Angels of North County

by T. Owen O'Connor

  This night he had emerged later than usual from the colonel’s tent and the rowdiness told him his men were deep into their cups. The fence posts burned bright and reduced the world outside their circle to sheets of black that no eye could pierce. Blinded by drink and flames, Walker hung outside the ring of light and took a seat on the root of a towering maple, draping a gray blanket across his shoulders to keep off the dew. He eavesdropped, trying to comprehend the men who followed him without pause into the devil’s breath of cannon, and yet, would begrudge him a seat close to the fire’s warmth or a sip of whiskey. He knew the task to understand the mysteries of the troop was a fool’s errand. The bond they shared could not be fathomed. He had seen other officers try to seep into the fold, try to shed their skins and be baptized into the ranks, but they always spiraled from leader to object of ridicule. The men are an eternal mystery to those with rank, and maybe that is for the best.

  From his solitary in the darkness, he studied them as they drew on pipes and spit chaw. He observed the leathery faces, the crows’ feet furrowing back from blank eyes that eternally searched the horizon. The fire’s glow at times masked the truth with tricks of light and he imagined he saw flashes of the boys they had been, the illusions evoking in him dim memories of the heady days after Chancellorsville. The talk then was only of going north. Buck privates would crow of how they were going to ride down Pennsylvania Avenue and smack Abe and tell him to hold the reins of their horses while they took a piss off his White House steps. All faded now, the boasting drowned in the ceaseless torrent of their brothers’ blood. All they ever talked of now was fleeing south, of going home. They chatted of simple things, of sleeping for a week under the roofs of their shacks; eating roasted rabbit and chicken ’til they burst; drinking whiskey by the jugful; and always hunting and fishing the day long. They studied the letters from home like monks searching ancient texts for the hints of revelation until the paper feathered and tore and melted in their hands, and then complained that their women did nothing but squawk about the harvest, the chores needing tending. Walker knew the war was lost from the melancholy of his men.

  But on nights when the war ceased its churning, they returned to their ritual, voting a different storyteller to conjure up the past. The elected would don a captured Union general’s field jacket with its gaudy epaulets of gold braid and wear atop his head the great black stovepipe hat of a fallen Pennsylvanian. Billie was the elect this night and he leaned against the stack of fence posts that was stacked to provide a stage of sorts. He looked like some great Tecumseh adorned in a jester’s costume. Big Billie was that affable breed, a giant of a man but an eternal boy that harbored no grudge against man or the Almighty for being born. He rambled on in that easygoing yapping way that the amiable share with the world, spinning his yarn of home.

  “Nah, nah, we called him Stinky, but his given name were Wyatt, if I recall. Stinky didn’t have all that’s supposed to be given in a man’s head; crazy as a shithouse rat but he were cagey as a calico cat too. All his kin took the long way home in the cholera o’ ’32. The only kin he had left was his mama’s sister in Chattanooga. She sent a letter to Sheriff Dunning and told for him to pack that orphan up and ship him to her. Yep, but Sheriff Dunce-cap, of course we all know that crooked goat couldn’t find his ass with both hands at noon on Sunday, he told that boy what he was aiming to do. He claimed later he told Stinky so as to give him time to say his thank-yous and goodbyes to the folks who’d give that orphan charity aft’ his kin took the dirt nap.

  “Well, Stinky, he hated that god-awful great aunt, and you can’t give a rat an out ’cause sure as shit he’ll take it. He’d already spent one August in Chattanooga with that shrew stuck in short pants and he forever claimed that’s what caused his alergees to church’n. So Stinky weren’t about to have none of that crud for the rest of his days. He said ‘thank you, dumbshit sheriff, I am off to say my goodbyes’ and he up and tailed it to the one place ain’t nobody gonna find a boy if’n that boy is try’n to get lost, Miller’s bog. That crazy squirrel spent the next twenty year in that godforsaken swamp. And it were in Miller’s bog that Stinky learned to catch the biggest catfish you ever seen, but to accomplish his feat of fish’n he had to fish as naked as the day he fell out into this world.”

  “Aww, go on, Billie, how you know Stinky fished naked and all this?”

  “Miles, it’s my darn night for the tell’n. We voted wit’ all democracy and I could get to tell’n it, boys, if’n Miles’d shut his piehole.”

