Death on the River Read online

  It makes no difference. They won’t look at me.

  “I’m going to join the army,” I yell. “I’ll be as good as Jim. I’ll be better. I won’t get killed.”

  They still won’t look at me. I have to crawl up the bank and shake them so that they see me and understand that I’m going away to the war to be as good as Jim, but I can’t. Someone is holding my ankles and pulling me in the other direction.

  “This’un’s still alive,” a voice says in a heavy southern accent.

  “Well, drag him in and put him with the others,” a second voice pushes its way into my dream. “The blue-bellies ain’t gonna attack again tonight.”

  FOUR

  I come to with a pair of Rebel soldiers holding an ankle each and hauling me, upside down, over the breastworks. I feel like my head is going to explode every time it bumps against a log. It doesn’t, but I keep blacking out.

  When I finally wake up, it must be the next day. I’m surrounded by about thirty other Union prisoners, most with a bloody rag wrapped around some part of their bodies. I don’t recognize any of them. My head is pounding, there’s dried blood all down my cheek and my right eye is almost closed from the swelling.

  That morning we are forced to stagger the two miles to Gaines Mill, where we are locked in an old barn. We are held there for several days. It’s hot, uncomfortable and stinks of the animals that were here before us, but it gives us a chance to recover. The pain in my head eases and the swelling goes down. There is even a water pump outside that we are allowed to use once a day, so I can clean the dried blood off my face. There’s not much food, and the Rebel soldiers tease us about how easily they beat us, but for the most part, they’re decent and share what food and tobacco they have.

  At first I hope for another attack that might free us, but nothing happens. A few more wounded from the attack on June 3 are brought in. They all complain bitterly that General Grant didn’t ask for a truce to collect the dead and wounded. It seems I’m lucky to have got so close to the Rebel lines before I was wounded. Those farther back died slowly, their screams and cries echoing across the field for days.

  One morning the barn door is thrown open and a grinning Rebel officer yells: “Grant’s skedaddled. We whipped you boys good. Reckon you’re with us till we get to knock on Abe Lincoln’s door in Washington.”

  I feel abandoned, but I don’t have much time to fret. That morning we’re formed up under guard and marched out.

  For almost three weeks we travel, sometimes this way, sometimes that, sometimes held under guard in an open field for a day or two. Once we travel for three days by mule, and a couple of times we have the luxury of a train. That’s where we are now, in a horse wagon on a train from Macon, Georgia. I don’t know where we’re headed, but I sense our journey is almost over.

  “What day is it?” The soldier beside me is small, skinny and nervous. I don’t much like him, but he seems to have attached himself to me and, despite my discouragements, won’t leave.

  “I don’t know,” I grumble.

  “I reckon it must be near the end of the month, twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth. How much longer do you reckon they’ll keep us moving?”

  “Until we get where they’re taking us,” I reply testily.

  “I heard they was taking us to a place called Belle Isle. Know where that is, Jake?”

  “They’re not taking us to Belle Isle,” I say, angry at the kid’s stupidity. “Belle Isle’s in Virginia, outside Richmond. We’re in Georgia and we’re going in the opposite direction.”

  I wish the kid would shut up and leave me alone, but the harsher I am with him, the more he seems to want my approval.

  “Probably a prison camp,” the kid says. “We’ll be all right there, Jake. I got some money.” He clinks some coins in his pocket. “I’ll share it with you.”

  I ignore the offer. It’s a miracle he still has his money. I have some, but it’s sewn into the lining of my jacket. Ma put it there before I left home.

  “There’s some rough types out there, Jake. You save this for a rainy day,” she said.

  I’ve not been in the army long, but I’ve learned not tell anyone about my money. The kid brags about his coins proudly to anyone who shows him the least kindness.

  “How can you be so stupid?” I ask. “Sew that money into the lining of your jacket or the first person you meet will steal it.”

  “You’re right, Jake. You’re right,” the kid whines. “I should’ve listened to you before. I’ll sew it into my jacket as soon as we get somewhere. But I meant it when I said I would share it with you.”

