“Yeah.”
“It was such a good show we let it go on. Didn’t shoot. Just watched those dogs draw blood.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Well, you corner something, make it afraid, it’ll turn mean. Crazy mean. Has to. That’s how it was with that bear. Just went wild wanting to hit something, anything, anybody, to give back some pain.”
“What happened?”
“He got one dog before we shot him. Hit that dog so hard, it flew. I swear that dog was dead, all busted up inside, before it hit the ground.”
I nodded. Riley wasn’t talking about bears and hunting dogs. He was talking about the soldiers. Between the Government keeping them here and us drawing blood at every turn, they were cornered. Cosgrove’s little traps would just make it worse. I thought of a soldier camp we had shot up a couple nights before. After the soldiers quit spraying the darkness with bullets, one of them started screaming at us, calling us fucking cowards and every other dirty name, daring us to come out and fight. The soldier sounded like he had gone crazy. At the time, I thought it was funny. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
“So what you reckon they’ll do?” I said.
“Don’t know.” He looked down at the ground and shrugged.
“Why don’t you tell Jane about this?”
He looked up and smiled. “No. Jane don’t listen. Not when she’s got her mind set. You know how she is.”
I nodded. I knew.
It was maybe a week later that we found the boy. He was terrified, and we had trouble understanding him at first. Then we didn’t want to believe what he said.
He had hid in the woods when the soldiers came. The soldiers had surrounded the village, driven everyone out of the houses. Then he ran as fast as he could to find help.
The boy didn’t have to lead us there. The smoke from a burning house showed us the way.
We moved in slow, worried about an ambush. There were bodies at middle of the village, next to the well. Some had been shot in the head once. Others had been damn near cut in half by the big machine guns.
We spread out, to see if the soldiers were still there, to find survivors. All the buildings I checked were empty, except the last one.
A woman was on the table. Her shredded clothes lay under her, already sodden with the blood from the wide deep cut across her throat. Her eyes were wide open staring at the ceiling. Flies buzzing all around.
I stood there until I felt my stomach coming up. I got outside and bent over but didn’t vomit. When I felt under control again, I stood up and found myself facing Jane.
She looked at me for a moment and then began to move toward the house. I stepped in front of her and put my arm across the doorway, blocking her.
She looked at me.
“Don’t,” I managed to say. There was a terrible taste in my mouth.
She kept looking at me and lightly put one hand on the arm I had across the doorway. I dropped it and let her pass.
When I forced myself to go back in, Jane was covering the woman with a blanket. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t done that.
Before she pulled the blanket over the woman’s face, Jane stopped and closed the eyes. She started to move the blanket again and hesitated. She took a crumpled piece of paper from the woman’s mouth. There was blood was on it. Then Jane pulled the blanket all the way up and went outside. I followed.
She opened the crumpled paper. It was a copy of the sign with Jane’s picture. We looked at in silence before Jane folded the paper and put it in a coat pocket.
We walked back toward the well. Now there were a few people standing, looking at the bodies. The survivors. They stood without moving, as still as if the world itself had come to a stop. I could hear the buzzing cloud of flies feasting on the dead, the pop and crackle of the burning house, and the thump of my heart.
Then we heard gunfire, coming from the other side of the village. While the survivors scattered, scrambling for hiding places, Jane and I ran toward the shots. For a few seconds, we heard the heavy rattle of automatic rifles. The rattle stopped, replaced by single rifle shots. Then silence.
Ahead, at the top of a rise, a big man named McGill was dragging a soldier into the road. Riley and a couple of our men followed. When Jane and I got closer, I saw the soldier looked bad. Real bad. He was covered in dirt and blood, and was bleeding from his mouth and cuts on his face. Finally, McGill threw the man on the ground in front of Jane and kicked him in the ribs. Gasping and retching, he curled up in a ball with his hands over his head. He was quivering.
McGill looked all set to keep beating the soldier.
“Stop!” Jane shouted.
McGill’s eyes were crazy looking. Had he cut loose again, I don’t think anything would’ve stopped him. But Jane held him.
“Stop,” she said. Calm and even. Something in McGill seemed to turn, and he took a step back.
“We found this one, and two others, draining a bottle.” Riley said. “He gave up. Other two are dead.”
She nodded and looked down at the soldier, still curled up at her feet.
“Sit up,” she said. “Sit up. I want to talk with you.”
He just lay there shaking, waiting for the next blow.
“We ain’t gonna hit you,” she said.
It wasn’t until Jane got us to step back some that the soldier tried to sit up. He could barely move and had to support himself with trembling arms to keep from falling on his face.
Jane squatted in front of him so he could see her face and she could see his. When he seemed able to focus on her, she took the folded piece of paper out of her pocket and held it up for him to see. His eyes worked back and forth between the drawing and her face. He stiffened, recognizing her.
Folding the paper again, she put it away. Then she turned and looked back in the direction of the heaped bodies. The soldier looked there too.
She turned back to him and said, “Why?”
