by Ralph Peters
Blake understood the reference. It wasn’t deep.
“Billie, tell me one thing. Without giving it a hard mouth.” Blake breathed in the bitter smoke. “Why have you hated me so much? What have I ever done to you?”
A horse whinnied back in a grove. Other horses took up the noise, as dogs will, then quieted again. Cobb pondered the questions.
At last, the little man said, “Now, what makes you think I ever hated you, Sergeant Blake?”
Blake snorted. “I’m not joking, Billie. Nor mocking. I’d just like to know. Why you never miss a chance to dog me. To get downright mean, if you want me to put it plain. Why me? What did I ever do to you?”
With a sigh almost parental, Cobb met Blake’s eyes dead on. The gaze was so fierce Blake found it hard to keep steady.
“Why do I hate you, Tom Blake? That assumes you’re big enough for a man to hate. And I don’t mean the tallness of you and the broad shoulders, that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“If I’m not big enough to hate, then why? Why all the devilment?”
Cobb poked the embers with a blackened stick. A flare of light sharpened his features. “Ain’t what you done to me. You never did a thing to me. Not the way you mean. It’s what you do to yourself. It just makes me angry.”
“Would you two shut up?” a man called from his blanket.
Cobb shifted closer to Blake. His voice hissed. “Look at me,” he commanded. “You look at me, Thomas Blake. You don’t have to tell me what you see. I know it well enough, oh yes I do. But take a good look, boy. Then you go on and look at yourself. Come first light, you borrow yourself a mirror, and you look.” Cobb shook his head. “And what’ll be looking back at you? A face as comely as the beloved of the Rose of Sharon. And the lily of the valleys.”
“And you hate me for that?”
“Damn me to Hell, you don’t listen. Can’t you listen just once, boy? You ask me a question like that, then you don’t listen none?” Cobb’s voice remained a whisper, but he seethed. Mad enough at Blake to come on with his fists.
“I’m listening.”
“Then you listen good, for I won’t tell you but once. You look at yourself now. You know the look of yourself. Big, strong. Handsome. Even if some jumped-up little dolly in a poor-built brick house run off on you. That’s you right there, right now, strong and handsome. Born so, a gift from God. Smart, too. Maybe not wise, but smart. The way it takes to get on in life, when there ain’t no war to skew things. And are you grateful? No, sir. Some worthless no-good on a horse his daddy bought him hollers that your daddy was a drunk. And you sulk and sorrow like Job himself, as if the whole world ended. And all the while, you’re a buck-handsome fellow with a half-interest in a store back home, and, from what I hear, some land bought up, and you ain’t but twenty-six nor -seven, give or take. Then you look down at me and want to know why I hate you.” Cobb spit. “You’re not man enough to hate, ’least not yet. You’re just a grown-tall boy who won’t stop picking at scabs a true man would forget. Look at you, Thomas Blake. You got everything. And you cry unto the hills that you got nothing.”
The little man’s grimace spoke of anger, but not hate. “Sure enough, I’m jealous. But I’ve been jealous worse. That ain’t the point. It’s the resentment that the Lord done give you all these gifts, and you refuse to be grateful. You’re a blessed man in search of a curse he can hide behind.” Cobb sat back. “All I ever wanted from you was one sign that you knew how lucky you were. Just one sign. You’re the fortunate son, beloved of the daughters of Zion, blessed with groves and vineyards unto a surfeit. And what do I see? The luckiest man I know pitying himself like a girl no one asked for a dance.” Cobb looked into the glowing ashes, ruined face carved with despair. “They should’ve named you ‘Cain,’ you know that? Heaped with gifts, and killing’s all you take to.”
“I’ve never seen a man who likes to kill as much as you do.”
Cobb snorted again. “If I do, I’ve got reasons. If I do.”
“So why are you the way you are? You know so much about me. Or you believe so. What about you, Billie? All anybody knows is that you grew up on the Cobb side of the McCaslins, made no great impression, then disappeared. Folks figured you either went west, or got knifed up some hollow. Then you turn up ten years later, mean as the cholera.”
