Gawain looked at his companion. “Did you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Peck. He smiled. “At a barbecue down at John Walker’s on the Fourth of July. You were there.”
“Ah,” said Gawain, his face reddening at the memory. “I think I do recall that afternoon.”
“That was a long time ago,” said Peck.
Gawain thought that it was, indeed, a long time ago. “No doubt you will dance with her again,” he said.
“You reckon?” said Peck, grinning.
At that moment, Morgan turned her head and saw them. Later, Gawain would remember that she called his name.
IN THE RUINS of the courthouse, among the ashes and charred timbers, among the blackened deed books and remnants of furniture, sat the old bell. It was cast in Massachusetts in 1840, sent down by ship to New Orleans, then upriver by steamboat to the mouth of the Yazoo. From there it made its way on smaller boats to Wyatt’s Landing on the Tallahatchie, thence by the muddy roads to Cumberland. For twenty-four years, it rang the hours in the cupola of the courthouse, signaling quitting time and dinnertime, ringing of fires and death and Easter morn and New Year’s. When the courthouse was burned, and the flames reached the cupola, the bell dropped two stories straight down into the fire, landing upside down with a final clang that was heard by no one. Now it squatted in the ashes, its temper ruined, waiting to be hauled away. It was half full of water that, unaccountably, swarmed with minnows; children marveled at their silver flashes as they rose for air.
Had the courthouse not been burned, and the bell still hanging, it would have struck ten o’clock just as Solomon Gault and his men topped the rise at Walker’s place and put their horses into a gallop.
XXII
She called his name, then ran to him holding her hat, the shape of her legs in the folds of her green dress and her free hand outstretched. It was the first thing he touched, her hand; he seized it in his own, then grasped her as if they were dancing, and spun her around, and almost knocked Marcus Peck off his crutch.
“Sorry! Sorry!” cried Gawain, laughing, and she kissed him then, in broad daylight, still holding on to her hat. Then she pushed away, and brushed the hair out of her eyes, and put her hands on her hips.
“What do you mean doin that?” she said. “You are too bold, Gawain Harper!”
But he grasped her again, and when she turned her face away, he kissed her cheekbone, and then she wasn’t turning away. After a moment, she leaned back and looked at him, her face gone scarlet. “My!” she said. Soldiers in the yard watched in astonishment, having gone a long while—some of them all their lives—without such a display. A few of them coughed vigorously, which made Gawain laugh.
“It’s all right, boys,” announced Peck. “They’re betrothed.”
“Are we, now,” said Morgan, pushing away again. “Since when?”
Gawain scratched his head. “Well, you said back at Carter’s … didn’t you say—”
“Oh, that! Well, that was under duress. No, first you have to ask Papa, then you have to ask me.”
“Well, I already as much as asked your papa—”
“No, you have to wear your best coat—”
“I was wearin my best coat!”
“—and arrive by carriage, and present your card, and—”
“Why, Morgan Rhea,” said Gawain. “You are actin just like a woman—imagine that!”
From her place by the front gallery, Aunt Vassar watched the reunion. “Shameless behavior,” she said, smiling. “Have you ever been married, Captain Stribling?”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” said Stribling. “I can hardly bring myself to utter the word.”
“Why, sir, the institution has much to recommend it!” said Aunt Vassar. She went on talking, and Stribling smiled and nodded, but he wasn’t listening now. He was watching the twelve-pounder, the gun crew rummaging through their limber chest, one man walking away toward the creek with the sponge bucket. Load, thought Stribling. Canister. He cocked his head, listening. He pulled his watch and opened the case. Nine fifty-five. He snapped it shut, and at that moment saw Old Hundred-and-Eleven arguing with a soldier by the road. Behind the old man, his arms pressed to his sides, stiff as a ramrod, Molochi Fish stood blinking in the sunlight.
“Ma’am, you must excuse me,” said Stribling, touching Aunt Vassar’s arm. He left her by the gallery then. He was walking, still watching the gun, still listening. When he came to the limber chest, the gunners looked up. The sergeant of the crew, a lean man in muttonchop whiskers and shirtsleeves and a floppy bummer’s cap, started to speak, but Stribling held up his hand. “Load,” Stribling said softly. “Canister.”
The sergeant nodded, his eyes on Stribling’s face. “Go tell Tom to hurry up with that bucket,” the sergeant said to a comrade. “Gabriel, you take the rammer. Load canister.” As the gun crew began to move, Stribling went on toward Old Hundred-and-Eleven and Molochi Fish. He had removed the sheriff’s badge and slipped it in his pocket; he withdrew it now and pinned it on.