At first, he didn’t react. He just slumped forward, leaning on his arms, swaying a little. Then he glanced around as if calculating his chances of escape. At last, he looked at the ground and said, his voice cracking, “The officer told us. It was him. He made us to do it.”
I felt like shouting at him, asking him if the officer made him rape and murder that woman. But I didn’t. It wouldn’t do any good. I felt sick again, like my stomach would come up.
Jane just looked at him, steady.
“But I didn’t do anything,” the soldier went on. He was pleading now, desperate, looking around for a trace of pity in our faces. “I didn’t do anything!”
Jane said nothing.
“Let’s shoot the lying bastard and be done with it,” McGill said. “Who wants to do it? I’ll be glad to.”
The soldier hunched forward, whimpering. All hope gone.
“No,” Jane said, her voice almost a whisper. “I’ll do it.”
I looked at her, unable believe what I had heard.
“I’ll do it,” she repeated and stood up. Her voice was now firm and even. Almost normal.
All of us, except the soldier, gaped at her. God forgive me. The first thing I felt was relief. I didn’t want to pull the trigger. But I couldn’t let her do this.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the soldier and the silent men standing around him. After a few steps, she wrenched her arm away, but kept walking with me.
“You crazy?” I said. “Why did you say that?”
“It’s my burden.”
“No. You don’t want to do this.”
“If I don’t, will you?”
I should have said yes. But I hesitated.
She looked at me. Reading me.
“Let McGill. He wants to.”
“No.”
“Then we’ll draw straws. Cast lots. Let God decide.”
“God has decided. I’ve said it. I have to do it.”
“No one should expect this of you.”
“They do now.”
Then she turned from me and
walked back toward the men who were still watching her in silence. I followed.
Jane worked the bolt of her rifle, loading a new cartridge. Her hands were trembling a little. She looked down at the soldier and told him this was his chance to make peace with God, to ask forgiveness for his sins.
The soldier seemed not to hear her. He just rocked back and forth, crying and wailing like an abandoned child.
We all looked at her. She didn’t look at us, only at the soldier. Then she lifted her rifle, David Winslow’s rifle, and aimed. A long moment. Then she screamed and did it.
Somehow, all the fine details of that instant have been scratched on my memory. I can still see how the men were standing. I can still see the look on Jane’s face. And the soldier’s.
I know, of course, that I could not have seen all those things at once. But that’s how I remember it.
The shot hit the soldier in the forehead. The back of his head blew out, and he snapped backward, one arm flew up with the force of the impact. Then the limp body fell over, blood gushing and spurting out of the head.
We all stood still, waiting until Jane moved again. She worked the bolt of her rifle, ejecting the spent shell and loading a new one. That released us, and we started moving again.
We spent the rest of that long day helping with the dead, digging graves and such. I had long since gotten used to seeing the dead. But burying children . . . that was something else. Maybe there’s a way a man can get used to seeing that, but I pray to God I never do.
It was almost dark when we had done what we could and got ready to leave. McGill came over to Jane. He had a face like an old boot, lined and hard. There was just enough light to see he was crying.
“What do we do now?” he said.
Jane stepped closer to him and put a hand on his arm. She looked at him and said nothing. She was not crying.
CHAPTER 16
As you came upon them, you always heard a child or two crying with hunger, or sobbing with some grief deeper than words. But the others were silent. They were too hungry and too weary to talk.
At first, here and there, we saw handfuls of our people on the trails and the roads. But soon crowds of people were on the move, plodding toward somewhere they might have kin, or just away. A few had horses and carts for their things. Some had an old wheelbarrow. Most carried what they could in a sack thrown over a shoulder or dragged on the ground. Many had little more than the clothes on their backs.
We couldn’t do much for them. We had no food to give them. We had no medicine. Jane talked with them, prayed with them, but then moved on. Riley and I helped how we could, mostly digging graves.
What we had seen in that village happened again, here and there in the mountains close to the big road. Soldiers slaughtered children and old folk, raped women, and burned homes. In a few of the larger towns, or where folks fought back, the soldiers dropped bombs and used artillery.
It was plain what the soldiers were doing. They were trying to drive our people away. The people fed us, hid us, and nursed our wounded. Our people watched for the soldiers and told us what they were doing. We couldn’t fight without their help.
The soldiers were going to drain the pond to get the fish. If they had to, they would kill us all. Kill women and children like they were lice. Not a trace of mercy. Until I had seen that village, I would have thought it impossible. I mean, I had read old history books, and those books are full of stories of blood and slaughter. But to me, those stories were always just words on a page about other people in another time. I suppose those folks didn’t believe it could happen either, not to them. Now it was happening to us.
I thought about the prisoner Jane had let go. Lieutenant Hobbes. He was the only soldier I had ever heard say more than a few words. I wondered how he would explain this. He had talked about “law and order.” What had he said? “Law and order make everything possible.” I wanted to tell him that “law and order” had made the slaughter of my people possible. I wondered if he had known about all this back when we had him. Maybe his army had done this before. Maybe not. Hobbes said he had seen things as a boy, terrible things, things we couldn’t imagine. Maybe he had. I just wanted show him what he had done to us for a stretch of road.