“Ugly,” Cobb said, “and mean.” He snickered emptily. “A leper, without the Savior’s healing hand. I suppose I ought to wear bells.”
“That’s putting it hard.”
“Look at me, Thomas Blake. How would you put it?”
Blake reached for words of comfort, but he found none. Instead, he asked, “What happened, Billie? Where were you all those years? Yesterday … graveside … you were different. And tonight. Bible verses all over you. What happened?”
“Maybe I done beheld a pale horse?” Cobb looked away. “Or maybe I finally come far enough away from the Whore of Babylon.”
“I’m no good at riddles.”
“You know your Good Book, though. But you wouldn’t say a word over James Bunyan yesterday. Left me to do it. Which wasn’t right.”
“Why wasn’t it right?”
“Because those words don’t belong in my mouth no more. They come out sour.”
“If you don’t want to tell me, fine. But I’m asking you. What happened to you? What made you so damned hard?”
Cobb smiled. “You know something, Quaker? This is the first time anybody in the company … in the whole damned regiment … asked me anything about myself. Beyond my name and age, when I enlisted.”
“Well, I’m asking now.”
The little man scraped the earth so fiercely with his stick that it snapped in two. But he spoke with ghostly calm. “I wasn’t much of a McCaslin, tell you the truth. Nor a Cobb. Just never took to the ways of my own folk.” He tilted his head, considering the broken twig. “Some say there’s a tinker strain in us. Others say just bad blood, just plain, old wickedness. And I saw some wickedness, yes I did. Couldn’t miss it. Doings up in them hills that even a beardless boy knew had to be wrong. Pleasurable, in the ways of Sodom and Babylon. Or Cherkey Hollow, anyway. But wrong. And I just didn’t fit the muster. Oh, I got along, I wasn’t trouble. My brothers and folks just thought I was queer in the head. But I worked a good day, and that was all they needed. Then, thunder and lightning above, I felt the Call. Didn’t want it, didn’t ask for it. But damn, if it didn’t come over me.”
His eyes saw other landscapes. “I had my letters. Taught them to myself, with some talk-help from my gram, the one came over herself. She’d gone blind, but knew the verses, and I spelled them out. Can’t say it did me no good, neither the letters, nor the Good Book.” He cackled, almost the old Cobb. “Barely man-ready to deal with the world, and I fall to my knees by a corncrib, blinded by the light. Caught on the road to Damascus. On my way to feed the hogs, anyway. And I knew I had been chosen by the Lord, that he had favored me.”
Cobb tossed the broken stick into the embers. Weak sparks rose. “I come preaching to the dinner table that night and my brothers laughed like men troubling a hoor. Beat me bloody, to bring me to my senses. The way brothers do.” He frumped his chin, remembering. “Come morning, I was gone. With nothing but cold biscuits and that old Bible.”
Staring into nothingness, Cobb took up his tale again. “You wouldn’t of knowed me. I was a good preacher, a downright wonder, a natural hollering man. Not for the quality folks, nor in a church of my own, but down in the corners and hollows, in the shade groves and barns. I laid my hand upon many a good man’s head and blessed many a woman. They believed me, Quaker, because I believed myself. I was called, and never had a doubt.” He grinned. “Folks took to calling me ‘Little Elijah,’ though I never got around to smiting heathen priests in significant numbers. But folks give each other names for their own reasons. Anyway, I traveled west of the mountains, far as the Mississippi, even across that great Nile into Arkansas, and rarely wanted for a meal. Folks were hung
ry for salvation and starved for the Word, and I had a beautiful shout and a veil of rapture. Of course, I fell into the sin of Pride.” He cackled again, at himself now. “I got to thinking my powers truly could redeem the Sinner, male or female, child or elder.”
