part 2 chapter

24

t he second day after capture, union soldiers herded small knots of us into a

massive, depleted pack headed to the potomac river. four thousand prisoners were strung

across desolate stafford county’s fenceless fields and splintered forests toward belle point port

for two steamboat trips to the union prison. i plodded wearily beside one of the few other tall

men in the crowd. at 6 ′3′ i was very conscious of others who shared my unusual height.

i’d heard his deep voice while we awaited our captors’ order to move out. every utterance

sounded as though it was extracted by hook from his gut. he appeared younger than i by as

many as four years, maybe he was as young as seventeen. there were cannon-fodder fourteen-

year-olds who carried muskets in this war, but this fellow wasn’t quite that young. his height

caused me to take a closer look.

“my god, you’re the soldier who saved my life yesterday!” i said. “i never had a chance to

thank you. what’s your name?”

“private john bibb, an artilleryman in cutshaw’s charlottesville artillery.” he looked at me

with sudden recognition. “i couldn’t let you die. there’s only a few of us beanstalks in this

war.”

“that’s because most of them forgot to stoop when union bullets were flying around,” i said.

“well, this time i’m thankful to be tall. you were really heroic.”

“it happened so fast, in a blur. animal instinct, that’s all. nothing special about it,” he said.

“sorry i didn’t recall your face at first.”

the ensuing silence gave me a chance to observe him more carefully. crisp white laugh lines

framed blue eyes in his open, filth-smeared face. flaxen hair, bleached from sweat and several

weeks without shelter, flopped across his forehead. he clearly was unaccustomed to his rapidly

sprouting body. gangly arms swung awkwardly at his sides as he leaned forward. his head

preceded his long limbs and his pants legs ended inches above his ankles.

“i’m sergeant tom smiley, company d, stonewall brigade, or what’s left of it,” i offered.

“my rank is due to a shortage of men, and i’m still pretty green at it. this last week’s fighting

was my first as sergeant. where’s home for you?” i asked.

he said he’d grown up in charlottesville and had just reached legal age for enlistment two

months earlier. on the morning of his seventeenth birthday, he had joined his brother’s

company. his distraught mother had been furious that the age for enlistment had been lowered

and had heard the confederacy wasn’t training draftees any longer. he scoffed at her complaint

that he was only one day past sixteen, was too tender to kill men, and was too inexperienced

with weaponry for defense.

“if my mother hadn’t been so dead set against it, i would’ve lied about my age and been on

the battlefield a year earlier,” he added. “then i could have joined you fellows at gettysburg and

first and second manassas. but these past few weeks might make up for it.”

his bravado showed how little he understood war’s toll. our souls were sheathed with its

callouses—worn thick by acres of burned yankee bodies at chancellorsville and burnished by

the gettysburg landscape after three hot, sultry july days the year before. after the third

afternoon, jim blue, zeke, and i, along with the rest of our mess and thousands of the infantry

had wandered the wheat fields and peach orchards under a white flag. we searched for any signs

of life in the confederate bodies sprawled across boulders and twisted in the grass. zeke tugged

the arms of a bloated corpse toward a shallow grave, and then suddenly vomited on its chest. he

wasn’t the only one whose gut heaved up. beards, blue, and i suffered the same in the midst of

so many swollen horse and human carcasses. i later read that death lay heavy on the land for

three months, and townspeople miles away couldn’t venture forth without a scarf muffling their

noses. john bibb should thank his lucky stars he wasn’t there.

now as union prisoners, he and i trod past a severely wounded boy propped against a sturdy

log. the fellow reached into his pocket for a plug of tobacco, although he looked too young to

chew. a wound gaped across his skull and oozed crimson and globules of gray. he poked the

treasure into his mouth, then slowly toppled to the side with eyes rolled back in his head. some

bodies on the field in front of the earthworks had taken bullets from both sides for the entire

battle. they were now only glistening sponge-like globs with what must have been thousands of

bullet holes. the air reeked of smoke and the putrid scent of dead horses and humans.

mockingbirds earlier spooked by battle’s roar warbled again from the split pine and oak

branches overhead as though nothing had happened that day.

as i considered our situation, surrender was nothing to be ashamed of. the peculiarity was in

surrendering my rifle. it was as though i’d severed my arm, and i felt naked and vulnerable.

john bibb had it right; he had been to see the largest and fiercest of the elephants, and both of

us had escaped the cry of the owl. now he confessed his real reason for joining the army. the

yankees had shot french, his oldest brother, at chancellorsville. his truest motive was revenge.

