Speaking Volumes
By: Elizabeth G.
Tags: Christian, Short Story, Historical Fiction

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Colors swam before his eyes. Tate set down the palette and stared at the canvas in front of him, his back slowly sensing the warmth of the sun creeping upon it. The canvas was blank. Blank, just like his mind was, some days.

He rubbed his fingers together. Images began to focus in his mind, faded and torn at the edges, like the flags men had finally carried home from war.

A flag. He’d start with a flag. He picked up his brush and dipped it in blue. Blue like the sky, blue like the many rivers they’d crossed, blue like the cold faces and frozen fingers that he’d seen each winter. Blue like the Union uniforms.

Red. A new color, a new memory. Red for him was blood most of all. Blood everywhere. He closed his eyes and fought the sickening urge to lose all he’d eaten that day.

Now white. White like the pallor on the faces of the sick, white like the clouds that floated across the sky on days when men shot each other like crazed animals. White like his mother’s face when he’d left home for the battlefields. White like snow, and broken plaster, and letter paper.

He wiped away tears, which were once more making the colors blur. Blurred colors, blurred memories, blurred outcome. Wasn’t that what they really had now? Yes, a victory, and the Union preserved. Yes, triumph over the evils of slavery. But loss, also. Loss of life, loss of friendship, loss of the old way of life.

He heard steps approach him from the path that led through the yard to the road. He turned and saw Mr. Hendricks, the postmaster, before him.

“Tate, Tate, how are you this morning?” Mr. Hendricks smiled and Tate could see the pity on his face as clearly as he had heard it in the man’s words.

Tate shrugged and smiled a little, to keep from being rude.

“Painting?” Mr. Hendricks stepped onto the porch to look at Tate’s smears of paint. “What is it you’re putting down there?” He waited a moment, then continued. “Tate, myself and several of the men of the town think you’re ready to tell us. Tell us what happened, what you’ve seen, been through.”

Tate regarded him quietly, setting the brush down on his palette.

Mr. Hendricks cleared his throat. “You see, no one will be able to understand what you mean if you do nothing but paint your thoughts. That isn’t the way we record history. We need to tell the world, through words, whether spoken or written, what has happened. So that atrocities… so that nothing like this happens again. Words have power, you know.”

Tate closed his eyes a moment, then shook his head.

Mr. Hendricks sighed. “It would be simple to write down your thoughts, even just a few a day. Please? It has been several months. We all… we all need to know. To share your suffering. To learn.”

He set his hand a moment on Tate’s shoulder, then turned away. “Think about it, Tate. Now, is your ma at home?”

Tate nodded. Mr. Hendricks knocked at the screen and stepped inside the kitchen. Tate listened to him strike up a conversation with his mother, then stared back at his painting.

Mr. Hendricks might mean well, but words were not the only things that possessed the power to tell a story. Unable to speak, he didn’t wish to write, either. Audible words had been taken from him; he wished no longer to give silent ones. He needed to tell his story the way he knew how, the way he had set it down in his memory through those long months. A story told with pictures, colors, light, and darkness.

But not with words. And perhaps that was why Mr. Hendricks and all the other men in town wished for him to write, not paint. Because they didn’t know what he might portray. A journal entry, a newspaper article, these were things people could read, and imagine for themselves, and put aside. But a painting? A painting could be interpreted in any number of ways. What if it said, or worse, showed, the wrong things? Things people wanted to read about, and disapprove of, but not see?

Tate picked up the brush and finished the flag’s general features, then began working on the corner of the white expanse of canvas. He chose black, and brown, and gray, muted colors outlining a muted, cold existence.

