by Robert Hicks
Now he took down the pistol and shoved it deep in his pocket. In his other pocket he put the five remaining bullets and caps. He would load it later, on the way.
He would do it that night. He had only one night, because he didn’t know how often Mr. McGavock checked his guns, and he would never lie to the McGavocks, even if they asked him if he knew where the guns were. He’d have to do it before they had a chance to ask. He waited until nightfall. Miss Carrie, expecting a guest, was too distracted to notice when he slipped off.
But Winder noticed. He’d seen the whole thing. Eli had underestimated Winder’s resourcefulness; he had been watching him over the years as closely as Eli had watched Baylor. He knew about how Eli followed Baylor around and how he would sometimes mumble in his sleep about his sister and a man and angels and how he took his father’s dueling pistol out into the woods to shoot. Winder was no dummy, although it served his purpose to have Eli think it—it made it easier to follow him without getting caught.
That night he watched Eli take the pistol and run out of the house. Winder had an idea where he was going. He couldn’t decide whether Eli’s actions were wrong or not, but he figured to let Eli make that decision. He trusted Eli, and he would not break their bond of loyalty, even if Eli didn’t know it existed. So he went to his room and pulled out his collection of dead grasshoppers, which he counted again and again, but after about a half an hour of debating with himself, he went to Carrie to tell her what had happened. Zachariah Cashwell, the man with one leg who had lived with them, had just arrived. That’s odd, he thought.
His mother screamed when Winder told her the story, and his father came running. The three adults stood in the foyer talking quickly. Then the one-legged man got back into his saddle with some difficulty and went riding hard toward town. Winder’s father came next, followed by his mother, whom he had never seen ride a horse. Eli’s already there, he thought. You won’t catch him.
It was a long run from the woods to the steps of Mr. Baylor’s front porch. It had not taken Eli much shouting to get the old man to come out of the house and down the steps to meet him. He had not given a second thought to raising his precious pistol and firing.
He had not aimed to kill, and the bullet lodged in the old man’s left leg. He went down awkwardly, and Eli thought he heard the snap of a bone as Baylor twisted and screamed and tried to back away as he fell.
The old man did not know who he was, didn’t recognize him, and that suited Eli just fine. Baylor hadn’t known who his sister was, either.
Eli wanted to look into the man’s face before he killed him, and so he walked carefully around the figure on the ground, always out of reach. He watched the blood pool and run in a strong rivulet down the slope of the man’s dirt yard, toward the pike. Eli reckoned he had only a few minutes before the sound of his pistol would attract others. He’d have to finish it fast. He hadn’t thought he could kill someone. Reckon it matters who that someone is. He could kill Baylor, that was certain, and he intended to do it. He got around to the man’s head and looked and saw eyes that stared up unseeing, pleading with something beyond Eli, something more important than Eli, and Eli felt slighted. Here he was, bringing death, and the man was ignoring him as if he weren’t even there. He raised the pistol.
When the others arrived, Eli had already shot Baylor and had his pistol up to the man’s head. What were they going to do? John and Zachariah shouted at Eli to put down his pistol, but he only shook them off. They couldn’t shoot the boy, although Zachariah had one of his Colts and John had his hunting rifle. They raised the weapons, but it was apparent in Eli’s eyes that he was going to do what he was going to do, whether he died or not. And anyway, why would they shoot the boy? For the sake of Baylor? Eventually they went quiet and lowered their weapons, unsure what would happen next.
Carrie watched the boy confront the old man, and she watched the old man bleeding on the ground, refusing to beg for his life, refusing to do anything but to treat Eli like he was trash. She thought to shout out, but she didn’t know what to say, and she felt suddenly afraid. Then she felt anger—at Eli? Baylor? Herself? She did not know, but welcomed it. Good, she thought, and then she cringed at the horror of that thought. Good, good, good. This hadn’t been her plan, but good. She longed to be settled back in the safety and confinement of her little room at Carnton, far from the complication of towns and men. She wondered where the rest of the Baylors were. It was just Mrs. Baylor and a daughter, she remembered. They were probably hiding, hoping we’d do something. I’d be hiding, too.
She watched the boy approach the head of the old man and study him for a moment. Carrie knew she should speak, knew she should stop what had begun, but the words would not come out of her throat. There were no words, actually, just vague sounds and thoughts muddling around in her head.
Then Carrie heard the boy speak, clear as if she were standing beside him in the light thrown by the quarter-moon.
Eli was yelling about the boy Cotton. He said he knew Will’s name but that he would always know him as Cotton. He told Baylor about how Cotton had courted Becky in secret because the old man would never have allowed it. He told him how he had learned that Cotton died on the battlefield right there on his own farm, leaving Becky to bear his child. It was the secrecy that enraged him, he said. His own sister had never revealed Cotton’s real name, not even when she was dying.
Carrie could see that the old man was losing blood, but she could also see that he was getting some fight back into him. He raised himself up on his elbows and leaned back with his head up, gritting his teeth in pain but listening directly to the boy.
“Son, I’m dying here. I’m sorry about your sister, but you got no cause to come here with that pistol, and you’ll hang for it.”
