Andersonville (64 page)

Did you hear anybody move in? No more did I.

Freshest fish in the ocean, I’ll be bound. See how clean that cloth is, Johnny?

I’m going over. Appleby went away while Adam was still stretching and rubbing his eyes.

John came back soon, babbling with gossip. It’s sailors, he announced in the gasping muted mumble with which they commonly maintained privacy when privacy was desired. . . . Two of them. Great big hairy fellow, big and fresh and strong, got meat all over his bones. Big old fellow, could be maybe of the age of thirty-five or forty. The other one is puny—just a boy fourteen or so. They’re newly took by the Rebs—only last week, or so I make it out. But the old chap is some kind of foreigner; I can scarcely catch a word he utters.

Garrett’s brother-in-law had served in the marines, and he remembered talk of weird doings aboard ships. John. That sounds like a seaman and his chicken.

Chicken? What in tunket is a chicken?

A little boy. Cabin boy, most likely. He belongs to the big man, and that chap takes care of him and loves him. He pulled Appleby’s head closer to his, and lowered his voice to a bare whisper, and told more.

I never heard the beat of it! Appleby cried out in horror. Never heard the—

Mister, you’ve heard of corn-holing, hain’t you?

Oh, yes. But just imagine. On a National gunboat or warship! You’d think the officers—

I didn’t say
all
the sailors. I just said some of them.

They soon heard it related that not one but three or four sailors had been accompanied by their chickens when the latest draft of fresh fish arrived. The Vermonters were busy with Hyde’s obsequies, and did not notice excitement at the North Gate which had attended incoming squads. For the seamen had, for the most part, retained their sea-bags. This came about because they were guarded by a detachment of infantry newly removed from some position of coastal defense, now journeying north to aid in the resistance above Atlanta.

John cried indignantly, Just their damn good fortune! If they’d drawn a company of these volunteer Home Guards! I vow, it takes militia to comb you over.

The huge sailor domiciled in the Caldwell-Hyde hole told them about it later, when they could understand his speech more ably. He said that he had a razor, he carried it folded in his sleeve, and he could flip it out, opened and threatening, in a manner to strike terror. After the incoming prisoners got off the cars at Anderson, and were standing in uneven ranks waiting to be counted again and marched to the stockade, two Reserves did in fact descend on him and demand his sea-bag, and the boy’s. The razor whistled close, the Reserves fell back, cocking their muskets. A voice snapped at them, an officer’s voice, and the Reserves were ordered away before they had a chance to fire. A few of the forty-odd navy men in the detachment lost their possessions, but most kept them intact. It was lucky for them that they arrived after the breaking of the raiders instead of before. People guessed that they wouldn’t have gotten halfway across the stockade with those bulging canvas bags.

The mighty sailor had slit his own bag to make this fresh canopy, since he owned no blanket or overcoat. He and the boy had short-cut pea jackets however; these they used for bedding. The big man was Irish, speaking an almost unintelligible collection of syllables which he tumbled round and round, deep in his thick throat. When he gave his name, to Garrett’s ears it seemed to be Paydrog. Hence they called him Pay, and the other neighbors did too. He was a shambling, round-shouldered giant with a rim of cinnamon-colored brush shaped carefully down the boundaries of his cheeks and across his chin. Soon he gave up shaving, and used the razor for other purposes; then the razor was stolen from Pay one afternoon. He bellowed for a solid hour but it did no good: the razor did not reappear. Likely one of the New Yorkers got it.

They called the little boy Chickie at first, but Pay showed resentment; it seemed that the term was for use only by the adoring partner, or in the third person. The boy was named Valentine, and he had been born near the wharves of the Delaware River at Camden, New Jersey, and had gone to sea when he was twelve or thereabouts. Val sported a spoiled, simpering little face, a mouth which could smirk out of all proportion to its puffy pink fatness, and polished eyes reminding Adam of nothing so much as the eyes of a trapped garter-snake. Val could curse—and did, hourly—in a manner to put any of the raiders to shame. But Pay he addressed in cooing accents to drive the neighbors mad. Val seemed trying to imitate a mourning-dove.

Or a honey-bee, said Appleby in hate.

