The Year of Jubilo

by Bahr, Howard;

  “Did you hear?” Gawain asked, after a moment.

  Stribling held up his hand; at the gesture, the bird ceased calling, and even the murmuring in the grass seemed to pause, waiting. The horse lifted his head, ears tilted. The dog watched them all, cocking his head just as Stribling had. Then the empty place passed, and the world began to turn again. Stribling lowered his hand. “Sorry,” he said. “What was you sayin?”

  “The bird,” said Gawain. “Did you hear him? It sounded like—”

  “No,” said Stribling. “Not the bird.”

  The horse moved restlessly; Stribling spoke to him and rubbed his nose, all the while watching down the road. “I know this place,” he said. He nodded. “That bridge yonder.”

  Stribling went on stroking the horse’s nose, talking to him, while Gawain stared in wonder at the bridge. It seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, emerging from a line of sycamores Gawain now understood to be a stream bank; it was a narrow span of weathered gray planks, serene, drowsing in the dappled sunlight. The road led down to it in a gentle fall, then, at the far end, curved away into a dense wood. Gawain had not thought of the bridge until this moment; he had merely expected it to be there, and now it had caught him by surprise. They were close now, only a half mile or so from town.

  “Why, that is Leaf River bridge,” said Gawain. “Wonder why the yankees didn’t burn it.”

  “I crossed it three times,” said Stribling. “First time was at a walk, northbound. Second time was at the full gallop, southbound, and a dicey piece of work it was, too, with those other fellows on our heels. Then the last time going north again, ambling along, in no particular hurry to catch anybody. I wondered at the time why they didn’t burn it; I suppose they didn’t care if we caught them or not.” Stribling laughed then, and pushed his hat back on his head. “It is the only intact span I have seen in years—I might have to burn it myself.”

  “I understand,” said Gawain. “But do it from the other side, if you will.”

  “Surely,” said Stribling. “I—”

  The horse jerked at the reins, wanting to back up. “Easy,” said Stribling.

  “What’s the matter with him now?” said Gawain.

  “He’s a horse is what’s the matter with him,” said the other.

  “Well, they are crazy all right,” agreed Gawain. He did not like the horse to be so nervous all of a sudden.

  “Do me a favor, sir,” said Stribling.

  “All right.”

  “Open that offhand bag for me, would you?”

  “Surely.” Gawain set his carpet bag in the road, ran his hand down the horse’s sweaty neck then moved aft, his hand touching the horse all the while. When he reached the saddlebag, he unbuckled it and looked at Stribling.

  “Now hunt around in there and fetch my pistol. Be careful—there’s some old underdrawers in there, too.”

  Gawain frowned, started to speak, but Stribling shook his head. Gawain reached into the bag and felt the cool flank of the pistol right away. He brought it out: a ’49 Colt’s Pocket Model, capped and loaded. He handed it butt-first to Stribling. “Here,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Stribling, and tucked the piece into the waistband of his trousers. He was watching down the road again, his left arm wrapped around the horse’s nose, the fingers of his right hand tapping the butt of the pistol. The horse was still, but for a quivering in his flanks and his breathing. Meanwhile the fyce had trotted a few yards ahead and pointed his muzzle at the woods. Again the woods and the grass fell silent, and the sunlight seemed empty, and the leaves of the trees grew still.

  “Hush,” said Stribling. “See the dog yonder.”

  The fyce was creeping. His back was bowed, and the hair on it bristled; he lifted each foot with infinite care, as if he were walking on glass. His lip was curled, and he was moving toward the almost seamless wall of a stand of poplars grown thick in the bottomland.

  “Watch it,” said Stribling. “Watch the—” And that was all because the horse squealed and reared then, cutting at the air with his hooves, and Stribling ducked and almost lost the reins. But he held on, cursing, at the same time trying to shuck out of his frock coat. Then the horse reared again but lost his footing and slipped in the mud, landing hard on his side with a whoof! of air, and Stribling had his coat off and wrapped around the horse’s head and pulled the pistol from his belt.

  “Gawain!” he said, and flung the pistol at Gawain Harper, who caught the piece awkwardly between his hands, the muzzle pointed at his stomach—

  “Jesus,” said Gawain, and fumbled at the pistol, turning at the same time toward the trees.

