A Separate Country

by Robert Hicks

  “I am sorry to hear this. When is the funeral?”

  “Already been. Days ago.”

  “I should have been notified.”

  You should have been paying attention.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes. Well.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose, where there was a mark from a pair of glasses.

  “Is there an inheritance?”

  A very strange question.

  “I wouldn’t think it, they were right down in the world at the end, I believe. Left nothing behind except maybe that book you got.”

  He wasn’t listening to me.

  “How did he die?”

  “Yellow fever, got hot and died.” Why ask such a question?

  “No boy, I mean, what did he say? How was he at the end?”

  “In pain, reckon. Groaning, so forth.”

  “That won’t do, but I’ll fix that.”

  “How…”

  “That’s my business, boy. Now. What is your business?”

  The ceiling seemed so far away in that room, so tall. The ribbed molding around the door, the eight-paneled door, it all seemed to loom over me, asking me what the hell I wanted, threatening to crash in on my head if I didn’t get it right.

  Before I could say anything, Beauregard spoke up.

  “You know, he once told me I had no right, or rather, that I was stupid, for wanting a report on the disposition of his scouts. That is, my scouts, the insubordinate son of a bitch. He wrote me to tell me that such a report would inevitably fall under the eyes of spies, derelicts, and disaffected persons, who would only give away his positions and strength to the enemy. In other words, my staff was lousy with turncoats.”

  Beauregard began rummaging through his bookshelves, finally pulling out a scrapbook and flipping furiously through it.

  “Yes, here it is, my reply. ‘My Dear General Hood,’ I write, ‘You must have a low estimate of the intelligence and judgment of your wily adversary, if you suppose at this late day that he is ignorant of the position of your army and the strength of your corps.’ And that was Hood, boy, he always had a low estimate of his adversaries. So low, in fact, that he sometimes couldn’t recognize them.”

  By now the hairs at the back of my neck had pricked up. This was not going as I’d expected, though the delight that Beauregard took in telling me that story made me think I might have an easier time getting that war book from him. He was no friend of Hood’s, that I knew now, so why would he want to mess around with Hood’s war memoir? I decided to chance it, come right out with it.

  “Sir, General Hood made a request before he died, and that was that I should go find you and retrieve his war memoir.”

  He frowned.

  “And do what with it? I’ve already begun to make inquiries about its publication. The book is perfect. It is an arrogant and blinkered pleading, but that is what we expect of Hood. It is Hood! How could you improve it? Can you read?”

  “I can read. But he didn’t want me to improve it. He wanted me to destroy it.”

  Beauregard drummed his fingers on the desk. Then he gestured with them, palm up, as if he were presenting the rabbit bouncing out of the hat.

  “Well, yes, any sane person would have wanted that destroyed, it is obvious, no? It was something a child would write, so absorbed in himself and so outraged by punishment! But you will not convince me that a man mad from the fever could make such a rational judgment, and I will not carry out the ravings of a madman.”

  “But sir, I know that he was sane when he told me this. I have been around the yellow jack, been around them dying ravers, and he wasn’t one of them when he gave me these instructions. He was very specific, very cold about it.”

  Beauregard waved his hand, stirring the dust in the air, dismissing me.

  “It shall not happen, and I shall not discuss it any longer.”

  “It was his wish.”

  “It is not my wish.”

  “He would be very unhappy.”

  “He is dead.”

  He said this, and then he relaxed and slumped back in his chair. He even seemed to smile warmly at me, as if I had been beat at something and he would gladly play the gracious winner. There was nothing more for me to do about it at that moment. He believed the discussion was over, and I let him think it. I nodded my head and looked at my shoes, all the while thinking, We’ll have to break in. Rintrah might be good for something anyway. I wonder where he keeps it.

  “Is that all you came to talk about today?” He roused me from my thoughts, my acting the grateful loser. That wasn’t all I’d come to talk to him about. I had the other thing right there, in my bag. I didn’t trust him, and especially not to tell me what to do with it, but there was maybe some information I ought to get out of him anyway. I decided to test him.

  “Have you heard of a man named Sebastien Lemerle?”

  Beauregard began to laugh.

  “Of course, though I don’t know the man. Insane, wasn’t he? He’s of an old family, though they’ve dissipated in every conceivable sense. I don’t believe they have a dime between them anymore, though the first of the Lemerles was a mighty fighter, a favorite of Bienville. Why do you ask?”

  “He owes a friend something.”

  “Your friend will never get it. Sebastien Lemerle… He was an army man, I believe. If a man could only fight, if he didn’t need to live or eat or move among other men, Sebastien might have been a success in the army. I believe he was discharged in, hmmmm, Texas.”

  “Just wondering where he might be.”

  “I do not have knowledge of such men, of course.”

  I took a gamble and prayed I wouldn’t end the day run through by the general’s saber, mounted above the bookcase behind him.

  “General Hood thought you might know where he was.” An utter lie, of course, but I had to see.

  “Why the hell…”

  He spun around on his seat and leaned across the desk, first looking at me and then grabbing for a silver letter opener in the shape of a bayonet. He tapped it quickly on the blotter and concentrated.

