by John Farris
It was at odd moments like this, when she hurried her speech, stumbled charmingly, that the sibilance of her Gallic background became audible. "Please wait. I'll get dressed. There must be something I can do. You said people were hurt. Won't they need help at the hospital? Just don't leave me alone, Sshamp! I need you."
I waited outside while she dressed. Jenner appeared unexpectedly with a crutch, the wood gnawed like a dog's bone, the padded crosspiece stained with age and stinking of dried sweats, but it was exactly what I needed.
"I bought it from that World War vet who hangs around the depot. Five dollars. Probably hasn't seen that much money in years."
I repaid Jenner and called Bull Pete for instructions. It had occurred to me that since we were but a two-hour drive from the capital we would soon be under siege by representatives of the world's press; the privacy of our guests, some of whom were of frail constitution, had to be ensured. I wanted to get the train and as many of the wedding party as possible on the way back to the mid-South, preferably before dark. I knew there was going to be a nasty scandal, the family had to be protected. In the meantime it was Bull Pete's job to round up those servants loose on the town. Second Lt. Jenner, for whom I had developed a great deal of respect on short acquaintance, volunteered to stand armed guard at the train to discourage trespassers.
Brakestone drove Mora and me to the community hospital, named for Robert E. Lee. The lawns were extensive and lovingly kept; unfortunately the staff infirmary was not equipped to handle the survivors of a disaster. A detachment of cadets under the direction of staff officers from the institute had begun to establish order, although the approaches to the hospital were badly crowded with vehicles of all types; even a horse-drawn barouche had been pressed into service as an ambulance. The noise—horns blowing, people shouting for assistance—was maddening. The Civil War itself could not have been more disruptive to the town.
I directed Brakestone to leave us and return to the train in case Jenner needed reinforcement. A soft, northerly wind had come up and dogwood petals fluttered in the air as Nhora and I made our way along the brick sidewalk, around makeshift litters and past limping, weeping victims of the silent chapel bell. Tents for emergency first aid were being unloaded from the back of a military transport and hastily erected on the front lawn.
At the hospital gates, guarded by cadets, we were jostled by people congregating in a lump, feeding each other's fears, clamoring for friends or relatives. Nhora, unearthly pale, looked around in bewilderment. I had not prepared her for this scene—my explanation of the chapel's near-collapse had been hurried, incomplete, largely incomprehensible.
"All this," she said. "But why?"
"Let us through! Let us through! This boy'll die if you don't let us through!"
The animal terror in the man's voice charged the hairs on the back of my neck. A group of men were lugging a writhing thing in a soiled bedsheet to the hospital. They were all local men, farmers, wearing overalls and cloth caps. As they passed us I had a good look at the boy in the sheet, who carried on unmercifully, like a cat drenched with kerosene and set afire. He was about ten years old, and completely naked. "I'm burning!" he screamed. "Stop it, stop burning me!"
The crowd murmured and gasped and made room by the gates, which were thrown open by the cadets inside. Most of the farmers continued on through with their burden, but one of them, perhaps a brother of the tormented youngster in the sheet, left off and stood staring at me with that peculiar, heart-rending sweetness of someone breaking down emotionally. His face was filmed with perspiration.
"I don't know," he said, as if compelled to explain to both of us. "Found him just the way you see him. No clothes on his body. Running down Railroad Ridge to the home place, falling down, rolling, creaming how he was burning up. Well, you saw him. Not a mark on his skin. That right? He just ain't burnt—nah, ain't burnt no way I can see." Tears rolled down his cheeks. "Can't stand his screaming no more. Tell daddy I'll wait in the truck, please, sir."
"Doctor!" the father called, as his little son flailed and shrieked. "Get me a doctor quick!"
With a look of dread fascination Nhora drifted after them while the gates remained open. I hesitated, then followed. My attention was transferred to Hackaliah, whom I saw striding toward the hospital doors carrying a box of supplies marked with a big red cross. I called to him, but he didn't hear. Nhora had reached the farmers and the frenzied, mysteriously harmed boy. They lowered him to the cool grass. Nhora stared, then bent over the boy and tried to soothe him with her hand. He bucked and kicked. and never stopped screaming. Nhora flinched as if she'd, been hit. One of the farmers shook his head in dismay and kindly led her aside. She was looking at her clenched fist when she returned to me.
