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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504024006 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Permanent Press (ORD) |
| Publication date: | 11/24/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| File size: | 415 KB |
About the Author
Joanna Higgins has taught at colleges in the United States and in England and is the author of the novels Dead Center and A Soldier’s Book, which was a finalist for the 2007 Michael Shaara Award for Civil War fiction. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Award for fiction, and her short stories appear in several anthologies, including the Best American Short Stories series.
Read an Excerpt
A Soldier's Book
By Joanna Higgins
The Permanent Press
Copyright © 1998 Joanna HigginsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2400-6
CHAPTER 1
This cattle car had a stench but at least a quiet one. For now. No moaning, fussing or cussing. Every sweet its sour, every sour its sweet. We're rocking southward, farther and deeper downward into the valley of darkness. When I close my eyes I see everything I do not want to see. When I keep my eyes open, I see more of the same. I think of provoking some argument with one of the guards. I mull the possibility of jumping and then they will have to shoot me. Why I don't do either of these things I don't know.
I believe I do. I have made so many wrong decisions that I fear making any decision now whatsoever, knowing it can only be the wrong one. So I sit here in this sour mess of a cattle car, eyeing the fouled water barrel but not even able to get myself up and go there. I am a gone-up case, as they say. I am pot and kettle overboard. From the looks of us, I'd say we all are. Guards, too. It is raining. South Carolina all rolling fog. Looks ashy as if everything is burning away. The flies in this car are laying low. The guards sit with drooping heads. I really should run.
That's what I'm thinking as the car jostles and creaks, but it's a far-away thought, as if somebody else is thinking it and I am only hearing the echo.
This is day thirteen of our captivity. Early on, we thought our boys might stumble on the bunch of us being marched, by night, to Gordonsville, in Virginia. There'd be a skirmish and we'd run. You could almost hear everybody thinking this. Hope is an odd thing.
Thirteen days. That's near two weeks. Two weeks has reduced us from being soldiers in the Army of the Potomac into commodities, each body of us worth one reb soldier in trade. About twice the worth of a bushel of oats or wheat.
So they're keeping us alive, more or less, sometimes robbing themselves to do it. But you can see there's sure no love in it. In Gordonsville, Virginia, they relieved us of all greenbacks, rations, ammunition and arms, haversacks and cartridge boxes and cap boxes, cross belts, waist belts, canteens, as well as my compass and change of clothing. Why they did not take our coats and blankets I do not know. Gus says it's because we ain't cavalry. They hate cavalry beyond all else and will rob them of everything but their pants.
I have my Soldier's Book for Leisure Moments and my father's pen, and a Brazil silver spoon found on the Gordonsville Road. Also some thread and a needle. If I run, I will put these items near Gus so when he wakes up, there they'll be. He lost all his bounty pay to them.
I find that if I pay attention to things right now, it's better. Gus taught me this. Right now I'm looking at him. He is a small and trim man, with white hair curving away from his forehead but his beard and moustache still fairly dark. You wouldn't believe he's asleep, the way he's sitting up so straight. Veterans know how to do that. He is going to wind up the most rested captive in all of Georgia.
For that's where we're going, is the new rumor.
My own eyes feel rubbed in sand.
It's warmer now the rain's stopped. Flies again.
The worse-handled a guard has been, the easier they are on us. A person might think just the opposite, but no. These in this car look like they have been through three wars. No uniforms, shirts with a year's worth of tobacco juice painted on 'em, boots looped up with twine. One man has a black patch like a pirate and squints with his other eye, as if holding us up to the light. Probably can't see worth half a bean. I should run.
Know why I don't. Gus. He'd probably come after me again and get shot. I'd be the one not to.
Hardly a one of us believes this fortunate turn. Bathing in a stream while awaiting a transfer at some station. We have eaten good corn pone and drunk our bellies full of clean water. Georgia, our new guards are saying. Ain't no scrimpers here, like some places, they said, serving up that corn pone. In good humor, maybe to be home. All around, piney hillsides rise up sharp. Everything ascends. The light, too, sparking off these deep pools. Everywhere I look is green. But this ain't no place to run.
Reminds me of the Wilderness, which I don't care to remember but do. The way we marched straight into those woods all brambles and bunched-together trees, and stumps bristly with sucker grown, and stone outcroppings, and piles of grown-over brush, and ravines with steep inclines and stony creeks at the bottom, all that mess breaking apart our ranks in no time. And we foolish enough to think that whatever rebs might be around were in fast retreat before our so-called advance. Flowers along the creeks, the nicest little flowers. Closing my eyes now, I can see them. Yellow. Six petals. Gold, furry centers. Can see a bird lifting up out of a tree as viney on top as at the bottom. Can hear the first shots up ahead, see the woods go gray with powder charge, see myself running, blackberry canes snagging and ripping at my uniform, and then I'm firing my ramrod into a pine, exactly like they told us not to, then running some more, forgetting to get the ramrod, running because I am twisted around and lost, then coming to a glade and being so happy to see Federal blue, but then stopping like a shot man — at the flies, the blood seeping into that blue, our boys strewn about like blown laundry in them brambles, and one of the dying boys saying, Son, some water — But I run like something crazed until Gus intercepts me, Gus come searching for me.
