Andersonville (26 page)

He pulled on his boots with some trouble, reaching across with his left arm to drag at his right boot, not daring to stretch the tender right arm. He tied a black scarf about his neck and reached for his revolver belt. The new weapon was a pride. He had bought it while abroad after concentrated search amid the shops of Parisian gunsmiths. This revolver was in fine condition, though it was secondhand, and a special holster had been sewn to contain it. The cylinder itself was built of barrels, ten small barrels; and from the larger bore in the center of the cylinder a musket ball could be projected whenever one chose to pull the trigger which operated it. Do not fool with me, Yankees. No monkey business from you! . . . The acrid but pleasing scent of barley coffee came to his nostrils. Ha, this was a good day, his first day of duty at Camp Sumter. He wished that he might enjoy an egg, but Mr. Boss said that rats or mink or some such vermin had taken off the chickens. Doubtless he would be served corn pone and fried hog-meat, the common fare of these backwoods ignoramuses. Henry Wirz felt in his pocket for the silver dime which he must offer in payment, and went clumping to his breakfast.

...Yes, a very fair day; birds were straining with song as he rode toward the stockade half an hour later. This was a borrowed horse, a bad one because he was close to being fractious, and difficult to manage with but one arm and a half. Henry must procure another mount. He must speak to Captain Dick Winder at once, and convey the unpleasantly perfunctory greeting which General Winder had sent to Cousin Dick, and inquire after a sedate gray-white mare he had seen in the pine-pole paddock behind a kind of outhouse indicated as Winder’s office, the previous day. The quartermaster was absent—a lounging sentry said with little respect, Well, Captain, sir, he’s away someplace like he usually is. The sentry had spat tobacco juice dangerously close to Wirz’s boot-toe. Discipline was needed sorely in these parts. He would instill it. Wirz pushed back his shoulders as he rode.

He called at Dick Winder’s shack, could not find him, left word that he had called, and rode to the North Gate where he dismounted and tied his sore-flanked horse firmly to an adjacent railing from which all bark was already chewed. Henry Wirz would show this ragged hireling horde of Yankees that he was not afraid of them; he would go inside on foot, man to man (no, no—man to prisoner) and look them fiercely in their eyes. Wirz’s own nervous pink-lidded eyes shone with fresh fire when he glanced at his shabby patent-leather boots. His boots would be dirtied by prisoners’ filth but he would get a Negro to clean them for him. Yes, and he should have an orderly; he must have clerks; he concluded shrewdly that such might be found readily among the mass of Yankees. Errand boys, clerks, personal servants; he would make them walk chalk—no funny business from any of them; but if they volunteered to come Outside in response to his summons they would receive in turn many morsels of food not obtainable in the pen. Would he be justified in offering prisoners double rations if they came to serve him? Assuredly. No one could complain about that.

At the outer gate of the boxed-off rectangle the sentry did not recognize him as the new superintendent and refused to let him pass. Wirz shrieked, flew into the German which temper always made him spew, shaped the German into broken English once more—English interlarded generously with the oaths and obscenities which at least he could speak clearly. The sentry was unmoved: a stupid elderly fellow with lack-lustre eyes, split lip, stringy beard. Wirz brandished his orders under the fellow’s nose; the fellow could not read, and Henry Wirz would make him sweat for this. He would write out a complaint to the lieutenant-colonel commanding! He—

Once on duty at this stockade you come, you dumb sentry you, God damn you are my boss! I mean—son of a bitch—
I
am boss! It is under my orders you come!

(
Ach,
why could he not speak the English better? It baffled him. Elizabeth had tried to teach, even the little girls had tried to teach. He knew that he was yelling like an idiot, and the recognition of this fact made him but more enraged and yelling the louder. Lack of facility at English had held up his promotion, lack of English—)

By God, I make you smell hell
oder
you let me in!

