Andersonville (14 page)

In the morning, after roll call, Wirz announced that a petition had come to his attention, asking for permission to stage a prizefight at the end of Market Street.

“While I will not condone gambling, I have decided to allow you men this mild entertainment. You have selected your combatants. Tomorrow you may have your fight.”

The men lifted up a genuine huzzah for the captain, the only one he'd ever deserved in their estimation.

The bets, of course, were all laid out beforehand, tallied by the shrewd gamblers with only a modicum of secrecy. Wirz didn't really care what the prisoners did with their goods so long as they weren't bartered with his own troops.

It seemed that every man wanted a piece of the action because of the real-life belligerence between the two fighters and the factions they represented.

The fighters were, of course, Sailor Jack Muir, who was for Mosby's Raiders, and Big Pete, who had overnight become the most popular man in the stockade.

Barclay saw it all for what it was, just an underhanded grab by the bookies at their fellow prisoners' cash. They egged their comrades on by appealing to their hatred of Mosby's Raiders, convincing them that laying their meager money and trade goods on the line was akin to taking some kind of moral stand.

Despite Wirz's wishes, the betting was not confined to the prisoners. Sergeant Duncan was heard collecting bets from the sentries as he made his inspection of the pigeon roosts.

Even the Negro soldiers talked of nothing but the impending bout as they worked.

“I heard tell Big Pete used to bust heads for some politician in Pennsylvania,” Callixtus said. “He fought that Joe Heenan fella to stop at a saloon up in Troy.”

“Where you hear that, boy?” Clemis asked skeptically.

“I heard Sergeant Limber say it.”

“You don't even know where Troy is,” Clemis scoffed.

“I do too. It's up in New York State,” Callixtus said indignantly.

“Awright, so you run through there once on your way to Massachusetts.”

“I come up from South Carolina,” said Callixtus. “New York ain't on the way to Massachusetts.”

A couple of the other men chuckled at the exchange.

“Nigger smart 'cause he can read a damn map,” Clemis muttered, waving him off. “You go put your money on that big bastard, go ahead, 'cause of somethin' you heard.”

“I intend to,” Callixtus said. “He got the reach, and he got God on his side.”

“God? Why, 'cause he ain't one of Mosby's bunch? You think God give a damn who win some stupid fight betwixt a couple of no-accounts? God ain't inclined his eye on Andersonville in a while, buck. He got bigger problems.”

“Who you bettin' on, Barclay?” Callixtus asked, turning away from Clemis.

“I don't gamble,” he said, shaking his head.

“Y'see, that's smart,” said Clemis. “Easiest way to win a fight is to not pick no side. O Lord, I wish I'd learned that before I signed on for this mess.”

Despite the moral obligations the men felt toward the outcome of the contest, many who had seen Muir take on Sarsfield and his friends placed shameful clandestine wagers against Big Pete. The little sailor had quickness and a level head in a fight. Secretly, he was Barclay's favorite to prevail as well. Big Pete was strong, but he was a lackwit and a plodder. Muir would dance around him.

Yet there was also the decided lack of preparation to be considered. The fight was tomorrow. There would be no weeks of proper training and conditioning.

At first glance, that made Jack the logical choice again. He was newly arrived at Andersonville, and malnutrition and disease had not yet ravaged his body. However, Big Pete, for all his time in the prison, appeared to have retained his weight and strength quite well. Some men were like that. There was no real explanation other than grace or luck. Though one of the majority, he still had a Raider's well-kept physique. Maybe he retained a food hoard in his shebang, or maybe his abnormally large body just took longer to waste away than the average man's.

That night after work Barclay met Red Cap for his first reading and writing lesson, but the boy was distracted and could talk of nothing but the impending fight.

“Who's your pick, Mr. Lourdes?” he asked excitedly after they had recited the alphabet for the third time and he had guided Red Cap in reproducing it in the mud in a crude scrawl.

Barclay sighed. He knew there was no point trying to steer the boy's attention back to the lesson.

“I don't know Big Pete well enough to place a bet, so I'd have to give it to the sailor. I've seen him fight. He's a bold one and quick.”

