XVIII
All things followed time, and all persons followed time. Uncle Priam went home to tell the news to Aunt Vassar, taking Wall Stutts’ horse with him. The horse went peacefully, as if he’d finally used up all his meanness and could rest now. Old Hundred-and-Eleven went down to the boxcar jail and found Dauncy and Jack playing marbles in the dirt. He took them back to the woods above the Harper place, and there they hid Wall Stutts’ body in a shallow grave. They finished as night was closing down and the whippoorwills began calling in the fields. Fireflies rose about their feet as they walked back to the jail through the broomsage, Dauncy and Jack carrying the shovels, all of them silent.
Gawain and Alex did not return to the Harper house. The last thing Gawain wanted right now was to face Aunt Vassar, even though he suspected she would approve of the afternoon’s events. Carrying the Henry rifle and his father’s Colt, he felt as conspicuous on the daylight streets as a brass band, so he and Alex made their way through back lots and the old Academy grounds to Carter’s. Alex wanted to know all about the adventure in the woods, of course, and kept up a steady stream of talk until Gawain told him bluntly to shut up. To Gawain Harper, who had just killed a man, the boy’s innocence was unnerving. Though Alex was offended, he felt better when they had to hide among the buildings of the Academy, then again in the weeds by Holy Cross church, while citizens passed on the roads.
At Carter’s, Gawain did not knock but came in the door shouting Stribling’s name. He stopped when he saw Morgan in the hall. Alex ran to his sister and began, “Mister Harper has—”
“No!” Gawain shouted. “Don’t you say it!”
“What do you mean?” said Morgan. “Don’t you be talkin to this boy—”
“No!” Gawain said again. He flung the rifle down in the hall and crossed to her. By this time, the others had come down the stairs, and Judge Rhea burst from the parlor. Gawain looked at them in surprise, but only for an instant. He shoved the boy aside and took Morgan by the shoulders and spoke to her as if no one else was in the hall. “I killed Wall Stutts,” he said.
Morgan’s eyes grew wide and filled with tears, and she pulled away. “No! Don’t tell me that! Don’t come in here and tell me that!”
Gawain followed her. He pushed through the men in the hall, pushed her father aside. He caught her arm, but she pulled away again and was out the back door and gone, and Gawain let her go.
“What?” said Stribling. “Tell me, boy.”
Gawain turned back to the hall then and looked in the faces of the men gathered there. “What are you all doin here?” he said.
Stribling came forward, took Gawain by the arm and led him to a settee in the hall. “Now, you tell us,” he said. So Gawain told them, and in a little while understood in his turn that they had all come a long way since morning.
When he could, Gawain slipped out into the yard and found Morgan on the garden bench. She was not crying now, and she would not look at him when he approached. He sat beside her in silence for a moment, wondering if she could smell the death on him. Finally, he started to speak, but she hushed him. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Don’t apologize, and don’t expect me to cry.”
“I take no joy in it, if that’s what you think,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
No, he thought. I am not sure. He said: “What do you think?”
She looked at him then. “I think you must do what you must. I think I want it to be over with, so we can start again.”
Gawain nodded. After a moment, he said, “Well, ain’t you goin to cry just a little? I was in dire peril, after all.”
She lifted her face to him then. “You are all right? He didn’t hurt you any?”
“Why, no,” said Gawain.
“All right, then,” said Morgan. “And no, I am not goin to cry.”
He took her then, and gathered her hard against him. Pressing his face against her hair, he noticed for the first time a gray strand, coursing through the dark like the delicate skein of smoke from a snuffed candle.
After supper, it was decided that everyone but Thomas and Stribling would go home before the moon rose, then return at daybreak. “The yankees don’t know who was around the tavern, except for Thomas here,” said Stribling.
“Mister Wooster knows,” Nobles pointed out.
The correspondent, who had taken a seat in a commodious armchair, smiled and tapped his notebook. “It’s all right here,” he said. “An account that will enthrall even the jaded readers of Cincinnati, Ohio.”
“Well, I reckon that means we will have to kill you,” said Bloodworth.
