The Sentinels of Andersonville (4 page)

Lew eased down, resting his back against a tree, stretching out his healing leg. Emery tossed down the haversacks between them and gratefully took a tree himself. The planked seats in the boxcar had no backs.

“I am thinking this,” said Emery quietly, his voice set only for Lew to hear. A squad of six or seven prisoners had followed them, under guard of two Confederate soldiers, and threw down their things behind the dry goods store, some ten yards away. “I got some tobacco left, and some dried meat.”

“Dried mule. I’d rather eat horse. Mule is grainy. I wonder if it
is because it cannot reproduce. Perhaps that also explains the odd flavor.”

“Shut up and listen: I want you to take it. You’ll have something to trade with in the pen.”

“Not doing so. You’ll have nothing left.”

“I intend to marry your sister if she is as pretty as you say, and I will not have my betrothed accuse me of not taking care of her brother.”

“I’ve told you, she’s engaged.”

“You keep saying that and I keep trying to find its relevance. Besides, if her intended is in the war, he’ll likely die in battle.”

“If you are her unintended intended, do unintendeds
not
die?”

“My argument is she’ll forget all about him once she sees me. I have an effect on women you have not yet learned. Lew
 
—is it
a
ffect or
e
ffect, with an
e
?”

“Well . . . I’m not sure.”

“The word stumps me. Also,
diarrhea
. I spell that different every time.”

“That you would have multiple occasions to spell it at all amazes me. But I am
not
 
—”

“Shut up and listen. Once I have delivered you safe to the pen, I have orders from Captain Graves to report to Captain Wirz who will, God willing, send me back to my regiment as Graves specifies, and that’ll be somewhere near Atlanta where I will personally lick Sherman. God
not
willing, Wirz will conscript my services for his own garrison, as commandants are wont to do if they are low on men, at
which
point I will certainly relieve you of my provender. I will hunt you down for it, in perpetuity. No terms except an unconditional
 
—”

“One of these days I want you to come out and say you admire Grant.”

“Lew. My kinsmen are right over there.”

“Well, I admire Bobby Lee.”

“What is not to admire? But you’d not say that if we were in the North and I was
your
prisoner with
your
kinsmen nearby. I do regret to inform you he’s gonna lick Grant at Petersburg.”

“Have you learned nothing from Vicksburg?”

“Well, now
 
—he wasn’t fighting Bobby Lee, was he?” Emery beamed a wide, comical grin, and Lew chuckled. Emery took his knapsack and began to rummage. “Lew, we don’t have much time left. Does anything remain unsaid?”

“Your oath to that Captain Graves.”

“Remains unsaid. ’Til I meet your sister.”

“An oath made on my behalf is something I feel I have a right to.”

“How do you feature?
I
made it, it’s
my
business, and there’s the end of it.”

Lew drew up his leg and unpinned the flap to examine his wound. The Negro woman in Atlanta had given him a pin to close the ragged gap made by the bullet. From what Emery could tell, the wound was healing well. She used a greasy concoction that seemed to speed it up.

Lew refastened the flap. “There is one subject we haven’t spoke on. I didn’t want to court your ire. But it bothers me some, and when this is said, all is said. It is on the subject of slavery.”

Emery sighed. “Wish we could leave that alone. We’ve done all right without it. Well, let’s have it then.”

Lew adjusted himself to fit the tree better. “Well, Em, here it is: we had an escaped Negro following our camp. We had to saw a neck iron off him. Tricky work. As we did so, we observed his condition, and it was bad. Had a cut-off ear. Had a brand on his thigh, made by a hot iron. And his back . . .” Lew shook his head. “You are the South to me, and I know you don’t have it in you to treat a man like that. So I want to know why you fight for those who do.”

While Lew was talking, Emery had pulled off his hat and made a game of winging it at a sapling stump a few feet off. After retrieving it twice, he dug in his knapsack for a fishhook and string, and attached it to the hat. He winged it at the stump and ringered it, then with some satisfaction, pulled in the hat with the string. Lew knew it was Emery’s way of listening.

“Don’t know how a nation can treat folks like that.”

