Andersonville (99 page)

There rode on good horses a noisy herd of wenches (all young, perhaps the youngest was fourteen) dressed in gowns of colored silk stolen undoubtedly from some wealthy house. Crimson and gold of their disheveled costuming fairly hurt the eyes. They were headed by a pompous fat Negro bestriding a dappled stallion; he rode bareback, he kept turning to the chattering mounted bevy behind, holding out his hand, saying sharply, Keep up, you all, keep up, stay together! He wore a gilt-piped coat hanging open, unbuttoned, and a beaver hat too small for his head. Ira supposed the fellow was some officer’s servant who had gathered this harem.

Ira stood at the edge of a clump of trees and blackberry vines; still he carried his carpetbag: it had endured through vicissitudes since the train was stopped. But now he felt the bag wrenched from his grasp. A clumsy young man had stepped out of the lounging files, twisted the carpetbag away, and was going off with it coolly. A voice sang sharply, Hi! with an inquiring lift to the cry. A young lieutenant on a bay kicked his horse into a trot along the edge of the field and overtook the robber. He retrieved the carpetbag, whirled his horse, came back to Ira. Here, Mister, and he leaned down to deliver the bag. Better drop it out of sight behind that brush. Some of these folks have got the itch, they’ll steal anything in sight! He was gone before Ira could thank him.

He tossed the bag behind him into a weed patch. He would have liked to have sat on his haunches. His stiff knee would not permit this, but a little farther on there was a stump; there he sat for a time. Regiments, cattle, black wanderers, wagons from which corn and parlor chairs spilled down, more lounging tough companies—the crowd kept flowing. Ira thought of a celebration he’d seen in New York, with Broadway thronged between its shop fronts, brass bands hallooing. Here there were no bands, although he did see a bass drum carried atop a chaise. It was as if the earth had erupted in the northwest and spewed a strange concentrated lava of people, brown and white, to come rolling down these sluiceways. A Negro woman skipped there, young, waving long bony arms, trying to make screams although her voice was worn from previous screaming. Tildy, cried another black woman, overtaking her and tugging her to the side. Now you quit crying for that baby! He’s safe with Jesus. . . . In the wwwater, the other woman kept blubbering. In that old wwwater. Got push off that old bridge. All these soldier folks they push my baby. . . .

More troops coming, herds of ragged blacks keeping them company. Zachary Clark, a voice yelled. Oh, Zach, where are you? and a big laugh sounded ahead, a curly head turned. Zachary Clark was a Yankee soldier, an older man, his ringlets were silver, his fleshy face beamed. Right up here, he called in response. Come along, Archie! . . . What you carrying, Zach? . . . Ladies’ pants. . . . And so he was: a queer double bag made from voluminous drawers with each leg tied at the bottom. This strange receptable rode atop his right shoulder, his rifle was slung on his left. . . . What you got in them pants, Zach? Hey, Bob! . . . there was running of feet to catch up with him. . . . I bet you’d just like to know! Voices drifted off into the pounding, striding, hoofing, wheel-turning.

Smoke and dust lay in a compress high over the road and beyond it . . . would Georgia ever rise again? Smudge of the Keelings’ house had been but a firefly. Ira thought drearily of what Major Hitchcock, the tired-faced Yankee, had said the night before. Hitchcock spoke of burning cotton gins. Oh, would we have ruined the simple economy of the North, if we instead had made a march? Say that we had gone the length of Indiana. Would we have put their corn into ashes? Perhaps, perhaps. . . . No, no, we would never have done so. I, at least, have a pretension to decency. So have people like Cato Dillard, so has even the crippled Coral Tebbs—a hard warped pride. So have men like the unfortunate Keeling. But would we have done this, what homes might we have looted? In Indiana are no slaves for us to turn loose, but— Ira thought of the vicious Winder. He treated us so. How might he have treated Yankees at the North? Ira got up from his stump, went back and gathered up the carpetbag. Now he did not even care if it were taken from him. So much else had been taken from everyone.

A silver shine came bobbing along the road: yes, it was a helmet, a souvenir perhaps from Napoleonic times. God knew how it had ever come to Georgia. But a boy found it, in press or cupboard, so now he wore it gaily, the old horse-hair plume blew in the wind.
Mooooo
said the cows, great buffalo herds of them, they dropped their dung as they traveled. A thousand feet of men came to tread and skate in slime behind them, wagon wheels came to crease the dung.

