CHAPTER TWELVE
That evening when Tim had finished working over the big, black woodburning stove he went to the Navy kitchen to have some food with Devil and Bell. He looked down mournfully at his greasy pants.
When Devil finished eating he turned to Tim. “You’re downcast tonight, Lieutenant,” he said, pulling at his long nose.
Tim knew by now that he could trust the Navy men. “I have to get away from here,” he whispered. “Red and I are dying to get away.”
Devil was sitting on a barrel and Bell squatted on an empty wooden box. Bell doused his empty plate in a pail of water and put it on the table. He held his hands over his knees and cracked his knuckles. “Are you more anxious than the rest?”
“Some others are anxious, too, of course.”
Bell got up from the box. He reached into a corner and brought out a copy of a Charleston paper only two weeks old.
“Aunty brought me this a few days ago.”
He unfolded the paper and pointed to a column thatwas headlinedPresent Position of Union Troops. “Sherman’s in Memphis now, and Burnside’s been in Knoxville since early September.”
Tim said, “Knoxville’s closer by some three hundred miles. But granting that we’d have a chance to get to Burnside’s lines, how will we get away from here?”
Devil stood up and walked to the door. When he was satisfied that none of the guards was near he crossed the little room and pulled aside a couple of ragged towels that hung across a corner on a piece of string. A big rusty boiler was there. “Look here,” he said, pointing at the wall behind the boiler.
There was a small, sashless window halfway up the wall. “That leads to the woodshed, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” said Devil, “and the fence at the back of the woodshed happens to be in sorry shape. If a man could find a time to do a little work he could loosen a board in the fence.”
Bell was keeping watch in the doorway. He turned around to speak to Tim. “The boards of the fence are wide, and the nails were hammered in from outside.”
Tim’s heart thumped as thoughts of escape whirled through his mind. Forgetting himself, he spoke with excitement, “One of us could loosen a board while we were fetching wood. A couple of blows with a decent sized log....”
Bell turned around again, this time with his forefinger pressed against his mouth. Then he sauntered to the center of the room. “They’ll hear you, if you aren’t careful.”
A guard put his head in the door. “The corporal says, finish your chores,” he drawled. “He wants to take you back inside.”
Tim grinned foolishly at the guard, stood up and wentaround to the Army kitchen. His hands shook as he lit the lantern and scraped the stove.
He signaled a sentry who was lighting the lamp that hung in a bracket on the jailhouse wall. “Finished for today,” he said.
Addison’s room was on the first floor at the back of the jail, and when the guard knocked the corporal’s keys began to rattle. He opened the door. “’Bout time,” he said, holding his lantern so it would light Tim’s face.
As they moved along the first-floor corridor Addison mumbled, “I’m going up too.”
It was the custom of Senn or the guard on duty to check the prisoners’ beds after the men came up from their mess. Senn had decreed that they stay on their beds until he’d finished counting them in.
Tim went straight to his cell and climbed to his bunk.
Red lay on the top bunk, across from Tim. He stirred against the dingy wall. “Sure, that was a capital mush you cooked tonight.”
“Sit up,” Tim said. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
“What is it, boy?”
Tim slapped his thigh. “We have it,” he whispered. “We have a route at last.”
“You’ve marked it on the map?” asked Red.
Addison’s keys jingled in the hall.
“No, I’ll tell you later. Bull Head’s coming down the hall.”
Addison’s boots scuffed out of the adjoining cell and he appeared in the doorway with his lantern held high. He looked at Tim with something like a smile. “We meet again,” he said.
Dawson’s arm was dangling from his bunk. The man was apparently asleep.
Addison squinted at the bunk under Tim’s. “Is Lieutenant Mills in that pile of straw?”
Mill’s voice came from the corridor. “Sorry I’m not on my bunk,” he said, “but I had duties at the end of the hall.”
“Now what duties ...” Addison began then stammered, “Try not to let it happen again.” He moved past Mills and along the hall.
Red doubled up with glee. “Never again,” he said as he rolled over and shook his bunk with silent laughter.
Tim smiled to himself. “They say if you stay in jail too long you go back to your childhood ways. We’ll have to get you out of here.”
When Addison had left the floor Tim and Red went to the end of the corridor away from the common room and stood by a window that overlooked the yard. The light from a flickering lamp outside painted swift black ghosts against the wall.
Tim told Red about the window in the Navy kitchen and the condition of the fence at the back of the woodshed. “We can enter the kitchen when we’re in the yard and crawl through the window while Devil and Bell kick up a noise. Then we’ll wait in the woodshed till after dark.”
“They’ll discover our absence when they check the beds, and the hounds will be after us in no time at all.”
“We might leave dummies in our beds.”
Red looked through the bars at the dark blue sky. “If Senn’s not on duty, dummies might work.”
“Senn’s off duty all day Thursday. Let’s aim for Thursday afternoon.”
“That soon?”
“Why not? I’m sick of waiting. That gives us long enough to get ready.”
