“Ain’t old no more. Been completely rebuilt by that Gast fella. You seen him. I heard it’s now the hottest blast furnace in the country. He was around a lot last month when they was finishin’ the train depot down yonder.”
“Oh, the guy with muttonchops…”
“Yeah, and the white horse.”
“And there must be a big stockade somewhere beyond the works. As for what we’re doin’ here —shee-it, armies been doin’ that for a thousand years. The spoils’a war is what it’s called. Usin’ the enemy’s resources ’cos they sure as hell’d do the same to us. Shit, now that Lincoln won’t exchange prisoners no more, what else can we do? I been hearin’ some ungodly stories ’bout that Yankee prison in Annapolis. Starvin’ our men, beatin’ ’em.”
“Goddamn Union can go to hell, and we’ll send ’em there. A’course what we’re doin’ here is all right. You heard that, Major. We just kicked the Yankees out of Tennessee. General Lee’s army’ll surely be capturin’ Washington by December.”
“Yeah, and they got cold winters up there. Our boys need good sleepin’ bags…”
You still don’t understand yet you march your post via some order beyond your consciousness. They’re drying something in that field, you realize. And it’s NOT peat. It’s something coming from the barn…
Your perimeter march takes you around the other side. No doorways on this wall but there is a half door, with the top half open.
Go look inside…
As you approach, a stench rises. It’s an appalling smell and also an incomprehensible one. These civilian prisoners probably hadn’t washed in months but only part of the stench was body odor. Their clothes had all been stripped, obviously, to reuse the fabric for the war effort, but now that you thought of it, why go to all this trouble to confine and feed women, children, and old men? They were of no military value…
Then you look into the barn—
Large wood fires burn in each corner, and over each fire sits a kettle six feet wide. The kettles are boiling, gushing the foul-smelling steam, and each is being stirred by a male slave with a long wooden paddle.
“Boil it good, boys,” a pistol-bearing officer barks.
But what are they boiling in the kettles?
“Gotta kill all that dirty Yankee lice ’fore it’s fit for our men…”
You still don’t understand…until you look to the center of the barn where there is an incessant snick—snick—snick sound…
The mostly nude prisoners are standing in a silent line. They’re all very skinny, ribs showing, knees knobby. Some of the women show signs of pregnancy; in fact, so do some of the female children just entering puberty.
“Next ten! Come on, hurry it up!”
Ten at a time the prisoners are called to the center of the barn where ten grim-faced Negro women wait, each holding a pair of shears.
Their duty now is clear. They quickly clip all of the hair off the prisoners’ heads.
“Arms up!”
Next, tufts of underarm hair are shorn off to fall to the ground.
“Feet apart! Hurry!”
Now each Negro kneels, shears poised. All pubic hair is similarly snipped off. Children too young to have any are merely shorn of their head hair and sent to the second door where they reboard the wagon…
They’re boiling hair, you realize, wide-eyed. Then it’s dried in the sun and used to stuff mattresses and sleeping bags…
After several cycles the hair sits in veritable piles. The cutters take a few minutes to scoop up the hair and drop it in the kettles after the previous batch is skimmed out and dropped steaming into a waiting wheelbarrow.
Hence, the process.
A farm for human mattress filling.
On several occasions, you see soldiers throw some women into the kettles, who are left to churn for a minute and are then pulled out. The soldiers stand round guffawing as they watch these unfortunates shriek and shudder, red-skinned, on the floor, their eyes boiled and their faces steaming. You have the distinct impression that the soldiers are doing this simply for amusement.
You step back gagging, a monstrous taste in your mouth. You stagger backward to see out of the corner of your eye the wagon heading up the hill, only now the forlorn captives are all bald.
The wave of nausea threatens to keel you over, and from a distance you hear some shouting.
“Get her!”
You look out but only see through a shifting vertigo of sickness…
“Private! Shoot that escaping prisoner right now!”
You’re still staggering. When your vision clears, you see a bald and very naked little girl running away from the barn.
“SHOULDER YOUR WEAPON AND FIRE!” a red-faced lieutenant is screaming as he approaches. You raise your weapon and sight the target in the V-notch. Your finger touches the trigger…
“What are you waitin’ for!”
“But-but, sir,” you stammer, “it’s just a-a little girl…”
A pistol barrel touches your temple. “Private, if you do not shoot that escaping prisoner, I will kill you right now and put your hair in with the next batch!”
I’m not going to do it, you think but nevertheless you take a breath, let half of it out, and squeeze the trigger. The hammer snaps, striking the brass primer cap, and after a split-second delay, the musket tries to leap out of your hand. Black powder blows the .69-caliber smoothbore minie ball out of the muzzle with a deafening boom and a belch of smoke.
Your eyes were closed when you squeezed the trigger but you hear a faint thwack! and a child’s shriek.
The lieutenant is fanning gun smoke with his hat. “Fine shot, Private! You hit that kid right in the back even as she was turnin’!”
Your eyes sting like fire. You see the small nude body quivering in the grass. For a few seconds she hacks out some sobs—“Mommy! Daddy!”—then:
Silence.
“What’s your name, Private?”
The answer grinds out, “Collier, Justin. Third Corp, sir.”
Did the lieutenant’s eyes seem tinged yellow? “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
Your throat is nearly squeezed shut, and in the back of your head a voice whispers, You killed a child, you killed a child…and the words come out of your mouth with no awareness, “Fredericksburg and both Bull Runs, sir.” But you only wish you could reload and kill yourself right there.
“Damn fine shooting, Private.” A slap on the back. “Now get some nigrahs to recover the body and resume your post.”
You stare into the field and drone, “Yes…” II
“…sir…”