They do live high. Whilst you were digging roots this afternoon, and whilst I was on guard, they cooked up a stew—I mean, Pay cooked it. It had salt, too; he’d been down and made a barter opposite Stockade Creek. Had salt, onions, potatoes, some of that there Rebel vegetable—what you call it, all squashy—?

Okra.

That’s the one. And two beef bones—reckon they’re mule, though—and a big piece of tripe.

Tripe! Come along, I don’t like being played for a fool.

Well, they had it. I set out there, and so did the New Yorkers, and that old saddler from Ohio. We set around on our marrowbones and watched them, and we could smell pretty good, too. They finished everything in that big pot, or pretty near, and Pay says to the lad, Did he want more? No, no, says Val, and made that silly face he’s always making.

What did they do with what was left?

Pay give it a heave. You heard me. He flung it out.

Well, why didn’t you—?
You
can go dig roots tomorrow.

I calculate to.

Then Garrett felt that he had had enough sport with his friend, and lovingly he produced the two bones he’d salvaged. There was gristle along the sides, the marrow would be intact for they had not been cut open, and there was actually a wad of lean meat and glutinous fat around the end of one bone. The New Yorkers made a dive, he said, but this little Vermont apple-knocker got there first.

The two flat hats, bobbing about next door, became a familiar spectacle, just as other familiar spectacles had existed before in the same locality during the tenancy of the Maine artillerymen, just as further familiar spectacles would in time supersede this one if the same eyes were there to witness. The flat hats bore in printed letters the words
Sea Sprite
but one day the bristly Irishman was not wearing his hat. He had sold it to a guard for brown sugar, a little envelope of brown sugar. Val had a sweet tooth.

The big sailor’s store of money ran out quickly. Then, article by article, Pay hawked away his fortune. He bartered extra pairs of blue pantaloons for meat, his extra pairs of socks . . . he sold his sailor blouses, he sold tough linen thread, big hanks of waxed cord, many of his needles. He’d had something to do with the sails aboard that sloop on which he and the chicken were captured. In time he even sold the gold-beaded Rosary that hung around his own neck. Val was the possessor of a fine wardrobe—little white sailor suits trimmed in blue, little blue sailor suits trimmed in white. These costumes had been hand-sewn for him, lovingly, by his protector. Not a stitch of the chicken’s possessions would Pay offer for barter—not until dire necessity on Val’s part forced him to it. Then he disposed of them to some of the elder guards who bought the clothing for their children; he sold them for rice, turnips, a half-rotten melon, rancid bacon, anything he could get. Of course he was cheated roundly.

He had lost weight from the start, rapidly and visibly, as biggest men always did. It was as if a bony structure melted away beneath the stout countenance and let the exhausted cheeks and other features fall loosely, as they were a mask grown limp and hung upon a curtain rod. Folds of flesh around his neck drooped like cloth, then tightened up in a turkey’s wattles. The beard, no longer shaped, straggled out in tusks and horns. The ruddy skin became black as a miner’s . . . Pay spent hours with his head pushed down in pine smoke, blowing at reluctant flames of his cooking smudge.

Also he washed Val’s clothes stubbornly, hunting for less pestilential pools of the morass, prospecting here and there, and finally going to work with ashes and muddy water—wringing, rinsing, twisting, pummeling sodden cloth with a stick and with his fists—striving to keep Val the mincing blue-and-white dainty thing he’d been before. The neighbors, most of them, were beyond the point of catcalls and ribaldry about this; they only stared in a manner of bored impudence and disbelief. Pay himself was far beyond the practice of sodomy or any other misshapen act, but he proceeded in a pattern long established: he owned an affection, it had come to rule him, he was selfless, savagely devoted.

The silver-haired Ohio saddler, whose name was Tom Gusset, did a brisk trade in the repair of leather goods. He had managed to keep some of his knives, awls and the like, when he came in. Each day he set up shop, now near the North Gate, now near the South, and cried his skills aloud. He would cobble a strap or a shoe or a leather cartouche flap—he could do such things soundly and speedily with the aptness which lived still in his fingers—but he worked only for currency or for some victual he fancied. One day there was excitement when a batch of freshies came in from some fort in the Carolinas, and one of them had smuggled a packet of candy: gaudy, viscous sticks striped with red and white. Promptly the candy was distributed to the four winds; the newcomer needed a blanket, a cooking can, things more imperative than candy. Gusset acquired one stick; it was stared at and coveted by all. The saddler limited himself to a half-inch at a time. After two days there was still a sizeable stub remaining.

