Poison Spring

by Boggs, Johnny D. ; Abell, Chris;

  “We shouldn’t let her eat no fish that we catch,” my brother whispered.

  I rubbed my muddy hands in his hair and agreed with him.

  He laughed.

  “She doesn’t like fish,” I said.

  Good spirits abounded that early Monday morning. We hadn’t felt this way in a long time, but Miss Mary was an angel in heaven, and our family seemed to be stronger now. Though I couldn’t tell you why.

  While Mama packed our dinner—carrots and cornbread—Baby Hugh decided to go fishing in the bar ditch at the road. I shook my head, but baited his hook, anyway, and sent him on his way. One worm. That’s all he had, which might last forever in that ditch, or he might lose it before he got halfway up the lane. After placing the can of worms on the porch near Edith’s and my poles, I went to the wash basin to clean the mud off my hands, and headed for the kitchen.

  “Stay on the shallow end,” Mama said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Hugh cannot swim.”

  “I know.”

  “Be back before dark.”

  “We will.”

  “Fishing in the millpond!” Mama shook her head. “Why didn’t we think of this before?”

  “Because Papa always said the only fish in the pond were mudfish,” Edith said, “and he said they aren’t fit to eat.”

  “They aren’t,” I agreed. “But I think there are some bream and catfish in there now. And crappie.”

  “Be careful with the catfish,” Mama said. “Watch their fins.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I looked at Edith. “Are you coming?”

  “Yes,” she answered defiantly.

  “But you don’t even like to eat fish.”

  “I eat the tails.”

  Which was all she would eat, just crunching on the tails after Mama fried the fish we used to catch with Papa in the river and creeks.

  “This will be wonderful,” Mama said. “Fried fish. Just like Saturday nights with Papa.” She couldn’t stop smiling.

  “If we catch any,” I had to remind her.

  “You will,” Mama said.

  Somehow, I wish we could have frozen time at that moment. Mama beaming. Everyone happy. The war, the feud with our neighbors, the passing of Miss Mary … all of that behind us. A child’s fantasy, I guess. It couldn’t stay that way.

  It didn’t.

  Baby Hugh’s screams reached us, and we burst out of the kitchen, onto the porch. He barreled down that road as if the devil himself chased him, holding his hat in his hand. He must have dropped the fishing pole somewhere up the lane, or left it by the ditch.

  Snake must have scared him, I thought. Or maybe just a crawdad.

  “Ma-ma!” He ran harder. “Ma-ma!”

  Not even bothering with the steps, she jumped off the porch, and rushed to him.

  Edith and I heard him shout—“Soldiers!”—as Mama swept him into her arms. He stuttered something we couldn’t understand. Edith and I hurried off the porch, and stared down the lane, expecting to see Lieutenant Bullis or some other Yank come riding down in search of hidden corn.

  “Goodness gracious,” Mama said. “Those poor Union soldiers are bound and determined to ….”

  Baby Hugh’s head jerked off Mama’s shoulder. He wiped his eyes, sniffed, and sang out: “But it ain’t Yankees, Mama!”

  No longer did I concentrate on our lane. Mouth open, I stared hard at my kid brother. Mama stood, stepped back. “Hugh …?”

  “They’s Confederates,” he shouted.

  I could hear the jingling of traces a long way off down the road, muffled voices. I could picture all of General Price’s army marching back to Camden. Turns out, it wasn’t his whole command, but plenty enough.

  “Are you sure, Hugh?” Mama asked.

  “They was all dressed in gray and brown and such, and I saw that flag. A bunch of flags. There was one with a big star in the middle of blue, with two big old red and white stripes.”

  “The Texas flag,” Mama said.

  “And there was the blue flag with the star … the one we sing about …”

  Lyrics to “The Bonnie Blue Flag” briefly ran through my brain.

  “… and the Confederate flag and ….”

  “How do you know?” Edith demanded.

  Right back, Hugh snapped: “I know what that flag looks like, Sister.”

  “Be quiet,” Mama said. “All of you.”

