Devil's Dream

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “You aim to tell me what he’s doen with a knife?” he said.

  “It settles him some to whittle,” Aunt Sarah said.

  Forrest snorted, much as Ben had done. “Don’t seem to settle him enough,” he said. “Somebody’s apt to find that twixt their ribs, afore we’re through.”

  Silence obtained. In a tree somewhere beyond the palings, a mockingbird whistled the first notes of a popular air, then gave it up.

  “I shore could use a carpenter, don’t ye know,” Forrest said. “But I do believe he’s too peevish to work.”

  Moonlight pooled around them in the yard. A little gray mouse stepped over the sill of Aunt Sarah’s cabin and looked at them for a moment and then went back inside.

  “He ain’t naturally mean like that,” Aunt Sarah said.

  Forrest waited. The water stain on the dirt of the yard was fading as it dried.

  “Don’t know what turned his heart bad, do you?”

  Forrest’s chuckle was inaudible, even to himself. “No, Auntie, I don’t know,” he said. “But I reckon I must be fixen to find out.”

  THE SACK OF COINS from his last gambling spree was hid beneath a fireplace tile. It wasn’t that they didn’t use the bank, but this gold was special, something apart, and Mary Ann had planted it there like a charm.

  “I need a piece of money,” Forrest told her, looking toward the fireplace from where he sat at the table with his bacon, biscuit and coffee. If you pressed on the right top corner of the tile it would rock up on the other side and you could slip a knife blade into the crack and lift the whole thing out. Mary Ann might think he didn’t know that but he did. He couldn’t have said why he needed the money to come out of that hidey-hole, when he could have got it somewhere else and not said anything about it. She asked him only with her glance.

  “I need to buy a black gal,” Forrest said.

  “You what?” Mary Ann had stood up sharply, tall as she could draw herself.

  “Wait a minute,” Forrest said. “Not for me.”

  She stared at him, both eyebrows high. I must want her to know, he thought. What I’m doen, and why.

  Mary Ann took her fists off her hips. She opened her hands and looked at her palms, then back at him.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m listening.”

  HE WENT ALONE on a fast saddle horse, because he didn’t know just where he was going or how long it might take to get there. All he had to look for the girl with was her first name and an anecdote. Turned out she had been sold twice, first to a broker and then to a place called Coldwater Plantation, a couple of miles north of Hernando. He knew the owner, a little bit, but that didn’t help much—he still had to pay extra since the girl was expecting, and since he couldn’t hide the fact that he wanted her special and wouldn’t nobody else do.

  He didn’t name his reasons while they were dickering over the price—the other man would have thought he was crazy if he had. Hell, maybe he was crazy. If he went around doing this kind of thing for every wild nigger, he would be out of business in no time. He had to borrow a wagon to carry her home, since she was too far along to ride, and that cost him some extra too. He had to drive the wagon himself, with his saddle horse coming along behind on a lead rope, for that wasn’t a horse you could ask to draw a wagon.

  His man ran from the horse to the troublesome Ben. A man you couldn’t ask to set in a cage or drag a chain … He shook his head, like a horsefly was after him, to chase that thought away.

  The girl sat on the box next to him, bowed-up and silent, staring down at the ruts in the road below the wagon tree. She was short and heavyset, hair so tight on top of her head she nigh about couldn’t close her mouth.

  “Nancy,” he said. He could feel the effort it took her not to even glance his way. By damn they make a lovely couple, he thought, hoping Ben might prove a good enough carpenter to make this whole expedition worthwhile. He didn’t even bother to worry if the idea might not turn out, because Aunt Sarah was usually right about things like that and if she wasn’t this time, well …

  “Benjamin,” Forrest said. “Ben. That’s why—”

  The girl seemed to fist up even tighter; now she was biting her lower lip.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he burst out. “Why would I name him to you except—”

  “For meanness,” Nancy said.

  “Simmer down, would ye?” said Forrest. “I ain’t that kind of mean.”

