“Hear tell there's some sweet potatoes. Smoked pork, too. Eggs.”
Eggs. A good egg could fetch fifty cents, a rotten egg a dime. Ragsdale smiled and reached inside his shirt, which was overlarge and worn loose so that he could smuggle as many items as possible back into camp. He pulled a small sack of dried beans from a hidden pocket and passed it to the Rebel.
“Much obliged,” the guard said, without looking up. Ragsdale hurried into the trees. McCloskey and the other hucksters would be along soon, and Ragsdale wanted his choice of merchandise. He was scarcely twenty feet into the forest when a man stepped out of the brush.
Their eyes met. The man held out his hands, revealing four small brown eggs.
“How much?”
“A quarter,” the man said. Deal done. Ragsdale then purchased some stale tobacco, pork that had not yet gone rancid in the heat, a dozen wrinkled potatoes. All for a dollar, which he would turn into ten dollars on the inside, and have a full belly besides. He put the goods inside his clothes, except for the eggs, which he wanted to protect until all the bodies were counted and it was time to bury the three-dollar corpse.
He started back toward the dead-house, pleased with his purchases. Another man stepped from the trees.
“Sorry, Johnny, all done up,” Ragsdale said.
“That's a shame,” the man said. “Because I got quality goods.”
Ragsdale glanced at the face. That dark hair, those bright eyes--
Ragsdale nearly dropped his eggs. Tibbets stood before him, smiling.
“Yeah, it's me.” Tibbets' mouth yawned open in speaking, and Ragsdale saw where the fatal bullet had shattered the man's jaw. Ragsdale felt the blood drain from his face. His mind screamed at him to run, but his legs were rooted to the Georgia clay.
“Nuh—” Ragsdale grunted, unable to formulate any words which would explain the impossibility before him. It was Tibbets, all right, fevered and pale and exactly the same as he had been yesterday, with the exception of the bloody holes in his worn tunic.
“It's better out here,” Tibbets said, again flapping the damaged lips. “Look.”
The dead man held out his thin hands, palms full of pink soap and razors and fine Illinois sausage and eggs the size of apples. Despite his shock, Ragsdale couldn't help coveting the merchandise.
It's a dream, Ragsdale said to himself. My belly's full and I'm dozing in the shade of my tent.
But the fine fragrance of the soap beckoned him, too real for dreams, more vivid than any sensation he had ever known. He reached for it. “How much?” he managed to gasp.Tibbets pulled the goods back into the folds of his tunic. “Not for sale.”
Not for sale? Why, everything was for sale, ever since those 3,000 Plymouth prisoners had been brought in. Just before their capture, they'd been furloughed from the Union army, and under the terms of their conditional surrender, they were allowed to keep the veteran's bounty that filled their pockets, hundreds of dollars per man. Since then, the huckster business was booming.
And Tibbets wasn't going to deny him what was rightfully his. He'd paid his three dollars for that first corpse, he'd bribed his captors, he'd earned first chances on the merchandise fair and square. What was it to Ragsdale if some men starved because they couldn't afford his mark-up?
“That soap,” Ragsdale said. Imagine the luxury of soap in a camp where the prisoners waded into an open swamp to relieve themselves? Where the odor of fevered sweat and gangrenous flesh and death, death, death, hung in the air like a solid thing? Who wouldn't want to scrub such misery from their skin? Why, soap would fetch five dollars a bar.
“You can have all this,” Tibbets said. “And more.”
“More?”
“Pumpkin and corn, raspberries, honey, sugar, coffee. All free.”
As if by magic, what had to be magic, the scent of those products wended into Ragsdale's nostrils. How long since he had tasted real coffee? Chickamauga , nearly a year ago?
There was a crashing in the brush nearby, and he knew that the guard had come to herd the hucksters back to the dead-house. Only moments to act. He knew he must be mad, and that Tibbets couldn't exist. Still, those smells haunted him as no mere ghost could.
“Yank?” called the guard from beyond the trees.
