Chance Encounters, page 13
“Then you sympathize with them?”
“Hell, yes, as long as they know their place. Had thirty field slaves to pick cotton. We took care of them, lot better than here. How about you?”
“I had fifteen families.” Major Fraser replied. “Built them each a house with a garden plot. They worked for wages in my hemp factory, making sack cloth and rope mostly. They were slaves in name only, seeing we were in Mississippi. My neighbors complained that I treated them too well...”
“Then you’re an abolitionist?” The Captain’s tone suddenly turned a bit sharp.
“Not so you’d notice. I married into the property and inherited their way of life. From my side it was really a question of efficiency. Believe me, a wage earner works ten times faster and better than a slave. And we were efficient. We sold our products as much to the north as to the south... before the war.”
“My place was burned down; I have no home to return to.”
“My wife’s dead, but I have two sons living with her parents. I hope so at least, I haven’t heard from them since before Vicksburg.” The Major reached inside his shirt to finger the locket.
“Yeah. I guess we all have stories to tell.” The Captain got up heavily. “Stay healthy, Major, and you may see your sons yet.”
“Call me Chance.”
Healthy? Chance grumbled to himself. Easier said than done. His body was emaciated, the skin loose over his stomach. Perhaps the hardships of his youth had tempered him with a certain hardiness. Barrack 19 was occupied mostly by officers and had therefore, extra rations of wood to heat the place and extra issues of blankets. Worst off were those forced to live in tents with hardly any heat. They dropped like insects in the first frost, frozen overnight or struck down by some illness.
With darkness, people went to bed. Wrapped themselves in a blanket and whatever else they could scrounge: rags, a little mildewed straw, even last year’s leaves. For a while, Chance listened to the snores, the whimpering, and from the far end, somebody struggling with a nightmare. He forced himself not to hear the noise of compressed humanity. The stench of unwashed bodies was also overpowering, something else to ignore. He thought back on his life, the workhouse, the canal, laboring as a coal tender on a steamship and improving himself to become Chief Engineer. Had he made the right decisions, to travel and take on the world just to end up in Mississippi and now here in New York State in this hellhole? In all his life he’d never argued against his fate, but he’d never been so challenged before.
Chance thought of Anabelle. She had been such a happy person, finding joy in everything. She loved being a wife and a mother. For Chance she meant family, something he’d almost given up on nearing 40. He liked her, and loved that she bore him two sons. Adam, the first, and Gage, named after an uncle in her family. The boys were now 5 and 3. When was the last time he’d held them? After Antietam sometime.
He turned over in his bunk, trying to find a new place for the hard boards to dig into him. Thinking of Anabelle, now lying in the fenced off family plot; perhaps it was kinder she died when she did. The South was going to change in the aftermath of this war. She wouldn’t have liked it and it would’ve been hateful to see her spirit broken by the hardship and humiliation. He fell asleep with these sad thoughts.
Next morning Chance rose and visited the buckets in the corner to relieve himself. The doors wouldn’t be opened until official reveille at 6:30. A tight group collected around the long table, whispering something urgently. Chance went up to them. On his approach the group fell silent, throwing suspicious looks at him.
“It’s all right. A hero at Antietam, he can be trusted,” Captain Cobb vouched for him.
“Last night three enlisted men were executed for ambushing their comrades and stealing property from them. They beat up Corporal Hennis in Barrack 3, and put out an eye of another. They’re responsible for at least ten attacks. At the order of Commander Wilcox, the Regulators stepped in, hung two, garroted another, and pardoned but warned three of the lesser perpetrators.”
“Who are these Regulators?” Chance asked.
“Their names are secret. They enforce our discipline in camp,” Cobb said in a grim tone. The others just nodded.
“Won’t the guards punish such things?”
“The guards don’t care. Fewer to watch. Besides there’re plenty of suicides to fit them into. Have no fear, nothing more will come of this.” The guards’ duty was to keep the prisoners contained; they bothered with little else, certainly not with policing them. That was left up to the prisoners themselves.