  “Ah, get on with it.”

  “All righty, then. I apologize for the heckler in the theatre tonight, folks, tickets were sold to the public and jackasses can pay for tickets same as any t’other. Anyways, me and Augie was boys work’n a bow and arrow out back of Angus’s when Stinky come out the woods with a sack o’ catfish. It were so fresh it like it’d jumped out the swamp and ran to us. Angus gave him his coppers and let Stinky take on some work cutt’n some dovetails. It give Stinky an ’cuse to stay for supper. Angus knew Stinky wouldn’t take no more charity.

  “That night after supper Augie and me swiped a jug of Angus’s whiskey and got Stinky, well, stinky drunk. We told him that we’d rob him another jug if he told us about how he caught them catfish.”

  “If Stinky were drunk when he told it, how’d you know it were true?”

  “Holy grits and shits. Once again, if a certain fool shut his piehole he’d realize that’s what I fix’n to tell. My story’s called the secrets of Stinky. I’ll tell you what. I’ll do it t’other night when I’m not stymied by a heckler from the back pew. And I darn certify that everything I’m tell’n can be vouchsafed by Sergeant Augie.”

  “C’mon Miles, you need to shut up or you’re sleep’n with the horses,” one of the circle yelled. Miles sensed the threats could go from jovial to a smacking party in a fly’s life and he shrank into his blanket.

  “The secrets of Stinky shall commence ag’n since the agitator has been relegated to his rightful place in shutupsville. Stinky fished naked, and I’m telling ya’ll how it come about, but you gotta swear me an oath. What I say ain’t to go to no one outside this here circle when we get home or I warn ya’ll there won’t be no catfish left in no time. Swear?”

  Hurrahs went up from the circle signaling their consent.

  “All right. Stinky were no more than thirteen runn’n in that bog. He said he was hav’n little luck catch’n fish and were about to starve hisself to death when one day he slipped on a mossy rock and dropped his fish’n pole in the water. And, wouldn’t you know it? Right then a big old catfish come swimm’n along and snatch that nightcrawler sitt’n on his last good hook. The fish took t’bait and the whole dang pole down a hole in them rocks. Stinky said he was fit to be tied he was so hungry.

  “He sat on the rocks and about forsake his life of freedom when out in the middle of that bog river, he spied two inch of his pole poke straight up out t’water and set there like a tombstone. He took off his pants and jumped in and swam out to the middle and tried pull’n on it but float’n there he couldn’t get enough to budge that ol’ fish. Said that catfish had buried itself in a hole at the bottom and set itself like a pig in a pen gnawing away on that nightcrawler. He was float’n there like a log when he looked to the heavens and told hisself, ‘Ah, the hell with it.’ He dove in and followed that line to the bottom; said his ears were about to blow when he reach’d in that hole and tried pull’n his good hook out that fish’s mouth. I shit you not Stinky put his hand in that mouth up to his elbow. He said it were the meanest catfish he’d ever wrastled with. He said he were matched against Goliath hisself at the bottom of that there bog river and do you know what that whiskered devil-fish did next?”

  A voice from the circle cried out, “No.”

  Billie cried out in response, “Of course not, fool, cause I ain’t told you yet,” and the circle erupted in guffaws of laughter until boys shushed each other.

  “That fish clamped down its jaws on
Stinky’s arm. Stinky said to hisself, ‘this is it, fool, the Almighty punish’n you for not go’n to Sunday school in Chattanooga.’ But you know Stinky, he never one to shirk from a fight so he pounded that fish with his free hand but it weren’t lett’n go. His breath about done he says he started thinking that he’s about probably feel’n like a catfish hisself that done grabbed a hook. He said that’s what give him the idea. He think’n he done lost him a hundred catfish after they’d grabbed the hook, so why not him gett’n away? Hell be damned if Stinky didn’t start fight’n like a catfish. He starts pull’n for the top with his good hand and kick’n for all he’s worth to git to the light. Lo and behold that catfish starts rising wit’ him; its big ol’ sucker still stuck to his arm. He broke the top gasp’n for air and damn if he didn’t see that catfish ain’t still suck’n on his elbow. He drags it to the blessed shore and once it bellies up on them dry rocks Stinky said it flop twice and its mouth open; and out his arm pop like a cork out a whiskey bottle, a bit red and sorely scraped but none the worse for it.

