Shaw’s Pond

Flash Fiction by John P McCally

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From the Diary of Pvt. Jason R. Bartlett, Maine 17th Infantry

Andersonville Prison, Georgia. September 8, 1864.

I haven’t made an entry in over a month. There’s nothing much to say except that I have survived. I’ve been running a fever on and off, and I’m such a skeleton that my clothes are falling off me. If I don’t make it out of this awful place alive, please deliver this diary to my brother Andrew. He’s the captain of the fishing schooner John G. Dennis out of Wiscasset, Maine. Mr. Elisha McKenney is the postmaster there, and he can get it into Andrew’s hands.

It’s a stinking, hot summer day in Georgia. It never gets this hot in Maine. The smells of the prison are so bad in the heat. They say there are thirty thousand of us here. No proper latrines. No medics. The only clean water we get falls from the sky. Rats are everywhere. The bugs from the swamp feed on us day and night.

It’s been two years, three weeks, and one day since I climbed aboard a train in Portland and left with Company K for Washington, DC. I gave Mom and Pop my $27 enlistment bounty, and off I went. I thought it would be more exciting than fishing. And I wanted to preserve the Union and free the slaves. I still do.