“What?” asked the young soldier.
“Well, there ain’t but one thing,” said the drummer.
“That’s right,” said Bloodworth.
“Well, what was it?” asked the boy.
“Why, gnaw it off,” said Craddock.
“Gnaw it off?” said the boy.
“Yep. They sent for Nobles, and he done it. He always did the gnawin in the regiment.”
“Aw, hell,” said the boy.
“I sure did,” said Nobles. “Tasted like shit, too.”
“Here, now!” said Peck, while the others looked solemnly into the fire.
“It was hell on campaign,” said the Federal with the coffee, and every man nodded in agreement.
FOR KING SOLOMON Gault, it was the most exhilarating ride of his life. First the charge through camp, then the Shipwright house boiling like an ant hill behind him, cavalry in pursuit, his name on every tongue—if only the Colonel had been in the yard! But no time for that now. He expected to see the road ahead filled with cavalry, but there was none—only the troopers behind, pushing their big horses to their doom like the French knights at Agincourt. Excellent image, he thought, and filed it away for his memoir even as he wondered where the swarms of Federal cavalry he’d expected had got to. He could not dare to hope that they were pulled back north, but he knew somehow they were, as if he himself had given the order.
The muddy road reeled beneath him, the sunlight flickered on his face. The horse was fast, but she was flagging, and he could hear the huffing and pounding and jangling of his pursuers. They did not fire—excellent discipline! thought Gault—for they could see the blood hosing from the horse’s belly and knew the chase was almost run. Gault holstered the Dragoon and, awkwardly, in a movement that nearly unseated him and that cost him a yard or two, he fumbled in his pants pocket for his clasp knife. He opened it with his teeth and jabbed the blade into the horse’s withers. She squealed and leapt forward. The trees blurred, and the open fields, and in a moment there was the bridge and the road beyond, all lying quiet in the shadows as if nothing would ever happen there. Now we will see, thought Gault, and closed his mind to everything but the picture he had created for this moment. Should I have put them on both sides of the road? he thought. No, the damn fools would only kill each other. The horse hammered over the planks of the bridge, nearly stumbling. Gault plunged the knife again, and the horse twisted her head, her teeth clacking over the bit, her foam pink with blood, and Gault saw them in the trees. Wait! Wait! he demanded, Not yet! and now the horse fell, all her strength gone, and Gault hit the soft mud rolling, losing his knife, crying Now! Now!
The cavalrymen reined their horses, shouting Halt! Halt!, horses pulled down on their rumps, heads thrown back. One fell on its side, pinned the rider, the muzzle of his carbine driving into the mud. The trooper pulled it loose, pushed with his free leg against the saddle as the horse struggled to rise; then he was free and crawling toward the roadside, and so he was the first to die. Second was the officer, who died cursing his men for opening fire without orders, only the fire was not theirs. Another man fell, foot caught in the stirrup, before the survivors realized they were being shot to pieces; they dismounted, raised their carbines, backed toward each other for mutual support, but too late. In a moment, the image Gault had created for this moment was complete and three-dimensional: six dead cavalrymen tangled in the churned road, horses with empty saddles and stirrups flapping, the scavengers swarming from the woods in feral joy. The dead were sprawled in their boots (already being yanked off) and blue fatigue blouses (pockets to be gone through), leaving behind their six Spencer carbines and cartridge boxes full of ammunition. The quickest assassins snatched these up and immediately had to defend their prizes from the others. Gault registered all of this as he stroked the nose of the officer’s big gelding. The animal’s nostrils were flaring from the scent of blood; he quivered, and his eyes rolled white. Gault calmed him, noted with satisfaction that a saber was strapped to the saddle. He drew it and, leading the horse, waded into the ragged scavengers capering in the road, struck them with the flat of the blade, cursed them, and in this way calmed them as well. Get these men out of the road, he said, his voice serene, steady now. Catch those horses. Finally, he sheathed the saber and mounted the skittish gelding, patting its withers, speaking to it. He pushed the big horse over to the side of the road where Joe Cree, a scrawny, red-bearded man with plaited hair, was scraping mud from his new carbine. Give it to me, said Gault, serenely, his hand out. The man looked at him, but only for an instant before he put the weapon into Gault’s hand. The cartridge box, too, said Gault. In a moment, the road was empty. Gault remained long enough to dismount and retrieve his saddlebags from the dying horse that brought him here. He left the Dragoon. Then he, too, was gone, back toward the Wagner place, leaving only a thin haze of smoke rising to the trees.