“Except that the camp will know and respect the rule of law.”
“Law?”
“We need law and discipline to survive,” Cobb asserted. “You’re now sworn to secrecy.” All eyes turned on Chance.
“I swear,” Chance said, feeling at the same time revolted and protected by the law.
Another day passed with nothing to do, leaving lots of time to complain about the many miseries. One tried not to think of hunger, of the cold, the passing of comrades, the senselessness of prison life and the memories of bloody battlefields haunting them. Yet daily, new arrivals came, increasing the crowding, bringing with them news of battles lost and the horrendous numbers of casualties.
To fill the time, they refought battles, often exploring the “what-if” premise. What if England would have joined the Southern cause to defend their interests in and need for cotton? What if Mexico would have attacked the flanking armies of the North? What if Gettysburg had been won by the valiant Pickett’s charge and Lee could have continued invading the North? What if... what if?
Sitting around the big table of the barrack, often enough the arguing and wishful thinking got out of hand. Chance tried to stir clear of such discussions, but occasionally got drawn into them.
“The North likes to claim the war was fought for e-man-ci-pa-tion,” Roy declared, sarcastically dissecting the word. “It was anything but. The North wanted to bully the South to give up its statehood rights to determine its own future. Free the Negroes? Bull! The war was pushed by the financiers in New York, the industrialists in Connecticut and politicians in Washington to squeeze King Cotton from its preeminence and deprive the South of its source of wealth. Everyone knows that blacks are inferior, incapable of rational thought―”
“Now, hold on there,” Chance interrupted in a sharp tone. “I’ve been to Africa, and had seen black kingdoms and cities. Sure, there is ignorance and poverty as elsewhere, but there is also wisdom, purpose, and statesmanship―”
“What are you? A nigger lover?” Roy turned a hostile face on Chance.
“I believe in fairness to everyone. The war is a nightmare of errors and misdirected passions and should never have been fought―”
“You’re a cowardly turncoat. Go ahead. Betray your oath to the South... swear allegiance to the Union and be done with it. At least we’ll know which side you stand on...” Roy reared up from his seat, his fists balled and his face red. An uneasy stir went through the whole group.
“I stand on the side of truth. I remember comrades lost in battles, same as you. I buried my friends at Antietam and Vicksburg. And I tell you they died in vain. The South is defeated and weaker than it ever was. You can wave the Southern Cross all you want, it won’t change facts.” Chance said his piece in cold fury to match the other’s red hot anger. They glowered at each other, so the rest had to step in to separate them.
“We all know the war is lost and it wasn’t fought just to free the Negroes. And when it’s all said and done with, we’ll have to find a place for ourselves in the new Union,” Sergeant Wilmont said to ease them away from a fight.
“Limey bastard, has no right to call himself American, much less a true Southerner,” Roy muttered, but allowed himself to be held back.
“I lost a home, a factory and my wife. I fought a good fight, but in the wrong war.” Chance found it hard to walk away and harder to calm the storm inside. There was much bitterness over the war, wounds that might never heal.
The nights were worse. Trapped in his head, Chance struggled with his thoughts. To survive he needed something to sustain him, something beyond this war, clear of this hellhole. But he had nothing: no wife, no home. He only had his sons, Adam and Gage. Still, there was nothing in his present to encourage him and from the misery of prison life, the future looked equally bleak. Maybe there was something in his past to hold onto, something hidden in his memories. Nothing in his childhood and certainly nothing on the canals. The only times he had felt really alive were the times he shared with Emily. The abduction and the passage, two beacons in his life. He had suppressed those, thinking that somehow, he was being disloyal to his wife. Now Anabelle was dead; she couldn’t help him anymore, but could Emily? How impossible was that, separated by an ocean, and the times so misaligned: she was married with children and he had two sons of his own.