  The hounds came silently out of the grass in perfect harmony. Black they were, and long-legged, with great triangular heads creased down the middle, and long pink tongues flecked with slobber. Their muscles rippled like rope under the taut black hides. Their smell exploded over the road, and the fyce yelped and curled his lip. When he shot forward, the two hounds split apart, and the smaller one, the bitch, hesitated, offered her flank, and the fyce went for her. He bit, but his teeth closed on the empty air. The fyce whirled, but too late. Then the bite came, hard, at the base of his neck, and the sound like a stick breaking.

  WHEN HE SAW what the hounds were up to, Gawain cocked the pistol. He lay the bead on the center of the big one’s head, the one that was circling, and pulled the trigger, and heard the dry snap of the hammer.

  “Shoot em both, Gawain,” said Harry Stribling, holding the horse’s head. “You can get their names later.” But Gawain didn’t hear; he had already snapped the pistol again and now he was watching the big hound move fast, close his jaws on the fyce’s neck and shake him once and fling him into the grass, then turn, both of them, and grin at him, tongues lolling, sliding apart again.

  “Shoot, goddammit!” said Stribling, but Gawain wouldn’t shoot again. He could hardly see now, and he knew what that was about—the red light breaking behind his eyes, like when you looked at a fire at night then looked away, and the breath coming in quick gasps, and the trembling, and the calm. That’s how it had been, always—something he had learned, come to depend on: the calm, the quiet place he moved in. He could not have done it otherwise, all those times when he could see their faces, their hands, some odd detail of their dress—a button, a certain cut of jacket, a corps badge or set of chevrons, a ragged cuff—as they came out to meet him in the smoke, or recoiled behind their works, or ran before him. So he moved toward the big hound, wanting to kill it, wanting to lay the pistol barrel across the broad, creased head as many times as it would take to crack the bone, splinter it, make the pink froth spill between the jaws. From far away, he heard Stribling say his name, but he was watching the hounds’ dull eyes, the lips curl over the yellow teeth and the coarse, bristling hair. The animals crouched—still silent, not a sound had they made since they came sliding out of the grass—then a voice that was not Stribling’s voice but that of another: “Don’t be doin that.”

  The voice brought him up, made him aware again. From the corner of his eye he could see Stribling and the horse; he could see the hounds crouching low, their eyes just over the tassles of the grass, and the jeans breeches, wet to the knees, of the man who had spoken. Gawain raised his eyes, blinked, the breath still coming quick so a moment passed before he could speak. Then he saw the man’s face, swollen, peeling red, his mouth opening and closing as he breathed, and the red, peeling hands, and the muslin shirt worn to thinness and soaked with sweat, and finally the fowling piece, held together with wire, thrown casually over his forearm, the barrel steady and in a line with Gawain’s eyes.

  “Your dogs killed that little fellow,” Gawain said.

  “They’s dogs,” said the man. “They’ll do that.”

  A powder horn hung from the man’s shoulder by a leather thong, and a shot pouch, and a goat bladder of water. From his waistbelt, a brace of squirrels dangled head-down. One of the squirrels moved its paws lazily in the air, as if reaching for so
mething.

  Gawain studied the man. His eyes did not seem to blink, nor to be looking anywhere in particular. The face was empty of expression. Gawain moved a little to the side, watched the shotgun barrel follow him. It was a single-barrel gun, the muzzle worn from much shooting. The hammer was cocked; Gawain could see the little copper gleam of the percussion cap.

  “I know you,” said Gawain. “You and your goddamned dogs.”

  “Pardon me, gentlemen,” said Harry Stribling. “You reckon I can unwrap this horse’s head? He is gettin my coat all full of slobber.”

  The man looked up, as if noticing Stribling for the first time. “You askin me?” he said.

  Stribling spoke to the horse, then pulled the coat away and stroked the horse’s nose. Zeke rolled his eyes and snorted, but he stood fast, his feet planted stiffly in the road. All his near side, and the saddle and stirrup leather and saddlebags, was coated in mud from his fall. “Now then,” said Stribling. He looked at the man. “You might want to point that gun some other way.”