  When he did get her back to Ben, he thought, she’d find him with that half-healed wound where Forrest had busted the pot upside his head, but he hadn’t done that for any kind of meanness, but just only because he had to, that’s all. He hadn’t thought about it before he did it, and there was no use thinking about it now. Maybe he should have stuck to trading in mules. There’d never be the same money in it, but it was rare to end up feeling like a mule owned you as much as you owned the goddamn mule.

  A man and his wife came along in a buggy and Forrest raised his hat to them. He couldn’t call their names right off but they were people Mary Ann’s mother knew from Horn Lake. They weren’t too far from Memphis now and he would be mighty glad to get off of this wagon and get shet of this surly gal.

  “Yore man ain’t no use at all without you with him,” he announced. “That’s why I’m carryen you back to him, and that’s all they is to it. Ain’t no meanness come into it, not that I can see. World’s hard sometimes. I didn’t make it.”

  He shut up and looked at the road ahead, looked at the mule’s tail switching greenbottle flies. Nancy still didn’t say anything, but he could feel the knot of her temper coming undone. In a little while she raised up her head and began to look at the scenery.

  THEY ROLLED BACK onto Adams Street in the cool of the day. Jerry drew upon both gates of the stockade so the wagon could come in. He looked at the wagon curiously as it went past.

  “Mm-hm, that’s right,” Forrest said. “You git to drive this wagon back to Coldwater.”

  “Wheh Coldwater at?” Jerry said.

  “Down to Desoto County,” Forrest said. “Don’t fool with me. You know where hit’s at.”

  Jerry smiled sideways. “Reckon I’ll git theah.”

  A good many of the other slaves in the pens were out and about, drawing water to wash themselves down. Some sat in their doorways to eat the evening ration of grits and gravy. Ben’s door was shut.

  “He still in that sull?” Forrest said.

  Jerry shrugged. “He off his feed.” He was looking up at Nancy, who still sat on the box, not looking at him or anyone else in the yard. Presently he offered a bony hand to help her down.

  “Glad to see you back,” Aunt Sarah said. “He won’t eat nuthen since you left.”

  “Who’d a’thought he’d miss me that much?”

  Aunt Sarah ducked her head to hide a quick grin. Forrest walked up to Benjamin’s door, peered in. The big man sat slumped on his stool in the corner. There were a couple of small whittled objects in the dust by his shoe, but Forrest couldn’t see them plain in the dim light. He wondered what became of the bed knob or whatever it was. If Ben had made something useful maybe somebody was using it now.

  Forrest had been gone about thirty-six hours, and if Ben had really taken no nourishment in that time he’d have a right to be feeling low.

  “Ben,” he said. “Benjamin.”

  The man moved his head but didn’t look up. Forrest turned away from the door, his eye drawn by a movement at the second-story house window, above the posts of the stockade. The wisteria was just barely in leaf, just beginning to put out the tight purple cones that would soon open into blossom, and through the vine he could see Mary Ann, pulling back the white curtain to look down at him with a curious interest. Or maybe she was looking at the back of Nancy’s head. The girl had got down from the wagon and stood like a dark little shrub rooted in the hard dirt of the yard.

  Forrest thought he saw Fan pull herself up to peep over the windowsill, but her dark eyes were there fo
r only a second. He turned back to Ben’s stall, unlatched the door and pulled it open a crack. Enough of the fading light spilled in for him to see the little carvings on the ground by the legs of the stool: a stump-tail bobcat and some kind of fice dog. Small as they were they both looked like they’d bite you.

  “Ben,” he said. “I got somethen for ye.”

  “Don’t want any damn thing you got.”

  Forrest sighed. “Well never mind whar hit come from, then. Fer I’m right shore hit’s somethen ye want.”

  He pulled the door wide and stepped out from between the man and the woman. Nancy made some kind of low sound, took half a step forward and paused as if leaning over the edge of something. Forrest waited a long moment, watching, till Ben got up shakily from his stool and came toward her, holding out both his hands.

