The Judas Field

by Bahr, Howard;

  “What is it, lad?” he said, whispering again. “What did you see?”

  The boy opened his mouth and a sound came, but only a sound, like a mouse in the cellar.

  Cass said, “You must show me.”

  The boy shook his head. “Lucian,” said Cass, but the boy shook his head again. He began to cry, fighting it, trying to be a soldier, managing only to be a boy.

  Cass said, “There’s a good lad. Never mind. We can go on back; we got two rabbits—”

  “Uh-uh,” said Lucian. He dropped his musket and wiped his shirtsleeve across his eyes. He pointed toward the barn.

  Well, shit, thought Cass. “All right, then,” he said. “You stay fight here and guard this hog.”

  Cass did not want to go behind the barn. There could be nothing back there he hadn’t seen on other fields, but he had never been far from his comrades then. Cass had always declined to explore alone the horrors left after a fight, yet that was what he had required of Lucian, and now he must do it himself. He must stand to it, if only to prove to the boy that dead men didn’t bother—until later, of course.

  He cradled his musket and walked through the scorched grass, smelling the burned wood and the faint whiff of decay that pretty soon would cover the homestead like a filthy blanket. He paused at the corner of the barn, listening, then stepped around.

  He saw the horse first—a chestnut, blazed white, lying against the fence in a corner of the lot. All the dead horses were different colors; the regiment must have just had a remount from gathered stock. This one lay on his belly, legs curled under him, his muzzle pressed to the earth. His eyes were open, and Cass half expected him to rise, but he was dead like the others. Did he say ha-ha amid the trumpets, once? The saddle was a rampart of bedroll, saddlebags, overcoat, saber, picket pins, all the junk the yankee horsemen toted. Then Cass saw the rider.

  “Aw, mankind,” whispered Cass.

  The rider had met a fate different than his mount, and unluckier. He had been thrown clear of the horse or perhaps dragged himself away, driven by some impulse to flee. He had found a rotten stump, and there he was leaned against it, his booted legs stretched out before him. He had done it all by feel, Cass supposed, for his face was a shapeless thing, like cherry cobbler spilled from the bowl. Around the mass, the man’s hair, soaked in blood, glistened darkly. Only one eye remained, white and glutinous and blind; the teeth, without lips to define them, were fixed in a grin. Where the nose had been, a little red bubble grew and popped, grew and popped.

  Cass felt as though he had discovered the bottom of time. He had been wrong after all, for in years of soldiering, he had never come upon a live thing like this. Now he was alone with it, the silence closing down. A rumble of gas came from the belly of the dead horse. Cass whispered, “Do you know I am here?” and the man lifted his hand. The solitary eye swiveled like a lizard’s. The teeth parted, the opening webbed with blood, and a sound came, urgent and pleading.

  “I know, sir,” Cass told the man. “I know.”

  Then the boy was there. He came quietly, without his musket. He wrapped his hand in the skirt of Cass’s jacket and pressed close. “What made it like that?” whispered Lucian.

  “A shotgun, I expect,” said Cass. “Don’t say ‘it.’ He’s a man still.”

  “Why would they leave him? Why won’t they take him to the doctor?”

  “They would have. I guess everybody thought he was dead.”

  “Oh, Lord,” said the boy. “We got to do something!”

  “Well, we are,” said Cass. “You are going to go back and guard that hog like I told you.”

  The boy pressed closer. “I don’t want to—”

  Cass took the boy by the arm, bent, and spoke into his face. “Listen to me. This is a thing you don’t talk about. You just do it!”

  The man let out a sudden squawk, and Lucian jumped and covered his ears. “But what are we going to do!” he cried. “Are we going to take him to the doctor?”

  Cass closed his eyes and steadied himself. He cursed the enrollers who gathered children, and those who allowed it. “No,” he said at last. “I am going to shoot him, Lucian. That’s what he wants.”

  “How do you know that?” sobbed the boy.

  “Because that’s what I would want,” said Cass. He turned the boy back toward the house and gave him a shove. “Now, go on. Be quick. This man is in hell every minute, and us fooling around.” Cass watched the boy until he was out of sight around the barn.

