Poison Spring

by Boggs, Johnny D. ; Abell, Chris;

  I scribbled only a few paragraphs, hardly even knowing what I wrote, then returned the tablet to Papa’s cigar box, hid it in the shed, and raced home.

  The next morning, everyone awakened and dressed before dawn. Dew covered the ground. The weather had turned cooler, I could feel the rain in the air, and I felt in a rush to get to the mill, to begin loading sawdust.

  I finished breakfast so quickly Mama laughed. “If you’re in that big of a hurry, Travis,” she said, “you go on to the mill and get things ready. I’ll bring Betsy along directly, after I am certain”—she put both hands on her hips and stared hard at Edith and Baby Hugh—“that two children in this household begin their baths.”

  “It ain’t Satur—” The word died in Baby Hugh’s throat. He stared at his potatoes and grits. “Yes’m,” he muttered meekly.

  I snatched hat, broom, and poncho, and raced out of the kitchen, down the steps, and onto the road.

  * * * * *

  Travis Ford races through Paris, determined to get the diamond necklace to Queen Anne and save her from her husband’s wrath and the guillotine.

  * * * * *

  When I reached the mill, it took a while to catch my breath. Then I checked the barrels, and restrained myself from sneaking into the shed to write some more. Mama might find me. But she didn’t come.

  I threw stones in the mill pond. I tossed stones at a squirrel. I even cleaned up parts of the mill. Still, Mama didn’t show up. That wasn’t like her. She wouldn’t be late for church, she always had breakfast, dinner, and supper on the table early. After an hour, I became worried. After two, I had stopped playing, stopped working, and perched myself on the steps, staring down the woods lane. Ten minutes later, I was walking back up the lane.

  The line of men, their curses, their laughs, stopped me for a moment. Again, I caught my breath. Unsteadily I continued toward the road. The marching men glanced at me. One sent a river of tobacco juice in my direction, and laughed. Horses, wagons, cannon, but mostly men marched on by. All along the Camden-Washington Pike, as far as I could see in both directions, soldiers marched toward Washington.

  Once I understood what was happening, I began running alongside the road, on the other side of the bar ditch. Running as fast as I could for home.

  Chapter Seven

  It wasn’t a dashing musketeer or a Confederate spy who ran through the weeds and briars, but a frightened thirteen-year-old boy. Since the start of the war, I had seen soldiers, but never this many. A few cracked jokes as I raced by them. Laughing, some tossed mud clods after me. Others assaulted me with their foolish jokes, light-hearted insults, vile curses.

  “What’s the hurry, kid?”

  “Hey, Sarge, why don’t we conscript that cheetah as a runner?”

  “McEnroe, I ain’t seen a body move that fast since Princeton last December.”

  “Yeah, Gates, but that was us skedaddlin’ then.”

  A musket popped, and I almost fell, but then came the laughter, and I righted myself, never breaking stride, leaping over a fallen log. The laughter died behind me when an officer yelled: “Who fired that shot? Who fired it?”

  By the time anyone admitted to the breach of protocol, I was a hundred yards up the Pike, being greeted by more jokes, dirt clods, and laughter.

  I tried to tell myself that there was nothing to worry about. Mama couldn’t bring the mule up the road because the Confederate Army hogged the entire lane. She had had to wait, and that’s what she was doing. But I couldn’t convince myself.

  The path ended, and I cut into the woods, zipping through the pines and oaks, feeling the briars tug at my trousers. Out of the woods I shot, and resumed my race through the weeds, next to the cackling soldiers.

  Run! I told myself.

  Faster!

  My lungs burned, and sharp pain pierced my side. Gripping my side, leaning forward, I kept running, though my stride kept lessening. Tears blinded me. Somehow, I refused to quit racing home.

  Until a vise gripped my shoulder, and jerked me savagely to the ground.

  My head exploded. I wanted to roll over and vomit. My lungs screamed for oxygen, and I sucked in as much air as I could as I rubbed my head, opened my eyes, and waited for the tears to evaporate.

  “Where you runnin’ to, boy?” a thick voice demanded.

  “Answer Mickey, you runt!” A boot slammed into my brogan.