The drummer boy looked aghast.

“How can you say that? You're sidin' with Mosby?” He jumped up, ready to fight himself. “I thought you was one of us!”

Barclay chuckled, but the boy was dead serious. It was as though he had made a lewd suggestion about Red Cap's beloved mother.

“You take that back, you sorry nigger!” Red Cap shouted the next minute.

“Okay,” Barclay snarled, standing up to his full height and towering over the boy. “Here endeth the lesson.”

Red Cap spit on his chest.

Without thinking, he backhanded the kid hard enough to stagger him.

A couple of the men nearby looked sharply at him and started to come over.

“You okay, Ranse?”

“Hey, boy!” shouted one angrily, and Barclay knew with a sinking feeling that it was not directed at Red Cap.

“I'm okay, boys,” Red Cap announced, straightening his cap, which had been knocked askew by Barclay's blow. “Take more'n a clout from some shiftless, limp-wristed cotton picker to do me a hurting.”

The men eyed Barclay with enough ill intent to make him walk away.

He looked back once and saw the kid staring after him, more sad than angry. They had both done something rash that neither could take back.

The next morning after roll call Barclay was surprised to find that the Negroes had been granted a day's furlough to watch the fight.

“Ain't you goin'?” Clemis asked when he had gotten up.

“I thought you didn't have any interest in it.” Barclay yawned.

“Sheeyit, I never pass up the opportunity to watch two white boys beat on each other.”

Barclay shrugged. He had much to think about, but it looked like even the Rebels had adjourned to the surrounding hills to watch the spectacle. He reasoned that if he went snooping around the stockade now, he would stick out.

Reluctantly he followed Clemis.

Most of the prisoners lit out directly from roll call to the four stakes and two rows of hemp strung around the makeshift ring on the front porch of the North Gate at the end of Market to jockey for a good spot from which to see the fight.

Arriving later, Barclay and Clemis had to stand, shouldering in close as they could until they were cursed and told to stop shoving and stay put.

They waited for an hour in the sun before the two fighters and their attendants made their entrance. Sailor Jack Muir was stripped to his pantaloons. He had a wiry, muscled body and a bevy of superstitious seaman's tattoos cascading like intricate blue waves up and down his trunk and forearms.

His entourage included Rickson, and Barclay scanned the boisterous, booing crowed for a sign of Charlie, but he couldn't pick her out.

Offal was heaved by hidden hands into the ring when Muir stepped through the ropes, but the referee, Sergeant Turner, pulled his pistol and fired it once into the air and declared, “There'll be no more of that!”

And there wasn't.

Big Pete approached the ring next, and his arrival was akin to the passing of Christ through the gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The men swung their caps around and cheered till they were hoarse, even stamping the ground with their feet till it felt like thunder in hell.

Big Pete's physique was broad and doughy. Indeed, it did appear he had been maintaining a regular, sustaining diet. To Barclay, he even looked a bit slovenly. He was big-shouldered, true, but the flesh hung from his arms and chest and his belly undulated as he walked. He suspected his choice of Muir for the win was not unfounded. A few minutes into the fight, Big Pete would be sorely winded carrying all that extra weight around.

In Big Pete's corner were Romeo Larkin and Sergeant Key.

The two men wasted no time advancing to the scratch line. Turner murmured what might have been a reminder of the rules or a prayer. He was inaudible beneath the hoots and calls of encouragement from the audience.

“Give 'im hell, Pete!”

“Lay that big bastard low, Jackie boy!”

The Raiders contingent commanded the south side of the ring, with Mosby on a field officer's chair right up front, flanked by his lieutenants, and the rest of the stockade filling the other three sides. It struck Barclay how very few men the Raiders could actually field. The rest of the prison population dwarfed them several times over yet were like a flock of sheep cowed before a pack of wolves.

Turner signaled the start of the contest, and Muir danced in with perfect fighting form, weaving and ducking, anticipating blows that Big Pete did not launch. The bigger man just lumbered forward, barely covering up with his ponderous hands. Muir got in close and let loose with an inquisitive left jab. Satistfied when he tagged Pete's lip, he unleashed a follow-up straight that should have smashed the big ox's nose, but Barclay noted that it had peculiarly little effect.

