Prayers to Broken Stones

by Dan Simmons

  “Wake up, Boy! It’s him. It’s Iverson!”

  The urgent whisper shocked me up out of sleep. I looked around groggily, still tasting the dirt from where I had lain with my lips against the ground.

  “Goddamnit, I knew he’d come!” whispered the Captain, pointing to our left where a man in a dark coat had come out of the woods through the gap in the stone wall.

  I shook my head. My dream would not release me and I knuckled my eyes, trying to shake the dimness from them. Then I realized that the dimness was real. The daylight had faded into evening while I slept. I wondered where in God’s name the day had gone. The man in the black coat moved through a twilight grayness which seemed to echo the eerie blindness of my dreams. I could make out the man’s white shirt and pale face glowing slightly in the gloom as he turned in our direction and came closer, clearing a path for himself with short, sharp chops with a cane or walking stick.

  “By God, it is him,” hissed the Captain and raised his pistol with shaking hands. He thumbed the hammer back as I watched in horror.

  The man was closer now, no more than twenty-five feet away, and I could see the dark mustaches, black hair, and deepset eyes. It did indeed look like the man whose visage I had glimpsed by starlight in the old tintype.

  Captain Montgomery steadied his pistol on his left arm and squinted over the sights. I could hear hisses of breath from the man in the dark suit as he walked closer, whistling an almost inaudible tune. The Captain squeezed the trigger.

  “No!” I cried and grabbed the revolver, jerking it down, the hammer falling cruelly on the web of flesh between my thumb and forefinger. It did not fire.

  The Captain shoved me away with a violent blow of his left forearm and struggled to raise the weapon again even as I clung to his wrist. “No!” I shouted again. “He’s too young! Look. He’s too young!”

  The old man paused then, his arms still straining, but squinting now at the stranger who stood less than a dozen feet away.

  It was true. The man was far too young to be Colonel Iverson. The pale, surprised face belonged to a man in his early thirties at most. Captain Montgomery lowered the pistol and raised trembling fingers to his temples. “My God,” he whispered. “My God.”

  “Who’s there?” The man’s voice was sharp and assured, despite his surprise. “Show yourself.”

  I helped the Captain up, sure that the mustached stranger had sensed our movement behind the tall grass and vines but had not witnessed our struggles nor seen the gun. The Captain squinted at the younger man even as he straightened his hat and dropped the pistol in the deep pocket of his coat. I could feel the old man trembling as I steadied him upright.

  “Oh, a veteran!” called the man and stepped forward with his hand extended, batting away the grasping vines with easy flicks of his walking stick.

  We walked the perimeter of the Pits in the fading light, our new guide moving slowly to accommodate the Captain’s painful hobble. The man’s walking stick served as a pointer while he spoke. “This was the site of a skirmish before the major battles began,” he said. “Not many visitors come out here … most of the attention is given to more famous areas south and west of here … but those of us who live or spend summers around here are aware of some of these lesser-known spots. It’s quite interesting how the field is sunken here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” whispered the Captain. He watched the ground, never raising his eyes to the young man’s face.

  The man had introduced himself as Jessup Sheads and said that he lived in the small house we had noticed set back in the trees. The Captain had been lost in his confused reverie so I had introduced both of us to Mr. Sheads. Neither man paid notice of my name. The Captain now glanced up at Sheads as if he still could not believe that this was not the man whose name had tormented him for half a century.

  Sheads cleared his throat and pointed again at the tangle of thick growth. “As a matter of fact, this area right along here was the site of a minor skirmish before the serious fighting began. The forces of the Confederacy advanced along a broad line here, were slowed briefly by Federal resistance at this wall, but quickly gained the advantage. It was a small Southern victory before the bitter stalemates of the next few days.” Sheads paused and smiled at the Captain. “But perhaps you know all this, sir. What unit did you say you have had the honor of serving with?”

  The old man’s mouth moved feebly before the words could come. “20th North Carolina,” he managed at last.

  “Of course!” cried Sheads and clapped the Captain on the shoulder. “Part of the glorious brigade whose victory this site commemorates. I would be honored, sir, if you and your young friend would join me in my home to toast the 20th North Carolina regiment before you return to the Reunion Camp. Would this be possible, sir?”

