Whiter Than Snow (15 page)

On April 24, 1865, after the war was officially over, Minder and Billy Boy and two thousand other released prisoners boarded the
Sultana,
one of the Mississippi’s great steam packets, on a journey up the river to Cairo. The soldiers laughed at the way they were pack-jammed together, and they all crowded to one side of the steamer to have their picture taken, almost capsizing the boat. They had survived the war, survived Andersonville. Nothing could harm them now.

“There’s too many of us on board,” Billy Boy remarked, but Minder only shook his head, because Billy Boy was one to worry, and he asked as a joke whether his friend wanted to wait for the next boat. The two found a place on the hurricane deck, where they could sit propped against the railing. The steamship backed out into the flood-swollen Mississippi, and Minder felt elation that he was going home to Kate, wondered if his letter would arrive before he did.

“You think she’ll have me?” he asked Billy Boy.

“What?” Billy Boy replied. In the moonlight, Minder could see that his friend’s eyes were red and glassy with fever.

“Kate. You think she’ll marry me?”

“You already asked me, asked me a hundred times. Why’d Kate want to marry up with somebody who smells like he’s been dead for two weeks?”

“Maybe I’ll wash up first, trim off my beard. She’s never saw me with a beard. You think that would help?”

“Naw. Then she’ll see how ugly you are. By now, she’s bound to be sweet on somebody else.”

“You’re joking me, aren’t you? You better be joking me,” Minder said, not sure of himself then.

Billy Boy smiled, and Minder punched him in the shoulder, nearly knocking him over, because Billy Boy was that weak. “I’d be proud to have you in the family,” Billy Boy said. “Now don’t pester me any more about it.”

In a minute, Billy Boy went to sleep, curled up on the deck, but Minder was too keyed up to close his eyes. He stared out at the river, so swollen now that he could see the tops of trees peaking out of the water. The river had overflowed the banks, and the
Sultana,
creaking under its heavy load, sat low in the water. Some of the soldiers had complained that they were packed in like hogs, but Minder didn’t care. After what he had been through, he was not afraid of a river. In fact, the Mississippi seemed peaceful to him; the sound of the water lulled him.

He was more worried about Billy Boy, who had grown weaker. But Kate would take care of him, feed him milk and bacon until he was fat as a groundhog.

The next night, when he couldn’t sleep, Minder was again thinking about Billy Boy and how needy he was, when he heard the explosion. It was loud and terrifying, and Minder felt the boat heave and then heard the screams of men being scalded and burned and impaled on shards of lumber. Billy Boy woke up, thought he was in battle again, and reached out for his gun.

Minder grabbed his friend’s arm and shook him. “It’s the boat. I think it’s blowed up.”

The two saw the fire caused by the explosion of the
Sultana
’s boiler, saw the bodies of the dead and wounded, and then saw the men in the water. Someone tried to fight the blaze with a wet gunnysack but could not stop it. “The boat is sinking!” a man yelled. Another, whose hair was burned off, cried, “Jump. We got to jump, or we’ll all be dead alike.”

Billy Boy turned to Minder, his face white in the light from the flames. “I can’t swim.”

“Follow me,” Minder replied, although he did not know where he was going. He only knew it was up to him to save Billy Boy, who would never survive in the water by himself. And Minder was sure they couldn’t stay where they were. So he led the way to the front end of the deck, where the two grabbed hold of ropes and lowered themselves down to the bow of the boat. The steamer was littered with burned and injured men, and the survivors trampled them in their frenzy to get off the
Sultana.
Minder looked into the water and found it thick with soldiers, horses, and mules. He watched as men sank beneath the water and didn’t come up. Some of the survivors fought over planks and sticks of wood, shoving one another away in their attempts to save themselves. A man yelled, “Let go of me, fool, or you’ll drown us both.” The river was so thick with people that you could almost walk on their heads, and Minder knew it was death to jump among them.

But they did not have any other plan. Minder waited until there was a clear space in the water, then grabbed a panel of a door and told Billy Boy, “Now. We’ll jump together. Hang on to the board.”

“I’ll drown,” Billy Boy cried.

A burning timber fell onto the deck beside them, and there was fire all over Billy Boy. They tried to brush it off, but Billy Boy’s hair was burned. Minder said, “I’ll take care of you, I promise. We’re pards to end of the road, aren’t we?”

