The Black Country

“I’m all right, Nevil! I’ve reached the bottom!”

“Is it iced over?”

“Not at all! It’s still warmer than it is up there, but the water’s cold!”

“Hurry! You can’t stay there!”

“Are you sure? I’d love to stay!”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Nothing, Sergeant! A little humor!”

He paddled around in the narrow space, taking care not to lose track of the rope. He bumped into something hard and felt its contours with his free right hand. It was the bucket. He used it to brace himself, which freed up his left hand. He kicked in a small circle, running his hands over the walls. The stones here were smooth and damp, polished by centuries of water. There was a thick organic odor wafting up from the water, like a warm stagnant soup. The bucket thunked into something, and Day turned toward it and reached out. His gloved hand brushed against a handful of moss and he spidered his fingers, feeling outward until he realized that the handful was too delicate to be moss. He groped at the object and felt a soft curve, a small bony ridge. The moss was hair, and there were pliable swellings under it. Day realized he was holding his breath, praying that he had found an animal of some sort, a squirrel or a badger that had taken a tumble into the well. But as his fingers continued to explore, he knew what he had found and his heart sank.

“Nevil!”

“I’m here, sir!”

“I think I’ve found him, Nevil!” Day said.

He turned the object over in the water, dead and limp and yielding.

Yes.

“I’ve found Oliver Price!” he said.

INTERLUDE 2

ANDERSONVILLE PRISON,

CONFEDERATE GEORGIA, 1865

The dead wagon rolled out through the high gates of the Andersonville stockade. Calvin Campbell was in the bed of the wagon, jostled about along with four other prisoners. Cal was the only one of them still breathing. Shallow breaths through his mouth because the dead men had begun to ripen in the hot Georgia sun. One of the men had open sores on his arms and his throat, and Cal watched maggots writhe in and out of the wounds, slimed pink with blood over their pearly whiteness. He gagged and closed his eyes, concentrated on keeping his gorge down.

After what seemed to Cal like most of the day, but couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes or so, the wagon stopped and the bodies were pulled out, one at a time. He listened to them thunk into the ground like so much meat. The man next to him, the maggot farm, was second to last out of the wagon. Some of the larvae were left behind, wriggling blindly on the bare planks. They would burn to a crisp in the sun and be buried under the day’s bread rations before long.

Cal felt a hand close over his ankle, and then he was being dragged the length of the wagon’s bed. He braced himself for impact with the ground, but another hand grabbed his other ankle, and then someone had his wrists and he was being hoisted through the air. He risked opening an eye and looked up. One of the men carrying him was Richard Devine, a friendly fellow who had taken Cal’s shebang and his tattered clothing in trade for helping him hide in the wagon that morning. Devine saw him looking and gave him a slight curt nod. Cal glanced at the second man, but didn’t know him. A friend of Devine’s, he supposed. They carried him to the trench, the same trench where Joe and Duane rested, and they heaved him up and through the air. He felt himself start to tense and forced his naked body to go limp. His arms and legs flopped and he clenched his jaw despite himself, anticipating the coming impact. His shoulder hit the side of the trench and he bounced away, landed solidly atop a mound of skin and bone and mud. He was glad the trench was nearly full and he wasn’t one of the first to be thrown in a grave. A new trench would be much deeper, and the fall might actually kill him. His shoulder felt bruised, but nothing seemed to be broken.

He laid still and listened, and after a few minutes he heard the wagon roll away. Far in the distance, he could hear soldiers laughing and birds calling. He heard a cricket chirping somewhere close by. He realized he was holding his breath and he let it out all at once. He had made it. He was outside the walls and he hadn’t been discovered.

He took a fresh breath and immediately vomited into his beard. He felt the warm liquid run across his chest and down his arm.

The trench was full of a week’s worth of dead bodies. Hundreds of them. And he would have to wait here among them until dark. At least ten hours. Once the sun went down, he would need to climb out of this hole and make it to the river without being seen. He tried to vomit again, but there was nothing left in his stomach. He hoped he would get used to the stench, but it seemed unlikely. The air was so thick he could see it, like a poisonous fog that crept across the top of the trench, thick wet tendrils, searching him out. Cal took another shallow breath through his mouth and passed out.

–

Grey Eyes dropped his cigar and ground it under his boot heel. He listened to the night: the river burbling below him, crickets chirping nearby, and a bat squeaking somewhere in the woods ten yards away from him. He squinted at the dark tree line and then up at the moon. It was a sliver, barely enough to light the way down to the water.

He rested the barrel of his rifle against a river birch and unbuttoned the fly of his standard-issue grey uniform trousers. A moment later he felt the release of pressure in his bladder and he sighed.

Four feet to his left the water erupted, and Grey Eyes turned as something huge, a dark shape against the darker sky, moved toward him up the riverbank. He let go of himself, letting urine stream down his leg as he reached for his rifle, but the shape was on him too fast and he felt rough hands grab him and spin him off balance. The other man-it was clearly a man-pulled Grey Eyes backward toward him, one hand against the guard’s forehead, pinning the back of his head against the other man’s chest. Grey Eyes reached across his body for the knife on his belt, but the other man already had it.

Dry lips rasped against Grey Eyes’s ear, and a low voice whispered, “This is for Joe Poole, you cold-eyed bastard.”

Before Grey Eyes could call out, he felt the tip of the knife puncture the thin flesh of his right cheek. He felt warm liquid flow down his jaw and he grabbed for the other man’s arm as the knife was dragged across his face. There was a split second of resistance and a slight pop and his lower lip fell free and slapped against his chin. There was a flash of blinding pain and Grey Eyes saw bright pinpricks of light. The other man let go of him, and Grey Eyes sank to his knees and toppled forward into the river with a splash. He heard footsteps in the grass, someone running for the tree line, and he wondered whether his attacker had kept his knife. It had been a gift from his father when Grey Eyes had joined the Confederate Army two years ago. It occurred to him that he might never see his father again. Darkness washed over him and he began to sink into it, but then he felt cold river water flowing over and through the wound in his cheek and the pain abated enough that he regained his senses. He rose slowly, fighting the pull of the current, and crawled up onto the bank. The pain in his cheek returned, but he used the pain to help him focus. A prisoner had escaped, had meant to slit his throat, but had missed. Had the knife gone in two or three inches lower, Grey Eyes knew he would be dead.

He moved forward, one hand held out in front of him, until he found the river birch. His rifle was still there. The other man hadn’t seen it in the dark. Grey Eyes smiled and nearly passed out from the pain. He would have to remember not to smile again until his cheek healed. He rose to his feet, dripping river water and blood, picked up his rifle, and walked to the tree line.

He paused there and looked back at Andersonville. Once he stepped into the trees, Grey Eyes