The Sentinels of Andersonville (25 page)

Maybe Emery Jones
could
be saved.

“You get to it, Pickett?”

“Maybe.” He felt a little better. In fact, as pieces began to fly together and form a solitary notion, and when Dance prodded that
notion and found it solid, he felt much better
 
—and brightened prospects for both Lew
and
Emery brightened the prospects with Violet.

He went back to the rail. “How’d you win your wife, Burr?”

“She won me.”

“How’d she do that?”

“She was herself, and I liked it.”

“It didn’t have much to do with you winning her?”

“What do I got in me that she’d want? I liked what I saw in that girl, and determined her as mine.”

“Well, how did you go about it?”

“Went up to her one day and said I’d marry her and no other. Then I went off to bide my time.”

“How long did you bide?”

“Two years,” he admitted. “She didn’t like what I said. But she come around.”

“It was worth it?”

“Twenty-six years of worth it.”

“Burr, will you do something for me?”

“I will.”

Dance went to his scrip in the corner. He took out a pencil and piece of paper and began to write as fast as he could.

Violet, I want you to marry me. Here is how you won me: When you came to the prison, you fought to reach that dying man. Doing so, you reached me. You were yourself. You were who I hoped you were all along. So I will marry you or I will marry no one, but I must do something first. I do not know how long it will take. Wait for me, because I am yours, and you, Violet Wrassey Stiles, are mine.

Dance Weld Pickett

He folded the note and slipped it into the leather scrip, making sure it was the top paper. He fastened the leather string and handed the scrip to Burr.

“I can’t do two things at once. But I think my father will come and see about one of them. He is a retired lawyer and loves to meddle. Especially if it has to do with law.”

“I am nervous again.”

“Get this to Violet Stiles. And get me Old Abe. Have him at the gate in a quarter hour
 
—wait!” Dance snatched back the scrip and hurriedly opened it. He found an envelope. He took a piece of paper, folded it, and slipped it into the envelope. He tucked in the envelope flap, wrote a name on the front, hesitated, wrote more, and put the envelope in his pocket. He retied the scrip and gave it back to Burr. “There. Old Abe at the gate, a quarter hour.”

“I am more nervous than I ever been!”

“Say hello to my father for me. He’ll arrive sometime tomorrow. This time, he will come.” He ran for the ladder. He ran back to Burr and shook his hand heartily, and ran for the ladder once more.

Burr looked at the leather scrip and wished with all his heart he could read. But it did not take a reader to smoke out how Pickett planned to help the one called Lew, not standing at this post all this time and seeing all from the same place.

An ache pierced his heart, and he looked over the stockade.

 
—

They wouldn’t let Dance see Emery Jones, as he’d had his quota of visitors for the day.

“And no, you can’t see the Articles of War ’cause they are for punishment only and not for reading any old time someone pleases, as this ain’t a library. And furthermore what are you doing off your
post, Dance Pickett? Just because your daddy is some kind of to-do, that don’t give you the right to
 
—”

“Oh, have it your way,” Dance groused at the guard. He stepped back and shouted, “Emery!”

“Dance?” came a faint voice from within. “That you?”

“It’s the Articles, isn’t it?”

“Figure it out, did you? That’s my boy.”

“Enough of that!” said the guard.

“Not quite. This peawit won’t let me read them. Which one?”

“I was thinkin’ of Article 22. But I don’t know if there’s enough in it.”

“Article 22. Listen, one more thing: The oath is fulfilled. You hear me? It is done, Emery. All is well.”

No answer.

“You hear me?”

“I heard.”

“You get on, Pickett, or you’re gonna join him! Try me!”

“See you later, Alabama.”

Emery did not answer, and that was all right.

Emery had to know that Lew was taken care of before Saturday morning. But maybe Father would come and meddle. He might not come to the aid of Yanks, but he might for a Confederate soldier, especially if the law could ferret out his innocence. If something in Article 22 could do so, Father would find it.

