What Henri feared was that the boy would find a way to make his ownself dead before the day was done. Whatever fire got a good start in Forrest would burn to the very borders of his being—like the fire that had consumed that manor house outside of Okolona. Today it seemed the same fire burned in Matthew, just as bright. He followed Matthew, but not too close. There was a smell of death in the air, which of course made sense in the midst of pitched battle, but somehow what he sensed today was worse.
Smith’s men made a number of small stands as they moved north, all of them rolled up quickly by Forrest’s horsemen. They kept up the chase well into the night, and in the darkness and confusion it once occurred that two parties of Forrest’s men fired on each other for a minute or so. By great good fortune none were killed. Though Matthew caught a crease on his upper arm he would not even stop to have it dressed, but joined a scout with Henri and Major Strange around two in the morning when the other pursuers finally stopped to rest: they found Smith’s men were resting too, a mile or so south of Okolona.
The next morning’s first charge drove the Federal rear guard straight through what remained of the town. Smith had drawn up an imposing battle line just the north side of Okolona, but Forrest soon flanked him out of this position and put him on the run again. What at first looked like a total rout settled into an organized retreat. A couple of miles north of the point where Sakatonchee Creek trickled away to nothing, Smith rallied his men into a strong position among the fences and outbuildings on the top of Ivy’s Hill.
Jeff Forrest’s brigade took over the attack here, relieving Bell’s brigade, which had been chasing at a run for a hard nine miles. The bugle blew and the horsemen charged through the pale winter sunlight toward the crest of the ridge where Smith had ranged the first of his two battle lines behind stacked fence rails. Many of Smith’s men were armed with the new breech-loading rifles and so could sustain a more rapid fire than before. The Rebel yell ripped back along the charging line, shredded by the wind of forward motion, but Jeff Forrest’s cry was stopped short by the bullet that struck him in the throat. He fell backward out of the saddle, arms jerking like the forequarters of a slaughtered hog, dead before he hit the ground.
Bedford Forrest reached him almost before he had landed, tearing the knees out of both pants legs as he skidded to his brother’s side, and Doctor Cowan was there too, searching for a pulse in Jeff’s left wrist. The death tremor made the left hand flutter in Cowan’s grasp like a captured bird. Forrest cradled his brother’s head, caressing the pale face as it quickly cooled, stroking the fine silky beard and mustache, while his lap filled up with blood. It looked to Henri like blood might burst out from his eyes. The charge had stopped and the firing had stopped—even the Yankees had stopped firing from the hilltop—and Forrest’s men stood mute with their hats in the hands.
Forrest looked at Doctor Cowan and the doctor shook his head. Forrest slipped free the thong of the doubloon Jeffrey wore around his neck and put it over his own head. He covered his brother’s face with his hat and stood up. Henri saw his eyes turn yellow, saw his whole body ripple and compress. The bugle sounded. Perhaps Forrest had ordered the sound to occur. He leapt onto his horse without touching the saddle and ran screaming headlong upon the enemy.
Matthew stooped, unfolding a white handkerchief from his pocket. It occurred to Henri to wonder how he had saved it clean and whole through the last months of running and fighting, as if he had preserved it for this doom. He lifted the hat and spread the white cloth over his dead uncle’s face and lowered the hat back down. Major Strange was helping Doctor Cowan to his feet saying We must go after him, Doctor, or he will surely be killed, and Cowan: He won’t be the only one killed—you know if he only loses a horse he won’t stop until he has killed a Yankee bare-handed and young Jeff was his favorite brother.
There were days when being already dead wasn’t much comfort, and today appeared to be one of them. Henri found himself riding with Matthew, Cowan and Major Strange up the hill into the teeth of the enemy, well out in front of McCulloch’s brigade, which had just sounded a charge behind them. Though only a handful of the escort had gone with Forrest in his first mad rush, they’d broken clean through the first Federal line, and the point they’d punctured was a melee. Forrest stood with his legs locked straight in the stirrups, his horse trampling corpses of men he’d shot down, and by then his pistols must have been empty for he was slicing one enemy trooper to ribbons with the double-edged sword in his left hand while simply choking another to death with his right. Meanwhile half a dozen of the enemy were reaching to pull him down from the back but just before that could happen the wave of McCulloch’s charge washed over them.