Still, in the depth of his loneliness, thoughts of Emily came to him, and he relived each moment of the memories trying to read something into them. He was again fighting a private “what-if” war with fate. What if he had revealed himself in the beginning and claimed the reward she had promised him? With money, he could have built a life in England and wouldn’t have had to be forced abroad to seek his future. Anabelle had been a pleasant interlude, but it had not fulfilled his restless spirit. Emily was an unrequited dream, maybe kept alive by the fact it was unrealizable. But what if...? Indeed, what if?
The bugle blew and the barracks stirred. Chance hurried to help Howard up. The man was sweating, and fever colored his face. The beating yesterday didn’t help him any. Curse on the foul tempered sadist, Brutus.
“By God, we better take you to the hospital.”
“No! Not the hospital. People go there to die, few are ever cured. Help me...” He reached out an arm. He was right, of course, the hospital seemed like a waypoint to eternal rest in John W. Jones’ garden. The Chief Surgeon was overheard boasting that he’d killed more Johnny Rebs than any soldier in the Union Army.
Chance helped Howard out of doors to face the morning roll call. This time the numbers checked out and they were dismissed to get perhaps a thin coffee and a piece of toast, not much to last one until supper.
Cobb, seeing the bad condition Howard was in, directed them to Jesse Edwards in Barrack 15. With a strong hand under the sick man’s arm, Chance guided him there, where six men were already waiting. It took nearly an hour to see Corporal Edwards.
“Well let’s see.” He took Howard’s wrist and counted his heart beat, felt his forehead for fever and pulled up his clothes to check for rashes. With a trumpet-like tube, he listened to the labored breathing of his chest. “You have pneumonia, I fear.”
“Can you do anything for him?”
“Not much. I can make a local application of mustard seed, pepper and hickory leaves.”
“Is that going to cure him?”
“Cure him no, but it might help to ease him. His own body must fight off the disease.” He took Chance aside and continued earnestly, “I don’t like the looks of him; you might better take him to the hospital.”
“He refuses to go. Can’t you do something?”
“I’m a simple medic, not a doctor. All I know is what I learned in the field hospital and what I read in medical books. I never went to school.” He started rolling up Chance’s sleeve.
“What are you doing?”
“You were inoculated for smallpox weren’t you? I’m just taking a look at it.” The needle track didn’t appear bad, hardly any scarring. “Was it here or someplace else?”
“Here, on admission.”
The Corporal frowned. “The shots here are of very poor quality. I’m surprised it caused you no problems, no festering abscesses. You’re one of the lucky few.” He went to his shelf and gave a small jar to Chance. “For him, for his pneumonia. Use as directed by the script.” He turned to the next soldier waiting.
“Maybe we’d better go to the hospital,” Chance tried again.
“No! Just stick me back in bed.” Chance did as asked. Afterward he went for a walk along the palisade that surrounded the compound; he was determined to exercise gently every day to keep up his strength but not to exhaust himself. On his rounds he saw emaciated soldiers dressed in rags, some catatonic, staring into nothingness. They were just days or hours away from death. He tried not to see them.
Overlooking the south fence was a tall tower, built to allow Elmira residents and tourists for five cents to peek into the prison compound holding the notorious Johnny Rebs. Often, women and children climbed the tower to gawk at the crowd of prisoners. More than once, a prisoner would whip out his penis and shake it in their direction to chase horrified sightseers away.
On the next day, Howard was worse, now delirious. Cobb took a look at him and ordered him to the hospital.
“But he doesn’t want to go,” Chance protested.
“I can’t risk him infecting anyone else,” was Cobb’s terse comment. Two soldiers got a litter and carried Howard away.
“Major,” Cobb called as he was leaving. “You’re a rational man who recognizes realities. This afternoon I want you to come with me.” He gave a lopsided smile. “We be going hunting.”
“Hunting what?”
“Just be here this afternoon.”
Chance met up with Cobb and a man introduced as Huxley from the 5th Carolina. “He’s the best rat hunter in camp.” Then he laughed when he saw the appalled look on Chance’s face. “Meat is meat, Major. Your palate may object but your stomach won’t.” He led the way to Foster’s Pond. They settled behind a hammock and Huxley pulled a slingshot from his coat pocket. He loaded a stone into the sling and waited. A fat rat nosed along the edge, sniffing at the discarded garbage. Huxley aimed and shot, hitting the rat dead center. In half an hour they’d bagged six rats. “Thank God for the Pond, it attracts these rodents like honey. We’ll feast tonight,” he promised.