  “Stinky’s sitt’n there suck’n for wind and he look and goddamn if it ain’t the biggest catfish bottom monster he’d ever seen sitt’n thar next to him. Got the fire started and couldn’t eat but half of it. After supper, he’s sitt’n there stuffed like a pilgrim at Bethsaida and starts to think’n the Almighty must have spared him for some purpose of biblical prophecy. He figured his ordeal were heaven’s means to teach Stinky to lead his fella fallen man to a greater good. So he sat there by the waters and waited, and waited, but not a goddamn thing happen in the follow’n three days, so Stinky went back to pole fishing. But ya’ll know that one way to certify you ain’t gonna catch noth’n but a cold is to mix fish’n with an empty belly. Stinky said the second time he stick his arm in a catfish at the bottom of that there bog he was more scared than a girl on her wedding night, ’cept of course for your sweetheart, Taylor.”

  “Ah, go on, fool, and leave me out of it.”

  “Anyways, Stinky pulls that second one up and he said he were like Christian Columbus discover’n the new world, a world wit’ the easiest fish’n cause you the one that done git caught by the fish. And that’s how Stinky learned to fish naked.”

  “I don’t believe word one of that catfish horseshit!”

  “That’s ’cause noth’n but horseshit ever pumps out of your piehole, Miles.”

  Hutch asked, “Billie, what happened to Ole Stinky? I hear he took himself deep into Miller’s bog and didn’t never come out ag’n.”

  “That’s right, he most certainly never did come out.”

  “You think he hook’d him some catfish that didn’t let go?” Hutch asked.

  “I reckon not. Augie, should we tell ’em?”

  Augie looked about the circle of fire. “I reckon it okay.”

  “All right, then, ya’ll know the tales of Miller’s bog. Well nobody knew that bog better than Stinky ’cept a course that top-hatted devil hisself, Old Man Briggins. When me and Augie got him right drunk that night Stinky told us he had found him a cave that was chock-full of Briggins’s treasure and he was aiming to rob it. Stinky weren’t taking on no partners neither, no matter how much me and Augie begged him. When we asked him how he discovered the treasure Stinky told us one of Briggins’s witches told him. He liv’n in that shack by the ford and still catfish’n his secret way, when one evening with the sun about to drop he pull him up a catfish for supper. He were stand’n there naked as a jaybird on some rocks when an old slave from the Briggins’s plantation came down a doe path. Stinky said she jest about floated out them trees. He feared first it was a haint come to chew on his soul. Stinky said she had on a white . . . Augie?”

  “Toga.”

  “Yeah, a toga, like a bedsheet dress. Stinky says she tall like a reed and swayed like one do in a soft breeze. It were the oldest woman he’d ever seen; her faced stitched up with a quilt of scars on the cheeks—the devil’s drawings. Stinky said she raised one long bony finger at Stinky and hooked it to signal him to follo’ her back in them woods; said she had nails a bayonet blade long on t’left hand. Stinky said he nearly wet hisself. He stood there froze; didn’t move ’til that witch smiled and pointed at that catfish and curled that finger again at Stinky. That plumb nut forgot he weren’t wear’n pants and threw that fish o’er his shoulder and follo’d Saul’s hag into them trees. Stinky says that old witch had a hut you had to climb halfway up the biggest Cyprus tree he ever seen to get to it; and she went and fired up the best catfish stew he’d ever taste. She mixed about anything in them woods a man can eat in her cauldron. Stinky says it delicious; he sat there a good part of the night squatt’n naked on her treehouse floor stuff’n himself wit’ her stew. He says that ol’ witch told her name were Clarabelle. I knows you all ain’t heard that name for the first time t’night. Every one of our mamas kept us from sneak’n out after bedtime with ghost stories of that sorceress lurk’n in the bog snatch’n naughty boys. Anyhow, Stinky woke in the morn’ and she were gone, so he took back to catfish’n but she had warned him the night ’fore not to run no deeper in that bog; she foretold they were runn’n his scent.”

  “Who Billie?”