Forrest tucked his bloody sword under his elbow like an umbrella and set about reloading his pistols as he charged after the Yankees fleeing through the barns of Ivy’s Hill and down the other side of it. They were running pell-mell up the road toward Pontotoc till suddenly they struck a point where the Federals had drawn three lines across a field. Forrest drove into them without a pause, but within the first few seconds of contact his horse was downed by five bullets, the saddle shattered by as many more, and Forrest ran forward on foot firing his pistols with both hands until Benjamin had brought him another mount. No sooner was he well astride than the new horse too was slain in a crossfire and Forrest went down, dead himself maybe, lost anyway to Henri’s sight. Henri was trying to get to Matthew, who had got himself into a tangle his father would have been proud of, emptying his pistols into a dozen odd Federal troopers surrounding him, then socking them with his elbows and the shoulders of his quickly turning horse. Sound of screaming just to the rear and King Philip’s iron-gray hide broke through the line like the skin of a breaching whale, Jerry not so much bringing him to Forrest as being dragged by him hollering Whoa goddamn slow down you hellion while King Philip’s neck stretched out straight as a snake’s reaching to bite through any blue cloth that he saw. That was what they were all screaming about Henri would have supposed but he paid no mind for he still could not reach Matthew and there was one of Smith’s troopers carefully lining up a pistol to shoot him dead and the boy empty-handed facing the hollow of the barrel with that eerie calm of one who knows that death is now inevitable. Dark cylinder turning with scenes of the past and more yet to come. Still Henri could not reach him. He would not. But the Yankee’s aim began to waver. Then Henri saw that there was a fountain of blood where the Yankee’s head had been and there was Forrest astride King Philip wiping his sword blade clean on the back of the dead man’s coat as he swung again toward the second Yankee line. Matthew settled himself in the saddle, plucked the pistol from the dead man’s hand just before he fell, and rode on further into the fight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
May 1865
UNDER A THIN SPRING RAIN, Major Anderson rode out with Forrest from the town of Meridian, Mississippi. They had nowhere in particular to go and nothing special to do when they got there. Sometime that day paroles were supposed to be signed for them and all their men who had a few days before consented to surrender, but neither Anderson nor Forrest could exert any influence on that event. Their object was to take the air and exercise their horses, though since the failure of their enterprise to fight off Wilson’s fourteen thousand cavalry with less than half that number, the horses were so played out they could hardly lift their hooves from the mud, while the men, as Forrest would put it, not excluding himself, were wore right down to a nubbin.
They trotted doggedly out into the countryside, halting briefly at the edge of a blighted farm, its fence rails carried off for bonfires, livestock scattered or scavenged by soldiers of either or both sides, a cotton field coming up in hogweed. Forrest clicked his tongue and rode on. Presently the road ran into the woods. Forrest’s head was lowered under a slouch hat, rainwater running from the front and back of the brim. Now and then he massaged his upper arm with the other hand: the half-healed saber cut from the fighting around Selma the month before.
Forrest had killed the Yankee horseman who’d cut him but it took him longer than usual to get it done.
Sheets of silvery rain poured over him. His long duster, once bone-white, had evolved into a colorless patchwork that seemed to be held together by nothing more than grime and dried blood. When Anderson urged his horse alongside he could see Forrest’s lips working, under the hat brim and inside his beard. He would be composing something, probably. Though indisposed to the use of the pen, as Kelley put it from time to time, Forrest was choosy of the words he wanted in a document and Anderson often had the task of setting them down on paper.
They’d reached a crossroads and Forrest reined up. Anderson waited what seemed a long slow time; he’d never seen Forrest undecided about where he wanted to go.
“Which way, General?”
Forrest hacked out a rough simulacrum of a laugh. “If one goes to Hell and t’other to Mexico, hit don’t make me no difference,” he said.
