by Greg Hunt
It was also a dandy place to plink a deer on a chilly autumn morning, which was why Mel’s daddy had named it as he did when he settled here. Years before when they were cutting the Gately Post Road from Palestine to Gately through these parts, Daddy had contended that White Tail Valley was the most logical route. But the road crews had their maps, transoms and compasses, and the map said otherwise. So they had hacked and sawed and dug and leveled their way through the old-growth forest due west from the farm instead. And eventually the new road had crossed Dutchman’s Creek on a bridge they built at the far end of White Tail Valley.
But road or not, White Tail Valley would be a logical route to move an army, and these men seemed to be preparing themselves for a possible attack from that direction. Gazing down the long valley, Mel thought that if it was him, he wouldn’t attack from out in the open like that, where someone had plenty of time to draw a bead. He’d slink along unseen in the edge of the woods until he was close enough to take the first shot himself. That’s the way Daddy had taught him to hunt deer and elk, and he figured it should work as well for hunting men.
But maybe armies fought different, Mel considered. With so many men a part of it, maybe it wasn’t like hunting animals at all.
Staying well clear of the work crews building the barricade, Mel headed east and passed behind his cabin. They didn’t seem to expect attack from the eastern side because no fortifications were in the works on that side. He passed through a thin patch of woods into a small clearing where the hog yard was located, well away from the house, and downwind, as mother had dictated.
A hound had little on Mel’s mother when it came to a sense of smell, and she had insisted that the hog yard be in the woods well away from the cabin. She liked her ham, bacon, chitterlings and ribs right enough, but otherwise pigs were only stinking, disgusting, grunting beasts to her. None of the soldiers seemed to have been there yet because all his pigs were still accounted for.
Many a time Mel had griped about the long slog down to the hog pen on cold winter mornings. But today he was glad they were where they were. After this he’d see things in a different way. Off from the house and concealed like that, none of the pigs had found their way to the army cook fires, and Mel planned to see that they never did.
He cut the hog yard fence on the east side, away from the house, and buckled a six-foot section back out of the way. Then he went inside the pen and herded them out. It troubled him to turn fourteen pigs, including half a dozen piglets, loose on the land. But what other choice did he have?
If this army had offered to pay him with something more than worthless Arkansas script, he would have sold the whole herd at a bargain price. But he’d rather set them free and let them turn wild than have them stolen from him. At least they’d be out there to hunt someday, and he might even be able to lure some of them back eventually with slops and buckets of fall acorns.
As the pigs began to scatter into the woods, rooting around here and there for acorns, mushrooms and tubers, Mel started walking in a wide circle, first east, then south. He thought it might be dicey crossing the road because of the unaccustomed horse and wagon traffic. But no one challenged him or paid him any mind at all. Everybody’s attention seemed to focus west and north, where they expected to face their enemies.
A short while later he was walking outside the split-rail fence that marked the southern border of his land. Far to the north, across the pasture and across the cornfield, he saw that the hill on which his barn and cabin stood continued to boil with preparation for the fight these men seemed to expect. Now that all these intruders had taken over, he hardly recognized the place. But maybe they’d leave soon, and then he could start putting things right again.
It was a fine place to live and work, Mel thought, surveying his farm fondly, as fertile and productive as any in the area. He was born right up there in that cabin, welcomed into the world by his daddy’s calloused hands. The farthest he’d ever travelled in his life was twenty-eight miles to the county seat in Winchester, and he’d made that trip only twice. He’d never put money in a bank, and for his whole life he’d never owed another man a single dollar.
But how would all that change, he wondered, if this big fight came about? How much would he have left, or would he even be alive, when it was all over?
Moving from post to post, he kicked loose about thirty feet of split rails, then called the cattle to him with the “Whoo-yah! Heah!” that they knew meant grain, hay, or milking time. As the cattle began drifting toward him, he led them down into the channel of Christmas Tree Creek, named that by his father because of the pretty little cedars that seemed to favor its banks.
A few head were missing. They were probably on their way to the cook pot by now. But maybe some of the remainder might wander far enough away to survive. Rounding up a few head later to rebuild the herd would be better than having none, even if he had to spend a winter or two without beef.
Once his cows were down in the creek cut, out of sight and drifting away, Mel started back across the pasture toward the cabin.
The sun was setting and a low fog was rising, as it often did in the valley this time of year. Usually he welcomed the dusk because it signaled an end to the day’s work when he could return to the cabin to eat and rest. Sometimes he’d take a few nips from a clay jug of home brew and twang a few songs on Mother’s old guitar.
But today the approaching darkness only made him feel worried and uncertain. He was bone tired, and hungrier than he’d been in a long time. He couldn’t recall the last time he had a full meal.
Off to the northwest a distant rumbling rose and faded, then rose again, one thunderclap following close on another for several seconds. That probably meant rain later tonight, or maybe early in the morning. The rain would have arrived at the right time for the corn, if there had been any corn left to rain on. He stopped at the row of trees and brush that marked the division between the cornfield and the pasture to take stock. There was another shallow creek here, a branch of Christmas Tree Creek, and he stooped to raise a handful of water to his mouth.
