Andersonville (82 page)

Want to hear a Chapter?

Don’t mind. What are you on?

I just finished Nehemiah.

Hard going.

It is for certain, with all the children of Benjamin, and Levites and things. I read it through when I was just a little shaver, but now I swore to take her all the way through again. You a Baptist, by any chance?

Congregationalist.

And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.

Don’t need to go preaching immersion, little chap. Not to me!

Well, I’ll start on Esther.

Good enough. I only got the New Testament by me.

The youth began reading in a shrill wiry voice, and Judah Hansom sat in stinking shade, listening, with all the vast growl of the stockade muted somehow by heat, muted more in this mid-afternoon than at most other hours. The little chap’s name was Willie Mann, and he was a Missourian. Willie liked the part about the beds of gold and silver and the colored pavement, and especially he seemed to like the part about the wine served in vessels of gold, for he read that verse twice in a row.

Ever drink any wine, Mister?

Judah said, Had an aunt used to make it out of cherries. But she said it wasn’t an intoxicant. Tasted pretty good.

Ma made grapejuice, but it wouldn’t keep none too well. I know some German folks that make beer at home. . . .

Willie returned again to Esther, and then once more he and Judah fell to talking. Willie told about Providence Spring and how it had started up, right on top of him, when God seemed to smite the hill. Judah had heard about this miracle, and under the watchful eyes of police he had stood in line twice daily for water since his arrival.

He said, I know where there’s a dry well.

Where at?

Right in the corner of our shebang.

How deep is she?

Calculate it might go to twelve foot or so. Hain’t no water in the bottom.

You know, said Willie Mann, a sight of tunnels have been dug from some of those wells.

They sat in considerate silence for a while, both thinking hard. Wirz had made good his threat to build a second stockade in order to discourage tunneling, and now in August the second stockade was a fact. Outsiders reported that it stood at a distance of perhaps one hundred and twenty feet, rimming completely the interior pen. Folks who had seen the fence said that it was not as high as the stockade proper, but still an effective deterrent to escape. Many believed, considering the Federal advance upon Atlanta, that this new work was as much a structure for defense as well as for restraint.

That there well, said Judah Hansom. Not too far from the deadline.

I know. But a hundred and twenty feet farther to go than earlier. Few boys have done much tunneling since July. Little profit in it.

So I hear. Do you know anybody who ever made it to the Outside?

Oh, I knew one fellow went out with that bunch of Buckeyes—guess twas a fortnight ago—but the dogs got him. But some have made it, folks do say. Course the Rebs found most of the tunnels and busted them in.

Judah said, Think your tentmate would part with his knife?

Not likely, but he’d rent it for a dollar, or so he has done before.

Mind speaking to him about it? How big is the knife?

A Barlow, about so big. Got two good blades on it still, and he keeps it well whet.

In this way their friendship began. Within a week Willie Mann was committed solidly to the task of excavation, and he kept at it with a passion exceeded only by the burrowing of Judah Hansom. Judah ached for trees and blue space, Willie had Katrine pictured in rosy soft flesh before him when he dug in loneliest depths. Most of the others worked with comparative apathy, and did not send out so much dirt, and could not stay underground as long as these two. Judah and Willie were more able-bodied than others of the group, although Willie was plagued by encroaching illness. He had loose teeth, one came out, his limbs hurt him, his mouth was sore perpetually. He kept the faithful large tin cup as a thing sacred to himself, to drink from, to feed from; he would not lend it or share from it because he feared in conscience that he might infect others.

The twelve-foot well had been dug by earlier inmates solely as a well and not as a preparation for escape. It went straight down and ended in a floor of caked clay. It had gone dry on the opening of Providence Spring, but Willie could remember when the fetid seepage of it sold for five or ten cents per cup. He had never consumed any of the water because there were too many sick in that hut above, but now they were all dead (or carried to the hospital, and thus probably dead). He remembered these things within the hour after Judah Hansom first came calling, for the knife. You knew things in this stockade, you recognized men or incidents of the moment; then, under the blanketing of days and nights and listlessness and dissolution, they were gone, scarcely a portion of memory, never a portion of recognized history. The past drifted from you because it was nearly identical with the present, and would be a stencil from which the future might be printed.

