The Sentinels of Andersonville (15 page)

What if they figured out the reverend was a Confederate? What if someone knew him from Americus?

“Pickett, you are in a state of agitatement,” Burr observed. “I don’t know as I prefer this or the other.”

Suddenly the plan didn’t seem like such a good one. If something happened to the preacher . . .

“Someone’s callin’ for you.”

Dance started, looking this way and that over the men, but Burr was looking at the ladder. Dance went over, and Emery Jones was at the bottom. He was clearly about to ask after the preacher when Burr stuck his head over the hole to peer down. Dance shook his head and Emery turned away.

Dance went to the rail. After months of allowing this mass to become one blurred entity, he now sought out single faces. To his surprise, many of those faces were familiar.

“What you up to, Pickett?” Burr said, squinting.

Perhaps the mass wasn’t as blurred as he thought.

 
—

Harris Gill performed another neat trick of profanity to fashion from cusswords an intricate wrought-iron majesty. But Lew had no time to admire the edifice, for two known rabble-rousers, Raider-gang remnants, were heading straight for Reverend Gillette.

“That preacher made me nervous the minute I saw him,” Lew said through his teeth as he and Harris pushed their way through. “Emery Jones, I will kill you.”

“We just wanna see what’s in your pockets,” the tall one was saying. “You gave away them fancy shoes, you must got somethin’ else.”

“Gentlemen, I assure you, my pockets are as empty as my stomach.” The preacher turned them inside out. “Oh. Well, I do have a few of my daughter’s jacks. You are welcome to them.”

“What is that accent? You a
Reb
?”

“You some kind of spy?” The shorter one grabbed the preacher by the collar. “They send you in to ferret out tunnels?”

“You know what we do to spies?”

“Of course he’s a spy, boy-os.” Harris came beside the preacher and whacked him on the back. “But he’s
our
spy, ya great peawits.”

“Don’t you recognize him?” said Lew. “That’s Little Mite Badger. That’s his spy name, anyway. You should know him from
Frank’s Illustrated
. My wife’s in love with him.”

“
All
Pennsylvania women be in love with him,” Harris said sadly.

“I ain’t seen a
Frank’s Illustrated
in months,” said the tall one.

“Well, I’m just in from Kennesaw. He came with me. They got him round about . . . where’d they pick you up, Mr. Badger?”

“Oh. Ah
 
—near the Chattahoochee,” the preacher said. “After a . . . struggle.” He put up his fists.

“Lew brought me over to shake your hand.” Harris stuck out his hand and the preacher shook it. “Heard you got some vital information to Sherman. Too bad it cost your freedom.”

“Yes, well . . . Stars and Stripes forever,” the preacher said.

The two thugs nodded. “Stars and Stripes forever,” the tall one said. “Did you meet Sherman?”

“I did. He is . . . very committed. I was impressed.”

“What’s he look like in real life?”

“Ah, he’s not as tall as I thought he would be.”

“Boy, I sure woulda liked to meet him.”

“That woulda been first rate.” The tall one nodded. “Sorry you’ve come to these straits, mister. It’s a real shame.”

“Well, our lot is common,” the preacher said.

“Listen, anyone gives you trouble, we’re by where Mosby used to be. You ask for us by name
 
—Elliott and Stern.”

“I am obliged, gentlemen.” The preacher gave a little bow.

The two started off, but Lew said, “Say
 
—don’t let out he’s here, him being famous and all. You know how people are.” Lew winked. “We’ll let the fellow have some peace for a bit.”

The tall one nodded grimly, as if to say the prison would deal with him before it dealt with the spy. The two left.

“Little Mite Badger,” said the preacher, watching them go.

“It was all I could manage in short time,” said Lew.

“Is there such a man? A Union spy?”

“No.” Lew looked him over. “I’m Lew Gann. This is Harris Gill.”

“William Gillette.”

“Listen, Preacher, I need to have you at the north gate by ration time. That’s not far off. You were supposed to just walk and observe.”

“I am observing.” They shared a long look.

“You want to observe more?” Harris asked. “We’ll take you to Hotel Ford. It’s where we sleep at night.”

“Harris, that’ll take too long,” Lew protested.

“You should get someone to look at that,” Gillette said, glancing at Harris’s swollen lip.

“Artie’s worse off. He’s our messmate. We’ve been together for three years. If you can manage any help for him, why
 
—I’d convert. To the everlastin’ despair of my mother and all the saints.”

“Catholic . . . Protestant . . . Does it really matter here?” the preacher said. He stared into the crowd of men.