Open my eyes and find I am afloat in a stream musical as any. And sun pouring down. No fire coming. No dead and dying boys thrown about in brambles. But in the stream-music I hear it, that wall of fire, and I see myself running, loaded down as a jack mule and clattering like some broken down engine.
I try to think of the minute under my nose.
Hear a furling that is only water.
See a stretch of blue sky, a river up there too, glowing between the hilltops.
A guard hollers something and it sounds just like the yell of those Outcasts in the Wilderness, as Gus called them, who captured us that day, then rushed us down trails only they could fathom out.
I flop over in the water. Float like a dead man.
Day fourteen. At some lean-to siding, waiting for something. Everybody in this car hoping for some more corn pone. Each rattle from outside and we look at one another, wondering if. But it's taking too long so I've given up. When a thing's complicated it usually means it won't work out. The thing that's meant to be happens like water rushing downhill.
There's grumbling about the fragrance in here, guards grumbling too, but what can we do about it?
We have made two friends. A big fellow named Louie Val and a boy named Willy Winston. Sixteen, maybe even younger (says eighteen). Louie Val looks like a farrier. Big and rounded. Wide-set eyes. Hair black and thick and filling up his head and face, wrapping down around it and sweeping up over the top lip. Looks like black moss overtaking a stump. Willy is skinny but with a little boy's plumped up face yet. Hair so red it makes his skin pink. Jug ears. A sharp, shrewd look most of the time.
They were caught in the Wilderness too, but asleep on their arms. Louie keeps telling this story over and over. How they were on alert for thirty-six hours, then had to have a little sleep, so an order was given to withdraw and they did and then Longstreet with his twenty thousand or so boys picks that time to show up. They got the whole regiment, Louie says, thousands of them, just like that. He always slams one hand against the other at this point. If only we didn't have to smash into each other in that damned jungle! he keeps saying. I would not like to be on his bad side. Willy is a runaway from an orphans' home in Reading. Says the grub there was terrible. Believes they put ashes and what-not in the porridge to make it stretch. Couldn't be worse in the army, he figured, so here he is now.
My book the only thing that helps me fall asleep. So I read for awhile. A gentle breeze moves four miles an hour, a fresh breeze twelve miles, a brisk wind twenty-five miles, a very high wind sixty miles, a violent gale one hundred miles, and hurricanes still more rapidly, up to three hundred miles an hour.
Eyes are nearly shutting nice, but Willy wants to know what I'm reading. So I read it to him. Louie says, That's what hit us, a damn hurricane. He smacks his hand again. Someone in the car yells, Dammit, when we goin'?
We are all grousy now about no food.
Git there soon enough, a guard yells back.
Where?
Prime Georgia countryside, boy!
They all laugh. We don't.
Louie sick to think we haven't yet managed some escape, with all the stops and transfers and what-not. I could tell him my theory but don't.
There's shouting and for a minute I am back in the Wilderness, not knowing which way to run. A boggy fear seeps up around my heart. But Gus gives me a little shake, makes sure I have blanket and coat, and then we're ordered out of the train car into sunlight strong as some explosion. Inside that light is the smell not of gunpowder but salt water.
It stirs me up, thinking transports! exchange! but then I'm scared to think it, knowing I'll be sent back for a furlough.
Yet everyone around me is larky with the idea. Except Gus. He's only watchful, like right before we crossed the Rapidan at Germania Ford. Taking in the lay of things.
Charleston, our boys are saying now.
Where it all started three years ago, when people thought it'd be over in three months.
A jumble and clutter. Rail tracks, alleys, baggage carts, wagons, teams, drovers. Louie eyeing all this. Willy too. Willy says to me, Want to try it, Jim?
I'm thinking maybe we should. Then I go a little dizzy, knowing that one step in a new direction and I'll have to keep going, chase straight through into the next thing, which will probably be the end of it all.
Gus is shaking his head. We got to stick now, he's saying. He likes this word. He has told me before that the Union has got to stick, too, and if it takes blood to make it stick, then it takes blood. But it has got to stick sure as fingers on a hand.
So if I go, he probably will too and that's what I am afraid of, above all.
This I can hardly explain to Willy, who's still looking at me, hungry to move. Why he ain't looking to Louie, I don't know, unless Louie's already set, and they just want a bunch more.
But then we're marching again, along a corridor of guards.
What day is it? someone yells to a guard.
Christmas!
Some of us look at one another, thinking, I suppose, they mean Exchange.
Then where's the eats, dammit? the fellow calls.
Turkey's straight ahead, boys. Keep moving.
So now even Louie and Willy are thinking better of running.
But Gus seems to know what's what. I see flatbed cars ahead and decide to try a joke. I say, Seems like they might be giving us a present after all.
Saying something like that make me feel a little better. Sounding like a man.
A tall fellow turns to us. Life's a festival for the wise, he says, in a deep, carrying voice.