  The birds had settled on the hog again but flapped away when Lucian came. He stood in the scorched grass, watching some ants rebuilding their nest where a horse had stepped on it. He tried some cuss words aloud, but they did little good. He tried thinking: Lucian Wakefield. Lucian Wakefield. He did not tell Mister Cass, but he knew the chaplain had named him Lucifer because he was bad, and he must be bad still. The reverend said, Lucifer, you was born in hell, going to end up there again. The boy never understood that till Mister Cass explained it. Maybe old Pelt was right, and here he was. But he was called Lucian now. That thing back yonder had tried to speak to him, and he couldn’t understand. The eye had rolled at him, looked at him, and he ran away. How could it be alive? “I wish I hadn’t gone!” he said aloud, but took it back right away. Mister Cass had watched over him in a terrible battle and given him his own name without even being asked—and now Mister Cass was back there with that—going to shoot it—what did that mean? The thing had scared him so bad, coming on it all at once, and all at once like falling down in a deep well, and how could he and it be in the same place? Cass said the thing was in hell, so maybe he was, too. But Cass said it was a man. He said—

  Lucian jumped again when the shot came. It echoed in the trees down by the broad river. He was crying now, no longer ashamed of it, knowing he couldn’t stop.

  Lucian Wakefield. Lucian Wakefield. Way up in north Alabama in the year Eighteen-and-sixty-four. Them ants don’t care about anything, they just go right on. I am growed now, I have been soldiering, my name is Lucian Wakefield now.

  Cass came around the barn carrying his musket in the crook of his arm, like a bird hunter returning, and a white scarf in his hand. “Lucian,” he said.

  The boy wiped at his eyes. Cass knelt before him and held up the scarf. “I got this out of his bags—you take it. You’ll need it when the weather turns.”

  “But I don’t want it!” said the boy, backing away. “I want a jacket like you got.”

  “We’ll get you one, but this’ll be good with a jacket.”

  “I don’t want it!” said the boy. “What if he comes hunting it back!”

  “He won’t do that,” said Cass. “All that’s done with now. Kneel down here.” Lucian came and knelt. They were facing each other, and Cass hung the scarf around his neck. “He don’t need it. He might want you to have it. In fact, he told me to get it for you.” It wasn’t much of a lie; the man might have told him that, if he could have.

  The boy made no reply. He could smell horse sweat on the scarf and thought about where it was last night, and just a little while ago.

  “We all do it,” said Cass. “It’s all right. Not a single one ever came back looking for his goods.”

  “You promise?” asked Lucian. “He said that to you?”

  “Honor bright,” said Cass.

  The boy nodded and seemed mollified. He touched the ends of the scarf. “Huh,” he said. His face was a mess of dirt and tears, and Cass could see the sun’s light paling on it. He could see blue shadows in the fence corners, and black shadows creeping along the ground where there had been none before. The day was falling quickly.

  “I’d want to go back home,” said the boy, “if I had one.”

  “Me, too,” said Cass.

  The boy twisted the scarf in his fingers. He looked at Cass. “Maybe you’ll take me where you live, if I am good.”

  “Well, I … well, I never thought of that.”

  “How long before we can go there?” asked t
he boy.

  “We have to whip the yankees first,” said Cass.

  Now Lucian started to cry again. He was worn out with crying, but there didn’t seem to be an end to it. “I don’t know,” he said. “Don’t know if I can stand it much.”

  “Well, I thought you were having a bully time,” said Cass.

  “I was,” said the boy. “Goddamn, I can’t quit this bawling! What a baby!” He struck at himself with his fist until Cass grabbed it.

  “Here, don’t be doing that,” said Cass. He unlimbered his canteen and gave it to the boy. “Drink a little. Wipe your face. Here’s my handkerchief. You are a regular Miss Nancy, all right.”

  The boy scowled but took the filthy rag and wet it and wiped his face. He held the canteen in his hands and stared at it. He said, “When you done for those fellows the other day, it never bothered me too much, and at the house them people were mean and I never minded, but now—Lord, that poor man back yonder, I come on him all at once, I never knew such a thing could happen to anybody—” ,

  Then the boy’s chest began to heave. He dropped the canteen and crawled a little way before he threw up, sobbing and hitting his fist against the ground.