  She drew in the deepest breath, held it a long while before grabbing Baby Hugh’s hand to lead him toward the cabin. “Inside. All of you.”

  There was no hesitation, no discussion, certainly no argument. We walked up the steps, leaving our can of worms and the fishing poles leaning against the porch, except for Baby Hugh’s.

  After marching us into the sleeping quarters, Mama went back into the kitchen for a moment. Quickly she returned, holding the sack filled with the dinner she had planned for us. The door shut, the latch string came in, and she lowered the bar.

  “Travis,” Mama said, “pull in the other latch string, and bar that door, as well.”

  As I obeyed, Mama moved to the window. I thought she would close the shutter, but, instead, she dragged her rocking chair beside it and sat down, staring outside.

  Baby Hugh tried to stop crying, and Edith and I looked at each other without speaking. We couldn’t hear anything now, except our own heavy breathing and Baby Hugh’s sniffling.

  “Mama?” Edith spoke in a whisper.

  Mama rocked and watched.

  “Mama?” Louder this time, but it wasn’t until the third try that Mama turned. She looked nonplused.

  “Yes. I’m sorry, Edith, what is it?”

  Wetting her lips, my sister turned to me as if I knew what to say. I didn’t, but I made a stab. “What should we do?”

  “Oh …”—she brushed her hair off her forehead—“yes, well, just read your Readers. Yes, the Readers. Quietly.”

  Baby Hugh looked up. “Mama’s addled,” he said.

  She smiled, and went back to rocking and watching.

  So I fetched our McGuffey’s Readers, handed Baby Hugh his. He wiped his nose, and went to a stool. Once I gave Edith hers, we sat on the hearth. There was no fire, yet with the doors shut, the room quickly turned hot and stuffy.

  I started the excerpt from Robinson Crusoe, read all about the house he had built after the shipwreck, finished it, and then had to read DeFoe’s passage again because I couldn’t remember anything I’d read on those six pages, couldn’t even describe the illustration.

  We read. We waited. Mama watched.

  An hour passed. More. It must have been around 10:00 a.m. when Edith and I lowered our books. Mama had stopped rocking, and leaned closer to the window. Baby Hugh kept on reading.

  “There,” I said, though not meaning to. Turning toward Edith, I started to ask, but she beat me to it.

  “Did you hear that?” she said.

  I could only nod.

  Baby Hugh looked up, and, seeing that we had closed our books, he did the same. “Hear what? I didn’t hear nothing.”

  “Quiet!” Mama called from the window. She had stopped rocking.

  The little pop sounded again, was answered, then a few more sounded. This time Baby Hugh heard, and he sprang out of his chair.

  “What is it, Mama?”

  Mama clasped her hands together. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could read her lips. “My God.”

  For the next few minutes, the sound continued sporadically, kind of like what we had heard when Papa would walk over to Miss Mary’s cornfields in September or October with his shotgun and come back in the evening with a mess of doves for Mama to fry for supper.

  We listened. Baby Hugh tried to keep track of the number of the shots he heard, but quickly lost count.

  “A
re they fighting, Mama?” he asked.

  She stood now, against the log walls, wetting her lips, wringing her hands. “Yes,” she said, barely audible.

  “Fighting the Yankees?”

  Her head bobbed slightly.

  He grinned, but just for a moment, then he cried out: “I hope they ain’t fighting Jared Greene! I kinda like him.”

  “I hope ….”

  Mama never finished. The whole cabin trembled, the doors and shutters rattling. Mama reached through the window, and slammed the shutter, fastening it, moving toward the bed.

  “Come here,” she said.

  Our house shook again.

  She sat on the floor, leaning against the bed, and we gathered around her, Edith and Hugh the closest to her, me sitting beside my baby brother.

  “It sounds like thunder,” Edith observed after our cabin shuddered again.

  “It’s coming from down the road,” I said. “Toward Camden.”

  “Not that far,” Mama said.

  “That’s where those Confederate soldiers was marching to,” Baby Hugh said. He waved toward the east.