The Raiders erupted in a hearty cheer.

Perhaps Pete was smarter than Barclay had taken him for. Perhaps he had lured the smaller man in. In the next instant he let loose with a tremendous haymaker of a right that collided with Muir's shoulder and sent him flailing as though he'd been kicked by a stallion.

The Raiders' cheers choked off in a hiss as if their collective throats had been cut simultaneously.

Big Pete skipped in, his long legs slicing short the distance between them, and landed an unbelievably fast left hand in the sailor's breadbasket, so powerful that it lifted him for a moment off the ground and then deposited him wheezing on his hands and knees.

Everyone knew Big Pete was strong, but the man commanded incredible brawn to knock a man like Muir for such a loop. Barclay shook his head. Such ferocity and speed was uncanny, almost unfair.

Turner ordered Pete to his corner as Muir heaved for a moment and then picked himself up and staggered into the arms of Rickson, who splashed his face with water and slapped him a few times to get his sense of place back.

Pete simply stood out the thirty seconds in his corner, driving one huge fist into its brother's waiting palm in anticipation, not winded in the slightest.

At the start of the second round Jack was more wary and danced out of reach of the big man. But Pete came on like a bull, slapped down the sailor's guard, and punished him with an overhand blow that struck the smaller man in the ear like a poleax.

Once more Muir trembled to retain his pins, and Pete followed up with a furious blur of surprisingly alacritous combinations. His hammer fists struck the smaller man so rapidly, it was like watching a body dance in a firing line volley. Muir was driven back against the ropes until they were the only thing holding him up, and blood spattered Mosby and his stunned men in the front row as the roar of the appreciative prisoners filled their ears.

Big Pete stepped back to let Muir fall a second time, but the sailor gripped the top rope with one trembling hand and wiped the blood from his eyes with the back of the other and did not go down.

Instead he lunged at Pete like a drunken brawler and tagged him in the eye with a wild all or nothing punch.

Pete stepped back blinking, and Muir fell on his face.

Pete chuckled and raised his fists. The crowd cheered.

But the bloody little sailor pushed himself to one knee, waited a few seconds, and got his feet back under him.

The Raiders were too crestfallen at the early shaming of their champion to offer much more than a few light claps and solemn “Atta boy, Jacks.”

Muir lurched to his corner, and Rickson dowsed his head in water and shouted for someone to go get more.

Turner checked his watch and looked dubiously at the sailor while Big Pete faced his people and kept his hands raised, not even deigning to look back at his opponent.

Thirty seconds ended, and Muir, like an old man, limped to the scratch line and waited for Big Pete to quit his showboating.

The look on Pete's face when he turned around and saw Muir standing there, face blossoming with purple mounds, lips mashed and inflated, was one of flat-out incredulity.

Muir folded his arms and tapped his foot, mimicking impatience.

A tide of laughter rolled through the crowd.

Pete fumed and returned to the line himself.

Turner gave the signal, and Pete cocked his fist and flung it at Muir.

Muir ducked halfheartedly but still caught the brunt of the blow on his forehead. He wavered but somehow stayed on his feet and heaved a desperate uppercut that slipped past Pete's chin and skidded up the front of his face, creasing his nose instead.

Pete's answering barrage of withering punches pushed Muir into the ropes again so hard that when at last he fell forward, the mark of the hemp was burned across his back like two blazing red lashes.

Pete spit in the dirt and returned to his corner.

Muir crawled halfway to his, then got up and stumbled again to Rickson.

“Stop it!” Barclay found himself yelling. “It's over! Stop the fight!”

To his surprise, reason penetrated the bloodlust of the others, and his cry was taken up.

Turner went over to Muir's corner, inspected him, and conferred.

Muir shook his head vehemently and pushed past Turner to get to the scratch line.

Pete shook his head in exasperation and toed the line.

The fourth round lasted all of six seconds before Muir was sprawled on his back.