of thanks.
Barclay spared Sarsfield one last glance and continued on his way. That had felt good, a physical unburdening to match the lapse in mental concentration he had allowed himself with Bruegel. This place was like an assault on his whole being. He had been feeling like a clenched fist since passing through the gate.
He was nearly to the shebang when he encountered a gaggle of foot traffic crowding around the North Gate backed up clear to the center of the stockade.
He craned his neck and saw some Rebel soldiers perched atop a mule wagon, handing a few pine boxes of something into the outstretched hands of the crowding prisoners. It was the ration wagon, he realized, and joined the press and let the choking tide of filthy men carry him closer to observe.
It seemed the Union sergeants were entrusted to distribute the pine boxes to their various companies. Barclay saw Limber and Romeo carry a pair of the boxes on their shoulders over to an area where Charlie and a few other faces he had seen in his new neighborhood waited around a blanket spread on the ground.
Limber tipped the box and spilled a mound of cornmeal onto the dirty blanket, meal ground so coarsely that he could see bits of cob tumble out, and Romeo emptied a box of boiled bacon. Then Limber returned the box to the issuing Rebels, who dropped it back into the wagon bed and hefted out another for the next sergeant in line.
Barclay wasn’t overly squeamish, but a look at the pint or so of meal the men carried away from the blankets in hats or cow horns, tin plates, or other makeshift receptacles put him off his stomach. It was crawling with weevils.
As he drifted closer to the Rebels, he realized, with a considerable drop in his appetite, that they were dishing out the rations from the very same wagon they had hauled the piles of putrid corpses out that morning.
No, he wasn’t quite that hungry yet, though he knew in the days to come he would be.
He decided to head down to the swampy creek to ascertain the best way to gather drinkable water.
The creek was a sorry affair. The men apparently could do nothing to keep it clean. The scummy tributary was coated with a yellowish film, probably the greasy trash he had seen the bakers dumping carelessly into it upstream. He wondered if this was the only water supply of the place. If so, it seemed the best thing to do was to get up early in the morning before the bake house was running and gather water at the point where it was newly entering the stockade. This area stank to high heaven of shit. The air whirred with buzzing flies, and the sand beneath his shoes jumped with hordes of fleas. Although there was an area to the extreme east near where the creek flowed out under the stockade wall set up alongside a plank bridge and a squatting rail designated as the sinks, apparently the less mobile men used the entire creek for their latrine. Then again, he had spied men squatting over shallow holes beside their dugouts. No doubt when the rains came the lower domiciles paid the price for their upper neighbors’ convenience when they flooded and spilled their murky contents down into the creek. The water was filthy with refuse. The area made Barclay’s stomach turn and put a harrow deep in him. He saw a corpse, little more than a skeleton wrapped tightly in yellow flesh, with a crowd of flies crawling over its back drift by facedown. No one paid it any mind.
As he stood covering his mouth and nose against the stench, a man walked past him purposefully and descended to the bank of the putrid creek, where he unbuttoned his tunic, revealing his ghastly starved frame, each knobby vertebra distinctly visible through his pasty skin. He neatly folded his shell jacket, laying it atop the marshy sand. The man continued to disrobe and added his baggy trousers and ratty shoes to the pile, then waded out into the disgusting water stark naked until it reached his bony thighs, at which point he raised his arms and called out in
Barclay spared Sarsfield one last glance and continued on his way. That had felt good, a physical unburdening to match the lapse in mental concentration he had allowed himself with Bruegel. This place was like an assault on his whole being. He had been feeling like a clenched fist since passing through the gate.
He was nearly to the shebang when he encountered a gaggle of foot traffic crowding around the North Gate backed up clear to the center of the stockade.
He craned his neck and saw some Rebel soldiers perched atop a mule wagon, handing a few pine boxes of something into the outstretched hands of the crowding prisoners. It was the ration wagon, he realized, and joined the press and let the choking tide of filthy men carry him closer to observe.
It seemed the Union sergeants were entrusted to distribute the pine boxes to their various companies. Barclay saw Limber and Romeo carry a pair of the boxes on their shoulders over to an area where Charlie and a few other faces he had seen in his new neighborhood waited around a blanket spread on the ground.
Limber tipped the box and spilled a mound of cornmeal onto the dirty blanket, meal ground so coarsely that he could see bits of cob tumble out, and Romeo emptied a box of boiled bacon. Then Limber returned the box to the issuing Rebels, who dropped it back into the wagon bed and hefted out another for the next sergeant in line.
Barclay wasn’t overly squeamish, but a look at the pint or so of meal the men carried away from the blankets in hats or cow horns, tin plates, or other makeshift receptacles put him off his stomach. It was crawling with weevils.
As he drifted closer to the Rebels, he realized, with a considerable drop in his appetite, that they were dishing out the rations from the very same wagon they had hauled the piles of putrid corpses out that morning.
No, he wasn’t quite that hungry yet, though he knew in the days to come he would be.
He decided to head down to the swampy creek to ascertain the best way to gather drinkable water.
The creek was a sorry affair. The men apparently could do nothing to keep it clean. The scummy tributary was coated with a yellowish film, probably the greasy trash he had seen the bakers dumping carelessly into it upstream. He wondered if this was the only water supply of the place. If so, it seemed the best thing to do was to get up early in the morning before the bake house was running and gather water at the point where it was newly entering the stockade. This area stank to high heaven of shit. The air whirred with buzzing flies, and the sand beneath his shoes jumped with hordes of fleas. Although there was an area to the extreme east near where the creek flowed out under the stockade wall set up alongside a plank bridge and a squatting rail designated as the sinks, apparently the less mobile men used the entire creek for their latrine. Then again, he had spied men squatting over shallow holes beside their dugouts. No doubt when the rains came the lower domiciles paid the price for their upper neighbors’ convenience when they flooded and spilled their murky contents down into the creek. The water was filthy with refuse. The area made Barclay’s stomach turn and put a harrow deep in him. He saw a corpse, little more than a skeleton wrapped tightly in yellow flesh, with a crowd of flies crawling over its back drift by facedown. No one paid it any mind.
As he stood covering his mouth and nose against the stench, a man walked past him purposefully and descended to the bank of the putrid creek, where he unbuttoned his tunic, revealing his ghastly starved frame, each knobby vertebra distinctly visible through his pasty skin. He neatly folded his shell jacket, laying it atop the marshy sand. The man continued to disrobe and added his baggy trousers and ratty shoes to the pile, then waded out into the disgusting water stark naked until it reached his bony thighs, at which point he raised his arms and called out in
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