But these people were not mere bummers: bummers drifted far on the outskirts of the march. These men were plunderers, they were arsonists, but first they were soldiers. They had the stringy tough weathered look of veterans, they were of the West, there was a pioneer hunter’s quality to their marching. They carried blankets rolled, their rifles were well rubbed; very few wore the bulky knapsacks, their haversacks swung as Confederate haversacks swung. Ira thought of what their units might be: Thirty-second Missouri, Ninth Iowa, One Hundred and Eleventh Illinois, Nineteenth Wisconsin, Thirtieth Iowa . . . they looked as if they had risen out of tall grass and unkempt woods. . . . Have we sufficient force to stand against them? Will they be turned back before they reach Savannah? Never, thought Ira. Our power is drained; we cannot halt them, scarcely impede their youthful brutal Western force. Miner, trapper, lumberman, and miner’s son and trapper’s son and lumberman’s son: they come, they possess somehow the quality of Indians, you expect them to whoop as Indians do, some of them whoop so.

Ira Claffey suffered the depression of one who looks at bad weather and knows that he may not restrain it. . . . You cannot subdue a tornado; this shaggy twisting wind has sprung from beyond the horizon. Its thunder is heard, lightning has knived us already, rain comes smashing, our roof is gone.

He was haunted by the absurd delusion that if his sons had been allowed to survive, they might have kept this rabble out of Georgia. But if his sons had been born beside the upper Mississippi, instead of in the county where they were born, they would have helped to make the rabble. He turned and started south stubbornly, resolved to watch no more. He had seen enough, seen too much. These invaders took everything, burned everything, they cut their swath toward the coast. Now Ira Claffey was marooned, and so was Andersonville marooned, unless wild cavalry had gone pushing there. Behind him the jumble of individual identifiable sounds resolved into a low roar, the call and flapping of a million birds. There they traveled, cutting landscape at his back: Forty-seventh Ohio and Fifteenth Michigan and Twelfth Indiana and Fourth Iowa; they’d gathered up the very soil of Georgia, folded it around them, were wearing it as uniforms. . . . Later that day, Ira managed to buy a dinner of sorts, and also a very sorry mule. He rode the mule down into Dooly County where the mule died. Ira walked the rest of the way home.

 LIII 

...W
e go the gate again, Surgeon Crumbley. What is your news from Albany? A letter on Thursday, to be sure? I am glad, sir, that Mrs. Crumbley is mending. It must be an ordeal for you to serve so far away during her illness. . . . Paregoric? Fortunate that it was available. I wish that we might have some at this point.

...No, no, Surgeon White established no particular pens for any of us today. I observed no such notation on the Duty List. Take any pen you choose—they’ll all be filled. There remains but to prescribe formulas and numbers as has been the custom. How many have you on your list? Mine runs up to thirty-odd: Number One is prescribed to serve for diarrhoea; Number Two for dysentery; Number Three for scorbutus, and so on. Is it in accord with your notions of medical procedure to take the discretion entirely away from the prescribing physician himself? I objected to this in my first assignment to such duty, as did you. I felt that I could not prescribe properly for my patients. I looked upon it as utter quackery! Quite so, Surgeon Crumbley. I discovered that the diseases from which our patients were suffering stemmed from want of the proper kind of dieting, remedies, etc. To begin with, I was convinced that I could have done more—indeed yes, I know I could—with proper dieting, than I could have with the medicines available. When first I came here—it must have been for two whole days, not more—I examined each new case, made my diagnosis, wrote out my prescription accordingly. I found that the medicines had not been supplied. I asked the reason, and they informed me that I was not to practice in that way: I must practice according to the numbers and formulas presented. I told them: I know nothing of such formulas and numbers, and care nothing for them. And, gentlemen, I refuse to practice in any such way! . . . What’s more, I went my round, diagnosed the cases again, made out a prescription for each case. It was extremely laborious; there were many under my charge, as you will understand, Surgeon Crumbley, as you have had under your charge. I sent up the prescriptions, and once again they were refused. I said to my clerk—a Yankee prisoner, no less, and On Parole, but with some claim to a background embracing pharmacopoeia—I said, What ho, Yank? . . . Surgeon Elkins, he told me, it is quite useless for you to make out such prescriptions.

It would appear that there is a blockade.