That evening, before the barracks filled up, the three of them spiked the rodents and holding them over the fire of the stove, roasted them. “Good enough,” Cobb declared and delicately nibbled at his. Cautiously Chance tasted his small piece and picked through the small bones. It wasn’t bad, he decided, but from time to time he gagged as he swallowed. Afterward, for the first time, he felt more full than usual.
The following day Chance went to the hospital on the other side of the Pond. The place was full, with not much order evident. The sick lay where there was room; often people had to step over them.
“Where’s Lieutenant Small?”
“Who?” A harried orderly tried to remember.
“Howard Small of 35th Alabama.” The orderly didn’t know.
Chance made his way through the sick, looking for his bunk mate. Everywhere he looked were bodies strewn around, some awake and suffering, groaning or whimpering. The rest were thankfully asleep or unconscious. “Where is Howard Small?” he asked several more, but no one knew. Finally, among the stretcher bearers he found a response. “Tall, red hair, with a thin mustache?” Chance nodded. “Him we buried earlier this morning.”
Dejected, Chance walked back to his barrack. Looking through Howard’s possessions he came across the concoction the medic had given him. He walked over to Barrack 15, and saw Jesse Edwards out front smoking a pipe.
“I’m not working today,” he said, discharging a plume of smoke.
“I just wanted to give this back.” Chance handed him the jar. Edwards looked at it and motioned for Chance to take the other seat.
“I guess he didn’t make it.” He puffed again, pointing to his pipe. “Tea leaves. First I make tea, dry the used leaves and smoke them.” He tapped the pipe against the heel of his boot, scattering the ashes.
“I tell you it’s the lack of food. Everyone is weak and the diseases just take them. Do you know that we have twice the mortality rate of any of the other prisons in the Union? With almost 8,000 prisoners, we produce 1,500 gallons of urine a day, and how many tons of excrement. There’s no sanitation anywhere. No hygiene. Not in handling of food or taking care of the sick. No wonder that we drop like flies, of typhoid, dysentery, pneumonia, those are the three worst. Add to it cholera, smallpox in spite of the vaccination, tuberculosis and digestive tract diseases.” Edwards was visibly agitated. “The Bureau of Prisons doesn’t want to deal with this. The government doesn’t. And people are so tired of the war they just don’t care anymore.” He stewed silently for a while, then relented. “That’s not entirely true. The government formed a Sanitation Commission that is trying to do something. Other relief organizations, too. And there’re an amazing bunch of women who go serve in the field hospitals and organize better nursing and sanitation. Dorothea Dix, Mary Ann Bickerdyke, Mary Jane Safford and Clarissa Barton, just to name a few. These are courageous women, stand up to doctors and surgeons who despise them all. But Grant listens to them and it’s said that President Lincoln does too.”
“Why aren’t they here then?”
“Because... because Colonel Hoffman refused them entry but the War Department is on his tail so he’ll have to. Mark my words, they’ll come.” He spit toward the watchtower occupied by a sentry. “The fools! Don’t they realize that they often die of the same diseases they catch from the prisoners? It would be in their own interest to take better care of us.” He spat again.
Edwards stood up and looked toward the tourist tower. “You know many Union wives and mothers with men in Confederate prisons are sympathetic toward us, maybe thinking that if they take care of us, their men will also be better treated by the women of the South. They send what they can: medicine, bandages, clothes and food.”
“Where’s all this then? How come we don’t get it?”
“It’s the fault of the damn bureaucracy. No one was ready to fight this war. Not the generals, not the government. Everything is caught up in red tape. Everything has to have a requisition and manifest, and goes at a snail’s pace... all because of profiteering. Industry and business want a large piece of the pie, needing more oversight and controls.”
