by Maria Hummel
“See, it ain’t the devil’s work,” whispered Woodard. “They’re good Christians.” They watched together behind the veil of thorns and hard green berries, Laurence sucking at a scratch on his thumb, Pike swaying as the song sped up and the dancers began to spin and leap in tight, convulsive bounds.
At first, a lone woman with the waistless, oblong torso of a bathtub began to call out hoarsely. It sounded like she was being strangled, but she stood alone in the circle of dancers, her head flung skyward. Then a second woman joined in, her own garbled speech directed toward the earth. She moved in stiff, jerky steps and pointed her thin arm at the fire, as if she glimpsed in it a creature that would leap out and devour them all, and only she could keep it at bay. A man with a grizzled beard started hissing and popping like the fire itself, and then he fell to the ground and lay there, rigid, his eyes open, drinking the stars.
Laurence was afraid to look at his companions, afraid he would see in their faces his own dubious envy of the overtaken slaves, or, worse, that they would understand more than he. But when he heard beside him a soft echo of the contrabands’ hymn, he turned, to find Pike singing, his hands cupped around the blisters on his heels where his too-large boots had worn the flesh away. Although the boy seemed unaware that he had joined them, his sweet, eerie soprano rose from the thorns and bloomed into the night above. The contrabands danced on, undisturbed, and Laurence heard something in the way Pike’s voice echoed the sway and jerk of their bodies, something he knew he had not heard before, and he understood suddenly the fear at the root of his fascination. This war would change them all, the dancers and the watchers, the soldiers and the families that stayed at home. They would never be the same again.
Finally, the singer ran out of verses and the song came to a swelling close. The afflicted ones fell to the ground in a heap. Silence filled the air, and Pike slumped, exhausted, against Laurence’s right side.
“Gaw,” he whispered. “Their hands look like the dark got rubbed off from holding things.” Laurence could feel Pike’s heartbeat thumping through his bony ribs, and he shifted to let a small channel of air flow between them.
“Cotton,” Woodard affirmed. “It will tear a man’s hands to shreds. I read that somewhere.”
“It isn’t cotton,” Laurence hissed, irritated. “They’re born that way. The babies have it, too.”
“Shh,” Woodard said, and pointed. Another man stood in the center of the circle now. Narrow-hipped and with a regal lift of head, he petitioned the Lord to remember the days when they had nothing to eat, and no time to sleep from working all day in the tobacco fields, when they had been kept out in the frost and snow, and suffered in every way imaginable. The Lord would smother his enemies, said the petitioner; the Lord could help Mr. Linkum win.
“Mr. Linkum,” said Pike. Disgust flooded his voice. “He can’t even say the name of the president right. Gilbert says they ain’t human, really.”
After all they had seen and heard, this comment angered Laurence, and he cuffed the boy on the neck. “Think for yourself,” he hissed.
But Pike had been precariously balanced to avoid any contact with his blistered heels, and the light blow knocked him into the thorns. He gave a sharp cry. The contrabands turned in its direction, the hum of agreement dying out on their lips. In a matter of moments, the men and women vanished one by one into the mouth of dark beyond the fire. Laurence blinked and yanked Pike back by the collar. He had been gazing so long in the direction of the blaze, his eyes were blind in the near blackness.
“Goddamn it, Pike,” Woodard said. He could never effectively pull off cursing, and he sounded like a schoolboy practicing the language of men. “You had to scare ’em off, didn’t you?”
“He didn’t meant to—” Laurence began, attempting to explain his own action.
“I didn’t mean to,” said Pike, interrupting him. “I just fell.” He was less than a foot away, but still Laurence could not see him. He stared until the boy came in focus. Blood welled into a long scratch winding down Pike’s cheek, and he wiped it with the heel of his hand, refusing to meet Laurence’s eyes.
Never before had anyone been afraid of him, and the thought made Laurence feel sick and triumphant at once. He watched a moth take off from a leaf, its ugly gray body aiming for the light of the contrabands’ fire.