  The man nodded, but he did not move the gun.

  “You know,” said Stribling, “it really is bad judgment to shoot squirrels in the hot summertime. They get the fever.”

  “Don’t say,” said the man.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Stribling. “I’d be real careful, I was you. Real careful.”

  They stood in silence for a moment: the three men, the dogs, the horse. It was hot and still, the air heavy now and smelling of pine. The birds were quiet, taking their midday rest. Then the man nodded again, as if he’d digested the advice Stribling offered. He said, “Yonder’s the river; you ought to cross it now, go on to town if that’s your notion.”

  “Gawain, let’s be goin,” said Harry Stribling.

  But Gawain was moving slowly, looking at the trees, moving between the two dogs where they lay in the grass. He stopped then, looked down at the fyce. The dogs watched him, making no sound.

  The fyce lay with his teeth bared and his eyes open, intact save for the odd twist of his neck. Already the fleas were leaving him; Gawain could see them moving under the bristly hair. He nudged the carcass with his foot, then looked at Stribling. “Would you care to offer a philosophy?” he said.

  “No,” said Stribling.

  “That’s too bad,” said Gawain. Then his eyes lit up with remembering, and he turned once more to the stranger. “Molochi!” he said. “Molochi Fish!”

  The other turned his swollen mask to Gawain, mouth opening and closing, eyes dead and lidless, as if in parody of his own name.

  “You still hire out to the paterollers, Molochi?” asked Gawain, moving a little to the side while the eyes followed him. “Still hire out for Constable John Talbot?” He waved the pistol at the dogs. “That was all a long while ago, Molochi—these must be the pups of the one caught young Peter. My, that was a day.”

  Molochi Fish blinked at last. He worked his mouth and spat. “Ain’t any paterollers since they freed the niggers.”

  Gawain slapped a palm to his forehead. “Of course! I just can’t get it in my mind, been gone so long. They freed the niggers, Molochi, and there you have it. And Mister John Talbot?”

  The man spat again. “Dead,” he said.

  “Ah, me,” said Gawain. “What a good and righteous man he was, and now he sleeps with the angels. My, how the world goes and leaves us behind.”

  He turned to Stribling then, who was still watching, whose face still brooded in the shadows of the moving leaves. “Now Harry, this is Molochi Fish who used to be our hero in the old times, but has lost his situation now the niggers are free and the town constable is out of office—life’s incumbent, you might say.”

  “A pleasure, I’m sure,” said Stribling.

  Gawain tucked the useless pistol into his waistband and squatted amiably beside the body of the fyce. Stribling watched him. Molochi Fish seemed not to see him at all.

  “Now, Harry,” said Gawain, “old Molochi here reminds me of the days when we had a little nigger we named Peter. He was sweet and harmless as a bird, but simple-minded, don’t you see. My daddy, oh, how he loved young Peter—taught him to read and cipher, if you can imagine such a thing, and bought him a goat once that pulled a red wagon, and told me I could only ride in it if Peter said I could.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” said Stribling, rubbing his leg. “Maybe we could—”

  “Now, I am tellin a story,” said Gawain, waving him off. “I have to tell you about my dear daddy first. He was always a good man, except sometimes things would happen inside his head. He wasn’t mean by nature, but when a spell came on him, his eyes would go empty and bulge like grapes, and he would have to hurt somebody. So he’d hunt for a fault until he found it, then he’d come for anybody handy—hunt us through the house and yard—and we would all hide and hope he’d find Peter first, which he generally did because Peter didn’t have sense enough to hide. God damn, that was noble of us, don’t you think?”

  “I wish you all’d go on,” said Molochi.

  “One day,” Gawain said, “the old man was in a fit, and he caught me playin with some lead soldiers on the porch. He snatched me up by the collar and laid into me with his cane, when young Peter came around the porch and took up a flower pot and broke it across the old man’s head. Jesus, what an eruption. Then Peter ran away.”

  “Gawain—,” began Stribling.

  “Of course, Papa went to Constable John Talbot, and Constable John Talbot went to Molochi Fish because that’s what you did when you had a runaway nigger. Daddy made me ride behind him on the horse, and I was there when the dogs … when the dogs caught the boy in a corncrib. You remember that, Molochi? You remember that, goddamn you!”