It would appear that if President Davis himself were suffering from the pip, perhaps he might be served.

Might the Secretary of War be served properly? Might General Winder? Let us say that is a moot question.

As I recall now, you were overjoyed, Surgeon Crumbley, when a bottle of paregoric was found—a medicament to relieve your wife—in the recesses of some friend’s closet in Albany.

Let us not seek narcotic for our senses, sir. Twill be unavailable.

For diarrhoea? Red pepper, and decoctions of blackberry root and of pine leaves.

For coughs and lung diseases? A decoction of wild cherry bark.

For chills and fever? A decoction of dogwood bark.

If fever patients seem to crave especially something sour, let us dose them with the weak acid made by fermenting a small quantity of meal in a barrel of water. Vinegar? My flask is empty, I regret to say. My vinegar is a tiny vial of fresh water sprayed into the Sahara sands.

Let us consider gangrenous sores. Ha, ha—here is the specific: peanut oil, no less! May we hope that the hospital orderlies do not steal it for a slosh in which to sop their corn bread! Dear, dear—why be picayunish about the matter? Gangrenous patients will die anyway; the hospital orderlies might live, and not eventually join their fellows amid pine straw, amid oozing holes where stumbling sick have let go their bowels, amid pools where stumbling sick have let go their bladders. What fun if the hospital orderlies were to be tricked—damn Yankees anyway, and Paroles, what’s more—and let them have a ration of castor oil instead! What a lark!

How many are you empowered to admit today, Surgeon Crumbley? Five patients? The same for myself, sir. So we shall stand in our rude pens at the gate and observe the flow, the crawling and the carried.

...My, my, here is a grand ulcer, to be sure: at least four inches in diameter, on the calf of the leg. . . . What have we here? Necrosis of the jaw. Hold still, patient. Keep him still, friends of the patient; hold the patient, let me make an examination with my fingers. . . . Huzza! Necrosis indeed. A piece of bone nearly an inch long came out attached to my finger.

...It is my opinion that the diarrhoea commonly observed hereabouts is an attendant symptom of scurvy, not to be confused with the ordinary camp diarrhoea observed in our own army.

...Generally there is an enervation of the nervous system. It runs down in consequence of the dietary condition. Naturally the nervous system must sink under such pressure. I observe the effect manifested in idiocy, dementia and other mental weaknesses.

...Yes, yes, I should expect that morally such abject circumstances would produce deep humiliation and resignation. However, the effect seems otherwise: the moral attitude of the prisoners declines, men seem to abandon themselves. The well will steal from the sick, the sick will steal from the dead. Why, by God, it has come under my observation that the sick will nerve themselves to remarkable accomplishments, and steal from the
well
!

...That man with the bucket in his mouth, gripping the bail of the bucket as a dog would hold a bone? I have seen him frequently. He crawls for his rations.

...Surgeon Crumbley, have you observed the deadhouse in the hospital lately? When first I went there, there were boards forming a shed. Goodness sake—but the boards disappeared. I presume that they were stolen by those inmates of the hospital able to crawl. Lately the dead have lain with no shelter whatsoever, until wagons and mules and niggers came to cart them away.

...Did you observe that patient bearing the name of Clayton? Yes, yes, carried away just now . . . but you should have heard him exclaiming how he was put upon! He had a good stout belt—buckle and all—and he contended that the orderly fancied the belt. He said that he woke up; his arm was open and raw, as you remember, and he declared—it was in the night—that the orderly was rubbing gangrenous fluid into his sore. The belt, you see. What matter now? A false accusation, perhaps . . . naturally, yes: the orderly was a Yankee as well.

...For the treatment of wounds, ulcers, etc., we have literally nothing except water. The wards, some of them, are filled with gangrene, and we are compelled to fold our arms and look quietly upon its ravages, not even having stimulants to support the system under its depressing influences.

...Ulcers are produced from the slightest causes imaginable. A pin scratch, a prick of a splinter, a pustula, an abrasion, or even a mosquito bite are sufficient causes for their production. The surface presents a large ash-colored or greenish-yellow slough, and emits a very offensive odor. After the slough is removed by appropriate treatment, the parts beneath show but little tendency to granulate. Occasionally, however, apparently healthy granulations spring up and progress finely for a time, and again fall into sloughing, and thus, by an alternate process of slough and phagedenic ulceration, large portions of the affected member or large masses of the body are destroyed. In this condition gangrene usually sets in, and if not speedily arrested soon puts an end to the poor sufferer’s existence.

