Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War by Jeff Mann

Author:Jeff Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: romance, gay, queer, civil war, historical, gay romance, manlove, romance historical, m2m
Publisher: Jeff Mann

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CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

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When Drew’s sobs subside, I unlock his shackles. It takes a long time to tug his smelly boots off, his piss-soaked trousers and drawers. Their bitter odor fills the tent. Again, after so many hours bucked, he can barely move. How he’ll recover fast enough to keep up tomorrow only God knows. But now my battered Yankee lies entirely naked, save for collar and cuffs, in the light of the candle stub. He is, of course, as beautiful as ever, despite the blood and bruises, but I keep my lust to myself for now. The lover can come later. Right now, what’s needed yet again is the healer. I roll and heave him this way and that, soaping, scrubbing, kneading, salving, bandaging, doing what I can to reverse the damage of the afternoon. His breath catches, as if hung on something, then sluices out of him in great sighs. He’s stunned, unresponsive, a great stone I move up and down, back and forth.

What I can’t salve, of course, is his pride. Hours of painful bondage and abject humiliation at the hands of my company-mates, those facts mere soap and water can’t erase. It was full dark when Sarge gave the order to release Drew. By then, both his eyes had been blackened by my compatriots’ fists, his mouth chafed bloody by the stick-bit, his wrists chafed bloody by the ropes. By then, my Yankee Achilles had been used as a piss-pot and a spittoon by half the camp. And, after fourteen hours bucked, he was sobbing without check, uncontrollably, in so much pain he’d lost all caring or awareness of what his many jeering witnesses might see or hear. He cried harder when I unbucked him and helped him stretch his limbs. He kept crying as Rufus and Jeremiah helped me drag him to my tent.

Now he’s quiet, lying on his back atop the oilcloth, beneath the quilt I brought from home, blond head propped on my haversack. His eyes are closed, both swollen shut. The weevily hardtack Sarge ordered me to feed him I’ve soaked in cold coffee till the bugs floated to the surface. He tried to eat it, got down a couple of bites, then gagged and threw it up. I’ve managed to get only a few sips of whiskey down him. This does not bode well for tomorrow’s relocation. He’ll be not only stiff and sore from today’s long restraint, but he’ll be weak from lack of food. If he collapses, if Sarge commands me to kill him, well, someone will die indeed. I won’t know until that moment, if it comes, whether it will be Drew or Sarge.

I sit on the cot, chin in my hands, elbows on my knees, and study him. His face is a little boy’s bruised up after a brawl. I try to imagine him as a child, a farm boy in Pennsylvania, smiling as he climbs a tree or greedily gobbles a piece of pie. I try to imagine us meeting somewhere else, in some other time, some decade less full of cruelty and death.

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