He turned and walked away, and he could feel those grey eyes watching him with every step he took.
–
The gates opened and the dead wagon rolled through at ten o’clock. Duane’s body had been stripped and he lay naked in the mud.
Cal and Joe had divided his clothing between them. The extra layers would help keep them alive during the deadly cold nights. It was the only good thing that could come from Duane’s death. They had tried to wash Duane’s blood out of the jacket, but the waste in the river water had only made it worse. They’d buried the jacket instead. In a few days, they hoped to be able to dig it back up and use it to help fortify their shebang. By then, it was possible the smell might fade.
There were only seven dead this morning. Some mornings there were as many as a hundred bodies waiting for the wagon. Cal waited for the others to pile their dead friends on the wagon, then he and Joe each took an arm and a leg and swung Duane onto the hard planks of the wagon bed. It was a struggle. Duane didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds, but it was dead weight, limp and unyielding, and they were weak.
The driver shouted to the horses, and the wagon turned around and rolled back through the gates. Cal and Joe followed after. They had volunteered for wagon duty this morning. It was a coveted job because it got them outside the fence for a few minutes.
Cal walked past Grey Eyes. He could feel the guard watching him. Cal’s fists clenched and unclenched, but he kept walking, kept his eyes glued to the ground. And then he was outside the stockade.
He took a deep breath. The air smelled different out here, away from the crush of unwashed bodies, the shallow holes where the men buried their waste, and the stretch of river that leached filth from the surrounding mud. The clean air was almost solid, like something he could eat if his teeth were sharp enough. He gulped it in. For a moment, and only for a moment, he felt like a man again.
The wagon led them to a long shallow trench, and they unloaded the bodies, pulling each dead man onto the ground with a heavy thunk, hefting him between them and swinging him gently. They gave Duane an extra swing, getting him as high in the air as they could manage before letting go. They watched him fly free, his bony arms and legs twisting gracefully before disappearing over the lip of dry earth to land somewhere out of sight atop yesterday’s dead. Neither Cal nor Joe looked into that trench. Each of them knew the odds. They’d be down among the dead men themselves one day. Maybe soon enough to keep Duane company.
When it was empty, the wagon rolled away. It would return in a couple of hours with the day’s bread rations, stacked where the bodies had been. Cal knew that the wagon wouldn’t even be swept out before the bread was piled in.
Grey Eyes gestured with his rifle, and they turned back toward the stockade. Men rarely tried to escape. They were too weak, from hunger, from thirst, from lack of sleep, and from the parasites living under their skin. They were no match for a rifle.
Cal gulped clean air one more time before passing through the gate. He held it in his lungs and listened as the doors swung shut behind him. He looked at Joe and saw something new in the other man’s eyes. Watching Duane fly had changed something in Joe. He reached out to touch Joe’s shoulder, expecting the ready smile and the wink, some sign to indicate that Joe would be all right, that the prison hadn’t broken him. But Joe only shook his head and walked away.
Cal watched him go. He opened his mouth and finally took another breath and let Andersonville fill his lungs.
–
Cal woke early, but the sun was already peering over the horizon and pale light shone through the flap of the shebang he shared with Joe Poole. Cal had heard something, some noise that had awakened him. He looked over, but the old shirt that Joe used as bedding was wadded and abandoned in the corner. Cal rubbed his eyes and struggled out of the low shebang on his hands and knees. He stood and stretched and groaned and looked around. Few prisoners were moving about yet.
He went behind the shebang and relieved himself, but standing still made him feel anxious.
He couldn’t place it. There was a strange smell in the air or a taste at the back of his throat, a tingle somewhere at the base of his brain. Something was wrong. More wrong than the usual wrongness of Andersonville. Without knowing why, he took off at a trot toward the corner of the stockade where Duane had died.
He passed two prisoners who were already playing chess with rocks in the dirt. One of them looked up at him and shook his head, as if he knew what was happening. But Cal understood that he was wasting energy moving so fast. He was a veteran by now of the prison system and should know better than to try to move quickly. That was all the other prisoner had meant with his gesture, but it felt like more than that. Cal didn’t slow down.
Until he reached the dead line.
Joe stood there by the low interior fence with his back to Cal. Cal called out Joe’s name, but his voice sounded soft and low even to him and he was certain that Joe hadn’t heard him. But Joe turned his head and smiled. He had been waiting for Cal. Joe pointed, and Cal looked across the line. Against the wall of the stockade, eighteen feet past the dead line, there was a patch of green against the brown. Cal squinted and the green blur came into focus as a stem with two small leaves that were spread out across the mud. At the top of the stem was a small yellow bud. It was a dandelion. The first growing thing that Cal had seen in five months.
He caught his breath and looked over at Joe, but Joe was already stepping over the low fence, passing the dead line. Cal called out, but the air was caught in his chest and his voice was a whisper.
“Joe.”
Joe didn’t turn, didn’t indicate that he had heard. He walked slowly, confidently, toward the tiny green and yellow plant. The dirt at Joe’s feet exploded, and Cal looked up at the guard tower. Grey Eyes leaned against the low railing of the deck, his rifle pointed casually in Joe’s direction. Cal reached out, but he couldn’t make his voice work, he couldn’t call out.
Grey Eyes pulled his trigger again and the leg of Joe’s filthy trousers parted at the seam, a puff of linen escaping into the air. At the same time, a pockmark appeared at Joe’s feet. He kept moving, seemed not to notice.
Cal reached out to Grey Eyes and the guard noticed him, smiled, and pulled the trigger again. Joe’s shoulder exploded in a spray of gristle and bone. He staggered, but kept his feet. Cal looked back at Joe, and a split second of time extended indefinitely as Joe slowly winked. There was no pain; Cal understood that. Joe smiled and there was something new in his eyes, and something gone from them. Cal understood what Joe was telling him: It was all over. Andersonville wasn’t there anymore. Joe was free. He was flying.
Joe reached out toward the dandelion, his face a mask of joy, and he couldn’t possibly have felt it when Grey Eyes’s fourth bullet smashed his skull and pounded a small piece of his brain into the dirt under the dandelion’s leaves.
Cal stopped himself, his fingers inches away from the dead line, and he looked up to see that Grey Eyes’s rifle was pointed at him. He looked back and watched as Joe’s legs buckled and he fell sideways, already gone, his good shoulder taking the impact of all that useless meat.
Cal closed his eyes and all he saw was Joe, that good man, that good friend, the only person who cared whether Cal lived or died.
Joe was winking at him that one last time.
22
A thin band of clear sky ran across the horizon east of Blackhampton. Above it was smooth grey cloud cover, completely unbroken. The sun rose and was visible for a half an hour from the main road of the village, then passed up behind the clouds and was gone again. Nearly an hour passed before the sky broke and the air filled with billowing pristine white snow, unsullied as yet by the pervasive ash from the mines.