Andersonville (16 page)

They walked behind, out through the gate, two armed men before them and two covering their rear.

The sentries watched them from the wall like curious apes as Turner led them up the road. When they reached the crossroads, Barclay entertained a sinking notion that Turner would order them all to take the fork to the cemetery and there shoot them into a trench, but instead he took the familiar path through the pines to the depot, over the tracks, and beyond, to Andersonville proper.

They passed the sawmill office and town hall and rounded a corner near a small church. The Confederates and the townsfolk and their slaves stared at them as they tromped down the street, scarecrow soldiers in filthy, faded ragamuffin uniforms.

They stopped before a plain whitewashed wood building with a small front porch, where hung a shingle that read:

CAPTAIN HEINRICH HARTMANN WIRZ, COMMANDANT, INTERIOR PRISON

Turner tromped up onto the porch and rapped on the door.

There was a muffled query, to which Turner replied: “Union delegates from the stockade, sir.”

At a command from within, Turner opened the door and gestured for Limber and the rest of them to enter.

It was a tight fit. When they all filed into the stuffy, creaking office, there was room only for Turner. The four guards remained outside.

Barclay found himself standing to the right behind Limber, with Doctor John on his left.

Wirz's office was sparse, just a single bookcase and a chipped desk at which the man sat, his uniform coat draped over his chair. His pistol, Barclay noticed, lay naked on the desk.

He did not rise as they entered, nor did he look up until they had completed their shuffling. He did wrinkle his nose, lean back, and wrench the window open. They surely gave off an offensive odor in the close space, but Barclay had ceased noticing.

“State your name,” Wirz grumbled, rubbing his temple.

“Sergeant James Laughlin. 67th Illinois.”

He started to introduce Romeo behind him, but Wirz waved him off impatiently.

“Never mind them. I'm not going to sit here while you rattle off all those names. State your grievance.”

Limber began an impassioned though stammering address about the death of Red Cap and the crimes of Mosby and his Raiders. Wirz watched him the entire time but chewed the abnormally long fingernails of his useless right hand and spit the jagged parings on his desk. It was an awkward, stomach-turning process to witness, for Wirz had to hold the flopping hand up and lean forward. The sleeve on the bad arm crept up a little, and Barclay saw a hint of sore encrusted flesh. Apparently the arm was still a source of tribulation.

Barclay looked around the bare office, straining to read the titles of the few books on the shelf. It seemed most of them were almanacs and local records, probably left over from whatever village official had occupied the building before Wirz. It didn't seem any of the books residing there even belonged to Wirz.

Then a slim volume bound in green leather on the corner of Wirz's desk, partly obscured by a sheaf of official reports, caught Barclay's eye. The lettering on the spine was embossed, but the print was small and the book was upside down.

“I admit I was not aware the problem of theft was so institutionalized,” Wirz said when Limber had finished listing the Raiders' various crimes. “Who is their leader?”

“They rally around several villains but are overall ruled by a man named Collins who calls himself Mosby,” Limber said breathlessly. “They are headquartered in a large communal tent in the southwest corner of the stockade. That is the capital of their territory, where they divide their spoils.”

“Very well,” said Wirz, sitting up in his chair and swiping the chewed bits of fingernails onto the floor. “I will order a squad to break up that tent and arrest the ringleaders. They'll be put in the stocks. Whipped, if you like.”

“That's not enough, Captain,” Limber said. “There are too many of them now, and like dogs, they're all hungry for the top spot. Get rid of Mosby and half a dozen are waiting to take his place. The only way to break them for good is from the bottom up.”

“You insist on policing yourselves, then.”

“It's the only way,” Limber said. “You said yourself you can't be in there with us night and day, and even if you could, your men don't know a Raider from an honest man. We need a group inside to regulate, to stand up and fight.”

“I will not authorize rioting in my prison,” Wirz said evenly.

“It won't be a riot. Just give us the means to defend ourselves and we'll go from there. Once the men start seein' we can fight back, they'll get behind us. Hell, there's more of us than them.”

“I won't provide you with firearms, either.”

“Clubs will do,” Limber argued. “No more than what they use against us. That and your authorization to carry out justice, which I expect will carry more weight.”

“And what do you mean by justice?”

“I mean we put the ringleaders on military trial.”

“And would you pass sentence?”

“Sentence?” Limber repeated, thinking the matter over a bit. “Yes, sir. If it comes to that. If they're found guilty.”

Wirz held Limber's eyes for a moment, then shrugged.

“As to that, authorization will ultimately have to come from General Winder.”

“If the Raiders know you are with us, they will break,” Limber said. “But that also means putting a stop to the trading going on with your guards.”