As Tate moved his brush, the memories, shaky and smeared like the paint, began to filter through his mind. For the first time in months, he allowed them to come to rest so he could look at them. It was a horrible, removed feeling, reliving the past while not touching it, seeing but not smelling, reaching out but not grasping anything of reality…

Cold and hard. That was all the title he could give to his bed. Or rather, his place of pretended repose. In reality, a strip of ground he reclined on during the night hours. Tate pushed himself upwards and stared about him at the ending of night. Minutes fled by him, each one disappearing into nothingness. Dawn came at last, and Camp Sumter slowly showed itself to the sun, which illuminated it first in one place, then another. Tall palisades of wood enclosed about twenty acres of ground, which was covered with makeshift tents and shelters filled with weak, staggering men by day, and near corpses by night.

Beside him, George Burns sat up and rubbed his eyes, his hands already beginning their daily tremors. Tate studied George quietly, one prisoner watching another. George had been tall and strong when he’d arrived at the camp two days after Tate. But he had deteriorated quickly, and each day Tate was more aware of the decreasing muscles, the trembling limbs, the sunken eyes.

“Morning, Tate,” George spoke, turning finally to recognize his nearest neighbor. “Sleep at all?”

Tate shrugged. “A little.” He paused for breath and fought to make the next words audible. “How about you?”

George laughed. “Hardly any till just before dawn. Couldn’t make these legs of mine lie still long enough for me to close my eyes.”

Tate grinned a little. George was an inspiration, someone uncannily cheerful in all this loss and suffering. “Well, at least — ” He broke off when the words didn’t come out loud enough to be heard.

George grasped his knee in a slightly paternal motion. “Now, take it easy, Tate. No use loosing your voice before we’ve even choked on breakfast.”

Tate smiled, but controlled his laughter. Laughing took too much breath.

“Let’s see how it’s healing up.” George pulled himself unsteadily to his knees and examined Tate’s neck, which was swollen more than ever. Three months before his capture, Tate had received a wound from a bullet grazing his throat. Intense laryngitis had worsened his condition, and now it seemed to take years to gather enough breath and volume to be able to talk.

George winced and pulled Tate’s bandage back into place. “It looks pretty bad. I won’t lie, Tate. I… I don’t know about it.”

Tate grabbed onto George’s hand and held it tight. He didn’t care that he was nineteen, too old to act like a child in need of reassurance. The fact was, he did need reassurance. Whenever he thought about what might happen if his condition worsened, he felt panic creeping over his body. Panic, laughter, anything could make him gasp for breath and choke on the very air he was trying to breathe.

George wrapped his shaking arm around Tate’s shoulders. “It’s all right there, Tate. Slowly, boy. The Almighty has us in His hand, even if we can’t see Him.”

Tate fought to control himself, fought to shove away the terror climbing through his body. He squeezed his eyes shut, then looked at George and nodded. Tears came to his eyes. He could never understand it. Though George himself was weak, on the verge between life and death, he always managed to console Tate, even with his own heart no doubt in need of consolation.

Tate rose to his feet and held out a hand. George grasped it and hauled himself slowly into an upright position. Tate felt a surge of bravery. This was his way, his turn to show kindness. With George at last standing, he turned and they began a tottering walk towards the creek running through the camp. With so much horror and cruelty and useless anger, all they could do was hold onto each other, and God…

Two days later, Tate finished the painting he’d begun in the corner. It was more than a corner now. His thoughts had flowed through the color to take up almost half of the canvas. Before his eyes stretched a likeness of Camp Sumter, or Andersonville, as it was also known. Dirty men, pallid faces, a vast expanse of ramshackle huts and tents and filth and mud.

Tate nodded. That was one memory, one series of memories, he wished to leave here, on the canvas, forever. He rose from his stool and walked into the house, his drying painting under his arm. In his room, he threw the canvas into a corner and curled up in his bed. Pressing his eyes to the coverlet, he let sobs come, then coughs, then silence.

It was three weeks before he dared take out his paints again. The ache had finally receded, and one bright morning he felt brave enough to sit out once more on the porch and begin the next memory.