A coughing and apologetic Captain Hamrick was drawn to the scene by Wirz’s fuming; he identified the new superintendent of the prison, the sentry accepted a furious tongue-lashing from Wirz which seemed to draw no blood—perhaps the creature was deaf as well as illiterate. Wirz passed through the enclosure, halting to survey it critically although there was really nothing to see except log walls, a broken wagon wheel leaning against the logs, and a bedraggled slave stretched at full length in the sun which by this time was high enough to find the interior of the box: the black was either sick or asleep or both. Well! In time there should be built a complete second stockade rather than this mere border around each gate. What was to prevent devilish Yankees from digging tunnels underneath a single stockade? Then might they come squeezing through like fast-bred rodents, emerging into freedom, ready to pillage the countryside—burn houses and stores, corrupt the crops, ravish the women, seize guns, shoot, shoot—ready to constitute a threat behind the Confederate lines more appalling than that faced at the front. Certainly. A second stockade should be constructed as soon as Wirz could wheedle such security from the Winders.

He paused at the interior gate, quickly putting himself to rights for the prisoners’ eyes. His revolver hanging at his left side, ready for his left hand . . . yes, fully capped, ready to spit. He made his heavy gold watch chain hang true, and felt the forepiece of his cap, and drew the cap jauntily to one side.

Going inside, sir? A pimply child at the inner gate put the nasal question.

I am Captain Henry Wirz, commanding now this prison!

Just a second till I lift the bar, Captain, sir. The boy exerted skinny arms under the wooden bar. Wirz helped him with his hand, together they worried the bar aloft and the wicket door scraped open. Wirz stepped over the sill, wrinkling his sharp nose as an odor swept to possess him. It smelled like an alley in one of those Parisian slums where he had walked gingerly, not pitying the poor, but scorning them for their filth, thinking that they should know better.

Wry-necked Smith was calling the roll. That was his regular task. He was a Rebel sergeant on whom devolved many duties not too complex but savoring of any ceremony which exemplified discipline. He was a middle-aged man with a squeezed face, sandy mustache and goatee, and a perpetual frown of concentration. In Taliaferro County he had sought public office assiduously and was bound to be disappointed always on election day, but the next election found him undiscouraged. Smith was barely literate. He pronounced many names so remarkably that it was difficult for their owners to recognize them. Years before, on the way to a gin, driving a cart with his own bale of cotton atop, Smith had managed to upset the vehicle and was pinned beneath the load. His recovery amazed the Taliaferro County medical profession; but after that time his head was riveted around to the right; he could not turn it. When he wished to look in another direction he had to turn his whole body. At this late date the wastage of war had raked even this misshapen relic into the army, and soldiers of his company said that Wry-necked Smith was frozen permanently at Eyes Right: an officer had called the order, Smith had obeyed, and then the officer had forgotten to give the order of Front. Northern prisoners, as soldiers also, had come naturally to the same conclusion.

Wirz had never seen this sergeant before, and now regarded him with disfavor. His darting examination told him immediately that the prisoners were playing roots with the non-commissioned officer. It was an old trick; Wirz had seen them attempting it during his brief service in an Alabama prison and even at Richmond. They tried the trick but did not perform it successfully when Henry Wirz held the roll! It consisted, mainly, of making eighty-seven men, perhaps, seem to count as a hundred. Smith edged warily in front of the formation, moving a few steps at a time, moving to the right where his congealed gaze led him. Yankees responded to their names at one end of the rank, then ducked behind the bodies of their fellows and reappeared in line farther along, squeezing in, answering to the name of Johnson or Langley later as boldly as they had responded to Adams or Atherton earlier. One hundred rations were more to be desired by eighty-seven men than eighty-seven rations. And the game of roots could be played in divers other ways also: it was an aggravation to authorities, a positive swindle to the unalert.

By God, Sergeant!

Wry-necked Smith stepped promptly around to look at Henry Wirz.

These God damn Yankees, you watch them better!

Smith shifted his tobacco quid. Who’re you?

Sergeant, it is now I command this stockade. Better you better watch all these damn Yankees. You watch them close! They come around behind, beating you every times!

A few prisoners hooted in the ranks, the rest watched apathetically, the rest were too tired to do more than that. For the most part only the young lean whipper-snappers in their teens had this dance and energy left to them. Ragged slouching ranks were of a sameness; there was such variety to torn attire or lack of it, such infinite variety in people’s shapes and sizes that they seemed starved down into common face and form. Who had answered to the name of Lewis when previously he had answered to Gilmore? Wirz might not know; their uniformly tarred faces baffled him whether they wore hair or whether they didn’t, whether they were scurvy-ridden and bent between sticks or whether they stood erect, whether they were well-fed raiders or waifs preyed upon by the raiders. Not knowing, feeling his way to absolute authority with caution, Henry Wirz let his patent-leather boots take him away.