“Well, that’s all we get, ’cause of you.” Woodard punched Pike lightly in the shoulder. “The show’s over.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Pike repeated. The blood had left black streaks up his wrist. He did not rub them away, even after they all stood up and began to walk back toward the tents, stumbling over roots and fallen branches, not knowing which was which until the branches snapped and the roots held fast.
Chapter Eight
Addison’s heel plowed up and down a small area in the dirt, leaving the headlands, a curve of untouched earth at the edge of each row.
“I told Betsey if she waited for me, I’d come home and buy a nice piece up the Onion River and we’d settle there,” he said over the groan of the stump he sat on. “But if she ain’t waiting, I ain’t buying.”
The lounging soldiers looked at their own feet, uncomfortable with Addison’s confession about his negligent sweetheart. He had painstakingly written Betsey several letters already but had received nothing in reply. Only Addison’s mother had written him, and with unfortunate news: Her cough had worsened, their larder was nearly bare, and his little sister was running around wild. Addison’s allotment in the correspondence department seemed particularly unfair to Laurence, who got the most letters of anyone in the company. His mother, aunt, and cousin competed for his attention with almost daily frequency, and his haversack rustled with their written greetings every time he lifted it.
“Maybe the post is slow,” Laurence offered, shuffling a deck of cards.
“My mother said her mother was fast and Betsey would turn out fast, too,” Pike blurted out.
“Bully for your ma.” Addison placed his hands on his knees and hauled himself up. He stared out over the jaw of pointy teeth the tents made across the field. “Did it ever occur to you she was jealous?”
Pike pursed his lips together to say something else, but Gilbert slapped him on his bony thigh and spoke instead. “Ain’t we gonna play cards?”
“You can. I’ve got to go see about a horse they can’t break over in the paddock,” Addison said. He walked off into the bright afternoon.
Laurence let the deck splay over Addison’s future hay field. “Can I come, Addison? You said I could see you break this one.”
“Don’t see why not.”
“Can I go, too?” Pike sprang to his feet.
“You said you’d play cards,” protested his brother.
“Nope. Too many of you will scare the horses,” Addison said, his voice carrying through the sunny air. Pike continued to stand, swaying on his blistered feet. The scratch on his face had healed to a thin line, and he cupped it gently with his fingers.
“Let’s go,” called Addison. Laurence paused for moment, pitying the boy. Noticing Laurence’s eyes on him, Pike plopped down beside his brother, hissing at the pain of the blisters.
“If the schoolmarm already shuffled them, then we can start, can’t we?” he said in his determined little voice. He leaned over and scooped the deck from the dirt.
“I ain’t playing with just you.” Gilbert fished Laurence’s mirror from the tent and eyed the growth of his black beard. Since their fight, Gilbert had gone back to being a frequent victor, and he was always trying halfheartedly to bait Laurence into a rematch. Laurence refused to consider it. His ribs still bothered him when he breathed.
“I’ll play,” Laurence heard Lyman Woodard offer as he jogged after Addison, skirting the white flags of undershirts hung out to dry.
“I wasn’t thinking straight when I asked about Betsey,” he apologized when he caught up.
Addison wagged his hand in the air. “I’m touchy about it,” he said.
“Perhaps I ain’t the one she wants to write to,” Addison said.
They reached the rise where the officers kept their horses. The rolling Virginia pasture was already grazed down to the root. Bales of hay sprawled at its edges, ignored by the mares, who preferred the sweet taste of new clover to the dry dust of last year’s fields. At the end of it, a pond, deep with spring rains, wavered and held the noon heat. The few lone trees were nipped of their lower leaves, and they provided only the faintest shade for the horses.
“Private Addison.” Captain Davey strode up with a rope slung over his shoulder, a hunting knife in his hand. On the ground, Davey looked awkward and shambling, his body bulging at the gut and filling the square shirt he wore half-tucked. His eyes were fixed in a perpetual squint, as if he were gazing into an unpleasant distance the rest of them could not yet see. Only in the saddle did the captain acquire the grandeur appropriate for an officer, his bowlegs fitting perfectly to the contours of the horse, his hands graceful as a conductor’s with the reins.