“Say, now,” said Harris. “Don’t you despair, Father. You be as a skippin’ stone. Don’t sink in; just
 
—”

“What’s the matter with you?” Lew gave Harris a little push. “Let him sink. That’s what he’s here for. He’s here to take in the whole of it, and bring it out there.”

“They won’t believe me.”

“They might.”

“I don’t know if I would have believed me.” He looked at Harris. “Where’s Hotel Ford?”

T
HE RATION WAGON CAME AND WENT.

“What worries you, Pickett? I see you, Old Abe!” Burr hollered down. He shook his musket.

“I am here to be seen,” the Yank hollered back.

“You keep toein’ that line, you gonna lose some. Do not try me.”

“For you are in a foul temper’ment,” the other mocked with a Southern accent.

Burr grinned and lowered the musket. He looked at Dance, and the grin soured. “Pickett, you got me nervous.”

Dance leaned on the rail. He studied Old Abe.

Ann Hodgson, Emery Jones, Violet Stiles. A wagon full of food, a kidnapping, a handbill. What had Dance done? He applauded.

“What is that man’s real name?” Dance said.

“Tucker P. O’Riley, 12th Iowa.”

“How did I know you’d know it? Burr, I believe I have cast off the two most important things to safeguard my sanity in this place. It is a paradox.”

“What are them two things?”

“The ability to see and the ability to feel. Maybe to see and to feel is to act.”

Burr spit. “I ’spect so.”

“You missed me,” Old Abe called.

“Oh, I wasn’t aimin’ for you, you old pisspot. You’d know if I was.” He reached into his pocket. He sent out a furtive glance, then dropped a sweet potato over the rail. Old Abe made for it even as it fell, but it took a bounce and landed in the dead zone, two feet short of the deadline. He stopped short and stared up at Burr. Burr looked at the nearest sentry booth, but the fellows there were chitchatting. He gave a quick jerk of his head. Old Abe quickly reached over the line, snatched the sweet potato, and withdrew into the crowd.

“Do you know who my father is?”

“James Weld Pickett. Friend of Governor Joe Brown. Taught at Yale Law School same year Brown was there. Campaigned to get him into office. Y’all have dined together on multitudinous occasions.”

Dance stared. “I’ve told you about him?”

“Lots of times.”

“I don’t remember.”

“That ain’t a surprise. Half the time you just listen to the wind in the pines.”

“Well, I’ve shamed him, Burr.”

“How’d y’all shame him?”

“My brother Beau’s in the navy. He sails with the CSS
Florida.
He’s very proud of Beau. I am, too. But early on I didn’t make an effort to fight in this war, not like Beau did. I was trying to see how I felt about it. I didn’t want to bleed and die for something I didn’t believe in. If I believed, I could do that. I could.”

“Go on.”

“I was confused, and I was angry, and all I wanted to do was study
and get on with my life and the war was nothing but an interruption. I took too long figuring it out.” He chuckled bitterly. “I was the last one left in my classes because everyone else had gone to war, including the professors. The registrar finally told me not to show up. Do you know, anyone in the beginning who said they were against the war was a social exile? And now it is in fashion to do so? I hate what is in fashion. I have a contrary nature.”

“Boy, I have seen
that
.”

“Here is the truth: I was too afraid to let my father know how I felt about the war because I did, in fact, know my mind right from the start. But I didn’t want to hear him say I was wrong.”

“’Cause you loved him?”

Dance opened his mouth to spit out an answer, but a different one came out. “Well
 
—yes. I hated to disappoint him.”

“That’s how it goes all over with fathers and sons, Pickett, high or low. Folks as wear broadcloth, such as yourself, or folks as wear homespun, such as me.”

“He’d like you, Burr. You should meet him one day. He can fill a room.”

“Well, I’d believe that. Now what’re you trussed up about? I ain’t seen you like this since that girl.”

“The one I insulted?”

“Nope. Though I like tellin’ that. The other one, Miss Stiles.”

“She doesn’t truss me up,” Dance said, a curl to his lip. “Talk to Emery Jones about her. She’d follow him out on thin ice.”

“Who’d follow me on thin ice?”

Emery came up the ladder.

“Violet Stiles.”

At the rail, Emery edged out Burr, who pulled away to study the other two. One anxiously looked along the deadline north, while the other anxiously looked south.

“What you boys up to?” he asked. “You and Sergeant Keppel and the turnkey . . . you all is up to something.”

“Any sign?” Emery asked.

“No.”

