Devil's Dream

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “I can tell that much from the way you talk,” Little said. “But why would a free nigger want to run South?”

  “You don’t know where I was coming from, do you,” Henri said. “The world is round, if you haven’t heard that. And it’s bigger than you seem to think.”

  Little opened his hands palm up on his knees. The fingers were long and slender, though calloused. “I’m just asking is all,” he said.

  Henri got up and walked widdershins around the bare top of the knoll. The blackberry patch had vanished in fog. Through an aureole of the mist, a long way off and a long way down, he saw Forrest riding, riding, one hand holding a six-gun high and the other reached forward to stop the wound in the throat of his horse. When he passed behind the hollow tree he looked down again and saw the weary remnants of the Army of Tennessee marching over winter-hardened ground toward the trench south of Franklin where six thousand of them were to die. The air was full of the reedy music of Old Ones.

  Henri walked back into the circle of men. “I came to raise a revolution,” he said. “Kill the white men and set the black men free.”

  Little’s mouth had opened, round and dark. “A nigger rebellion.”

  “A revolution, I said.”

  “And kill the white people?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Then why in the hell are you fighting with us?”

  “Who knows?” Henri said. “But I get to kill white people almost every day.”

  Little looked over at Forrest where he breathed softly on his bed of green limbs. “What about him?”

  “I don’t know about him,” Henri said. “He’s hard to kill.”

  “And me?” Little was on his feet suddenly, as if something had stung him. “You think I’m easy?”

  Easier than you want to be, Henri thought, but he didn’t say it. He felt sad for Little, who would soon be dead, and regretted having upset him. An Old One was blowing a flute in his ear, drilled out of one of Little’s own rib bones, and Little couldn’t even hear it.

  Jerry was scraping his skillet with a bundle of twigs. “Y’all white folks done et,” he said. “Now you mise well go on about yo bidness.”

  Little opened his mouth again. Nath Boone flicked his straw away and stood up. “Come on, Monty,” he said. “Don’t devil these people. There’s trouble enough.”

  “All right, then,” Little said. He looked at Jerry. “We thank y’all for sharing your food.”

  The two white men walked away from the hilltop. Two paces off the brow of the knoll the mist had swallowed them completely. Henri stood still, feeling his hands swing from his wrists like a pair of cannon balls hanging from chain. Matthew, sitting back on his heels again, was staring at him openly. Ginral Jerry was looking anywhere else. Forrest’s breath was just barely audible, a faint hiss like a bellows sustaining a coal.

  CHAPTER TEN

  May 1861

  AT SUNRISE Forrest stepped down from the squared-off log that served as a back step for his house in Coahoma County and strode out toward the cotton fields. It was already warm and he wore no jacket, just linsey breeches and a pullover shirt with the lace hanging loose at the throat. He beat a straw hat against his thigh as he walked.

  When he came out of the grove of oaks that shaded his house he was walking down a double row of cabins in the quarters. There were twelve of them, sound buildings all, the gaps between the logs chinked tight and the plank doors and shutters properly whitewashed. Benjamin had built them, one by one as they were needed, drafting help as he required it from among the middle-sized boys in the quarters. There was one of those boys might make a pretty fair carpenter himself before he was through. Benjamin had steadied up right well since Nancy had been returned to him, and they’d got three more children besides the one she’d been carrying when Forrest went to buy her back from Coldwater.

  Women worked in their dooryards, cleaning skillets or cracking corn for the next meal. A shirttail baby with her hair braided into tight little nubs ran ahead of him, chasing after a cackling hen. That would be Ben and Nancy’s least one, near as he could tell from looking at the back of her cornrowed head. Well now, what was her name?

  At the end of the quarters lane, Forrest paused where Ben had raised a wooden gateway. There wasn’t any fence or gate to go with it so it was just for show—one of Ben’s own notions. The posts were set wide enough to pass a wagon with no trouble and the crossbar would be nigh on eight feet high. Forrest squinted up, raising the straw hat to one side of his face to shade his eyes from the climbing sun. Since he’d last come this way a week or so back, Ben had carved the joins of post and lintel so that two hands clasped each other at each corner. He would have needed a ladder to do that.