...On examining the roster I find that twenty-four medical officers are charged to the hospital, and yet but twelve are on duty. The rest either by order of General Brown (at their own request) are off on sick leave or leave of indulgence. In order to attend to the wants of the sick and wounded, not less than thirty efficient medical officers should be on duty in the hospital.

...The corn bread received from the bakery, being made up without sifting, is wholly unfit for the use of the sick, and often, as in the last twenty-four hours, upon examination, the inner portion is found to be practically raw. . . . The corn bread cannot be eaten by many, for to do so would be to increase the diseases of the bowels, from which a large majority are suffering, and it is therefore thrown away. All then that is received by way of subsistence is two ounces of boiled beef and a half pint of rice soup per day, and under these circumstances all the skill that can be brought to bear upon their cases by the medical officers will avail nothing.

...Surgeon I. H. White, chief surgeon post, informed me that timely requisitions have been made on the quartermaster’s department for the necessary materials to make the sick and wounded comfortable, but thus far he has been unable to procure scarcely anything.

...Feeling we have done our whole duty, both in the eyes of God and man, we leave the matter to rest with those whose duty it was to furnish supplies and build up a hospital that might have reflected credit on the Government and saved the lives of thousands of our race. . . .

Harrell Elkins believed truly that he had done his duty in the eyes of God and man. But he had not done all his duty; his work would end only with the termination of the hospital, with the last death there, the last removal. He went home in the dark. He had served an hour and a half past his time. Scarcely had he seen Lucy since Ira Claffey left. Harry did not allow himself to think of her when he was at work; but he could not keep her out of his thoughts at other times—especially in those many occasions when he was too tense for sleep, when he could not relax, when he lay taut as a ramrod, feeling thin and hard as a ramrod. Mrs. Effie buzzed about, but discerned soon that the young man was actually too worn to engage in professional discussion. She recognized that Elkins had toil and nuisance thrown in his face in a quantity beyond her accumulated experience. She thought that she might derive benefit from him in the future, if the cyclone of foreseen defeat did not tear him away from this region.

Harry remembered a period of shellfire when missiles came down and burst interminably. He had thought then, along with the rest of the troops, Won’t it ever stop? I’m so weary of it. Can’t they ever stop firing those shells? Can there be anything else in existence beyond this constant crouching, waiting, fearing, jarring? . . . So battle recurred to him now, in the form of hospital and stockade gate. Will it ever cease? Nay, never. It cannot, cannot, will not, never will cease.

November wind hit him and it was dark, dark; the surface of the lane was so ruptured that he stumbled even though he knew the way. He reached an open area of lawn behind a fence at the corner of the Claffey orchard. A lantern was being carried to the rear shed where Elkins always stopped to brush and examine his clothing. Someone had been watching, someone had made out his approach and was ready with the lantern (for the supply of oil was low: one could not leave a lantern hanging alight indefinitely, one took care, one saved and saved). He went up the drive and into the shed corner. There the lantern waited, hung on its peg; but hands which had carried it and hung it were gone away. He thought he knew whose hands. He took off his jacket, shivering in cold. He shook the jacket, worked over his shirt with the brush he kept in this shed, brushed the jacket, brushed his pants. He felt an itch. He closed the shed door, removed his shoes, took off his pants and shook them violently, turned them inside out, examined the frayed seams. He killed four graybacks, he could find no more. A flea went hopping into space. Harry wiped his shoes with a rag, and then dressed once more and carried the lantern into the rear hall of the house. Reflected gleam of candlelight drifted from the library ahead. He blew out the flame, put the utensil on its shelf, and went hesitatingly to the library door.

You are late, Cousin. Lucy was curled at the end of the sofa in folds of a faded shawl, she held a book.

Yes, late, he said. What have you been reading?

Keats.

I wish that I were not too weary to play the Poetry Game with you.

She came to meet him in the doorway, her voice telling a secret. We are alone.

Alone?

Our neighbor, old Mrs. Bile, is said to be dying. She’s been poorly for a long time, and Mrs. Effie was sent for. Jonas took her to the Bile place and fetched back a note saying that Mrs. Bile’s condition was grave. Thus Mrs. Dillard must needs spend the night.