“you might have seen my brother somewhere. he was an officer in a student volunteer unit

from virginia military institute that fought in the valley campaign.”

“no, i never encountered him. i’m sorry to hear of your loss. what happened?”

john related how french had been shot by the yankees in the upper right thigh, but the

family didn’t get word until he was already at an army hospital in richmond. his father rode

nonstop to the city and found that french’s leg had been sawed off near the hip, and the wound

was foul with gangrenous pus. bibb told me how his father stayed by his delirious son for three

weeks, soaking the fetid injury and softly beseeching french not to leave just yet.

“your family must have taken it hard.”

“i don’t think they’ll ever recover. he was the best of us five children. my father wanted

french to follow him into the dry goods business, but he would have made a first-rate university

professor or doctor. so that’s why my mother was dead set against me going off to fight.”

he paused and withdrew a scrap of paper from his pocket. “i saved a poem placed on his

coffin during the funeral by a young lady he’d known.” shyly he handed it to me, and i read

these lines:

his noble heart is now at rest;

the young, the beautiful, the brave,

we will not mourn his early grave.

then let him rest, till that glad sound full on his

raptur’d ear is pour’d,

“come forth, ye blessed of the lord.”

it could have been for any fallen soldier, but the words gave him comfort. sharing it with me

was an invitation to friendship. his other brother, albert pendleton, had followed french into

service, even though he’d been plagued all his life by asthma. he was quickly dispatched home

on sick furlough, because he couldn’t run without becoming breathless. it had fallen to john

bibb to avenge his brother’s death.

i was moved by his friendliness and, sadly, his resemblance to my former, more innocent

self. it made me want to protect him from what we’d come to know. and now that he’d saved

my life, our fates were inextricably bound. i owed him something. i vowed then to make every

effort to keep him safe. when we halted for the night, i invited him to join beards, jim blue, and

the others where we chose to lie down. they took to him as quickly as i had. “you’re one of us,

now, bibb,” tayloe said. “you’re a bona fide member of company d.”

“welcome to the best damned company in the confederate army,” zeke added. “what’s left

of it, anyhow. we need a new recruit.”

“thanks. my old company has disappeared. i’m grateful to be adopted,” he said.

a cold drizzle fell through the moonless night. we kept to ourselves, wrapped only in our

thoughts as we lay on the damp branches and brambles in the woods of stafford county. sounds

of combat faded with distance, and we fell into deep unconsciousness, worn out after five nights

of fighting, marching, digging, and more fighting.

when i woke, my gut was cramping. i’d seen a confederate boy on the field pilfer hardtack

from the pockets of a fallen comrade, discarding the bloody bits to eat the rest. beards saw it too

and reminded me, “i hope i’ll never be that desperate. but i wouldn’t mind having more of that

greasy groundhog we shot two nights ago. we won’t have such a good meal for a long time to

come.”

on the second day’s march, we traded stories about home—anything that would draw bibb

into the group and distract my men from their misery. as a boy from the city, there was a lot

bibb didn’t know about. for instance, his mother had always procured bacon from a market. we

nurtured the hog from a piglet and slaughtered it fat in the fall. now, because we had no food to

eat, i thought talking about getting some might raise spirits. “beards, tell bibb what happens at

hog slaughtering time. this city boy doesn’t know a whit about where virginia ham comes

from. he’s probably never seen a real live hog,” i said. bibb took a playful swipe at my cap,

knocking it to the ground.

