part 2 chapter
31
i t was in late november when temperatures plummeted below freezing and held there
for weeks. the delaware river crackled with ice, and brittle wind blasted across the frozen
surface every day. frozen waste at the sinks and in the canals mounded in piles with no
movement of water to dislodge it.
schoepf requisitioned more guards. when we had arrived, the prison held four times the
number of men it had been constructed to house. thousands continued to pour in. the
inexperienced germans from ohio finally had been joined by veterans from a massachusetts
company. in this group was a union guard named israel adams. after his brutal cudgel beatings
of several prisoners for reasons that no one could fathom, ahl found merit in the man. he
became convinced that adams, with his hair- trigger temper and profound disdain for his
charges, would instill discipline in the younger, softer-hearted guards. he might even serve as a
role model. in a matter of days, this stocky, puffy-faced man was promoted to sergeant of the
guards. his florid complexion betrayed his fondness for alcohol, even in the daytime, and
slurred speech and unsteadiness on his feet warned us to stay out of his way. it didn’t take him
long to figure out how to curry favor with schoepf. he made a show of keeping the barracks
sanitary—whitewashing and scrubbing obsessively. snarling, he would cry, “hike out, hike out,
you damned rebel sons a’ bitches!” he quickly earned the name old hike.
shortly after breakfast on the seventeenth of december, with the divisions assembled below,
old hike stood atop the pen wall next to ahl, arms folded across his blue-clad chest. “the
united states army has taken pity on you sons a’ bitches, and they’ve provided overcoats and
woolen clothing. strip down to your shirts and hand off your old pants and other clothes to the
guards passing among you. do it on the double quick.” he turned toward ahl and grinned. ahl
offered a mock salute with his cane.
when all prisoners were half naked before him, he bellowed, “right face, face forward,
double quick hike!” beards, jim blue, john bibb, and i looked at one another in astonishment,
then total dismay, as we were marched back through the freezing, slushy mud into the barracks.
it was a bitter day, and we had no warm clothing to begin with, much less any extras. by this
time, we prisoners were so demoralized that no one challenged old hike’s order. tears trickled
down the cheeks of some. our dejected mass gripped blankets and huddled, naked body to
naked body, with no hope we’d survive the delaware winter.
the following morning, the same cry issued from the wall top. old hike lorded above us
amidst piles of our old filthy rags, which he and the other guards then kicked with their muddy
boots down into the pen. a wild melee of tossed garments ensued. i was forced to settle for
someone else’s stained canvas pants slit from knee to ankle, worse than the ones i lost. fistfights
erupted when boys were caught improving their lot with someone else’s better cover.
“form lines, face forward, stand at attention!” old hike commanded when most of the men
were clothed again. “the barracks will be scrubbed and searched while prisoners wait in the
yard. any more than one blanket per man, and it’ll be confiscated.”
the sound of the guards stomping through the barracks caused my spirits to fall even lower.
they’d claim whatever we’d purchased from the sutler with those precious bits of money from
northerners. some men had begged enough to purchase an extra blanket. beards had gotten a
second one from a crate sent by a quaker group. he, jim blue, and i had been spreading it over
our three bodies, lying motionless and grasping the corners to keep it in place. we flipped a
button at lights out for the spot in the middle, but even so, our teeth chattered through the night.
for two hours, we were forced to stand in formation in the icy yard while the guards
scrubbed and performed their mischief. my fingers turned blue, and it was only by rubbing them
together constantly or tucking my hands in my armpits that i kept them from freezing. the
barrack reverberated that night with the sound of hacking coughs, sniffling, and feverish moans.
during the early morning hours of december nineteenth, the first snow fell ankle-deep and a
blast of wind careened across the solid river. no one had warm footwear, and we stayed in our
blankets, dreading the need to go outside to wait at the sinks. guards delivered coal to the
barracks daily, but it was only a half-day’s supply for the small cast-iron stove. even the guards
clutched at their thick overcoats, shoulders hunched inward as they paced on the walkways.
the ohio fellows were particularly surly. their “one-hundred-day tour” was to have ended in
early december, in time to be home for the holidays, but ahl announced several weeks earlier
that they’d be staying on that godforsaken island through january. whiskey around the clock
would console them until their tour was up.
later that morning, but before breakfast, old hike howled his devilish command under a
steely sky. “hike out, hike out, you lazy bastards!”
many men were too ill to stir, including john bibb. phlegm rattled in his chest. his ragged
hacking during the night was another reason for my sleeplessness. he pleaded, “could you
answer for me if there’s a roll call? standing out in the snow will be the end of me.”
