“Beg pardon?” old Shipwright said.
Now it was twilight, the air still smelling of wet leaves, and a breeze coming up from the river, and the sky a powdery blue and filled with chimney swifts. Burduck watched the birds and marveled at their speed as they swirled overhead chattering to one another, or dove headlong into one of the chimneys of old Frye’s tavern. Between the chimneys, the ashes of the Citadel of Djibouti still smoldered, even after the rain, sending aloft little tendrils of smoke here and there.
Burduck felt all right standing in the road in the twilight, watching the ashes. Once they would have saddened him, but now he thought they might not be such a bad thing in the end. Like all the ashes strewn across this country, they had to be there, needed to be there, if anything better was to rise from them and take its shape against the stars. It was a hard thing, but there it was. I could have told you, Burduck thought. Maybe I will tell you yet.
And maybe Gault was right after all, though not in the way he intended. Maybe what they had been trained to see as victory and defeat was neither one in the end, but all part of the same turning. He thought of von Arnim, dying on the porch after coming all that way, and the cavalrymen massacred on the road, and the soldiers and raiders shot down in the yard, and Gault, who would die tomorrow. Win or lose, it was all the same to them now, just as it was to the vast legions left behind in the war. And to Colonel Burduck, too, he added, smiling to himself. He might call the morning’s fight a victory if he wanted, but it had been a soldier’s fight and none of his, and it should never have happened at all. Certainly General Washburn would call it a victory, and see that the Northern press called it that, too. Then, after a decent interval, Colonel Burduck would be called to Memphis, as his brother had been summoned to Dakar. From there, a Quartermaster’s billet at some isolated post in the far West, among rocks and sand hills far from the sea, where a failed soldier might be buried and never mourned.
Burduck thought of the soldiers’ graveyard above the camp, where yet another grave had been dug that afternoon. That would be the last. There had been enough burials there, too many caskets rotting in alien soil too far from home. The bodies of von Arnim, the troopers, the soldiers—these would go north on the same train with the prisoners—north to the fields they had known once, to unburned towns waiting in the valleys among the corn. And he would see that the others were moved in time: back to Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, anywhere but here in this place. He was still in command, and he would see to it. He would leave no bones behind.
In a little while, Burduck moved past the ashes and down to the creek. A cat emerged from the cedars and followed him, its tail in the air, complaining of neglect. On the creek bank, Burduck and the cat found a large negro woman fishing. She had a cane pole and a bobber made of a porcupine quill, on which a dragonfly perched. She sat on an empty whiskey keg and smoked a corncob pipe. When Burduck approached, she looked at him and scowled.
“Is you come to build it back?” she asked.
“Build what back, Auntie?”
“Why, all these here taverns, all that.”
“No, not I,” said Burduck. “But somebody will, I expect.”
“I sho wish they’d get on with it,” huffed the woman. “I get tired eatin with the soldiers.”
The creek was shadowed by the trees and moved in a soft light, and from it rose streams of mist like smoke from the ashes. A little upstream, a heron stood motionless among the roots of a sycamore. The air hummed with mosquitoes.
The woman had a bucket with some fish, and the cat expressed an interest in it. The woman picked out a little perch the size of an oak leaf and gave it to the cat, who watched it flop around for a moment, then took it delicately between his teeth and marched off. Meanwhile, Burduck found a log to sit on and lit his cigar. He opened the dispatch case and propped the manuscript on his knee. He thought again of the man whose testimony it was, and wondered what he was thinking back there in the boxcar jail. Regret? Probably not. You know what you are, Burduck thought, and opened the manuscript to a random page, and read.
