Ghosts of Yesterday

by Jack Cady

  “It’s not a time like you said,” he whispered to Bester. “It’s a time of choices. It’s not a time that time forgot, but a time when I can act like the man I should have been.” He looked at the two standing figures; the wailing old man and the stalwart old man. “Do I become old and simple, or old and of use to the world? Gentlemen, I rejoin my ship.”

  He kicked off his boots and shrugged out of his furs. “Should you chums ever drift downeast to Maine, and if I’m there, we’ll drink and tell tales.”

  “We’ll cover you,” Bester said, but sounded doubtful as he unshouldered his rifle.

  “Don’t,” Ephriam told him. “Whatever happens is what’s supposed to.” He walked into surf and disappeared, like he stepped through a doorway of time. When we turned, the two figures of Ephriam had disappeared as well.

  “We should have stopped him.”

  “You know better. Think on it.”

  ……

  We turned away from the sea, Bester and I, and as we turned the sounds of surf disappeared. Wails drifted through mist, and wails were like silver blades. Hurry and scurry carried on around us, and sometimes we could see movement of men. We could sense dread, resolve, horror. Mostly we trekked.

  Cold days gave way to colder nights and fires gleamed before crouching men. It seemed we walked through a bivouac of ghosts and ghostly fires, the fires burning but cold.

  “I’m understanding more than I want,” Bester told me. “I thought the old woman wanted me to take your party away from the hills.”

  “She didn’t?”

  “She did. What I didn’t figger was she wanted me gone as well. She’s practical.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Men protect their homes,” Bester said, “but it changes ’em. Once the fracas is over, nobody wants what they’ve become… can’t blame her for gettin’ rid of me.”

  “… you’ve been listening to preachers. I’d think better of it.”

  “T’isn’t that,” Bester told me. “I figger we brought war with us. It would never have moved eastward without us. We drew it like offal draws flies.”

  “More preacher-business.”

  “Don’t be a fool.” Bester sounded about to lose patience. “We can’t forgive each other because we can’t forgive ourselves. That’s what Ephriam discovered. He’s forgivin’ himself.”

  Bester peered through mist. Stink from black powder was so ordinary that I no longer smelled it. Stink of fire was common as well, but the stink of burning that lay heavy in the air was like a bonus of sorrow. “I don’t know about you,” Bester said, “but I’m walkin’ into something. Something lies just ahead.”

  The terrain gave way to rolling foothills where scorched trees leaned toward smoking earth. Camp-fires glowed through mist and through night, but the fires were small compared to what we saw and smelled from the distance.

  The horizon was alive and red with fire. As we progressed Bester began to tremble. “What you’ll see,” he whispered, “neither man nor devil would wish.” His walk slowed as he thought on his words. “No, a devil might wish it. You could say a devil did… a devil with hell in his heart.”

  Fire bloomed through and above a cabin roof, and a twin fire bloomed above a barn. A plowhorse stood tethered, having been stolen from the barn. Squawks of fowl swept through the night, while, standing before the fires, a group of soldiers wrestled with a squealing hog. They cut its throat, and before it was dead cut away the hams; were prepared to leave the rest. Firelight silhouetted them as they packed meat into a cotton sack.

  Small plunder lay about, skillet and pots. Blue uniforms shone black in firelight. A soldier kicked the hog carcass. “You’re emancipated,” he told the dead hog. “Oh, Lordy you are free.”

  A rifle popped from the darkness, and a small tongue of flame leaped, accompanied by a curse. The soldier toppled forward. He fell across the dead hog as if he embraced a lover.

  From the darkness came a yell that would curdle blood. It was Bester’s voice, and it carried all the fierceness of the Rebellion. The other soldiers fled quick as cats, heading into darkness; all but one who did not avoid a second shot. This soldier was hit low in the spine. He fell forward, and began screaming.

  “Satisfactory outcome,” Bester whispered. “If only it had stopped there.”

  What followed was like a magic lantern, a stere-opticon. Bester stood beside me. The two of us watched the spirit of Bester ease from darkness into light, then step back into darkness. Flames crackled and sparks rose above the burning cabin like dots of hate. The screaming man moaned, fell silent, then screamed.

  We watched as the spirit of Bester once more stepped from shadow, then stepped back just as a rifle shot sounded from the direction of the fleeing soldiers. At least one man remained. The spirit had deliberately drawn fire.

  The cabin burned, the wounded man gasped and moaned. For a space of minutes nothing moved, and firelight illumed the corpse of the man lying across the butchered hog. Then, from a distance, the spirit’s voice screamed curses. The voice moved further and further away, then fell to silence. For the moment, the lantern show paused.

