Devil's Dream

by Madison Smartt Bell

  There came a long deep droning sound like wind over the mouth of a long bottle, and a hole opened up into the next world where the Old Ones sat cross-legged smoking their pipes and playing their strange music, then out of the hole a tapered artillery shell came majestically sailing; it entered Forrest’s fresh horse just behind the crook of Forrest’s own knee, and then the horse exploded.

  Henri lay facedown, embracing the frozen dirt. He had stopped feeling the cold during the first charge that morning, eight hours before. But now he felt frozen all the way through and the only warm spot in the entire world was his horse’s nostrils nuzzling the back of his neck, wanting to know that he was all right, wanting him to get on again. But the last place Henri wanted to be was on a horse right now.

  “Git up if ye don’t want me to kick ye.” Forrest’s long shadow stretched over him; Forrest shaking his head. “Git up now, Henry, if ye ain’t dead.”

  Reluctantly Henri sat up. He let Forrest help him to his feet.

  “Goddammit!” Forrest said, his beard’s point shaking. Henri felt his sorrow transmuted to rage. “That’s two good horses in less’n five minutes—by damn, them Yankees need to pay—”

  Down the slope, General Pillow was calling for his men to retreat to their breastworks.

  “The devil!” Forrest hollered. “Goddammit to the eternal fires of Hell, cain’t ye see we got’m on the run? There’s three good hours of daylight left, we ought to be killen Yankees with that!”

  Henri leaned against his horse’s shoulder, stooping enough to shelter his head from whatever projectile might yet come hurtling out of the next world in his direction. Forrest’s face had turned that hot-iron color. He kicked shale loose from the frozen ground.

  “Goddamn if I aim to go back to any goddamn breastworks,” he said.

  AT DUSK they gathered around a campfire Ginral Jerry had built in the lee of a snowbank, which did something, though not exactly enough, to cut the bitter rising wind. Forrest sat on a tripod camp stool, his long arms wrapped around his knees, reflected firelight flickering from the deep hollow of his eyes. Though he was in his shirtsleeves he didn’t seem to feel the cold. Is he even human? Henri thought.

  Kelley sat across the fire from Forrest, quietly contemplating him. No one spoke except for Jerry, who was counting out loud slowly.

  “Thirteen, fo’teen … Cunnel Forrest, you done leff me a whole lotta menden to do … Fifteen bullet holes in dis here coat … doan even know as I got enough thread …” Jerry spread the coat so that the firelight shone through minié ball tears, to Henri it looked for a second as if the coat was studded with glowing jewels, or more like a dozen-odd lightning bugs had lit among its folds.

  “I got a mind to ax Ole Miss to he’p with dis job a work,” Jerry grumbled.

  “Miz Forrest has gone back to Memphis,” Forrest said.

  “May God keep her safe there,” Kelley added.

  Forrest looked at him thoughtfully, then turned to Jerry with a smile on at least one side of his mouth. “Don’t know as she’s so far off yet she caint hear ye callen her ‘Ole Miss,’”Then he stood up, as Jerry mimed a cower at the thought of Ole Miss’s wrath. Forrest’s gangling shadow lay back a long way from the fire. “Hand me over that coat,” he said, reaching for it. “Ye can sew on it some more later, I reckon. Right now I got to go down to Dover and parley with them ginrals.” Shrugging into the coat, he turned from the fire and spat into the snow.

  “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” Kelley said.

  “That they do.” Forrest looked into the shadows beyond the ring of firelight. “Brother Bill?”

  “Brother Bedford.” William Forrest stepped into the fire’s glow. He was as tall as his brother, and favored him considerably, except that his hair and beard had gone to an early gray, while Bedford Forrest’s were still hard black.

  “How’s Jeff a-maken it?”

  “He’ll live,” Bill Forrest said. “Got a sore bruisen but it aint a-goen to kill him.”

  “Would ye take a couple of the boys and go scout out the Nashville road? I’d admire to know what’s out thar, if anything is.”

  Bill Forrest nodded to his brother, and turned toward the trees where the horses were hitched. Henri stood up. “I’ll go,” he said. The fire only got one side of him warm anyway, while the other side was frozen numb.

