by Greg Hunt
A second light joined the first in the distance. They were obviously coming down the road in his direction. Mel quietly withdrew to a thicket of weeds and brush several feet off the road and settled in to let them pass.
When he began to hear the cautious tone of the conversation, Mel was convinced that these were men and not specters. Surely ghosts would not curse the darkness with such foul language. They were probably soldiers, separated during the fighting, trying to rejoin whatever army they belong to.
“Look yonder. There’s a couple.”
Although Mel could not see the group clearly, there seemed to be four or five of them, two leading the way with lanterns, and the rest stumbling along behind in the shadows.
“These here is mine,” one of the intruders announced, moving ahead of the others with his light.
“Hell, it don’t make no difference, does it? We all agreed to divide everything fair in the morning.”
“That was fine till I seen Luke slip something in his shirt back at that last bunch.”
“It wasn’t nothing. A hunk of bread is all. I showed it to you.”
“Yeah, that’s what you showed me, all right.”
When they reached the two dead men they knelt around them like feeding buzzards, and fell to work. Mel remained still as they set to their task, emptying pockets and stripping the dead men of shoes, socks, shirts, and trousers. One of the scroungers stripped off his own tattered shirt and threw it to the side, then pulled on the shirt belonging to one of the dead soldiers.
They stuffed their sorry treasures in the burlap sacks they carried, then stood and moved on down the road. They went no more than one hundred feet before finding more dead bodies, and repeating their shameful routine.
How many more men like this would be wandering the woods tonight? Mel wondered. Was it like this after every battle? Dying out here in the wilderness was indignity enough, but there was something particularly disgraceful about having your corpse stripped naked by fools like these. True, Mel had stolen from the corpses too, but he had taken only what he needed to survive. He hadn’t made a business of it, which he strove to believe set him well apart from these hounds.
The night was a long and jittery one as Mel worked his way cautiously north along the old logging road. The moon rose eventually, making it easier to see his route—but also making him more easily seen. He skirted a camp where several men lay asleep on the bare ground near a dying campfire, and hid from another small band of scavengers. The river valley widened and the hillsides on either side became less steep and forbidding. He had passed well beyond the area where the fighting had been, and there were no more bodies laying about.
Where the road crossed the river at a wide shallow ford, he came to a patch of cleared land, a farm place long abandoned. The cabin and a couple of outbuildings still stood, though none were in good shape. It appeared that several hundred men had made their camp here recently.
Mel entered the cabin cautiously, his pistol drawn, but no one was inside. He stretched out on the hard dirt floor and fell almost immediately asleep. He was so spent that he hardly gave a thought to what might happen if someone found him resting here.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next day dawned so clear and pretty that any man who had not been through what Mel Carroll had in the past few days might easily forget about the fighting and killing that raged all over these parts. But Mel hadn’t forgotten, not just yet, and he took a careful look around through one of the cabin windows before venturing outside. There was nobody about, living or dead, and he figured he must have walked out of the killing zone sometime during the night.
He washed his face and hands in the cold refreshing water of the Little Bold River. He was tempted to strip down and take an all-over bath, but the thought of someone happening along and again catching him bare naked and unarmed put a stop to that idea.
He shot a ten-inch turtle sunning on a log and soon had several strips of turtle meat roasting over a small fire. Ordinarily turtle wasn’t one of his favorites, especially smoky and charred as this would be, but today the odor of the roasting meat made him ravenous. He couldn’t remember the last time his belly had been full to the point of satisfaction.
While his breakfast cooked, he cleaned and reloaded all the handguns in his small arsenal. Besides the biggest and best, which he wore in a holster, there were three pretty-good ones in the pack as well as a couple of sorrier ones that didn’t look like they would be trustworthy in a bad situation.
Mel now had a sound reckoning of where he was, and after his turtle meat breakfast, he set off north at a brisk pace. There was plenty of evidence that an army had passed this way, but no signs of any fighting in this area. Missing as well was the distant, unsettling sound of gunfire. Perhaps the war finally moved on out of their little remote corner of the state, and folks hereabouts could start putting things back in order. But he had thought that before, only to be caught up again in the fighting.
It was too much to hope that the Adderlys and their home place had escaped the turmoil and destruction, but maybe old Ezekiel had been able to take his family away before the fighting started. If that was so, and if the armies had truly moved on, then maybe they would have returned by now to see how bad things were and to figure out what to do with what was left.
At any rate, he’d find out soon, probably before the sun reached the midday sky.
The valley where the Adderly place was located was still heavily wooded with old-growth hardwood at its upper end, but Ezekiel and his sons had cleared much of the lower end by the river, turning it into fields and pasture. The cabin, barn, and outbuildings were at the far end of the valley, high up enough from the river to avoid the spring overflows, tucked back into a grove of oak, birch, elm and chestnut. It was a pretty little spread, well tended and even more remote than Mel’s own place.
But clearly the farm was not remote enough to have escaped the same fate as his. All the signs were there—the wrecked fences, destroyed fields, the barricades and earthen berms lining the river, and the crooked rows of hastily dug graves in what had been a pasture. Even from a distance Mel could see that the barn was down, and he guessed the house was too, burned down or blown apart by the cannons.
There was not a living creature in sight, no farm animals, no soldiers, and certainly no members of the Adderly family. Mel felt the hollow dread growing in him as he trudged down the valley toward the deserted battleground.
His fears were confirmed as he approached the grove where the Adderly home had stood. A blackened stone chimney stood sentinel over a shamble of ashes and debris. Smoke still drifted up from the long walnut foundation logs on which Ezekiel had built his family’s home. They looked to have been smoldering for days.