By Wednesday night it seemed to Tim that nothing could go wrong. Yesterday afternoon Devil had loosened the boards in the fence.
Tim had watched and listened from the corridor window when the wagon had come in. Aunty had cackled and slapped her thighs. She had prodded Bell to laughter with a set of faces that would have made a dying man laugh.
There had been a bad moment when one of the guards, not satisfied with watching from his usual distance, had moved up to the woodshed door. “Don’t fetch wood now,” he’d said. “Wait until the wagon leaves.”
“Need wood now,” Devil had said, staggering through the door with a teetering load. Then he’d tripped on the sill and the wood had gone flying, one piece hitting the guard on the shin, making him shout out a stream of oaths. Devil had kicked the shed door shut before he got off the ground. Tim hoped that no one passing through the alley would notice the loosened board and report it to Senn.
Tim stood by the window in the common room. He watched Red bending over his game of chess with Peter Mills and marveled at his outward calm. A little fire sputtered on the hearth and Dawson and Frazer were reading by candlelight. Brown stood in the door, staring into the fire and dreaming his private dreams. The air outside was clear as crystal, and the lights twinkled yellow in the neat white houses. A soldier and a girl passed under a lamp at the corner of the park.
Kate’s map had shown him the rail line running north along the east bank of the Broad, sticking pretty close to the river for a number of miles. That was their route, straight up the Broad. God give them the nighttime to move without pursuit.
Now the sound of music reached his ears. Tim had heard it before. It was said that the people of Columbia held great balls from time to time to raise money for the Armies of the Confederacy.
For a moment Tim forgot the meager rations in the jail, the smells, the dirty clothes, the bedbugs that plagued them at night, the eternal boredom that made the men short of temper. He thought of the people he would miss. There were Devil and Bell and Peter Mills.
Tim’s thoughts went back to a late afternoon shortly after the arrival of the officers captured in the second assault. Someone had started to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” others had joined the singer, and before a minute had passed the whole second floor had rocked with the song. The prisoners had pressed against the bars and shouted across the town.
Suddenly, caught by the sun, a white handkerchief had fluttered from a window of the little white house across the street. Then the owner of the handkerchief had appeared, a happy-faced young woman who waved as if she could never grow tired. Senn and Bull Head and another guard had come up the stairs to spoil the fun. Senn didn’t want singing or shouting in his jail. But from that time on the young woman whose heart beat for the Union had been the sweetheart of every Yankee in the jail.
Tim thought again of the coming day. Two haversacks and some other supplies were hidden in the Navy kitchen.
Tim put his hand over his breast pocket to be sure that his pictures were there. They had come in a shining black book with the wordALBUMstamped in gold on its spine. The covers were sky blue inside, neatly patterned with white stars. The pages were made of heavy pasteboard covered with paper frames to hold the pictures. The frames were arched at the top and lined around with gold.
Kate’s picture was there with the ones of Mother and Father and the twins. It was the only one that wasn’t stiff. It was posed, of course, but somehow Kate’s natural poise made it seem more alive. Her waist was slim and her figure had filled out where it should be full. She was more of a woman now. The photographer had put a touch too much pink on the cheeks, but her face was the same. Before the picture had come, her face had faded a little from Tim’s mind. Now he could see her clear as yesterday.
She had cut out a little piece from the hem of the dress she wore in the picture and had pasted it on the blank page opposite her photograph. The material was golden brown—some kind of silk he supposed it was.
The fire flickered low. Tim heard the men stirring behind him and felt a hand on his shoulder. “No sleep tomorrow night,” Red said quietly. “We better get sleep while we can.”
Tim turned from the window. “We’ve rested for five months now. We don’t need sleep. We need a beefsteak dinner and a couple of greatcoats.”
Dawson looked up from his book, quiet and inscrutable. “Do you really mean to try to escape?”
By now their secret was known to everyone on the second floor. There had been the chance that someone would notice their absence from the mess. Then, too, they would need a little help along the way.
Mill’s chess partner had left the room and Mills was studying the board. He turned to Dawson. “Sure they’re going,” he said. “Say, Dawson, do you play chess?”
Dawson didn’t answer, and Mills stood up and followed Red and Tim out the door and along the corridor. When they were back in their room Mills said, “That man’s behavior is downright unsettling.”
They lay down on their bunks, and after a while Dawson came in and stretched out on his bunk, without taking off his blouse. Soon he breathed steadily in a seesaw chorus with Mills.
Tim thought again about Kate’s map. She must have searched her soul before she mailed it. That map, drawn with such painstaking care, might show him the way to his death. But she must have known he would never rest until he’d tried to get away.
Until now Kate had been waiting at the end of the trail—warm and lovely but far away. All at once it seemed she was very close, her faith and understanding sending him on his way, making him impatient to be free, no matter what hardships freedom might bring.
Red stirred, and Tim whispered, “Red, you awake?”
“Yes.”
“Wish Peter could go along.”
“So do I.”
“You got any worries?”
“Not really. Good night, lad.”