Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War (11 page)

“Excellent, Ian! Finally you’re being a proper
nephew. You might not have been born with strength, but you can
certainly achieve it,” says Sarge. “Till tomorrow, you can start by
tightening this pig’s bit. He’s chewed it half loose.”

I obey, unknotting the gag. Drew winces as I secure
it tighter; warm drool spills over the bit, dripping onto my
hand.

“Just one more thing tonight. This poor Yankee looks
mighty cold, so I’m going to warm him up.”

The previous prisoners endured this too. There’s
nothing I can do without risking the hope I suddenly see. I stand
silent as Sarge unbuttons his trousers, pulls out his penis, and
circles our prisoner. The piss splashes across Drew’s face, over
his shoulders, and down his back. My Yank sputters and gasps,
heaves and shakes. The bitter odor fills the air. Sarge chuckles,
“How’s that, boy? How’s that? Warmer now, I’ll bet.” Finished,
Sarge wipes his dick across Drew’s cheek, then buttons up, pats my
back, wishes me a good night, and disappears into the dark.

Drew waits till Sarge is safely off before he breaks
down, cursing and crying against his gag. I hunch down and grab his
hand. He shakes me off. “Listen to me,” I say, gripping his jaw
just as Sarge had. I can feel streaks of saliva half-frozen on his
bristly chin. “I did
not
betray you. Listen
to me. I think I know how to make things a little easier on you and
how to keep you alive a little longer.”

His sobs cease as abruptly as one of Jeremiah’s banjo
strings sometimes snaps. Wiping the tears and urine off his face, I
explain. “If Sarge thinks I enjoy seeing him torture you, maybe
he’ll let me keep you alive longer. It’ll mean regular whipping and
restraint, the sort of things you’ve already endured, but it might
mean fewer nights out in the cold and it might mean more food.”
It’s a gunpowder mix, this amalgam of tenderness, pity, and desire
I feel, stroking his wet beard.

”Sarge’s been after me since I was a little boy to
lay down my books and get mean, to toughen up and turn ruthless.
This way he might think he’s succeeding; he might want to keep his
big blond whipping post around longer. What do you think?” I ask,
pressing my face to his. “It’s better than dying in just a few more
days from starvation and exposure.”

Drew’s head bobs with more energy than I thought he
had left. I squat there for another few minutes, warming his hands
in mine, till I’m convinced everyone’s asleep and the sentry isn’t
likely to pass by soon. Then I loosen the knots behind his head,
ease out the stick-bit, and fetch food and blankets from the tent.
Shawled in wool, my Yankee Achilles gives a throaty growl and falls
to, hurriedly gobbling the cheese, bread, and spoonfuls of soup I
lift to his lips. I stand guard by him for a long time, while,
despite his bonds’ discomfort, he drowses exhausted in the
blanket’s long-awaited warmth. When a sentry’s tread alerts me, I
reluctantly remove the blanket, rope the bit back into Drew’s
mouth, tightly, in case Sarge checks again, and slip back into my
tent.

“That’s all I can do for you tonight, Yank,” I
murmur, tying the tent flap half open again so I can see him and he
can see me. “Tomorrow I’m going to talk to Sarge.”

Drew nods. “Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks.”
His words are distorted by the stick I’ve tied in his mouth, but I
can make them out nevertheless.

Lifting my flask, I take a last swig. I slip off my
spectacles, pull my blanket up to my chin, and fall asleep knowing
how fortunate I am.

_

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

_

Rain. That’s the patter of rain on the tent. And
something else, below the rain’s rhythm, some other sound, nearby
but barely audible. I roll over, slip on my spectacles, and listen.
Through the tent’s entrance I can make out Drew’s shape in the dim
gray that heralds dawn. His head’s down and his shoulders are
shaking. Behind him, in the camp, no one’s in sight.

I crawl from the tent and kneel beside him, in the
lingering smell of urine, the must of dead leaves growing sodden in
the rainstorm. Drew’s sobbing, very quietly. This long agony has
finally broken him just as it did the others. Why is it that,
broken, he’s even more beautiful? The sound of his suffering makes
burning embers crumble and flare inside my chest. I stroke his
temples; he lifts his pain-twisted face to me; around us the rain
drums down. He’s bound, he can’t fight me; he needs me too badly to
betray me. And so I do what his naked woe demands that I do. I kiss
his forehead, his streaming shoulders, his bearded chin. I kiss the
stick-gag between his lips, then, as best I can, the lips
themselves. Drew pushes his mouth against mine and sobs harder.
Rain’s speckling my lenses; my fingers roam his chest hair, his
torso’s hard curves.