“He won’t tell us how he’s going to break him,” Davey informed Laurence, his lower lip bulging around a plug of tobacco. “Just a pond, a tree, a knife, and a rope, he says.”
“Where’s the horse?”
The captain pointed to a corner where a well-muscled bay stallion was eyeing the fence as if considering jumping it.
“Furlough’s a reb stallion escaped from their camps,” Davey explained, and spat. “He went crazy after a bullet almost hit him in the eye, and he won’t let a man near now. You won’t get close enough to ride him,” he warned Addison.
Addison grinned and took the rope from the captain, motioning for him to keep the knife. “I’m not gonna ride him. But I may need your help heading him off, Cap.”
“Sartainly, sar.” The captain made an exaggerated salute.
“Lindsey, you should stay clear,” warned Addison. “Furlough’s liable to kick.”
Nodding, Laurence stood his ground while the other two men approached the stallion cautiously, their legs bent at the knees, arms flung back. As soon as the horse smelled them coming, he wheeled and began charging toward the corner above the pond. Addison tied a lasso while Davey slid to the east, blocking Furlough’s exit.
Out of the corner of his eye, Laurence saw Pike come up to the rail fence to view the proceedings, his intent face propped up by the highest rail, arms looped over and dangling like a criminal in the stocks. Laurence was used to the boy following him now, and he ignored him, knowing Pike would prefer it that way.
A light wind riffled the manes of the horses, carrying with it the percussion of clicks and whistles Addison was making to soothe the stallion, and, softer, below that sound, Furlough’s breath wheezing in and out of his lungs. He was a gigantic beauty of a stallion, the kind the poet described in Laurence’s book: “limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground, eyes well apart and full of sparkling wickedness.” Addison’s noises had little effect on him at first, but after a minute, Furlough dipped his head to nip at an invisible tuft of timothy. When he raised it again, a graceful, looping lasso fell about his neck.
The pasture exploded. Furlough reared up with an angry scream. Sod flew from his muddy hooves, falling to the earth. Addison began edging toward one of the trees near the pond, nearly pulled off his feet by Furlough with each step he took. The horseman’s mouth opened and, after a moment, his cry emerged, a high hyah, hyah, hyah.
At every call, the horse’s hooves kicked up, narrowly missing Addison’s head, and every time they came down, he ducked at precisely the right moment to avoid being crushed. The horse seemed irritated by this and rose higher, descending with greater force. But Addison stayed calm, and when Furlough was finally between him and the water, he swiftly knotted the rope around a tree trunk and took the flashing knife from Captain Davey. Furlough reared again. His dark body heaved high as the doorway of a barn, and at the moment it reached its zenith, Addison stepped forward and cut the rope.
Loosed suddenly from the cord that held him earthward, the horse flopped backward and into the water, flinging up a white wall that showered Addison from head to foot. He tossed the knife to the grass and waited as the pond closed over the stallion. Sunlight bled across the surface, and then the water parted, streaming over the horse’s head. After a moment, Furlough emerged with a loud whinny and stood, struggling like a newborn colt on legs rickety with shock. When Addison waded in and grabbed the rope, the horse shied slightly from his approach, but he did not rear up.
As Addison led Furlough out of the water, his soaked wool trousers sagged against his legs, but his jaunty cap was dry and intact. The soldier finally allowed a sliver of a grin to spread across his face.
“He needs to be fussed over and given some oats, if you got ’em,” he said to Davey. He reached out slowly and combed the stallion’s wet shoulder with his hand. Furlough’s muscles flickered, but the horse did not pull away.
“Oats,” said Davey admiringly. The two of them faded into horse talk, appraising Furlough’s still-shaking body, and Laurence jogged up the pasture to greet Pike. The boy’s face was tipped skyward, his cap nearly sliding off. His nostrils flared as he breathed.