I have heard it said—and from the pulpit, too—that God cursed Ham to eternal servitude & from that we are to deduce that the Negro race is doomed to slavery. What better argument than this for the Reformation, that every man might read & understand for himself the supposed Word, rather than hang his reason upon the mouthings of the Priest. For it was Noah, in the pangs of a “hangover,” who cursed not Ham but Canaan, thus the ancients explained the profligacy of the Canaanites and justified their ruin at the hands of Israel. But as to the mythic curse—can they not see that it lay, not upon the Sons of Ham, but the Sons of Adam—that is, upon ourselves—a race of men chained to a System that degrades, brutalizes—not the Negro, for what is he but a Beast?—but the architects and stewards of a civilization that
Burduck raised his eyes from the fine, careful strokes of Solomon Gault’s pen. The negro woman was humming to herself; her cane pole made a graceful arc over the water, and the dragonfly rose to the tip of it. The heron was wading, lifting his long legs in the shallows. When he looked at the manuscript again, Burduck found that he didn’t want to read it after all, not now, maybe not ever. He straightened the pages, spread his handkerchief on the log beside him and lay the manuscript upon it. He relit his cigar and held the match for a moment, considering the flame as it burned itself out, the last blue skein of smoke vanishing like an idle thought. He had other matches, enough to—
But no, he wouldn’t burn Gault’s manuscript. Nothing would arise from those ashes, once they drifted away over the moving water. He would keep it, and some day by a winter sea, he would read it all—every word—and hear once more the pleasant voice reply As for the others, they are not important. Then, maybe then, he would build a fire of driftwood and be rid of Gault forever.
“You are having some luck, Auntie,” he said.
“Some,” the old woman said, “but they’s too much fresh water.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Burduck.
He took up his stick and drew idly in the mud: a crescent moon, a comet, some stars. Then he watched the light change on the water, and let his mind be still. The twilight had reached that fragile place where day and night balance on the point of a single moment, when all things and all persons are hushed and motionless, and the world seems to lie behind a pane of yellow glass. In such a moment, all that is touched by the light seems already passing, already gone, so the heart perceives it as memory even as the eye holds it fast. The mist, the trees brushed with gold, the moving water dimpled with shadow and taking its color from the sky, the face of the old woman burnished like copper—all these things Burduck watched, held to as long as he could while they dissolved into yesterday down the long corridor of time.
Yet in that moment something else took shape from the light, emerged from it as though made of the light itself, insubstantial as light and just as real, and just as likely to dissolve. Burduck turned his head. He had not heard the horseman come, but there he was a little way up the slope, watching.
“Well,” said Burduck, “I didn’t think any of you would come.”
The horse pricked its ears at the sound of the Colonel’s voice. The rider shifted in the saddle, rubbed his leg as if it pained him. Burduck heard the leather creak. Man and horse seemed to stand in a shadow of their own, but Burduck could see the rider’s frock coat, the long curl of his hair, the watch chain gleaming faintly, and behind the saddle a bedroll tied, and a pair of saddlebags. Above him hung the lamp of the evening star.
“You didn’t do so bad, your first day as sheriff,” said Burduck. “No doubt you have found your calling.”
The horseman laughed. “No, it is incompatible with that of a philosopher. Besides, I threw the badge away—and anyhow, I didn’t do anything, just drove the wagon, is all.”
“Well,” said the Colonel, “I don’t suppose you’d light and tell me about all that—what happened with Gault.”
“No, sir
,” said the other. “I better go on. But I wanted to satisfy myself that you’d really come here like you said you would. And I wanted to tell you—”
He paused then, and in that moment the balance tilted, and it was night. Not dark yet, not for a while, but night just the same. Up the bank, the old woman laughed to herself and jiggled her line. The current made a black V around her quill bobber. The heron stretched his wings and lifted off, long legs dangling. Stately and silent he flew, and disappeared into the shadows of the trees. When Burduck looked at the horseman again, he seemed to have moved further back toward the road, though it might only have been a trick of light. “What would you tell me?” the Colonel said.
“I saw the ocean once,” the horseman said. “Way off in Carolina, a long time ago. Maybe I’ll see it again sometime.”
“I hope so,” said the Colonel.
“What about you, sir?”
Burduck thought a moment. A long way he’d come, following the old flag to this dim shore fading into night. He smiled then, and found it easy. “I expect I’ll see it pretty soon,” he said.
“That’s good,” said the horseman. “That’s what I come to find out.” Then, after a moment, he said, “I liked the sound of it—the ocean. I won’t forget it.”
“Nor will I,” said the Colonel. “I promise.”
“Good,” said the horseman.
The old woman had gathered in her line now, and took up her bucket of fish. She was moving away up the bank, the cat following behind. Before she had gone too far, she stopped and turned, and though Burduck could barely see her face, he knew that she was smiling. “That’s all right,” she said. “Somebody burn it down, somebody build it back. That’s all right.”