  “Whatever runs in them caves, you all know the stories of Old Man Briggins. He used to take his slave witches into them caverns and have’n ’em dance to the sun of the morning’s fiddl’n. Stinky for years after give Clarabelle a fair share of his catfish until one day he asked for her to tell him the cave Briggins’s treasure were hid. Clarabelle wouldn’t tell him, told him straight the price of find’n that coin be his soul. Stinky told us he threatened Clarabelle that she weren’t feast’n on no more of his catfish ’til she tell. Me and Augie told Stinky he were crazy to wrastle with that witch; the son of the morn whispers in her ear; he were ask’n for it. Stinky said he were tired of being poor his whole life and he aimed to have that treasure. He gone the morn after we got him drunk. Stinky was aim’n to fetch that treasure and he ain’t never been heard from ag’n in the county.”

  Walker sat there alone in the darkness ruing the upending of his entire world. Molly was alone at Sommersville with no family but Missy Jay and a young hand named Sally. Jessup had died and the rest of the hands were moved on by the war. Three years earlier on a winter leave he had married Molly and had returned to the front without respite. After the folly of the invasion at Antietam, his father predicted with a bookkeeper’s accuracy the outcome of the war, even the year it would end. He took his mother and what fortune was not nailed down to the plantation and sailed for England. Molly refused to leave.

  In London, his father had invested in a shipping company and had tripled the family fortune, running munitions to Havana and to Boston to feed the insatiable Union war machine. He could feel the last letter from his father folded over in the breast pocket of his tunic, his father’s perfect script forecasting the destruction of the Confederacy in the bland language of commerce: trade, manufacturing deficiencies, manpower shortages, and the brilliance of Anaconda. He even examined the concentration of power in Washington, predicting that there would be no negotiated peace, remarking that Lincoln had become a dictator more bloodthirsty than pharaoh, and that the man simply had no business sense. The letter laid out detailed instructions for John to sneak his way to the Union lines and upon his surrender to immediately request to be rendered to the custody of a Major General Bradbury of Massachusetts. The general was the brother of one of his father’s Boston shipping partners and the two dined together on Thursdays in London. The contract had been agreed upon over dinner for a thousand British pound sterling. Bradbury would commute his sentence and secure him a berth on the next cutter out of Boston bound for Liverpool. If he would not do it for himself, his father pleaded for him to do it for Molly, who, out of misplaced loyalty, stayed in the path of the barbarian.

  He gazed at the men settling into their blankets for the night and looked at the fire pit. It blazed bluish gold, feasting on a score of fresh fence posts. The fire’
s golden hue reminded him of the first time he was taken by Molly’s beauty. It was on Christmas Eve when she had come of age and was attending her first ball at Sommersville. He remembered her standing alone by the fireplace; she stood mesmerized by the massive heads of the pair of lions forged into the iron of the fire dogs. Her amber face glowing in answer to the lions’ magnificent fangs. He dreamed that if he could go back in time to that night and hear its music and laughter, if he could flirt again with Molly before the lions, this world of blood and loss would fade away. The universe would spin once more in his orbit and the approaching war would still be the stuff of a boy’s dreams and not this waking nightmare.

  Yet, despite the blood of the fallen and the cracking of his gentrified world, he knew if he had the power to shape time, he would change nothing. He would resurrect that moment in the magnificent past and sacrifice love, life, and fortune to be born again, to have another chance to lead the gallant boys in those lost days when they were heroic. His mind flooded with the vivid images of the early battles, the visions of poor boys striding about the parapets with the gait of princes, lording on steeds over the dead of their enemy that had fallen to the charge of horse.

  He was lost in reverie, back on the hill at Chancellorsville, when aged sap buried in an old fence post popped and sent a brilliant burst of sparks into night. The shower of light pulled him from his dreams and reverted his vision to the reality of the broken souls before him crawling drunk into their filthy blankets about a smoldering pit of rotted fence posts. He lowered his gaze and drew the blanket around his shoulders to stifle the chill of hate coursing through him. He spat and cursed them as cowards, his mind lashing out with vile condemnations that they were nothing but shades of the warriors he had shown them they could be; foul scum, weak of nature, and filled with nothing save the base instinct to scuttle home and hide in their horrid shacks.