  Wincing, I saw what I had run into. Two Confederates had leaped across the bar ditch. I figured it had been the big one who had grabbed my shoulder, flung me to the ground. The runt who had called me a runt didn’t look much bigger than me.

  He thrust the point of a bayonet under my chin. “I said, runt, you answer Fellman, here. Or you’ll taste the steel Steele’s gonna taste right soon.” He laughed, turned toward the soldiers on the road, and called out: “Hey, did you hear that, Jimmy? ‘Taste the steel Steele’s gonna taste.’ That’s funny. That’s real funny.”

  “If you say so, O’Brien.”

  O’Brien stopped laughing and faced me again, thrusting the bayonet lower. “Where you bound in such a hurry, runt?”

  His blouse was denim, patched with plaid in various places, and filthy suspenders held up his green trousers, the hems rolled up revealing bony, hairless legs, no socks, no shoes, and blackened feet. His face was gaunt. In fact, he looked more like a skeleton than a human with his gray eyes sunk well back in his jaundiced face. He wore no hat, and the only thing that identified him as a soldier was the oval brass belt buckle that held his cartridge box, and that, I soon realized, was stamped US, not CS. He wasn’t a Yankee, though.

  “You heard him, boy,” his partner said. “Where you in such a jo-fired hurry to gets to?”

  That man had a dirty brown beard that stretched halfway to his stomach. His long hair was a mess, flowing this way and that, although he did wear a gray porkpie hat. His eyes were dark, his face leather, and he looked like a mountain. Instead of being too loose, his clothes—butternut pants, a shirt that might have once been white, and a shell jacket of patched gray—appeared as if they would split at the seams if the big man sneezed. He had butted his musket against the ground. He thrust a giant finger at me, which seemed more frightening than the bayonet at my throat.

  “Answer me!”

  “Home,” I managed. “I’m going home.”

  “What you got there, boys?” another soldier called out as he marched past. “A Yankee spy?”

  “That’s what Fellman and me’s tryin’ to figure out,” said O’Brien, the runt. He grinned without humor at me. “You a Yankee spy, runt?”

  “No, sir. I live down the road.”

  “Where you comin’ from?” the giant asked.

  “My papa’s sawmill.”

  “Your papa?” O’Brien cursed, and spit phlegm into the ditch. “How come he ain’t fightin’ with us?”

  “He is. He joined Slemons’ cavalry.”

  Runt turned to the giant. “What outfit’s that?”

  “Second Arkansas, I think.”

  “Cavalry.” The runt snorted. “Well, your papa must be a right rich man. Got his own horse. Gets to ride all around. Hey, Fellman, you ever seen a dead hoss soldier?”

  “No,” the giant said. “Never.”

  They laughed, and then the runt said: “What’s your papa’s name?”

  “Ford. Connor Ford.”

  “Fancy name.” But the bayonet had been removed. He turned toward the marching soldiers. “Hey, Gene. You know of some sawmill in these here parts run by some uppity hoss soldier named Ford?”

  “Criminy, O’Brien, they’s more sawmills in this county than they’s peoples.”

  “Well, how come you ain’t fightin’ with us, boy?” O’Brien asked me.

  “I’m … I’m only thirteen.”

  The big one laughed and spit. “Me and O’Brien’s bur
ied boys younger’n that.”

  The runt looked back at me. “I don’t know that we can trust him. What you think, Fellman?”

  “Looks like a Yank to me.”

  “Smells like one, too.”

  “Should I run him through?”

  “We ain’t kilt nobody today. Might as well.”

  I had stopped breathing. Then something crashed to the grass behind me, and the giant and the runt snapped to attention.

  “Fellman!” a voice roared. “O’Brien! What are you doing? Back in the ranks!”

  “We’s interrogatin’ this runt, Capt’n,” the runt said.

  “Help him up. Now! Or you’ll both be on the wooden horse when we reach Prairie D’Ane.”

  They both moved—the runt’s musket falling into the grass—and lifted me up. The giant’s hands roughly brushed the leaves and grass off my back while the runt picked up his musket and ran.

  “Sorry,” the giant said, and he hurried across the ditch.

