Liberty shrugged. “Fishes seem to be quite common in every part of the sea.”
“That’s a good one, young fellow,” replied the stranger, chuckling dryly into his beard. “Always knew you Yankees was sharp.” He lowered his gun and stepped forward, hand extended. “Ellsberry Simms, at your service.”
“Liberty Fish.” The man’s grip was surprisingly strong and vigorous.
“Now there’s a moniker to choke a tyrant on. Come on inside. I got something to show ye.”
“May I be permitted to retrieve my rifle?”
“Leave it be. Ain’t nobody gonna disturb it out here.”
Liberty looked skeptical. “That’s property of the United States government. I’m responsible for it.”
“Well,” said Simms, stooping to pick up the gun, “certainly don’t want you getting into any trouble with General Sherman, now do we? Appears you’re probably in enough trouble already. Follow me.” Then he disappeared through an exceedingly low doorway into the curious interior of his rude cabin.
The single room, not much wider than the span of one man’s outstretched arms, was a space of astonishing cleanliness, the walls whitewashed to a blinding sheen, the plank floor swept and polished, and hanging above the scrubbed hearth a pristine Stars and Stripes and a framed lithograph of President Lincoln. In the center of the room was a bare table and a pair of chairs in which they sat formally facing one another.
“Got any coffee?” asked Simms.
Liberty shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Didn’t think you would, but no harm in asking, is there?”
“Last true coffee I tasted was a couple weeks ago.”
“Thought you Yankees came equipped with everything from sacks of fresh beans to the mill to grind them with, but you, Mr. Fish, don’t look like you even got a crust of bread hidden in your hat.”
“I’m afraid you’ve been slightly misinformed as to the bounty we travel with. Actually, none of us in this army is carrying much more than our personals. We are expected to live off the land as per General Sherman’s instructions.”
Simms arched an eyebrow. “That so? Well, I imagine you’ve found precious little to graze upon in this desolate country.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“So I would. I’ve tried for four long years and more to suck sustenance out of this bitter soil, and you behold before you the fruits of such futile endeavor.” From a nearby sideboard he produced a tin box which he opened and offered in Liberty’s direction. “Care for a hush puppy?”
Liberty held one of the doughy balls to his nose and sniffed.
“Perfectly fine,” said Simms. “Daughter brings ’em by once a week or so. Doesn’t want the old man starving to death out here in his hovel in the wilderness.”
“What are you doing alone in the woods anyway, if I might ask?”
Simms couldn’t help but smile. “Sometimes ask myself the very same question. Truth of the matter is, I’ve seceded.”
“Seceded?”
“Yes sir, seceded from the secession. Back in ’60 when we went out of the Union, I decided to go out of Georgia. Couldn’t stomach the whole business. Made me sick to think about it then, makes me sicker today. But this scant little plot of earth you occupy at present I have reclaimed in the name of the Republic and the Union forever. You stand on free soil here and it will remain free as long as I am capable of drawing an honest breath.”
“Must have been a hard judgement to come to.”
“Terrible hard. Lost my family, lost my farm. They run me off of it, sir, run me off my own property.”
“How could they do that?”
“With guns and torches, my friend, that’s how. Suspected me of arming the niggers. Lucky to have escaped with my life.”