Ragsdale leaned toward Tibbets and whispered. “How?”
“Cross the deadline,” Tibbets said, his ragged lips stretching into a smile. “It's all here waiting. We've got a camp set up behind the forest.”
And as the Rebel guard blundered cursing through the bushes, Tibbets vanished back into the pines. Ragsdale gave the guard an egg to soothe the man's anger, then allowed himself to be led back to the dead-house. All the while, Ragsdale thought of those smells, tried to recall them and keep them full in his mind.
As he dragged the three-dollar corpse from the dead-house to the grave ditch, he looked at the others with their corpses and searched madly for Tibbets. Ragsdale and the others stooped and strained with their shovels, widening the ditch to add their fifty to the thousands already returned to the soil. McCloskey was digging beside him, stripped to the waist, the sheen of sweat bright on his muscles.
“McCloskey, have you seen Tibbets?”
“Tibbets? Who cares about Tibbets? I've got a pound of tobacco to sell when we get back inside.”
Then the deed was done, the bodies covered but the ditch still open and awaiting tomorrow's supply. As they went back to the stockade and again entered that dreary mass of groaning men, Ragsdale could take no joy in his smuggled goods. He gave the captain an egg, then went among the disease and squalor and filth and sat in his tent, thinking of orange pumpkins and strong coffee and, most of all, that sweet, sweet soap.
The afternoon came and two dozen died in the heat. Evening food rations were parceled out. Still Ragsdale sat, heedless of the eggs and potatoes in the folds of his shirt. The prisoners who eagerly came to him with cash were sent away grumbling about how smugglers held out on goods to drive up the price. But Ragsdale cared nothing for their money. Because out there, in the high bristling trees beyond the stockade walls, was soap and coffee and bacon and perhaps a pint of fine bourbon.
All he had to do was cross the deadline.
He stood on trembling legs. His eyes were bright and looking toward where vintages might need stamping.
As he broke into a run, he heard shouts erupt from the tents, and from the little circles of men gathered around their cooking fires. But he didn't stop, he didn't even hear them, and then he saw what Tibbets must have seen.
A large shining field, rolling out in gold and green and red, all harvest colors. And to the sides, under shady trees, were stalls and wagons loaded with every luxury known to civilized man. Crisp tents and bright campfires stretched into the distance, and the smell of frying bacon mingled with the woodsmoke.
Ragsdale vaulted the rail and shouts rang from above. Still he ran, the blood roaring in his ears. A wetness poured down his head, surrounded him, and he lost his balance as darkness fell.
Dawn found him outside the walls. He searched for Tibbets, but saw nothing but scrub forest. Sounds from the prison gate drew him back to the edge of the woods. The grave detail was heading out. Ragsdale thought that McCloskey would take his place at the front of the line, but all the prisoners were strangers.
Ragsdale saw his own corpse down near the end of the line. A fifty-cent corpse. He looked hopefully at the two hard-eyed Union prisoners that carried the flesh that Ragsdale had so recently worn. Ragsdale was annoyed that someone had made fifty cents off his corpse. That money was rightfully his.
Maybe he could hail the soldiers, send them away with a quick profit and no work. Ragsdale searched his boots for money and found none. Someone had robbed him as he lay dead. And he had nothing to trade. He watched from the woods as his body was counted, then thrown in the ditch and buried.
As the dirt was thrown over his face, night fell, then the sun rose and found him watching the next grave detail. Again his cor
pse was dragged before his eyes. A different pair of soldiers carried him that morning. He again felt the anger at someone profiting from his death.
A week of such dawns, a month of funeral processions, and Ragsdale became accustomed to the stench of corpses. In fact, he welcomed it. Because the stench helped drown out the maddening aromas that drifted through the trees, the exotic smells of soap and coffee and bacon, goods that were being enjoyed by others in peaceful distant bivouacs. If only Ragsdale had some money, he might go there and trade in the land where everything was free.
Sometimes, just as the dirt was thrown on the face of his corpse and night again fell, he heard laughter and singing from the far camps. It was the sound of men with full bellies.
