CHAPTER SEVEN
The shriek of a whistle brought Tim to his senses. He was steeped in sweat and he shook his head and blinked at the train as it backed slowly toward him, its bell clanging, its wheels singing and screeching.
Six freight cars and a caboose made up the train. Up forward the stack of the engine stood high above the cars, belching smoke and sparks. Along the tops of the cars the ragged men and boys of the Home Guard stood with their muskets held loosely in their hands. On the platform at the back of the caboose stood a grisled old man with a pistol thrust into his belt. Beside him was a man, apparently young, in a soiled Confederate uniform, a slouch hat shading his face. As the train stopped, Tim could see that the young Confederate’s face was nothing but an expressionless scar.
It wasn’t long before another column of men came into sight. They were all in Yankee uniform, and as they marched out of the shadow Tim’s heart skipped a beat. At the head of the column, hatless and with his blouse thrown open, marched Red. There was life in his stride. His hairblazed in the sun and he held his bearded chin at a jaunty angle. Alongside Red walked Kautz with a snappy military air.
Tim could feel the thumping of his heart. He got to his feet, dizzy with sleep and fatigue. He jumped off the platform and waved to Red. Red broke ranks as the column halted. “Timmy,” he said, “I knew you were alive but I didn’t know when we’d meet again.”
Captain Kautz smiled and held out his hand. “Good to see you, Lieutenant,” he said.
The platform was crowded with prisoners. The guards began to shout, “Form ranks, get back in line” but the men just stood and talked.
A shout like the bellow of a bull broke through the talk. There was sudden quiet, and with a broken-toothed smile showing through his snow-white beard the old man on the back platform of the caboose said, “Bluebellies, you’re in my charge now.” He took off his gray slouch hat and bowed his white head in mock respect. “When a prisoner steps out of line my men will shoot to kill. My sergeant here will stand by one car at a time and count thirty men into each. Now get to your feet.”
The old man jumped to the platform and strode down the line until he saw the derelict prisoners with their pots and pans and furniture. Some of them were leaning against the wall and others were lying on the platform in the sun. He bellowed again and the derelicts stared like sick rats at a ravening dog. Slowly they got to their feet. “Proud Yankee bucks,” the old man sneered.
The emaciated prisoners reached for the poles that held their belongings.
“What the hell is this?” the old man screamed, frightening one of his charges so that he dropped the end of a pole,letting his belongings clatter to the stones. “You can’t take your junk on the train.”
The men stood silent and timid in the sun. In a treacly voice that could barely be heard the old man said, “Just leave your stuff here and bring up the rear.”
“Filthy, bullying pig,” Tim said between his teeth.
Then his anger waned and he turned to Red. “I thought I’d never see you alive again.”
Red kept his voice low as the old man passed close to them. “A Confederate captain told us you were still alive.”
Red moved closer to Tim. “Captain Kautz has a plan of escape,” he whispered. “It was just to be the two of us. I imagine you’ll want to be coming too.”
Tim raised his brows. “That’s why you marched in here happy as a raw recruit.”
The old man stood on the platform, his pistol in his hand. “No talking in the ranks,” he ordered. “Move forward and be counted in.”
“Stick together from now on,” said Kautz in a tight-lipped whisper. He looked sharply at Tim. “We jump from the train. I give the sign.”
They were the last to be counted into the car ahead of the caboose. As they approached the door Tim held his breath as the scar-faced sergeant counted, “Twenty-six, twenty-seven....” And Red was twenty-eight.
The guards kept their places on the tops of the cars. All the doors on the opposite side of the train were shut and probably locked.
As the prisoners climbed into the car the smell of cow dung and urine struck them full in the face. The last ones in sat near the open door.
Tim’s head ached and he was stiff in every joint, but as he leaned against the boards of the cattle car with Kautzon his right and Red on his left he smiled to himself. Friends, that’s what a man needs, he thought. It’s going it alone that makes it tough.
Kautz turned to Tim. “I’ve studied maps,” he whispered, slapping a slight bulge in the lower part of his blouse. “I thought about capture before we attacked the fort.”
Tim glanced at Kautz and for a moment he couldn’t believe his ears. Kautz had never shown the slightest doubt that they would take the fort.