  “I euchred the fool.” Bester stood beside me as the sounds of his past disappeared into the forest. “It was good soldiering.” He put a hand on my arm. “I take satisfaction in what happens next. The fool thought I had fled.”

  From the edge of the forest a shadow appeared. It moved slowly, and as it moved it whispered to the wounded man. “I’m here, Johnnie. I’m comin’ to getcha.” The soldier edged toward his wounded friend.

  The pop of a rifle from darkness, and the soldier folded forward like a collapsing tent. He grabbed at his groin. He screamed. From the darkness Bester’s voice spoke, this time quietly, “Like castrating hogs… I reckon you’ll sire no more bastards.” His voice was lost in the dual screams of the two mortally wounded men.

  The lantern show moved. The first paling of dawn gathered above a frame house standing at the edge of a broken town. In dimmest light, shattered buildings stood along a dirt road. From some of the buildings came sounds of weeping. The frame house stood unmarked by battle, and from it came the snores of men.

  Beside me, Bester trembled. “Stop it,” he muttered, and he talked not to me. Then he turned to me. “I tracked them there. I waited the night. They became drunken.”

  We watched as the figure of Bester appeared from behind a broken building. The figure carried sacks of black powder and a makeshift torpedo. Bester’s spirit moved almost casually, as if it had all the time in the world. It circled the house with a line of powder. When it ran out of powder it made another trip. The torpedo was installed at the front door. It bulked like a dark thought in the growing dawn.

  Beside me, Bester groaned. “Seven were there. I’d gotten three. Three should’a been satisfaction aplenty.”

  Sounds began to issue from the nearest broken building: a child’s awakening cry, a woman’s hushing voice that was as dark as Bester’s skin and as troubled as Bester’s furrowed brow. A second child spoke querulous and was hushed by the trembling voice of an old woman. The quiet voice of an ancient man reassured the child.

  The family emerged from the building and stood in the gathering dawn. They looked up and down the road, deciding in which direction to flee. The woman was thin, high-rumped with a baby at hip. She was darker than Bester, splay-footed in the way of field hands. The baby was not quite of walking age. A girl of seven or eight stood beside her grandfather and grandmother. The couple stooped, moved with pain, and watched the road as if it would spit forth sorrow. They were a family that had never before traveled ten miles away from home and plantation. A family lost.

  The spirit of Bester knelt with flaming torch above a trail of black powder. It watched the family, hesitated, made motion to deal in fire and explosion, hesitated.

  The family began to move slowly away from the house and the snoring. Bester touched flame to powder, and a trail of fire encircled the house just as the girl chi
ld turned. She ran toward the broken building, for something left behind, a corn cob doll perhaps. She ran toward the fire, and her mother followed screaming. She was still screaming when she and the baby were felled by the exploding torpedo.

  The little girl fell, holding her face, rolling in dirt as the two old people hobbled toward her. The old man knelt beside the girl, while across the road flame engulfed the house. Bester ran forward, crazed, and did not go near the child. He stood with rifle at the ready, covering door and windows. One man staggered toward the street and died yelling as Bester’s rifle popped. The house burned like hellfire. The lantern show moved.

  Bester stood beside me, and held my arm as if he would fall. We watched the little girl roll in the dust and clutch her face. He looked at the lifeless figure of the woman, at the dead baby. “Blinded, and orphaned,” he said, but not to me. “Hell of a day’s work, and it still early.”

  “It’s past,” I said. “You acted a little too fast. A mistake, but it’s past.”

  “It can’t be,” he said. “It must not.” We watched as the scene faded. We stood together on smoking ground. Bester clutched my arm like he was afraid he would fall. There was no strength left in me, or so I thought. I had nothing to spare. Somehow, though, we both stayed on our feet.

  Bester shrugged out of his pack. He laid his rifle across the pack, dropped his revolver beside it. “What did Ephriam say? ‘Whatever is gonna happen is gonna’?” He looked back the way we had come. I’m backtracking. Somewhere back there I’ll come on all this again. Somewhere back there is the man I could have been.” He grasped my arm once more. “Go with God’s blessing, and go with mine.” He paused. “A’course, mine may be a devil’s blessing.”

  “You’ll want help. I’ll follow.”

  “I’ll want help,” he said, and he was grim. “But that’s not to be. This gets done alone.” He turned from me. “The old woman knew that the only way to defeat war is to defeat it in yourself.”

  I watched him walk away. I stood and watched for quite awhile, until he faded into distance.

  ……

  And then, it was, that my torment began. I had been among comrades for the best part of a year, and now, alone, I felt a different kind of fear. Fear tasted like corroded brass. Fear partly arrived because of weakness. My legs persuaded me that they could not support my pack. For the space of a day, perhaps, I sat beside a cold fire in the same manner that a thousand men sat before cold fires. I chewed dried meat and used my knife to cut away part of my bedroll. Strips of hide from my robe served to bind cloth around my feet. Chill lay all around, and the fire became a mockery of cold.

