Cooper's thinning hair fluttered in the wind. His face, normally pale, was the color of pond ice. "I doubt it. Not yet. You've only stayed down a few minutes each time. We must demonstrate that she can stay down much longer."
"Well, sir, how long is much longer?" Alexander asked.
'Till the air runs out. Till the crew has reached the absolute limit of endurance. We must find that limit, Dixon. In fact, I want you to choose one man and put him ashore for the next test. I'll replace him — I got Old Bory's permisssion yesterday. I did it because it will help banish his doubt. I must prove the Navy Department trusts this vessel, that all the deaths have been the result of human error, not faulty design."
"But Mr. Main," Lucius protested, "it could be extremely dangerous for you —"
Then, reddening and realizing he was in the presence of someone else who would face danger, he shut his mouth. He avoided his superior's murderous eye. Dixon's own reaction surprised Cooper.
"Mr. Chickering's right, sir. You are a married man with a family. Is your wife agreeable to —?"
"I need General Beauregard's permission, but I don't need hers. For anything. Keep that in mind, if you please. I want Hunley in service, sinking Yankee ships and drowning Yankee seamen, without further delay. I am going to take part in the test dive. We are going to make it tomorrow night."
His hunched posture, compressed lips, furious eyes made argument inadvisable. Seaward, the Parrotts boomed as the day's bombardment started. A dozen big, black-headed gulls lifted from the beach in fright.
90
Approaching the end of his sixth month in Libby Prison, Billy weighed twenty-eight pounds less than he had the day he walked in. His beard hung to the middle of his chest. His face had a gray, sunken appearance. But he had learned how you survived.
You poke your food with your finger, hunting for weevils. Then you smelled the food. Better to starve than swallow some of the spoiled slop fed to prisoners. Bad food could induce the flux and force you to run repeatedly to a trough in one of the odorous wooden closets the keepers dignified with the name bathroom. You could die before you stopped running.
You inserted no angry words or sentiments, no criticism of the prison or its administration, in the letters you were permitted to write. To conserve paper, the allowable length of each letter had been reduced to six lines. Billy took this as a sign of the war going badly for the rebs. You didn't count on any of the letters reaching the North; Billy suspected some or all were burned or dumped in the James.
You slept lightly in case prisoners from another part of the building staged a rat raid, hunting for items to steal. To sleep lightly wasn't difficult. Each of the large rooms of the prison held between three hundred and five hundred men; the place was bursting because exchanges had slowed to a trickle. Billy's room on the top floor was so crowded that everyone slept spoon fashion. Without blankets. That added to the ease of sleeping lightly now that winter had come.
You stayed away from the windows. You did so no matter how strong your longing for a whiff of fresh air instead of the stinks of fumigation. Guards outside, and even some civilians, occasionally shot at prisoners who appeared at windows. These marksmen received no reprimand from the warden.
You broke the tedium by taking an apple or newspaper or small homemade oatmeal cake from the basket of Crazy Betsy, then chatted with her for a bit about matters of no consequence. Crazy Betsy was a tiny, tense, blue-eyed woman, about forty, addressed formally as Miss Van Lew. Boys loitering outside the building shrieked "witch!" when she entered. Occasionally they threw stones at her. But that didn't deter frequent visits, and the authorities allowed her the run of Libby because she was a lifetime resident of Church Hill and helped keep the inmates pacified with her little gifts.
You did everything possible to avoid depressive thoughts of your situation. You played checkers. Swapped combat stories. Learned French or musical theory in one of the informal classes taught by prisoners. If you had spare paper, you scribbled out an item for the Libby Chronicle and handed it to the editor, who stood up and recited an entire newspaper twice weekly to huge crowds jammed into one of the largest rooms.
Above all, if you were Billy Hazard, you avoided contact with Corporal Clyde Vesey.
Throughout the early weeks of Billy's imprisonment, that wasn't hard. Vesey was still posted on the ground floor, where he continued to receive new prisoners and maintain records of those already inside. One night right after Christmas, however, in the freezing room where Billy was trying to sleep amid the restless men around him, Vesey appeared, specterlike, carrying a lantern.
"There you are, Hazard," said he, smiling. "I was anxious to find you and tell you I've been transferred up here, nights. It means half again as much in wages. It also means I shall be able to give you the attention you deserve."
Billy coughed into his fist; he had caught a cold. After the spasm, he said, "Wonderful news. I'll treasure each and every golden moment in your presence, Vesey."
Still sweetly smiling, Vesey glanced at the hand with which Billy braced himself on his bit of floor while he spoke. Quickly Vesey shifted and stepped on the hand with his hobnailed boot.
"I'll have none of your arrogant college ways while I'm on duty." He put more weight on Billy's hand. "Clear, sir?"
Billy clenched his teeth and squinted. Tears filled the corners of his eyes, and a little line of blood ran from under the sole of Vesey's boot. "You son of a bitch," Billy whispered. Fortunately Vesey was talking again.
"What? Do I see the brave Yankee weeping? Excellent. Excellent!" He twisted his boot back and forth. Billy couldn't hold back a low, choked sound. Vesey raised his boot, and Billy saw the gashes, the blood shining in the lantern light. "I must go on my rounds. But I shall be back often from now on. We shall have regular lessons in humility, until you learn your proper station. Lower than the lowest nigger. Good evening, Hazard."
And off he went, humming a hymn.
Billy blinked several times, tore a piece from his ragged shirt, and wrapped his bleeding hand. He sneezed twice. Men lay on either side of him and at his head and foot. He was certain they must be awake, but not one had stirred during Vesey's visit. He didn't blame them. He wasn't sure he would risk his own chances of survival just to defend some other prisoner unlucky enough to draw a guard's wrath.
By early January Billy's hand was infected and his cold much worse. Vesey sought him out at least once every night to abuse him verbally or force him to march up and down the prison staircase for two hours, or stand in a comer on tiptoe while Vesey sat on a stool, a bayonet on his musket and the steel tip held half an inch from Billy's trembling back.
"Confess," Vesey would croon to him, smiling. "By now you must be cognizant of your inferiority. Your heathen nature. Your wrong thinking. Confess that you admire President Davis and consider General Lee the greatest soldier in Christendom."
Billy's legs shook. His toes felt broken. He said, "Fuck you."
Vesey tore Billy's shirt and raked his back once with the bayonet. Luckily the wound didn't fester as his hand had; the hand was all yellow and brown with pus and scabs. "We shall continue this," Vesey promised as his duty sergeant came looking for him. "Be assured of it, heathen."
Billy's attitude about helping other prisoners soon underwent a change. Eight new men arrived in the top-floor room to occupy the space of a captain who had died in his sleep. One of the newcomers, a sallow, curly-haired youth with a high forehead, found space next to Billy. The newcomer's name was Timothy Wann. He had enlisted at the end of his freshman year at Harvard and been brevetted to second lieutenant after three others holding that rank in his unit were killed one by one.