“What an incredible tale.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of folks like me from one end of the state to the other. Most of ’em learned right quick to keep their chawholes shut. Me? Never was much good at holding my tongue. Couldn’t abide the silence.” Suddenly he raised a hand and cocked his head. “Hush, hush now,” he cautioned, listening intently. “Horses on the way. You best get on down in here.” Hastily he pushed the table to one side, pulled up a trap in the floor and motioned for Liberty to jump in the hole. Then the door dropped and Liberty was plunged into a darkness so complete it mattered not whether his startled eyes were open or closed. He seemed to hear, as if from a great distance, the rumble of male voices, their sound baffled, their import indecipherable. Time passed. He speculated on the quantity of air available to him in this tomb and how long he could bear squatting here in gloomy dampness before his thriving sense of suffocation and claustrophobia caused him to leap franticallly free like a lunatic from his cell. Gently raising a shoulder, he tried the door. It was locked. Now what? He decided to wait another five minutes or so before attempting a more rigorous escape. Mentally counting off the seconds, he began to notice that the surrounding darkness was not the dense, solid block of obsidian it had originally appeared to be but was, in fact, a shifting panorama of shapes and shades of diverse complexity and depth, and that within these murky subtleties swam forms of a creepily animated character. Curiously, shutting his eyes produced no variation whatsoever in the effect, outer and inner natures absolutely indistinguishable, while consciousness, that dim instrument, seemed for the moment little more than a tenuous fulcrum precariously balanced between two equally disturbing worlds. As hordes of terrible white bugs went swirling about him, he started to entertain the notion that perhaps it might be prudent to cut short this subterranean sequestration, a bullet in the sun now seeming urgently preferable to this hideous confrontation with the nameless, numberless plutonian beings of madness. In his sudden panic he imagined he heard a cry, most likely his own, but when it was repeated, then followed rapidly by the sharp crackle of gunfire, he decided to linger yet a few moments longer. After a decent interval in which the only detectable sound was the caninelike panting of his own breath, he rose, setting his back against the hard wooden door, and after a few determined shoves the trap abruptly flew open and he was free, climbing up into the muted light of the empty cabin.
Outside he discovered his samaritan lying face up in the ruddy dust of the deserted road. There was blood on Simms’s shirt and hands, but the bellows of his chest continued to work, trying, however futilely, to keep alive the fire within. Red saliva was bubbling from his mouth, trickling down his hairy cheeks. When Liberty attempted to open Simms’s wounds, the man pushed him roughly away, hands flailing awkwardly.
“Now, now,” said Liberty, patting Simms on the shoulder. “It’s a friend.”
Simms’s eyes slid briefly into focus. “I’m a dead man,” he muttered. “I’m gone.”
“I don’t know about that,” answered Liberty. “If you’ll just permit me to examine—” He leaned forward and again was pushed impatiently away.
“No, no, I can spy already the far shore.”
“What do you see?” asked Liberty, figuring it not only beneficial to keep the man talking, but also frankly curious about the nature of his vision.
“Nothing much, my friend. Rocks, trees, piles of sand. Looks desperately lonely. Not what I expected.”
“Nor I,” said Liberty, checking the road east and west for signs of armed riders.
Simms coughed, wincing in pain, producing an explosion of bright blood that settled thickly across his beard. “No,” he managed to say, “this is not at all what I had imagined.” He tried to rise but could barely lift his head. “Give me a grip, son,” he said, seizing Liberty’s hand and clutching it tightly to his heaving chest. “If you continue along the road here for some six, seven miles you should come to a farmhouse in a grove of oak where you will find my daughter. Her name is Olivia. Would you please inform her that her father died defending the Union he loved?”
“Yes,” promised Liberty. “I will.”
“Those sons of bitches been lying in wait all these years. Smelled th
e end coming and—” Though the fierceness of his grip did not slacken, Simms let out a deep sigh and his eyes ceased their blinking, turning motionless as wet marbles. Gently, Liberty pried loose his hand and for a moment stood there gazing mindlessly down at this newly stilled body, an object ordinarily conducive to elemental reflections had not his previous encounters sorely diminished his capacity for speculative thought. He considered leaving the body where it lay but reckoned he would not wish his remains to be so carelessly abandoned in the dirt of a public road, so, gathering up Simms by the ankles he dragged the corpse off into the shade behind the lonely cabin, where he covered it as best he could with handfuls of fresh pine needles.