  It was a woman’s voice that moved me along. It was a voice of sorrow, of anger, of loss. “Forward,” it whispered, “or we are lost.”

  We? I remembered her not. The voice was not kindly.

  A survey of the terrain showed that foothills were lowering. There seemed a promise of flatland, perhaps of fields and easier going. When I stood it seemed impossible to even stagger. Too much weight.

  Cartridges weighed heavily in the pack. Without cartridges the weapons were useless. It seemed possible to carry either weapons or food, but not both. I cast the weapons from me as had Ephriam, and Bester.

  Hours or days or months passed, or perhaps only minutes. I walked in a haze of thought and memory, but also in clairvoyancy. My mind followed Charles, watched him formally dressed and handing a fine lady into a fine carriage. I saw him standing before a stable of thoroughbreds, and saw his proud satisfaction in ownership. I saw Charles addressing his private club of gentlemen, as he lectured on ‘My Solitary Sojourn and Adventures Among Red Men of the Forest.’

  Time seemed suspended and I only know that I walked. The landscape changed. Foothills gave way to flat land. Farms abounded with split-rail fences down, barns burned, and the rotting carcasses of beasts dotting farmyards. Field crops stood overgrown in weeds.

  Farms gave way to prairie, and I scorned myself for thinking that I once thrilled at adventures told by stalwart Englishmen, conquerors of savages in jungle or desert. Then I thought of a better kind of Englishman, and lines from his poem: For we are here as on a darkling plain/Swept with alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies clash by night.

  But why remember words that spoke of “we”? Charles was gone, and Ephriam, and Bester. The land rolled immense and dark before me. Long grass had been burned, and wind swept fire across the horizon. I walked among cold embers across a flat and dreadful land.

  “Find him,” the woman’s voice whispered. “You dare not falter now.”

  I did not understand, and I found no one. Fires smoked through the mist and souls wandered. And, it was while I hunkered beside a fire that the boy found me.

  “Mister?” His voice came from the mist, and then he appeared. He was as small and frail as a spirit. He still wore the red rag at his throat. His other rags barely covered him, and his torn hand hung limp at his side. He approached timidly. And, although he feared me, I feared him more. “My ma sends me,” he whispered. “Looks like we still got dealin’s.”

  A woman’s sobs, disappearing.

  “Tom,” I said. “That’s your name?”

  “So, ’tis.”

  “Wrap yourself,” I told him. I passed him the blanket from my bedroll. “Are you alive or am I dead?”

  “Can’t say,” he told me. “In these parts it don’t spell much difference.” He hunkered before the fire. “You’re a growed-up. You’re supposed to know.”

  I watched him and remembered that he had been too brave. In small light from the fire his cheeks were sallow, his hair ragamuffin dirty, and his eyes swollen from weeping. He wiped his nose with a tattered sleeve, squared his shoulders, and pretended he had no fears. In the distance cannon rumbled, or perhaps it was only thunder.

  “Bin waitin’ for you,” he murmured, “…one snakey hell of a long time.”

  “You’re somewhat young to cuss.”

  “I figgered I was growed-up,” he said, and he sounded like he thought he gave an answer. He looked at his torn hand. “I was fixing to be a drummer boy. You could say that part’s over.”

  “I lived in a big city,” I told him, “and wrote pieces for newspapers. Then newspapers yelled for war….” I looked over the flat and dying land. “Don’t care for that work anymore. You could say that part’s over.”

  From the east, and far away, cannon or thunder rumbled, then diminished. The boy trembled with cold. He clasped the blanket close, and it seemed he yearned toward me. Or, perhaps I only imagined such. I told myself that he had been too brave for a long, long time.

  “Ma claims I got to get somethin’ figgered. Can’t do it ’til I know what ’tis.”

  “Looks like we both have the same job,” I whispered. I thought back on the long journey, the war, the forest, the old woman, the trek. All of it seemed pointed toward a meeting with this child.

  I felt a need to touch the boy. Hesitated. Felt the deep fright that he so sternly controlled. No boy so young should have to own so much control. I leaned toward him, then drew him to me. He came willingly. He snuggled against me the way I had once seen a two-year-old cuddled in the arms of its dead grandmother.

  The Englishman’s poem kept running in my mind. …Ah, Love, let us be true to one another….

  It must have been written for a loved woman. Yet, with the boy snuggled in my arms I thought it might well have been written as a father to a son.

  “We’ll see this through together,” I told the boy, as silver light lay cold in the west. “We’ll get it figured out. We’ll walk together, westward.”

 

 

 
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