“I told ye,” the soldier was saying. “Cap’n Bloom is down with the pickets, and you ain’t goin no goddamned place, so be quiet.”
“Turkestan!” shouted Old Hundred-and-Eleven. “The Sanhedrin!” Then he saw Stribling. “Ha! Mister Stribling! Come over here straightway!”
“What’s the trouble here?” asked Stribling, in his former Captain’s, now sheriff’s, voice.
While Stribling discussed the situation with the guard, and Old Hundred-and-Eleven capered about waving his Bible, Craddock and Bloodworth were fabricating lies. They stood with their backs to the Shipwright yard; before them was a thick privet hedge, and beyond that, Brummett’s livery.
“We will say we were fishin yesterday,” said Craddock, “and the yankees—”
“Aw, I ain’t been fishin since I was ten years old,” said Bloodworth. “Amy Lou will never buy that horse.”
“Well, what, then?”
Bloodworth thought a moment. “Well, we can say we were at Mister Boswell’s—framin up his house. He’ll stand by us, long as Miss Emily don’t catch wind of it. Then—”
“Then, they gave us supper, and—”
“And we were goin to send somebody to say we’d be late, but—”
“The yankees caught us after curfew,” said Craddock. “Of course, you were opening your front door at the time.”
“Still past curfew,” said Bloodworth. “It was all a big misunderstanding.”
“Will she buy that?”
“No,” said Bloodworth.
“Nor Carrie. God save us—we may have to tell the truth.”
“Let us walk that way and ponder awhile,” said Bloodworth.
The former dining room of the Shipwright house was now the province of the Federal surgeon, Dr. J. J. Hammond of St. Paul, Minnesota. The doctor was a large man, florid of face, with a great beard that made him appear to be standing behind a bush. In spite of three years’ campaigning in the South, Dr. Hammond had never adapted to the climate; his clothes were always wringing wet, and he fanned himself constantly with a great palmetto fan. He was fanning now as he regarded the shirtless L. W. Thomas, who was slumped on the former dining room table. Brown and Nobles stood by.
“Sit up straight,” said the doctor, scowling. He grasped Thomas’ chin, turned his face this way and that, worked the joints of his arms, pressed an ear to his chest, pulled down his eyelids and peered within. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he said at last.
“The wound, sir,” prompted Professor Brown. “He is shot through and through.”
“Oh, yes,” said the doctor. He bent down and scrutinized Thomas’ gunshot wound. When he poked his finger into the hole, Thomas howled. “You call that a wound?” said the doctor, unmoved. “Nothing to it.”
“It hurts all the time,” protested Thomas, “and it won’t stop running.”
“I can see that,” said the surgeon. “Laudable pus, nothing more. We’ll cauterize. Terence?” A hospital orderly
stepped forward. “Where is the ramrod?” asked the doctor.
“Now, hold on a minute—,” began Thomas.
“You won’t feel a thing,” said the doctor, fanning vigorously. “We have plenty of ether—Terence, ain’t we got ether? Yes, of course.” He pushed against Thomas’ chest. “Now lie down, be comfortable—won’t take but a minute.”
IT WAS GLORY, it was movement and madness, headlong rushing. At the trot. At the gallop. They came over the rise, the road unreeling, and found a body of infantry standing in the road. The officer’s face turned toward them, he drew his sword, his mouth opened to shape the order, and the men began a left wheel, pivoting on the road. The big gelding, his tail streaming behind, moved heavily between Gault’s legs. The saber came out with a ring; in his other hand, with the reins, Gault clutched the carbine. But he didn’t need the reins—the horse knew how to do this. “Sabers!” Gault cried, and knew he heard the terrible clang and rattle of eighty drawn blades, and knew they glinted in the air like the teeth of a terrible machine. “Bugler, the charge!” he cried then, and the clear notes rang out in the sunlight over the pounding, over the breathing of horses and the cheers of his men. It is only a moment passed now, an instant, but the horse seems to float through time.
Solomon Gault would strike them in column; the irresistible weight of eighty horses at full gallop would crush the infantry and carry the riders on to the Shipwright house, then a quick wheel into line and another charge into the shambles. The men in the road were firing now, but they couldn’t sustain a volley. Too late for them, too late, Gault thought, as the balls hummed past. Then he brought the saber down hard, like a ribbon of silver fire arcing.