Simms’s daughter, to Liberty’s mild surprise, turned out to be not the sallow-skinned, pipe-smoking, hard-used country woman he expected but an educated, well-mannered wife and mother overburdened with the care of her father’s failing farm and a kaleidoscopic brood of small children so numerous, noisy and restless that he could barely tell one from the other or even how many nimble rascals there actually were. Olivia Simms received the news of her father’s demise with an equanimity born of hope-famished years in which the worst arrived with such alarming regularity, sense had become dulled to the blows. She simply slumped silently into a chair, still clutching the long squirrel rifle with which she’d greeted Liberty at the door. Then, without a sound, tears slowly filled her eyes, brimmed and overflowed in crooked trickles down her cheeks. Liberty remained standing in the middle of the room, shifting uncomfortably from leg to leg, kneading his cap in sweaty hands and trying to avoid stepping on one of the babies crawling around his feet. When one of the toddlers began tugging on her dress, Olivia pulled the child up onto her lap, opened her blouse and guided the nipple of her breast into the child’s pursed mouth.
“Maybe,” said Liberty, clearing his throat, “maybe I’d best be moving on.”
She turned and stared out the window for a long while. Then she said, in a clear, firm voice, “All my life I’ve always wondered why the sky was so blue, but never could find a soul who could answer the question. Can you?”
“No, ma’am,” replied Liberty, trying to avoid the scrutiny of her sharp black eyes. “Afraid I can’t either.”
“Just as well,” she said. “Probably we’re not supposed to know.” She slapped the nursing child lightly across the cheek. “No biting, honey, please. So,” she addressed Liberty, “is it your Mr. Lincoln then who decided to costume you boys all in blue and frighten us southern folk into thinking you were as big and powerful as all heaven?” The child paused in eager sucking as if it, too, awaited Liberty’s reply.
Liberty, attempting as best he could to keep his unruly eyes from straying in the direction they seemed determined to go, managed to stutter out, “My, what curious thoughts you must entertain out here all alone on the farm.”
“No more curious, I suspect, than the ones that must plague you while out fighting this great big war.”
“I think you learn not to think so much,” he replied, uncertain now how to proceed, overwhelmed by regret that he had been forced by chance or whatever mysterious force governed such matters to be the messenger of grief in a scene even now being reenacted in homes innumerable north and south, no boundary of sufficient temper or dimension to hold at bay the Masked Player who now dominated the American boards.
“I’d offer you coffee, if I had any,” she said, her disconsolate stare roving aimlessly about the barren room. “Would you care for some acorn tea?”
“That’d be fine.”
He watched as she placed the baby back down on the floor where he or she was instantly set upon by another he or she, producing a series of cries almost unendurable in volume and duration. “Children, hush!” she shouted, setting the kettle on the stove. “Not in front of company.” Though not a single one of the bawling, laughing, singing imps seemed to have taken any notice whatsoever of this stranger in their midst.
When the tea was brewed, she presented a steaming tin cup to Liberty, warning, “Mind yourself, it’s hot.”
He sipped carefully at the vile decoction which tasted remarkably like boiled swamp water. “Excellent,” he declared. “Better than anything Dog robber John ever served out of the mess tent.” Her rough red hands, he noticed, had trembled slightly when passing him the cup. The enemy in her house? A man in her house? Both? He waited, studying his own dirty hands, the cup trembling now between his fingers, as the woman settled back into her creaking chair.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked, detecting the trace of a sigh.
She leaned forward, touching him lightly upon the knee. “Please, don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ My name is Olivia.” Her large brown eyes seemed to have increased in size and brightness.
“Yes, uh, Olivia. Is there anything I can do?”
She turned and looked directly into him. “You’re waiting for me to shed more tears. Well, I can’t. I’m all dried up inside. Like the land.” Again she sighed. “Of course, I suspect you wish to know more.” Her white-knuckled fist clutched at the harsh material of her shift, her fingers clenching and unclenching as if kneading dough. “Certainly I warned him until my voice was hoarse. I knew this would happen one day and so, I think, did he, but the days passed, the months and the years, and when it still hadn’t happened I guess both of us started thinking that maybe it wasn’t ever going to. I guess we were wrong.” Raising her head, she directed toward him the bleakest expression he had ever seen. “This war,” she went on, “this horrible, evil war, it’s never going to end. You do understand that, don’t you? Even after it’s over it will continue to go on without the flags and the trumpets and the armies, do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Liberty softly. “My mother believed such.”