What had happened, what could still happen, lay heavy on all of us. But for Jane it was worse. She had told us God wanted us to fight, and if we fought, God would bring us victory. But for all our fighting, killing, and dying, the Government’s army kept coming. More soldiers, more weapons, and more supplies kept arriving. We were neither winning nor losing. So in the end, we would lose. If Jane had been wrong, all the blood and suffering was for nothing. This burden was on her from the start, of course, but back then, she could still smile, still laugh. She had come a long way since then. We all had. The path didn’t seem to lead where God had promised.
Then one day, Jane put her finger on the map and said, “There.”
She was pointing to Canton. It was the first big town the Government soldiers had taken when they had rolled out of Asheville. It was east of us, a five or six day walk, and beyond where any of our units operated.
Riley and I waited, hoping she would explain.
She said nothing.
“The Spirit?” Riley said.
She nodded.
It was a hard trip. We had bad luck with the weather. But there was more to it than that.
On the second or third day, I can’t remember which, it rained all day and into the night. We camped in an abandoned cabin and built a fire in the old stone hearth. All three of us sat, crowding the flames, trying to get warm and dry. Sitting there, I could look at Riley and Jane. I watched their faces in the firelight. As the heat worked its way into him, Riley’s face relaxed, and he closed his eyes. He fell asleep and from the little smile that came and went on his lips,
Jane just looked into the fire, her face blank, her mind somewhere else. I was looking at her when she glanced up at me. But I didn’t look away, embarrassed, as I once had.
She smiled. But her eyes didn’t smile.
“Fire feels good,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Getting dry?”
She nodded. “You?”
I nodded. “I’ll add some wood before long.”
She looked back into the fire and went back to wherever she had been. I wanted her to tell me what she was thinking. I wanted to know why we were going to Canton. I wanted to help. But I let the moment pass.
We walked east in a steady rain all the next day. To make better time, we ran the risk of using roads. People trying to get away from the soldiers were moving west, the opposite direction, on the same road. As we passed them, most gave us no more than a glance. They were too miserable to take much notice of three wet travelers going the wrong way.
Just before sunset, the rain quit, and we passed a small bunch of folks who had camped on the roadside. They had a few wagons and some cook fires going. The smell of their food made me hungry, but I knew we couldn’t stop. So I paid them no mind until we heard a voice behind us calling, “Janie! That you? Janie?”
I wheeled around and saw a boy, maybe fifteen years old, running toward us, splashing through puddles on the road. He was grinning and shouting, “Janie! It’s you! It’s you!” When he got to Jane, they wrapped their arms around one another.
I looked at Riley. He had one eyebrow raised, the way he always did when he found something interesting.
“Is everyone . . . OK?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, a big grin on his face. “We got out before any soldiers came around. We’re all here. Come on.”
Jane, remembering Riley and me, told us this was Ricky, her little brother. He was so happy to see her that it was hard not to smile along with him.
Jane was grinning too until Ricky said, “Papa didn’t believe it. He said you couldn’t be here. Just wait till he sees you.”
We went back along the road to the little camp. Jane’s family had a wagon with a rain cover rigged on o
ne side. They had a good fire going with a cooking pot hanging over it.
As we approached, a man and a woman sitting by the fire stood up. The man had only one arm. The other had been cut off above the elbow. He had to be Jane’s father, but his face was blank and hard. Angry.
The woman, Jane’s mother, looked surprised, putting both hands to her face. She glanced at the man for a moment before letting herself smile. Then she came out and embraced Jane real tight, whispering something in her ear.
Finally, the woman drew Jane over to the fire. The man just continued to stand there, still and silent as an old tree.
“Hello, Papa,” she said.
“Janie.”
“How you been?”
He gave a little shrug. “You?”
“Good.”
Without taking his eyes off Jane, he gave a little jerk of his head toward where Riley and I were standing. Jane told him our names.
The man did not even look at us. It wasn’t hard to tell he wished we weren’t there.
Jane’s mother had us all sit down, and her father said a prayer. Then we ate. It was the first warm food I had eaten in a while. But Jane’s father never said another word. Her mother and brother kept glancing at him as they talked about how they had packed up and left, how bad the weather been, what was happening to this relative or that neighbor, and such things. They didn’t ask Jane anything about Winslow or the war. They didn’t even ask why she was walking east when everyone else was going west.
As soon as we finished, Riley and I thanked them for the meal and excused ourselves. We needed to find a place to bed down. There were a few other folks camped here and there, their small fires flickering in the darkness.
We heard a voice call out of the darkness, “You boys are welcome at my fire.”
I looked over and saw a man toss some wood on his fire. He waved to us. Something about him was familiar. We went over to the man.
When I got closer, I recognized him and said, “We met you a while back. With Jane.”
“That’s right,” he said and put out his hand. “John Darcy.”
We shook his hand and gave our names. He invited us to have a seat. Then he sat down on a log, but with considerable effort. He laughed and said, “Old age has its blessings, but comfort ain’t one of them.” Riley and I smiled and sat close to the fire.
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