The Sentinels of Andersonville (16 page)

“You’ll get used to it,” Andy assured. “Don’t give it away. Put it in your pocket for later.” He glanced at Artie. “He won’t mind. I’m sorry, boys, but I don’t think he’s gonna last until morning. He looks like Bart did at the end.” He eyed Harris. “Gill, you ain’t lookin’ so good.”

Harris crawled over to Artie.

Artie lay as if sleeping. It was easier to see him this way, instead of thrashing about in pain and delirium.

“He ain’t gone yet, Gill,” said Andy. “I checked a minute ago. He’s just sleeping. He’ll have a peaceful time of it.”

Harris stretched out beside him.

“Don’t it seem like he’s already in that good place?” Andy said gently. “Seeing things we wish to see? Why, look at him. He is already at rest. He ain’t mindful of this place no more, Gill, and that is a good way to go.”

Reverend Gillette crawled over. He lifted the pair of trousers that Artie had used for a coverlet and stared in horror at the wound in Artie’s thigh. He re-covered it. “Why wasn’t this man taken to the hospital?”

“He was,” said Lew. “There wasn’t room.”

“I am glad he is here,” whispered Harris. “With us.”

Reverend Gillette laid his hand on Artie’s leg and prayed for him silently, and then did the same for Harris after he had fallen asleep.

T
ALK IN THE SENTINELS’ BOOTH
had taken a philosophical turn, as things often did when answers could not be had. Instead of speculating on the missing Reverend Gillette, the three men packed snug at the rail spoke of the war and of Andersonville.

“We all thought Jeff Davis was our man,” said Emery.

“Yep,” said Burr. “Him or Cobb.”

“You can’t shake the feeling that something went terribly wrong at the breaking of the nation,” said Dance.

“No matter what reasons we had for leaving, we should’ve stayed. That’s what my uncle says. The rending ought not’ve come. But it did. We got a divorce.”

“All became different and difficult and wrong and hasn’t stopped being that way,” said Dance. “And now, this. Anomalies like Andersonville sprang from the breaking of the nation.”

“We strayed into territory unknown, and we are not yet quit of it,” Burr murmured. Dance glanced at him, and Burr spit. “You gonna put that in your scrip?”

Dance smiled faintly. “I might.” He remembered when the slopes before him were empty and green. Now, not a blade of vegetation remained in twenty-six acres. It was either trampled or eaten. He had better shelter than they, this open-air affair that kept off sun and rain.

“I wish I could explain this place for the meeting,” Emery said.

“I have visited every word I know,” Dance said. “Nothing pins it down. I’ve brought it to this, that if hell is a province or a state or a country, Andersonville is a town in it.”

“Pickett, I been thinkin’ on somethin’,” said Burr. “Why don’t you get your daddy out here? Then maybe he could get Joe Brown to come on down. I don’t think old J. B. would put up with this if he saw it.”

“He doesn’t have as much sway with Joe Brown as he believes. And he won’t come. I have written four times asking him to, and four times I have received a similar reply: ‘I will not shed a tear for a Yank. You are too soft, Son. If it’s bad as you say, and you are given to embellishment, what have
you
done to change things?’
 
—his hale and hearty answer for all.” His voice lowered. “He’d deny this place even as he looked on it, for he’d never believe it of our fair Confederacy and never understand the bureaucracy that got it this way. Much as I hate that bluff and bluster, the thought of extinguishing it is . . . Andersonville would crush the old man. That, I cannot bear.”

The three thought on this.

“Well, the sun is about to set, and I never thought the day would end like this. I pictured triumph.” Emery pushed away from the rail.

Dance turned. “What are you going to do?”

He paused. “You know what? For the first time in my life, I do not know.” He went down the ladder.

 
—

“He’s getting worse.” Andy put his hand on Harris’s forehead. “He’s awful feverish, and that ain’t the heat. I ain’t seen him eat, Lew. Have you?”

“No.”

“Have you seen him drink?”

“No.”

“We should get him to the lines.”

“They’ll do as much for him as they did for Artie,” Lew said. “Is there anything you can do, Preacher? Artie’s past help, but not Harris.”

The preacher looked up from where he had lapsed into a quiet, faraway state. “I don’t know,” he said. “I will try.”

Andy looked uncertainly at Lew, then at the preacher. “Who are you?”

“Son, I have asked myself that since I came. My name is William Gillette. I am a Methodist minister from Americus. It’s a town not far from here.”

