takemystand (takemystand) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2010-02-16 09:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | emo, johnny rebel |
Who: Johnny Reb and Emo
What: Facing some past demons
Where: Various places in Elmira, New York
When: Tuesday midafternoon
Warnings: Language, mentions of death by disease and starvation, and a sad Johnny
The city was nothing like he remembered. It had been a quiet little town when they were marched in from Erie Station, through the streets and to the 30-acre place alternately known as Camp Rathbun, Camp No. 3, Elmira, and ultimately --for the some 12,000 prisoners there-- Hellmira. Now the camp was no longer there; the buildings (such as they had been, all green timber and unfinished roofs) had been razed the summer after the surrender. There was a "historical district" of homes there, quiet two-way streets and cozy houses standing on land that had been home to the worst atrocities of Johnny Reb's wartime experience.
No meat, no blankets, ankle-deep in sloshing mud when it rained, filthy water from the river polluted with the camp's waste, and the spectator's stand the townsfolk had erected -- the worst indignity of all, that one...
He'd remained quiet on the drive, and was equally quiet in the terse "Stop here" that he said to Emo, in the driver's seat of the car. They were on Winsor Avenue, where a memorial had been placed. His flag flew above the memorial, right next to the flag of his brother (of his uncle, of his grandmother, of even his father now, of every family member except him). There was nobody else around as he stepped out of the car and approached the monument.
And he was on the prison grounds, even if the prison was no longer there. He was standing on the land that had held him and far, far too many of his brothers-in-arms, far more than were logistically able to fit in such a small space.
He shared a tent with three others from his regiment, all of them young Georgians utterly unprepared for a frigid New York winter. Benjamin, at fifteen, was the youngest of them. Lionel and Edwin were cousins. Between the four of them, they had only one pair of shoes and two blankets. It wasn't too bad, until the first hard frost of winter hit.
He only stayed at the monument for ten minutes or so before getting back in the car. There was no point in staying so long; it would only do more harm than good -- and this trip was going to do him good, no matter what his father and his twin had to say about it. They were content to deny their pasts, but they didn't know what it was to be so closely defined by it. Johnny Reb was his past, was made by it and forever stuck with it. The only way for him to live with that was to make his peace with it. The cemetery was next on the list of places to stop.
The sexton of the cemetery at the time was a Negro, a runaway slave. He carefully recorded all the information of each corpse the camp brought him, and when stone markers were brought into the cemetery years in the future, only seven men of the 2,963 dead would be unidentified. In later years, when he could think of the camp without remembering the constant dull aches of hunger and cold, Johnny would find the whole thing unbearably ironic.
Here was Benjamin's marker. Johnny traced his fingers over the name reverently, like a prayer.
Prayers had been the last things on Benjamin's lips as the smallpox took him, prayers to God and his mother and anybody else the drummer thought could help him. When he died, Johnny stole the shoes off his feet and didn't spare a moment for guilt.
Here was Lionel, who died of malnutrition at the same time as Johnny had. Of the four of them, only Edwin had made it out alive (Johnny figured dying twice disqualified him from that).
Here were the rest of the Georgians, the North Carolinians, the Virginians, all the boys from all the states, neatly lined up in rows beneath matching stone markers. So many of them, and Johnny hadn't thought twice about running and leaving them behind when the opportunity presented itself. He walked up and down each row of the Confederate section of Woodlawn National Cemetery, taking in every name and touching every gravestone like a holy relic. If he apologized to them all, perhaps it would give him... absolution? Peace of mind? Hell if he knew. But he was going to do it anyway.