"That boy—"
"I know, it's terrible."
"I only wanted to help. But I think I scratched him." Timidly she opened her fist and showed me colorless, neat fingernails. There were a few bloody flecks of skin under one nail. Nhora winced. "I couldn't help it." She looked back suddenly. A doctor had been found for the boy; he came running with his black bag.
"They'll give him morphine," I said. "He'll be all right. I have to find Nancy."
Nhora nodded, preoccupied. "I want to stay with the boy until they know what's wrong with him. I'll catch up."
There was not the pandemonium I'd expected inside the hospital. Apparently at least five physicians had been guests at the wedding, and those who were able had pitched in to supplement the hospital staff. And there was no shortage of volunteer nurses or nigras, such as Hackaliah, to fetch and carry and clean up. Looking around, I saw familiar faces from home: aunts, uncles and cousins several times removed. They sat huddled in groups, some with bandaged hands and heads, and appraised me tentatively as I went by on my crutch. "Is that you, Charles?"
"My, my you've filled out so I didn't hardly know you."
"Charles, what do we do now? Do you think we can all go home?" I asked them to be patient while I spoke to Tyrone, who was in the hallway checking names on a list of our wedding guests.
"Your wife is in a ward on the third floor," Tyrone said. "Knocked out, but peaceful. Aunt Clary Gene's with her."
"Aunt Clary Gene? Boss brought her along? She's half-blind herself."
"Nobody I'd rather have by my bed if I took sick," Tyrone said sternly.
Nhora had come in the door; she was crying but calm. A group of kinfolk formed slowly around her. Without commotion they embraced and kissed Nhora. This show of sympathy and affection obviously gave her strength. She stood a head taller than the others and, although I'd never found her particularly beautiful, she seemed stunning in her grief. Tyrone was looking at Nhora too. He could be so quiet at times you'd swear his heart had stopped beating.
"Tyrone—the bodies—" I said.
"Oh," he said, his voice distant, his pale eyes still trained on Nhora, "here already. Come with a military escort." He looked at me. "I wrote down the number of the local funeral home."
"I have a lot of people to see before I—and Nancy comes first."
"Better take it easy, captain. You look about all used up yourself."
I disregarded his advice and found room on the single busy elevator.
The eight-bed ward on the third floor was full, and there were occupied beds in the hall outside. Nancy was at the end of the ward, under a north window so brilliant her body seemed to give off blurred light in return, like a saint wrapped for burial in some Florentine oil masterpiece.
Aunt Clary Gene, who had been nursemaid to the lot of us—Beau, Clipper and me—sat in a straight-back chair wearing the prim black hat with the lace veil she wore for all "gettin' out" occasions, baptism, wedding or funeral. She held her limp Bible in her hand, unopened because she couldn't read it anymore. But the old colored woman had committed long passages of Scripture to memory. She raised her head at my approach; the crutch squeaked like holy hell. Behind the veil the round lenses of her spectacles, catching the light stream f
rom the window, were like milk glass rimmed in fiery red.
"Oh, Champ, you're not killed after all. Praise God!"
Nancy stirred and muttered on the bed. She was wearing a flimsy cotton hospital gown. I took her hand, looked at her small mute face. Her lips had pulled away from her teeth in a bloodless gash. There was a long streak of eye makeup down one cheek. Her hair was dusty. Too many bones seemed visible through her skin. She had never been very strong. A gleam of life in the slit of an eye seemed a light-year beyond apprehension of my presence, my voice. I tried anyway.
"I'm here, Nancy," I said. I told her that she was safe now, and that I loved her. Her hand lay cold and unmoving in mine.
"There is a plague on our house," Aunt Clary Gene said in her light, clear voice. "Beau. Clipper. And Boss. Is it true, about Boss?"
"Aunt Clary, don't."
"I'm praying you will be spared, Champ. May the Lord be satisfied with His tithe in blood. Let peace descend on our house."