Low white tents divided up into rows, kind of like streets in a town, covered the eastern half of the cornfield. Men were gathered outside some of the tents, feeding sticks into small fires. They had their muskets stacked together like lodge poles, so Mel figured they must not expect the fight to start any time soon.
During the afternoon they had thrown up a berm of dirt, running from north to south all the way across the cornfield, which was at least three hundred paces wide. They had even blocked the road with a barricade of dirt, apparently to stop the approach of their enemy. On the other side of the berm, all the way to the far tree line, the field was left flat and clear, leaving a broad open killing ground if their enemies decided to attack from that direction.
It was hard for Mel to imagine men who could get themselves so worked up for a fight that they’d run across that much open ground, right at the gunfire of their enemies, simply so they could have at them. But if that other bunch had brought along as many men as he’d heard—twelve or twenty thousand, so those men who were wrecking his barn had said—then he supposed they must have enough for reckless adventures.
Off to the right, down toward the road, some men were cooking in a huge cast-iron pot, even bigger than the one Mel used to blanch the hogs at killing time. The appetizing smell drifting toward him reminded Mel of how empty he was. That would be old Justice he was smelling. Mel drifted in that direction and fell in with a line of men filing past the pot.
When Mel’s turn came, he stopped in front of the pot expectantly. The cook serving up the stew was a big, hairy fat man, stripped down to his threadbare undershirt but still sweating heavily. As Mel watched, a rivulet of sweat made its way to the tip of the man’s nose and dropped into the pot.
“Yeah?” the man said. He looked Mel up and down like a man examining an imbecile.
“I thought I might try some of that stew you cooked up,” Mel said.
“Okay,” Mel said.
They exchanged stares. Mel’s look was puzzled, the fat man’s annoyed. “So where’s your kit?” the man asked at last. “ ’Less you want to eat out of your boot. Every man knows you need to have a plate if you’re figger on eatin’ in my field mess. This ain’t Antoine’s down in New Or Leens.”
“I’m not a soldier, mister,” Mel told him. “And the only plates I got are in my cabin up on the hill. But I don’t think that sour little cuss with the gold buttons is going to let me in there to get one.”
An unexpected smile spread across the man’s jowly features and his layers of blubber shook with laughter, slinging sweat in all directions. “So this is your place we’re squatting on?”
“My place, and my bull boiled up in that pot. So do you have something around here a man might eat out of besides a boot?”
“I s’pose we can find you something. But I best warn you, that’s a mighty tough bull you had there. Eatin’ him is like chewing on a belt.”
Mel left the line with a tin plate of stew, a hunk of cornbread the size of his hand, and a wooden spoon to eat with. The fat cook had called his concoction “cush,” an odd but tasty mix of beef, vegetables, fruit and crumbled cornbread. He settled on the ground near a cluster of men who had finished their supper and were passing around a quart jar half full of pale, tea-colored liquid. Mel knew what must be in the jar by the grimace each man made after he took a swallow.
Off to the west the distant rumblings started again, sounding like an odd succession of thunderclaps. It was full dark now, and Mel was puzzled that he hadn’t noticed any lightning flashes in the western sky. He started to say something about the rain blowing in their direction, but was soon glad he hadn’t showed his ignorance.
“Sounds like General Willard must be getting thumped over there by somebody’s big guns,” one of the men commented. “Either that, or he’s doing some thumping hisself.”
To a man, they all stared westward, their faces betraying varying emotions.
“Whatever’s happening,” another in the group said, “seems like it’s moving this away, don’t it?” He was younger than the others, hardly looking old enough to be a soldier. “Don’t it seem closer than a while ago?” He looked from face to face, but nobody offered an opinion.
There was another spate of rumblings, and Mel understood this time that he wasn’t hearing thunder.
“Maybe they’re cleaning out their barrels for a scrap in the morning,” a man in his thirties suggested.
“Or shooting at owls,” another chuckled. He must be the funny one in the bunch. “Nothing like twelve pounds of cannister shot to bring a pesky hoot owl down out of the sky.”
“More likely there’s some men dying over there.” The man who made that sober suggestion was older than the rest. If the jittery youth looked too young to be here, this man seemed too old. “Nobody would be fighting like that in the dark unless they wasn’t left with no other choice.”
They all contemplated that, including Mel.
Common sense told Mel that he should leave the farm right now, tonight, before the fighting moved this way, as this whole army seemed to expect. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Part of it was simply a young man’s curiosity and eagerness to see firsthand what a war looked like. But that old Carroll stubbornness was working on him, too. This was his place, all he had, and if it was getting dug up, ransacked, fought over, blown up and ripped apart, he felt like he needed to be here and know about it. He wished he’d been able to retrieve his shotgun out of his cabin before that little chicken-necked man took it over. At a time like this, a man felt plain old naked without some kind of gun in his hands.