A year passed, and Ragsdale still had no money, not even the fifty cents that his bullet-riddled corpse brought each day. He sat and watched the grave details, his stomach rumbling with an emptiness greater than hunger.
Ten, twenty, a hundred years of soft parades.
In the trees, forever in sight of the stockade walls, Ragsdale waited for the war to end.
THE END
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###
BONUS STORY: THE BLEEDER
By J.R. Rain
Leo Dershowitz stood in front of his painting and frowned. It wasn’t quite right. He had a firm image in his head of what he wanted and this wasn’t it. The color was wrong. And the shading was off. Yeah, that was it. The shading.
The problem was that the clear image in his head was fading, becoming hazy around its edges, amorphous.
Which meant only one thing.
He must be scabbing over again. He hated when that happened.
Leo looked down at his right arm, which hung over a white plastic bucket, inside of which was splattered with blood. His blood. Sure enough, the gash in his forearm was threatening to close. The steady flow of blood was nearly being cut off by a thick, congealing scab.
Using a very clean surgical knife, Leo deftly flicked away the scab, which broke off and fell with a splash into the bucket, itself partly filled with a finger or two of his own hemoglobin. Now, once again, sweet blood pumped freely from the gash just below his elbow, flowing rapidly over the many horizontal scars that lined the inside of his arm. Leo always thought the scars looked like piano keys.
Even though he had performed many such blood-letting rituals before, the site of so much blood at once gripped him briefly with nausea and an old fear. The fear of dying.
What if I bleed too much this time? What if I pass out and never awaken?
Leo knew the answer: If he passed out while bleeding, there was a very good chance he would never awaken. That he would bleed to death.
Then don’t pass out.
Good idea.
But Leo had learned long ago to ignore such inhibiting fears. He had to ignore them. Because the moment he began to bleed, the moment the life-force flowed from his wounds, a magnificent vision would appear. A vision that hovered tantalizingly in his mind’s eye. Clear as day. A vision that only lasted for as long as Leo would bleed.
And now, as the blood dripped steadily from his dangling fingertips, the vision, which had been losing it sharpness with the congealing of his blood, came starkly back into focus.
Leo had a painting to do.
He touched the tip of his paintbrush to his palette, rolled it gently, applying the perfect measure of light desert auburn mixed with pure white, and turned to the half-finished painting before him. And for the next hour or so he transferred the burning image of his mind to the canvas, twice more knocking away the damnable coagulating scabs.
And when the painting was done, when the bucket was splattered with his blood, Leo nearly wept at the painting’s beauty.
* * *
Seven years ago, Leo Dershowitz discovered his artistic muse. It came, quite literally, with a bang.
Seven years ago, the now very famous artist Leo Dershowitz would be the first to admit that he had been just a very average artist. None of his work stood out. He had been twenty-eight years old and he was miserable. By this age he was supposed to have been a famous artist, right? In the least, he was supposed to have his own art gallery, or a line of greeting cards.
Due to his predisposition for laziness, Leo had decided early on in life that he would become a professional artist. This was back in junior high, back when he was already sick to death of hearing his damn alarm clock going off each morning. It was on such a morning, after having pressed the snooze button for the umpteenth time, that he decided that he was going to find an occupation in which he never had to wake up early again, an occupation in which he could sleep in as long as he wanted, an occupation in which he made his own hours.
Having just made the bus and looking down at the fairly simplistic-looking Latin-American painting on his Spanish textbook, Leo was struck with an idea.
He, too, would become a painter!
After all, he enjoyed creating and didn’t his second grade teacher, Mrs. Garth, once say that a finger painting of his had been fairly good? She had indeed. Most importantly, though, Leo was fairly certain painters could sleep in as late as they wanted.
He never looked back.
Leo threw himself into art, taking class after class, in high school and college, leaving behind an insubstantial trail of uninspired paintings. You see, Leo wasn’t very good at painting.