  CHAPTER SIX

  February 1862

  THE WEATHER TURNED BITTER overnight and in the morning the sparse trees around the camp between the Fort Henry road and the river were glazed over with ice that gleamed like crystal. The sun was pale and distant and by midday its light was near blotted out by the rain of iron that the four Federal gunboats were hurling into Fort Donelson from the Cumberland. All who remained in Forrest’s camp had taken such cover as they could find, save Major Kelley, the Methodist preacher, who sat placidly by his open tent flap, reading his Bible with all apparent absorption.

  Sergeant Major Strange nudged Henri and pointed; the two of them went crouching toward Kelley’s tent. Once Henri’s feet almost shot out from under him on the sheet of ice that covered the ground. There had been heavy rain before the freeze. Kelley read on, with no sign he was aware of their approach or of anything else in his surroundings.

  “I don’t see how you can hold your mind to a book with all this racket going on,” Strange began.

  Kelley raised his head, holding his place in the text with one finger, cupping his other hand behind his ear. As Strange opened his mouth to go on there was a nasty whistle and a rush of wind. A rag of iron crashed down to splinter the ice pack just past his boot toes. Strange went skipping backward over a fallen log and dropped out of sight behind it.

  “Ah,” Kelley said deliberately. “Henri.” He was one of the few men among Forrest’s Rangers to give the name its proper French pronunciation. Others called him Henry, or more rarely Hank. Forrest, when he was feeling humorous, addressed Henri as Ornery.

  “You wonder why I sit here reading?” Kelley asked, and Henri nodded, though in truth he wondered just as much why he himself kept standing there.

  “As you know, the cavalry is not called to this engagement, it being chiefly a matter for artillery,” Kelley said. “The enemy compels us to study war, but he may not compel us to depart from our civilized practice and lapse into the ways of savagery. Thus I improve an hour which otherwise might be lost to idleness. Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established.” He smiled, sighting down the finger that held his place. “Proverbs, sixteen-three. But as for yourself, Henri, you are still more exposed than I. Have you no thought for your own safety?”

  I was killed at Chickamauga, Henri thought to say, but it occurred to him that Chickamauga hadn’t happened yet, and another tumbling shell was blotting out the sun. He skittered backward from under its shrieking shadow, and fell over the fallen log himself, discommoding not only Sergeant Major Strange but also Ginral Jerry, who had taken shelter with them there. Below, the fort’s single 128-pounder coughed and roared, and the gunboats answered. A horse let out a screaming whinny, then fell silent.

  Henri risked a peep above the log. The last chunk of shrapnel had sheared away the tent pole on which Kelley had been leaning (for the camp stool where he sat had no back to it). The minister stood up, arms akimbo, Bible pinned beneath an elbow, peering irritably at the mess of collapsed canvas. Weak sunlight glinted from his spectacles. A birdlike twittering emerged from between his lips.

  “What the hell is that chatter?” Strange inquired.

  “He cussen in Chinese, thas all,” Jerry explained. He had rolled onto his back and lay relaxed with one knee up and his hands laced behind his head; a straw or a splinter moved in the corner of his mouth as he talked.

  “Chinese?” Strange propped up on an elbow, looking at Jerry, but Jerry was gazing further off, at a quartet of rag-winged buzzards turning in the cold wind above the fort.

  “Chinese,” Strange said again. His tone shifted from outraged disbelief to a sort of resignation. Jerry rolled one eye toward him.

  “He been a preacher ovah theah. In China,” Jerry said. Again Henri raised his head above the log. With a sigh, Kelley settled himself on the canvas triangle of his stool and bent his attention back onto the Bible. Henri snuggled into the cold gray wood. Another hail of shrapnel pelted down and Jerry rolled tighter against the log, which Henri himself embraced still more closely.

  Then something changed in the pattern of the cannonade down by the riverside, as if a voice had left the choir, a bullfrog been gigged out of the pond. An exploding shell bloomed over Fort Donelson, and in its orange aureole the broad bearded face of Kelley appeared, hovering over the fallen log.

  “Come on, boys, let’s get out of this mess,” he said, glancing over his shoulder as he slipped the Bible into his coat pocket. “There’s too much commotion to read anymore. And the colonel went down there an hour ago—I want to see what’s going on.”