  “Too many cooks,” Kelley repeated ruefully, thumbing the edges of his beard. Starnes, sitting to his left, poked a wet stick into the fire. There were three Confederate general officers on the ground at Fort Donelson—Pillow, Floyd, and Buckner—and so far their cooperation had been less than perfectly harmonious.

  “You know?” Kelley said to the fire, “The first time I saw him run at the Federals that way I thought there was a good chance he was out of his mind. When he did it today I saw he was right. This army ought to be halfway to Nashville by now.”

  “Don’t you know it,” Starnes said.

  “Fifteen bullet holes,” Jerry muttered from the depths of a blanket he’d furled over his head. “You’d think Cunnel be satisfied he still alive. But you know he ain’t.”

  “I got a bad feeling,” Starnes said, and then they all were quiet.

  No sooner had Bill Forrest and Henri found their horses than the mulatto boy Matthew came out to join their scout. Since the weather had turned cold most of the men had been sleeping in pairs to improve their chances of not freezing to death. Matthew had been sharing Henri’s shebang—distinguished by a rubber ground cloth scavenged from the Federals, as well as the square of canvas stretched over a low branch to shed the rain and snow. Henri felt a certain sympathy for the boy, though usually he was sullen. Matthew was supposed to be a teamster, it appeared, but he didn’t seem to be very thick with the other wagoneering slaves, except when somebody needed a harness fixed, for Matthew was handy with that work, and had been trained to it, back in Memphis, it appeared. He had a good pistol, but no sword, and a horse strong enough to keep up with the cavalry, though as a rule he rode toward the rear.

  Under chill starlight they rode over the jaggedly torn and trampled snow, trotting their horses outside the Confederate trench lines. They followed the curve of the works to the southeast and once they had crossed the Fort Henry road they halted to look out over the field where the Federals under McClernand had been camped the night before. Tonight a good number of fires were burning brightly in that area.

  “What do you think?” Bill Forrest said.

  “We were all over there this afternoon, before dark,” Henri said. “Seeing to the wounded and picking up guns and cartridges. There was no enemy left there then, none sound enough to get away.”

  “Ain’t none thar now neither,” Bill Forrest said. “That’s the wind blowen up the fires from this mornen, effen ye ast me.”

  South of Dover they found the Nashville road flooded from a slough off the Cumberland. A wide expanse of water lay eerily still under the starlight. Bill Forrest rode out into the water, while Henri and Matthew watched him from the bank. Ripples swirled around his horse’s legs. When the bottom of his stirrup touched the water, he reined up and looked over his shoulder.

  “Hell yes we can git acrost this,” he said. “And I expect we will.”

  FORREST WAS in such a state when they returned to camp that he seemed hardly to listen to their report. “We got ginrals don’t know when they’re a-winnen—and we got three of’m too!” he complained. “They got the idee the Federals all have come back right to whar they were yestiddy—when we just got through runnen’m out of there today. Brother Bill, did ye see anything such as that?”

  “No,” Bill Forrest said.

  “I’ll wager ye didn’t,” Forrest said. “How much water is it down there anyhow?”

  “Some,” Bill said. “Might git yore feet wet.”

  “Might git yore feet wet,” Forrest repeated. “Them three ginrals got a doctor a-tellen’m the whole army’ll die if it gits they feet wet. Doctor Cowan?” He called to the surgeon wh
o sat on a stone beside the fire. “Is this army all bound to catch pneumonia and die if they was to oncet get their feet wet?”

  “Some might catch cold,” Doctor Cowan said.

  “Some might catch cold,” said Forrest. “Now that is such a godawful risk I druther have my sorry ass drug off to a Federal prison not to run it. How about you?”

  “Not necessarily,” Doctor Cowan said.

  “Well jest you try tellen that to them three ginrals down there,” Forrest said. “They’re a-setten up in that there Dover Inn a-studyen jest how to set about surrenderen nigh fifteen thousand men to an army they just got done whuppen. So they won’t get their goddamn feet wet! Jesus Christ nailed on the cross wept tears of burning blood!”

  Kelley, sitting by the fire, uncrossed his legs and crossed them again the other way.

  “Brother,” Bill Forrest folded his arms across his deep chest. “What do we aim to do?”

  “Boots and saddles,” Forrest snapped. “We’re a-goen to Nashville and we’re goen right now.”