He moved to the other corner of his canvas this time, ignoring rationale and the logical flow of a landscape painting. This wasn’t a landscape, it was thoughts, and memories, and a silent cry for the country to never forget…

“Tate?”

The words rang through his brain, forcing him to open his eyes. Tate shifted his head an inch, opened his eyes a crack, refused to move his lips at all. He had given up that weeks ago. Why open when no sound would come?

“Tate, look at me.”

Tate finally opened his eyes all the way to look at the tall man crouching over him.

“I‘ve located him. George Burns, your friend from prison.”

Tate felt a shock run through him. He unthinkingly opened his mouth, then gripped the doctor’s hand and waited for the specifications. Dead, or alive?

“By some miracle, he survived the explosion,” the doctor said simply, rubbing Tate’s hand between his. “According to the report I heard, he’d gained a little strength while here in Vicksburg. So when the Sultana exploded, he managed to cling to a board and float away from the wreckage. The Lord is merciful.”

Tate nodded, tears coming. He remembered starkly the agony he’d felt when George had gone aboard a steamboat headed northward, while Tate himself had been left in Vicksburg, alone. The sorrow he’d experienced while wishing he had also gone. The terror and guilty relief when the news had reached the southern city at last: the Sultana’s boiler had exploded and the ship had sunk in the Mississippi river. Around one thousand, seven hundred passengers had perished.

Now Tate sat up and gestured around, his eyes locked on the doctor’s.

The doctor somehow understood him. “George is in Memphis. That’s in Tennessee. He’s recuperating in a hospital there. As soon as you’re discharged from the hospital here, we can send you back home. I’m sure George will be sent home as well, when he’s able to travel.”

Tate sank back down on the cot. He wished he could see George one more time. It had all happened so fast: the evacuation of Andersonville after Atlanta fell to General Sherman, the move to Vicksburg, the surrender of Lee in Virginia, Lincoln’s assassination, the end of the war, and the Sultana’s explosion. It had all been half haze, half sharp reality to Tate as he’d drifted in and out of consciousness while doctors and nurses worked on his throat and fed him and helped him to heal.

He put a hand to his neck and felt the bandage. Perhaps soon he could go home…

Tate finished that part of the picture — the Sultana, the hospital, his cot — in one afternoon. His memories flowed a little gentler, and he could paint them with greater ease.

He wiped off his brushes and contemplated the work he had completed so far. He had a slash of space stretching from the bottom left to the middle top of his canvas on which to paint the rest of his story. At least, his end of war story. He would need an entirely new canvas to paint what had happened before his capture. But this was what he needed to tell now.

He glanced up and saw Josiah Raimes approaching from the back of the house. Cynical, weak, and plotting, Josiah had stayed home from the war to manage the bank and other town affairs. Tate didn’t blame him for not fighting. It was the sarcasm and the vanity, the attitude of superior knowledge on even the fighting itself that aggravated him. He swivelled on his stool and met the young man’s eyes as he mounted the steps of the porch.

“Afternoon, Tate.” Josiah seated himself on the porch railing and stared at Tate’s painting. “Is that the story Mr. Hendricks said you were telling? I thought you were supposed to be writing.”

Tate shrugged and tried to show a pleasant face as Josiah leaned closer to scrutinize his work.

“What is this supposed to represent? Tate, you have refused to write, and instead paint. But these smears don’t mean a thing. You have two entirely separate pictures here, and together with that object which I suppose is a flag overshadowing everything, your picture will not make one drop of sense to anyone of a sane mind.”

Tate gripped his brush and palette, wishing he could talk and at the same time glad he could not utter a sound. He dropped his eyes to the scratched floorboards of the porch and waited for Josiah to grow bored with a one-sided conversation and leave.

Josiah grunted, and Tate watched in astonishment as the man had the audacity to pick up the canvas and hold it close as if he could change what Tate had done by simply looking at more closely. “Look, your proportions are all wrong. That man lying there — his size is miniscule compared to the gun of that Rebel. No one will think this any story at all. If you insist on painting, at least do it right.” He dropped the canvas contemptuously back into its stand. “Really Tate, maybe you shouldn’t try at all. I mean, you won’t write and you can’t paint. So why try?”