  Edith gasped. “Papa’s mill.”

  Again our house shook.

  “Maybe,” Mama answered hollowly. “But I think farther up the road. Maybe Lee’s plantation.” That was another big operation, up the road toward Camden but past Papa’s mill.

  “Or Poison Spring?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  A series of muffled explosions shook the cabin again, and Edith cried out: “What is that?”

  “Cannon,” I answered.

  “I seen a bunch of them big guns,” Baby Hugh bragged. “They was plowing up the mud. There was a guy just yelling at a mule. He had on a cap just like that one them colored Yankees was wearing, only his was red and not blue, and ….”

  The cabin quivered.

  “Yes, near Poison Spring,” Mama guessed, and pulled Baby Hugh and Edith closer. Cannon fire became steady, each series of volleys shaking the mud chinks loose from the logs. Dust rose in the house, irritated our eyes and noses.

  “Can you make it stop?” Baby Hugh begged. He sniffled again.

  “Shhhhhh.”

  Mama pulled Baby Hugh closer, and, as faint musketry echoed the cannon fire, I slid nearer to my brother, wishing I were in his place and that Mama was holding me tight against her. Instead, I tried to be the man of the house, so I reached over and grabbed Hugh’s thigh, squeezing it while trying to reassure him with: “Everything’s all right, Hugh. That’s a long way from here. Poison Spring’s even past Papa’s mill. There’s no reason to cry. We’re safe here.”

  I didn’t feel safe.

  * * * * *

  For thirty minutes, which felt like days, booming cannons rocked the cabin. Suddenly the sound quieted.

  “Is the battle over, Mama?” Edith asked.

  Before Mama could answer, we heard that noise again. Not cannon. Not this time. Instead, the same pops from muskets that had started the battle resumed, only this time, it was not sporadic, but steady. Volley after volley. Volley after volley. Volley after volley.

  “Should we pray, Mama?” Edith asked.

  “Yes,” Mama said. “Pray for everyone there.”

  If anyone in our house prayed, though, it was silently.

  For more than fifteen minutes, those muskets fired and fired and fired. More cannon answered after that, but not as long, not as steadily, and moments later muskets spoke once more. When I blinked, my eyes stung, and I realized that I was sweating.

  It felt odd, sitting on the floor with my mother and my siblings, listening to a battle being waged a few miles from our house. We could hear the muskets and cannon, although dulled by distance, hills, and trees. No shouts. No screams. Just the soft shots of long arms, and the dull thud of cannon that rocked our home, our world.

  Four hours we sat on the floor, until the sounds died like a thunderstorm moving away from us. A few random pops, then a deathly, eerie quiet.

  “Stay here.” Mama pulled herself up, walked toward the front door, changed her mind, and went to the dogtrot side. Once she removed the bar, she opened the door, and stepped outside, leaving us alone for maybe five minutes, no more. We never budged. When she came back, the door closed, the bar went back into place, and she said: “I think it’s over. Pray it’s over, anyway.”

  “Who do you reckon won?” Baby Hugh sprang to his feet.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can we go out …?”

  “No!”

  Mama had fetched a bucket of water, and placed it on the hearth. “Let’s eat,” she announced, and bit into a carrot.

  The sack meant for our fishing trip sat untouched. No one had any appetite, though we all drank water. Mama returned to her rocker, and we kids to our Readers. The doors and shutters remained closed, and, around dusk, our stomachs felt strong enough to hold some grub, so we ate cornbread with carrots, washed down with water.

  Finally it began to darken, but Mama didn’t even light a candle or a lantern. She didn’t even get a fire going in the fireplace.

  “It’s bedtime,” she finally announced, but before any of us could stand or move toward the loft, a horse whinnied.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Instantly we froze. I’m not sure anyone even breathed. Darkness stretched across the cabin as the horse’s hoofs drew nearer, saddle leather squeaked, and footfalls sounded. Softly at first, then harder as the rider came up the steps and onto the porch.