  “Shut up,” I order.

  The kid looks crestfallen, but he falls silent. I don’t want to hurt him, but he’s two things I don’t want right now: a friend and a distraction.

  I don’t want a friend because friends get killed, and I don’t want a distraction because I just want to ignore everything else and think. And the more I think, the stupider I realize I have been.

  I was stupid to think this War between the States was a glorious crusade for the Union and against slavery. I was stupid to think of Jim as a hero, a knight in shining armor going off to save the world. And I was most stupid to believe his letters home.

  Jim must have realized what war is like—I have after only a few weeks and one major battle—but he continued writing me those cheerful, lying letters about what a big adventure it all was and how much fun he was having. Tell Zach and the others left dead and rotting in front of the Rebel breastworks at Cold Harbor how much fun war is.

  Worst of all, Jim treated me like a child. I suppose he wanted to protect me from knowing what war is really like, but he didn’t give me the credit of thinking I might be able to understand what was going on.

  But maybe I’m being unfair. It had taken weeks of war and death for me to grow up from a farm boy, whose greatest dream was to be a hero and return home with a chest full of medals and a mind full of exciting stories, into a bitter soldier. Maybe I wouldn’t have believed Jim’s letters even if he had told me the truth. But he should have tried.

  A change in the sound of the train’s wheels makes me look up. The view past the guards and out the open door of the wagon is still mostly pine trees, but now they are thinning and I see patches of open ground and occasional shacks. We are arriving somewhere at last.

  With much clanking and shuddering, the train groans to a halt. A cloud of white steam swirls past the door.

  “Git down,” one of the guards shouts.

  Awkwardly, we scramble out of the wagon and onto the flat ground by the railroad tracks. A small station house has Andersonville Junction painted above the door.

  “Come on, you lazy blue-bellies, form up.”

  With a lot of shouting and prodding with musket butts, the guards form us into a rough column. They’re a lot busier and active than I have seen them before. I think it’s because they are being watched by an officer on a white horse. The man is small, with narrow features partly hidden by a thick black beard. He is wearing a white, immaculately pressed linen shirt and trousers and has a gray cap pulled low on his forehead. He wears a Colt Navy revolver on his hip, but it seems ridiculously large for the man. He looks almost comical, but something about the way his eyes move, missing nothing, and the deference the guards show him make me think this is a man to beware of.

  “Andersonville Junction,” the kid says as we form up. “Never heard of it. You think this is where they’re taking us, Jake?”

  I ignore his chatter. We walk a short way along a dusty path through the trees. I’m sweating under my thick jacket. It’s been an inconvenience many times as we’ve stumbled along under the summer sun, but some instinct tells me not to discard it. It’s not going to be summer forever, and who knows where I’ll be come January.

  The man in front of me stops walking, and a cloud of brown dust swirls up around us. We’ve just come out of the trees, and as the dust clears we can see an open valley in front of us. In the center is a l
arge rectangle surrounded by a double stockade wall. A stream runs into the stockade midway along the far side, crosses the compound and exits below us. Several neat barracks and houses are scattered outside the stockade, some surrounded by colorful gardens and low white fences.

  The compound itself is crowded with tents of all sizes and shapes, and masses of dark figures move slowly between them. It is crisscrossed by a network of narrow paths.

  “It don’t look too bad,” the skinny kid says.

  I’m not so sure. The camp looks very overcrowded. The stream, clear where it leaves the trees, becomes a wide muddy mess in the middle of the compound, and off to our right there is a long shallow pit and a field of graves. Worst of all, there’s a smell. It’s mostly the smell of human shit, but there is an underlying sweetness that I recognize from the slaughter shed on the farm. It’s the smell of death.

  FIVE

  By the time we get to the camp gates, the smell is almost overpowering. We stand in nervous silence as the man on the white horse addresses us. He has a thick German accent and we have to struggle to understand what he is saying.