Cobb laughed a soft, surprising laugh and scratched beneath his shirt. “Don’t go thinking I was one of these hellfire-and-brimstone fellers. No, sir. I put more stock in Jesus than Jeremiah. And I never tried to tell a man Jesus really turned that wine into water, not the other way around. Just tried to persuade him that getting hog-drunk and killing his own brother wasn’t Christian. Same with fornication. Oh, my Lord. I’d seen enough before I was twelve years old to know men nor women weren’t going to give that up. Just wanted them to stop doing it with their own sisters.” He wiped a dirty hand across his mouth. “Tell you the truth, there were times when I think I just loved the roll of the words in the Bible verses, loved to hear my voice ring out across the beauteous vale of this old world. I truly felt the Call, from head to toe, though some days it lay stronger on me than others.” He nodded over a congregation of memories.
“Trouble started when I took all that talk about Mary Magdalene too serious. I’d come on to Natchez. Ever heard of Under-the-Hill? Down by the river? Silver Street? Well, you’re none the poorer for it. More sin packed into one little row than any place since Sodom and Gomorrah. That’s where I met her. Susan. My Susan. Susan Wyatt. Susan Cobb. Or whatever she calls herself these days. I went down among the heathen to save souls, and lost the best part of my own. But a man lies to himself, and never more so than he does about a woman. I saw her ‘as the lily among thorns.’ And she was beauteous. And I took her unto me.” He laughed, grimly now. “I believed, I truly did, that I could lift her up and save her soul. But you know what I was interested in, Quaker. Even if I couldn’t say so to myself. And she was willing. Oh, that she was. Always laughing. I told myself my Susan was an innocent led wrong. And I took her unto me as a wife. ‘And I said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man.…’ Hosea 3:3.”
Cobb closed his palms over his eyes, whether from weariness or sorrow come to a surfeit. “My heart was filled with joy, and my loins with lust. Even her own people tried to warn me off, but at a time like that a man’s a mule. And I was halfway to Heaven, telling myself, ‘Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun.…’” He unveiled his eyes. “Know that verse, Quaker?”
“Ecclesiastes 9:9.”
“What’s 9:18 say?”
“‘Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.’”
“Quaker folk beat that into you? Anyway, it’s true enough. About the sinner destroying much good. If there was any good left in me, after I tarried with her. With the woman I loved more than eternal salvation. Know what I meant to her? After giving her my name and pledging my immortal soul? I was a riverboat ticket from Natchez up to Memphis. No more than that. Wasn’t a month thereafter, and she’d gone off in the night. With my last two dollars.” His grin spread his ravaged nose. “Even took my Bible. I suppose she figured it might bring enough for a breakfast. And what she did leave me with made me into a thing that makes decent folk turn away.” He spit into the ashes. “Like I said. ‘A leper.’ Even if it ain’t the leprosy in the Bible. And there ain’t no healing Savior here among us.”
Blake considered Cobb a while longer, then looked away. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t have been a lie.
Cobb slapped his thighs, as if he meant to rise and slip off to sleep. But the little man remained seated until the last coals faded and left them in the dark. As for Blake, sleep had no charms to draw him. Not that night.
At last, Cobb said, “Figure it’s true? About us going in again tomorrow?”
Blake nodded at a darkness rimmed by darkness. “What’s left of us. Unless the Yankees march off.”
“They won’t.”
“No. I expect not.”
“Something’s changed. Can’t say exactly what. But something’s changed.”
“They’re fighting for their homes now.”
Cobb’s disembodied voice said, “It’s more than that. It’s like they took a while to figure out they had that much fight in ’em. And now they know.”
“Now they know.”
“Well,” Cobb said with a dead-of-night yawn, “I expect we’ll have a chance to cover ourselves in glory again in the morning. You ought to try to get yourself some sleep, Quaker.”
“You can stop that now. Calling me ‘Quaker.’”
“All right. Sergeant Blake.”
“I like ‘Tom’ better.”
Cobb cackled. “Why, I wouldn’t feel sufficiently respectful, you a sergeant and all. I might get court-martialed.”
A shot, close by, startled both men. Blake rose to his knees, grabbing for his rifle. A voice cried, “Jesus, oh Jesus, I’m shot … I’m shot and killed…”
“That Corny?” Blake said.
“Sounds like.”
“Somebody help me! Jesus Christ. I’m shot.”
The two of them hurried toward the voice, blundering over men whose sleep had been broken. Others, too, headed for the wounded man. A lantern emerged from an officer’s tent.