  “Hood was in Texas, not me. I don’t know what went on there.”

  Didn’t say anything went on there, General.

  “I don’t know nothing about the army, only what Hood said. He said you were right well acquainted with this Lemerle, close friends. He said you and Lemerle were cut of the same cloth, the same people. Cousins possibly, he said. He said Lemerle didn’t do nothing without talking to you about it, you was that close. Like brothers, maybe he said. Don’t know all exactly what he meant, you Creoles are still a mystery to me mostly, but he seemed to think you’d know where the man would be living now.”

  Sitting in front of me now was one red-faced Creole, veins popping out his neck, fingernails gouging into the desk.

  “You insult me, boy.”

  “Not me! And I didn’t think it sounded so much like an insult when he said it. And I might have got it wrong anyway. It was hard to hear, what with all the groaning.”

  “I believe you have. Got it wrong, that is.” His color went down a notch. “What did he want with Lemerle?”

  “I guess, sir, he just wanted to say hello. Too late now, of course. I guess maybe they served together, if like you say, they both served in Texas. Or maybe he meant you. Are you sure you weren’t in Texas?”

  Beauregard grimaced.

  “I sure as hell was not in Texas with that animal. And I know this much, Hood would just as soon cut off his other leg than have a nice little chat over tea with someone like Lemerle. Now you stay sitting in that chair while I puzzle this out.”

  He stood up. I could see that the years after the war had been good to him. He had a belly that poked out some, but his eyes were dark and deep and expressionless, as if they were trying to reach in and take something out of me.

  “How do you know about Lemerle?”

  “He told me about him, like I said.”

  “He never would hav
e. Never. Sebastien Lemerle is dead, and your great friend the General Hood killed him. That’s a fact, and I bet you know it, too.”

  It wasn’t a fact, but at that point I wasn’t volunteering anything.

  “What are you trying to tell me, with this nonsense? Are you speaking in code? Is this Hood’s code? He was always a supercilious bastard.”

  He called for Henri, his manservant or whatever the hell the man in the white uniform was, and I stood up.

  “What are you doing here, boy?” He looked down at my feet. “What the hell is in that bag. Is that paper? Henri! I need you!”

  And I needed to leave. I’d lived among gamblers long enough to know when to get the hell out of the house. I ran for the hallway and Beauregard tried to step around the desk to head me off, but he tripped over an artillery shell he’d turned into an umbrella stand and went crashing down on his face, black umbrellas piled around him like kindling.

  And before Henri could get to me, I was out the door and down the street and over three walls, deep into the city.

  That night I talked it over with Rintrah, who laughed at my description of the general falling over his umbrellas. He said he had some idea what was on Beauregard’s mind. He made me an omelette in the back kitchen of his house, standing on an old fruit crate. He was an expert chef, and that surprised me. But his hands, thick and large, were delicate with the eggs and shells, and he could flip an omelette in the air and get it to land perfectly, sizzling just enough to make a whispering sound.

  “He’s a fucking cheat, that’s one thing. He’s a fucking lottery cheat, and believe me I know. Takes one to know one. I wish he’d been run through by one of them umbrellas.”

  “What do you mean, he’s a cheat? What about the lottery?”

  “Don’t worry about that now. I’m asking the goddamn questions. We need Lemerle. Ask him questions, he’ll know. That murderer will know, and if he says he doesn’t, I’ll have it cut out of him.”

  We ate our omelettes in silence, watching the gaslights flicker outside in the courtyard. I didn’t know who to fear more: Lemerle, Beauregard, or Rintrah. I looked over at him swallowing his omelette nearly whole while continuing to swear and lay curses on nearly everyone in the city.

  “I wish Michel, Father Mike, were here. He’d love to hear that story.”

  I was shocked to hear him say that, and knew that it was a sore subject. Father Mike. Big old Michel. The burly priest who had disappeared not long after the adventure at the fish camps. Not long after… oh Lord.

  “The lottery.”

  That was the first and last time I saw Rintrah cry.

  Later he got up and gave me a cane encircled by a carved snake and painted black and red. He didn’t say a word, just held it out, and I took it.

  A few days later I went into the Cabildo and the inky man told me that Lemerle had sold his house, leaving only the name of a parish as a forwarding address.

  “He’s gone way on down into Terrebonne Parish, young man. Bring a rifle.”

  CHAPTER 21

  John Bell Hood

  In October 1868, I approached the lottery building from the west. I had not lost the habit of reckoning his location by the sun, though local custom referred to the river. The carriage rolled downriver, but the sound of the word downriver nagged at me, making me think of debris washing down. I had been General John Bell Hood, CSA. How had I ended up there? Rolling downriver through a city that seemed at the end of the world, hoping no one would recognize me, traveling in a borrowed rig behind a borrowed horse just for the sake of propriety in case anyone recognized me, harboring the lunatic hope that we could be saved by the slip of paper in my hand.

