part 2 chapter

26

n ot one tree or shrub shaded our prison pen, and that summer the dirt baked into

cracked clay and magnified the scalding sun’s rays. ahl called us out twice a day for drill, but

after the morning activity, many boys cooled off by standing or lolling shirtless in the canals’

toxic slime. others flopped down on their backs, too sapped by the heat to move. exposed skin

burned and blistered, creating open wounds vulnerable to the canals’ foul brew.

one blazing mid-august day, zeke and i stood in the shade of the pen’s wall watching jim

blue and a fellow from the west barrack compete at chess with sacrificed shirt buttons. a board

was scratched in the dirt, and a barrack against barrack contest was under way. from boyhood,

blue had been an ace chess player. we rooted loudly for him.

a commotion began to brew over by the gate. a new group of prisoners poured through.

they’d been duly searched, all possessions confiscated, and then they were released into our

midst. with calls of “fish! fresh fish!” we abandoned the game to surround the new prisoners.

we were starving for news, and its only source was those most recently outside. these

newcomers had been captured near petersburg and richmond. a cacophony of voices yelled,

“did you hurt those yankee bastards?” “what company y’all with?” “where were you

captured?” “have they gotten any closer to richmond?” “is granny lee still alive?” “did we

win?” “is this god-forsaken war going to be over soon?” “what happened after spotsylvania?”

“where’s grant now?” “have you seen —?” a thousand names followed the end of this

question.

the din drowned out any answers. a heavy-jowled older man shouldered his way through his

companions with his arms above his head and scaly palms forward. he had a face like a bulldog.

“hold on now! settle down! let me introduce myself. i’m sergeant martin sorrell, and i’ll

address your questions. any of you boys who came with me feel free to jump in and correct

what i get wrong.” he looked around for approval. a calm settled over our group as they

realized this man was the only route to satisfied curiosity. a white roped scar traced a line from

sergeant sorrell’s right cheekbone behind his right ear, which was short a chip off the top. his

right eye was swollen and bruised black. i couldn’t tell whether stiffened blood or red virginia

clay colored his rusted outfit. zeke and i joined the prisoners who sank to the crusty ground,

squatting on their heels in attentive postures. sorrell had the brash and aggressive manner of an

elixir salesman, which i later found him to have been.

“first, you southern boys can rejoice,” he said. “we roundly routed the yankee bastards in a

glorious victory at petersburg this last week.” the cheering was rowdy enough to be heard in the

civilized world across the wide delaware. minutes passed before he could quiet the exulting

crowd. “yes, that defeat merits great celebration, but as god is my witness, i declare this was a

battle unlike any ever fought, which makes victory even sweeter.” scratching at the lousy

varmints feasting behind his torn ear, he paused for that tidbit to sink in. “they employed two

new weapons against us, both of them indecent and immoral, just like the yanks themselves.”

his audiences made sounds of impatience to hear what those were.

sorrell was visibly enjoying everyone’s rapt attention. he told how, the morning of the

attack, he and thousands of troops had been sleeping like babies, scattered at dawn across a

petersburg field after days of mounding up ten-foot walls of dirt around their position. suddenly

the ground heaved up with an infernal din and threw him what must have been three feet into the

air. miraculously, he fell to earth without a broken bone. “you won’t believe what happened

next. a giant fountain of red dirt rose high into the air, stretched out over the plain like a fierce

thunderhead, and then let loose a barrage of broken timbers, planks, clods of clay, guns—all

mingled with blackened arms, legs, heads, and every sort of body part.” waving his arms,

sorrell gave the appearance of a country minister describing hell.

zeke and i joined the collective gasp. the federals had never deployed explosives of this

force. sorrell then told how the blast left a gigantic crater, larger than a wheat field. it was

hollowed out ten to twenty feet deep, just where our boys blissfully dreamed. it was into this

crater that the horrible debris rained. he said the yanks had chiseled out a tunnel in the dark of

night and planted hundreds of kegs of dynamite beneath our boys. they then trailed a fuse all

the way back out of the tunnel to the yankee side of the field.