GAWAIN WOULD HAVE liked to sit in the camp all day and listen to the soldiers and watch the goings-on, for he had decided that soldiering was an interesting trade when you didn’t have to do it yourself. Suddenly there was excitement in the yard: sergeants shouting, men running for their stacked arms and accoutrements. The Federal soldier returned the tin cup to Bloodworth and rose wearily with his comrades. “Sure you don’t want to enlist?” he said. “We can fill out the papers in no time.”
The drummer was collared by von Arnim. “Sound the long roll,” said the provost. The drummer grinned and tightened the ropes of his drum and in a moment was beating the call that Gawain Harper could not hear without a painful quickening of his heart. The young guard grew more nervous than ever, and Gawain shook his head at the notion of how easy it would be to get the musket away. He looked at Craddock, who was likely to make a grab if anybody was—that wouldn’t do, and Gawain was ready to stop it if he could. But Nobles was beside the boy now, talking to him, and anyhow von Arnim was approaching again. The provost seemed almost happy. “All right, lads, let’s get on with it,” he said. Von Arnim led them into the Shipwright house. Gawain caught a glimpse of old Mister Shipwright lurking at the top of the stairs, and he remembered when he used to tangle with the Shipwright boys, Elmer and Ernest, his boyhood enemies. They were both older than Gawain, and longer of reach, and meaner, and regularly trounced him, and once nearly drowned him in Town Creek. Elmer and Ernest had ended up in the Virginia army, and Gawain wondered where they were now, and if they were coming home.
In Colonel Burduck’s office, the atmosphere grew chilly. The Colonel himself stood with his back to the room, peering out the window toward the creek. Two guards flanked the door with the usual bayoneted rifles, and Gawain wondered if these yankees ever unfixed their steel. L. W. Thomas sat on the horsehair settee between Mac Brown and Henry Wooster. Brown sat meekly with his hands in his lap; Wooster seemed excited, his notebook open on his knee. Thomas looked feverish; his jaw was slack, and his eyes seemed empty and unfocused, as if they could only see inward now. Gawain had seen that look on men’s faces before. He had seen it on his mother’s face. In that moment, a peregrine thought wandered through Gawain’s mind: he wondered if anyone would ever erect a monument to the Great Confederate War. He could see, as in a vision, vast crowds swarming around a megalith of granite, upturned faces outraged, wondering, their hands waving, shouts of Take it away! Cover it up! and the monument itself atop the stone, out of their reach, burnished in the light of dawn—two bronze figures, nude, in heroic proportion: one masculine, seated, hands between his knees, head bowed; the other feminine, standing behind, her face in anguish but fixed defiantly on the crowd, her graceful arm raised, and in the hand a frying pan of polished copper gleaming in the sun like a torch—
Von Arnim lined them up before the desk. Still, Colonel Burduck stood at the window, his hands clasped behind his back. “Damn,” Stribling whispered to Gawain, “I feel like the twelve fellowcraft.”
“Mea culpa runneth over,” said Gawain, and took his rosary into his hands.
“Quiet, yo
u men!” said the provost.
HENRY CLYDE WOOSTER sat backon the horsehair couch and observed the prisoners. Thomas had looked bad when they brought him in, but he had rallied at the news of Solomon Gault’s mad charge through the camp. South, he had said. They will come from there. Von Arnim had cursed him, called him a liar, but Burduck said No! I have seen him there. Is that the meeting place?
South, said Thomas. They will come from the south.
So Burduck had ordered Captain Bloom to establish a line to the south, and called for a gun to be brought to the Shipwright house and two more to be held in reserve. Now the Colonel was at the window again. Wooster thought the Colonel must know the yard pretty well by now.