Footsteps. I look up, and there’s rangy Jeremiah on
another of his rounds, leaning against a sapling, watching us in
pre-dawn light the dove-gray hue of his uniform. My friend from
back by the Greenbrier, who hoed beside me the same hilly acres,
who surely shares the same sense of sin as all our people. But what
I see in his face is not a scowl of disgust but a sad smile.

I’m up and stuttering now, trying to explain—”I-I-I
w-was just…”—but Jeremiah strides over, grips my shoulder, and
shakes his head. “Ian, take comfort where you can find it. To hell
with those preachers back home. And help this poor bastard as best
you can. I won’t tell.” With that, he’s gone, just a crunch of
leaves receding in the rain.

As if Jeremiah’s understanding gives me some
long-awaited permission, I crouch down, unknot and remove Drew’s
gag. Laying it on the leaves, gently I wipe blood from the chafed
corners of his mouth. Then I grip him by his metal collar, pull his
face to mine, and kiss him again, full on, hard and fast. He parts
his lips, whimpers, and our tongues nestle together for a few sweet
seconds. He tastes like iron and salt-rising bread. I pull away,
looking into his eyes, running a fingertip over his swollen lower
lip.

“Please,” Drew gasps. “Oh please, Ian, please! It
hurts so bad. Please get me out of this.”

“I will. I’m going to untie you and fetch us some
food. We’re going to have a proper meal together. But first I have
to speak to Sarge.”

_

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

_

I
 
don’t know what power
keeps the stutter from my words this morning, but I’m thankful. I
sit in a sling chair in Sarge’s tent and explain, as calmly as I
can, my requests. He gives me only the edge of his attention as he
shuffles papers on his camp desk.

I begin with what he wants to hear. “Sir, will you be
beating the prisoner today?” My voice is tight with counterfeit
eagerness. “That boy deserves to suffer.”

“Tomorrow, Ian. As much as I want to string the
Yankee up and flog him bloody, I’m heading down the hill with some
of the boys to rustle up provender. We’ll need some provisions to
get the boys to Lexington.”

Another day for Drew to gather his strength, thank
God.

“Certainly, sir. I’ll wait. But may I ask permission
to—”

“What, what?” Sarge asks, impatient. He’s poring over
a map.

“Sir, I want to get the prisoner out of the elements
and feed him. I—”

Suspicious cock of the head. His gaze abandons the
map to fix on my face.

“Now, Ian, if you’re going soft, as you did with that
other bluecoat—Brandon?—I’ll have to give over the prisoner’s care
to someone else. George has volunteered to take the Yank off your
hands. He’s older and firmer, despite his unseemly behavior when in
his cups.”

Now I’ve really got to be convincing. George will
beat Drew and most probably, cross-eyed drunk one night, rape him.
“Sir, I’m not going soft. I want the Yankee out of the cold
because, to be honest, if he suffers frostbite and loses toes,
he’ll be more of a trial to lead around. And, since he’s forbidden
to ride a cart when we break camp—”

Sarge nods. “That makes sense. Go on, go on.”

“I want to feed him so, well, I want to keep him
alive for a while to—to torment. When I watch you beat him”—I
stroke my belt—”his suffering…nourishes me, I guess the same way
that you took righteous pleasure in the pain of those other
prisoners.”

Here’s the truth embedded in my manipulative lies.
It’s a mystery, not only why I’ve come to care for Drew, but why it
gives me such pleasure to see him bound and sunk in deep hurt.
Maybe there is a demon in me.

“Since I’m your kin, I’m finally… Well, you know,
sir, what they say: blood tells.”

Chin cupped in hand, Sarge studies me for a long
stretch in silence. “And you will prove to me your loyalty and
kinship by making him suffer as I would make him suffer?”

“Yes, sir, I will prove it. At my hands he will bleed
and weep.” Blood and tears, yes, Sarge and I both cherish them,
though I suspect for different reasons.

Sarge, smiling, drops his eyes back to the maps at
hand. “You have my permission to warm and feed him, though I expect
you to keep him well bound. Tomorrow, when I return, I will break
him again with the lash.”

“Thank you, sir.” A quick salute, and I’m out in the
rain, striding back to my tent as fast as I can.

_

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

_

I
 
can hear the muffled
cussing from a good distance away. When I round the tent, I see the
cause of it. That damned ferret, George, is standing beside my
captive and snickering as he roughly slaps the sides of Drew’s
head. Though I left Drew ungagged, George has apparently seen fit
to force the stick-bit back in, against which Drew growls protest.
Just as I shout, “Get away from him!” George slams a boot into my
helpless giant’s side.