“On this train,” he heard Kautz say, “we will probably head for Columbia. If so, we jump south of the city. We might branch west toward central Georgia. If we do that, I’m for jumping as soon as we see our chance. In either case, our objective would be Eastern Tennessee. If we should head south along the coast, we jump near Beaufort.”
Kautz looked around the car and leaned close to Tim. “The giving of the signal will depend on the position of the guards, the degree of darkness and other things.” His whisper became a hiss. “We will be taking great risks, in any case. I will go first, then Kelly, then you.”
The sergeant looked into the car. His skin was mottled purple and pink and white, scarred so badly that his face could express no emotion. When he talked the glistening skin crinkled dryly around his mouth. His voice came soft and deep. “We have to put three more men in here,” he said with something that sounded like regret, “but I’ll keep the door open if you behave yourselves. In this country,” he said, “escape is foolish. Don’t forget that.” He clamped his jaw shut and moved along to inspect the other cars.
Three of the derelicts crawled into the car and collapsed like half-empty sacks of meal.
While Kautz had been talking Red had sagged and fallen asleep. “I’ve had a little sleep,” Tim said to Kautz, “you sleep now and I’ll stand watch for an hour or so.”
“Fine,” Kautz said. He rested his beard on his chest and went to sleep.
Tim smiled to himself. He even sleeps efficiently, he thought. As he smiled his eye was caught by the gaze of one of the derelicts. The man stared into Tim’s face with vacant, luminous eyes. Tim took three of Greene’s oranges out of the pocket of his blouse and held them toward the man. “You’re hungry,” he said. “One of these for each of you might help.”
The man’s emaciated hands shot out, grasped two of the oranges and clutched them to his body. He reached for the other with something in his pitiful face that made Tim draw the third orange back. “One to each,” he said.
The man’s lower lip quivered. He grasped the oranges and turned his back and started to claw at one of them. Another derelict saw his chance, plucked the other orange from the man and tore at the skin with his teeth. He sucked and bit as the juice ran down his tattered shirt.
The train whistle gave a sudden, piercing shriek and the cars bumped together with violent jerks. The third Yankee derelict, a boy still in his teens, opened his eyes. Tim leaned over and handed him the third orange. He took it silently, turned it around and around as if it were a ball of gold—as if spending the wealth would take some thought. He put up his knees to make a shield, and with his thumb and forefinger gently peeled off the first strip of skin ... and the second ... and the third. When the orange was peeled he quartered it and ate deliberately, gasps of pleasure punctuating every gulp.
Now the shouts of the guards and the roaring, crackingvoice of the captain rang along the platform, and the train moved slowly forward. The door on the right was left half open.
Tim watched the shadow of the train as it moved along beside the tracks. It must be past noon. Was it this morning they’d attacked the fort?
The train jerked and stopped. With a squeaking and clanking of tortured couplings it started again and gathered speed. Warehouses and sheds flicked by in a blur, like bits of faded glass in a kaleidoscope.
As the train left the city by the sea the landscape was flat, dotted with brown-leaved little trees and tall pines with trunks which reached high and bare before they branched into thickly needled clusters. Once when the train slowed down for a moment the face of one of the guards hung upside down from the roof of the car, then disappeared again.
As they rattled through the countryside Tim was the only one in the car who stayed awake. The train swayed and rocked across huge swamps filled with trees with swollen roots, their branches dripping with Spanish moss. The pungent odor of stagnant water and rotting wood mixed with the smell in the cattle cars.
Tim’s senses dimmed. His head dipped and came up again. He pinched himself, stood up and steadied himself against the door frame of the car.
Kautz’s head snapped up. “Have we changed direction?”
Tim sat down. “No,” he said. “I judge by the sun that we’re still going roughly northwest.”
“How long have we been on the road?”
“About half an hour.”
“No chance for Beaufort now,” Kautz said. “They’re taking us to Georgia or Columbia. There’s a place calledBranchville just ahead. If we fork right, it will be Columbia. I hope that’s what we do. My maps don’t cover much of Georgia. Then there’s the matter of getting help. We can’t get to our lines without some help. They say there are Unionists in North Carolina and Tennessee.”
“Then we go north, no matter what.”
“It looks that way,” Kautz said. “Get some rest, Lieutenant. I’ve had enough sleep.”