  I tugged at the Captain’s coat, suddenly desperate to be away from there, lightheaded from hunger and a sudden surge of unreasoning fear, but the old man straightened his back, found his voice, and said clearly, “The boy and me would be honored, sir.”

  The cottage had been built of tar-black wood. An expensive-looking black horse, still saddled, was tied to the railing of the small porch on the east side of the house. Behind the house, a thicket of trees and a tumble of boulders made access from that direction seem extremely difficult if not impossible.

  The house was small inside and showed few signs of being lived in. A tiny entrance foyer led to a parlor where sheets covered two or three pieces of furniture or to the dining room where Sheads led us, a narrow room with a single window, a tall hoosier cluttered with bottles, cans, and a few dirty plates, and a narrow plank table on which burned an old-style kerosene lamp. Behind dusty curtains there was a second, smaller room, in which I caught a glimpse of a mattress on the floor and stacks of books. A steep staircase on the south side of the dining room led up through a hole in the ceiling to what must have been a small attic room, although all I could see when I glanced upward was a square of blackness.

  Jessup Sheads propped his heavy walking stick against the table and busied himself at the hoosier, returning with a decanter and three crystal glasses. The lamp hissed and tossed our shadows high on the roughly plastered wall. I glanced toward the window but the twilight had given way to true night and only darkness pressed against the panes.

  “Shall we include the boy in our toast?” asked Sheads, pausing, the decanter hovering above the third wine glass. I had never been allowed to taste wine or any other spirits.

  “Yes,” said the Captain, staring fixedly at Sheads. The lamplight shone upward into the Captain’s face, emphasizing his sharp cheekbones and turning his bushy, old-man’s eyebrows into two great wings of hair above his falcon’s beak of a nose. His shadow on the wall was a silhouette from another era.

  Sheads finished pouring and we raised our glasses. I stared dubiously at the wine; the red fluid was dull and thick, streaked through with tendrils of black which may or may not have been a trick of the flickering lamp.

  “To the 20th North Carolina Regiment,” said Sheads and raised his glass. The gesture reminded me of Reverend Hodges lifting the communion cup. The Captain and I raised our glasses and drank.

  The taste was a mixture of fruit and copper. It reminded me of the days, months earlier, when a friend of Billy Stargill had split my lip during a schoolyard fight. The inside of my lip had bled for hours. The taste was not dissimilar.

  Captain Montgomery lowered his glass and scowled at it. Droplets of wine clotted his white whiskers.

  “The wine is a local variety,” said Sheads with a cold smile which showed red-stained teeth. “Very local. The arbors are those which we just visited.”

  I stared at the thickening liquid in my glass. Wine made from grapes grown from the rich soil of Iverson’s Pits.

  Sheads’ loud voice startled me. “Another toast!” He raised his glass. “To the honorable and valiant gentleman who led the 20th North Carolina into battle. To Colonel Alfred Iverson.”

  Sheads r
aised the glass to his lips. I stood frozen and staring. Captain Montgomery slammed his glass on the table. The old man’s face had gone as blood red as the spilled wine. “I’ll be goddamned to hell if I …” he spluttered. “I’ll … never!”

  The man who had introduced himself as Jessup Sheads drained the last of his wine and smiled. His skin was as white as his shirt front, his hair and long mustaches as black as his coat. “Very well,” he said and then raised his voice. “Uncle Alfred?”

  Even as Sheads had been drinking, part of my mind had registered the soft sound of footsteps on the stairs behind us. I turned only my head, my hand still frozen with the glass of wine half-raised.

  The small figure standing on the lowest step was a man in his mid-eighties, at least, but rather than wearing the wrinkles of age like Captain Montgomery, this old man’s skin had become smoother and pinker, almost translucent. I was reminded of a nest of newborn rats I had come across in a neighbor’s barn the previous spring—a mass of pale-pink, writhing flesh which I had made the mistake of touching. I did not want to touch Iverson.

  The Colonel wore a white beard very much like the one I had seen in portraits of Robert E. Lee, but there was no real resemblance. Where Lee’s eyes had been sad and shielded under a brow weighted with sorrow, Iverson glared at us with wide, staring eyes shot through with yellow flecks. He was almost bald and the taut, pink scalp reinforced the effect of something almost infantile about the little man.

