The Appomattox River runs right along the northern border of Petersburg, Virginia and there are about four or five streams that branch south and flow into the town proper. During the Civil War, in 1864, on the siege of this poor town, Union General Benjamin Butler unveiled the Gatling Gun for the first time. A large rapid revolving gun that mowed down soldiers by the thousands. It had a gold casing and it seemed to take the sun and shoot it out like something from the Bible. There was a roar of thunder that shook the ground and it seemed like the gun never got tired of shooting and never needed to be reloaded. Smoke came from the giant thing like a seething dragon. People were screaming, their rifles and pistols instantly antiquated like they were playing with rocks and stones. One is reminded of the stories of cowboys riding up on natives with rifles in hand. Thunder sticks to them. Each bullet came so fast and so rapid that men were halved where they stood. Their trunks sliding forward leaving behind a tangle of guts like ropes unraveling atop their two standing legs. Then the Union pushed on the front and lit up the whole town. Houses and saloons and horses were annihilated in the wake of this Golden Gun. It was thunder and lightning all at once. That night the moon hung idolatry and pale. And the fourth stream of Petersburg filled with bodies.
In the weeks following the Siege on Petersburg nobody cleaned the bodies from the river. In fact, they’ve seemed to have stepped outside out of the time-line of death. They do not rot. They stay bloated and buzzing with flies. Hundreds of men piled high like stones or a beaver dam. A tangle of limbs and carrion, mouths agape, slack jaws, bot flies in and out of mouths slowly nipping at the gray sclera of opened eyes. And the water from the north comes in clear but leaves so red, even browning some of the sediment on the banks like a spreading rust.
At first, it was the center of attention, but then the surrounding hamlets of the fourth stream started to protest. They started to ward off scientists and journalists and began to lie and say that it was all gone. Everything passed. Nothing to see there anymore. And any scientist or journalist that got too nosy found themselves on the wrong end of a rope and were added to the pile.
Shortly, they began to respect the pile of dead bodies that stretched from bank to bank like a pyramid of death. To them, it was a reminder of what war had caused. Never mind God. What Hath the Golden Gun Wrought? It was a type of flag in the history of their town. There were people that filled their pails with water from upstream, in the Appomattox proper where the water was clean and fresh. And then there were people who filled their pails from the fourth stream. And inside their stomach unraveled something heinous and evil, a deep bubbling bile filled them up and coursed through their veins and in the night when their teeth were red and they tossed and turned – they could feel the lives of the dead men who floated in the water, they could feel their skin double layer and their bones grow thick. The boy in the man in the mother and the flesh atop the flesh atop the flesh – cut open the tree and see the rings they were all one, reborn into a new prison and seeing out of the eyes layered above like a double exposure.
When Sheriff Downs’ wife grew ill he feared the worst. Death, he thought, was likely. She had tuberculosis and had spent the last three weeks in bed, gray and pallid, and coughing so hard the doctors said she broke a rib. Sheriff Downs wanted to bury her in the town cemetery and was worried she had other ideas. Clementine, his wife, had taken to the pile of bodies in the river.
“If you drink from the river you can feel their lives,” Clementine once said. Downs held her hand and it was weak and clammy. The sheriff star on Downs’ chest had saved him from the violence of battle but he had seen it come and go. He had traveled beyond the city lines but even in the city itself you could still the see scooped out land from where canon balls had blasted and where trees had fell and began to rot leaving behind grass that looked like long stretches of bone.
“We don’t drink from the stream, you know that,” Downs explained. “I get our water from the Appomattox. It ain’t more than a few extra minutes. And the well on the other side of town has got it clean too. It’s easy enough to avoid the red water.”
His wife looked at him and soon there were tears in her eyes. She inhaled a hard wheezing breath.
“Take me to the pile to die,” she said.
Downs looked at Clementine. He remembered a scene he hadn’t thought of in a long time. When Clementine got pregnant, the first and only time, this was during the war, she had suffered a late stage miscarriage which left her in severe pain and emotionally bereft. A doula told Downs she was just “Gonna have to go through it, the poor thing.” And Downs got drunk on whiskey and watched Clementine in the outhouse several yards from their home “go through it.”