  Cass knew he had to decide then. The winter day was short, near twilight now, but all the days of man were short, and too much depended on what you did when you came to a crossing. You couldn’t stand there long, you had to decide, and whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Janie, I wish you were here, thought Cass. But Janie was far away, and the night was coming.

  Well, fuck it, thought Cass. This time next month, we’ll all be dead anyhow. He rose and waited until the boy was done heaving. When he pulled him up, the boy was limp, trying to catch his breath. Cass turned him, took the rag, and wiped his mouth. Then he stroked the boy’s greasy hair, calming him, calming himself. “We’ll go home one day,” he said. “You and me and Roger, and whatever boys are left. You don’t have to worry about being good.”

  “I guess that was too many,” said Lucian, sniffling. “I’ll tell you one damn thing, though.”

  “Quit your cussing,” said Cass. “Tell me what?”

  Lucian looked back toward the barn. “I won’t never hurt anything again,” he said. “You can tell ’em that, all them gilded sons of bitches.”

  It was full dark when Cass flopped the two dead rabbits down by Captain Byron Sullivan’s fire, where the company stew was in progress. Into this stew went everything the boys could gather at foraging, so it was various of content and odor. “That all you got?” asked the officer.

  “We left the pies and sweetmeats down in camp,” said Cass.

  First Sergeant Williams began to clean a rabbit. “How’re you and that infant making out?” he asked.

  “His name is Lucian,” said Cass, then told about the incident at the farmstead. The captain leaned back on his heels and sighed. “Well, that was a hard lesson for a boy,” he said.

  “You know any easy ones?” said Cass.

  “I still hope to discover one,” said the captain.

  Cass took a deep breath. “Well, I’ll just tell you now and get it done,” he said. “I am sending the rifle they give him back to the quartermaster. I won’t have the lad bearing arms.”

  Williams looked up from his skinning. “You won’t—well, goddamn—”

  “Now, don’t fuck with me, Bill,” said Cass. He turned to the captain. “Colonel Sansing give him to me to raise, and I mean to do it as I see fit. I—he is—goddammit, Cap’n.”

  The captain held up his hands. “All right. Well put him to cooking, bearing litters, and the like. Will that satisfy you?”

  “Yes,” said Cass. “Yes, sir.”

  The first sergeant put his rabbit down and regarded Cass for a moment. He said, “You put me in mind of a fellow I knew in Texas, used to hunt rattlesnakes for sport.”

  “Yeah?” said Cass. “What happened to him? He get bit?”

  “No,” said Williams, “he just got to looking like he’d seen too many of ’em.”

  Roger said, “What have you been doing with that boy Lucifer? He is slinking around like a stray cat.”

  “He is called Lucian now,” said Cass, and told the story again.

  “Oh, my,” said Roger. “No wonder he is in a dark study.”

  “Where is he now?” said Cass. Roger pointed to a stand of sycamores at the edge of a slough. Cass said, “Let’s go see.”

  The boy was sitting among the roots of a big sycamore. Cass and Roger sat cross-legged before him, took out their pipes, went through the ritual of filling and lighting up. They were running short on matches, and the tobacco was dry as dust. Cass would wait to tell Roger about the good tobacco he had taken from the cavalryman’s saddlebag. He said, “Lucian, do you smoke? Lord knows you spit enough.”

  “No,” said the boy, “but I been meaning to take it up.”

  “It is a noble habit,” said Roger. “Superior to chewing.”

  “Good for the humors, too,” said Cass. “Lucian, tell Roger who taught you about the Lord.”

  “Well, old Pelt, the chaplain at the orphantage,” said, the boy.

  “Orphan-age, dammit,” said Cass. “Would this Pelt ever read the Bible to you?”

  “Oh, yes. He would line out a passage, then tell us what it meant. He said we were to believe it, every word, else we would go to hell. Way he talked about it, I didn’t much want to go there.”

  “No, me neither,” said Cass. “Did you ever read any of it for yourself?”