  Morning glory vines were climbing each post from the ground. If they had been planted there a-purpose, Forrest couldn’t say. The vines looked fragile and they had a long way to go before they’d reach the joined hands on the high crossbar. Ben’s own cabin was considerably ornamented with such whittling, and so were quite a few of the others—he probably earned himself a little something in doing such work on the side. The big house here, still being finished, might have had such decoration, except that Mary Ann thought it uncivilized—said that it gave her the willies, in fact.

  The men had gone out ahead of him, but not by much. He could hear the cadence of a song from the cotton fields hidden behind the next low rise, accented to the point where hoes chunked into the dirt in unison, pausing there and beginning again.

  The banty hen had been chased clean out of the quarters, and now broke one way, toward the creek, while Ben and Nancy’s little girl ran the other, picking up speed as she dashed into the open shed by the creek bank, built in the shade of two big water maples, where Ben sat planing white poplar boards for cabinets in the big house. He stood up quickly and caught her to his bare chest. The girl squirmed, looked back at Forrest and then away, pulled at the pendant Ben wore on a string around his neck: a half-hickory nut he’d whittled just a little bit, to improve its natural resemblance to a barn owl.

  “Be still, now,” Ben told her. “What got into you?” He looked at Forrest with the hint of a half-smile. “She act like she think you the booger-man.”

  “Hattie,” Forrest said. The name had come to him when she turned her little round face his way. She stared at him a moment, then wildly shook her head.

  Benjamin set her on the ground and gave her a tap on the bottom. “Get on back to yo momma then,” he said. “Effen you don’t want to act like folks.”

  Hattie dodged around Forrest’s left leg and bolted back toward the quarters. He glanced after her for a second, watched the pale dusty soles of her feet flying up. When he turned back, Ben was just straightening. The zigzag scar came out of the close-cropped hair above his temple and down by his ear like a lightning bolt.

  “Reckon she don’t see too many big ole bushy black beards round here,” Ben said. “Cep’n when you comes to see us.”

  A couple of the middle-sized boys had stopped pulling their crosscut saw when Forrest arrived at the shed, but now, when he glanced at them, they went back to it. The one with the best feel for the work was coming twelve probably; he had a pair of big soft ears, shaped like handles of a jug. Forrest ran his over the board Benjamin had been planing. Smooth grain and more than two hands wide.

  “Doen a fine job with this lumber,” he said.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Might need to put this job off a while though,” Forrest said. “Why don’t you walk over to the field with me a minute.”

  Ben’s eye’s flicked over him, quick a snake’s tongue, then went out to the horizon.

  “No, I ain’t senden ye to chop no cotton,” Forrest said. “Not even studyen that. Hit’s a piece of news and the men need to hear it, that’s all.”

  He turned and stepped out from under the shed roof. Ben pulled on a shirt and followed him along the curving, rutted path toward the first cotton field. They were about halfway to
the rise that concealed the field hands when Forrest heard the saw teeth stop pulling through the wood. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the two half-grown boys trailing after them at what they must consider a safe distance. Well, let’m come on then.

  “What news,” Ben said.

  Forrest tried to catch his eye. “What d’ye hear?”

  “Trouble aplenty,” Ben said after a pause. “Even white folks can get some now.”

  He looked at Ben hard; Ben was facing him head-on but somehow their eyes still just didn’t meet. By damn that was a sassy remark … but it was true too, and Forrest thought he’d as well let it go. No telling what kind of wild tales might be going round the quarters and if he didn’t want a smart answer he’d have done better not to have asked.

  “Let’s git on,” he said shortly, pulling down his hat brim. Ben followed him to the top of the rise.

  Thirty-some slaves were thinning cotton, fanned out over the long black furrows. The plants had come a good four inches high. Forrest turned left and walked along the outside of the split rail fence to a point where he could see down to the pocket by the tree line and the creek, where another handful of slaves was working. He cupped his hands and hallooed to them, and while he waited for them to come he stooped and broke a clod of the black earth with his fingers.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Ben said again, at his back.