Later, in the middle of the night Downs stirred awake and realized that Clementine wasn’t next to him. He went down to the outhouse and found her on her knees digging into the hole at the bottom.
“Clem,” he called. He had a lantern and it threw a dark orange on his wife. She turned with blood on her mouth and menstrual clots in her hands and furrowed her brows like what he was seeing was none of his business.
“They’re mine and they belong in me,” she said. And then that was that.
Downs stopped remembering. He looked at Clem, sick in the bed, and then pulled his hand away and unthinkingly wiped it clean on his pants. Clem stared at him and could see his thoughts. She could see his fears and his nightmares right there in his eyes. In the bags beneath them. In how he ran his hand through his hair and then wiped his brow with the sleeve of his work shirt.
“Clem, that pile ain’t right. It ain’t…” He stumbled on the word. He never thought he’d have to say it. “It ain’t holy.”
“I ain’t never been no god fearing girl, you know that,” Clem said. She coughed. She reached her hand out again for Downs to take but he did not. Her shirt was soaked through with sweat. Her ribs visible like a washboard. “God did this war. God took my kid. God gave me this sickness. God ain’t done nothing for me. I want to be a part of that water. And when I die I want you to drink from it so I can live in you.”
Downs didn’t say anything. He just looked at her.
“There’s no way I can force you to. It’s your decision in the end. But that’s my dying wish. And don’t say it ain’t fair because I ain’t get a fair hand not once in my life.”
When Clem fell asleep Downs went to the saloon across the way. He made a decision with himself that if he drank all night and came back and she was dead – he was going to bury her in the cemetery. But if he came back and she was alive, he’d take her to the pile to die.
It was on his fifth whiskey when the doors to the saloon were kicked open. Everyone turned and watched the young man enter. His face was pale and his hair was in patches and his teeth were red.
“I can feel them. It’s true. I can feel them in me,” the young man said. Downs recognized him as Roy Teller – the stonemason’s boy. He had a brother in the war.
“Roy, you should sit down,” the bartender offered. He shot a glance at Downs and then Downs realized how drunk he was. He put on a sober face and turned to Roy and instinctively put his hand on the butt of his pistol.
“You okay, son?” he asked.
“It’s like they’re using my hands as gloves and my feet as boots.”
Teller shambled forward. And Downs couldn’t tell if it was the whiskey or not, but he could see something under the skin of the young man. Like his knuckles were still shifting into place, or like he had more veins tangled around his forearm like tree roots. The man jerked forward like his brain was getting different orders – a ship caught in a gale.
“I can see everything they saw,” Roy explained. Blood started to come from his mouth. People in the saloon backed away – something fell and shattered in the corner of the room.
“Sheriff, do something!” a voice hollered.
Downs stood up and Teller advanced on him.
“It’s so crowded inside of me,” Teller screamed. “It hurts so much. I can barely breathe.”
“He’s in pain! Look at him!” someone else shouted.
“I can see everything at once,” Teller said. The blood in his mouth was thicker, like strands of drool connecting his teeth. “I can feel all their muscles in me. I need to make room for them. I need to make room for them.”
Downs tried to shake off his drunk. He blinked several times and rubbed his eyes and it was then when he heard someone shout – “He has a knife!” And Downs’ vision cleared up just to catch Roy Teller plunge a knife into his own stomach and drag it slantwise across his body. And maybe it was the whiskey in Downs but he could’ve sworn he heard screaming. Not Roy’s screaming. Not the people in the saloon’s screaming. Not even his own screaming. But a cacophony of screams erupted from the man’s wound like there were, in fact, hundreds of trapped souls struggling for space deep within his body. A hurricane of screams came out of his stomach and when his organs spilled out and hit the ground with a wet slap, and Roy dug into his own cavern, Downs was positive he saw a face in the body staring back, like a child hiding in a cupboard.
The road to the pile is an easy one and Downs rode his horse slowly as Clem, wrapped in a quilt, bobbed softly in front of him. It was a peaceful ride. The sunlight dappled through the trees, few people were on the path, and it seemed that even the incessant coughing and wheezing of Clementine had subsided.