Emery pushed his hat back. “I wonder now if this wasn’t my best idea. There may be things I hadn’t thought of.”

“Well . . . I wasn’t going to say anything. You seemed to have everything in hand, and I didn’t want to dampen the momentum.”

“What you two done?”

“What are the consequences of kidnapping, lawyer boy?” Emery said, scanning the stockade under his hand. “How bad an offense is that?”

“Aside from personal affront?”

“In the eyes of the law.”

“I wouldn’t think as much about what will happen to us as what is happening to him.”

“I’m not worried about him. Lew will take care of him. What worries me is not being around to take care of Lew if I am off being hung.”

“Hanged. Don’t worry about that. We’ll put it on Burr.”

“What you gonna put on me?”

“We kidnapped a man,” said Emery. “A preacher. We turned him into the pen to get a fill of it before the Millard dance tomorrow night, in hopes to set him preaching rightly once more.”

“I thought his lectern would be a nice touch,” Dance mused. “Set it up by the fiddlers.”

“But we’ve lost him,” said Emery.

“Where does Lew abide?” Dance stared under his hand into the thousands.

“I don’t know.”

“Where does he sleep at night?”

“I took your meaning the first time, and said I don’t know.”

“Boys, I’d laugh myself right out o’ the county if I wudden petrified. That is some cockamamie number you have pulled. Y’all have stepped in it for sure.”

“We know it.”

Dance lowered his hand. “Whiskey, kidnapping . . . nothing works for me.”

“What are we going to do, Dance?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you a thing I do know.”

“What’s that?”

“I am not the one Violet would follow.”

 
—

Hotel Ford was a five-foot-square claim over a place half burrowed into the ground. The first occupant who did the burrowing had died, deeding the place to Bart and Andy Rogers, brothers from the 2nd Delaware. Bart and Andy made room for Harris and Artie. Bart died, making room for Lew.

Hotel Ford was smack in the middle of the northeast quadrant of the pen, where it took five minutes to make fifty paces. Just south of the hotel was a well, dug and maintained by a group of men. They charged for the water, but at a fairer price than most, and if the boy with the bullet-creased cheek was on guard, it was always free.

“We’re coming to the new part,” Harris said as they continued north along the deadline on the east side. “They expanded this place about a month ago.”

“I know they pressed some of Howell Cobb’s slaves to do it,” said Reverend Gillette.

“Why didn’t they press them to build barracks?” Lew asked.

“I don’t have an answer for that.”

“Is Cobb a big to-do? I don’t have a handle on who he is. I know he’s a general, and from this area.”

“Well, he’s a big to-do around here,” said the preacher. “Very wealthy. Owns over a thousand slaves.”

“Why hasn’t he done something about this place?”

“I don’t have an answer.”

“Listen, Father, do you have any news on exchange?” Harris asked.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you there either. I don’t pay much attention to the newspapers anymore.”

“The whole system is shut down, and we don’t know why,” Harris said. “One thing is sure
 
—if Lincoln or Sherman had a boy in here, you bet it’d start up quick again.”

They picked their way through, stepping over or around men.

“We’re coming into our neighborhood,” Harris said. “How’s the arm, Indiana?” he asked of a man lying half in and half out of a tent
 
—such as it was. It looked like a threadbare curtain stitched to an equally threadbare set of trousers, held up by two sticks.

“Not so good,” said the man.

Harris squatted and took a peek under a filthy bandage. He examined the wound, picked a few things out of it, and resettled the bandage. He patted him on the back and said, “Don’t strike your colors, lad.”

They moved along, until a boy not more than fifteen came up to Harris. “Jim’s taken to his bed again. Says he’ll go over the deadline and stand until they shoot him. Says he’s given up.” The boy hung his head. “I can’t have him give up.”

Harris’s face changed. It balled up like a fist, and with the shiny, gruesome infection that swelled his lower lip and chin, the effect was frightening indeed. He took his time rolling up one sleeve and then the other. He followed the boy.

“Preacher, you’re gonna wanna cover your ears,” Lew said uneasily. “In fact
 
—you don’t want to see this. It’s not fitting for a guest.”

The preacher had every intention of seeing it. Everyone in earshot did, and the party picked up interested persons along the way. Harris Gill had a reputation for breaking up monotony.

The boy stepped aside and Harris fell upon the tent like a thunderclap. “Come outta there, you no-good
 
—” he hollered, finishing with an admirable wrought-iron feat of profanity. He seized a protruding foot and yanked a man out, along with the tent itself, leaving behind another man surprised from a nap.

