A Morality Tale

Part 1

The woman grabbed the loaded shotgun standing in the corner of the room and taking a lit lantern, she went out across the yard to the chicken house. The chickens were squawking again and this time, she was going to get the intruder.

She was sure it was a skunk. A few mornings she had gone out to collect eggs and found chicken feathers in the yard along with the occasional carcass, the head torn off so that the skunk could lap up the blood. Not only were there the tell-tale sucked eggs, but the musty smell of its fur would hang around the coop for a while. So this time she was ready and even if a few chickens got in the way, she was going to blow away the polecat for good.

She walked cautiously toward the chicken coop but it was no skunk; it looked like a man inside the fence, kneeling, his back to her. He hadn't seen her and since the chickens were still running around in the fenced section, not being able to slip out the gate that had swung back to an almost closed position, he hadn't heard her either.

She set the lantern on the ground and put the shotgun to her shoulder. "What're you doin', mister?"

The man quickly turned his head and stared at her. Then he slowly raised his hands in the air. "I don't have a gun," he said. "Please don't shoot. I don't mean any harm—I just…"

But she didn't let him finish his sentence. "Put your hands on the back of your neck and stand up."

The man dropped the egg he had been holding and tried to do as she ordered but he had difficulty standing up without the use of his hands. Finally, he managed. He stood about ten feet away from her and she reached down, watching him the whole time and picked up the lantern. She held up the light and saw that he wasn't lying—he was unarmed. He looked like a scarecrow, tall and thin; she felt he must have once been a big man, but now he was practically a skeleton, his face gaunt, his eyes hollow. And when she held the lantern closer to look at his face better, she saw that he still had egg yolk and slimy whites on his beard which was unkempt, as unkempt as his greasy, black hair that almost reached his shoulders and held bits of forest debris. But what struck her the most were his eyes; they looked as if they had seen horrors.

She held the lantern lower and saw that he had a bloody shirt; he obviously had a wound in his right side that was bleeding anew; the spot was glistening while his lower shirt and the upper part of his trousers had become soaked earlier; the blood there had dried and turned a rusty brown. And his clothing that hung on his body, was a Yankee uniform, or what was left of one. Now it was faded and worn.

She knew who he was. He was the escapee from the stockade at Camp Sumter near Andersonville, the man the Confederate soldiers were looking for when they had stopped by her farm earlier. If they came by now, she would gladly turn him over to them, even watched while they hanged him or shot him. After all, hadn't the Union more than likely killed her husband and destroyed almost all the south?

She would get the news of the war from travelers and neighbors, even though the nearest neighbor was over ten miles away, and she knew all the atrocities the Yankee soldiers had inflicted, the bayonetting of children, the raping of women—or so it went-and she had been warned that it was going to become worse as the Union army worked its way deeper into Georgia and all the way into Florida. And everywhere they went, the Union Army left a conflagration of destruction.

Up until recently, she had been isolated from the war on her small farm in southwest Georgia, but the two soldiers who had come by and to whom she served a fresh pan of cornbread and butter on her front porch, told her that Sherman was moving into the southern reaches of Georgia and that if she had relatives out west, she should go while she still could. But she told them that she had no one, she didn't even know if she still had a husband, if he was dead or alive. She would stay.

"This is the best food we've had in a long time, ma'am. I am grateful for your hospitality," the blond soldier told her. She had noticed how thin they both were and the red-headed soldier seemed just a boy to her, he was so young.

"Don't they feed you men at Andersonville?" she asked.

"Ma'am," the red-headed soldier said, "we barely got enough food to feed all the Union prisoners we got in the stockade—we barely get fed either. Leastways we get to go out and shoot a squirrel or a rabbit and make a stew. But corn meal? We got just enough to make some thin gruel for the prisoners to eat, leastways ourselves." The man went back to eating.

"Best cornbread I think I ever tasted, ma'am," the blond soldier said. It was obvious to her that he was the more refined of the two and although she wasn't particularly familiar with uniforms, his seemed a bit fancier that the other man's.

"Thank you—I made it with buttermilk and a little bacon fat. Would each of you like a glass of buttermilk?" They replied they would so she went back in and brought out the pitcher and two glasses and watched as the redhead quickly drained his glass of the thick milk while the blond savored every sip.

He smiled at her; the woman was young and pretty and he hadn't seen a woman, let alone a pretty one, in a long time; she made him ache for his wife back in Virginia. He told her that they had so many prisoners in Andersonville that they were transferring them to another stockade when this Union officer escaped and they were to bring him back or kill him. Then they talked about her husband and she revealed that other than a few letters early on, she had no knowledge of her husband's whereabouts, if he was dead or alive. And although he didn't say it, the soldier was certain her husband was dead. No man would ignore a wife like her and would have at least written by now or deserted to get back to her.

She then gave the soldiers two chickens which the blond one, Hawkins, tied over this saddle. They thanked her and then rode off and she watched them disappear into the falling dusk after telling them that she wished them luck in finding the prisoner.

And now she was face to face with the escaped prisoner. "Get out of here before I shoot you," she told the man, her voice quavering. She knew that she wouldn't shoot him but all that mattered was that he thought she would.

"Yes, ma'am," he said and began to drop his arms.

"Don't put your arms down—just walk, and if I see you lurking around here, I'll blow you clean apart. Understand?"

He just nodded and with a look of resignation, clasped his hands behind his neck again, and began to walk away. He had only gone a few yards when he seemed to stumble. His legs buckled underneath him and he collapsed, face-down on the ground. She cautiously walked over but he lay quietly, his face turned slightly to the side. She prodded him with the shotgun but he didn't move. She bent down slightly and held the lantern closer to him and saw that he had been shot in the right side of his back and for some reason, the thought that the soldiers had shot him in the back softened her a bit; he had been escaping, of that she was sure. And she thought of her husband. Had he been in a Union stockade and tried to escape, he would have been shot too, just like this man had. And she wondered if this starving man had a wife and children waiting and hoping for him to return safely to them. She considered whether or not she should attempt to revive him and feed him. But then she thought about how the Union was starving out the Confederacy and she decided she wanted him dead. It was the North that was responsible for the Union prisoners not receiving proper rations.

"Let him die out here—bleed to death," she said to herself and went into her house, bolting the door behind her. Then she washed her hands and went to her bed but she didn't sleep; it was too hot and she couldn't forget that she had a dying man in her front yard. "God forgive me," she whispered and felt hot tears.

It was mid-August in Georgia and the nights were barely cooler than the days and there was no breeze that night—the air was still. And she hoped that in the morning she would have a dead man in her yard or even better, that he had died and been dragged away by a black bear or some other predator. After all, inaction wasn't a sin. If she did nothing and let God decide if he should live or die, how could she be guilty of his death? But she knew she would be, she couldn't lie to herself, so sighing, she rolled out of bed, put on her light wrap, picked up the lantern, lit it, and slowly went to the front door. She paused before drawing back the bolt but she did. She looked out in the front yard and by the moonlight and the light of the lantern, she saw that he was still lying in the dirt.

TBC