  I blinked, but caught only a glimpse of my savior as his roan horse leaped across the ditch, parted through the columns of soldiers. His kepi bounced as he rode back down the line, shouting: “Keep moving, lads! Keep moving!”

  He was fifty yards back down the road when I took off running again, passing Fellman, passing O’Brien, who was arguing with a tall gent in a straw hat.

  After that, the dirt clods stopped coming my way, and the insults and laughter became only sporadic.

  At last, I turned down the lane that led to home.

  Soldiers were there. Long before the dogtrot cabin came into view, I understood that much. Horse apples and horse tracks scarred the path. I heard Mama screaming. I ran harder as I saw a group of Confederates circling the well and caught sight of Mama’s head in the breaks between their shoulders. Two men were each carrying something in their arms toward the group by the well. On the porch, Edith held Baby Hugh in her arms. Both were sobbing. I saw other men coming out of the root cellar. I couldn’t see the barn or coop, but I could hear chickens squawking, so I knew men were there, too.

  Soldiers of the Confederate States of America. They were supposed to be protecting us, not robbing us.

  I dodged between the picketed horses and mules, ran toward the well, past the two soldiers carrying …. My stomach turned as I caught the scent of death. One soldier pushed back the brim of his forage cap. The other laughed and spit tobacco juice. Each carried a dead dog over his right shoulder.

  “You … are … not … doing … this!” Mama’s voice, spaced out, determined, but choking, frightened.

  Finally I heard myself yelling—“Leave her alone!”—as I charged into the men who surrounded my mother and our well.

  Tried to anyhow. One of the men, in a gray blouse without buttons, turned, brought up the butt of his musket, which cracked against my jaw. My teeth snapped down, my jaw exploded in pain, and, as I hit the ground hard on my back, I tasted blood in my mouth.

  “You idiot, Clyde,” another soldier said. “That ain’t nothing but a kid.”

  Then my mother’s voice: “Travis!”

  My head swam, the earth spun out of control, and I thought again that I would vomit. Mama lifted me into her arms. I turned away from her, spit out blood. My tongue ran around my teeth. By some miracle, it didn’t feel like I had lost any. I spit again.

  Mama kissed my forehead. I worked my jaw while Mama screamed at the soldiers, calling them brutes, animals.

  “Ma-ma,” I managed. I had to spit again. “I … bit … my … tongue.” I hoped I hadn’t bitten it clean in half.

  “You rest. Just lie still.” Gently she lowered me to the ground and leaped to her feet. “You are not doing this!” she shouted at the soldiers.

  As I opened my eyes it seemed as though dozens of my mother’s figure spun around hundreds of blurred soldiers. I closed my eyes, spit, moaned.

  “Orders, ma’am!”

  “Please!”

  “Yanks are comin’. Y’all shouldn’t be here nohow.”

  “This is our home!”

  “Please, lady. We ain’t takin’ no pleasure in this, neither, but it’s gots to get done.”

  “You are not poisoning our well!”

  I made myself sit up, started to stand, slipped, tried again. A rough hand gripped my arm. I tried to pull away, but the vise tightened, yet the voice was soft. “Easy, kid. Let me help you.”

  His beard-stubbled face came into view. He chewed on a twig. He was, I soon realized, the same soldier who had cracked my jaw. “Stand easy,” he said. “Sorry I knocked you some. You give me a start.”

  “Don’t do this!” Mama yelled, and I stepped away from the man, somehow keeping my feet as I staggered over to Mama, and stood beside her. They’d have to go through both of us to get to our well. Which wouldn’t be hard for six or eight … or was it sixty or eighty? … Confederate soldiers.

  “This is war, lady,” said a black-bearded man, wearing the chevrons of a sergeant.

  “It’s not humane,” she said.

  “If the Yanks got nothin’ fit to drink, might could be they’ll leave y’all alone.”

  “And if we have nothing fit to drink?”

  The sergeant sighed. “Most folks are leavin’ Camden already. Y’all might as well follow us down to Washington.”

  “This is our home,” Mama said.

  I tried to say something, but my tongue felt ten sizes too big. I spit blood again.