Last night, after his interview with the Colonel, Wooster had left the porch and crept around the back of the house, the thunder rumbling and the trees along the creek shuddering in the wind. When Wooster stepped up to the open window, the Colonel was sitting with his chin on his breast, his eyes closed.
“Colonel Burduck,” said Wooster softly, trying not to startle the man. But Burduck didn’t move nor even open his eyes. “Go away, Henry,” he said.
“Colonel, I know where Thomas is hiding,” said the correspondent, his heart hammering now that the actual words were out.
“I know you do. Now, go away.”
“Colonel, your cavalry’s gone, ain’t it. And a whole company of foot.”
Burduck raised his head then. “Of foot?” he said. “This is not the British army, Wooster.”
“Call em what you will, they are gone, ain’t they?”
Burduck leaned forward, his elbows on the windowsill. “Yes,” he said. “I have one reduced company, a section of guns, and a dozen … horse. Now you know. What of it?”
“If Gault strikes—”
“Sir, if Gault strikes, he is a goddamned fool, and I will whip his ass. That is not bravado, sir—you may quote me in the Cincinnati papers. Now begone.” The Colonel rose and put his hand on the window sash, but Wooster lay his own hands on the sill. “No,” he said;
Burduck sighed and sat down again. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Wooster,” he said finally, raising his eyes, “you have followed this battalion since the Chickasaw Bluffs. You have always been a discreet and loyal and steady man, and I wonder what has come over you now. These goddamned rebels—”
“They are not rebels, sir,” said Wooster. “They have taken the oath.”
Burduck leaned on the windowsill again. “Henry, no doubt there is a place for you in the government somewhere, but do not split hairs with me, sir. Do you think Thomas ever took the oath?”
“No, Colonel, but he might.”
Burduck laughed. “Are you so innocent to believe that the goddamned oath means anything—that it can change the way a man feels about—”
“No,” said Wooster, stung. “I know better than that.”
“Then what do you want, sir? You want me to turn my head while a traitor—”
“I want you to end the war, Colonel,” said Wooster. “Before it kills you.”
Burduck sat back then, and propped a foot on the windowsill. He pressed his temples, and Wooster knew that the wolves were gnawing in the Colonel’s head again, but he went on. “How many times you been out of time lately, Colonel?” he asked. “Deaton told me all about it, the night after the tavern fight, the night Kelly was killed. The old men know it, sir. They remember.”
“You are out of line, sir,” said the Colonel.
Wooster shook his head. “No, sir, I am not. You always thought you could hide it before, in the general madness, in the days when everybody was wrung out. But you couldn’t hide it then, and you can’t hide it now, Colonel. Tell me why you never made brigadier? Can you tell me that? What do you see out this window, sir? Why do you have Rafe Deaton laid out like a shrine—”
“That’s enough!” bellowed the Colonel, and men in the yard turned from their fires to look. A sentry came up, his accoutrements creaking. He looked at Wooster, then at the Colonel. “Everything all right, sir?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” said the Colonel. “Go back to your post.”
When the man was gone, Wooster tried again. “You won’t be the last casualty, Colonel—there’ll be plenty more in the years to come. But you don’t have to be one at all. You want to know where Thomas is hid? I’ll tell you. You can go get him anytime you want. But you have a choice. You can give him the oath, you can make believe it means something, you can at least pretend that peace is more than the arbitrary mouthing of politicians. Or you can hang him, and let the poison boil in your blood if that’s what satisfies you, and maybe in a little while you’ll go out of time and stay there, wherever it is, where there ain’t anything but the cold dark. Is that what you want, Colonel?”
For a long time, Colonel Burduck sat in silence. The wind was whipping the smoke around the abandoned fires now, the men gone to their tents. Presently, the first drops of rain began to fall: fat drops, striking the earth like ripe fruit. Wooster turned up his collar and waited. At last the Colonel sat upright and looked around as if he’d just awakened. “Wooster,” he said. “Damn you, Wooster. Come inside out of the rain.”