  Jerry only smiled and stayed where he was, curling closer to the log. Henri and Strange got up and followed Kelley. They found their horses in a grove of pin oaks in back of their camp. With Kelley leading they threaded their way through a peppering of hastily dug rifle pits to the right of the trenches which Buckner’s men occupied, waiting for a landward assault from the Federals. The outer works of the fort were three miles long and the Confederates on the ground were too few to man them as they were meant to be manned. Henri rode with his shoulders hunched against the swelling noise of the cannon, following Kelley down a gulley that fed into Hickman Creek, which gave them and their horses some cover from the shells. At the mouth where the creek flowed into the Cumberland, Forrest stood beside his trembling horse, soothing it by stroking the withers as he stared at the four Federal ironclads closing in on the inner redoubt on top of the bluff to his right. Fort Donelson’s 128-pounder had gone silent—only four smaller cannon remained.

  “Hello, Parson,” he said, turning the whites of his eyes on them. “Ye’d best git to prayen now that ye’re here—ain’t nothen but Godamighty can save that fort.”

  THEY DIDN’T STAY LONG to pray or to watch, but the fort did survive, by the hardest, despite the loss of its one long gun. At closer range the smaller pieces cut up the ironclads handily and set them adrift away downriver. But Grant’s reinforcements were still closing in overland.

  That night it snowed, and at first light, diffused by a hovering fog from the river, the Confederates led by General Pillow attacked the Federals below the little town of Dover, downriver from the fort, hoping to open a line of retreat along the road to Nashville. Henri rode between Kelley and Strange, shaking from the cold he could not get used to, following Forrest as the cavalry rode in advance of Pillow’s left. They made their first charge through a fog so thick they could not see the Federals till they were in hand’s reach. An hour later the sun was blazing back from the strips of snow that had not been stained crimson and Forrest was raving mad because he could not get permission to charge the retreating Federals again and run them clean off the battlefield. With his breath steaming from the chill, every curse he uttered was haloed in smoke.

  He led his cavalry to the right, sweeping outside the entrenchments manned by General Buckner’s troops, and cheered himself up a little by capturing a Federal battery of six guns, killing most of the men and horses that served it. Moving further to the right, he came upon General Pillow under fire of another battery at the head of a ravine.

  “If you must charge something,” Pillow said, “Charge that
.” Forrest said nothing, but put his head down, directing his riders with a sweep of his arm. Henri swung in after him, outdistancing Kelley and Strange—but that was his horse’s idea, not his. The ravine was steep and choked with buck bushes, a few pinkish berries clinging to the scrub. Horseshoes shivered the ice and slipped on the frozen mud beneath it. At the head of the ravine the cannon thundered and Forrest’s men screamed back at them. In the general uproar Henri couldn’t even hear what sound was pouring out of his own raw open throat and he didn’t know if he was screaming in anger or fear. To his right Captain May of the Rangers toppled, dragging his mount to a halt with his dead body trailing from one stirrup, and just behind that, Jeffrey Forrest’s horse reared up and fell over backward on the steep grade, rolling over the rider. Forrest looked back for half a second, just long enough to see his youngest brother sit up coughing painfully but anyway still breathing. Two minié balls tore through the sleeves of his coat, and Henri saw more bullets striking the forequarters of his horse, like fat raindrops plopping into a pond, but Forrest, impossibly, did not stop, and so none of those still in the saddle behind him stopped either. In the next moment they had ridden right over the cannon and the Federals who weren’t killed were running away.

  “By God we done it!” Forrest yelled, turning back to Henri, who was the first man behind him now. His black beard jutted, his face was on fire with pleasure. “Come on boys, let’s go find’m!”

  As he dug in his spurs, his horse went down on its front knees, spurting little fountains of blood from seven bullet holes. Forrest slipped down and held the animal’s head. He didn’t know which of the blood leaks to stop. Henri watched him watch the horse’s eyes go dim, and for a second it looked as if Forrest would weep, but then Ginral Jerry came tearing out of the sour smoke of the captured battery, with another horse all saddled and bridled and ready go, and Forrest was astride again, beckoning Henri to follow him—there didn’t seem to be anyone else with them just now.