“Well, Lew, the whole South ain’t that way, and a man can be against slavery without being Union. He can just love his home, and love his people, and fight because you are down here and we’re afraid of what you might do. You mustn’t believe the whole South would do for that man as was done
 
—it ain’t right, and decent folks know it.”

“I
have
been ashamed at how some of our boys have treated the Negroes. We’re not all of us emancipationists. Some of our boys are ignorant and cruel.”

Emery reeled in his hat. “Decent folk, both sides; folk suitable for tar and feathers, both sides. That is the war in a percussion cap. On slavery itself, well . . . sometimes you go down a road a spell before you find it’s not the one you want to be on. At which time, a course correction is called for, only we kept on. This particular course correction came from the North. I hope you all don’t get uppity about it.” He winged the hat and ringered the stump again. He tried to reel it in, but it snagged. “Is all off your chest?”

“As I feel mostly relieved, I guess we can be quit of that topic. Yet there is one thing more.”

“Go on,” said Emery, patiently tugging the line.

“On June 28, I was due to muster out
 
—the day after Kennesaw.”

Emery stopped pulling the line.

Lew forced a smile. “There’s a kick in the teeth, hey? Did my three years, all set to go home, and now this. Colonel Ford didn’t even tempt me with a reenlistment bounty. He was a Penn boy, too.
He knew I did my part.” He picked up a twig and dug at the ground. “I miss my children, Emery. Miss my farm, my dogs. And I miss Carrie like . . .” He fell silent. He broke the twig into little pieces. “I’m a farmer. I’m not a warrior. I never figured on fighting a war in my lifetime. Never thought I’d miss three years of my children’s growing up. And that is all, Emery. That is everything.”

After some time, Emery pulled the hat line again. “You’ll get home, Lew. This war won’t last forever. And what about prisoner exchange? Always chance for exchange. You hang on to that.”

Lew scattered the broken twig pieces and sat back against the tree. He looked up at the leaves.

The day was sulfurous hot, but under this tree, next to this woodpile, it was nearly pleasant. It felt good to rest after one miserable conveyance on the rails after another.

“I have to tell you that Northern Negroes are different from Southern Negroes,” Lew said. “I found this out a few months ago when on campaign in Tennessee. It’s the singing. A group of ’em were following camp. One of ’em led off in song, then the rest joined in chorus, and I tell you, though I couldn’t understand half the words, yet I was drawn into that song and felt of it. Felt where it came from, and where it was going. All of us quieted down to hear it, and when it ended, felt like the sun went down and left the sky a thing of beauty. All was sad and quiet and good. Sure wish I could hear that again. I think the Northern Negroes would learn something from the Southern, when this is all done.”

Emery held up his hand.

“Is that a religious affirmation?” Lew asked. But Emery put a finger to his lips, and motioned to the squad of men behind the dry goods store. All of them were looking at something on the other side of the woodpile. Something dangerous, by their stares. Emery slowly stood and crept over to the woodpile. He raised himself up, and peered over.

It was a girl.

She had not yet noticed the squad of men staring at her, nor did she see Emery looking down. It was evident she was listening intently to the conversation on the other side of the woodpile, and soon it was evident that she wondered if she had been caught; then her eyes widened as she caught sight of the staring men across the way, and a blush leapt to her cheeks; and then she realized where some of them were looking, and slowly looked up.

A face full of blue eyes framed by dark hair and bonnet gazed up into Emery’s. His first thought was to bless her out for eavesdropping, but no one could take up with a face like that. Lovely cheeks, lovely lips, and eyes gone slightly wild with what Emery took to be fear, and fear in a woman got his gourd. The entire effect melted his perturbation like butter in the sun.

“How do,” he nodded.

She nodded back.

He touched his forehead since he’d not reeled in his hat. “Corporal Emery Jones, 22nd Alabama Volunteers, Company C. Appreciate it if you keep quiet on anything you may have heard, ma’am.”

She nodded.

“Rather not have things go hard for me from simple misunderstandin’.”

