It’s up to you to keep them alive, the voice whispered beside his ear. Your responsibility to get them home.
36
September 7, 1863
Dear James:
We received your letter of July 28, and understand that its brevity is dictated by the rules of your captors. You are constantly in our prayers, and we pray earnestly that this ghastly war will be over and you can come home to the family that loves you. We are all well here.
You would be surprised to learn that Memphis has been thriving under Federal rule. And with the fall of Vicksburg, river traffic has once again begun to boom. Your dreams of a steamboat of your own are better now than ever before. With the river open we have been receiving plenty of flour, sugar, and coffee and the prices have fallen. Good thing we kept our northern currency since Confederate paper is worth nothing here anymore.
Mollie Henderson stopped by for a marvelous visit this morning, having been relieved to discover her husband, Peter, is alive and well and back in the ranks after having been listed as missing in the fighting over at Murfreesboro.
Colonel Mason tells us that we can send packages to you at Camp Douglas through the regular post and we shall do so. As I mentioned in my last letter, the good Colonel will be making enquiries about the possibility of getting you paroled. He also noted that if you would be willing to swear a loyalty oath to the United States he might be able to get you back to Memphis. I think you two would hit it off splendidly, and he is such a good match for your sister.
Do consider the parole. From the looks of things the war will be over by next summer, and the question of secession will have been decided one way or another. It was bad enough that you missed your sister’s wedding. Should providence permit, we would love to have you home in the event you might become an uncle.
All of our love,
Mother.
“I don’t understand.” Doc dropped limply to the ground where James sat in the sunlight. For the moment even the itching and burning of lice and flea bites was forgotten.
James reached out, carefully taking the letter from Doc’s nerveless fingers. James leaned his head back, eyes closed in the bright sunlight. The letter hung between his fingers to waffle in the cool breeze blowing in from Lake Michigan.
“All them times you wrote her? Maybe she never got them letters. Maybe she thought you forgot her.”
Doc reached a hand to his chest as if he could soothe the odd emptiness inside. All he felt was bones, the fragile skin beneath his threadbare shirt, and the hollow where his shrunken gut receded under the rib cage. But then they were all walking skeletons, especially if they’d been in the camp for any length of time.
In his memory, Ann Marie smiled at him with love, eyes dancing with promise.
“She married a colonel. Whose colonel? Reb? Yank?”
“Reckon Yank,” James said softly. “No Reb colonel would be wanting me to give a loyalty oath to the Union.”
Doc blinked his eyes. An eerie keening wanted to rise up through his lungs and trachea.
She’s married?
“Doc, don’t,” James told him. “I know how much you loved her.”
“Loved?” His voice broke. “Loved?”
He staggered to his feet, aware of the hundreds of bored men crowding the yard around them.
James was standing, hands on Doc’s shoulders. “Why the hell didn’t you leave, Doc? You could have made a stink, demanded that they release you on parole as a noncombatant! You could have gone home!”
Doc shrugged off the restraining grip. He staggered forward, vision silvered.
From long familiarity, he knew the slope of the deadline. All he had to do was march up that angled soil. So many others had taken the route before him.
“Doc!” James screamed in his ear. “Damn you! Stop it!”
Doc angrily flung James’s restraining hand from his shoulder. In the process, he blinked enough of the tears away to see the slope. Four paces, three, two, just another …
Hard hands grabbed him from behind. He was jerked backward, his foot lifted high for the next and fatal step. With a grunt, he hit the ground, smelling the reek of piss. Confederate prisoners made a point of urinating on the deadline. One of the few acts of defiance that they could actually get away with.
Three bodies landed on top of his, knocking the wind from his lungs.
“What the hell are you doing, Doc?” Andy McNeish’s face shoved close, his ragged gray kepi at an angle on his blond head.
“He just learned his fiancée married another,” James said.
“Thought that was your sister!”
James sounded miserable. “Just … leave it be, okay?”
“Goddamn,” one of the other men holding Doc declared. “If Doc, of all people, can give up like this? Ain’t none of us safe.”
Doc felt his shoulders shaking, and reached out desperately, pleadingly, for the Yankee guard up on the walk.
The man was watching him, rifle raised, waiting for him to set foot on the deadline. A slight smile lay on the guard’s lips, his aiming eye bright with anticipation over the rifle’s sights, the other squinted closed.
“Just let me go,” Doc pleaded.
“You ain’t thinkin’ right, Doc,” McNeish growled into his ear. “You kept too many of us alive to let you squander yourself like this.”
They jerked him to his feet, keeping their hold. A ragamuffin crowd had formed, delighted for this break in the ceaseless boredom. Now they waited, watching to see what would happen next.
As James, McNeish, and Ab Smith dragged Doc back toward the barracks, the
