for surely you shall find God when you find mercy— Spare them, lads!

No, that same single voice came biting.

Ferocious hating brothers of the lone boy (whoever might he be? And perhaps his mother or sweetheart or Sunday School teacher had said many times, Luke is the tender one. Just see how gently he handles Tab’s kittens. He’s such a gentle lad, wouldn’t harm a flea) put their cry up against his, and supported him a thousand fold and supported him ten thousand fold. Peter Whelan’s supplication went drowning. No. No.
No.
The
short grunting yells thudded as if a master chorister stood with ferule uplifted, beating rhythm. No. No. No. No.
No!

Hang them, rose the high-pitched hoot of a mountain boy who’d been stripped at the North Gate eight days before. Hang them, by Mighty! Haaaang them.

Hang them, said posts of the fence. Haaaang them, said every sentinel’s platform. The gallows cried, Haaaang them; each beam and timber implored a choking. You could see that lacy face of old Peter Whelan turned in agony. (He was more miserable than he would be at any moment until he dragged himself out of the gate for the last time, in October.) His lips were moving, his jaws went up and down, but no man standing at his elbow could have heard him now.

From an ill end, deliver them, O Lord!

From the pains of hell, deliver them, O Lord!

From all evil, deliver them, O Lord!

From the power of the Devil, deliver them, O Lord!

No, no, no, no,
no
!
Never deliver them, let them strangle and stretch. Let the long jarring fall snap their necks, let nooses crunch, let the men’s breath fail, let them die hard. Never deliver them, O Lord. Hang them, hang them, haaaang them!

Henry Wirz had reached his office some minutes before, but the wide slamming chant brought him out immediately, he stood bewildered on the step. What were those prisoners up to? Bears, what message do you growl?

Was gibt’s?

Said the clerk who stood behind him, speaking in German— Captain, it is the prisoners, all calling together. They demand that the big men be hanged.

Why don’t they get on with it, then?

Charles Curtis stood at the right of the file against whom the implacable demand of Hang them, Hang them, was cried. His gorilla shape was shortest in stature of any of the condemned. When honest (but dull and brutal to those about him) he had wielded a tamping-bar on the railroad in Providence. There was trouble because he struck a fellow workman with that same tamping-bar; his fist would have been nearly as lethal. Curtis decamped to Boston, found employment on the docks, found opportunities for profitable banditry. Again the police chased him, this time to Brooklyn, where he and a partner went buccaneering in a stolen boat through several lucrative seasons. In time they quarreled over the use and abuse of an anguished housemaid, a Scandinavian immigrant whom they’d kidnapped and lugged to a deserted wharf. Curtis’s partner was found floating a day or two later, minus a portion of his skull; Charles Curtis sought seclusion in a battery of the Fifth Rhode Island Artillery. He was believed to have killed at least a dozen men with his own hands while in Andersonville, and to have been responsible for the murder of many others in his role as gang leader. But still he did not wish to hang, and now roared that he would not hang. Other Fifth Rhode Island artillerymen would sink to their doom in the mire of this place: Doyle would die in August, Calvin would die in September, Fay in August, Garvey in August, Sisson in August, Eaton in October; even at this moment one William Wallace lay in final stupor; and all were comrades, some from Charles Curtis’s own battery. Not one of them but would have prayed to see him swinging. Still he did not wish to hang. I’d ruther die this way, his thick harsh voice came bursting. With arms folded across his face he dove into the line of Regulators.