He had to word it perfectly.

He ran to the telegraph office in the Andersonville depot, sent a message, and raced back to the stockade.

 
—

Late that afternoon, J. W. Pickett of 14 Glastonbury Street in Augusta received two telegrams. Both times he feared it was about his oldest
son, Beau, and both times it wasn’t. The first was a cryptic missive from the Stiles family. The second was from Dance.

Dear Father. Come at once, and bring a set of the Articles of War. Study Article 22 and see to Emery Jones in Castle Reed. He is unjustly sentenced to death, Saturday 11 a.m. Law can save him. I’d do it myself but I have been called away. Gratefully, Dance.

Gratefully? Since when had Dance been grateful?

“Is it Beau, sir? Is it Dance?” said a worried Mammy Wallace, their old nurse. “Is all well?”

J. W. Pickett roused himself. “All is very well indeed. He is grateful! A sure sign he is growing up, thank God. But don’t put off your prayer shawl just yet, for our Dance is sent to the front. I am glad for his chance to prove his mettle and pray he escapes Federal wrath
 
—but oh, this gladdens me more!” He shook the telegram. “Two happy things herein, Mammy Wallace! ‘Law can save him,’ says he
 
—he’d
do it himself
if he could! Oh, it joys me to my toes!” He did a tiny shuffle dance in place.

“What is the next happy thing?” said she.

“Recalled to life!” roared J. W. Pickett. “Was Sydney Carton the hero of
A Tale of Two Cities
? I think not! It was the old lawyer, Mammy Wallace, the old lawyer!” And off he went to pack his bag.

 
—

Dance followed Old Abe along the deadline, heading north, and didn’t dare look up to see if Burr was watching.

It was an easy thing to get the turnkey to open the pass-through door in the gate. Dance simply showed him the envelope and said, “General Winder wants me to get a signature. It may take some time.”

“My watch ends in an hour,” said the turnkey.

“If I’m not back by then, tell your relief I’m coming out. Name’s Dance Pickett.”

“I know who you are.”

Yes . . . but his relief didn’t.

A new turnkey on watch rotation had replaced Lucerne, he who betrayed Emery for a barrel of whiskey and a furlough. The new man did not know the face of Dance Weld Pickett.

He felt curiously light as he followed Old Abe.

The people of Americus were terrified these men would rise in cutthroat revolt; yet here Dance dared to go and fetch a “signature” without an armed escort. He wasn’t even questioned by the turnkey. Mosby’s gang, the only real trouble in the pen, had been put down last month, and the new Regulators did a fairly even job at keeping peace. When it all boiled down, these were just men; some were bad, but most were good
 
—like any place in Georgia. He was safe enough in the company of this lame man.

A tumult of thought billowed within, pierced through with sharp exhilaration, and he wished for paper and pen. The pen would turn billowed thoughts to shapes, and give them habitation. Then he’d lay them to rest in that sanctuary of hope until the day came when it was safe to bring them out.

One thought floated free in the tumult, shaped and waiting for ink: I have seen what this place has done to men, and I admit I am afraid it will come to me, too, but better this fear than the other, that God has died. I saw him today in a man who spoke of lemons.

In his mind, he wiped the pen and stoppered the ink; he dried the page and slipped it into the scrip. He gave the scrip to Violet and kissed her good-bye.

Dance Weld Pickett, adored son of James Weld Pickett, the ardent secessionist, the confidant of Governor Joe Brown, and the hater of all things North, was about to become a blue-belly Yank.

Once inside . . . men exclaimed: “Is this hell?” Verily, the great mass of gaunt, unnatural-looking beings, soot-begrimed, and clad in filthy tatters, that we saw stalking about inside this pen looked, indeed, as if they might belong to a world of lost spirits.