  Gawain was shaking now. He stood up and wiped his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “I ought to kill you,” he said. “I could do it, easy.”

  Molochi blinked and raised the shotgun.

  “Maybe this pistol won’t snap the next time,” said Gawain. He shook his head. He could feel the veins in his temples filled to bursting, and black spots moved before his eyes and danced against a curtain of red. “Ah, shit,” he spat. “Ah, shit.” He sat down again, the pistol in his lap. He pressed his palms to his temples. “Oh, Lord, oh, Lord,” he said.

  Harry Stribling came and took the pistol out of Gawain’s hand and tucked it away in his pocket. The dogs rose, menacing, but Stribling looked at them, and they lay down again. Then Stribling came to Molochi Fish and pushed the shotgun barrel aside. “Mister Harper had a choice to make,” he said. “If he’d chosen wrong, he’d be dead, and so would you, for I’d of killed you myself.”

  Molochi Fish backed up a step. The dogs came and stood behind him, close to his legs.

  “Maybe one day you can pay him back for choosing right,” said Stribling. He looked up the road then, toward the bridge and the woods beyond. The wind was rising in the trees, and he could smell rain coming. When he turned back again, Molochi Fish was gone.

  V

  When Molochi Fish left the two strangers on the road, his idea was to go home and forget about them. He had gone a quarter mile into the woods before some impulse turned him back, and in a little while he was moving up the bank of Leaf River toward the gravelly ford. From there, he could watch the bridge and see when the strangers crossed it.

  A big moccasin was on the gravel bar, in the cool mud just outside the willows. Molochi could smell the snake before he saw it: a smell like stagnant water and rotting leaves. The dogs smelled it, too, and wanted to go after it, but Molochi heeled them with a harsh, bitten sound that they knew was the last command before a beating. Man and dogs passed within two feet of the snake. It was an old one and had no pattern now, so that it might have been only a darker shadow save for its bulk, piled in thick, muscular folds in the lee of a driftwood log. The scarred end of its tail began to vibrate as the man and the dogs passed; the broad, wedge-shaped head arced slowly, watching as the man knelt in the grass, and the dogs lay down behind him. After a moment,
the snake rested its head on the black, mossy scales of its body and watched with its lidless eyes.

  Molochi Fish did not give a goddamn about the snake; he was interested only in the two men who were on the bridge now. He squatted on his heels, the fowling piece across his thighs, and watched them down the shadowed tunnel of the trees. He wanted to remember them, to etch them deeply into his recollection.

  The gnats swarmed around him. They were at the eyes of the dogs too, but the dogs remained still, only flickering an ear now and then, or shaking their heads. Molochi knew they would not move.

  The dogs, as Gawain had suspected, were the pups out of the bitch that had run the little nigger boy down. The bitch had been but a pup herself then, striving to make her place in the pack. Surely he’d had a pack then: ten, sometimes fifteen dogs that he trained with nigger clothes and nigger hide and blood when he could get it, that could run all night and bite broomsticks in half. He remembered them not as individual dogs but as a dark roiling mass of tails and ears and glistening teeth moving through the deep shadows of the trees or over open ground in the moonlight.

  Now only two dogs remained. Their dam was one of the few dogs he remembered outside the anonymous crowd; she had been his favorite, and he had felt something when he had to put her down with the rest. He had put them all down, all but these two, when the yankees came, when the niggers were freed. He had cut their throats one by one so as not to waste powder and shot. The bitch, he remembered, seemed to know what he was about; she crouched at the end of her tether, snarling at him. She bit him hard in the forearm before he could get hold of her muzzle and pull her head back and draw the knife across her. He saved some of her blood in a little bottle, but after a while it dried up and he threw it away.

  The men on the bridge were talking. He could not hear the words, but he heard their voices. One was sitting on the bridge rail with his back turned, the other was leaning on the rail, looking down at the water. Molochi Fish did not wonder what they were talking about, nor what the Harper boy was seeing in the waters of Leaf River. He only watched them, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. He could hear the harsh sound of his own breathing. The gnats lapped at the raw skin of his face.