“I thought you was Southern. You said ‘war’ a little while ago, but said ‘whoa-ah.’ This awful whoa-ah, you said. I like to hear you people talk.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since May. My brother and I. He died last week of
 
—well, it’s not manly to say, but it was diarrhea. Mississippi Quickstep, we call it. He got it from the food and water, though he was healthier than me when we came in. The healthy ones seem to fall off fastest. You people gonna help us? Is that why you’re here?”

The preacher studied Andy. Then he looked at Lew. “Yes, it is. And yes, we are.”

“I wish it had come sooner,” Lew said coldly.

“So do I.”

After a moment, Lew looked away. “I’m afraid you’re gonna have to spend the night, Preacher. I was supposed to have you to the gate hours ago. I don’t know what’ll happen now. I hope they don’t get in trouble. If Captain Wirz finds out
 
—”

“I will tell him it was my doing,” said the preacher. “Don’t worry about your friends.”

Lew snorted. “I will worry about him ’til he’s dead. He is unpredictable. Reminds me of my little sister.”

“How do you know him?”

“He took me prisoner on Kennesaw. I got sick on the way here, and he took care of me. We got to be friends. Listen. Here’s what we’re going to do. Tomorrow morning I will go to where I first saw him a few days ago, on dead duty.”

“Dead duty . . .”

“He’s in charge of a squad of Union boys who bring bodies to the south gate. I’ll see if I can find him where I did last. If I can’t, we’ll be at the north gate for ration time. The wagon comes around four, but men gather a few hours earlier. If I can’t find him on dead duty, my bet is he’ll meet us at ration time again.”

“Perhaps he knew it would take a long time, my tour of the stockade.”

Lew shook his head. “He never planned for you to spend a night. Nights are worse than the day.”

“Maybe he did plan for it,” the preacher said dryly.

 
—

Night closed on Andersonville.

“We should go right now and tell his wife,” Emery said, head in his hands. “This is the worst thing I have ever done.”

Dance and Emery sat outside Emery’s tent, in the camp of the 3rd
Georgia Reserves. Things were usually quieter at night, but General Winder had increased the patrols around the stockade and the picket lines, a few miles out; a Union rescue attempt by a general named Stoneman, while foiled up near Macon a few days earlier, had put the entire camp on high alert. For once, Winder’s extreme paranoia showed validity. Some of the same cavalrymen who sought to liberate Andersonville were now its prisoners.

The three-gun redoubt thrown up east of the 3rd Reserves camp now had six guns, half of those trained on the prison itself. The guard at both gates had doubled. From here, Dance could hear a sentinel in his perch sing out, “Eleven o’clock, and all is well!”

“She’s gonna have a long night of it,” said Emery miserably.

“So is he. Maybe good will come of it.”

“There are so few things I regret. I can’t think of one except this. What’s gonna happen if we can’t find him? Thousands of men in there, Union men, the enemy, and I turn loose a
Confederate
to them. Not all of ’em are like Lew. Prob’ly most aren’t. What if they kill him? What was I thinkin’? All my life that’s all I heard out of my uncle. What were you thinkin’ . . .”

 
—

“One ten, and all is well!”

Lew timed the calls. Every half hour or so the guard in the nearest perch called out. Seemed it should be quicker than that, if they did it without letup. Tomorrow he would measure the exact distance between perches, and figure out exactly how long the call did take to round the stockade. Such was Andersonville. You had time for things like that.

Lew couldn’t sleep for the strangeness of sharing the tent with a Confederate. The Confederate couldn’t sleep either.

The men lay the only way they could fit, on their sides in
single file. When one got unbearably uncomfortable, he would say, “About-face!” and the crew would turn to their other side. Except for Artie. He lay on his back and did not move. Harris and Andy finally drifted off.

“I will endeavor to obtain some sort of treatment for your friend,” said the preacher. “My wife is a fair hand with herbs. She can prepare a poultice.”

“Now I know how bad he is,” Lew said. “Nothing brings out his skill with adjectives more than vermin, and they’re the worst at night. First night I haven’t heard a peep. When did you give your socks away?” The preacher’s bare feet shone in the dark.

“I don’t remember. Sometime before the altercation with the man who wanted to go to the deadline. Do they really shoot anyone who steps over the line?”

“Most times. The ones who have no sense. I don’t like a youngster with a rifle. A fellow fell into the deadline just the other day, just fell, he didn’t aim to. He was joshing with another. Lucky for him the youngster had poor aim
 
—not so lucky for the fellow he shot instead.” Lew hesitated; he wanted to tell what he had learned about Brewer, but didn’t like what it suggested of Brewer’s character.

Was he ashamed of Brewer? How could he judge anyone who lived here? Was he not living it now? Did he not know? Brewer was a good man.