“Did you see that?” Laurence shouted needlessly, thrilled that he had witnessed something worth recounting to the others. He was already formulating the story in his mind. “A pond, a rope, a knife, and a tree, he promised Davey. I heard him.”
“Don’t look up,” Pike said without lowering his chin a fraction. His arms were still dangling over the high rail.
Ignoring this advice, Laurence cranked his head skyward, saw a trio of buzzards circling above the pond, their wings extended, motionless.
“I told you not to look up,” Pike said reprovingly. “Now you’re stuck like me. It’s bad luck to look away before they flap.”
“It’s just a bunch of birds, Pike,” said Laurence, disgusted. But he kept his eyes on the dark shapes as they spiraled higher and higher, climbing an invisible stair. The wings did not move.
“Superstition,” he added, still watching. The buzzards spun so high, he could barely make them out. His neck began to ache. The sun was a hot white hole, and it pulled a trickle of sweat down his temple. He blinked. He could no longer see the buzzards and was about to say so, when Pike spoke.
“We have an uncle on my ma’s side who works for the Lindseys.” He said the name as if it didn’t belong to Laurence, but to some distant people he had never met. “Uncle Johnny used to come over some nights and tell us stories about people who lived rich like that, in great big houses with a hunnerd windows—”
“Hardly a hundred.” Laurence was glad they could not look at each other. His sweat-soaked collar clung to his neck.
“And Gilbert, he used to say he was gonna have a big house with a cook and servants to do the washing and—”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” asked Laurence, interrupting him. “About Johnny.”
“Gilbert asked me not to,” said Pike. “He doesn’t want Uncle Johnny to know a Lindsey whipped him in a fight.”
Laurence snorted. The black specks descended, taking shape again.
“What kind of stories did Johnny tell?” he demanded. “Did he say he shot an innocent man?”
“He said he once had to fire at a runaway nigger because Daniel Lindsey asked him and then later he was punished for it.”
“That’s a lie,” Laurence said to the sky.
“He was punished,” Pike insisted. “He said it was all the same—no matter what he did that day, it would have been the wrong thing, and they would have punished him for it because they couldn’t blame themselves.”
“He’s a liar,” retorted Laurence. “He’s a drunk and a thief and a liar. Everybody knows that about Johnny Mulcane.”
Pike did not answer this time, although Laurence heard t
he rail fence creak and Pike’s feet thump the ground. The birds were dropping down fast, as if the spiral of air that lifted them had reversed course. Their wings were still rigid. Laurence tried to imagine Johnny Mulcane, but he couldn’t see his face, only the edge of his boot as he stood on the roof, sweeping snow down on the yard.
“Anyways, I think I seen one flap.” The boy’s voice was coppery and final, like a penny falling to a table.
Laurence lowered his head. “I saw it, too,” he said, although he knew they both were lying.
Chapter Nine
By the sloped light of midmorning, the regiment reached a stream with a hill swelling behind it, dotted with sweet gum and sycamore. The trees cast a serene, speckled shadow down on the rail fence that crossed the hill. Only the loud racket coming from the other side made it possible for Laurence to believe that this was the entrance to his first battle.
All day, the companies had heard fighting, but it remained in the distance, someone else’s story, and while the men told jokes and poked one another with their muskets, Pike and Laurence drifted out of line to gather blackberries, cursing as thorns scraped their wrists. Laurence was gnawing on his last sweet handful when the soldiers’ chatter was silenced by Davey’s shout to march quick, and then double quick.
In a chaos of yelling and splashing, the troops crossed a shallow ford. When he reached the soft grass beyond, Laurence looked at the faces of the captains, guessing by their desperate glares that the soldiers had taken more time than the battle plans had allotted them. He wondered where the generals were, with their field glasses and maps. Could they see the outcome already? Double quick, double quick. Laurence tossed down his knapsack and bedroll with the others and charged up the hill. His canteen tolled against his chest.
“We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree,” sang Pike, speeding ahead of Laurence, the soles of his brogans already worn and flopping off.
“‘My soul is among lions,’” Gilbert muttered before hurrying after his brother.