However, he found that the heat of his body was melting the sweetness as he carried it about in his clothing. Privately he dug a storage den, and buried the precious colored fragment. He’d put it in a chunk of hollow cane which he owned, and plugged up the ends. The chicken must have seen where the treasure was put away, though no one knew it at the time.

The next afternoon Garrett was root-digging and Appleby housekeeping, when an explosion occurred in the Ohio quarters. Previously a fight had begun, across the swamp on the slope of the North Side, and most of the stay-at-homes were down there watching the fight. Three angry skeletons were engaged in a battle royal over ownership of an old boot; literally they sought to club or gouge one another to the death. Then came the outburst closer at hand, and Johnny looked out to see Val in full flight, with the old saddler loping after him.

He told Adam, You should of seen it. Didn’t know that old rooster could move so spry. He had a big belt in his hand, and he was wheeling it like all possessed. The youngster legged it like the Old Harry was after him. He’d dropped the candy prompt when Gusset spied him in the act of thieving, but Gusset was bound to teach him manners. I calculate the chicken would of got away scot-free, but he was tripped by Pay’s own shelter-rope. That strap buckle sung out like it was a bullet, and it bit a piece out of his bottom. Should of heard him yip.

Garrett scratched the filth of his beard. Don’t like that. Was it a big piece the buckle took out?

Well, he had blood on his bottom. He went dancing away, still yelling like possessed, and hanging on to his ass with both hands. But I could see blood on his little white cookie. Right side.

Take any kind of scratch or cut. Even a blister. Remember Greenberry? That was the way he went, from just a blister on the palm of his hand. Remember how that arm busted open, all the way up to the elbow?

Don’t talk about it.

Reckon Pay will take it out on Old Ohio’s hide.

Reckon he wanted to, but he couldn’t find him. Gusset knew what was in the wind, and he moved off the Island before Pay come home. Likely he’s joined some other Ohioans he knows, one place or another.

Appleby came closer to whisper, Pay’s got Val under the shelter, bathing his hind end. Heard him say he’d kiss it and make it well.

It would take Jesus of Nazareth to make that well.

Johnny was shocked. That’s sacrilege.

I know, but ain’t it true?

Remorselessly the spoilage began; Adam Garrett’s prophecy came true and more than true. The wound was puffed and swollen at first, then increasingly discolored (this was what the Irishman told his neighbors later, after he had come, leaking tears, begging them to help). Val fretted day and night, he had to be on his left side, then on his stomach. . . . Pay bathed the wound, the bathing hurt, Val cursed him with shrill hysterical fluency.

Johnny, that’s a bad luck shebang, most certain.

Where?

The old Maine hole. First them other miseries, now the chicken.

Gad. I wish he’d stop his whining.

You’d whine the same way, with one side of your bottom swolled up and turning blue.

He oughtn’t to have tried to steal. Thou Shalt Not Steal.

Everybody steals around here.

I wouldn’t.

Reckon we both might come to it in time.

There he goes, squealing again. Just like a porker at a butchering.

The Vermont neighbors advised hospital, so did the New Yorkers, but Pay stood dumb and tearful and merely shook his awful head. They’d never be letting me care for him in the hospital, now would they?

Not likely that they would.

Sure, I’ll care for him myself. Ah, Chickie, Chickie, it’s the fine good broth I’m making for you now, do you hear, do you hear me, little Chickie?

In these days he began to sell Val’s clothing from the sea-bag which had been sacrosanct before. He would bribe a neighbor to sit by the shelter door and keep an eye on things while he went to market. No longer did he fall in for rations, he refused to take that much time away from the nursing of Val. He sold the once-delicate uniforms which he had constructed, the two silk handkerchiefs, at last the small bright shoes. He’d sold his own shoes long before; he was barefoot; he cut one toe half off by stepping on a sharp broken cooking pan of tin. This injury did not try to close itself up as the boy’s did; it stood open, draining constantly, but soon stuffed with worms. Pay was in pain along with his chicken, but never did he complain of his own hurt.