“Before I came, one of our mess was killed at the deadline. He was sick, and he saw what this place did to others, and the last thing he said to Harris was, ‘I’m not going out that way.’ Before Harris could stop him, he stepped over the line, and he was gone.”

Silence. Then, “I am truly sorry to hear it, Mr. Gann.”

“I don’t want you to think badly of him. He was a brave man. It was his choice, and it was a bad one, and he was sick when he made it. On deadlines in general, well, to me that seems to fall in line with
a more natural aspect of war, for the sake of prison security. But for everything else, for the starvation and the exposure and the miserable hospital conditions, I want to know one thing: Why hasn’t your town risen in rage at this treatment by your government?”

No answer. Then, “I do not believe they truly know. Not like I do.”

“Listen to those boys out there.” He allowed the groans of the suffering to fill the space. During the day it wasn’t noticed as much. This was what made nighttime the worst time, more than vermin. “All this suffering, and I am astounded they do not raid the office of General Winder and demand justice.”

“Well, you say the word
justice
, and that has all to do with it. To them, you are the invader. The killers of their sons.”

“But this place
 
—”

“You killed their boys, Mr. Gann. To them, you killed their boys.”

“But you aim to go back and tell them to help us. Us ‘boy killers.’”

“I do.”

“Then you are more compassionate than they. Why is
 
—?”

“No, I’m not,” said the preacher, and Lew heard an emphatic ring. “There is no difference between Americus and me. A few weeks back, my sermon was about the Good Samaritan. To draw a correlation, I used Federal soldiers as they who ambushed the man on the road.”

“You made us the robbers.”

“I did. You are still a robber to me. A brutal invader, he who would . . .”

At the word
invader
, Lew remembered the conversation with Emery and felt again a wave of understanding. When the South set foot on Pennsylvania soil for Gettysburg, fear and alarm and fury leapt in the breasts of all.

“. . . and when you say justice, an old thing boils in my blood. Do not set yourself up as innocent. Do not set the North up as such.
Do you know how many funerals I have officiated? Boys blown up so badly there was nothing to collect to send home?”

“That is war.”

“That is war, yes, I know. But I have held the hands of the mothers and the fathers. Did anyone know what we were getting into? Either side?”

Lew was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Harris told me he’s seen Americus come to gawk at us, Preacher. He saw civilized ladies and gentlemen gaze down from the platforms with such loathing and scorn. And, yes, pity. He did see pity. My point is they know right well what is happening here. You did, too. You knew some of it. So why are you going to help now? Why did you not stand at that gate when they turned you in, and yell for Captain Wirz? They would have sent for him. He would have come. You would’ve been out of here in half a shake of a lamb’s tail.”

The sounds of the suffering filled the air, feverish groans for water and groans unintelligible. Next door, a man cursed and bellowed, “I was not thrice wounded in battle to be et up of lice!”

“A few weeks ago I sat to dinner with a sentinel posted here,” said Reverend Gillette. “There was great torment upon that boy. He said nasty things of Americus, and then he said this: ‘Maybe I would change my mind if just
one
of them
 
—’ and the rest was unsaid. It haunted me, what was unsaid.” Then it seemed as if the preacher spoke to himself. “Just today I had an appointment with the provost marshal to look into affairs here. I had intended to apply for a pass of inspection on the grounds of religious duty. It seems I have obtained that pass. I knew it the minute the door locked behind me. The Millards’ dance is a noble cause. But the need here is immediate. Believe me when I say we did not know.” His voice dropped. “
I
did not know. Maybe I did not want to know. Maybe I never believed us capable of turning away from this.”

A knot grew in Lew’s throat. He bit the inside of his cheeks to keep it together. Maybe what killed Brewer was not personal despair, but the despair of knowing he could not help his people. Lew felt worse than powerless when he saw men die that he could not help. On a battlefield, he could at least stop wounds with leaves, or pull someone behind a rock for cover, or just keep pumping the lead and give his boys a chance. There was nothing here to check gangrene, or diarrhea, or starvation, or exposure. There weren’t even leaves.

When he could, he said thickly, “Anything you can do for Harris . . .”

“I will do my best, Mr. Gann.”

By dawn, Harris had fallen into a high fever. And Artie Van Slett was dead.

 
—

Lew and Harris had kept Artie in line when his big mouth threatened time and again to get him into trouble. Artie always needed looking after, always half in attendance on any given orders, always asking later what those orders were
 
—to the aggravation of all
 
—and it was Artie who dragged Harris off a battlefield under heavy fire by his trouser cuff. Artie who first emptied his pockets for any need. Three years with this man. It was hard to let him go.