“On the contrary,” said Wooster. He flipped through the pages and licked the point of his mechanical pencil. “By the way, how do you spell your name, sir? Is it Bloodwort? Bloodsworth?”
Stuart Bloodworth spelled out his name. “It’s Welsh,” he added.
“Capital!” said the correspondent. He looked around as if everything was decided.
Professor Brown cleared his throat in the silence that followed. “Clyde,” he said, “I think we might require of you a pledge of confidentiality.”
“Ah, I see,” said Wooster. He shifted his great bulk in the chair. “Gentlemen, be at ease. You forget I am your alibi.” He smiled and lifted the notebook. “Besides, the story ain’t over yet.”
“Oh, Henry is all right,” said Thomas. “He is a journalist and must let the thing play out to its gaudy conclusion. Ain’t that right, Henry?”
“Well put, sir,” said the correspondent. “I am a model of objectivity. Merely an observer of the passing scene.”
“The profession has changed since I was in it,” said Stribling.
Soon after, the men slipped away into the growing darkness. When they were gone, the house was quiet. Stribling, Gawain, and Thomas went up on the gallery to smoke. They had been there half an hour when Nobles returned. “The Citadel is burned to the ground,” he said. “The yankees did it for spite.” He stood in the candlelit hall, his hat in his hand, his face glistening with sweat. “Ben Luker is caught. He told on everybody that was there. I got to go warn them others, if the yankees ain’t snatched em up already.”
“I should have killed that son of a bitch when I had the chance,” said Stribling.
“Sir!” said the Judge. “You forget yourself.”
“It’s all right, Papa,” said Morgan.
Stribling blushed and turned to Morgan. “Beg pardon,” he said. “After this day, I would not blame you if I were lowered in your eyes.”
Morgan shook her head. “We aire all tired, Captain,” she said. “Tomorrow, I will have forgotten everything but your kindness.”
In a moment, Nobles was gone, and Stribling with him. They passed into the pale light of the waning moon, then parted, Nobles to find Craddock and Bloodworth, Stribling to seek out the professor in his tent. Toward midnight, Stribling returned alone, exhausted, his eyes empty. “They are in the boxcar,” he told Gawain. “Every one of em, Nobles too. And von Arnim ain’t foolin around this time.”
WHEN L. W. Thomas heard the news about the Citadel, he crept back upstairs and went out on the gallery again. Beowulf followed and lay down at his feet, watching him. The moon was rising through a few feathery clouds, and Thomas noted there was a ring around it. He looked out at the yard, with its shadows just beginning to coalesce out of the darkness, and the sprinkle of fireflies among the trees, and he wondered how he had come to be here. He could, if he wished, trace the actual events that had brought him to this gallery, but choices and turns and missteps were not all of it. In his thirty-eight years, or at least since he was old enough to ponder such things, he had searched for that element within him that made the choices, made the turns, willfully, already knowing what would happen—and he had never found it, never isolated it long enough to anticipate what it might do. Choosing to leave the valise under his bunk was a perfect example, he thought. He wanted to take the money, run for the depot, disappear up the railroad towa
rd the Planter’s Hotel. But that other part, the one that always prevailed at such moments, whispered atonement atonement atonement and he had abjured money and safety and freedom for—what? Atonement for what? he asked himself. There was so much to choose from.
Thomas’ hands were shaking. He gripped the balustrade and listened to the murmur of his soul. He was afraid. These days he was always afraid, not of any solid shape or form—not the yankees, for instance, nor even Solomon Gault—but of some indefinable presence that always seemed to be watching, judging, ready to destroy him if he should slip up. Long ago, he had read the stories of Arachne and Niobe, how they had challenged the gods and suffered for it, and it had occurred to him that the origin of his fear might dwell in the ancient, mythic memory of his race. He feared God, of course, but figured he might have some show with Him. The old gods were different, even if you didn’t believe in them: they laid for you in the dark.