“of course, i’ll speak for you. just try to be well enough to be out there yourself tomorrow.”
grabbing my blanket, i headed for the barrack door.
on the pen wall, old hike was joined by ahl, whose face was barely visible within the
shroud of a woolen scarf. his flinty eyes gleamed between a cap pulled low and the cloth over
his nose and mouth. old hike clutched the roll list in his gloved hands as puffs of steam floated
from his mouth. he bellowed out each name as usual, and a man’s voice responded every time,
hanging in the frigid air. at the end of roll call, ahl scanned the group. “we have here an
epidemic of escapees or an epidemic of cowards. which is it? where is everyone?” he tugged
his scarf higher around his neck.
old hike growled, “i know how to rout the lily-livered rats. leave it to me.” he shuffled
down the stairs on the other side of the pen. a heavy wooden truncheon dangled by a strap from
his ham of a hand. soon the sounds of old hike’s cursing, wood impacting flesh and bone, and
cries of anguish rang from the barracks across the frozen yard. ahl rocked back and forth on his
heels as he listened with his gloved hands clasped behind his back. when old hike entered our
division, my heart sank. i knew there would be no mercy for any of the ailing fellows, including
bibb. after a time, boys with bloodied noses and heads staggered out, and a few clutched an
arm dangling by their sides.
bibb’s face was ashen and drawn in the morning light. he stumbled at the doorway, but i
gained his side before he tumbled onto the ice. they had broken his arm. jim blue and i held
him upright until ahl finished calling roll again.
“now, that’s more like it. all the rats have been routed from their cozy nests. be sure you are
all—every last one of you—out in the yard tomorrow,” ahl said. he turned toward old hike.
“you may give the order to disperse.”
with an arm around bibb’s waist and his good arm draped over my shoulder, i supported him
back to his tier. his weakness was now so great that he seemed insensitive to pain. blue and i
helped him to lie down on his tier and tucked his blanket around him. i then went out into the
cold pen and returned after an hour with tears blinding my eyes and a nose like a frozen radish.
but i had found a discarded strip of packing crate.
“what do you plan to do with that?” beards asked.
“make a splint,” i responded. “but first i need a scrap of cloth to bind it to bibb’s arm.” i
held out the edge of my ragged shirt to show that it had too many tears to be useful. blue yanked
his shirt over his head and tore at a small rip with his teeth until a strip of fabric was free. after
shivering back into his shirt, he held the stick while i wrapped the fabric around and around to
keep the bone in place. bibb cried out only once. another fellow volunteered a strip of shirttail
to then bind the arm to bibb’s chest. when i was done, he gave me a faint smile of gratitude,
squeezed my arm with his good hand, and drifted off to sleep. i sat by his bunk, hoping that my
presence might give him some comfort if he awoke.
in my heart, i was roiling with a dark rage. bibb deserved this punishment the least of any of
us. if ahl and old hike despised us for being rebels, they should have picked on a seasoned
soldier like beards, blue, or me. why pick on the least experienced and weakest?
i spent the afternoon of the nineteenth seething. there was nothing i could do to avenge bibb
or, as their former sergeant, to protect any of these men. i was obsessed with how the guards had
humiliated and bullied us too many times. but i knew it was at ahl’s direction. three frigid
months now stood between us and the advent of spring. i couldn’t see how we’d survive until
then.
more than that, i knew that my family was suffering from hunger and the cold. i was helpless
to do anything about that, too. ever since captives from the battle at cedar creek had been
admitted in late october, i’d been distraught with worry. as usual, a horde of us had gathered at
the gate to learn news of the outside. “sons a’ bitches burnt the whole valley,” one had said.