“I ain’t your son, and I ain’t hanging for nothing.”
“I need a doctor.”
The boy ignored the old man, and Carrie wondered if it was God’s intention for her to ride in and save the old man from the boy. She waited for some kind of sign.
“Not once, Mr. Baylor, not once did my sister say the real name of your boy.”
“How does this concern me?”
“I’ve been thinking about how I might have been able to save her if I’d just known Cotton’s name. I knew Cotton came from money and that he probably came from town. But I didn’t know which son of a bitch owed my family help. A doctor, a place to rest, some medicine. I didn’t know which one of you had an obligation to my sister, and so she died. I wish I’d gone to Mrs. McGavock sooner, but back then I didn’t know what she thought of us, either. I didn’t know what any of y’all thought of us.”
Carrie cringed in shame. Baylor began to say something, but the boy cut him off.
“What I did know was that my sister died, and her son died, all because everybody was afraid of you, whoever you were, and what you would say about what they done, or who they were. I am alone now; I ain’t got no one. That’s your doing. I am alone on this earth, and that’s also your doing. I’m here because I been thinking for years that if I ever figured you out, I would find you and show you that I weren’t afraid of you or of crossing you or of killing you.”
“Boy . . .”
“And you about to be killed now.”
I am alone on this earth. Carrie had again received her sign from God.
“Don’t do that, Eli.”
Carrie’s voice startled Eli, and he stepped back from Baylor as if the man were talking to him in two different voices and could throw one of them around and make it sound like a woman’s. Carrie’s horse seemed to understand the task at hand and began to walk forward into Baylor’s yard.
“Don’t kill that man, Eli.”
Eli looked at her uncomfortably, as if he was possessed. But he stood up straight and faced her.
“I will kill him. I got my reasons.”
Carrie lifted herself down from her horse and walked toward him. She stared into his eyes so intensely that he looked away.
“Step aside, Eli. I have business with this man. Lower that gun.”
Eli did as he was told. She felt wild and angry and tough as hell. She knew that Eli wouldn’t dare to cross her, even though, moments before, he was prepared to kill a man.
She stood over Baylor, who blessed her for interceding. She didn’t speak, but picked up a small, sharp rock and made a tear a few inches from the bottom of her dress. Then she ripped it until it detached as one long, wide piece of cotton. A bandage.
She examined the wound with an expert’s eye. The metal had torn through the fleshy part of Baylor’s leg, leaving a jagged hole in his trousers. She took the rock and ripped his trouser leg at the bullet hole and then tore it off as she’d torn off the bandage. His leg was blue-veined and ghostly white except where the blood coursed down in steady, heavy streams. He might die here anyway, Carrie thought. She told Eli to fetch her a short, thick stick, which she then used to tighten the bandage above the wound, shutting off the blood.
“I believe you don’t have much time to get to a doctor before that leg dies, Mr. Baylor.”
She stood up again and looked down upon the man in the dirt, who had seemed to shrink before her eyes. He was an old man clinging to life, as primal as every other man. He let his hair gather dirt as he scrabbled at the ground, grimacing. One side of his face had turned clay red. And yet he was still the same man he had been minutes before, perhaps even more so. He croaked when he tried to talk.
“Have that boy arrested.”
“I will not. He is not my business.”
“Then I shall.”
He tried to get to his feet but only managed a few moments before slumping heavily back down, panting.
“Mr. Baylor, I want to remove the dead from your field and bury them properly on our land.”
He looked up at her, and she saw panic in his face.
“I am dying here, and you are talking about my field? You have no shame. You set this young boy upon me, who probably doesn’t know any better . . .”
“The hell I don’t,” Eli said.
“. . . so you could get those bones out of my field? And I’m supposed to just give up like that, bend to your crime? You would have me shot for those bones? You are insane.”
“You weren’t listening to the boy. His trouble with you is his own. You were listening, weren’t you?”
“Yes.” He went quiet for a moment. “Yes, I was. But I can’t bring that boy’s sister back, or her baby, or my boy. I can’t bring any damned one of them back. The only thing that can be done is to go forward, and that does not include getting misty-eyed over dead who died so foolishly.”
He called out to the house for his wife but received no response. We were the only people in the whole world right then.
“Just foolish, dead soldiers, that’s what you think?”
“You must get me help, Mrs. McGavock. Please have pity.”
“Those men in your field are no different from this boy here. Alone, without options, watching death come for them and those close to them. Look at him!”
Even Eli seemed to jump at her words.
“Do you see him? He’s the boy who’s dead in the field. Thousands of boys with no other option but, as you say, to go forward, straight into the fire. Do you think they marched themselves there on their own decision? Do you think they looked at your field and said to themselves, This is a mighty fine place to die?Your quarrel is with them? Is it?”
Baylor had propped himself up on his elbows again.
“I have learned, Mr. Baylor. I have learned from a man ten times more courageous than you that it was life and not death that those men, like this boy here, sought from this place. It’s a paradox, but it’s true nonetheless. I have learned from that man of the cruelty in the strategies of men, powerful men, men not unlike yourself. I have learned from him that there could have been no worse fate than to have died on your field, and yet there had been no choice. Who would help them? You were listening to the boy. Who? Who would help them, with their few choices, with no way out?”