“Well, I’m glad to know there’s folks up north who understand.”
“She was a southern woman.”
“Well.”
“Yes, born on Redemption Hall plantation over in South Carolina.”
Her penetrating gaze bored directly into his eyes, as if searching for something she wasn’t hopeful of finding. “I’ll never understand this world,” she said.
“Maybe it’s like the sky,” Liberty offered. “We’re not supposed to understand it.”
“Then what’s the good of any of it!” she suddenly shouted, rushing from the room and slamming the door behind her.
Liberty found her out back plucking savagely at the carcass of a dead chicken, the bird’s severed head and a bloody hatchet lying atop the tree stump before her.
“I was saving this hen for a special occasion or until I couldn’t stand not to kill it. I reckon that time has come. You partial to fried chicken?”
“Of course,” said Liberty, “but, ma’am, you don’t have to cook for me.”
“I know I don’t, but maybe I might just want to.”
Oddly affected by the sight of her bloodied hands and a sacrifice, so she claimed, made solely for him, Liberty, although anxious to move on, found himself warming to this obviously strong and self-sufficient woman who also, at the moment, was in terrible need of adult companionship. “You sure, ma’am, I shouldn’t just be heading out?”
She stopped her work and brushed the feathers from her face. “What’d I tell you about that ‘ma’am’ nonsense, and you’re not going anywhere until your belly’s been loaded to the rim.”
“Whatever you say”—he paused—“Olivia.”
They sat together at a wobbly pine table, Liberty chewing industriously on the remarkably tough fowl and nibbling at the gray crumbs of a withered potato she’d managed to produce. Her portion she cut into minute pieces which she dropped one by one into the gaping mouths of the children who’d begun gathering around the table at the first scent of cooked meat. Halfway through the meal, an ancient black man with a stooped back shuffled up to the open doorway and stood boldly staring in at them as they ate.
Liberty, uncomfortable at such scrutiny, finally asked, “Aren’t
you going to see what he wants?”
“I know what he wants,” Olivia replied. “Jasper,” she called rather sharply, “go away from here. You know better than to stand out there like that.”
The man remained as he was, his soft brown eyes betraying not a hint of what might be going on behind them.
“Now git, shoo, skedaddle back on home.”
“Missus.”
“I’m not talking to you, Jasper. Say what you will, I ain’t answering. I ain’t even listening.”
And when Liberty looked again, the empty doorway framed only a patch of sandy soil in forlorn sunlight.
“Man’s got a nose like a bloodhound,” said Olivia. “Hobbled over here to see what he could cadge. Some of these people, I swear, could smell an uncooked egg in a pile of manure.” She slowly licked at her greasy fingers. “I don’t know, I no longer have the will or the patience to look after them. They’re free now, free to starve along with the rest of us.” Then, noticing the expression on Liberty’s face, she added, “I’ll send the remains around to the cabins. You can boil up a fine soup from these bones.”
Afterward, they sat out on the gallery watching the children wrestle with one another. Olivia offered Liberty a pipe packed with a harsh but not wholly disagreeable tobacco of sufficient potency to send his brain into a pleasant reel.
“Peyton Camp brings me by a plug or two every so often. He lives up the road five, six miles from here. Expect you’ll pass by there on this interesting journey of yours,” she concluded, glancing sideways at her young visitor.
Liberty laughed. “I appreciate your discretion in not mentioning it sooner.”
“Well, I’m only a country woman and certainly no expert in military matters, but I do know enough to recognize that a detached soldier such as yourself, wandering alone over dangerous ground, is not someone to be questioned too closely about his motives or destination.”
Liberty nodded slightly. “Again, I appreciate your politeness.”
The Amalgamation Polka Page 23