His face so close to Tate’s threw back memories of school days together: Josiah always crowing over Tate, the younger and smaller of the two. Tate fought the passion inside him, but finally let overwhelming grief, mixed with anger, explode through his movements. He grabbed up his brush and dipped it in black paint.

Cruelty

Anger

Hatred

Disease

Pain

Fear

Hopelessness

The Dead line

Loss

Suffering

He dropped the brush and turned on Josiah, sobs making him shake. No, one more thing he needed to write. He snatched the brush back up, dipped it afresh so the words would smear and coat the canvas and wrote

Is this what you wanted to read?

Then he flung the brush down and rose to his feet. The anger diminished, leaving only the sorrow, and he viewed Josiah’s stunned face with near tranquility. He bowed a little, an apology for the anger, and walked into the house. From the kitchen window, he saw Josiah once more staring at the painting, at the harsh and implacable words scrawled over the space he had planned to fill with the rest of his memories.

“Tate, what did Josiah want?” His mother came up to him, worry etched on his forehead like the words now etched on his canvas.

He pointed at Josiah’s retreating form, then at the scarred canvas, both of which could be seen through the open window. His mother went out the door and Tate heard her gasp over what he had done. A moment later she was back in the kitchen.

“Tate, why? You shouldn’t have!”

At least his mother understood. Tate pressed against her. Twenty years old and he still needed someone on whom to lean. He pushed through his mind all the words he wanted to say.

He ridiculed me. I feel that I receive only pity or contempt, never respect. Just because I want to do something different from the normal way, is that a reason to be shunned? Laughed at? Puzzled over?

His mother pulled him away so he looked at her, her hands in the hair at his temples. “Tate, never do that again. Never let your emotions ruin something you’ve labored over. Please.”

Tate stared at her, his eyes filling again. He nodded, then stared numbly at the ruined painting. His mother let go of him and stood watching as he walked slowly back outside. He stood before the painting, his hands reaching out but not grasping anything.

Forgive me, God. Please forgive me.

He lost track of time as he stood there, the sun sinking behind the treetops, the porch gradually fading into dusky shapes and objects. He heard his mother move through the kitchen. Once she came to the window but did not speak to him.

At last, mechanically, Tate entered the kitchen, lit the small lantern sitting on the sideboard, and went back out to the porch. Setting the lantern down on the windowsill beside him, he examined the painting by the dim light, its smears of black paint, its disproportionate figures, the shaky renderings of his mind.

Did it really mean nothing? Was it really worthless to proceed? How could he proceed, with the remainder of his canvas covered in scrawling words, words the spelled out all the fears he’d bottled up inside of him for over a year?

This time a memory, a bad one, came without paint following it. He sat still, as if frozen in place, unable to tear his mental eyes away from the scene which rose before him…

“Tate, Tate, I’ve missed you!” His mother’s hands were touching his face. Tate opened his eyes and looked into her face, all pale and tear streaked. He could tell she wanted to hug him, to kiss him, but his condition was still too fragile for so much movement.

He smiled at her, and took her hand.

As his mother sat down beside him, he gazed out the window for a moment, into the street of his hometown. Nothing appeared changed, as if the war had not managed to scar this little village with its horror.

“Tate, when you’re stronger, we can talk.” His mother stopped suddenly, looking ashamed, then patted his hand a little. “Well, in our own way.” There were both sorrow and hope in her voice, and Tate wished he could speak one word, if only for her sake.

“All right, Mrs. Menken, he needs his rest.” Dr. Phillips approached Tate’s cot.

Tate’s mother rose to her feet. “I love you, Tate. I’ll see you soon.”