Silence.
“No one. And it is alongside those men and boys that your own son fell, and surely you don’t hate your own son. A stupid battle, yes. A brutal and cruel war, yes. But are those the men you hate? Are those the men with whom you have a quarrel?”
More silence.
“They aren’t, no more than this boy. Any more than your own son. Your own son!”
Carrie could see she was running out of time. Baylor’s eyes drooped and popped open intermittently, flashing and then slowly dousing themselves.
“We will leave now. I’ve told you what I want from you, but I will not threaten you for it. Neither will this boy. I will send for help, and I will not say one more word to you about this.”
She bent over the old man with her hands on her hips and brought her face close to his. She could smell the tobacco in his hair.
“The bitterness will kill you quicker than that bullet, Mr. Baylor.”
Carrie stepped back from the man, breathed deep, and put her hand tenderly on the top of Eli’s head. She was relieved, and she relaxed and heard the cicadas buzzing in her ears for the first time. She tried to figure out how they were going to get the boy and make an escape, as that was the most immediate thing that boy was going to need. He has greater concerns than my interest in that field. He needs to run.
She prayed to God that if He let the lonely, abandoned, sad boy get away and become happy again, if he’d ever actually been happy, she would not let Him or Eli down. She would give the men in that field a proper place to spend eternity. She would not shy away from the task. She would be about God’s chores.
Eli pointed the pistol down at Baylor and set his thumb, ready to cock it. Carrie went toward him, and he waved her off with the pistol. The old man did not plead and cry for his life, as he had before. He stared straight into the barrel.
“I didn’t hear you give Mrs. McGavock an answer, old man.”
Baylor ignored the boy and turned his head toward Carrie. “Yes,” he said.
Eli kept the gun pointed at Baylor. “Yes what?”
Baylor turned back to his attacker. “You can put that gun down. I’ve already decided to let Mrs. McGavock have her way.”
“Or I’ll shoot you, understand?”
“No, go ahead and shoot me. I’m going to die anyway. You’ll learn someday, if you live long after this, that there are things about you, boy, that are more persuasive than that pistol of yours.”
Eli cocked the hammer. It seemed he had taken Carrie’s words to heart; he had his own business with the old man.
At that very moment Eli seemed to turn his scared and shining face straight toward Zachariah Cashwell. Cashwell could see the boy was begging for someone to relieve him of a burden he couldn’t remove himself, an obligation he would have to meet unless someone stopped him. He was scared but ready to pull that trigger. Zachariah had been listening to every word Carrie had said and watching every gesture she’d made, and in her words he had found something of what he had come to find—a vision of himself as a different, better man. I have learned from a man ten times more courageous than you that it was life and not death that those men, like this boy here, sought from this place. He was proud to think of himself as courageous, but her words stirred up something else in him. He had not saved a single boy that terrible day in that place, and yet he knew what she said was true: every one of them had wanted to live, and there had been no good deaths on that field. He had been saved that day, but he had done no saving. No boy left that battlefield intact because he, Zachariah Cashwell, had made it possible.
He had one more chance to tell Carrie that he had missed her terribly and that he could never love someone as he loved her. He knew he couldn’t have her ever, and her husband was sitting right there with a rifle, but he would have said it. He knew he had one more chance to thank her for saving his life when he didn’t know he wanted it saved. He knew he had one more ch
ance to tell her he had never known a woman like her and that he might not have ended up as he had if he’d known earlier there were women like her who saved lives instead of taking them, who could take in stray boys and love them without making them feel dirty and an imposition. He almost spoke of these things, right in front of Eli and Baylor and John, but he kept his mouth shut. She had already given him his gift. They would have to wait for another day, if there ever was one, to talk about the rest of it.
Having already committed a hanging crime, the boy stood over the old man. Baylor sat there, steadfast and unmoved by the boy and his weapon, as if welcoming his death. He was bleeding a little below the tourniquet. He’d need the doctor right quick, Zachariah thought.
Zachariah saw a boy who, if he was ever to grow to be a man, would have to live on the run, maybe forever. He looked over at Carrie, who stood a few feet from Eli, frozen. Zachariah would not accept that there was to be no other future for Eli except a hanging. Especially not if the hanging was for the crime of shooting a goddamn meddling, rich old fool who deserved at least a bullet in the leg and probably much more. Zachariah had no doubt that the justice that would be done, as much as it would make Zachariah sick to see it, would be proper and right and legal and that Carrie and John would accept it, even if it destroyed them. This was part of what Zachariah loved about all of them. Proper and right. They were good at proper and right, and it was this that distinguished him from the McGavocks. That had not changed. Someday he hoped to be proper and right himself, but not quite yet.
He spurred his horse across the yard, snatched Eli up, and rode off past the house, around the new stable, down the hill, over a stream that seemed awfully familiar, and kept on going for years.
That best part of me has left again, and who knows when I will know it once more? Carrie thought, riding slowly back to Carnton next to the other man she loved. We had so little time. The tears, she lied to John, were tears of joy.