In Baltimore, the summer after the riot, Thomas had been working under a shadowy character he knew only as “Burke.” This Burke had any number of lines running into Washington, and had discovered that a Mister Danforth, one of the most ardent secessionists in Baltimore, was in reality a Pinkerton operative with lines of his own, all of them converging at the office of the Federal secret service. Someone higher than Burke—Thomas neither knew nor cared who it was—decided that Danforth was dangerous and must be eliminated.
“There will be a bonus, of course,” said Burke as they sat together on a bollard by the inner harbor. “Two hundred dollars Federal.”
Thomas was surprised at how little he would take for snuffing a man’s candle—but it was war, after all. That night, late, he found the man’s house on Madison Street. An alley ran behind it, and there Thomas waited in deep shadow. He heard no whispers in his head; he did not know about the gods yet.
Presently, the lamps winked out, and the house was in darkness save for a single window on the ground floor. Thomas crept across the yard (there was no dog; he had determined that already) and up the wooden back stairs. He tried the door and found it unlocked. In a moment, he was in a pantry that opened onto a hall. He drew his pistol and moved soundlessly toward the rectangle of gaslight that would be the parlor or library.
Rupert Danforth, wrapped in a silk robe, was seated at his desk in the green glow of the lamp, writing a letter to the governor of the State of Maryland, arguing for secession. He heard the floor creak and looked up to see the man standing in the doorway, his face obscured by the glare of the lamp. Danforth shaded his eyes and peered into the dark. “Who is it?” he said. “Caspar?”
“You know better than that,” said Thomas.
Danforth moved the lamp aside, at the same time sliding his hand toward the desk drawer. “Don’t,” said Thomas, raising his pistol and moving into the room.
Danforth sat back. “Well,” he said. “I suppose I am to be killed.”
Later, Thomas cursed himself for letting the man talk. He should have done the thing right then, but he hesitated. He admired the man’s brass, he told himself later. That was the only reason.
Danforth let out a great sigh and ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t suppose you are a Freemason?” he asked.
“No,” said Thomas.
“Ah, well,” said Danforth. He was about to speak again when his eyes shifted to Thomas’ left. “Toby!” he said.
Thomas half-turned. The door was three or four paces away, and in it Thomas saw a boy, about twelve, in his nightshirt and slippers. With both hands, he held a single-shot Dragoon pistol, the kind with a swivel ramrod and a barrel band and a muzzle as big as a railway tunnel. “Whoa, now,” said Thomas.
The boy’s hands were shaking, and when he spoke, it was barely a whisper, dry and trembling. “You better leave us alone,” he said.
“Toby,” said Danforth. “Bring me the pistol, son.”
“No,” said Thomas. “Lay it on the floor. You’re too young to be killin people. I’ll be in all your dreams if you do.”
“Papa?” said the boy.
“Bring me the gun,” said Danforth. “This man fancies himself an assassin, but he won’t hurt you.”
“Don’t do it,” said Thomas.
“Come on, boy.”
The boy Toby looked from one to the other. Thomas saw that the hammer on the pistol was back, the lad’s fingers tight on the trigger. All right, he thought, tomorrow’s another day. He moved then, thinking he would make the door, knowing the boy wouldn’t shoot—
“Toby! Shoot!” shouted Danforth, and the boy jumped at the sound and pulled the trigger.
The pistol, apparently, was double-charged. It bellowed and leapt backward, and the hammer struck the boy in the forehead, opening a deep gash and knocking him through the door. Meanwhile, the .54-caliber ball passed through Thomas’ right side, through Rupert Danforth’s open, shouting mouth and out the back of his head, shattering the window behind him. Thomas, gasping in pain, turned in time to see Danforth stagger backward then slide down the wall, leaving a streak on the damask wallpaper.
Thomas’ ears were ringing from the shot. He stumbled to the door and saw the boy lying in the hall, his face marbled with blood. At the top of the stairs, a woman in a nightgown was shrieking for help. Thomas knelt by the boy, lifted his head and whispered fiercely into his ear. “Toby didn’t shoot his papa,” he said. “Toby didn’t shoot his papa. The bad man shot his papa.” Then he stood, crying out from the pain, and found the woman lurching at him, her hands clawed. He pushed her aside and ran. In the pantry, he collided with a screaming house servant and knocked her down. Then he was gone, out the door, staggering across the yard and down the alley while dogs barked and men’s voices rose in the darkness around him.