  “My husband …” Mama tried, “the father of my children here … he’s fighting with the Second Arkansas Cavalry. Please don’t do this.”

  “Might be he one of Paine’s boys?” the soldier who had walloped me said. “I might know him. I’m from Pine Bluff.”

  Her head shook. “No, he’s with … with ….” She couldn’t think.

  “Captain Mason,” I said, struggling with the words, and the blood, and the fear.

  “That’s A Company,” another soldier said. “What be your man’s name?”

  “Ford!” Mama called out hopefully. “Connor Ford.”

  The man’s head shook. I looked at the soldier with the rock-hard musket stock. His head shook, too. I hoped they were saying that they didn’t know him, hadn’t heard his name, not that he had been killed in battle.

  “Well, bully for your husband and Colonel Slemons’ horse troopers,” the sergeant said, “but we still gots to p’ison the wells. It’s policy, is all.” His nod sent the two dog-packing soldiers through a gap in the line.

  I stumbled, but didn’t fall, and stood in front of Mama. “You … leave … our well … alone,” I mumbled.

  A few soldiers grinned, but not the two with the dead dogs, and not the sergeant.

  Hoofs clopped on the lane and a voice yelled: “Hold on there!”

  The line of gray soldiers turned, and the rider in the kepi, the officer on the roan horse, came to the rescue again.

  “What’s the meaning of this, Sergeant?” the officer asked as he reined up in front of us.

  He was young, the blond mustache more peach fuzz than whiskers, the brass buttons brightly polished, the French-braided shell jacket free of mud. His pants were gray, with a blue stripe up the seams, and his boots were shiny all the way up to his knees, although the bottoms were quite muddy.

  “Orders, Lieutenant,” the sergeant said. “P’isonin’ the wells so’s the Yanks’ll get thirsty.”

  “Please,” Mama said again. “This is our home. We live here. I have three children.”

  I spit again. Blood dribbled through the corners of my lips. If the lieutenant remembered me from Fellman and O’Brien, his face didn’t show it.

  “General Price is abandoning Camden, ma’am,” the officer said. “We fear Steele is bound for Washington. Most citizens are leaving Camden, too, as you should, ma’am, with your family.”

>   “This is our home.” Mama stood straight. I tried to do the same, but now my head was pounding.

  The treetops rustled. Baby Hugh and Edith continued to cry softly. The officer looked toward our porch, then back at Mama and me, back to the porch. He stared the longest time, then sighed.

  Through the spaces in the line of soldiers, I saw other soldiers coming around the house. One stood in the dogtrot, holding a squawking chicken in each hand, grinning down at Baby Hugh and Edith.

  “Sergeant, get your men back to the road. Pack your dead dogs with you.”

  “But ….”

  “Do you have mud in your ears, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir!” the man barked stiffly, then spun around. “You heard the lieutenant, back to the Pike, boys. Let’s go.”

  They started away from the well, and the officer rode toward the house. “Parole those chickens, Monroe.”

  “Awe, Lieutenant.”

  “Now!”

  Down went the chickens, making a beeline for the barn, leaving feathers in the dogtrot. The soldier leaped off the porch, grabbing his haversack. “You’re gettin’ soft, Kane,” he said, but good-naturedly.

  “I have a daughter her age back in Ashley County, Monroe,” the officer said, glancing at Edith. “And so do you.”

  “Yeah.” The would-be chicken thief tipped his hat at my sister, and fell into the line of retreating soldiers.

  Mama and I started for the cabin when the last of the Confederates rounded the house. One of them pulled Betsy behind him.

  Now, Mama was sprinting again. “Please, you can’t take that mule!”

  “Sorry,” a lean, red-headed soldier said. “She’s been conscripted.”

  “But she’s not ours! We borrowed her.”

  “And we’re borrowin’ her from y’all.”

  Mama whirled to the lieutenant. “Must I beg you again, Lieutenant? That’s not our mule. She belongs to the Reverend White.”

  “I’ve spared your well, ma’am. That’s all I can do.”

  “But ….”

  “The South needs mules.” He choked out a dry laugh. “We need everything.”

  “It’s just one mule. A Jenny used by the preacher. For prayer services at homes. He needs that mule.”