Inside his clammy, rain-soaked garments, Anderson’s spine got even chillier than before. There were notions abroad of Confederate soldiers haring off to join the Mexican Revolution, but Forrest had seemed to pay them no mind. When invited to carry on the fight west of the Mississippi he turned it down cold. Nothing but murder he called that scheme, and any man who entertained it a fit subject for a lunatic asylum.
Forrest was still talking, perhaps to himself. “Never yet had to study what to do I just done it.” No, he was talking to Anderson after all, flashing him a quick bitter grin. “Anytime I run acrost one of them fellers as fit by note, I whupped him fore he got his tune pitched right. Swallered him whole whilst he set thar a-studyen. But now … by damn hit’s been too many in that style been worken on our side.”
Forrest looked along one fork of the road, then the other. “Cain’t afford to think about it,” he muttered. “I’m most give out, but I hate to give up. In my life I ain’t never give up, not on a thing that mattered. By damn I jest hate the thought of it.”
“Then don’t give up on your men, General.”
Forrest looked at him so sharply Anderson had to harden himself not to flinch.
“I ain’t never done no sech of a thing,” he said.
“I know it,” Anderson said. “Well then, I don’t need to tell you, the most of them aren’t going off to Mexico. Maybe John Morton and a few of the hotheads, but most won’t run off and leave all their folks and they need you to show them—”
“How to lose,” Forrest said.
“Just … how to do.” Anderson said. “Like you always have done.”
“Well, you’re right.” Forrest removed his hat to shake off some water, then put it back on. “I reckon I known it all along. I don’t mean to leave my folks neither. Men nor women. White nor black. All I own I’ll own up to.”
“Then what do you say we get out of this rain?”
“All right, Charles.” There was a touch of the old warmth now in Forrest’s bearded grin. “Let’s find us a dry spot and spell out what to say to’m.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
April 1858
FORREST RODE down the Memphis waterfront on the black stallion he’d named Satan. Mary Ann didn’t care for that name but he’d felt that none other would suit. Between his knees the animal boiled with a dark energy, stepping high and wanting to run. Forrest held the horse in with his left hand, leaving enough give in the reins that Satan wouldn’t harden his mouth on the bit, and kept his right hand free for tipping his hat, for once he turned from the river into Beale Street he knew most of the merchants and tradesmen whose establishments lined the western blocks. An acquaintance hailed him with news of a boatload of slaves out of Virginia that had just come downriver, and Forrest raised a finger to signify that he’d look in on his return.
At the corner of Causey Street a blind black man sat on an empty packing case, plucking a long-necked banjo slowly: a short repetitive cycle of notes. The strings were tuned down and the skin head was slack and the hollow slipperiness of the tune connected with an unquiet sensation Forrest had in his entrails. What he might feel at the start of a hunt or the brink of a fight or when he came to a gaming table and felt the first clicking of dice bones in the hollow of his hand.
The banjo faded as he walked the black horse south. In these few blocks of one- and two-room clapboard houses it was quieter than on Beale Street, and he needn’t tip his hat, though most of the blacks who peopled this quarter probably knew Mister Forrest by sight. A woman looked up from the wash pots in her swept yard with a flash of frank curiosity in her face, in the instant before she ducked her kerchiefed head away. Forrest felt his stomach settle. Here he came in broad daylight, bang down the middle of the street, riding the finest horse that he owned, head held high and his hat square on top of it.
The house he was bound for was built some stouter than most, with a waist-high stake fence around the yard and a gate with iron hinges and latch. Left of the gate was a hitching post and to the left of that, Jerry sat on the box of his wagon, his big hands lying loose on his knees, eyes hidden in the shade of his cap, still as a lizard soaking in the warmth of the afternoon sun. In the wagon bed behind, the boy sat facing the other way, stiff as a post, a bundle and stick tucked under his heels and his wrists and ankles sticking a little too far from the cuffs of his clothing.
Forrest dismounted and hitched his horse. “Matthew,” he said. “Why ain’t you gone inside?”