“When I die are you gonna drink from the water?” Clem asked. She sat in front of him on the horse. She didn’t turn when she spoke and Downs just studied the back of her form, small and thin even in the quilt.
“I don’t think I will, honey,” Downs replied. “It’s poisonous.”
“It ain’t poison,” Clem corrected. “It’s me.”
The rest of the ride was in silence. For a moment Downs was curious as to why he wasn’t sadder, why he wasn’t crying like he thought he’d be. Perhaps, he wondered, it was because she wasn’t being buried. If she were to be buried at the cemetery, he could’ve gone to visit her and leave flowers. He could’ve mourned her properly. There would’ve been a romance to it. But he knows now that when he leaves her dead on the growing pile of bodies in the river he will never return. It will feel like throwing out the trash or when he shot dead his old bluetick hound in the woods by Westover. He also knew that if he were to cry right now Clem would scoff and say nothing. She never cried when she had her miscarriage those few years ago. She just got angry and ate what fell out of her and then moved on. Downs was afraid of her in some ways to tell the truth. And, gun to his head, the idea of consuming her and having her inside him made him grow cold with fear and nausea.
“I do love you, Clem,” he said to her. But she said nothing. She simply wheezed softly and the horse rode on.
When they got to the pile she was all but dead. She was in and out of consciousness and her breathing was softer than it had ever been. Downs got off the horse and took her down and she seemed weightless and almost wispy. The quilt dragged in the rust colored mud as Downs carried her to the pile of dead bodies. He watched the clear blue water flow through the tangle of meat and bloat and then come out dark red and brown. Clementine’s eyes fluttered softly and she tried to speak but her lips barely moved. Then, finally, Downs started to cry. He held her tight in a fireman’s carry and took his first step onto the pile of bodies. His boot sunk into a soldier’s sternum. There was a squish and he heard bugs skitter out into the water. The he climbed up the pile one body at a time, some being displaced and toppling down into the stream proper.
At the top he rested her down and the smell of the mass made him gag. Meat stuck in a perfect stage of rot. Green skin and swollen bodies. Blood pooled in the bottom of legs and backs where they lay and with each rummage the skin would tear and gas would be released. He could hear blood and bile fall through the dam of bodies like water down a trellis.
“Drink from the water and let me live inside of you,” Clementine said. She clutched Downs’ hands with the remaining strength she had.
“It’ll kill me, Clem,” he replied.
“Let me live in you,” she said back.
“But it won’t just be you. It’ll be all of them.”
“Then let us all live,” Clem said. Then she laid her head on the shoulder of a dead body. She did not smile. She did not say anything more. She just closed her eyes and died.
A year passed before Sheriff Downs decided to drink the red water. At this point, the pile had nearly quadrupled in size. Where as before it was about a hundred or so bodies, now it was nearing the thousands. Some considered drinking the water the ultimate act of altruism. To let the dead breathe and see and live for a few hours before ripping your body apart was thought to be a beautiful and selfless death. Of course, some thought it was summoning hell right into your stomach.
People in the town were dying. They were drinking the red water and ripping open their stomachs. Downs could hear guttural screams in the night. Some people drank the red water and then fought the urge to cut themselves open. It became like a challenge. Who can last the longest and let the dead live inside them. How many dead souls could you fit under your skin? A General from the war drank two gallons of red water and had his men hold him down. Some say they saw a hand rip through his chest. Some claim they saw a pair of eyes hiding in the back of his throat when he screamed in pain.
When Downs drank the water he sat right there on the bank of the river and tried to concentrate. Immediately his vision split into thousands and his mind and thoughts became impossible to distinguish. He was looking for Clem inside of him, trying to sift through everyone else. And finally he found her. He felt her hands fill his skin. He felt her hair and heard her voice and saw through her eyes her own memories. And then he watched her memory of the miscarriage and he felt her pains of tuberculosis. And he even felt what he thought was his unborn child although he couldn’t be sure.
Finally, when he crawled his way to the top of the pile, now nearly 50 yards in diameter, he felt all of them at once in his body. He ripped open his shirt and could see faces peering back like an audience pushing through a screen. Hundreds of screaming and panicked faces trying to pull him apart from the inside. And then eventually they did.