Seven men worked at the tunnel, the rest of the shebang dwellers crouched uncaring up above. There were Judah, four of his fellow York State men, Willie and a tentmate of his. They used the hand-carved spades, the hoe, canteen halves, and a utensil made from twisted stovepipe. Each had special tools which he preferred, but there was room for only one man at a time to toil at the face of the tunnel. On the bottom of the perpendicular shaft which had formed the old well, the tunnel began. It ran at right angles to the stockade with a slight downward trend. People hoped that it would clear safely the region of Providence Spring, for now rocks could be seen when you peered down into the clear pushing water. Levering stones of any size would be beyond the prisoners’ power. It was concluded that at a distance of sixty feet from the tunnel’s commencement the passage would have extended to the line of inner stockade posts; eventually it would rise gradually like a long straight hollow blacksnake extending toward freedom.

The symbolism of the snake occurred to Judah as he shoved his shoulders through the orifice, and thrust his long arms in alternate attack against packed earth. He had devised a system of working with the two whittled-out wooden spades. They were rather like bent paddles with sharpened edges. He would dig-dig, dig-dig . . . a downward and backward shaving of the soil, until a harvest of loose dirt lay before his face . . . he could rest his chin on it, and particles got into his mouth and nose if he didn’t take care. Then with the hoe which he had dragged along with him, he would work the loose earth under his body until he could surmount the pile of it and shave deeper into solidity ahead.

He thought of that blacksnake . . . tunnel inching forward. He thought of his father, of Aunt Annie, and more often of Benny Ballentine. . . . Might get shot. Well, he hadn’t gotten shot, and now probably wouldn’t get shot unless he were careless about the deadline. Baaaa. He did not prefer dying here, either, as he watched ungainly hosts weaken and starve and slough their manhood away. If he were bitten by catch-dogs outside and finally bled to death, it would be preferable to puffing with dropsy. Judah’s body was transforming itself into a loose pulp inside his caked hide, and he wondered how many pounds of weight he was losing each day.

It had been agreed that no man should be compelled to lie cutting away at the penetration of the tunnel for more than one hour at a time. None of the party owned a watch, but a sun-dial of sorts had been rigged up with pebbles and splinters, although someone was always stumbling over it and spoiling it. This served moderately well as a reminder to the men above, but only on sunny days. Other days they had to guess at the time. When they were digging at night, it was simple; then guards signalled from their stations on the half hour. Night or day, it made no difference to the creature who mined below. All was empty earthiness, the raw earthiness of the grave. The world was composed of nothing but soil, and you could not see it—it had no color, there was no light, there was not even true blackness after you had once immersed yourself in the ground, because somehow it seemed that you needed the suggestion of associated light in order to recognize blackness. This color, this formlessness, this silence declaiming—you could recognize nothing except the feel of your implements, the sound of breathing and labor, the pumping of your heart, the drifting march of people and distorted events which came as a nightmare troop. You dug.

...Muskrat. That was the creature Judah’d always considered Benny Ballentine to be, but nowadays he couldn’t be too sure. More like a squirrel.

The right-hand wooden shovel had a notch in its crude handle, and that notch hurt Judah’s hand halfway up his first finger, and it rubbed it, and maybe made a blister; he must change paddles and hold that paddle in his left hand.

Mr. Endicott owned a letter press with a big iron wheel to work it, and once when Judah was little he went to Mr. Endicott’s office with Pa, and he kept wanting to play with that letter press, so finally they said, Very well, bubby, go ahead. He liked to smashed his little hand in it; oh, how he did bellow; but Pa said it would teach him a trick or two. Maybe so. He never more wanted to play with letter presses.

And earth coming back around his chin, and he could lift his matted bearded chin and kind of nudge the soil back under his Adam’s apple against his ragged breast; then he would have to grunt, and put down his spades, and lift himself on one arm, and get the hoe and work the loose earth farther back from the face.

