Andersonville (32 page)
Authors: Edward M Erdelac
Quitman Day took a coach from Day's End through the bare-limbed oak-lined streets of Tremé down to Claiborne, stopping by for a bouquet of dark purple chrysanthemums, Euchariste's favorite winter flower, on his way to the St. Louis Cemetery Number Two as he did every morning.
This cold morning, however, was different.
This morning as he approached the tomb of his wife and child, he found another man already standing there, a black man in a top hat and scarlet redingote.
Barclay turned from the tomb of his sister and nephew, somehow feeling the approach of Day. The man looked older than when they'd parted at Oxford. His hair was shot through with gray.
“Hello, Quit.”
“Good morning, Barclay,” said Day. “Please excuse me just a minute.”
He took off his bowler hat and knelt in front of the tomb, laying a fistful of purple flowers at the base.
He sat there with his head bowed for a moment, perhaps praying his last. A good-bye or a promise that he would soon be with them?
Barclay stared at the back of his head for some time, his own cold breath clouding before his eyes. Where did he think Quit would go if he died here today? Would he be welcomed into heaven or dropped into hell?
Finally he seemed to cease his silent prayer and stood. That was the thing about Methodists. No sign of the cross to tell you they were finished.
Day did not take his eye from the gray tomb at first, but finally he stood opposite Barclay, shoulders straight, and regarded him unflinching.
“I wondered if you'd made it through the war, Barclay.”
“The same here. I didn't sleep much for a long time. Then I heard about Winder.”
“I was sleepless myself for a while,” Day said. “But I finally enacted the ritual. When it was finished, I burned the
Chronicle
and had the iron melted down.”
“I thought that shrill woman might've impeded you. Miss Fair.”
Day smiled slightly.
“Miss Izora Fair. She blackened her face with walnut juice and marched to Sherman's camp in Atlanta, posing as a Negress, telling fortunes. Somebody let slip about the march to the sea, and she got back to Oxford and sent a letter to old Joe Johnston. Yankees intercepted it, though. She was hiding out in the Gaither house till that night. I had to take her back to North Carolina. Who knows, she might've swung the war if the damned blue bellies hadn't been such diligent readers.”
Day stared down at the tomb, and his eye looked as hollow and dead as Barclay imagined the one that rested behind that patch must be.
“We ran into trouble outside Kinston. Zora was killed.”
“I saw Wirz hanged,” Barclay said, hearing again the jubilant cheers that punctuated the clatter of the trapdoor and the snap of the rope going taut.
“I read about that. Did he get what he deserved?”
“What he deserved? Do you think Mastemah was right about us? That we're not worthy of continuing?”
Day swallowed before answering.
“I don't know. But I tell you, the rest of mankind should be grateful that neither of our opinions on that matter are of much account in the end.”
Barclay nodded.
“Barclay,” Day said, looking up from the tomb at last and into his eyes. “The last time we stood over a grave, you swore you'd put me in it.”
Barclay looked at the brass nameplate affixed to the tomb, which had not been there when he had seen his sister and nephew interred.
It read:
EUCHARISTE MARIE LOURDES-DAY,
Fanm pou yon tan, manman pou toutan
or, Wife for a time, mother for all time
And beneath:
JEAN-LAMONT WAYMAN DAY, son
“You named him, after all,” said Barclay. “She didn't tell me.”
“We wanted it to be a surprise,” Day said. “In honor of both our fathers.”
“On the train ride here,” Barclay said, “I dwelled a great deal on the ugliness I have seen these past few years. Papa always said, âIf you are in the slaughterhouse, blood will get on you.' But when I passed into Louisiana again, some of that fell away. And when I saw the magnolia trees and the empty Place Congo, I imagined the people who used to dance there, and the
bamboulas
. I won't inaugurate my homecoming by shedding a brother's blood on the grave of my sister and her son.”
Day said nothing, but he unbuttoned his double-breasted coat, and for a brief moment Barclay wondered if he would produce a pistol himself.
Instead, he held out a folded paper.
Barclay stared at it and looked up at Day questioningly.
“It's the deed of your father's house. I bought it. It's yours again.”
Barclay reached for it, but his fingers hovered over the document, then closed and returned to his pockets.
“I could never repay you for that. My family's fortune is gone.”
Quit stepped closer and pressed the deed to his chest.
“This isn't a loan, Barclay,” he said. “It's not a gift or a favor, and it's not charity. It's
my
repayment to
you
. Or don't you think my life's worth the price of a house?”
Barclay hesitated, then took the deed.
“
This
house, Quit,” he said, tucking it into his coat. “Only
this
house.”
I owe it to myself, my family, my relations, even the world at large to prove that there never existed a man so utterly devoid of all humanity, such a fiend incarnate, as it has been attempted to prove me to be. I see very well that I have no earthly show, that I am a doomed man, but thanks be to God, that I am enabled to say with holy Stephen, Lord lay not this sin to my charge. They judge by what they hear and I must abide by it.
âMajor Henry Wirz, 1865
To the unsung men and women of the Black Dispatches.
To my parents, who dragged me across silent green battlefields before I could appreciate them. I still remember touching the flattened lead in the old breastworks.
And special thanks to Eric J. Guignard for the loan of the book, which was invaluable.
E
DWARD
M. E
RDELAC
is the author of eight novels (including the acclaimed weird western series Merkabah Rider) and dozens of short stories. He is an independent filmmaker, award-winning screenwriter, and sometime
Star Wars
contributor. Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he resides in the Los Angeles area with his wife and a bona fide slew of children and cats.
https://emerdelac.wordpress.com/
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