“Anybody know where they dug the shitters?” the older man asked. “I still got the whoopsies from that purple beef they fed us down in Jasper. Going on two weeks now.”
“Back by the road, the way we come in,” somebody told him. “Downwind for a change.”
The old man stood up and said, “I need another snort of that stump water first.”
Mel edged forward as the jar started around, and nobody begrudged him a swallow. It wasn’t as smooth as the stuff he and Daddy cooked up from time to time, but it would do tonight. His own jug was tucked away in a corner of the cabin, unless those men up there had already found it.
He wandered away, heading up the hill toward the cabin, but he couldn’t go near it now. They had pitched several tents in the front yard of the cabin, some of them as big as a room. Uniformed guards with new-looking rifles were posted all around, and the first one Mel approached stepped directly in his path.
“State your business,” the guard said. He wore a gray tunic and gray trousers, and held his rifle crossways of his chest, ready to use either end it seemed.
“Nice gun you got there,” Mel commented. “I don’t recall ever seeing one like it.” Except the one he took off the dead soldier in his barn, he recalled.
“It’s a Springfield. Fifty-eight caliber. It’ll put a hole in a man you could pass a hedge apple through.”
“Easy to load?”
“You ain’t never seen one of these?” the soldier asked with some surprise. “It fires a paper cartridge with the bullet and powder already in it.” He fished a cartridge out of a leather box on his belt and handed it over for Mel to inspect.
“Sure beats a lot of the guns I seen around this camp,” Mel noted.
“Gives a man an edge,” the soldier agreed. “But we ain’t got many of them. I took this un off a fellow who didn’t need it no more after our last skirmish.”
Mel returned the cartridge, then explained to the soldier, “I thought I might get my blanket and pillow out of my cabin so I could bed down someplace tonight.”
“So you’re the landowner?”
“I am.”
“You still can’t go in, not while Colonel Mayfield has his field headquarters set up inside.”
Mel wasn’t sure what a field headquarters was, but he thought his little cabin must be ill-suited for anything with such a high-toned description. “Then how about calling that other fellow out for me,” Mel suggested. “His name is Elliott. Tell him what I need.”
The guard considered the request, then told Mel, “I’ll see if the major wants to talk to you. Stay here.”
A few minutes later Elliott came out carrying the blanket and pillow. “I apologize again for the inconvenience, Mr. Carroll,” he said.
“All of this left inconvenient way behind two minutes after you rode into my yard,” Mel told him. “It’ll take me five years to fix what you fellows tore up in one day.”
“A lot worse is likely to happen before this is over,” the major warned. “I’m trying to convince the colonel to let you leave. If he does, stay away for at least a week, maybe two. We can’t guarantee your safety, not even from our own men.”
“Nobody asked you to guarantee nothing,” Mel pointed out. “And I’m not leaving unless you run me off.”
“Have it your way then, Mr. Carroll. But if you do stay, for heaven’s sake don’t stir up any trouble. Colonel Mayfield’s a stern old bird, and he doesn’t tolerate any resistance from the civilian population, especially now that we’ve crossed the line up into Missouri. He calls it hostile territory. He had the mayor back in Palestine shot two days ago because he tried to stop our quartermaster from requisitioning food and supplies from his general store.”
“They shot Merriweather Riggs?” Mel said. “Well, he probably deserved it. I never could stand that swelled-up little crook.”
“But that was only the start of it,” Elliott said. “The colonel’s blood was up by then, so after we emptied the store, he had it burned. Half the town caught fire before it was all over.”
“Guess I’ll make it a point to steer clear of him, then.”
“But you still don’t want to leave?” Elliott asked.
“Not just yet.”
The major seemed a little exasperat
ed by Mel’s stubbornness. “All right then, the least I can do is offer you a billet in one of the officer tents.”
“I’m not sure what a billet is, but I already have a place in mind to bed down.” The major handed him the bedding and started to turn away, but Mel stopped him with a question. “How’d you boys enjoy Miss Belle?” When Elliott looked puzzled, he added, “The cow I was butchering.”
Elliott managed a tired grin. “I haven’t had steak that tasty since we left West Helena three months ago.”
It was no surprise to find the family root cellar at the edge of the woods stripped of everything edible or otherwise useful. Mel felt around until he located the candle stub and matches he kept in a tobacco tin on a wooden beam above the door. In the faint, flickering light, he made his bed on the low frame cot along one wall of the eight-by-eight space. Closing the door partway, he blew the candle out and laid his tired body down.
In the darkness, old memories came to him. When he was a child his family had spent many nights out here, feeling safe and content when storms thundered and raged outside. Mother would sing hymns or read to them by lamplight about the Savior’s life and teachings. Sometimes Daddy would spin yarns about his Indian fighting days, or talk about his family back home in Virginia. The shelter was dug five feet into the ground, with two feet of dirt on top of the layers of logs that formed the roof. Inside the root cellar it was always cooler than the outside air, making it ideal for food storage. By late fall, the shelter was so full of laid-by fruits, vegetables and other preserved foods that they could barely squeeze in and find a place to sleep when bad weather came.