She was just an old woman, thoughts loose as straws in her windy belfry, yet the notion that we Bradwins were formidably cursed struck me like a body blow. Again I was forced to grapple with the matter of the silent bell, the tortured chapel, the merciless slaughter—and again I reeled, shaken, numbed, unable to cope with the demands of reason, a simple yearning for purchase in the difficult flow of life. If it could have happened, then how was I safe from a fate as vile and unreckonable as my brother had suffered? If madness would be common, and all of nature in a fit, why shouldn't this building collapse beneath my feet, a tree fall on me from a windless sky, a tiger tear me from my bed some mild and dreaming night?
"Champ?" I barely heard him the first time he spoke. Then I felt his hand tighten on my free arm and looked around.
"Oh, boy, you damn well look like you've had it."
I shook my head irritably. Everett John Wilkes looked no better than I felt. There was blood in his sandy hair matching the freckles that pattered across his flat nose and cheeks. He was holding himself stiffly, one shoulder higher than the other. His Palm Beach suit was ripped and the remains of a red carnation drooped on his left lapel. A doctor had bound the knuckles of one big hand in tape.
He let go of me and stared at Nancy. "How's your little doll? Sleeping it off? Godalmighty, last thing I remember, boy, Clipper was swingin' that big old swift sword. I could've got there in time, maybe, but I tripped up, and then it felt like a hundred maniacs running over me. Worse than the Alabama game in '26, and buddy after that one they had to take my spleen out down there in Tuscaloosa. I'm one big bruise all over. Don't let me bore you with my troubles. I just came up here to tell you we're gettin' organized. Plenty of good people now to help out. I can sort of take over from here on, Champ. You go get yourself looked at. Save yourself for later, y'know? We'll talk when you're ready. Legally there are questions to be answered, but plenty time, Champ."
I readily forgave him for running on in a manner one could feel was insensitive; it was his nature to talk when there was nothing much to say. Evvy was middle partner in the law office that looked after the affairs of Dasharoons. He was a Harvard Law School graduate, third in his class, I believe. He had a great deal of lazy charm, but his brain never stopped working. Boss had thought he would make a fine governor of Arkansas after a few years of seasoning. He would've been Boss's third governor.
I was suddenly too weary, and too much in pain. There was no need for me to sit the rest of the day by Nancy's side.
"Don't leave Nancy," I said to Aunt Clary Gene. "As soon as she's conscious tell her I'm all right. Keep telling her until you're certain that she understands."
Downstairs a whiff of ammonium carbonate cleared my head, but I refused analgesics, afraid of the lull that was sure to follow. The doctor who examined my ankle was of the opinion there was no fracture, but undoubtedly I had torn ligaments. He recommended soaking in Epsom salts and told me to stay off my feet for several days.
Evvy Wilkes reported that Nhora, still badly shaken but in control of herself, had returned to the train, where she felt she would be most useful. Hackaliah drove me back to the superintendent's home. I borrowed a fresh tailored uniform from my old French instructor, Col. Ben Giles, which fit me almost perfectly; it was only a trifle snug across the shoulders. Then Hackaliah accompanied me to the Stonewall Jackson Hotel, where the bride's wedding party was staying.
I sought to express my sorrow to Corrie Billings's immediate family. I don't know what reaction I expected; I think I would have been relieved if they had spit on me. But for the most part they were subdued and as bewildered as I. Clipper's homicidal behavior they described as an "accident." Apparently not one of them had a clear picture of the tragedy. Corrie's father, for the most part quite lucid, could recall nothing of events subsequent to his arrival at the chapel. He rolled an empty shot glass between his hands the entire time I was there, and on several occasions referred to me as "commander." I don't know who he thought I was.
Memory is capricious at the best of times; the panic in which they participated had forced reality into grotesque images best encountered in the safety of our dreams. But to Clipper and me, Boss had always stressed the "quality of our observation." If we were going to be good soldiers, he said.