Wooster crawled through the window then, no easy task for a man of his bulk, and in time he fell asleep on the horsehair couch. Later, deep in the night, Wooster was roused from sleep. He was stiff, and a mosquito was humming in his ear, but he was still in that stage of waking where movement, if not impossible, is not yet a priority. The lanterns were out now, the shutters pulled against the blowing rain. Yet through the jalousies filtered a strange, ambient light, like starlight or the glow of phosphorous. Through this light, Colonel Burduck paced up and down before the body of Rafe Deaton. Wooster watched him move across the shuttered window, then back again, his head down, murmuring in a language Wooster did not at first recognize. Then Wooster’s mind passed through that region of clarity that comes just before the intrusion of full consciousness with all its noise and sensation, and the words began to shape themselves in the mysterious light. Requiem. Requiem. Requiem aeternam dona ei, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Then, at last, the pacing figure stopped, and for a long while, Colonel Burduck stood absolutely still against the pale interstices of the window. Wooster sat up, hardly daring to breathe. The drip of water from the eaves. The thunder, barely audible now. The croak of a night heron hunting at the edge of the swollen stream. Come back, pleaded Wooster in the perfect stillness of his mind. Come back and end it and you won’t have to go again, not ever again, and the morning will be pure, and all of us cleansed of it forever. And as he pleaded, Wooster saw a word stir in the deep bronze well of his memory, and then another, then both rising on his own voice as it was thirty years ago, in his schoolboy Latin: Vita. Animus. Vita. Animus. Then, as if the words had nudged him, Burduck trembled. He crossed himself slowly, then, slowly, turned and passed into a deep shadow of the room. When he emerged again, Wooster was startled by the impression that he had grown wings, the vast, white pinions of an archangel. But the white blur was a blanket that the Colonel held before him, that he spread over the body of Rafe Deaton and smoothed with his hands. Then, wearily, like a man whose long vigil is ended at last, Burduck returned to the chair behind the table and sat, and leaned forward until his head was resting on the windowsill, and began to weep. Only then did Wooster understand the source of the uncanny light that diffused in the room, that seemed to grow with every moment now. There was no mystery to it at all. It was only the dawn, only tomorrow.
WHILE THEIR MOUNTED comrades were being massacred on the southerly road, a squad of soldiers, observed by a sergeant, were filling the grave of Rafe Deaton. The sergeant was smoking the fanciful pipe that had lately belonged to the departed. The sergeant had known Rafe Deaton since the Indian-fighting days and had taken the pipe from the man’s effects to remember him by.
A little way distant, beyond the paling fence, four contraband, observed by Old Hundred-and-Eleven, were digging another grave, this o
ne to receive the blanket-shrouded figures of Dauncy and jack. Their grave was adjacent to a pair of rain-eroded mounds, each marked by a barrel stave:
_______________________
Unknown Colored Soldier
U.S.C.T.
March 1865
_______________________
Like all unknown soldiers, the men who lay in these graves had been known by somebody, but not by the men who buried them. Neither had they coffins; by now, the blankets that wrapped them were rotted, and all they had been was now indistinguishable from the earth that held them fast.
The burial place had once been pasture, and only a single tree had been left to shade the cattle who once lived here. It was a big white oak, perfectly formed, its trunk crawling with poison ivy. The soldiers, always ravenous for wood, had left it uncut because Bloom, the senior Captain, liked to sit under it in idle, contemplative moments. Sitting under it now, his back pressed against the poison ivy, was Molochi Fish.
The soldiers had come to investigate the gunshots that had been heard just before the wild horseman charged the camp. Old Hundred-and-Eleven had identified the man and told how he murdered the two boys, and of the promise made to Dauncy before he died. The soldiers had rounded up contrabands and shovels, and now all the dead were being hurried under the ground, away from the sun that was growing hotter by the moment.
The men looked with curiosity upon Molochi Fish. For his part, Molochi ignored them, sitting under the tree with his eyes closed, apparently asleep. Old Hundred-and-Eleven made no effort to explain Molochi’s presence.
Deaton’s grave was almost filled when word came that the infantry were to pack up and be ready to move. The sergeant gave his orders: the blacks would finish the graves, Old Hundred-and-Eleven and the strange man under the tree would come and talk to the Captain.
The Year of Jubilo Page 40