 
—
PRIVATE WILLIAM B. SMITH, 14TH ILLINOIS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY

Tuesday, July 19, 1864

Men, strong in mentality, heart and hope were in a few short months . . . reduced to imbeciles and maniacs. . . . the slowest torture to him who still had a clear brain.

 
—
F
ROM THE DIARY OF
C
ORPORAL
C
HARLES
H
OPKINS,
1
ST
N
EW
J
ERSEY
I
NFANTRY

“Y
OU GOT ANY MORE STORIES?”

Lew lay on his side, his back to them. “No, Martin. No more.”

All he had were lost friends . . . and no place to lament them.

“Leave him be a bit, Martin,” Andy murmured. “He’ll be all right.”

“I thought it might help if he talked,” said Martin. “We all pull our weight here at Hotel Ford. We look after each other.”

“Yes, we do,” said Andy.

Martin lay down and fell instantly asleep.

Smoke gave battles a sense of unreality. In some battles, you waited for the smoke to clear to get off a shot, wondering the whole time if it had cleared sooner for the enemy.

Lew would take that smoke over this. He’d take the unbearable sense of waiting, almost shot; he’d take turned-up earth and wrecked caissons and blown-up horses to lying down and taking this. They could not fight here. It was all mental living. All figuring out how to make a handful of food last a day. Figuring out water. Figuring out how to doctor someone with nothing, and you weren’t a doctor to begin with.

They could not kill what tried to kill them. They could not even throw a punch, and the powerlessness was unmanning. They had to take all that was poured upon them because they were soldiers and that’s what soldiers did and they died by the thousands doing so.

“We can kill lice,” Andy said. “There’s always lice, the dear little vermin . . .”

Lew came away from his thoughts.

“There is a twofold reward in it,” Andy said, as if asked. “We fight back, and we keep clean.”

Well, it was true.

Lew wiped his face. “How do you know just what I need said?” He rolled over to look at Andy.

“Because that’s how I felt when Bart died. I went on a wild-man lice-killing spree. Killed 143 off myself. Consigned them to a miniature abyss, wherever bad vermin go. It was a personal record, and it did me good.”

“What’s the most you’ve heard of?”

“I heard of a man on the south side who killed above a thousand off himself. But you know rumors. Could have started out half that.” Then he said, “I don’t know if my folks know about Bart.”

“Have you written to them?”

“Can’t get paper for it. I don’t know how things are reported here, officially. I hope they have a record of us. That’s a little fear I have. We’ll just get swallowed up. No one will know.”

“There is an official record, and I know the boy who keeps it,” came a soft voice at the tent flap. The flap rose, and a face peered in. “His name is Dorence Atwater. But my name is Lew Gann.”

“That’s my name,” Lew said, feeling foolish.

“Not anymore. Yours is Dance Pickett.” He put out a hand. “Nice to meet you. I am here courtesy of a mutual friend.”

Lew sat up. “What has he gone and done now?”

“Clearly you know him. Well, he is in trouble, some. I hope my father will get him out.” He crawled inside. “It took a while to get here, so we need to hurry. Burr is on duty another hour, and you must get to him before he leaves. We have to switch clothes.” He took off his hat and began to unbutton his shirt. “There is a new turnkey on duty tonight. He does not know my face. Give him your name, which is Dance Pickett, hold up this envelope, and tell him you got the signature for General Winder. He’ll let you through.”

Lew stared.

“Do I have to repeat myself?”

Lew nodded as he pulled off his boots.

 
—

Someone was coming up the ladder.

Pickett’s hat came into view, but it was not Pickett’s face beneath it.

“You must be Lew,” Burr said.

“A terrified Lew.”

“I heard you below. You did all right.”

“Good. I was nervous.”

“I am that, around Pickett. Well, what’d he tell you?”

“He said he was sorry, but he had no plan past getting me to you. He said maybe go see Ellen, a servant at the home of Dr. Stiles. Said her church stands by to help.”

“Yep. The coloreds round here got a system set up for escaped prisoners. ’Course, I don’t know anything about that. One thing at a time, and first we gotta land you safe to my place. This is a pickle.”

