Andersonville by Edward M. Erdelac Read Free Book Online Page A

nose was gone, and one ear dangled and twisted by a scrap of red flesh, but the hideous lidless eyes remained, the brown irises rolling crazily.
    The dogs had to be ordered away by Turner.
    Barclay noticed that the five Cuban bloodhounds were not among the ones that tore at the corpse, though with their superior height and muscles they surely had been the first to pull the man down. He saw them walking behind, stately and aloof to the rowdiness of their pack mates, almost feigning innocence of the deed, as if their spotted muzzles weren’t dripping blood like the rest.
    “Lash that boy to the tree,” Turner said to his men as he unhooked his whip and let the tapering end slither to the grass.
    The huffing man who was to be punished for allowing his partner to attempt to escape was dragged to a pine tree and made to hug it.
    “Now, you’re s’posed to have forty comin’ to you,” Turner announced more to the silent onlookers than to the penitent, who was quivering and whimpering too violently to hear him. “But since your partner’s lyin’ dead…well, hell, I ain’t about to flog no corpse. You’ll have to take his, too.”
    The man gibbered something like a plea as the soldier tied his wrists together and stepped aside.
    Turner said nothing but took up a position behind him and drew the whip back with a whistle, then lunged forward to crack the popper against the man’s bare back.
    Barclay flinched, as did a few of the other black men, but none of them looked away.
    By the fiftieth lash the man was on his knees, only the strap around his wrists keeping him aright. His back was flayed to the muscle, and he no longer jerked and bucked with each crack.
    Turner counted out the remainder, anyway.
    The man was left to hang there till the work detail finished, flies gathering thick and black on his shredded skin. Only when he was cut down did they discover that he had died.
    They marched in heavy silence back to the gate, and passing the long picket house made of boughs once more, Barclay saw that the wagon was now loaded with a heap of corpses, the dead who had been brought to the South Gate before roll call. The bough house was a dead house, and he watched two black men carrying the corpses inside as their Rebel guard leaned on his musket in the shade.
    The corpse of the fugitive was deposited beside the wagon, but Turner called for the men to pick it back up and carry it into the inner stockade.
    When the wicket opened, Turner marched in with his men and waved for the two men bearing the bloody remains to step forward.
    The prisoners near the porch of the gate recoiled at the sight of the slaughtered man, and Turner ordered him dropped.
    “Up north,” Turner shouted, “y’all got your own ideas of dogs. Maybe the worst thing they can do is piddle on your leg a bit, chaw on your slipper, hump your leg. You smack ’em with a rolled up Sunday edition of the
New York Times
on the nose and your troubles is over. Y’all take a good look at this here sack of shit an’ remember: southern dogs is different.”
    He grinned, spit a streak of tobacco juice on the corpse, and went out the widget door with his men.
    The prisoners shuffled closer to the corpse, curiosity overwhelming their earlier horror. One scrawny, thickly bearded white man, a particularly odd-looking fellow with bright deep-set eyes over chiseled high cheekbones and a mop of greasy flat-combed hair, darted out of the crowd and actually reached forward to pry something from the corpse. Barclay couldn’t begin to guess what. Then the man was gone.
    Barclay shook his head and followed the other Negroes as they plodded back to their divisions in the camp.
    He caught up with another man and tapped his shoulder. He was a young fellow, caramel-skinned, with a lazy eye.
    “Where can I find Major Bruegel?” he asked.

Chapter 7
    The lazy-eyed youth, an infantryman from the 54th Massachusetts named Callixtus Drew, led Barclay through the Negro encampment to a