“I’m scared, Minder,” Billy Boy said.

“Well, I’m not. I’m not going to lie to you. I’ll have to swim hard, but you can hold on to the board, and I’ll get us both to shore. It’s jump now or die here in the fire.”

“You promise you’ll stay with me?”

“I said I would, didn’t I? I won’t let us face the day of judgment yet.”

The two climbed onto the railing, each one gripping an end of the panel, and they went overboard. Billy Boy let go as they reached the water, and Minder thrashed around, searching for his friend, diving under the water, but it was so dark and muddy that he couldn’t see anything. Then suddenly, Billy Boy popped up beside him, and Minder grabbed his friend with one hand and began to swim with him toward the riverbank.

The river wasn’t what Minder had thought it would be. The current was swift and the water cold, and his coat and shoes were waterlogged, dragging him down. He couldn’t rid himself of the heavy clothing because Billy Boy held on to him. Minder went under once, then came back up, gasping for air. He looked around for something to grasp and saw a piece of lumber and lunged for it. But with Billy Boy holding him back, Minder couldn’t reach it, and the board floated on past. “Let up,” he called to Billy Boy, but his friend was too frightened.

Minder saw the men around him slide under the waves and disappear, and now he wondered if that would happen to him. And for the first time in his life, he was afraid. He had been brave in battle and in the fight to survive at the prisoner-of-war camp. But now he believed that death was after him, and he knew fear. He saw part of a tree floating with the current, and with a mighty effort, he shook off Billy Boy and reached for the log. He should have pushed Billy Boy to the timber, made sure his friend was safe, but instead, at that instant, Minder cared only about saving his own life. So he let Billy Boy fend for himself while he lunged for the log. He grasped it, then turned and shouted to Billy Boy, watched his friend struggle in the water, reach for the log, reach for his pard, his fingers touching Minder’s coat. Minder should have reached out to him, let go of the timber and grabbed his friend, but he didn’t. And then Billy Boy was gone. His head slid under the waves.

Minder yelled for his friend, reached out, but the log was moving downriver with the current, and Minder wouldn’t let go to dive into the water to search for Billy Boy. Instead, he floated along with the log, and as he did, he told himself that he couldn’t have saved Billy Boy. It would have been foolish to try. But in the end, he knew that he had let Billy Boy drown. He should have shoved Billy Boy onto the log first, but he’d been afraid, and so had saved himself instead of his friend.

Minder clung to the log for a long time, fighting off others who tried to appropriate it for themselves, and then he was alone, moving down the river. He no longer could see the flames on the
Sultana,
and he wondered if the boat had sunk, but the sky was lit up, and he thought the packet must be still burning. After a time, the screams and pleas for help stopped, and all Minder could hear was the sound of the waves. He floated with the current for a long time, past Memphis, where the
Sultana
had docked only hours earlier to off-load cargo. He was not frightened now. Instead, he was numb with the terrible thing that had happened, with knowing that when he had jumped into the river, he had stepped off to hell.

As daylight came over the river, Minder saw that he had floated toward the western shore, and after a time, the log lodged in the top of a tree that was almost submerged in the flood. He stayed there into the day, until men in a boat heard his calls and rescued him. They gave him a meal and clothes, because Minder had shed his waterlogged pants and wore only his shirt and drawers, and they offered him a bed. Later, they said, they’d take him across the river, where there was a hospital. But Minder wouldn’t stand for that. They might ask his name, and it would go down that he had survived, and he had decided during those awful hours on the water that his name should be listed among the dead, listed with Billy Boy’s. It would be better for Kate to think that the two of them had drowned together. It wouldn’t do for her to know that he lived, while Billy Boy had died.

So when he was rested a little, Minder taken out. He went west, walked most of the way, stopping here and there to work for a little food or a few coins. It took him a long time, more than a year, to reach Colorado, where he went to the gold fields, and after a time he owned a piece of a gold mine. He married then. His wife was a good woman, and he loved her. They had one child, a daughter, whom Minder named Katherine.

He never again wrote to Kate, didn’t know how she had taken Billy Boy’s death—and his, of course. But once, after he had commenced to be prosperous, he went back to Fort Madison. It was a long time after the war. Minder was old then, although not as old as he was now. The place had changed. Fort Madison had turned into a fine town, and he didn’t recognize it. He found a hotel, wrote his name, “M. Evans,” in the register. The clerk read it and said, “You’re not any relation to Minder Evans, I don’t suppose.”