Lew started to apologize, but Burr waved it off. “I don’t mind pickles. But I got to think. I got to get you out as Dance Pickett. There is all manner of comin’ and goin’ at watch change. Dusk will aid us, but still, it will be a tricky time. Come stand by me and look out, like you seen us do, and I will think.”

“Where is Emery Jones?”

“That is a separate pickle,” Burr said softly, knowing what he did about good, bright boys. He’d lost his own early on, and today he’d lost another.

“One pickle at a time,” he said, and produced a smile. “Now, I saw you walk up to the gate, but Dance don’t have a limp. Hope you can manage to walk like a spoiled-rotten dandy for a spell.”

 
—

“That is not Lew. He is wearing Lew’s clothing, but he is not Lew.”

Andy roused from sleep. “What’s the matter, Martin? Stop that! What are you doing?”

“Knockin’ some sense into my head, like they tried to at Mosby’s camp. He is wearing Lew’s clothes, but he’s not Lew. I feel tricked.”

“Martin, stop it
 
—it’s okay, all is well. Lew got out last night. Isn’t that fine?”

“Where did he go?”

“Outside. He’s gonna make it back to Sherman and give the Rebs a shellackin’.”

“What is outside this place again?”

“Well . . . same as inside. War.”

“I want to go where Lew is. We take care of our own.”

“We will, someday. But for now, we are going to make pretend that
this
man is Lew. We are even going to
call
him Lew.”

Martin shook his head. “I don’t like that.”

“Nevertheless, it is what we must do.” Then, “Lew
told
us to.”

“He did?”

“Yep.”

Martin rubbed his palm on his forehead. “Well . . . all right. I don’t understand it, but all right.”

“You’ll understand someday. I see you getting better every day,
Martin, you know that? Now go outside and pick off lice. Don’t stop until you get to a hundred.”

“I can’t count that high. I used to.”

“Get some stones. Remember what Lew said? Each time you count to ten, set aside a stone. When you see ten stones, you will have counted to a hundred.”

“Andy, can a man eat lice?”

“No!”

“But I’ve seen
 
—”

“No! We’ll never get down so low. Not here in Hotel Ford.”

Martin nodded. “All right, Andy. Not here in Hotel Ford.”

“Go pick ’em off and kill ’em.”

Martin crawled out. Andy nudged Dance. “Hey.”

“I’m awake.” He sat up and started scratching. “Not sure I slept.”

“You didn’t say much after Lew left.”

“I wasn’t much inclined.”

“My name is Andy Rogers.” He gave a brief history of Hotel Ford and its lodgers. “What worries me is Martin. He’s on the simple side, if you haven’t noticed. Best we could tell, he ran with Mosby’s gang early on. We think he went mad, and they kicked him out. Or they kicked him out, and he went mad. Lew took him in when Artie died. Our policy is four men in here at all times, because it is not in our conscience to take up all this space for less. But this time we’ll wait for a fourth until you leave.”

Dance glanced around ruefully. All this space. It was hardly five feet square. Not much bigger than a sentinel platform.

“When do you plan to get out of here?” said Andy.

“Same as you.”

“I don’t follow. I’m waiting for exchange or for the war to end.”

Dance shrugged and nodded.

“You came in here with no plan to get out?” Andy said, incredulous.

“If I get out now, I’ll be court-martialed for treason. But if the North wins like all signs say, then they’ll sort me out with the rest, and I will eventually get out of this with no lasting consequences.”

“Well
 
—you got anyone on the outside to keep you living? You won’t last long on what they feed us.”

“I hope a guard at the north gate will slip me something now and then.”

“I see you have not thought this through.”

Uneasily, Dance said, “What do you mean?”

“You can’t go to the north gate. You can’t go anywhere. You are known. Anyone who sees you living among us will think you came as a spy. They’ll think you’re here to report tunneling or other nefarious activities to Wirz.”