  YET WHEN THEY CAME near the floodplain below Dover, Forrest was taken by a spirit of caution. Earlier that night Buckner’s scouts had brought in a report of Federal troops moving in, under cover of darkness, along the Nashville road.

  “Come on, boys,” Forrest said to Henri and Jeffrey, who had limbered up enough to ride. “Let’s run out ahead and have us a looksee.”

  The chilly stars of Orion glittered above a field of empty snow. Henri let his head roll back, gazed up at the hunter’s jeweled sword belt. The stars where he came from were different from these.

  Forrest guided them under cover of a straggle of thorn trees on the slope. When he reached the last of them he raised a hand for the party to halt, still hidden in the bristly shadow of the trees. Henri’s breath clicked off when he saw a line of infantry still on the crest of the next snow-covered rise. For a long slow time no one moved or made a sound and even the horses’ breath steamed out in silence.

  Then Forrest let out a sour chuckle and nudged his horse from the shelter of the thorns. He pushed his mount into an even canter, turning parallel to the enemy line. Henri and Jeffrey exchanged a quick glance and went after him. At closer range the immobile rank of enemy troops was revealed by the weak starlight to be a picket fence.

  MOST EVERY RIDER carried a foot soldier behind when they crossed the slough, for a good number of Buckner’s infantry had chosen to take their chances with Forrest on the escape. First-dawn light was pale on the water as the horses waded through. On the far shore Henri’s passenger thanked him as he slipped down, and Henri overtook Forrest, who was talking, though he rode alone. Maybe he was encouraging his horse, or praying. But Forrest never prayed.

  “… bilepukenlilyliversnakebellysonsaJehosophat,” Forrest was chanting as Henri drew alongside him. “If they think I raised up all these men and armed’m and fed’m and brung’m up here to surrender the lot of ’m to a goddamn picket fence, well they got another think comen, them fleascratchenscumlickeneggsuckensonsa—”

  Strange rode up on Forrest’s other side. “That’s kind of a rough way to talk about your superior officers, don’t you think?”

  “Superior to what?” Forrest said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  November 1857

  THERE WAS A PLENTY of white and dark meat both on the Thanksgiving table, for Forrest had surprised a flock of turkeys drifting across a pasture on his Coahoma County plantation, at dawn a few days before the holiday. In fact he knew they scratched there almost every morning, and there were nigh on two dozen of them too. He’d roused Willie at first light, and they crept up on the turkeys under cover of a fringe of trees that curtained the field. Kneeling by a stump at the pasture’s edge, he’d helped the boy steady the long rifle and take aim on the eye-bead in the wattled head of a big gobbler. When he squeezed the trigger the turkey dropped. Willie couldn’t help himself from jumping up with a shout, but still, Forrest bagged four more birds before the flock had scattered into the woods.

  He brought the turkeys back to Memphis in his leather saddlebags, and hung them by their feet a day or two in the crisp fall weather. In the yard, sitting on the edge of the cistern, Aunt Sarah plucked the birds one by one while Catharine’s toddlers chased the feathers and caught them all into two bags: down for pillows, wing feathers for pens. Catharine mixed cornbread with onion broth to make stuffing, while Aunt Sarah took charge of roasting the birds—and it was she who brought the first turkey on its platter to the table, never mind the weight, while Catharine had charge of a dish of sweet potatoes following behind. Both black women stood back from the table, in case anything more should be wanted straight away, as the oohs and ahs went up—they had a big crowd, this time. Forrest’s mother was there and his twin sister, Fanny, and three of his older brothers too, though Jesse and Jeffrey had dodged the occasion and gone deer-hunting across the river in Arkansas. On Mary Ann’s side: the Reverend Cowan her uncle, her mother of course, and her first cousin, J. B. Cowan, who with his surgeon’s skill was carving the birds—a task at which Forrest tended to feel clumsy.

  Reverend Cowan asked the blessing and after the chorus of amen, bowls of greens and rice and taters and relish began to go round, along with a platter of sliced white bread. At a whisper from Aunt Sarah, Catharine padded into the kitchen and returned with a cream-colored gravy boat. She held it, standing to the left and a little behind Forrest’s chair, waiting for the plates to be served. She had worked herself warm in the kitchen, and he was aware of the heat radiating from her skin, and the hot sheen on her face and her open throat and her glossy forearms, though he did not turn his head to look.