The boy looked past him, his eyes lighting up when they fell upon Satan. When the eyes returned to Forrest they were vacant. Forrest shook his head and turned toward the house, laying his hand on the top rail of the gate. Two railroad tie steps led up to a shallow plank stoop under the overhang of the roof. There on a puncheon stool sat Catharine, nursing the new baby under a light cotton shawl. Her chin was up and her eyes didn’t lower. Two proud women, Forrest thought, and wondered again if south of Beale Street would be far south enough. He felt as if the unglazed windows of the several houses behind him were all drilling holes into his back.
“Why, Mist’ Forrest,” Catharine said, unsmiling. “You welcome to come in.”
He thumbed the latch up and went into the yard, pulling the gate shut behind him with a little snap. As he approached Catharine stood up, still holding the baby in her bosom, turned and went into the house, leaving the door open behind her. Forrest glanced back once as he climbed the pair of steps. Matthew and Jerry sat where they were, facing opposite ways in the wagon, immobile as a pair of bronze bookends. The whitewash on the doorjamb was still tacky when he touched it with his thumb. He went inside and shut the door behind him.
The first room smelled piney from the new boards. Catharine sat on a ladder-backed chair, cradling the baby to the breast. She aimed her chin at a stuffed settee. Forrest took off his hat and sat down awkwardly. Horsehair pricked his back through the ticking. He had bought an item or two of secondhand furniture and had others made at his place on Big Creek. This was the fanciest seat in the house and the least comfortable. Forrest craned his neck this way and that. The back door was open and he could see a few green shoots of something or other coming up from the dirt beyond its open frame.
“Where’s Tom and Jimmy,” he said.
“Gone over to the river with some other li’l niggers lives round here.” She looked up at him, her brown eyes catching a gleam from the front window. Forrest pulled his head back as if he’d been slapped.
“They peepen at them boats what carries po niggers downriver,” she said.
Forrest turned his head toward a motion that caught his eye through the back door. A little speckled hen scratched the dirt in the yard.
“Like you ship me downriver to satisfy yo wife,” Catharine said.
Forrest’s hat fell on the floor as he jumped from his seat. He resisted the urge he had to stomp on it, for a grown man looked foolish stomping on his hat. “Goddammit, Catharine!” he said. “I shipped you a whole ten blocks downriver, into a new-built house with glass in the windows and bra
ss knobs on the doors. Goddammit all to the burning tarpits of Hell.”
“Why Mist’ Forrest,” she said. “You carry on cussen thataway, Ole Devil gone tote you off to that Hell you keeps namen and stick you with a pitchfork.”
Forrest stared at her desperately. “Hit’s a hard-hearted woman ever which way I look.”
Catharine lowered her eyes. He felt that some of the fight had gone out of her. She seemed almost calm, though he knew she wasn’t. Her lashes were long and thick, the color of jet. He took a step forward to peer at the infant.
“He looks right stout,” he said, though really he was just an old baby with his eyes shut and his mouth busy pulling on the tit; there wasn’t a whole lot to see about him. “Favors his brother.”
“They favors they daddy.” She raised her head, turning her long graceful neck so he saw her in profile. Her hair was pulled up in her kerchief like a crown. She was looking out the front window now. “That’n out there on the wagon do too,” she said.
Air whooshed out of Forrest’s chest as he dropped back on the horsehair cushion. “His name is Matthew.”
“Ain’t no matter to me what his name is. That boy is witched if you ax me. Don’t speak, don’t move, don’t hardly breathe. What I want with a half-grown boy round here?”
“Chop wood. Draw water.” Forrest took a long breath. “He ain’t got nowhar else to go.”
“He a nigger, ain’t he? He a slave, ain’t he? He bound to go where you sends him,” Catharine said. “Ain’t he?”
“Listen to me.” Forrest leaned forward, elbows sliding over his knees. He searched the new planks of the floor for splinters. He felt a surge come over him of the kind he felt in any situation where there was nothing to do but throw down all he had. “His mother is dead. I never did own her. I couldn’t buy her. I was liven on my own then, traden in mules. I wasn’t with her but the one time. She got sold for a fancy girl down to New Orleans. They wasn’t no use in me thinken about it. Then she up and died lately and somebody sent word. I don’t know why they bothered. I don’t know how they knew who to bother. Two weeks ago I didn’t know that boy was on this earth.”
Devil's Dream Page 17