“Corny? Where are you? We can’t see you.”
“Git off me, you big sumbitch.”
“Corny?”
“He’s here, Sergeant Blake.” It was Charley Campbell’s voice. He had leapt to the side of his friend.
Blake felt along the ground and found a blood-slopped leg. His hand pursued the blood upward into a hot, wet pulse.
“Who shot you, Corny?” Charley asked. “What happened? Where’d they hit you?”
“My belly, my nuts. I don’t know. Oh, Jesus, don’t it hurt? I never hurt like this.…”
The lieutenant scared up to command the company found them with his lantern.
“What happened here, men?” the boy demanded.
“Bring the light here, Lieutenant.”
The lad did as Blake bade him.
Prodded, Corny screamed.
“Shut that damned feller up,” a voice called. “Shoot him, if you have to.”
“Corny, I can’t tell where you’re hit,” Blake said. “You have to help me.”
“Down there. Oh, my God. Down there. It hurts me so.”
Every spot Blake touched had been slimed with blood or still pulsed with it. There was gore all down Corny’s legs, where it made no sense.
A hand closed over his forearm, gripping it tightly. It was Cobb.
“Over here,” the fallen preacher said. He tugged the lantern from the lieutenant’s hand and held it beyond Corny’s feet, leading Blake’s eyes.
Young John Bunyan had blown out his own brains, rifle under his chin. The big corpse lay shapeless, with a wrecked jaw shocked open and a hole where an eye had been. The bullet had passed on to strike Corny’s groin, and much of the slop along Corny’s leg was brains and blood from the twin.
“What a damned fool thing,” Charley Campbell said, “what a damned fool thing.”
Corny sobbed in agony, but the whole men stared down at the twin.
“I figure he just got a head start on the rest of us,” Cobb said.
PART
IV
THE LIMITS OF VALOR
EIGHTEEN
July 3, Morning
Hints of light revealed the waste of battle. Horses loitered among the dead, masterless and shimmering with gore. Just below the rise where Lee and Longstreet stood contending, a stallion nuzzled the grass in search of breakfast. Its mutilated hindquarters quaked, part of a separate creature. The morning twilight revealed a dangling leg. Breaking from the cluster of staff men shadowing their generals, John Fairfax strode out and shot the beast.
As the Army woke, a yawning artilleryman quickstepped from the soldier-infested treeline to undo h
is britches and squat, soiling the ground ten yards in front of his gun so he and his fellows would not step in the turds when serving their piece. Only as he plucked stalks to clean his fingers did the fellow note that he had distinguished company. Undismayed, he touched a paw to an eyebrow and sauntered back into the woodline.
“Ecce homo,” a high-toned voice called from a cluster of staff officers.
No man for sacrilege, Lee turned sharply toward the few who laughed. Without resort to words, his bearing chastised them. The officers eased back, allowing the disputing generals another layer of privacy as they watched the landscape emerge from the dark’s retreat.
Many of the wounded had been collected, but moans still rose from the fields between the lines, distinct in the morning calm. There were no screams, though. Not this side of the field surgeries. Yesterday’s worst sufferers were dead.
In the distance, a bugle sounded: one of the newly written Union calls. Summoned, a crimson sun fought through the clouds, exciting the landscape. The night had been almost chill, but hard heat lurked.
“It can be done,” Lee said. “The men can do it.”
A breeze licked them with the stink of death.
Longstreet met Lee’s eyes. Caught by a spear of light, they glowed with a belief almost fanatical: His soldiers were expected to make miracles.
Struggling to keep his voice tolerably subordinate, Longstreet said, “General, I’ve been a soldier all my life. I’ve been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know as well as anyone what soldiers can do.” He broke the stare and faced toward Meade’s lines, willing Lee to follow his gaze. “It’s my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position. This wouldn’t be an attack, but a useless sacrifice.”
Lee turned away. The old man stood erectly, as rigid as a cadet on post at West Point. But Longstreet sensed the turbulence within. They waged a contest not only of wills and visions, but over who could best restrain his temper: two gentlemen, deciding the fate of thousands of trusting men held at their mercy.