“you can do as good a job as i can, but i’ll tell him how we all go to your pa’s place once the

weather gets a little edge on it—just as the leaves begin to turn.” beards went into great detail,

telling bibb how families bring their fattest pig in a wagon—the pig all the time thinking he’s on

a fine ride to see the neighbors—and how they line the creatures up together and shoot them

between the eyes at the same time, or they’ll scream and holler when they see what’s happened

to the other hogs. “you’ve heard that expression ‘screaming like a stuck pig’? you never heard

such a pitiful and miserable racket when that happens,” he said.

he described how the hogs’ throats are slit, the bodies are hung upside down to drain, and

how the dogs go crazy licking at the scarlet clots on the ground. every single last part of the pig

is dumped into a heavy black cauldron on fiery coals and filled with boiling water. after all the

hair is singed off, the men whip out their sharpest knives and saws and slice the meat into hams,

ribs, chops, bacon pieces. they save the head, feet, snout, ears, and brains for good eating, too.

then he got to the best part, telling how the day ends in a feast with sausage made by shoving

slabs of pork through a hand-cranked grinder and stuffing it into the cleaned intestines with

spices and herbs. fried, crunchy chitterlings and thick chops topped with apples fried with

cinnamon are piled on plates. ma’s buttermilk biscuits are followed by plump fruit pies. when

he finished, we all fell silent. this was the most we’d heard from beards in weeks. his account

had prompted such nostalgia for home and food that we felt worse, rather than better.

in an effort to distract us, and perhaps to put us in our place for our teasing, bibb talked about

his life. charlottesville was mr. jefferson’s city, bibb said, and even though jefferson had

passed away thirty-nine years earlier, his presence was everywhere. john bibb’s great uncle had

served as jefferson’s personal secretary up on the big hill at monticello after the president

returned from washington.

bibb related what might have been considered a ghost story. his uncle often rode with

jefferson through the countryside of albemarle county, and one day they came upon a large,

conical grassy mound that most regarded as a natural feature. jefferson was convinced it was

man- made, and measured it top to bottom and around with his father’s old surveying

instruments. he even made an astronomical investigation to see if the shape was aligned with

the sun or the stars.

later, when bibb’s uncle and jefferson were feasting in the shade, they spotted two men

making some sort of ritual walk around the hillock. the figures might be clothed as white men,

but feathers entwined in raven braids and necklaces identified them as indians. at the end, they

laid their necklaces at the eastern and western sides. then they retreated without being any wiser

that they’d been seen. the mystery mound gnawed at mr. jefferson. on a moonless night, he

ordered two slaves to dig into it and bring back whatever they found. he created a “curiosity

cabinet” with leg bones, skulls, spear points, and some bits of decorated pottery in his formal

entry hall at monticello so that the hundreds of uninvited public, who arrived daily to peer at his

home, might study the curious objects. bibb said his uncle swore that ever after, slaves told of

voices chanting in an unknown tongue late at night in that room. when they pushed back the

doors, the space was deserted. but their stories were dismissed as only idle slave chatter.

“i’d wager jefferson was haunted for stealing just to satisfy his curiosity,” i said.

no one responded with more than a grunt. spirits were too low. trudging along afterward, i

reflected on how bibb’s tale revealed his higher social status—with a brother enlisted as an

officer, a great uncle who assisted mr. jefferson, and his idea of a good story being one about

ideas and ethics. my parents treasured their books and valued learning but were country folk

more directly engaged in survival. the hog-butchering story demonstrated what the other boys

and i had in common.

morning and evening along the route, union officers halted their supply wagons and

unloaded wooden crates of hard crackers. a melee of pushing, shoving, punching, and cursing

would follow. using my recently gained authority as sergeant—and with help from beards and

jim blue—we organized lines around the boxes so everyone had a fair chance. i also grabbed a

handful for bibb, who wasn’t yet accustomed to the “every man for himself” culture we lived

by. then six hundred of us, many with branches as makeshift crutches, others with life-

threatening wounds and laid out in wagons, willed ourselves forward under the barking

commands of our captors.

we were two days from the battlefield. one more day lay between aquia harbor and

washington. from there we’d go by train to baltimore and by steamboat again to the union

prison, fort delaware. the guards marching alongside had told us that much. i plodded along in

the hobbling mob next to john bibb. this time he spoke about plans for the future. the efforts of

simply living day to day hadn’t yet swamped his thoughts of home and events there.

“my father hoped to hang out a sign with the gilded letters bibb and sons dry goods over

his store someday. but i’m not sure i want that tame life. with french gone, it’s too quiet at

home for me.”

“what would you do instead?”