That was a long time ago, and the wound was still with him and always would be. He had thought the great physicians of St. Louis might fix it, but he understood now that the notion was only another way of delaying the hard truth. L. W. Thomas would have to heal himself, if he was ever going to be healed at all.
So the money was gone; he would have to give that up for Tom Kelly and Rafe. But the wound was still with him, and if the gods were watching—as he supposed they were—he thought he might know what they expected. He still had his Remington, capped and loaded. It wasn’t much, but it would answer when the time came.
ALL THINGS FOLLOWED time, and all persons followed time. Shortly after moonrise, Henry Clyde Wooster arrived at the Shipwright house. He had made his way through curfew with a pass—an old one signed by General W. T. Sherman, whose signature impressed examiners so much they rarely looked at the date.
In Shipwright’s yard, an orderly stood by his horse, and soldiers lounged on the porch hoping for gossip. Inside, the house was full of cigar smoke and officers. The latter draped themselves over furniture or stood talking in groups, all in their swords and muddy boots and old blouses with the corps badges still pinned on. The scene had a painful, strangely comforting familiarity to it; Wooster felt he had been removed to the war again.
Von Arnim was there, antic and restless, his eyes glittering. He spied Wooster right away and, before the correspondent could speak, had him roughly by the arm and pulled into a corner. “Damn you, sir,” said the provost, “you have been consorting with rebels!”
“Take your hands off me,” said Wooster, aware that everyone in the room was watching. “What do you mean?”
“That dog Luker has been barking,” said von Arnim, jittering with excitement and rage. “It was that or be hanged, and I may hang him yet, along with the rest of those buffoons in the jail. Their goddamned comic opera of an insurrection—pah! But they have named you as their advocate—do you care to explain how that could be?”
Wooster was dumbfounded. He had come here, in fact, to speak for Nobles and the rest regarding the shooting, and nothing more. He had hoped to avoid the subject of insurrection.
Von Arnim punched the correspondent in the chest with a forefinger. “You were at the tavern. You
must have seen Deaton killed. Your duty was clear, yet you fled with the others—ran away, sir! That tells me you are guilty of conspiracy, sir; to what degree is irrelevant.”
“Oh, let him up, Rolf,” said Captain Bloom of the infantry. “He just pissed on his shoes, that’s all.”
“Lieutenant von Arnim,” said Wooster, collecting himself. “These men … I have proof, sir, that they—”
“Damn your proof,” said the provost. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I came to tell Colonel Burduck of the … developments,” Wooster lied. “I meant to exonerate these good men. They have recanted. You can’t—”
“Too late,” said the other. “Did you know I burned the Citadel? Burned it personally, sir—and do you know what else? It was great fun. Great sport, sir, like in the old times!” Von Arnim gathered Wooster’s shirtfront in his fist. “Now where is that traitor Thomas? You know, don’t you! Give him up, and maybe I won’t clap you in irons.”
“Lieutenant von Arnim!” It was Captain Bloom again. He crossed the room, closed his hand on the provost’s wrist and shook it until the man released his grasp. Von Arnim glared at the Captain with bloodshot eyes.
“Leave off that,” said Bloom amiably.
“I … I want to see the Colonel,” said Wooster.
Von Arnim turned and stalked out of the room. When he was gone, Bloom straightened the correspondent’s shirtfront and patted his shoulder. “Do not mind the provost,” he said. “He’s had a busy day.”
“I want to see the Colonel,” said Wooster again.
In a moment, the officer of the day rapped timidly on Burduck’s door, stuck his head in, spoke some words, and withdrew. “He will see you, sir,” he said to Wooster.
The correspondent went to the door, knocked once, and stepped inside. The room was lit by a pair of candle lanterns that wavered in the breeze from the window. Burduck was at the window, his back to the room. In the middle of the floor, on an unhinged door propped between chairs, lay the uncovered body of Rafe Deaton, his tunic buttoned, hands crossed on his breast.
The Year of Jubilo Page 33