  “Rules is simple here. Rations vonce effery day. Do not cause me no trouble and I vill not cause you no trouble. Cross ze dead line and zat is exactly vot you vill be. Ozer zan zat, do vateffer ze hell you like. Good luck.”

  “What’s the dead line?” the skinny kid asks.

  The officer nods to a guard, who steps forward. “You’ll find out,” he says to the kid with smile. Then he hits him hard across the cheek, knocking him down. “And you do not address Commander Henry Wirz unless he speaks to you.”

  “I’m sorry,” the kid says miserably.

  The guard kicks the kid in the ribs. “And I’m sir to the likes of you.”

  The double gates open and we shuffle through the two stockade walls. The kid is crying.

  Inside, there is a rough open area. A crowd of ragged prisoners watches us with interest. Most seem to be staring, but I realize that this is because they are so thin that their eyes appear large in their bony faces. I am conscious that, even after the trek here from Cold Harbor, I look much healthier than most of the prisoners. I wonder how long that will last.

  The prisoners move forward and mingle with us. They all want something. Some offer a place in a tent for money, others wheedle and beg for a crust of bread. One almost naked man approaches me and begins fondling the material of my jacket. I push him away and he falls over like straw figure in a strong wind.

  I’m confused and sickened and, if I’m honest, more than a little scared. What is this place?

  I push through the crowd and up the gentle slope, away from the disgusting stream. I need time to think, to plan what I should do so as not to end up a weak skeleton begging for scraps at the gate.

  What I thought were tents from a distance are, more often than not, crude lean-tos supported by twisted, rough sticks. What tents there are are patched with scraps of canvas and torn coats.

  The shelters are everywhere, and the space between them is filled with barely living men sitting listlessly or staggering about vainly searching for food. Several watch me enviously as I walk past, but no one tries to approach me.

  All along the inside of the stockade wall there is an open area about twenty feet wide. It’s defined by a rough waist-high fence and is overlooked by guard towers that reach above the stockade wall and are manned by bored-looking Rebel soldiers who watch my progress with little interest. I assume this is the dead line the officer mentioned. Certainly, no one seems to want to pitch their shelter too close to it, so there is a gap along the inside where the walking is easier.

  Eventually, I reach a corner in the wall. This is the highest point in the camp, and I turn to survey this city of prisoners.

  The shelters look even more tightly packed from here, like corpses in a huge grave, I think. The creek runs into the stockade to my left, but it is soon lost in the broad filthy swamp that is used as a toilet, as a place to collect drinking water and for washing by anyone who cares.

  The smell rising from the swamp is a mixture of every horror you can imagine—death, decay, sickness and shit. It’s a physical presence, catching in my throat and making me want to gag.

  “Charming, ain’t it?”

  I look around to see a short rat-like man with a hooked nose and dark eyes standing beside me. His eyes are flickering back and forth and his hands are never still, the thin filthy fingers twisting around each other.

  “Name’s Billy Sharp,” he says.

  “Jake Clay,” I say automatically.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Billy says, holding out a grubby hand.

  I hesitate.

  Billy shrugs and withdraws his hand. “No matter. Seen you at the gate is all. Thought I might help. Learn you the rules.”

  “Rules?”

  “Al’ays rules,” Billy says with a lopsided smile. “That there, for instance.” He waves a hand at the fence. “That’d be the dead line. Rule is, step over it and die.”

  “Why?”

  “To keep us dangerous prisoners away from the stockade wall. The Rebs reckon we’re so strong that if we get to the wall, we’ll just rip them logs right out of the ground, kill all the guards and go off and capture old Jeff Davis and Richmond.” Billy laughs bitterly. “Rules don’t need to make sense; they just are, and you better learn them if you want to live.”

  “Why would you help me?” I ask suspiciously.

  “Thing is,” Billy continues, grinning widely, “ain’t more’n two sorts of folk in here: them who’s dead afore they know enough to stop breathin’ and those, like me, who wants to live. I don’t aim to end up face down in some stinkin’ puddle. What sort of folk are you, Jake Clay?”