Tate nodded, smiled, and watched as Dr. Phillips ushered her away from him. They walked to the end of the corridor, where he saw them stop, and his mother ask the doctor a question.

The doctor glanced at Tate, shook his head, and replied. His mother gasped, her hand immediately rising to cover her mouth, though Tate wasn’t sure if she was trying to hide her emotions, or if she was too overcome to do anything else.

He knew what the doctor was saying. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Menken, but your son will never speak again.”

He closed his eyes. Never again. It was a dreary, terrible, frightening sentence. A deep gloom settled over him.

Two weeks later, a journalist from a nearby city came to the hospital. He asked to see Tate, and Dr. Phillips, after much deliberation, allowed the man inside.

“Mr. Menken, I have heard from associates of your imprisonment in Camp Sumter. I was wondering if — ” the man looked bashful for a moment, hesitated, then continued “ — if you might give me some details, so that I could write up a story with them. I really think it a most intriguing tale, and many people would give a good deal to read it. It’s just the type of tragic drama to touch people’s hearts, you know.”

Tate stared at him.

“Of course, you would be compensated for your contribution,” the man added hastily. “I mean…”

Dr. Phillips stepped forward, anger on his face. “Sir, I think you should leave now,” he said firmly.

“Oh. But the story…?” The man rose, but made one last attempt as he was herded towards the door, though speaking to the doctor this time. “It would make a pretty amount when it came into print! Enough perhaps for a surgery so he might not always be so horribly disadvantaged. Think of it this way, sir. A man whose voice has been taken from him, and perhaps his brains as well, for all we know. What better way to serve him then to let the country know of such a crippled martyr? I would write it for him, of course, for he could not tell it well, I am sure, but then, I am a trained professional.”

Dr. Phillips almost shoved the man through the doorway, but Tate caught the last words as the man’s voice faded from earshot. “I really do mean only the best, sir, for Mr. Menken and for the country!”

Tate riveted his eyes on the ceiling as Dr. Philips walked hurriedly back to his cot. He could barely breathe, let alone think.

“Tate.” Dr. Phillips’ voice was heavy. “I’m very sorry I allowed this to happen.”

Tate shrugged, tried to smile, and closed his eyes. His voice was gone, but not his brains. Not his short term memory, at least. Horribly disadvantaged. Crippled martyr. A man whose voice has been taken from him, and perhaps his brains as well. He could not tell it well…

Tate sighed. Shivers ran through him. The sun was now fully gone, but his canvas was softly illuminated by the lantern.

His mother suddenly came to the window again. This time she did speak. “Maybe you can fix it, Tate. Maybe it’s not completely ruined. Try.” She left before he could shake his head no.

Tate bent his head toward the letters. They were large, sprawled. He touched them, thinking slowly, moving slowly, breathing slowly.

He picked up his brush and dipped it into paint. He had no idea what color he’d chosen. In a sort of dreamlike reality, he raised the brush and touched it to the canvas. The black words of the afternoon had dried, and as he moved his brush over one of them, the black faded under the new color, which Tate realized was light blue. The black could still be seen, but it was fainter, less harsh, as if time, or love, had softened it.

This time Tate had no clear idea what exactly it was he was depicting. He had no more memories that fit with the rest of the painting. But he continued to move his arm, letting the brush drift across the canvas. He found himself creating in his brain an image, a dream, a hope for the future…

Blue sky stretching over acres of green pastures and forests. Men working in the fields, in the shops, in the factories. Honest sweat and toil. Pain, but also life. Sorrow, but also joy. Loss, but also hope. Wounds healing, friendships beginning, and continuing, and being made fresh and healthy. A light stretching over the country, with golden rays touching everything. Light that meant God, and faith, and trust, and love, and peace, in a country that one day, perhaps, please God, would really and truly be reunited…

Tate suddenly found himself in darkness as the light in the candle burned out. But the light in his mind continued, steadfast and clear. “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” The Bible verse shone through his brain like the thoughts he’d just painted. Perhaps with this painting, as well as with other stories, other acts, other people, they could overcome evil. Not entirely, of course, for that was impossible for fallen human beings. But perhaps, even for a little while, evil could be overcome by good, so that atrocities, to borrow Mr. Hendricks’ word, like Andersonville, like the war itself, would be stopped before they began.