“grant targeted it all the way from winchester to new market, and they went at it from june
until now.”
another had said, “we’re finished. our army is washed up, thanks to this last battle. the
yanks have the run of the whole valley.” he told us he’d heard that the burning continued south
of the targeted area all the way to lexington, with small bands of a thousand or so spreading the
flames. i had gasped. this meant the troops had marched past the farm. “they set fire to
anything that could supply the rebel army, whether barns, mills, blacksmith shops, or animals.
and even the occasional home, just for good measure.” i had groaned and covered my eyes with
my hand.
he went on to say that citizens now halted soldiers on the road to beg for just a crust of bread
and a few sticks of firewood. “imagine that. they’re turning to us for help, after we’ve depended
on them for food. it breaks a man’s heart.” there was no stomping and cheering. this time an
eerie silence had fallen across the prison yard.
now it was only a few days until a christmas that would be nothing like earlier ones. on the
way back from the dining hall as the sky turned from gray to black, beards reminded me. “i
never thought times would be so bad that i’d fondly recall yule celebrations in camp.
remember the smoked hams your father sent, and the rum-soaked fruitcakes from my mother?
and how zeke got so soused on contraband liquor that blue had gotten from someplace at the
end of ’62?”
“how could i forget? particularly the two of you fancy stepping around the campfire to
strains of blue’s mouth harp. i think you were a little soused yourself.” beards took a swipe at
me and laughed. then we both fell silent. the image of a dancing zeke was too painful.
“looks like snow again. i can smell it,” beards commented just as we entered the barrack.
he was right. when i awakened, i could see through the cracks that the putrid pen had been
transformed to a softly sparkling landscape, this time by knee-deep snow. small drifts had
blown through and blossomed on our sleeping shelf in front of each opening.
it was a holiday blessing, however, because the powdery ice was now deep enough to be a
source of clean water. there were no wiggle waggles or green slime. the snow had drifted pure
from god’s heaven and lay white across the ground under the open sky. now that the river had
become a slab of ice, the barges couldn’t reach the island and water was scarce. no one wasted
it on bathing. there was barely enough to drink. that morning, jim blue organized a group of
men who’d purchased pans from the sutler; they darted into the snow and forced as much into a
pan as possible and packed it hard. the containers filled the space around the coal stove in the
center of our barrack and quickly yielded warm water.
the men called a division meeting by midday. all voted that the pan contents would be used
for washing. fellows who wanted something to drink could scoop snow in their tin mugs. we
took turns sponging off, the water floating gray scum with use. even bibb, with help from
beards, joined us. my body hadn’t enjoyed warm water since the two summer baths in the first
months after capture.
although a day had passed since bibb’s injury, i couldn’t calm my fury. at home i’d have
smashed a fallen limb against a tree until the anger was spent. and cursing the guards might get
me killed. i had to find an outlet, or i would explode with helplessness and outrage. my eyes fell
upon the pans of water surrounding the stove. an idea was born.
“i’m goddamned sick of these tyrants playing with our lives. they make up nonsense rules
and then murder us when we don’t obey,” i sputtered to beards, who crouched next to me on
our shelf.
“there’s nothing we can do about it. calm down. no point in getting yourself so riled up,” he
said, his chin in his hands.
“no, listen to me. there is something we can do. what if, when the federal inspectors are
here, we expose ahl and hike’s barbarity? maybe even implicate schoepf?” i asked beards.
“maybe they’d be replaced by someone a little less crazy.”
he jerked his head in my direction. “what in god’s name are you thinking? we’re totally
vulnerable down here in the pen. you know we’re forbidden to speak to guards, much less the
feds. didn’t you learn anything from your time in solitary?” he pulled his blanket up around his
ears and looked away.
i shifted my seat so he couldn’t ignore me. “sure, it’s risky, but listen. tomorrow the federal
inspectors will be on the wall with ahl and old hike at 7:00 a.m. for their monthly tour. what if
we get some fellows together, and when the guards are changing shifts, we pitch pans of dirty
water out of the windows?”
“what the hell will that accomplish? and have you forgotten? special order number 157
states that men aren’t to throw filth into the yard.”
