“Could hardly feel much better,” I told him.
We spread a blanket and settled.
“There’s a good deal about you, Sam, that don’t add up if studied very close.”
I felt myself tensing. “What do you mean?”
“Now don’t get riled. It’s just that I’ve been studying you. I can’t help it, it’s my nature. I pride myself on knowing folks. When I talk about the pilot trade back in my rivering days, I generally lay the claim that I ran afoul of every type imaginable. But God’s truth is, I never met one quite like you—though there were a number who didn’t let on much about themselves.”
“You think I’m hiding things?”
“Think it? I know it! What’s more, it’s like you’re studying how to behave. Sort of like I did when I came here at fifteen, not knowing how to act at all, lookin’ around for signals but keeping quiet and hoping nobody’d notice.”
He looked at me speculatively. “Now, mind you, I’m not criticizing. A man’s business is his own. As a general thing I’m partial to them who consider before starting their jaws. And I’ve observed you enough to see that you manage all right. In fact, for a greenhorn, you make out tolerably.”
He waited for the band to finish a clamorous passage.
“Now, I’ve considered this, Sam. I’ve learned to trust my estimation of my fellowman, and I’m seldom wrong in my judgments.”
I smiled at his earnestness. “What’s on your mind?”
“I want to pass on a tale told to me after a lecture up in Elmira last year. I happened to stick in a warmhearted piece about a certain John Irishman. Well, the next day an old codger appeared at the Langdons’ front door and stirred up such a ruckus to see me that the servants finally gave in.
“I went out and sat on the porch swing and smoked while he poured out everything he had to say. He was Irish himself, and he talked so thick it was hard to decipher him at points. But I got the gist, and once he wound up and pitched into it, he had my hair fairly standing at attention.
“Started off telling me he could feel death coming. Didn’t want to depart with his secret untold. Naturally, I asked what the secret was, but he told me to be patient, it was a mite complicated. And so it was.
“Late in the war, after the two sides stopped exchanging prisoners in ’sixty-three, a surplus of Secesh captives forced the building of more Yankee prisons. In May of ’sixty-four one opened for business in Elmira, right down on the Chemung River. Well, they hadn’t even got barracks up yet; the prisoners lived in tents. During the summer things went along, but once the cold flowed in it was mortal hell. Boys perished from exposure. Smallpox broke out. In the spring of ’sixty-five the Chemung flooded, dysentery got bad, and then to cap it all, they got hit with erysipelas.”
“With what?”
“You’d maybe know it as St. Anthony’s Fire. Head turns red and swells, high fevers and delerium. It spreads like perdition when those with it can’t be isolated—like in a cramped prison. The Rebs got to dyin’ so fast—one out of three during the worst of the pox—that for a spell they were carted off to the cemetery nine at a time, that being how many coffins the ambulance wagon held. It went on around the clock.
“The old-timer knew all about this ’cause he worked in the death house. That was a shack just off the hospital, where he packed the boys in their boxes and did whatever precious little else to prepare ’em for their Maker.
“Now, another consideration during all this is that the Yankee guards were the New York Ninety-ninth Regiment—mostly Fenians who’d survived Meagher’s Irish Brigade in places like Antietam—and they got this plum of a job for the duration.
“Now the Irish, you know, are thick as thieves, and gambling comes as natural to them as breathing. The guards held regular games and often let prisoners in on ’em too. There were a good many Irish Johnnies—people forget that when they claim migrants alone won the war for the North—and sizable amounts of money changed hands, sometimes up in the thousands.”
“How’d the prisoners get money?”
“Oh, they were allowed to receive drafts—drawn on Yankee banks, of course. Some lived fairly high. One in particular, who went through the faro and poker sessions like wildfire, got assigned to burial detail. His name was . . . well, I don’t rightly know it, but he came to be called O’Shea. Mark that, Sam, it’s critical. Before long, working together as they did, O’Shea and the old-timer got to be like father and son.
“Meanwhile, at night, O’Shea and ten others set about digging a tunnel from inside the hospital. By the time they’d burrowed under the stockade walls sixty feet distant, the smallpox siege was at its peak and they decided to make a break right away. But two nights before their target time, O’Shea was cleaned out in a poker game by a Yank sergeant named Duffy. It was generally suspicioned that Duffy cheated and that he’d stockpiled considerable funds since coming to Elmira. O’Shea was bitter. He confided to the old-timer about the game, and also about the breakout. He swore he’d square himself with Duffy before he escaped.
“Then a number of things transpired. The breakout went as planned. Eleven boys were counted missing. Eventually ten were recaptured, and security tightened down considerably. But the eleventh, who had trailed the others through the tunnel, was never seen again. Can you fathom which?”
“Got to be our man O’Shea.”
“The same. Now here’s where it gets right interesting. Duffy was found in his tent, his throat slit. Next to him, a large oak chest had been prized open. Scattered around like chicken feathers were bank drafts and currency—Secesh notes—in the thousands.