  Captain Montgomery stared, his mouth open, his breath rasping out in short, labored gasps. He clutched at his own collar as if unable to pull in enough air.

  Iverson’s voice was soft, almost feminine, and edged with the whine of a petulant child. “You all come back sooner or later,” he said with a hint of a slight lisp. He sighed deeply. “Is there no end to it?”

  “You …” managed the Captain. He lifted a long finger to point at Iverson.

  “Spare me your outrage,” snapped Iverson. “Do you think you are the first to seek me out, the first to try to explain away your own cowardice by slandering me? Samuel and I have grown quite adept at handling trash like you. I only hope that you are the last.”

  The Captain’s hand dropped, disappeared in the folds of his coat. “You goddamned, sonofabitching …”

  “Silence!” commanded Iverson. The Colonel’s wide-eyed gaze darted around the room, passing over me as if I weren’t there. The muscles at the corners of the man’s mouth twitched and twisted. Again I was reminded of the nest of newborn rats. “Samuel,” he shouted, “bring your stick. Show this man the penalty for insolence.” Iverson’s mad stare returned to Captain Montgomery. “You will salute me before we are finished here.”

  “I will see you in hell first,” said the Captain and pulled the revolver from his coat pocket.

  Iverson’s nephew moved very fast, lifting the heavy walking stick and slamming it down on the Captain’s wrist before the old man could pull back the hammer. I stood frozen, my wine glass still in my hand, as the pistol thudded to the floor. Captain Montgomery bent and reached for it—awkward and slow with his false leg—but Iverson’s nephew grabbed him by the collar and flung him backward as effortlessly as an adult would handle a child. The Captain struck the wall, gasped, and slid down it, his false leg gouging splinters from the uneven floorboards as his legs straightened. His face was as gray as his uniform coat.

  Iverson’s nephew crouched to recover the pistol and set it on the table. Colonel Iverson himself smiled and nodded, his mouth still quivering toward a grin. I had eyes only for the Captain.

  The old man lay huddled against the wall, clutching at his own throat, his body arching with spasms as he gasped in one great breath after another, each louder and more ragged than the last. It was obvious that no air was reaching his lungs; his color had gone from red to gray to a terrible dark purple bordering on black. His tongue protruded and saliva flecked his whiskers. The Captain’s eyes grew wider and rounder as he realized what was happening to him, but his horrified gaze never left Iverson’s face.

  I could see the immeasurable frustration in the Captain’s eyes as his body betrayed him in these last few seconds of a confrontation he had waited for through half a century of single-minded obsession. The old man drew in two more ragged, wracking breaths and then quit breathing. His chin collapsed onto his sunken chest, the gnarled hands relaxed into loose fists, and his eyes lost their fixed focus on Iverson’s face.

  As if suddenly released from my own paralysis, I let out a cry, dropped the wine glass to the floor, and ran to crouch next to Captain Montgomery. No breath came from his grotesquely opened mouth. The staring eyes already were beginning to glaze with an invisible film. I touched the gnarled old hands—the flesh already seeming to cool and stiffen in death—and felt a terrible constriction in my own chest. It was not grief. Not exactly. I had known the old man too briefly and in too strange a context to feel deep sorrow so soon. But I found it hard to draw a breath as a great emptiness opened in me, a knowledge that sometimes there is no justice, that life was not fair. It wasn’t fair. I gripped the old man’s dead hands and found myself weeping for myself as much as for him.

  “Get out of the way,” Iverson’s nephew thrust me aside and crouched next to the Captain. He shook the old man by his shirtfront, roughly pinched the bruise-colored cheeks, and laid an ear to the veteran’s chest.

  “Is he dead, Samuel?” asked Iverson. There was no real interest in his voice.

  “Yes, Uncle.” The nephew stood and nervously tugged at his mustache.

  “Yes, yes,” said Iverson in his distracted, petulant voice. “It does not matter.” He flicked his small, pink hand in a dismissive gesture. “Take him out to be with the others, Samuel.”