“Yes,” said Burduck, and raised his hand, and watched her pass on toward the Shipwright house where there would be a cooking fire, where the ground was washed clean of blood. Then the Colonel turned his face toward the road, saw the black rectangle of ashes between the chimneys, and the empty shadow. A long time he sat on the log beside the moving waters, slapping mosquitoes, the cigar cold in his fingers.
THAT MORNING, AFTER Solomon Gault was taken away, Old Hundred-and-Eleven looked around for Molochi Fish. The man was gone, and nobody had seen him go. Then Old Hundred-and-Eleven unsaddled Gault’s horse and tied him to the fence that ran along the side of the yard. Alex Rhea watched with interest.
“That’s a big horse,” said the boy. “He seems friendly, too.”
“I bet you all got a currycomb somewheres,” said the old man. “You fetch it, and I’ll show you how to bresh him.”
In a little while, the boy was combing the mud out of the gelding’s tail. “I wonder if we get to keep him,” he said. “I’d brush him every day if we did.”
“Well,” said the old man, “if it weren’t for that ’ere U.S. mark on him.”
“Oh, that means he belongs to us,” said Alex. “Here’s Sister. Morgan, can’t we keep this horse?”
“Oh, why not,” said Morgan. She was a mess, her hair straying in her eyes and her dress spotted with mud, her face streaked with powder and tears. “We’ll keep him ’til they make us give him back, anyhow,” she said, and tried to laugh, though it wasn’t convincing.
Old Hundred-and-Eleven had swept off his straw hat and stood aside when Morgan approached. She looked at him now, her eyes narrowing. “What happened to your face?” she asked.
The old man swallowed and hunted his voice. “Face?” he bleated.
“Hah!” said Morgan as if she’d caught him in a lie. “And your hand—what about that? Let me see it.”
Old Hundred-and-Eleven held out his good hand. “Not that one, the other one,” Morgan said. So the old man produced his injured hand, and she held it open like a book and stared at the palm. “How’d you do this?” she asked.
Old Hundred-and-Eleven was shivering at the touch of her. “Oh, oh, it was for to seal a bargain,” he stammered.
“Singular bargain,” said Morgan. “It’s cut to the hamstrings.”
“It was with Molochi Fish,” the old man said. “For to catch Solomon Gault that killed my niggers.”
“He did what?”
So the old man told her the story of Dauncy and Jack.
She listened with her face turned away, so fearful was the gust of the old man’s breath, but she kept hold of his hand. When he was done, Morgan looked him in the face again. “Who is this fellow Fish, anyhow?” she asked.
Again she turned her head as Old Hundred-and-Eleven told all the stories he knew about the strange man Molochi Fish. “I don’t know why he done that this mornin,” the old man said finally. “’Twas Providence, sure. Agamemnon!”
“Well, you kept your bargain, the both of you,” said Morgan. “Now you go and wash this—wash it good, mind. And tell Miss Ida we want some whiskey. I will fetch a needle and thread—maybe it’s not too corrupted yet.”
In a few moments, Old Hundred-and-Eleven sat in a kitchen chair, his hand open on the table. He refused a drink of liquor but took a tablespoon of paregoric. It made him sleepy, but not so much that he didn’t cry out when Morgan poured the whiskey in his palm. The pain ran up his arm like a bolt of lightning, and all at once he was sick.
“Here’s a bucket,” Ida Rhea said calmly, and they waited until he was finished.
Morgan had a curved upholstery needle and a spool of black thread. He watched her thread the needle’s eye, then turned his face away. It took all his will not to cry out when the needle went in, but though the pain was sharp and red, it didn’t last long. The old man gathered up his courage and looked, and found the woman crying. She was steady, and her voice was even, but the tears ran down anyway, following the tracks of earlier ones in the grime on her face. “All right,” she said. “It’s too far gone. Mama, what shall we do?”
“There’s the surgeon—don’t the soldiers have one?”
“Hah,” said Morgan. “He would take the hand.”
“Or maybe this,” Ida Rhea said. She lifted Old Hundred-and-Eleven by the arm and led him out of the kitchen, Morgan following. They shuffled along, for the old man was groggy and Ida Rhea just out of bed and trembling. They went around the front of the house where Gault’s horse was tied.