“how did you find out?” someone yelled.

“we beat the hell out of a captive, that’s how,” sorrell said.

again, a torrent of questions arose, but sorrell silenced them with an offhand wave. he

paused for effect. “this is when the yanks unleashed their second surprise: the united states

colored troops.” again, the crowd erupted in shouts.

sorrell spat a thick wad of chewing tobacco and said, “this is the first we’d seen of a blue-

coated black company hauling rifles. for our boys, it was like waving a red flag before a raging

bull. you put guns in the hands of coloreds, and after this war is over, they’ll murder our

women and children sleeping in their beds.”

a torrent of epithets erupted and a chant of “kill, kill, kill them now,” floated above the

crowd. one man yelled out, “white soldiers shouldn’t have to fight coloreds! it’s a goddamned

insult.” voices throughout the pen echoed the same sentiment.

zeke muttered, “this is madness. these idiots assume slavery is the only thing standing

between whites and a population of black assassins.” the boldness of his words startled me, but

then i hadn’t recovered from seeing those free blacks rounded up for sale near gettysburg.

however, i’d kept it to myself. every nerve in my body was raw as sorrell continued.

“somebody swore that the advancing coloreds yelled ‘show ’em no mercy!’ that did it.

then we really had murder in our hearts.”

he told how union soldiers slid down the crater’s walls for cover, but then were trapped like

fish in a barrel. an alabama company charged in after them, using clubs and muskets to horrible

effect. by the time sorrell and his troops reached the crest, about five hundred yanks had

hoisted flags of surrender down in the bottom, coloreds and whites alike. sorrell continued,

“we stormed into the crater too, parting the blacks from the white yanks. you should have

heard them coloreds, begging us to spare their lives. but we executed every one of those

turncoats. shot ’em point-blank with our rifles.”

he told how soldiers plunged bayonets in the blacks’ hearts, blew their brains out with their

pistols, and knocked them in the head with their rifle butts. afterward, some soldiers pranced

around, whooping and hollering, and twirled over their heads steel blades coated with gore. he

then related how he came upon a grievously wounded black wretch who reached out to all who

passed, as he begged them for just a drop of water. sorrell said he hollered, “drink your own

blood. you’ll have no need for water, anyway, not when i’m finished with you.” and then he

silenced the man forever with his bayonet. sorrell paused for more cheering. admiring prisoners

enthusiastically applauded and stamped their feet again.

by this time, zeke’s head was lowered, the flush spreading on his neck a clue to his feelings.

i was outraged. everyone knew that a white flag of truce raised by surrendering troops means

the opposition holds its fire as prisoners are taken, regardless of race. glancing away from

sorrells to hide my revulsion, i busied myself with removing of a piece of lint that clung to my

tattered pants. again, mary’s image of sukie and those free blacks taken south seized my mind.

what were we doing?

he finished his address by exhorting the men to butcher every black cur that lincoln sent

against them when they were freed and went back into combat. “don’t capture a single one!” he

hollered. “not one, i tell you!”

“huzzah! huzzah!” poured forth when sorrell stepped back, mopping his forehead after his

oratorical exertions. zeke’s face was buried in his hands, and i felt hollow, empty as a deer

strung up by its hooves to bleed out. sorrell had described cold-blooded mass murder. this

creature and his comrades should have been hanged for their crimes.

head back and eyes closed, zeke leaned against the wall after the snarling crowd broke up. i

left him there and found another place to lean while i struggled with the anguish i’d been feeling

for the past year. yes, the union held the moral high ground. i no longer had any doubt. they

were also cruel invaders, but i couldn’t get away from the fact that in defending our homes

against them, we were also defending the abomination of slavery. when the conflict started, i

hadn’t the maturity or courage to give up my family, home, and friends on principle—to flee

north like reverend mcintyre. after sorrell’s account, screws of helplessness and guilt

tightened in my heart and filled me with loathing.