“this won’t be filth—it’ll be wash water. the guards will fire warning shots, but we’ll quit
before the third one. the feds are bound to ask what the disturbance is about. then ahl and
hike will have to tell them about special order number 157, and more than that, the guards will
look like maniacs for shooting at men who are just pitching out water.”
beards shook his head. “i’m not so sure about that, tom.” he said he thought i was
delusional, that i should know that nothing made sense in how the prison camp worked. he was
silent for a minute, considering. “you’re counting on the guard not aiming to kill the first or
second time, and on the yankee inspectors paying attention. the payoff is way too small for the
risk. give it up.”
i don’t know why i couldn’t hear him. how could i have been so stupid as to expect logical
rules in a prison camp when there’d been none in war? instead, i rattled on. “doing nothing is
just as dangerous. you know that living in daily fear does real harm to boys with wounded
minds. we’ve both seen it. there’s bibb, for instance.” i paused. “and there’s a chance the
guards are softening a little. don’t you remember when the fellow from division eight pissed
outside the barrack door. when he didn’t stop, the guards aimed above his head twice and then
didn’t shoot him. they just gave him a scare.”
i believed the guards wouldn’t dare shoot five or six boys at one time. not in front of big men
from washington. “i swear i’d be willing to risk my life if i thought it would destroy ahl and
old hike.”
“for chrissakes, tom.” beards was silent for several long minutes. “well, i’ll tell you what,”
he finally said. “i’m not fully convinced, but if you can talk the rest of the fellows into it, i’ll
join in.” he grabbed the corners of his blanket tighter around him and walked to the far end of
the barrack. i’m sure he thought i’d never convince the others, and he’d be off the hook.
it was tough work, but i persuaded blue and two others. beards lived up to his promise,
making five of us. “but i’m not joining in until you promise that after the second warning, you’ll
stop. and i mean it. stop dead in your tracks.” beards glared at me.
“i solemnly swear i’ll stop,” i said. “i’ll shake on it. you have my word.” i extended my
hand, and he shook it. i only wanted a chance. if my trick succeeded, ahl and hike would be
gone, and all of our lives would be less miserable.
the sun rose shortly before guard changeover. sleep had eluded me the entire night—what
with jangling anxiety and then despair at john bibb’s discomfort.
it seemed a shame to waste the warm water without first using it, so several of us sponged off
one last time. jim blue kept a look out through the window for ahl and the inspectors to appear
on the wall. finally, he signaled with a raised hand, and i slipped into the shadows behind him.
right on schedule at 7:00 a.m., ahl swaggered across the top of the pen, boasting loudly to two
portly, imposing looking fellows, stiff overcoat collars cupping their ears against the river wind.
one inspector stroked his dark beard, absentmindedly nodding as ahl extolled the sanitary
conditions and fair treatment of prisoners. the other was grinding away with a fingernail in his
ear while he surveyed the horizon. neither was listening to what ahl said. old hike scurried
behind, trying to insert himself into the discussion.
jim blue’s hand went up again; the trio was close by and the moment for action had come.
we hoisted buckets to the windows and, at my word, heaved their contents forward. steam
hissed as warm liquid splashed the snow. a startled yell burst from the guard on the wall far
across the pen. ahl was pointing and then waving his arms angrily. the inspectors peered
curiously in our direction as old hike barked oaths. the wind was fierce, and the guard’s
thready voice drifted off across the pen. a satisfied smile spread across my face as the little
yankee flailed his arms and his pudgy face darkened with rage. beards and the others speedily
recoiled from the window and crouched behind the barrack wall. reserve buckets were ready at
our feet, and jim blue and i each emptied out another. this time, the guard raised his rifle and
yelled more heatedly. ahl seemed to be encouraging him. when blue saw the gun barrel pointed
his way, he shrank back. but i was like someone intoxicated. danger didn’t cross my mind.
“come on, tom, quit now while no harm’s done! we’ve made our point.” beards’ voice was
sharp with urgency. “you promised. now keep your promise!” i could hear the other fellows’
entreaties as if from a distant shore.
then john bibb struggled upright from his sleeping tier and stretched his hand toward my
shoulder to pull me behind the window frame. “tom, i beg you. stop. this is pure folly!”
a surge of the old fighting spirit coursed through my veins. i brushed bibb’s hand aside.
“look at that little fool bestir himself!” i leaned out the window to pitch the last bucket of water.