“How am I known?”

“How are you
 
—? You’ve been on the north gate since I came! Sometimes other spots, but mostly there. You can change your clothes, but you can’t change your face.”

“So you have seen me . . . and I have not seen you.” Dance chuckled bitterly. “I am Americus.”

“I imagine we are a lot to look at. It would be interesting to see us from high up.” He motioned outside with his head. “Listen, Martin could be a problem. I can keep you secret. We’ll keep you in here as sick, and you can move about at night. I’ll fetch your rations during the day for roll call, and my sergeant won’t question it right away. We’ll get by a few days that way, until we figure something else out. But Martin worries me.”

“If I
am
discovered . . . will they do anything to you?”

“I don’t care to think that far.” He studied Dance. “Why did you do it?”

Dance scratched beneath his collar, then sent a squint of disgust
down his shirtfront. “I don’t know.” He let his shirt go. “It makes sense if I don’t have to say it.”

“I’ll say this: I like Lew. You picked a good man to do a good turn.”

“I didn’t do it for him. That I do know.”

 
—

Martin did not find the ten stones where he had left them. Likely they had been stolen. He picked his way along, collecting new ones. Soon he found himself in a place he did not want to be, and that was near Mosby’s old gang. Most of the bad ones were dead, as they strung up six of ’em. But some weren’t strung.

He about-faced to scurry along for Hotel Ford.

“Say, there! Wait up, old Martin!” It was Elliott.

“You are looking fine these days.” It was Stern.

“Lew got me new clothes. I need to get back to Hotel Ford.”

“What else did Lew get you?”

“Nothin’.” He tried to sidestep, but Elliott moved with him.

“You sure about that? You got new clothes, you put on weight
 
—no one does that here. This Lew must have something he can contribute to the Fund.”

“What fund?”

“My fund.”

“Well, Lew’s not here anymore,” Martin said, and it felt fine to say.

“Where’d he go?”

“He’s gone to give the Rebs a shellackin’. We got a new man. He wears Lew’s clothes, but he ain’t Lew. But Lew wants us to
call
him Lew.”

Elliott and Stern exchanged puzzled looks. Elliott shrugged.

“I reckon this man can contribute to the Fund on Lew’s behalf.”

Martin said unhappily, “Maybe.”

“Why don’t you take us to Hotel Ford and we’ll see. If he doesn’t have anything, he doesn’t have anything. Right? We won’t hurt him.”

“You won’t? ’Cause we take care of our own, there.”

“We ain’t like Mosby was,” said Stern.

“You didn’t see
us
hang, did you?”

“Well . . . okay. But make sure you call him Lew.”

 
—

“What do you think, Elliott?”

They didn’t get much of a look. But it was enough to prod a sleeping fire in their bellies. Andersonville was all about survival, but now and again came a chance to remember they were soldiers first, and not mere survivors.

“He’s from the north gate, all right.”

“What are we gonna do?”

“That smug Reb thinks he’ll just come in and roust out tunnels for Wirz like he’s some kind of Southern Stoneman on a raid. Like Wirz is his Sherman.”

“We gotta stop him.”

“He ain’t Stoneman,” Elliott seethed. “Ain’t fit to wear
them
boots.”

“You ever see so bold?”

“It’s bold of Wirz. He’ll just stash his man in a tent, let him run like a hound in our midst . . .”

“Well, he’s done it before. What are we gonna do?”

Elliott halted. He put up his hand. He looked at Stern.

“Let’s get up a council. Mosby ain’t here anymore, and he never was too smart. When he was hung, a lot of old bad things were hung with him. I want to do things proper.” He felt a fevered rush of
nobility and put aside as trifling what had drawn him to Hotel Ford in the first place. “I want to do our duty as Union men.”

Stern nodded. “That sounds right. For the boys who perished tryin’ to get to us.”

“And for Stoneman.”