  I don’t trust this man as far as I could kick him, but maybe he can help me. This place is obviously a lot more complicated than Cold Harbor. There, all I had to do was obey orders, and there was only the enemy trying to kill me and me trying to kill them. Here, I suspect, from looking into the blank eyes of the prisoners around me, that the enemy might be inside my head, and I don’t know how to fight him. But I do know that I have to learn quickly.

  I take a deep breath of the foul air. “I want to live,” I say.

  “That’s my boy,” Billy says, slapping me on the back. “Soon as I seen you comin’ through the gate, I says to mysel’, ‘Billy Sharp, there’s one wants to live.’ I can al’ays tell. Some come in here with death already in their eyes, too beat down to care anymore. They bin prisoners too long and they’re just coming here to die. But then I sees a lad like yourself. Holds hisself up proud and looks around, wonderin’ what sort of place this is he’s landed in. That’s one for the Raiders.”

  “Raiders?”

  Billy doesn’t get a chance to answer before someone stumbles against him.

  The man is barefoot and dressed in rags. His brown-checked shirt is ripped from armpit to waist on one side and the right leg of his blue woolen trousers ends in tatters above his knee. The bones of the man’s joints poke like knots of wood through his stretched gray skin, and his eyes, sunk deep in his skull-like face, gleam with fever. He ignores us and bends to scramble under the dead line.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  The man hesitates and looks up to see where the voice is coming from. He catches my eye and slowly shakes his head. With a painful effort he ducks, crawls under the low rail and stands up.

  I glance up at the guard in the tower that rises above the stockade wall to my right. He’s a kid, even younger than me. He has dark eyes that are wide with confusion as he stares at the man who has crossed the line.

  “Hey, you! Get back,” he yells in a high-pitched, shaky voice as he fumbles with his musket.

  The man ignores the warning and steps forward.

  “Stop!” the kid yells again, a note of panic entering his voice. “I swear to God I’ll shoot.” He cocks his musket.

  I want to stop the ragged man but I’m scared to cross the dead line and fa
ce the nervous guard. In any case, what can you say to someone who has given up all hope? All I do is repeat, weakly, “Don’t. Please.”

  The skeletal figure takes two more stumbling steps up the slope into the open, stops and stares at the ragged tops of the pine trees visible over the stockade wall. He seems unsure of what to do next.

  The musket shot sounds dull, deadened by the heavy, stinking air. The man, as if exhausted by the effort of standing so long, sags to the ground, rolls gently down the slope and comes to rest at my feet.

  “I’m sorry,” the guard says. It sounds as if he’s crying. “It’s orders. I warned him.”

  I look down at the body in front of me. I saw men shot at Cold Harbor and I’m surprised at how little blood there is around the small dark hole in this man’s chest. But then the others were fighting for life. The man at my feet welcomed death. There’s a smile on his face.

  As I turn miserably away, hands are already reaching under the rail, plucking at the corpse’s pitiful rags. Billy follows me.

  “Welcome to Hell,” he says.

  SIX

  “Don’t want to end up like him, eh, Jake, boy?” Billy chatters as he scuttles along behind me. I don’t like Billy, but he’s right. This is Hell and if I don’t learn the rules, I’ll end up walking hopelessly out across the dead line or lying like a vegetable in some collapsing lean-to. An unreasoning anger sweeps over me. I feel horribly cheated. I joined up to be a hero, to be like Jim. All right, war’s not the way I had expected, but it’s not fair that I survived the charge at Cold Harbor only to end up in this place. I spin around and grab Billy by the shirt front. “I’m not going to die here,” I snarl. “I intend to survive and go home.”

  Billy looks startled. Then his sly smile settles back in place. “That’s it, Jake. Survival’s what it’s all about. And I can help you do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Man’s got to have friends to survive in this place. Someone to look out for you. You watch my back and I’ll watch yours. How about that, Jake?”