Minder jerked up his head at that. “What?”

“Minder Evans.” The clerk pointed to a pile of books on the counter with a sign on top that read 25 cents. Minder picked up one and read the title:
The Civil War Letters and Drawings of Private Minder Evans, a Civil War Hero.

Minder placed a two-bit piece on the counter and took a copy of the book up to his room and sat down in a chair by the window and read the dedication: “This book is published in memory of two noble soldiers, Pvt. Minder Evans and Pvt. William E. Forsythe by the fiancée of one and the sister of the other. After fighting heroically in the war to preserve the Union and surviving the indignities of Andersonville, these two brave soldiers died in the waters of the Mississippi in the tragic explosion of the great
Sultana
steamship. May they rest in peace. Katherine Elizabeth Forsythe.” The book was filled with Minder’s letters and drawings. Kate had saved every one of them. On the cover was a photograph taken of the men on board the
Sultana.
Kate had circled two of them, identifying them as Minder and Billy Boy, but she was wrong. The two were indistinguishable in the photograph, hidden behind other soldiers.

For a long time after he finished reading his long-ago letters in the book, Minder sat and stared out the window at the Mississippi, and then he went downstairs and asked the desk clerk what had happened to Katherine Forsythe, the woman who had compiled the book.

“Miss Forsythe’s an old maid that runs a stationery store over on Avenue G, sells paper and books and whatnot. She’s a little daft, and age has come upon her.” The clerk chuckled. “Every year, she reads one of them Minder Evans letters at the Fourth of July ceremony. Kind of sad, isn’t it? You’d think she’d get over it, but those women never do.”

“Kind of sad,” Minder agreed.

Minder did not intend to speak to her, although he thought it would do no harm to go by the store, look through the window, just peer in out of curiosity. But he could not keep from going inside, where an old woman in black, her hair pulled straight back, sharpening her features, looked up. “Are you Katherine Forsythe, the one who wrote the book?” Minder asked.

She nodded, and Minder thought the clerk was right: She looked older than she should have. “You were in the war,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

“I was.”

“My Minder Evans was from Iowa. Were you?”

“Oh, no,” he said quickly.

She waited, and Minder wondered if every old soldier who read the book sought her out. She looked as if she didn’t mind, that she spent her days in the past. “Did they recover the bodies, the ones of Minder Evans and Billy—William Forsythe?”

“No. There were so many who just sank, young ones like Minder and my brother, who died short of promise. They never surfaced. I believe those two had rather die together than one of them survive.” She said the words as if she repeated them often.

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded and waited. Minder thought she might recognize him, half-hoped that she would, but she didn’t. After all, they had met only once, and they had been much younger then. He had a beard now, and his hair was white. “I’m in need of some reading material,” he said, mindful that she must make a poor living peddling books and paper and ink. He went to the shelves and selected half a dozen volumes, the big ones, the most costly, with gold on the covers. He bought writing paper and ink and pens, and when he was finished, he had spent almost thirty-five dollars.

After Minder left, it came into his remembrance that he had sent her a gold cross once, not telling her he had ripped it off a dead Confederate, and she had promised not to take it off until he came home. He had not looked to see if she wore it still, but it didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that he still did not know which sister she was.

The burial ground was deserted now. The widow McCauley was gone, and no one else had come to visit those lonely graves. Minder put away his Bible, the tiny one that Kate had given him and that had survived the Mississippi in the pocket of his shirt. He trudged out of the graveyard into town, raising his hat to a woman who passed him and greeting another with “Good evening.” He nodded at one or two men but ignored the Negro who came out of the mercantile. Minder knew who the black man was. He worked at the Fourth of July in the mill, but he’d never have gotten a job there if Minder still owned a piece of the mine. Minder disliked Negroes, disliked them as much as he ever had the Confederates. He hadn’t cared about them when he joined up, and over the years, he’d come to blame them for the war. He knew it didn’t make sense, but he blamed them anyway. If they hadn’t come to the United States as slaves, if they’d stayed back in Africa, there never would have been a war. Billy Boy would be alive, and he’d have married Kate. Over the years, Minder had come to blame the black people for the tragedy of his life.