  A blue-veined earthworm slipped over his thumb and burrowed back in the loosened dirt. Rich land it was. He had bought most of it three years ago. He’d take a thousand bales off it this year, if not for the war. In spite of the war, if they all pulled together.

  Slaves had straightened from the work and were shading their eyes to look at him. But they seemed uncertain if they should come. The day in the field had barely got started. Forrest turned, looked over his shoulder. A big iron bell stood on a post left of another gateway Ben had raised—this one with a good stout gate in it. He flipped up his shirttail and drew a pistol. Bracing right hand over left wrist, he took aim quickly and pressed the trigger. When the bell sounded the slaves dropped their tools and came running.

  Forrest put his hands on his hips and stretched out his spine till two vertebrae popped. He had an odd premonition that a day might come when he would regret the waste of that frivolous shot. The sound of the bell was bringing women and children out of the quarters too, and Forrest hadn’t really counted on that. But grown gals not nursing babies were in the field anyway, and the rest were coming quick, and would get there soon.

  When they’d all gathered round he took off his hat.

  “Hit’s a war comen shore enough,” he announced. “I know y’all bound to been hearen that talk. Well now I mean to tell ye the truth on it. The Yankees are fixen to come down from the North. They aim to kill all they can and take what we got.”

  He looked from one black face to another. Some looked worried, others unreadable. Men’s eyes shaded by fraying straw brims. Women’s heads bound in plain or checked cloth. He told off their names under his breath, his lips just barely moving. But for a couple, he could call their names true. They all seemed to sway from the ground, like rushes.

  “The war’s agin slavery, that’s what they claim. If the Yankees whup it, they’ll set ye all free. That’s right. You heard me right. They ain’t studied on what’s to be done with ye after that but they aim to set the lot of y’all free.”

  At that there was a swell among the slaves and they turned to one another and murmured. He let that happen for close on a minute, then raised up his palm and they fell still.

  “I’ve jined up already to fight for the South,” he told them. “Y’all most of ye’ve known me fer quite some time. Have ye ever seen me to take a whuppen?”

  Nawsuh, we ain’t. Don’t spec we will.

  “Well then. If the South whups it, we’ll still have slavery in this country. And that’s the side I’m fighten fer. I’ll tell ye that straight out and no doubt about it. I don’t mean to have nobody waltz in from somewhar’s else and start in a-tellen me what to do and not do—”

  Forrest could feel the blood beating hard in his temples now. He stopped a minute, fanned himself with the hat.

  “Now here’s what I come down to say to ye. War ain’t just a-comen, it’s done already started. I aim to fight for the side I jest said. That’s all they is to it. But any man among ye wants to fight alongside of me—when the war once gits over with, I will set that man free.”

  In the silence that followed he could hear a late-rising rooster crowing back behind him in the quarters. He thought he could hear water trickling in the creek a quarter-mile away.

  “What about the women,” Zebulon said.

  “Huh.” Forrest put his hat back on. He actually hadn’t thought about the women. “Now that’s a right reasonable question. Here’s what I say. If ye want to carry a gal free with ye, be shore ye step over the broom with her afore ye go to the fight. And not more’n one to a customer, mind.”

  At that there was a little laughter and a louder rustle of whispering. Young Alma came up on her toes to say something deep into Zebulon’s ear. Forrest raised his voice a little.

  “Ye can’t hardly lose with this proposition,” he said. “The Yankees win and ye go free thataway. Fight with me and I’ll set ye free.”

  “And effen we gets kilt?” Benjamin said.

  “Then ye’ll be dead.” Forrest looked at him, not especially hard. Benjamin held the gaze this time, till Forrest told him, “Don’t nobody live forever.”