“Now open your hand,” Ida Rhea said. “There, hold it out. Let them come.” And in a moment, the flies had come, and walked over the wound, and rubbed their feet in it, and laid their eggs.
They made a pallet for Old Hundred-and-Eleven next to Alex’s in the upstairs bedroom. He was glad to take another dose of paregoric, for he liked the sweet, drowsy feeling it gave him. “Don’t you dare say anything about this physic around Aunt Vassar Bishop,” Morgan warned. “Now, you lay here and rest yourself.”
The old man yawned. “Miss Morgan,” he said. “I remember you when you was little.”
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“Not so long. Miss Morgan?”
“Yes?”
“You like me, don’t you?”
Morgan almost laughed, but stopped herself. “I don’t stick needles in just anybody,” she said, and smiled at him.
“I was jes studyin on it,” he said. “You was always kind to me.”
“Go to sleep, sir,” Morgan said, and touched his shoulder. “I’ll wake you for supper.”
She left then, and the old man lay in silence. He had a new bandage on his cheek; he wanted badly to tear it off, but knew he better not. In the palm of his hand was another bandage, thick and damp, and he knew that soon they would waken under there, and the tiny jaws would set to work on the poisoned flesh. Maybe that way he could keep his hand.
The house murmured around him, unfamiliar sounds, and the way everything was so close seemed peculiar to Old Hundred-and-Eleven. Still, it was all very pleasant. A breeze moved the gauzy curtains, and sunlight played upon them, and the pallet seemed airy and light as the stuff of clouds. The room was perfumed with what Old Hundred-and-Eleven assumed were woman-smells: odors like flowers, li
ke spring water and rain, that seemed to have colors to them, blues and whites. He was trying to imagine what those smells were attached to, and how they could have color, when a boy came out of the fireplace and stood looking down at the old man. He was barefoot and had his breeches legs rolled up, but he was no country lad: his shirt was good linen, and he wore a straw boater with a red band.
“Hey, there,” said Old Hundred-and-Eleven. He knew the boy, but couldn’t call his name to mind. That was a long time ago, just as Morgan had said, though he ought to remember a boy’s name.
The lad put out his hand. Old Hundred-and-Eleven rose from the pallet and took it. Together they passed through the hall and down the stairs and out into the sunlight.
The old man wondered if he’d been sleeping a long time, into another day perhaps. The air of this one felt different, smelled different. It seemed to be high summertime, the sky pale blue and daubed here and there with journeying clouds whose shadows raced across the land. The roads were dry, and all that lay along the roads was coated with dust: leaves, the bloom-heavy crepe myrtles, grass in the ditches, the fronts of houses. The fences were sifted with dust, and the wild roses over them, and the honeysuckle. Grasshoppers buzzed in the heat.
They crossed the yard and went down the little lane to the cemetery road, then west toward the square. In the glebe of Holy Cross, Mister Garrison’s milk cow grazed, her bell clanking, jaws working side to side. She looked up with her kind eyes as they passed. Almost to the square and another bell then: the deep tolling of the courthouse clock, and for counterpoint the tenor chimes of the Academy, and above them both the clangor of the dinner bell from the Planter’s Hotel. Amid this carillon, then, the day traveled into noon and left the morning behind.
All persons, all things, woke to the bells from out the drowsy heat—woke as if summoned to the glory of the sun. Pigeons swirled from the courthouse cupola, doors opened and shutters closed, and well pulleys squeaked and squawked in their drawing. From the stores men came into the street, pulling on their coats, and above them others clumped along the galleries, leaving their offices behind. Tom Jenkins strode forth from his hardware, a straw hat tilted over one eye, and behind him a nervous, bespectacled clerk with a sheaf of papers, still talking. From the courthouse gallery, Sheriff Bomar watched the men spilling out the wide doors below: Judge Rhea and a brace of Memphis lawyers, Constable John Talbot and Ben Luker, Sam Hook with his hands in his pockets, a newspaper correspondent, twelve jurors all feeling important. All the while, old Doniphan’s mute sister clanged and clanged the dinner bell from the porch of the Planter’s Hotel.
The Year of Jubilo Page 46