Wirz's expression fell, and his eyes flashed deadly.

“I resent that accusation.”

“It ain't all of them. But some of them. The boys especially.”

Wirz drummed his fingers on the desk. They were very close to the butt of his pistol.

Barclay had been straining to read the spine of the book the whole time. His watery eyes slid to the floor momentarily, and he saw that one of Wirz's fingernail slivers lay very near his left foot. With barely a motion, he slid his feet together and, using his right foot, dragged the laces of his left shoe loose.

“I will speak to General Winder,” Wirz said at last. “You will have your answer within a few days. In the event it is the answer you anticipate, I would suggest you begin selecting your deputies.”

Limber straightened—they all did—at attention.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Dismissed,” Wirz said, not bothering to return the salute.

As the men turned about-face, Barclay dropped to his knee. He scooped up the fingernail and tucked it into his shoe, then swiftly tied the laces.

He glanced up and from the lower angle was able to read the spine of the strange book on Wirz's desk.

It was titled
The Chronicle of Mastemah.

When he stood up again, he found Wirz regarding him.

“Shoe, sir,” he stuttered quickly.

“What?” Wirz said, frowning.

Barclay gestured down to his shoe with what he hoped was a dopey expression.

“Laces come loose on me.”

Wirz looked at him blankly, as though a cuckoo had just sprung from the center of his forehead.

“Aren't you that nigger that was discovered going by another nigger's name?” he said. “What was it? Stevens? No. Lourdes?”

“Yassir,” Barclay said, averting his eyes.

“Coming up in the world, aren't you, Lourdes? From the whipping post to representing your fellows. Ambitious.”

“Nossir.”

There was something in Wirz's voice. He spoke differently. His accent had nearly disappeared, and his eyes were as sharp as bayonet points.

“No?” Wirz said sharply, leaning across the desk. Then, beneath the brim of his cap, Barclay saw Wirz's look soften. He sat back in his chair again. “No,” he said, and the accent was back again. “No, you just found a way to shirk your work detail, didn't you? Get out of my sight.”

Barclay grinned stupidly, turned, and filed out after the others, a personal scrap of Wirz's own body pricking the side of his ankle as he walked, an incalculable treasure in the right hands.

There was a passel of anxious men awaiting the return of the delegates. Many, it seemed, expected them to be carried back in, for at the sight of Limber coming through the wicket, a great cheer went up.

The Negroes were all out on work detail, and Barclay slipped away as the crowd surrounded Limber and he recounted the meeting with Wirz.

He went off to his tent, thinking of the paper envelope he'd filled with Bruegel's grave dirt and buried in the corner and of the scrap of Wirz's fingernail that he would add to it. He made a mental list of ingredients he still needed. Red and black pepper he might be able to get from the sutler. The rattlesnake skin might be harder to come by. And he still needed to lay hands on some salt.

When he went into his tent, he nearly leaped back out.

The Hatter, Boston Corbett, was crouched in there, patiently sucking maggots from his thick, teeming beard like some kind of mangy outcast chimpanzee. He reeked to high heaven and stared at Barclay from his ringed, red-rimmed eyes like a beast caught in the light.

“Corbett!” Barclay exclaimed, his pulse pounding at the unexpected encounter.

“Been waiting-er,” said Corbett, his speech tic more pronounced, a kind of growl that punctuated every other sentence. “How do you keep the demons from your shelter, brother?” he asked directly.

Curious, Barclay settled on his haunches with his back to the door. Corbett looked completely deranged with his frank stare and filth-caked clothes, the vermin crawling in and out of his ears, but he didn't feel threatened by the man somehow.

“What do you know about demons?” he asked.

“They flit and fly all about this place, day and night like wasps-er,” said Corbett. “They befoul our food, violate our bodies, make us sick. Don't you see 'em-er?”

“No,” Barclay said slowly. “But I
have
seen them.”

“When you were scourged,” Corbett said, nodding. “That will do it-er. At the moment of rapture, things overlap.”

“You see them all the time?”

Corbett nodded.

He crossed the tent swiftly and stuck the tip of his grimy finger into his left eye. Before Barclay could flinch away, his hand darted out and poked his eye, too.

Barclay clapped a hand to his swimming eye and fell back, ears ringing. He cursed, ready to fetch the madman a clout, but Corbett drew back the tent flap like an attendant at a medicine show and swept his hand outside.

“Look-er. You can see 'em now.”

Barclay blinked the tears from his assaulted eye and found that he
could
see them if he closed his good eye.

It was just like the vision at the whipping post; the sky over the stockade was crowded with shrieking nightmares. The kastirin rampant. Trilling their dark delights into the ghost-clouded air through maws of serrated teeth that dripped with slime as they dragged the incandescent souls of dying men from their shelters and carried them like carrion to the creek.