Harris untangled the tent from Jim and hauled him eye-to-eye. “Get up, you great coward! Don’t let me see you like that again!”

“Aw, Gill, it ain’t gonna work this time,” the man groaned, trying to push from Harris’s grasp. “I got no spirit left. I’m too hungry. I’m dyin’ of it.”

“Don’t strike your colors! You fight, boy-o, or by the saints and all their trappin’s I’ll beat the shillelagh out o’ you! Your own mother won’t know ya!”

“She won’t know me now!” Jim cried, and went slack in Harris’s grip, uncaring when Harris shook him like a rag doll.

“Stop it!” cried the preacher, but Lew pulled him back and said, “Just watch,” in his ear.

Harris threw the man to the ground and followed him there, dropping flat to his stomach. They were forehead-to-forehead, as if they were about to arm wrestle. Instead, Harris grabbed the man’s hair and pressed his face in the dirt. “There ya go! A little taste o’ Southern hospitality!”

The man tried to squirm away, but Harris held him fast. The preacher lunged, but Lew dragged him back.

“You wanna be buried in it?” Harris shouted.

“No,” came the muffled response.

“Come again?”

“No!”

Harris let him go. He stood up, brushing off dust. “Any more talk like that, boy-o, I’ll drag you to the line myself. Now get your arse up.”

Jim rolled to his back. He coughed and lay breathing hard, face coated in grime, nose bloodied. He stared at the sky for a moment and then belched. He murmured, “Excuse me.” Onlookers chuckled, and Jim protested, “I didn’t do that ’cause I swallowed dirt. I do that when my stomach grumbles. It is my personal constitution.” He sat up and took stock. He looked up at Harris. “I had a weak moment.”

“You’re not allowed a weak moment, lad. We are an army. Our surroundin’s don’t change that, and our current battle is to survive this hell. Now I outrank you, you sorry piece of
 
—” mild profanity. “This neighborhood is my detachment; you follow my orders. Don’t let me catch you weak again.”

Jim wiped his nose. “I keep thinkin’ of my wife and baby.”

“That’s a sin here. Pack ’em away and say a hundred Hail Marys.”

“Don’t know Hail Marys. I ain’t Catholic.”

“Well, I won’t hold it against you. Talk to the preacher, here. He’ll fill your suitcase with some good stout religion, and if it ain’t Catholic we won’t hold it against him.” He eyed onlookers. “Anyone who does will answer to me.”

Jim looked up through dust-coated lashes at the preacher. He sighed. “I know the Twenty-Third Psalm. I could say that.”

“That will do nicely,” said Reverend Gillette, and he helped the man to his feet.

 
—

“I collected your rations,” said Andy Rogers, as Harris, Lew, and the preacher crawled into the tent. Artie lay in the same position Lew
had left him in this morning. His ration, a three-inch square of corn bread with a handful of beans on top, lay on the ground next to him.

There was room enough for the men to sit Indian style. The tent itself was far better than others. It was Emery’s blanket. Lew had found it in the haversack Emery pushed into his hands when he first came in.

When was that? Mere days ago? Felt like a month.

Emery’s sack contained wonders the others had not seen in a long time. Strips of dried mule, some crackers, a few small apples. Lew had shared all of it out the first day. Yesterday they traded the sack itself for water for Artie.

Andy looked warily at the preacher, until Harris said, “He’s just visitin’, lad. From the other side.”

“Oh. Well, that’s okay. You get your rations yet?”

The preacher didn’t know what to say.

“You can have Artie’s. He ain’t eatin’.” Andy took Artie’s food and placed it on Gillette’s palm. The preacher looked at it dubiously. He glanced at the others.

“This is all you get for supper?”

Andy laughed. “Are you new?”

Harris said, “That isn’t supper, Father. That’s breakfast, lunch,
and
supper. That’s a day’s worth.”

“A few peas and a bit of corn bread with raisins.” He looked at it disbelievingly. “This cannot be. I must speak to General Winder.” He lifted it to his nose and sniffed. He recoiled.

“You have raisins in yours?” Andy said, leaning to see. Then he stared at Gillette. “You
are
new. Those aren’t raisins.”

Gillette put the bread and peas in a slant of light through a gap in the tent and examined it. His face stiffened. “Gentlemen, I cannot eat this. You are welcome to it.”

“Actually, this is a good day,” Lew said, inspecting his portion.
“It is baked. You should see what they call ‘bacon.’ I didn’t know it came in colors.”