“LET US FETCH Aunt Vassar and Stribling,” said Gawain. “Let us go to our house, and I will brush my coat and slick my hair, then you and I will walk in the garden, and I will ask you, and you will be satisfied, praise God.”
“Yonder is Captain Stribling,” said Morgan. “And look—it’s Old Hundred-and-Eleven. And who is that other strange fellow?”
“Declare,” said Gawain. “It is Molochi Fish!”
They were crossing the yard, Morgan lifting her skirts from the mud, Gawain already shaping in his mind the words he would only get to say once, so he better have them right. A little cat had come from somewhere and was parading before them, tail in the air. Suddenly, the cat darted away, vanished as cats will do, and Gawain saw men running and at the same time heard the firing down the road. But his mind refused the implications, accepted only the weight of Morgan’s arm on his own, the sound of her laughing at the cat, their steady progress across the yard toward Stribling. But Stribling was moving too, shouting at them, running for Aunt Vassar where she stood by the gallery. Then Gawain saw the gun, saw all at once the crew in position, the rammer straight up, the lanyard taut, the gunner with his hand in the air—
“Aw, shit!” he cried, and the gun bellowed and leapt back on its trail, and the air was filled with humming and a great wind.
GAULT SAW THE gun and drew back on the reins just enough so that the column flowed around him. He was two files deep in the column now, eight or ten riders ahead of him, their horses’ hooves throwing great clods of mud, and those eager ones were the first of Gault’s men to die. The canister raked them, horses reared or tumbled headlong, men were riven, sliced, transformed. A severed arm struck Gault in the chest, balanced an instant on the pommel, then fell away. Gault was flecked with blood, with bits of flesh and bone; his horse leapt over the fallen, and in an instant, he was among the gunners.
WHEN THE TWELVE-POUNDER discharged, Morgan screamed and leapt into the air. Then she was running, bent low, Gawain’s arm around her waist. She fell, lost her hat, tasted mud, then up again, Gawain pulling her now, the house floating in a little circle of light as if she were seeing it through the wrong end of a spyglass. Get in the house, Gawain yelled into her ear, and pulled her stumbling toward the front steps. They were almost there when Morgan saw Aunt Vassar standing calmly by the gallery, her pocket pistol in one hand, prayer book in the other, the smoke from the gun drifting over her. At the sight of the old woman, Morgan felt the fear rise out of her like a departing spirit, and in its place a rarefied anger of a kind she’d never known before—not hot, as she had thought all anger to be, but clear and pure like cold spring water. She stopped then, pulled away from Gawain, her vision opening until she saw with perfect clarity the house, the running men, the sun going dark with smoke. Then she felt the horses, the pounding of them jarring in her legs, and would have turned but Gawain was pushing her now. Get Aunt Vassar! he shouted. Get in the house! She fought him, not to turn back but to make him look at her. She took his face hard in her hands and shouted into it: Gault! It’s Gault! You can’t stop him, you can’t—
Gawain almost smiled. He took her hands away and kissed her once, hard on the mouth, then spun her around and shoved her toward the house. Get Aunt Vassar! he said, and was gone.
At the first rattle of musketry, old soldiers Craddock and Bloodworth turned their faces to the south. When the gun went off, they dove headfirst into the privet hedge and burrowed into the leaves and mulch, then reached back for their cartridge boxes. But they had no cartridge boxes, nor any musket nor bayonet, and they looked at their empty hands in wonder. Then they parted the hedge and saw the horsemen. Goddamn, it must be Gault, said Bloodworth.
Well, it ain’t Joe Wheeler, said Craddock. Still, it’s a gallant charge for peckerwoods. What’ll we do?
Stuart Bloodworth, who hated all armies, who wanted only to be home with his young wife, who had sworn never to touch another firearm, not even for squirrels—this Stuart Bloodworth, who wrote poems after Milton and read Virgil in the original Latin, nevertheless owned a temper that came at times unbidden, and it was coming now, and he embraced it, breathed deep of it like he would the smell of his wife in the dark night when the dreams woke him. The madness pierced him like a lance, and he cried out at these men who would crumble everything and dare wake the demons again, and all for nothing. Goddamn the sons of bitches, he cried. Let’s catch one when they come by!
Dr. Hammond was just soaking a cloth in ether when the fight broke out. At the gun’s report, which rattled all the windows in the house, he paused, looked up, then clapped the pad into a covered jar. Clear the table! he cried. Terence!