O silence. The pressure of lurking solid tons above, every pound a threat. O pressure and squeeze and no clarity of vision. Sand in eyes, burning, and the moisture oozing from eyelids. Bad air draining from the crude noisy world upstairs, and impregnating soil it touched as it passed with its taint, and flowing gradually through the hard-won cleft until it oozed across Judah Hansom’s sour body, drifted through the itching hair, the itching hair of his peeling scalp, the itching fungus of his beard, and found its way into those caked nostrils with which he still drew the breath of life (it smelled like the breath of decay).

He served more than his stint; so did Willie Mann. Each held his private reason for making perpetual sacrifice as he went worming a rod or nearly a rod beneath the populous sty on the surface. A man they called Old Bush—and a fellow pioneer of Judah he was— Old Bush said he couldn’t breathe for long down there; he didn’t know how the others breathed, he thought that they must be half mole or ground-puppy. He said he nearly smothered the last time he crept below. Now, fellers, you know I hain’t no shirker; Old Bush has always tried to play fair and square, hain’t he? . . . sat with pained legs bent beneath him, gluey tears coming down from his harsh pink-lidded eyes . . . tried to do my share. I want to get Outside just as bad as the next feller, but I can’t stomach that chore thout no air.

Judah served Old Bush’s shift, Willie Mann served Lew Ammons’s turn when Lew lay crippled with cords taut as fishlines in his legs . . . a big fish pulling at those cords, and what was the big fish’s name? Ah.

Judah recognized that he must have committed some unpardonable sin, and was now engaged in a fruitless attempt at expiation. He searched his past for the sin. He could not find it. Had he ever made unto himself a graven image? Well, if you could call a pumpkin head . . . he carved one of those when he was nine or so, and held it up to the window to frighten Aunt Annie, but she paid little heed. Had he taken the name of the Lord his God in vain? Only when a chip flew into his eye, or when—

Remember the Sabbath day . . . six days shalt thou labour
 . . . dutifully, willingly, piously he had bowed to these injunctions. He had honored a father in whom there was almost nothing to love. Why this restraint and tightening of lands and seas and antiquities? All Creation past and all Creation of the moment built into a box of clay, sand, pebbles, moistures, for the unique purpose of caging a Judah Hansom who had never liked to stand within a closet with the door shut, who felt manacled when he entered a room as small as the kitchen pantry, who had wept at crawling into the oat-chest in the barn when ordered there on an errand. Had he borne false witness, had he stolen? Nay, nay . . . oh, tarts and cream when he was small; he had stolen the prize Red Antwerp raspberries after being instructed not to touch them. Aunt Annie whipped him with a lilac switch. Had he committed adultery? Oh, Heavenly Father, he had not so much as kissed a girl when the rest were playing Spin-the-Platter; he’d just pretended to kiss Lydia Ruggles—he sort of pushed his face down past her cheek against her neck, and his face was a fiery furnace, and once again he was the first to leave the merrymaking.

Had he coveted? Well, once he saw a giant in Seth Howe’s Circus, and the giant had such mighty legs and arms that Judah wished the giant’s legs and arms were his own. Perhaps that was coveting.

He had worked hard and long. He had been frugal, he had prayed, he had eaten bread earned by the sweat of his brow; frequently he had fed tramps when his father wasn’t around; in the army he had stayed awake many nights to nurse the sick, to help nurse the wounded, because he thought that God expected him to do these things, and he had done his full share of marching and hewing on the days following, no matter how sleepy he felt. He had slapped his own face to keep himself awake, he had given himself a bloody nose with a careless slap, and thus recognized himself as a martyr.

How long must this tunnel be, how long could a hollow blacksnake grow to be? Judah put back his hand and felt for the knotted length of rags and string which they used for their reckoning. It was like the dirty tail of a kite: there was one big knot tied every three feet, so that it could be felt in the lonely dungeon where no light ever fell. His hand found the nearest knot and pulled the strand tight against the peg to which it was anchored at the tunnel’s beginning. . . . He’d scratched out another foot and a half, at least, since he came in.