Barclay had heard of such a technique before. His father had told him that animals see the spirit world and that you could see through a dog's eye by poking him in it and then yourself. Was this what Corbett saw all the time? No wonder he was mad.

He slapped his hand back over his stinging eye.

“They're everywhere,” Corbett said in a wondering voice as he looked out at them. “I can't sleep for the screeching-er. They come up from that creek. The water's contaminated, y'see, by a stream that bubbles up from hell's sewer. They swim up that way, I guess-er. That's how they escape to here.”

“Close it,” Barclay nearly pleaded.

“They're everywhere,” Corbett said again, letting the flap drop. “Everywhere but here. How is that-er?”

“I can keep them from your shelter if you want,” Barclay said, rubbing his watering eye.

“Glory-er! Will you?” Corbett asked breathlessly.

Barclay nodded.

“Let me gather my things.”

He didn't want to go out into that unnatural maelstrom, not now that he could perceive it, but there were things the Hatter might know that made it worth securing his trust.

“Do you have any fresh water?” he asked as he gathered up the piece of broomcorn he'd kept.

“I can get some,” Corbett said, “on the way-er.”

Corbett led Barclay out into the stockade. It was disorienting at first, and he had to lean on the Hatter a bit. He hunkered down as he walked, the kastirin swooping down at them like tormenting buzzards. After something with the distorted face of a woman with splayed, twitching crow's talons where her eyes should have been buzzed in his face, he clenched his eyes against the terrible sight of them and trusted Corbett to lead him blind.

The Hatter recited prayers the entire time, mumbling them in a rapid, jumbled cadence that was unintelligible yet seemed to keep the things mostly at bay.

When Barclay's foot splashed into some muck, he recoiled and opened his eyes to see that Corbett had led him to the creek.

There, in the center, he saw a swirling black whirlpool in whose depths there flashed a ghostly red lightning. He saw more kastirin dragging themselves from the murk like things primordial.

Corbett let go of his arm and splashed through the shit-ridden mud to the bank and, to Barclay's horror, stooped over, cupped a handful of the murky water, and sucked it into his mouth.

Barclay gagged and nearly vomited, but Corbett came back to him, cheeks puffed out with their burden. He gestured frantically to a tattered tent not far from the jakes where men hung their bare asses over a long rail to evacuate into the creek.

Barclay stumbled along behind the Hatter like a man in a windstorm and fell to his knees inside the small tent when Corbett ducked inside.

The inside walls were completely covered with makeshift crosses of lashed straw, dry wood, grass, rags, and whatever else the Hatter had been able to twist or bind into the shape. The bare ground beneath them was etched with the same motif over and over again.

Corbett drew a dented cup from a pile of rags in the corner and spit the creek water he'd been carrying into it.

Barclay knelt there, catching his breath and blinking, trying to drive the sight from his wounded eye with tears.

Corbett held the cup out to him.

Barclay shook his head.

“I told you, it has to be clean water.”

“But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life-er,” Corbett rattled off. “Look. Hold out your hand-er.”

Barclay opened his palm.

Corbett let some of the water from the cup drizzle down. It was cool and clear in the cup of his hand.

“What is this?” Barclay stammered.

“The Lord protects me,” Corbett said. “He is saving me for a great purpose-er. I consecrated myself to Him. A number of years ago I was a sinner and a profligate-er. I lusted daily for women of mercenary morals. So, knowing I could never be worthy of God's grace givin' over so easily to my proclivities as I was, I took up a pair of tailor's scissors and cut out the root of my disgrace-er.”

Barclay narrowed his eyes.

“The Old Horny is the lightning rod of Satan,” Corbett said. “When I had done it, I had my dinner and went to a Methodist meeting-er. And upon openin' up my Scripture, I come across the words in Genesis:
‘And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man
.
'
The loss of blood overtook me then, but I was not afraid, as I knew I had read those words as comfort from the Lord. I knew I would be saved for a greater purpose-er.”

“What purpose, Corbett?” Barclay asked.

“That has not yet been made known to me. But I know it will come after I leave here. If I leave here.”

“How do you know all this?”

“An angel came to me the day I was captured-er. It told me I would survive Andersonville but only if, like John the Baptist, another who would come completed his task here.”

“Another?”

“You, brother. The angel showed me you. That's why I told you not to eat the cornmeal that day I saw you. You haven't, have you?”

It was fantastic. Corbett had expected him? Could that be true? Or was he buying into Corbett's lunacy?

“What were you doing that day?” Barclay whispered.