  “Mister Forrest, white meat or dark?” From the opposite end of the table, Doctor Cowan saluted him with the carving knife.

  “I like the dark,” Forrest said, with a lip-licking smile. Surreptitiously he ran his thumb inside his waistband to assure there was room for the meal coming his way.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Montgomery said, with an untoward sharpness. “We know that you do.” With that she turned her pursed lips and pointedly raised chin toward Mary Ann.

  The gravy boat sloshed a bit as Catharine set it down on the table, turned her back, and started for the kitchen. Mary Ann’s large eyes were picked out with blue flame. He could read the thought that flared in her gaze: How dearly I’d love to whip that slut till her hips stop switching.

  His sister said something to Doctor Cowan, who batted the conversational shuttlecock toward William Forrest—soon enough the talk had resumed; there was a reasonable semblance of a festive conversation, though Mrs. Montgomery kept her silence, pecking at her plate like a croupy hen, and Mary Ann, though she spoke pleasantly enough if addressed, did not even pretend to touch her food.

  Forrest made himself clean his plate, forced himself to down a small second helping even, though the meat was like chewing fibers of a pine board now, and the surfeit lay like a stone below the topmost button of his trousers. Presently the children were excused and ran out laughing. A quarter-hour on, the ladies retired to the parlor. Forrest followed Doctor Cowan to the porch. As they went out, a red-bone hound came yawning and stretching from under the table and loped around the house to the back door of the kitchen where the chances of scraps might be more favorable.

  Reverend Cowan went for a post-prandial stroll with two of Forrest’s able-bodied brothers. John Forrest laid his cane against the wall and slumped, with lidded eyes, into one of the several freshly caned rockers. Doctor Cowan bit the tip of a cigar and spat the remnant over the porch rail. He lit up and sat down, gently rocking. Forrest settled into the chair next to him. The aroma of the cigar seemed not so unpleasant, and for once in his life he almost wished he had acquired the habit of tobacco.

  Of all the relatives in Mary Ann’s train, Forrest liked J. B. Cowan best. The doctor was certainly aware of the obus that his aunt had detonated in the dining room, but he did nothing except blow lazy smoke rings and talk on soothingly dull subjects such as t
he price of cotton and tobacco and the shifting of land values in North Mississippi and West Tennessee.

  From the kitchen came a smash of splintering crockery, and the younger woman’s voice shrilled. Aunt Sarah’s lower tones came in behind the first frustrated shriek, soon had covered it and smoothed it all away. By now it had grown dark outdoors. Forrest heard a splash as someone tossed a basin of water out the back kitchen door, and a dog yelped for getting a wet tail.

  “It’s a mite chilly.” Doctor Cowan got up and stilled his rocker with a hand on its top post. “I believe I’ll go in.”

  “Good night, Cousin,” Forrest murmured.

  In the corner of the porch, John Forrest was not quite snoring, lost in a laudanum haze. The cold Forrest felt in his own bones had little to do with the weather. Though he did not see his twin sister now as often as he used to, he knew she would come a few minutes before she laid her strong square hand on his right shoulder, and he knew what she was going to say.

  “Brother,” Fanny Forrest said. “You have got yourself in a right ugly fix.”

  He reached across his chest and caught her right hand in his left. “Don’t I know it,” he muttered.

  “Nothen to do but meet it head-on.” Fanny said. “Yore wife will be expecten you to make it right.”

  “Some things are jest wrong all over.” Forrest looked up; her eyes were deep-set and dark as his own.

  “Is that a fact?” she said. “I expect you know more about that than I do.” She gave his hand a parting squeeze and let it go.

  “I’M NOT ASLEEP,” Mary Ann’s voice said, as soon as he had crossed the threshold.

  Forrest maneuvered the bedroom door shut behind him. Of course he’d known it futile to hope she would be. The whole dark room seemed to hold its breath. He listened to the slow pump of his heart. Though his wife was a lady, it was not unknown for her to fly out at him if provoked. She’d shout until her hair came loose and red patches flared beneath her cheekbones. But not tonight. The house was packed full as a straw tick, with even adults sleeping three to a bed, children rumpled together like puppies in a sack. No more than he, Mary Ann didn’t want all her kin and his to know their trouble. The cutting would be quietly done. Almost in silence.