“You miserable fuck,” I say. Human weasel he might
be, but George still has ten pounds on me. No matter. There’s not a
man in this company who can outbox me. Been a while since I got a
chance to demonstrate my skills. I’m on him in an instant. My right
fist rocks his jaw, knocking out a scurvy-loose tooth; my left
follows, catching him in the belly. He doubles over, gasping, loses
his footing on rain-wet fallen leaves, and hits the ground
hard.

The bastard scrabbles about in the mud, whining and
snarling, trying to gain a foothold. I give him a kick in the side
to match the one he inflicted on Drew. He grabs a sapling, pulls
himself to his feet, and snarls, “Damn you, Ian! You’re a goddamn
Yankee lover. I’m going to tell Sarge. I’ll make you pay!”

My fists are up again. There’s battle-lust hazing the
edges of my vision now, like a red tunnel with George set in its
lucid center, in the focus of my hate’s sights. I get this way when
someone threatens someone I love. “Tell him, swine. And I’ll remind
him how much you want to ‘poke’ this here Yankee. You remember what
he thought of that?” I laugh and spit into the leaves at his feet,
then lunge forward, feinting another punch. George yelps, turns
tail, and he’s off, limping toward the camp. When he’s disappeared
among the tents, I shake the remnant rage from my head and sink to
Drew’s side.

“You all right?”

“Uh huh,” he grunts, red-faced and teary-eyed.

Drew smells like tobacco. How the hell did that
happen? Then I notice the brown juice streaking Drew’s cheek, the
brown liquid dripping off Drew’s chin, and remember Weasel-Teeth’s
fondness for the plugs of chewing tobacco the army rations out.

“I’ve won you some relief, big man,” I say, wiping
the smelly spittle off his face. “And I won’t let that swine hurt
you again.”

First I remove the gag, next the ropes binding the
rod between the crooks of Drew’s elbows and the backs of his knees;
now I remove the rod itself, releasing my captive from his hours of
agony. Drew’s face contorts as he slumps onto the ground on his
side, stretching long-constricted limbs. “Jesus,” he sobs between
gritted teeth. “Oh, Jesus, it hurts.”

“Easy, easy,” I say, unknotting the ropes about his
ankles. “It worked. Sarge says to keep you bound, so I’ve got to
leave your hands tied and your feet shackled, but he’s given me
permission to feed you and warm you up. Let’s get you into the
tent.”

That proves to be a difficult proposition. Having
been bucked that long and that tightly, now my prisoner can hardly
move. He tries to crawl on hands and knees—stiff as an old man,
emitting whimpers that break my heart—but can’t even manage that.
Welcome albeit cumbersome burden: I grip him beneath the armpits
and laboriously drag him into the tent. Inside, I try to get him up
and onto the cot, but he’s hurting too much. He collapses on the
tent floor, curls up, covers his face with his hands, and cries,
louder and harder now that we’re alone and there’s no chance of
mocking witnesses. I soothe him as best I can, in tones usually
reserved for children; I rub his joints’ throbbing till his tears
subside. Sighs of thanks, then he passes out. I cover him with a
blanket and stroke his moist face. For a while I guard his sleep,
then head out into the unceasing rain to fetch us what food might
be found. I will comfort my captive while I can before Sarge
returns and the pain begins again.

_

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

_

Drew sleeps all day. His slumber is restless with
what must be nightmares. Occasionally he mutters and tosses.
Occasionally he jolts awake, wide-eyed and panting. I reassure him;
he settles down, groans, curls into a big ball, and sleeps again.
While he snores and mumbles, I nibble on biscuit, sip on sour
rose-hip tea Rufus has simmered for me. I read, nap in my cot, and
listen to rain shift to hard sleet at the approach of dusk. I’ve
scrounged more bread and cheese for our supper, to share whenever
Drew wakes. I’ve also borrowed a little more whiskey from my
uncle’s stash. I figure, if Sarge expects me to keep our big
captive uncomfortably bound, the least he can do is help me keep my
conscience and Drew’s pain-tattered senses somewhat liquor-dulled.
Word in the camp is that Sarge and several of the men are gone on
their reconnoitering mission and that George, surly and
bruise-faced, has accompanied them. Good news, because, vindictive
as George is, he’s sure to be plotting what revenge he can. Only
vigilance, my fists’ skill, and my kinship with Sarge will protect
Drew and me from Weasel-Teeth.