Corbett reached into his dirty tunic and produced a leather cord on the end of which dangled a sizable white fang almost the size of a knife.

“I took this from the body of the man those hounds from hell tore apart-er,” he said. “God told me that if I marked myself with it and bled into the creek, it would make my soul invisible to the demons and keep me from falling ill.”

He held the necklace out to Barclay.

“But now the time's come for me to give it to you to aid you in your holy mission, praise God-er.”

Barclay took the thing and put it around his neck.

“Thank you.”

“Now will you do me a kindness-er?” he said. He gestured to the crosses on the tent walls. “They only work when I am awake, and I would dearly love to sleep-er.”

When he had completed the sealing ritual and promised to deposit the broomcorn in the crossroads as he had done for Clemis, Barclay took his leave of Corbett and mulled over his strange encounter with the man all the way back to his own tent.

Could it be possible that the Hatter was more than just some simple lunatic? He had seen the state of that filthy water and seen how it had come out clear from his mouth. Or had he substituted the cup somehow? But if he had, to what end? He pressed the fang against his chest between his thumb and forefinger. The tooth of a hellhound. Would Corbett's ritual work for him? He shuddered at the thought of wading out into that revolting creek.

Clemis had not yet returned from work, so he sat down and drafted another letter to Day, addressed to Euchariste in Creole. Even if there was a French speaker somewhere in the prison who could figure out the Creole, the use of the agreed-on Caesar cipher made him confident nobody could read it. It was a fairly simple single right shift substitution code in which “B” stood in for “A,” “C” for “B,” and so on, with “AA” meaning “Z.”

The letter was short. He merely wrote the name of the book he had seen in Wirz's office.
The Chronicle of Mastemah.

Maybe the book was nothing. Maybe it was just some little piece of fantastic fiction Wirz had picked up in a bookshop during his sojourn to Europe.

When he had dropped the letter in the postbox, a voice called down to him from the wall:

“I do declare, I have never seen a nigger with so much to say.”

Barclay looked up and saw Turner leaning over the wall.

There were two ladies and a man in a white suit and planter's hat crowding the platform with him. Apparently civilian sightseers come to see the prison on a whim. Clemis had told him that sometimes the women from town came and stood on the hill. Sometimes they took pity on the prisoners and threw biscuits wrapped in kerchiefs over the walls. One of the ladies tittered behind her Japanese fans at Turner's comment. He didn't peg her as a biscuit thrower.

“I didn't know you had nigger soldiers in there, Sergeant,” said the gentleman in the suit.

“Oh, yes; we got ever' type of Yankee down in there, sir,” Turner said loudly. “Red, white, brown, black. Even had a Jew and a Chinaman once.”

“It stinks,” said the younger of the two ladies, apparently the planter's daughter. She fanned herself rapidly and grimaced. “Why does it smell so?”

“Yankee in the field ain't given to gentlemanly habits, ma'am. Strip 'em down to the bare minimum and they ain't no better than field hands for personal groomin'.”

“But that boy down there, he can write?” said the man, still fixated on Barclay, who stood frozen next to the postbox.

“I am told he writes in English and in some mishmash French-speak. He's a runaway from down in Chatham County.”

“Is that a fact?” the man said. “Has his master come for him?”

“We don't maintain the resources to contact men who have misplaced their property,” Turner said. “Sometimes men come askin' to look at our coloreds. Nobody's come yet for that one.”

“May I speak to him?”

“No law against talkin',” Turner said.

“No, I mean, may I interview him? I might have a place for a reading and writing nigger in my mill in Augusta.”

Turner rubbed his chin, thinking.

“I ain't supposed to let prisoners outta the stockade, Mr. Tewkes.”

“Couldn't I soothe the risk of disciplinary action? Say, monetarily?”

“What did you have in mind, Mr. Tewkes?” Turner grinned.

Barclay felt cold sweat leak down his back. If he was sold to Augusta, it would ruin everything.

He had to think up some ploy to dissuade Tewkes, and quickly.

“Daddy, you can't bring that smelly old buck home,” the daughter complained.

“Oh, hush up, Oralene,” the planter snapped. “Little lye and some rosewater will clean him up just fine.”

Barclay spied the old cane pole the swallow swatters kept near the deadline and went to pick it up. He walked purposefully to the wall and began to poke at the nearest mud nest, but the pole barely reached the timber.

God, if only they would flit out. He continued to swipe feebly. The birds didn't even stir.

Bedessy,
lwa
of the sky,
he thought, in desperation going to the names he had invoked in his youth
, grant your servant a little miracle.

In answer, a gust of wind kicked up and the hot sun passed from sight behind a cloud, momentarily dropping the temperature a few notches, a merciful relief from the usual daytime heat.