He moved along Main Street toward the center of the stockade, holding his left hand upon the flap of his holster. His right forearm began to knock like the pulse of an aching tooth. Proximity to these devils had done that,
ja, ja.
The arm responded; the arm said, So these are the people who tore me, these are the inventors of my misery?
Throb, throb—
let me out, I am cased here in agony. Let me
out
!
Throb,
let me
out, throb, throb!
said the reeking suffering spirit fastened inside the arm,
let me see the Yankees.

Wirz traveled almost blindly, moisture on his forehead, cold moisture on his stringy neck. He looked down: one boot-toe was befouled by excrement, fresh soft yellow human excrement; it had to be human, there were no dogs in the place. He said aloud, God damn shit, Yankees are shit— He kept walking.

A string of monsters great and small began to attach to him. They followed calculatingly, trying to evaluate this slight grizzled man, many recognizing immediately the power which he would hold over them, and wondering in the same breath how they might profit from it or avoid its impact. Since Wirz announced himself to Wry-necked Smith the word had gone coursing through mildewed formations and on and on . . . a limp word was spoken, a head was turned . . . group to group among the shebangs. Him? Yup, him. There he goes. What? Who? New commander. Where? Over there. Hey, leave us have a look . . . shoed feet, shoeless feet pattering in muck behind the solitary visitor in gray uniform trousers, the armed man in the calico waist. What is he, an errant boy for Persons? Hey, bubby, does your Ma know where you’re at? Bet you a red cent he’s got some sugarplums in that there pocket of his. Who? That’s him . . . word was ahead of Henry Wirz now, people of the stockade were following in a drove, the news had spread faster than Wirz walked.

A dozen voices were blatting, their owners concealed behind huts or taking refuge back of their mates.

Hi, Mister, where in tunket did you get that great big awful pistol?

Will it shoot?

Beardy, don’t shoot me!

Who’s that specimen, anyways?

Wirz stood his ground, face twisted partly by pain and partly by desperate assertion. You hear to me, Yankees, you dumb damn prisoners! I am Captain Wirz. Now this stockade I command! You watch, you know what is good for you!

They seemed to have their faces corked like actors, they were hooligans from some weird treacherous minstrel troupe. Yah, sneered evil boys hiding behind other evil boys. Older ones or the more sickly (and all the sickly ones looked older than they were; so they were sick, they were fundamentally as vicious as the rest, but too weak to manifest their viciousness!) clung closer to Wirz. Some had actually the effrontery to touch the sleeve of his waist, and he drew back offended.

Captain. Please, Cap’n Wirz. . . .

You know anything about exchange?

Heard anything about exchange?

We’re bound to get exchanged soon, aren’t we, Captain?

They can’t keep us here forever, can they?

We’ll get exchanged, won’t we, huh, Captain, please?

Ja,
said Henry, who knew nothing whatsoever about the exchange or its stoppage—because he had been in Europe when that occurred—and who might not divine the resumption of exchange, because he owned no crystal ball nor knew how to use one.
Ja.
You all get exchanged pretty quick I guess.

He thought that he was being kind no matter how cruel he was in fact. These prisoners who clustered close were behaving like good children for the most part, and good children should be given peppermint sticks, horehound, barley sugar. This was barley sugar which he offered cheerfully, though it would turn to wormwood later. Bad children should be punished. That also would he do.

Several times during his march through this populated mire and during his businesslike return, he halted to examine the stockade from the prisoners’ vantage. His glance bounded about like a mouse fallen into a slop-jar. Ha: one stockade only. So they
could
dig tunnels. Ha: Yankees swarmed tightly against the fence, some of them had even attached their jungly huts to the tall logs, seeking shelter from wind or sun. The most innocent shebang might mask fiendish preparations: elaborate ladders to be raised in the dead of night, a concerted rushing of the gate when ration carts entered or when a fresh draft of prisoners arrived or when— A deadline! There must be a deadline. And tomorrow—at once on paper, tomorrow in the fact—the personnel within the pen should be squadded over. The Thousands and Hundreds should disappear forever, supplanted by Detachments and Nineties.