  ZEBULON HAD SAVED a long section of gut from last fall’s hog-killing, rescued it from the iron rim of the chitlin pot. He’d cleaned it and cut it into long thin strips and laid the strips to dry across the railing of the tiny porch that Benjamin had built onto the front of his cabin. He had softened the strips again and rolled them into slender, milky cords, then coiled them carefully to store away in a clean rag.

  When he saw Ben coming through the twilight he went into the cabin and came out carrying the rag full of strings in one hand and the mostly finished banjo in the other. Alma set a chair for Ben, one of the two that they had in the cabin. There was just room for the two men on the little lean-to porch. Alma settled on a chunk of stone outside the rail and bent her head to a pair of britches she was mending.

  As he stepped up, Ben took five pegs from his bib pocket and rattled them in his hand. With a smile Sap pointed to the empty chair and handed him the banjo. Ben had made it mostly himself, but all to Zebulon’s directions; it was the only instrument he had ever made. He set the drum of it on his knee and held the walnut neck up vertical. He’d made the headstock into a horse’s head, improving on the abstract form of fiddleheads he had seen. Little chips of white cow bone were wedged in for the eyes.

  The banjo drum was a cedar hoop, with half a big gourd for a resonator. Ben had put all the parts together, impressed how Zebulon knew just how to tell him what to do. The only part Zeb had done himself was stretching the hide parchment over the hoop, soaking it soft and letting it temper up as it dried. He’d needed to get Forrest to give him a pass so he could go a dozen miles south to where there was a white man crazy enough to be raising sheep in the suffocating Mississippi heat.

  Ben lowered the banjo head to the floor and, with the horse-headstock resting against his knee, began to set the cedar pegs in the holes already bored for them. Each peg was flattened at the top to accommodate the ball of a thumb. Two of the four he had to whittle a little more to get them settled right. Satisfied they’d turn and hold, he raised the banjo to his lap and pushed the fifth peg into place on the side of the neck. He tapped the skin head once, for a soft belling tone, then handed the banjo back to Zebulon.

  No other note had yet been sounded, but little children began to turn up, to watch Zeb knotting on the strings. Little Hattie hung by both hands from the rail, peering in underneath it. Beside her, just tall enough to see over the rail, was Eli, Ben and Nancy’s next oldest child. A few more children of the quarters were trickling over
, drawn by the attention of the first two, and more came quickly, once Zeb thumbed a string and twisted the first peg to a true note.

  He looked across at Benjamin as he tuned. “What you aim to do?”

  “Do bout what?” Ben had taken another, bigger piece of cedar from his pocket and was whittling; you couldn’t yet tell what it meant to be.

  “Mist’ Forrest goen to war tomorrow, what them say.”

  Ben looked away along the alley of the quarters, where Nancy was coming along barefoot toward Zeb’s cabin, between the rows of other cabins Ben had built.

  “I spec to go with him,” he said.

  Zeb shook his head and tuned up three more notes. With hammer strokes he sounded each against the fretless fingerboard.

  “Boy, are you outen yo mind?” he said.

  “What you mean to do yoself?” Ben asked him. He was watching Nancy as she sat down beside Alma on the chunk of the stone; Alma shifted over to make room for her. Nancy glanced up once at the men on the porch, then looked over the way, where a file of speckled chickens were flapping up to roost in a hackberry tree. Ben turned his piece of wood under the knife blade in his hand; the red cedar smell sprang up as he worked.

  “Plant cotton. Chop cotton. Pick cotton. Pluck on the banjo evenens and Sundays …” Zeb rolled an arpeggio on the four lower strings. “Live till I die.”

  He began tuning up the short fifth string, wincing a little as the note climbed higher. There was only one lone extra string, till he might get his hands on more gut sometime. The fifth string held and didn’t pop. Zeb picked out a quick melody line, thumbing the high drone note. As he fell into frailing the chords, the women on the stone below began to hum the tune. “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” The children who were already there smiled and nudged each other; more children had begun to come.

  “Don’t see what you want to go for,” Zebulon said.

  “Listen at what you playen, Zeb.”

  “Just playen. Ain’t singen a word.”