Returned to General Bucknam's at a quarter to six. Reporters had gathered in front of, indeed they blocked access to, the gate. Their behavior was outrageous. Unfortunate that the house is located outside the post, on a public street. We went in a back way so as not to be photographed. I refused supper. It was now 4 A.M. Almost dawn. Birds are singing. I have half-finched finished a second bottle of whiskey which Hackaliah brought to the room two hours ago. But my hand is steady I am cold staring
Monday, May 25 6:30 AM.
We would all do the perfect thing with an angel's indifference, but the primitive animal within each and every one of us demands appeasement for the shocks it is forced to bear, a total sacrifice of dignity, common sense and honor. And so it happened that I took my father's wife to bed little more than a day after his passing.
Sunday noon I awoke standing in the bathtub pissing myself sick from a minus blood potassium. A meal of dried apples is a slow but certain cure for the worst hangover, so by five o'clock I was in a condition that permitted me to attend special services with Nhora at the Episcopal church. Nhora was still experiencing occasional abdominal pain, but the doctor now thought it was a characteristic case of Mittelschmerz, or pain of ovulation, which she had suffered as a young girl. Nancy had come around in the hospital but was still too debilitated to leave her bed. Nhora and I managed a visit for a few minutes despite the ever-increasing annoyance of the reporters and photographers who had flocked to Gaston to cover a story that was claiming equal attention with the war news on the front pages of America's newspapers. I didn't know what was being written, and I didn't want to know. I couldn't bear to think about Clipper at all.
We also saw newsreel cameras grinding away as we were driven through a gentle rain from church to hospital and back to General Bucknam's house. Because the train and most of our wedding party had departed for Arkansas while I slept off the effects of my incredible consumption of sour mash whiskey, the press had concentrated its attention on Nhora and me. Everett John Wilkes thought it advisable to speak for us, and so he drafted brief statements which I approved.
But I knew the press would not be satisfied so easily. It was a story of sensational proportions, of lunacy and bloodshed even as sacred vows were recited, and no one yet had explained the mysterious tolling of the chapel bell. The clapper, we knew, was worn but intact. The bell rope had been removed some years ago to prevent mischief. Thus the bell would have had to have been manipulated by hand, by someone in the tower. Someone with the grotesque strength of a Quasimodo, which of course was nonsense. That left the supernatural hand of God—or the Devil, considering the results. More nonsense.
It was Evvy Wilkes who proposed a sensible answer as we sat picking at a modest candlelit supper w
hile the rain continued and the reporters huddled doggedly beneath black umbrellas outside the house. Something strange, perhaps unique, had occurred in the atmosphere, a freak of nature caused by colliding air masses—thermal air from the burning Blue Ridge, colder air sliding past us from the North. The collision produced an extremely localized tempest, like a stationary tornado, that whipped the giant bell back and forth while scarcely disturbing the leaves on the trees around the church. And, because this tempest was occurring some fifty feet above the ground, it did not attract the attention of the many chauffeurs and servants loafing along the Parade.
"But there was no sound," I said.
"Because the clapper was muffled, years ago. General Bucknam can't recall, but they probably wrapped the clapper in burlap or something to retard rust. Once the bell tolled a few times the rotten burlap just fell away. That's why you finally heard it toll when the tower started to go and the bell tipped. Look hard enough and you'll find some rusted old sack wrappings up there on the floor of the bell tower. You might. I wouldn't go poking around with that tower ready to collapse."
"I just don't believe it," Nhora said quietly.
Evvy had a grin that came and went, often at inappropriate moments, like an affliction of mirth. "Stones and hoptoads and ice cubes have rained down from a clear sky. A little bitty bit of a meteorite, traveling who knows how many billion miles through space, hit a house in Bogalusa, Louisiana, and burned up a fat woman in her bed. So I have heard from my granddaddy, who collected such curiosities."
Nhora drew breath censoriously and it was then I knew, watching the downcast almond eye in the candled side of her face, that she didn't much like Everett John Wilkes. "What causes little boys to die screaming, when there's nothing wrong that anyone can see?" Plainly she was still brooding about the naked ten-year-old boy in the grimy bed sheet who had died before the doctor could be of any use to him, body warped in a back-breaking curve, lips pulled taut in a cur's grimace, coughing blood from his herniated throat.