Andersonville by Edward M. Erdelac Page A

Crescent City Native Guards under Captain Bonseigneur. I was a lieutenant. I was ready to fight. But then my own friend, my so-called brother, he came and told me the Confederacy didn’t want me, didn’t want a colored unit. They took our arms, put my family in a refugee camp. I lost my home, all my father and mother had built. He’s out there still. Even now. Fighting for the South. But whose South? Not mine.”
    Barclay spit into the earth.
    Bruegel stared at the floor, then looked up at Barclay.
    “Don’t waste your life in hate, Lourdes. When it’s all said and done, I’d rather have a brother than an enemy any old day.”
    “Major?” came a voice from outside. “Got your ration, sir.”
    “Come in,” Bruegel said.
    In stepped Clemis. He stiffened and adjusted his spectacles at the sight of Barclay, then shuffled past with a wooden dish of corn bread and cold meat.
    “Clemis,” said Bruegel. “This is—”
    “Yeah, Earl Stevens. We was on work detail together, sir,” said Clemis.
    Bruegel glanced at Barclay askance but said nothing.
    Barclay straightened and touched his cap.
    “I’ll be takin’ my leave, Major.”
    “I’ll see what I can do about the paper. Do come and see me again.”
    Barclay smiled and exited, ignoring the withering glare of Clemis.

Chapter 8
    Barclay looked back at Bruegel’s dugout and wondered how badly he had been mistaken in telling the man so much. Idle conversation between the major and Clemis, who appeared to hate him already, could very easily lead to trouble. He knew better than that. What had possessed him? He had behaved like some addle-brained amateur.
    Perhaps the flogging he had seen that morning had affected his judgment. In the back of his mind, the crack of Turner’s whip kept sounding. Maybe he had needed to, for once, dispense with falsehood, not worry about keeping all his lies in the air. He only hoped it didn’t end up costing him his purpose.
    On the way back to the shebang he shared with Charlie, he rounded a corner and found three men shoving a fourth between them, drubbing him about the head and shoulders with their fists. One was Sarsfield, the redhead who had robbed and killed the boy only that morning. He had a stout knotty piece of pine in his fist, one end whittled into a handle, and as Barclay watched, he swung it into the man’s gut and sent him to his knees in the mud.
    An unreasoning anger welled up in his chest at the sight of that red hair, and he thought of the glassy eyes of the boy, the sloppy cut beneath his chin.
    “Get it, boys,” Sarsfield ordered, and his two cronies stooped down and tried to pry something from the man’s grip.
    The men struggled with him for a bit, and Sarsfield kicked the kneeling man onto his side, where he curled up into a ball.
    “Give it up, you goddamned savage, or I’ll bust your skull wide open!” he growled, pointing down at him with the pine club.
    Barclay moved swiftly behind Sarsfield as the man raised the club back over his head. He snatched the man by his wrist and twisted, slapping his other hand to his elbow and forcing him back across his outstretched leg, throwing him flat on his back and coming away with the club.
    The closest man whirled and opened his mouth in a belligerent curse, but Barclay closed it with a swipe of the club that flung a few bloody teeth into the air and sent him away howling, clutching at his bleeding mouth. The third man turned and ran.
    Barclay spun as Sarsfield got to his feet and planted a swift kick to his chest that sent him sprawling a few feet away, heaving breathlessly and hugging his torso.
    He threw the club down in the mud.
    The battered man on the ground uncurled and looked up in confusion at Barclay. He was Indian, with dark eyes and black hair past his ears, woefully underfed. He had a wooden bowl containing about two or three ounces of boiled bacon in his hands, his precious ration.
    The man scrambled to his feet and limped off without a word or a nod