Tate reached through the open window, picked up a match, and relit the lantern. He had one more thing. One final touch. And this time, he would use words.

This time, his handwriting was calm, and beautiful, and firm.

There are things that everyone should read. There are also things that everyone should see. Look and learn. Tate Hancock Menken, May, 1866

~~~

It was 1926, and in a small town museum, on display in the front of the building, a large painting hung, framed with carved wood. The door opened and a man, bent over on a cane, and walking stiffly, approached. He stood a moment, rocking slightly on his heels as his eyes drifted over the various scenes depicted on the canvas, now faded from the years and the sun. The man seemed to take interest in each portion in turn: a dark and cold prison camp; a stark hospital cot; a sinking steamboat. An American flag stretched itself between the different scenes, its folds curling and drifting between dark colors and light.

Rising upwards through the center of the painting, there stretched an expanse of green pasture, touching pale blue sky, which was dotted with golden hued clouds. This strip narrowed as it ascended, until it touched the top edge of the canvas in a small point. Almost as if it was pointing towards heaven. Towards God.

The man leaned in closer, his hands adjusting the spectacles on his nose. He had noticed the interesting black marks that appeared now only very faintly beneath the blue sky. They were words. There was ‘hatred’… ‘disease’… ‘hopelessness’… ‘loss.’ Such words fit very well with the prison scene, but certainly not with the beautiful middle strip. Indeed, the blue and gold and green paints lay on the canvas as if they had been washed there, brushed over to gently but firmly shut out the cruel words underneath.

At the bottom right of the picture, there were more words, forming a few sentences. The man leaned closer, read them, then held still, as if considering.

The museum guide approached the elderly man. “Sir, have you come for a tour of the museum?”

The man turned and nodded. “Yes, please. But I have one question about this remarkable painting. The name here is quite faded, and I can’t make out all of it. Ta — cock — Menken. What are the first two names?”

The guide, a young man of twenty or so, consulted a small booklet from the desk at which he had been sitting. “Tate Hancock Menken, sir. A man who used to live in this very town. An old Civil War veteran, who lost the use of his voice.”

“Used to live here? Has he moved?”

“Well, in a way, sir. Moved on to be with God. He passed three years ago.” The guide bent his head, as the older man appeared much moved by this revelation.

“Poor old Tate,” the man whispered. “How I wish I could have come sooner!” He turned back to the guide. “So Mr. Menken painted this piece?”

“Yes, sir. A year after the Civil War, as you can see by the date there. From the time he finished it, it created quite a stir, first here in our town and then throughout the entire state. People came in floods to see it, so I’m told. It was quite a sensation.”

The old man seemed pleased. “Really! Well, well.”

The guide, noticing the old man’s interest, and perceiving a chance to make a good impression on an out-of-town guest, proceeded with more details. “Yes, sir. People read about the painting in the newspapers and came to see it. Brought a good business to the town. Many spectators remarked that the painting… well, they said the painting spoke to them. Now, I hardly see how a painting can speak, sir, but the museum officials who were around then said that more than one lady was escorted out sobbing, and most all declared the painting said volumes.”

The old man reached out and shook the guide’s hand. “Thank you, sir. You have been most helpful.”

The guide bowed and retired. “Of course, sir. My pleasure.”

Left alone once more, the old man looked at the painting again. “The painting speaks volumes. Oh, to be sure, it does. The artist could not, so he let his brush speak for him. What a miracle. A Godsent triumph for Tate.”

He smiled, grasped his cane, and proceeded into the rest of the museum.

The End