“take that, you yankee bastards!”
a second later, a bullet whizzed past my ear. “it’s bibb! the sons a’ bitches have shot bibb!”
voices behind me cried. he’d made no sound but for a thud when his body collapsed back on the
shelf.
my breath stopped. perhaps he had only received a nick in the ear that stunned him, or a
wound to the arm. i dropped to my knees and gently shook him, oblivious to the scarlet fountain
that spurted from his chest and stained those of us close by. “answer me, please answer me,
john,” i begged. his bad arm dangled from the tier as his body sprawled in a widening puddle.
faintly i could hear someone saying, “i knew it. i knew this crazy scheme would get someone
killed.” my whole body seemed to dissolve in that moment.
another voice cried, “he’d still be alive if it weren’t for you!”
even beards, standing next to me with his hand on my back, softly said, “you gave your
word. you promised.”
every instant of my life was reduced to this wretched place and time, crouching at bibb’s
side with the realization that he was gone. nothing else mattered. i dropped my forehead to his
chest, oblivious to the warm, sticky liquid dampening my hair and beard. in death, his face had a
purity that belied his eighteen years. after a time, someone’s hands pulled me away and guided
me toward the shelf across the aisle. i turned toward the wall to hide the unstoppable tears.
when the wheelbarrow man arrived to cart away bibb’s body, i stood apart from the others.
jim blue solemnly tucked bibb’s blanket over his head and torso so that his blank, staring eyes
and gaping mouth would no longer be directed at the wintery sky. but the others persuaded blue
that john’s blanket would be of no use to him and might save one of us. he reluctantly removed
it. someone hid john’s knapsack with margaret ellen’s image to safeguard it from the guards.
lanky legs and arms flapping over the wheelbarrow’s sides, john bibb was hauled away. the
rumble of the iron wheels across the rough barrack boards and over the doorstep haunts me still.
schoepf convened a court of inquiry within his quarters that drab afternoon to investigate the
fatal shooting. the federal inspectors were long gone.
earlier in the afternoon, a guard had arrived at our division and led away private leonidas
tripplett, the man bunked on the boards next to john bibb. tripplett’s blanket, soaked by john’s
drying blood, was his only barrier against the cold. the guard also summoned privates william
kelsoe and r. m. retherford, the only prisoners in the snow-covered yard at that hour of the
morning. we watched them trudge away to schoepf’s rooms in the fort.
after tripplett’s return several hours later, beards asked the question for the rest of us. “are
those bastards ahl and hike and the guard going to suffer for this crime?”
tripplett surveyed our downcast faces, wiped his palm across his forehead, and began in a
despondent voice. “it was nothing but a charade. they simply wanted to judge bibb guilty and
to prove his execution was deserved, in case there were queries from washington.” his mouth
was a grim slit in his bleak face. “it was just a whitewashing. that’s all.”
“goddamn it!” beards exclaimed, as a chorus of expletives followed from the others.
triplett had told the jury how, as he was going out to breakfast, he’d seen us bathing by the
coal stove. a man then pitched out dirty wash water—not urine—against which there are no
prohibitions. besides, bibb’s injured arm rendered him incapable of dumping out a heavy
bucket. it was a task that required two hands. at this point we all cheered a strong round of
“huzzah! huzzah! good man, triplett.” he nodded and kept his eyes to the floor.
kelso and retherford had said the guard deakyne was too far away to have any idea what
was being pitched out of the window. but the tribunal only wanted to know if the two witnesses
were familiar with special order number 157. they didn’t want to hear anything that might
imply the guard’s guilt.
“last came the lying guard deakyne. first, he had no doubt it was urine; he was only twenty
feet away,” tripplett said. “and that he’d shouted a warning four or five times. the sorry louse
said he was only fulfilling his duty,” tripplett concluded. a furor broke out at those words.
when the boys quieted, blue asked, “and did the officers want to know who was actually
throwing the water? did they ask you anything about that?” everyone looked toward me.
“no, not a word on that matter or the others, either. or they would have had to ask
incriminating questions about the fort’s policies and deakyne shooting to kill without just
cause,” tripplett said. “the only thing they cared about was bibb’s innocence.” he paused and
finally met our eyes. “i’m sorry, fellows. he was a mighty good man who didn’t deserve this
ending.” he sank down on his bunk.
the guard deakyne was absolved of any wrongdoing. i too had gotten away scot-free. bibb
was the only one who paid.