We don't laugh.
For the lucky, I'd say, Louie offers.
The man just smiles. I'm startled, though. Seems he might be some officer. Has some sort of gravity like you sometimes find in captains and colonels and generals. But we heard they trade officers right away. They're worth a bunch of privates, for one thing, or else the rebs can get their own officers back fast.
Everything about him sags. Shoulders, eyes — The eyes give it away. Good eyes, my mother would say, but ruined by loss. She knows all about this. This fellow has a way about him like some old horse not caring if it's out in the rain or not.
One of our boys falls from the line ahead, and we all stop. A guard goes up to him, maybe says something, but nothing happens. I brace myself and then there it is, the shot.
They won't do that unless there's not much of a spark left. Even if we're half dead they can get one of theirs back.
I suppose it would be like wasting food. Otherwise.
The sun presses the cold and damp out of our bones. But the sea is far behind us somewhere, and Gus is right. We are headed straight into the heart of Secessia.
The train slows, must be a bridge ahead, and then I see two men on the embankment, and before I can think what they're doing there, one goes down in the tall grass and flowers. Shot. The other tries to run, then he's down too, just his arm coming up as if he's waving to us.
We all go quiet.
Now we can see Macon, spires and cupolas, at least somebody says it's Macon. The General, as we call him, says it looks just like a New England town so that might be where he's from. To me it looks like Montrose, up in Pennsylvania, from the hill west of town. For a time I am there again, walking down that hill, heading for the Bonhoffer house on Lake Avenue. Where all this began, for me.
Now our boys calling out familiar names. Church Street! Front Street! Court Street! And there's folks come to watch us pass. Seems we are a kind of celebration for everybody, the rebs waving back, proud and little boys and dogs chasing the cars, a hubbub.
We try to pretend it don't bother us a bit.
Day sixteen. From the open door of this car, we see two derelict houses with no roofs to them, or windows, or doors. Beyond the houses is a swamp, dead pines sticking out of the muck and high swamp grasses dried to the color of dead cornstalks. Dogs barking somewhere.
They say it's Andersonville and there's a prison here.
Merry Christmas, one of the boys says.
And a Happy New Year to ye's.
Tonight we are bivouacking on a sandy slope. Fires and a heavy guard surround us. There's a nice breeze and from time to time we can smell the pines and hear the stream.
But Gus fit to be tied. He don't like the creeping and cringing all around, our boys all cowering because of smallpox rumors. The prison, they say, full of smallpox.
He tells us not to believe a word of it. They're stirrin' up them rumors because they don't have enough guards to keep us tethered in Secessia. Want to see us drop from fear.
We laugh a little, for him. But the General has pointed out the logic of it. They wouldn't be here, meaning our guards, if there was an epidemic. Besides, one Yankee stripped of weapons and equipment still equals one reb in trade so they ain't going to squander us in no epidemic.
And I am telling myself there ain't no dead line, either, which to cross it means you're dead. That's another bull of theirs.
But I wonder about it. Seems likely enough.
Well, but Gus might have something. They might be trying to weaken us sick. Keep us from even thinking about running.
I check to see if my spoon is safe. It is. I take inventory of my other items. Clasp knife, Pen, Thread and Needle, Soldier's Book, Boots, Blanket, Overcoat.
Seems enough to have, this minute. And above us, a bit of starry tangle.
I am grown a little numb to the old pain of it, but there's still the ambush of knowing, the all-of-a-sudden recalling that stabs out its little bivouac and then there I am, fighting that army again.
I turn on my belly.
It's not just the loss of the thing itself, that string of moments that became, for me, Gabrielle. But the whole invisible scattering of them flung out and away from her as far into time as I might have been able to go.
I look over at Gus. He's still kneeling, saying his prayers. Then he leans forward and pats the ground. Then lies down and closes his eyes and I know he is asleep.
I turn again and look up at those broken bits. Like a mirror that's been shattered beyond repair. Some great sheet of light that is now only that.
CHAPTER 2Day Seventeen. We are a field of drunkards, all trying to stagger up while a guard calls us sons a'possums and a surly captain seasons each order with threats. They have commenced dividing us into messes of ninety men each. Then appoint a sergeant for each mess to take roll every morning and get our rations. The captain counts off three messes for a detachment and each one of those gets a sergeant too.
Leaves all of us shuffling about in sun and heat, with officers walking here and there grandly. Someone says there are near two thousand of us.
From this rise we see the stockade not too far off and something of the bunched-up mess within. Mouth starts shaking a bit. Gus gives me a look, so I remember to try and think of the moment under my nose. Summer heat. Hot down here, and only May. Noon, and still no grub.
Louie a nest of irritation. Still mad at himself that he did not try to run. The General tells him No way out now but through. Louie says Sounds like coward talk. Calls the General an ejeet. Calls himself that too. The General takes no offense. He's still sticking close to us. Like a dog you don't want but that wants you.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Soldier's Book by Joanna Higgins. Copyright © 1998 Joanna Higgins. Excerpted by permission of The Permanent Press.
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