“go west. reports about gold in california make me long for adventure. i had thought i

might even enlist in the army of the new confederate nation after things settled down. of

course, there isn’t much chance of that now.”

he withdrew from his rucksack a picture of his sweetheart. swirls of brown curls framed a

delicate face, and a black ribbon with a cameo looped her graceful neck. kind eyes focused

dreamily beyond the photographer, perhaps visualizing the boy to whom this likeness would be

given. he pushed the image toward me. “another thing i might do is marry. this is margaret

ellen. i’ve known her my entire life. we’re neighbors on ridge street.”

“she’s a fine-looking girl; i can see why you’d be sweet on her.”

“her family has agreed, but i’ll have to complete my education before we wed.”

“but then you’ll never taste the freedom of the west.”

bibb looked down and shook his head. “when i’m with margaret ellen, i think of nothing

else but being with her. the whole situation binds me in knots. i can’t decide what to do.”

“i know about the power of women,” i said. “there was this girl named lizzie . . .” and then

i stopped.

he looked off into the distance, not listening. “when this war is over, there’ll be plenty of

time to sort it all out, i guess.”

talk about home and adulthood unsettled me now that we were no longer soldiers. if prisoner

exchanges occurred as in the past, we’d be regular civilians within two or three months. that

thought triggered both longing and fear of how i might fit into my old life.

looking back, i marvel that dread of prison had such a light grip, even though we had all

heard stories of deadly disease, heartless officers, and no food. at that time, fewer men died in

prison than on the field, and the stay was fairly brief. and if we were concerned about

mistreatment from prison guards, we’d already seen enough from our own confederate officers.

poor zeke had plenty to say about that.

several months earlier, he was on a two- day leave to visit richmond, when our army

unexpectedly dismantled its tents and set out from louisa county to orange county on the heels

of some yankees. the evening he was due, beards walked up, powerfully disturbed. “where’s

zeke? is he here yet?”

“haven’t seen him,” i replied.

“do you think he’ll figure out where we’ve gone?”

“maybe folks along the way have given him the word.” i went back to idly gnawing on a

wheat straw i’d picked up.

“roll is being called right now, and anyone not here will have hell to pay later,” beards said.

he strode off, hoping to find zeke chatting with fellows down the row of tents.

by the time he caught up with the company, zeke was too late for roll call. at dawn, we

spied two soldiers yanking him along by rope twisted around his wrists as he peppered them

with oaths. our jaws dropped. beards shouted, “where are you taking this soldier? he’s done

nothing wrong!” they continued at a determined clip, zeke’s canvas-clothed buttocks bouncing

along over rocks and branches.

“you bastards, let me go. i came back, for god’s sake. this army is damned lucky to get me

back, too.”

“you tell ’em, zeke!” i bellowed. we gave pursuit. puffed up with my new status, i believed

i could sway them with rank. i drew myself to full height and said in an authoritative tone, “i’m

this man’s sergeant. i’m the one to deal with him. release him immediately.”

one guard spun around, grappling for his rifle while maintaining his hold under zeke’s arm.

“our orders are from the commanding officer. that’s not you, right? you got no say here. get

back to your camp. this is none of your business, but it will be if you come any closer.” that

quieted us pretty quickly. we had neared their destination, a grove of oak trees and scraggly

cedars. it sheltered a quantity of fellows in strange postures on the forest floor. their wrists were

bound, and their arms were forced tight down over knees bent up to their chins. a stout branch

was then threaded over one crooked arm, under their knees, and over the other arm, locking

them in a painful position. the sharp edges of bayonets were lodged within their mouths by cord

tied either end and then behind their heads.

released at sundown with crimson slits at the corners of his stretched mouth, arms and legs

like bruised boards, clothes stained with urine, and a voice gravelly from lack of water, zeke

was beside himself with fury. “there’ll be desertions tonight; bet good money on it. fellows

would rather risk execution than go through that humiliation again.” he also swore the

aggrieved men had “spotted” the commander for death on the battlefield the next chance they

had. luckily, the enemy targeted the wretch in the next day’s battle.

three long years we’d endured—what could a few more months mean? but an unforeseen

standoff between jeff davis and abe lincoln changed all that shortly after our fort delaware

arrival. those of us who managed to survive would remain for more than a year—months after

lee surrendered.