L. W. Thomas was happy to rise from the dining room table. He was rallying, the sickness gone, his mind clear of fever enough to remember that he was free, that Burduck wasn’t going to hang him after all. Through the front window, he saw the horsemen pounding through the yard, saw their mud-colored clothes and sorry mounts, saw Gault himself in his gray frock coat, swinging a saber from the back of a galloping horse. Thomas remembered telling the Colonel how Gault would come from the south, and sure enough, here he was. Nobles was already out the door, Brown crowding behind. Thomas made to follow when the doctor grabbed his arm. No, you don’t, he said. There’ll be hurt men. You must fetch em for me.
Hell, I am hurt my own self, said Thomas. The doctor grabbed him by the front of the shirt. You ain’t hurt. I can heal you, the doctor snarled. You get out there and take up the wounded. Get somebody to help you. Do like I say!
In the hall, Brown and Nobles collided with Colonel Burduck and Lieutenant von Arnim. Burduck shoved them aside and was out on the porch, his eyes moving over the yard. He saw the gun and the dead men around it, saw horses bucking and wheeling in the mud, their riders shooting into the crowd. An old woman stood by the gallery, her arm outstretched, a little pocket pistol in her hand. She fired once, and a horseman pitched backward over his mount. Another woman stood beside her, all in green, pointing out targets: There. That one. That one there! Now Bloom was to the south; they must have come on him before he was ready. He would be moving in now. Can’t shoot until he closes, though. Where was Gault?
Burduck’s mind was empty of all but the immediate present. He gave no thought to the way this debacle would appear to General Washburn in Memph
is, nor to its repercussions in the faraway halls of Congress. The philosophies of government, ratifications of peace, human slavery, his own mistakes, the day and month and year—nothing of that mattered now. Only the violation taking place before him mattered, and how he might erase it from the earth. Rally the troops then, and find Gault, and kill him.
So when Gault actually appeared for an instant in the swirling smoke, Burduck raised his pistol and took careful aim. Somewhere in his mind lay a burden of shame, of gullibility, and with it the image of Gault in the shadows of Sunday afternoon: his calm arrogance, his certitude, his implications of kinship. In time Colonel Burduck would recall these things and wrestle with them. But not now. For now, there was only the face grinning in recognition, the saber lifted in salute, the flash and report of the pistol—and the empty space where Gault had been. Burduck felt the wrenching irritation of a missed shot, but he was not surprised. He had known the instant he’d pulled trigger that the Ockham’s razor of armed combat would not apply to a man like Gault.
Another gun went off, rattling the windows, then another—the guns by the magazine, Burduck thought. Soldiers in the yard firing, loading, firing. Horses screaming. Chunks flying from the porch posts. A man ran by, brushing his elbow: it was Thomas, half naked, galloping down the steps. What the hell was he doing?
Lieutenant von Arnim had his sword and pistol out. Colonel—he began, and stopped. Burduck heard the ball strike flesh, then the hard slap as it buried itself in the weatherboards of the house. Von Arnim stumbled backward, looking down in astonishment at the hole in his frock coat. Burduck caught the provost before he fell, and eased him down to the porch. Von Arnim wore the expression of a man who had just suffered an insult undeserved. Rolf. Goddammit Rolf—, said the Colonel. The very idea, said Lieutenant von Arnim. And after all this way— Then he was gone.
Burduck went down into the yard then. The old woman fired past his ear, and the younger one cried Colonel! but before she could go on, the man Stribling came on the run and swept both women up and pulled them into the house past where von Arnim lay. Burduck looked around the yard. Lieutenant Osgood was there, firing his pistol, and Burduck jabbed a finger at him. Rally these men! Burduck shouted, waving his hand at the riflemen in the yard. Form up on the guns! Then a horse rearing, and Burduck seized the rider, pulled him off, planted the heel of his boot squarely in the man’s face. He turned then to see Carl Nobles with an infantryman’s musket, saw Nobles raise it, saw the muzzle swing into his face and the foreshortened barrel. Burduck did not hear the discharge but felt the sting of powder, and something struck him hard from behind. Burduck turned again and caught the body as it slumped against him, saw the flash of the knife falling, smelled the stink of whiskey and sweat, and the blood that swelled from the black O in the man’s forehead. Sorry Colonel, said Nobles, drawing his ramrod, that was mighty close work. Burduck nodded, then turned again, sweeping the yard with his eyes: no Gault, no Solomon Gault. But there was Thomas, and for the first time that day, Colonel Burduck felt a nudge of satisfaction.
The Year of Jubilo Page 42