“Of
 
—” She cleared her throat delicately. She rose, and discreetly dusted off her backside. “Of course not,” she said, mighty dignified. “Besides . . . well, I do believe my thinking of Yankees may stand to be adjusted somewhat. Once I have time to consider it. It is a very new idea. You have startled me, right in the middle of this consideration, and I have not come to any conclusion.”

She lowered her eyes, and a blush pinkened her cheeks. Emery smiled.

“Attention!” called a man who came around the corner. “You boys
gather up your charges and meet Captain Wirz on the east side of the depot. He’ll count ’em off into nineties, and we’ll walk ’em to the pen. Any of you headin’ back to Macon, check in with the provost marshal and get your passes. The rest, report to Sergeant Keppel at the stockade for reassignment to the garrison. Get going, now. Wirz don’t like dalliers.”

 
—

It was an ever-widening world for Violet Wrassey Stiles.

She sat very still at the woodpile, sorting through many heady impressions, two foremost in her mind.

First, the Rebel talked to the Yankee
wholeheartedly
, as if he were
not
a pillager, murderer, and defiler of Southern women, while the
Yankee himself
talked as if he were not. To consider a Yankee as something other than a hateful aggressor bound to brutally dominate the South was a terribly new and difficult thought. While it was perfectly acceptable to say out loud that at this point, the outcome of the war did not look good, and that General Cobb or Governor Brown might’ve done better than Jefferson Davis, it was another thing altogether to even
think
that the Yankees may have been a
tiny bit
(and the words
tiny bit
could not be more severe) misjudged, that the South had been
perhaps
misinformed as to the character of them
all
.

She could not bring these dizzying ideas to any sort of conclusion, so discomfortingly did they feel of treason. Yankees had done murder, and this was an indisputable truth. Many boys from Americus lay in far-off graves, and to think well of a Yankee was like killing them all over again.

The second impression was that the Confederate soldier was handsome. He’d certainly had an effect on her. Or was it
a
ffect . . . ?

Oddly, Dance Pickett came to mind.

And then came a different thought altogether, ousting both boys, and she looked to where the Federal men had filed away.

Papa worked at the Federal hospital at the prison. He’d forbidden her and the entire household from going near the prison, which was an easy thing to do since it was ten miles from Americus. He said it was not fitting for women to be around so many men. He said there were camp diseases.

She held very still, as if listening for something distant. Things about Papa and his volunteerism tried hard to make sense right now.

Tell your father he needs to be more careful.

The glorious Cause, which some hateful newspapers were now calling “lost,” had always seemed a little independent of Papa, which had bothered Violet
 
—he was not as patriotic as she wished him to be, content to remain in a vexing state of even-keeled benignity. But Papa had changed in the last few months. He was quieter. His smile was quick and gone. He’d even cut off his beautiful beard, and the family had never known him without it. Lily had cried for two days.

Just before he cut it, Violet and Papa sat on the porch on a Thursday evening after he came home from the hospital. He was very tired and had closed his eyes, resting a spell before Ellen called them to supper. Violet took the chance to study him when he couldn’t see her concern. How pale he was. How puffy his eyes. How
 
—and something
moved
on his beard.

It was a single, creeping, gray-colored
vermin
. She saw another.

Horrified, she tried to flick them away without disturbing Papa, but the hideous little things stuck fast. She looked about, then went to the magnolia tree and pulled off a leaf. She crept back up the stairs, and tried to scrape one off with the leaf without rousing Papa. He did rouse, saw Violet, and followed her eyes to the vermin. He calmly pinched it from his beard and flicked it away. She pointed to the other. He took care of that one, too.

“What
are
they, Papa?” she asked, nose wrinkled.

“Why, the first was Miss Mary, and the second was her beau, come courtin’.” He smiled tiredly, and patted her arm. “Not to worry.” And she wondered what she should be worried about.

The next day, Papa cut off his beard.

Tell your father he needs to be more careful.

Was Papa in trouble? What trouble could come from volunteering his medical services?

She picked up the box of seashells and brought it over to the corral, where the smart black Maxwell brougham waited outside the stable to be harnessed to the smart black Maxwell horse. She put the box inside the carriage, then closed the door, tied her bonnet strings, and headed for the east side of the Andersonville depot.