Leo eventually flunked out of college. His major, of course, had been art. Many of his classes were before noon, and that just wouldn’t do.
In the real world, he refused traditional jobs, especially jobs that called upon him getting up too early. Leo valued sleep above anything else, even above eating and having a roof over his head. At one point he lived under a freeway overpass, where he sometimes slept all day, lulled comatose by the steady drone of car engines.
Interestingly, Leo really did love painting. And the more he doggedly pursued it, the better he got at it. But getting better at painting, didn’t necessarily mean he was still any good at it. At least, not good enough to earn him any sort of steady income.
Which is why he often lived with older women who supported him. He called them sugar mommas, but not to their faces. To their faces, he called them whatever they wanted to hear. When the sugar mommas got sick of him freeloading off them, Leo would move back in with his parents. Leo didn’t care where he lived. As long as he had his precious, uninterrupted mornings—and a place to paint.
Through thick and thin, Leo Dershowitz never gave up. Give him that. He was going to make it as an artist, even if it killed him.
And, in the end, it did.
* * *
Seven years ago, Leo Dershowitz’s mundane, uninspired life would forever change with a shard of glass.
After a night of partying—and living alone for the first time in a long, long time (his last girlfriend had tossed him out after discovering him riffling through her purse)—he had been taking out the trash the next day.
The Hefty bag was full of glass bottles, some broken, from the small party he had thrown the night before. Leo often threw such parties with his local artist friends in Los Angeles, many of whom were not very good either. Leo hated good artists. He was deathly envious of them, mostly because he could not understand them.
So Leo’s parties were generally small affairs, filled with other artists like himself; that is, the uninspired, the hacks, and the unimpressive. Leo liked it that way. He was fairly certain that he was at least as good or better than most of his unimaginative friends, and that always made Leo feel good. Of course, if any of his artist friends did become too good, or too successful, Leo would drop him or her immediately—and have nothing more to do with them.
Now, heading to the dumpster that late afternoon, the half-asleep Leo swung the plastic trash bag about rather recklessly, a bag full of bottles and, most importantly, broken bottles.
Leo couldn’t help but notice when the
bag stopped swinging. He especially couldn’t help but notice the blinding pain in his left leg.
He looked down. Amazingly, the bag appeared stuck to his leg. But that wasn’t right. No, a broken piece of glass, poking through the bag, was, in fact, embedded in his left leg.
Leo yelped—and pulled the bag away. As he did so, a crimson arch of blood spurted from the very deep wound in his shin. Leo felt lightheaded. He was certain he was going to faint.
But he didn’t faint. And that’s when it happened.
For the first time in Leo’s life, inspiration struck. And boy did it strike. Leo literally stumbled backwards as a powerful and very elaborate vision burst into his mind. Searing into his thoughts like a scene from Heaven. Mind-blowing. Blinding. Now Leo really did fall back on his ass, but not because he felt faint. But because he was thunderstruck.
Leo scuttled back like a wounded crab, but the vision scuttled back with him. His frantic mind raced to understand what was happening to him. Had he taken drugs last night? No, he hadn’t. Just beer, and lots of it. Maybe someone had slipped him a Mickey or a roofie.
This was, after all, the mother of all hallucinations. And that’s when it occurred to him: It would make one hell of a painting.
My God, the colors, thought Leo. And now he stopped crawling backwards, stopped trying to run from the image.
Instead, he found himself lost in it.
Before him was a beautifully detailed and completely original scene. The colors were vibrant and out-of-this world, arranged in a way he never thought possible. Or, more accurately, could never have conceived on his own. The vision was a one-of-a-kind burst of inspiration that Leo knew may never strike him again.
He scrambled to his feet and stumbled back to his apartment, leaving behind the spilled bag of trash...and a trail of dripping blood. Leo shoved aside his snoring free-loading artist friends and took up his brush. With shaking hands, he applied the right amounts of oiled paint to his palette. Next, he quickly transferred the vision in his mind onto the canvas before him, using all the skills he had ever acquired.
Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set Page 8