Andersonville by Edward M. Erdelac Page B

he’d felt before.
    “Easy,” said Doctor John. “You’re gonna be tender a while yet.”
    “You talk different,” Bill observed.
    Barclay stretched his stiff arms, heard the elbows pop. There was no need for all that shuffling and patois affect among these men. Besides, if Clemis was right, he wasn’t very good at it, apparently.
    “I save the slave talk for the masters,” he said.
    Bill nodded and smiled slightly.
    “Where the hell did you get bandages?” Barclay asked.
    “Most anything can be got in Andersonville if you got something to trade,” Doctor John said with a wink.
    Bill had returned to the corner of the tent. He moved aside a heavy rock and produced a leather bag cut from an old boot. There was a three-foot-wide hole beneath the rock, and he dropped the boot into it. There was a far-off splash that made Barclay’s eyes widen. Bill pulled the boot up by a string, poured out water into a tin cup, and handed it to Doctor John, who in turn swirled it around a bit, then held it out to Barclay.
    He knew that if that well held clean water, it was as valuable here as if it had held oil. He wondered how many other ramshackle shelters hid a private well.
    “So what do I owe you for this?” Barclay asked, sitting up stiffly and taking the cup, sipping the cool water.
    “The price of that drink is your silence,” Doctor John said seriously, “and your life if you break it.”
    “Don’t worry. I can keep a secret.”
    “I can see that,” Doctor John said.
    “What about the doctoring?”
    “It’s on me,” said Bill, replacing the stone.
    “What do I owe
you,
then?”
    “I owed you, remember?”
    “Fair enough,” Barclay said.
    “You said some interesting things while you been here, Lourdes,” Doctor John said.
    Barclay narrowed his eyes. Had he resisted Turner’s lash only to spill the beans in a delirium? How much did they know?
    “Such as?”
    “You talked a lot…about spirits,” Bill said. “And something called loa.”
    Barclay relaxed slightly but then looked at them askance.
    “It’s all right,” Bill said. “We’re Indians.”
    Barclay shrugged.
    “All right.
Lwa
. You know vodoun? Voodoo?”
    “Voodoo?” said Doctor John, grinning and exchanging a look with Bill.
    Bill didn’t smile.
    “We’re from Michigan,” Bill said.
    “
Lwa
are the spirits of the ancients and the ancestors. The Invisibles who act as intermediaries between
Bon Dieu
—God—and man.”
    “Like the
manidoog
,” said Bill, leaning forward.
    “Mani —?” Barclay said.
    “
Manidoog.
Or
Manitou
. Spirits of rock and tree, everything,” said Bill. “Each one has a function. Each a nation, and each can be a go-between for us and the
Gitche Manitou
. The Great Spirit.”
    “What else do you know about this stuff, Lourdes?” Doctor John asked.
    Barclay shrugged.
    “To be honest, I don’t go in for it all that much anymore.”
    “Why not?” Bill asked.
    Why? Because something had happened. The
lwa
had interfered in his life, guided his family a certain way, and they had been wrong. He had trusted their judgment, welcomed it, and it had cost him dearly. He didn’t disbelieve in them, of course, but he didn’t seek their counsel anymore or show them deference.
    “I just don’t,” he said.
    “What were you dreaming of just now?” Doctor John asked.
    Barclay shrugged.
    “My sister. Things that happened…a long time ago.”
    “Is that the only dream you’ve had here in Andersonville?”
    Barclay frowned. He thought of the things he’d seen at the whipping post. But those were not dreams, he knew. Yet he wasn’t ready to talk about that just yet. Not to anybody.
    “Why? What do
you
dream?” Barclay countered, looking at both of them.
    “I barely sleep. My dreams are bad,” said Bill. “Every night, bad.”
    “A lot of men who are aware of such things,” Doctor John said, “have the same complaint.”
    “There’s something wrong with this place,” Bill said. “In my dreams I