  An eternity passed. Our fear turned palpable. Another new word.

  pal´pa-ble, a. [Fr., from L. palpor, to feel; It. palpabile.]

  1. Perceptible by the touch; that may be felt; as, a palpable substance, palpable darkness.

  Just beyond the front door, a man cleared his throat, then knocked.

  Harder.

  “Missus Ford?”

  A voice no one recognized, but it was Southern, a rich drawl yet commanding.

  “Is anyone home?”

  More knocking.

  “Missus Ford, if you are inside, and I pray that is the case, I mean you and your children no harm. My name is Richard Brodie, corporal with the Second Arkansas Cavalry, and we need your assistance, ma’am. If you are home ….”

  As soon as she heard Second Arkansas Cavalry, Mama moved for the door.

  Papa’s regiment.

  “Just a minute!” She hefted the bar, turned to us, saying: “Light a candle. Quickly!” The bar went into the corner, and she opened the door as Edith held match to wick.

  “Come in,” Mama said. She stepped away, allowing a tall stranger inside.

  Holding a greasy, gray slouch hat in both hands, he eased inside our cabin. Edith used the candle she had lit to fire up the other candles, bathing our visitor in warm light as he wearily made his way toward the center of the room, Mama walking right behind him, her face anxious.

  He nodded in our direction, then turned to face Mama. “My apologies for calling on you at this hour of the evening, Missus Ford.”

  His shell jacket, gray with yellow trim and gold French braid on the sleeves, was dirty, ripped all along the left sleeve, but I detected no blood. His boots were brown, scuffed, practically worn through, with dirty black trousers tucked inside the tall tops of the boots. The spurs made no noise. He wore no saber, and the holster on his right hip was empty.

  The eyes were what caught me when he looked in our direction, nodding again. Mama dragged the rocking chair over, telling him to sit, but his head shook.

  “No, ma’am.” He grinned. “If I sat, I fear my legs would not allow me again to stand.” The eyes, though, weren’t grinning. They were dark, dead, bloodshot. Hollow. He looked like a man who had seen a ghost. Or an army of ghosts.

  I doubted that he was older than twenty-five, sporting the beginnings o
f a mustache, but it was hard to tell because his face, the cheeks sunken and lips thin, was covered in black powder and dirt.

  “You said you are with the Second Arkansas …” Mama began.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “My husband ….”

  His head nodded. “Sergeant Ford. That’s how I knew where to find you. He said you would be here. I feared you would be like most Southerners, and fled after our army abandoned Camden. But the sergeant … he was adamant. He ….” His hand shot out, stopping Mama from her next question. “Missus Ford, I haven’t seen Sergeant Ford since the battle began. I know not where he is … where most of my men are, for that matter. Brigadier General Cabell sent most of our regiment to guard the rear, ma’am.” His smile tried to reassure us but didn’t. “I am sure he is fine, ma’am. But …”—he swallowed—“others, I fear, are not as fortunate.”

  Unable to hold himself up any longer, he sank into the rocking chair.

  “Edith,” Mama said. “To the kitchen. Bring a cup of coffee.”

  “It’ll be cold, Mama.”

  “I know.” Mama had moved to the bucket from the well, dipped the ladle in it, brought it quickly back to the corporal. Greedily he drank, though most of the water went down his chin, streaking through the grime.

  I helped Edith with the bar, and she went through the dogtrot to the kitchen.

  “We fought the Yanks today,” the soldier was saying.

  “Yes, we heard.”

  “I imagine you did.”

  Baby Hugh sang out: “Did you whip them?”

  “Hugh,” Mama said as the corporal hung his head.

  “I … well ….” Richard Brodie shook his head, sipped again from the ladle Mama had refilled with water. “We ambushed the Yanks at Poison Spring. Drove them off in a rout. It was ….” Closing his eyes, he shuddered. No one spoke.

  I thought he might have died, but his eyes finally opened when Edith ran back inside, holding one of Papa’s old beer steins filled with cold coffee. Mama took it, held it to the corporal, who drank it with unsteady hands.