  Iverson’s nephew hesitated and then went into the back room to emerge a moment later with a pickaxe, a long-handled shovel, and a lantern. He jerked me to my feet and thrust the shovel and lantern into my hands.

  “What about the boy, Uncle?”

  Iverson’s yellow gaze seemed absorbed with the shadows near the foot of the stairs. He wrung his soft hands. “Whatever you decide, Samuel,” he whined. “Whatever you decide.”

  The nephew lighted the lantern I was holding, grasped the Captain under one arm, and dragged his body toward the door. I noticed that some of the straps holding the old man’s leg had come loose; I could not look away from where the wooden peg dangled loosely from the stump of dead flesh and bone.

  The nephew dragged the old man’s body through the foyer, out the door, and into the night. I stood there—a statue with shovel and hissing lantern—praying that I would be forgotten. Cool, thin fingers fell on the nape of my neck. A soft, insistent voice whispered, “Come along, young man. Do not keep Samuel and me waiting.”

  Iverson’s nephew dug the grave not ten yards from where the Captain and I had lain in hiding all day. Even if it had been daylight, the trees along the road and the grape arbors would have shielded us from view of anyone passing along the Mummasburg Road. No one passed. The night was brutally dark; low clouds occluded the stars and the only illumination was from my lantern and the faintest hint of light from Iverson’s cabin a hundred yards behind us.

  The black horse tied to the porch railing watched our strange procession leave the house. Captain Montgomery’s hat had fallen off near the front step and I awkwardly bent to pick it up. Iverson’s soft fingers never left my neck.

  The soil in the field was loose and moist and easily excavated. Iverson’s nephew was down three feet before twenty minutes had passed. Bits of root, rock, and other things glowed whitely in the heap of dirt illuminated by the lantern’s glare.

  “That is enough,” ordered Iverson. “Get it over with, Samuel.”

  The nephew paused and looked up at the Colonel. The cold light turned the young man’s face into a white mask, glistening with sweat, the whiskers and eyebrows broad strokes of charcoal, as black as the smudge of dirt on his left cheek. After a second to catch his breath, he nodded, se
t down his shovel, and reached out to roll Captain Montgomery’s body into the grave. The old man landed on his back, eyes and mouth still open. His wooden leg had been dragging loosely and now remained behind on the brink of the hole. Iverson’s nephew looked at me with hooded eyes, reached for the leg, and tossed it onto the Captain’s chest. Without looking down, the nephew retrieved the shovel and quickly began scooping dirt onto the body. I watched. I watched the black soil land on my old veteran’s cheek and forehead. I watched the dirt cover the staring eyes, first the left and then the right. I watched the open mouth fill with dirt and I felt the constriction in my own throat swell and break loose. Huge, silent sobs shook me.

  In less than a minute, the Captain was gone, nothing more than an outline on the floor of the shallow grave.

  “Samuel,” lisped Iverson.

  The nephew paused in his labors and looked at the Colonel.

  “What is your advice about … the other thing?” Iverson’s voice was so soft that it was almost lost beneath the hissing of the lantern and the pounding of pulse in my ears.

  The nephew wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, broadening the dark smear there, and nodded slowly. “I think we have to, Uncle. We just cannot afford to … we cannot risk it. Not after the Florida thing …”

  Iverson sighed. “Very well. Do what you must. I will abide by your decision.”

  The nephew nodded again, let out a breath, and reached for the pickaxe where it lay embedded in the heap of freshly excavated earth. Some part of my mind screamed at me to run, but I was capable only of standing there at the edge of that terrible pit, holding the lantern and breathing in the smell of Samuel’s sweat and a deeper, more pervasive stench that seemed to rise out of the pit, the heap of dirt, the surrounding arbors.

  “Put the light down, young man,” Iverson whispered, inches from my ear. “Put it down carefully.” His cool fingers closed more tightly on my neck. I set the lantern down, positioning it with care so that it would not tip over. Iverson’s cold grip moved me forward to the very brink of the pit. His nephew stood waist-high in the hole, holding the pickaxe and fixing his dark gaze on me with a look conveying something between regret and anticipation. He shifted the pick handle in his large, white hands. I was about to say “It’s all right” when his determined stare changed to wide-eyed surprise.