  The boy took up a stick, began to break it in pieces and throw them into the dark water of the slough. Cass thought about what Janie said of the Bible once: Lord knows, l can’t get much out of that dreary old thing.

  After a moment, the boy shook his head. “Naw, I never read it, though I did look at the pictures. Fact is, I can’t read much a-tali. I never took to it somehow.”

  “Well, well,” said Roger. He unlimbered himself from the ground and went away.

  “Where’s he a-goin’?” asked the boy.

  “You never can tell,” said Cass.

  In a moment, Roger returned with the dictionary. He lay it in the boy’s lap. “You study this,” he said. “We’ll do five words a day, if we can.”

  “What if I won’t?” said Lucian.

  “Be quiet,” said Cass. “Now, you study those words like Roger says. What about prayin’? Did they teach you to pray?”

  “Oh, we prayed all the goddamned time.”

  Cass sighed. “Well, what did they tell you about it?”

  “You-all are making my head hurt,” said Lucian.

  “Nevertheless,” said Cass.

  The boy got another stick and broke it, snap-snap-snap. He rolled his eyes. “They said we was to offer praise, then thanks, then blessings for others, then ask for whatever we needed that was wholesome.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” said Cass. “What’s so hard about that?”

  The boy snorted and threw the sticks in the water. He put his grimy hands together and looked at the sky. “Thank you, Lord, for making me an orphan, and for sending me to the war where I’ll get kilt, and for being hungry and cold, and for seeing that poor man today, and please bless these holy men what keep badgering me about praying and reading and not cussing and all manner of torment.”

  “Well, hell,” said Cass. “That was a mess. Plus, you left out the praise.”

  “Huh,” said Lucian. “If God is so big, He don’t need my praise—be like me swelling up ever time a cricket chirped at me.”

  They were quiet then, for a time. Now and then, a big sycamore leaf, finally letting go, rattled down through the branches. The slough was still and silent; it gave of no voices, and no movement save where Lucian dropped his sticks in the water. The twilight was coming, and cold shadows followed. It was the dying time: of the day, of the year, of men, perhaps of the army itself. Cass shivered and drew his gray jacket close about him. He would have to get one for the boy pretty soon.
Tomorrow, come what may. A jacket was not too much to ask for.

  Suddenly there came a stirring, almost imperceptible, in the fields and woods around. It resolved itself into the sound of men’s voices rising, the stamping of horses, the snapping of blankets shook out, the scattering of fires, preliminary taps on the regimental drums. Cass and Roger knew what it meant, and the boy, too, perhaps, for he looked up questioning.

  “Yes,” said Cass, rising to his feet. “Time to get under way.”

  His judgment was confirmed by the appearance of First Sergeant Williams, fully accoutred, who said, "Here! What you peckerheads up to now?”

  “Why, we are keeping school, First Sergeant,” said Cass.

  “Yes,” said Roger, “and holding seminary.”

  “Well, it is no surprise to me,” said the first sergeant. “But you must adjourn now and fall in, for we are about to travel.”

  “Yes, First Sergeant,” said Cass and Roger together.

  “What is that book the boy has?” asked Williams.

  Roger said, “Well, Bill, it is a dictionary.”

  The first sergeant shook his head. “Jesus, such an army this is,” he said, and limped away as the drums began to sound Assembly.

  They marched through the night, through the growing cold, under a sky that little by little grew empty of stars. They could sense it coming: the cold that would eat down into their bones, that would shiver them, and kill some of them. The long columns marched in silence but for the clinking and creaking of their burdens. They marched with the long, swinging step that was their pride and trademark, up nameless roads, past dark cabins and houses where the occupants huddled, listening, sometimes peeking out to see the phantom shapes hurrying past.

  Whence they were hurrying, and why, the soldiers knew only through rumor, reinforced now by a sure instinct developed over many such journeys in the dark. They were going to cross the river. They were going to outrun some yankees coming up from the south: cut them off before they could reach the works at Nashville. There would be fighting before Nashville, then. Cass knew the Death Angel was with the column now, already making his choices. He kept Lucian close by, dragging him along by the collar when he fell behind, lest the Angel come peering into the boy’s face. Beside them, Roger marched in silence, keeping his own counsel.