  If only salvation and protection could be contained in a piece of paper. I had spent years searching through papers, letters, journals, and maps, looking for proof that I had not alone ruined the Army of Tennessee and led thousands of boys off to needless slaughter at Franklin and Nashville. But there had been no salvation, no relief from the sting of criticism and loathing that I felt, perhaps too often and too strongly, in the way other men greeted me and talked to me. The instruments of my torture—newspapers, the memoirs of other generals, cartoons—had been paper. They were the means by which I was known and reviled by the many thousands who would go to their grave thinking John Bell Hood was an impetuous, crippled laudanum addict who, if I had not actually pulled the trigger, had caused the death of many young men by fighting the war as if it could be won on courage and audacity and purity of intent alone. I had begun to think they were right, but it was too much to conceive. I shook my head as I approached the lottery building. I will salvage my reputation. But first, the business. I shifted my broad hat down over my eyes and slid down in my seat so that I would not be recognized. What the hell would they say if they saw me? “There goes that Hood, playing the lottery. Thought he had money? Guess he’s not much of a businessman, either.” I wouldn’t stand for that.

  Of course, that is exactly what they said about me when one of the most recognizable men of the late Confederacy stepped down from his carriage, cane in hand, and walked slowly through the crowd, which parted before him. I was recognized. I was always recognized.

  Didn’t they know that I deserved their respect, not their ogling? I was not a gambler! I was a Christian, a man of God, saved. Who were these men staring at me, these thick-browed, loud men in dark suits speaking their barely literate twaddle? They were gamblers, of course, degenerates and drunks and fornicators. They were not there because God had instructed them to be there, as He had instructed me. They were there for the amusement, but I had arrived for the torture and humiliation that might burn away my sin and misfortune, and perhaps save me. I was there to be tried, sanctified, and rewarded. I was there with a forty-dollar ticket in my hand, with a chance on $600,000.

  I stood in the middle of the lobby while the little Creole men scooted around me. I was still tall, despite my wooden leg and vacant sleeve. I had been through the fire before, I thought, I could do it again. My beard had grown long, longer than my official portraits, and had turned gray. I had once entertained the thought of growing my beard so long and thick that my entire face and torso might be obscured and unrecognizable, but I knew it would be futile. My eyes, damn it. My eyes were so pale they seemed merely orbs of light in my photographs. I’ve been told that in person they are sad and unmistakable. Don’t know about that.

  “Hood!”

  I looked around and here came Father Mike and Rintrah, dressed in their work clothes and wearing identical black bowlers.

  “Father. Is the Church shutting this gambling den down?”

  “Lord, I hope not.”

  Rintrah gazed around and commented on the beauty of the lobby. The lobby was repulsive, of course. Decadent. Red carpets and settees the color of blood, fat and cackling angels cavorting above the windows.

  “How is the hospital?”

  “We’re in bad shape still, John. I don’t know if we can keep going, after this past summer. We have nothing left, the dead took it all.”

  “Perhaps the Lord will provide.”

  Then Rintrah piped up from under his little black hat.

  “Or someone else, maybe! Lady Luck, yes sir!”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Rintrah.”

  “Around you, always, General.”

  We laughed, and then the bell rang for the next drawing, and we parted ways. As they walked off, backs to me and dressed nearly identically, they looked like father and son. I never saw Father Mike again.

  I had business to conduct. As I made my way toward the entrance to the great hall, feeling my wooden leg sink deep into the carpet, kicking up puffs of dust, a thin, yellow-faced Creole slid before me and bowed. He was as tall as me, but bent slightly to the side, as if his spine had slipped off center. It forced him to look up at me, even when he had stood up again. His eyes, bloodshot, made me think he might collapse at any moment.

  “Monsieur Dauphin begs the honor of your presence i
n his private room, if you please, Monsieur Hood.”

  Monsieur Dauphin? A ridiculous name.

  “I am not familiar with Dauphin.”

  “Forgive me, Monsieur Hood. He is the organizer.”

  “Ah.”

  How did he know I was here? And then, Silly question.

  “Will you accompany me? It is just up these stairs.”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  I could escape the indignity of standing among the crowd of onlookers and gamblers, perhaps, by sitting with this Monsieur Dauphin. And so I limped along behind the tall Creole, who stood crooked even when he walked, and looked as if he was always preparing to turn a corner.

  The stairs were narrow, and gave me trouble. At the landing, the man waited patiently for me to clunk my way up the stairs. When I had gained the landing, the man folded his hands in front of him, bowed again, and made off down the corridor to a small door. He gestured to me, beckoning me as if calling to a reluctant pet. He was rude in the way that Creoles could seem rude sometimes: presumptuous and brisk. I could snap this man in two. Or I would have, once. Instead, I ducked my head through the short doorway and entered the private room of Monsieur Dauphin.

  The little man did not remove his hat, but sat with his foot on the railing of the overlook, awkwardly massaging a cigar between his lips. He looked up and smiled, and gestured toward a chair like his. I took it, and leaned my cane against the rail. Below I could hear the burbling and crashing of many voices.

  “General Hood, I am sorry if I have surprised you. You don’t know me, but I know much about you.”

  Thousands of people knew me, and why wouldn’t the little lottery man be one of them? I sighed a little, and rubbed the inflamed callus where my thigh met the wood of my fake leg.

  “May I get you something? A drink, perhaps.”

  “No. No thank you.”