The barn, a hundred yards farther away, was demolished and down. The whole area had the look of a place that had been swept by the hand of chaos. And indeed it had.
Mel had no idea what to do, or even what to think, about what he was now seeing. For days his mind had been set on simply making it here, on finding Rochelle and doing what he could to help her family. Beyond that he’d only entertained vague thoughts about letting her know his intentions, about staying around to give what help he could, and eventually starting over back at his place with the little that was left.
It could take days or weeks to find them now, if they had survived and if, unlike him, they had made the smart decision to leave before the fighting started. There were other farms in the area, a dozen or more at least within a few hours’ ride. Surely they wouldn’t all have suffered the same destruction, and surely any of them would take in old Ezekiel and his brood. Cable Springs was no more than twenty miles on up the post road, and they might have fled there instead.
Or, Mel thought, gazing with dread at the new graveyard in the pasture, they might be there, buried anonymously with the hundreds of men who had traveled to this place to fight and die. Mel felt hollow inside when he considered the possibility that he might never
see any of them again, and might never know what happened to the woman he hoped to make his wife.
He wandered the Adderly place for a while, surveying the damage, looking for anything that might be salvaged, and cataloging in his mind what would need to be done first to begin putting the place back in order if anyone survived to do the work. One small cornfield, the one furthest from the fighting, seemed to have remained undisturbed. That would make a meager crop for meal and feed—if any people and livestock remained to eat it. Many of the fences were down, but a few days’ work would remedy that. The barn was flat but hadn’t burned, so much of its timber could be used to build a new one.
He was on his way up to the barn to take a closer look when the soft sound of a woman’s voice beneath the rubble stopped him short. In a moment a disheveled figure scrambled out into the open and rose stiffly to its feet. It was a woman, obviously, wearing a long dark skirt, a shapeless shirt, and a man’s felt hat crammed down over unkempt hair.
“Chick, chick, chick. Chiiiick, chick, chick.”
Mel realized it was Mrs. Adderly, though he scarcely recognized her. With one hand she held her apron gathered together in front of her.
“Chiiiick, chick, chick.”
Two scrawny chickens appeared from someplace and started toward her, expecting to be fed by this familiar figure. She reached into the apron with her free hand and dropped a few grains of corn on the ground at her feet. The chickens immediately went to work on it.
In a smooth, practiced move, Mrs. Adderly reached down and closed her hand over one chicken’s head. She lifted the chicken to her side and gave it a couple of deft swirls in the air. The chicken dropped to the ground and went running frantically away, blood spouting from the hole where its head had been. But it didn’t get far before falling over and twitching in its death throes. The other chicken continued to eat greedily. More for her, until her own turn came.
“Mrs. Adderly? Henrietta Adderly?” Mel said, not speaking too loud so he wouldn’t shock her.
The woman turned toward him, stumbling and nearly falling in her surprise. She looked filthy, ancient, and ill-used, like a hundred-year-old crone, although Mel knew she was not much past fifty, if that.
“It’s Melvin Carroll, ma’am,” Mel said softly. “Your neighbor.” Her eyes looked wild and confused, so he added, “You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve come to help.” As if to demonstrate his good intentions he walked over and picked up the dead chicken by its feet.
“That’s my chicken!” The woman said in alarm. “Please, we haven’t had nothin’ since yesterday.”
Mel took the chicken over and gave it to her. “Do you recognize me? Melvin Carroll, from over east of here?” There was a look on her face that disturbed him. It was not quite madness, but something closely akin. Whatever had happened here had clearly taken her beyond the point of reasonable sense and reality.
“Melvin . . . That boy . . . Rochelle,” she said, wrestling with her scattered thoughts but not quite able to piece them together. “My husband is obliged to have a talk with you, boy.”
“Where are they, Henrietta? Your husband and Rochelle and the others? Are you here alone?”
The woman’s face seemed to change shades, as if a heavy gray cloud passed between her and the sun. Her eyes bore a look unlike any Mel had ever seen before. There was terror there, and emptiness, and despair. She’s near the abyss now, he thought. It won’t take much more to send her over.
“Henrietta? Are you there, missus?” It was Ezekiel Adderly’s voice, weak and raspy, but his all right, coming from somewhere beneath the rubble of the barn. “Come on back now, sugar. Don’t stray too far out there or you’ll get yourself lost.”
Mel saw the worn place in the dirt where she had been crawling in and out beneath the fallen timbers and planks. He walked over to the spot and called out, “Mister Ezekiel, it’s me, Mel Carroll. I come to help.”
“Henrietta, come on back now. It’s okay, you can get a chicken later.”
Ezekiel Adderly spoke as if he hadn’t heard Mel at all, which puzzled Mel because they were only a few feet apart.
Mrs. Adderly brushed by Mel, dropping to her hands and knees, and crawled into the shadowy opening, dragging the dead chicken along through the dirt. “Ah, so you did find one then,” Ezekiel Adderly proclaimed from inside. “Praise the Lord, at least for that small blessing.”
“Mister Ezekiel, it’s Mel. I’m coming in,” Mel called out. There was no answer.
A mix of foul odors met Mel as he wormed into the tangle of fallen lumber. Worse than the stench of filthy bodies and human waste was something even more foul, which Mel easily recognized as the odor of decay and death. There must be dead bodies under these ruins, bodies that the advancing army hadn’t taken the time to uncover and bury.
The opening widened after a few feet, and Mel stopped in surprise at what he saw ahead. The Adderlys had set up a little nest for themselves in space left open by chance when the barn collapsed. It was about five feet wide and eight feet long, formed by a span of rafters that had fallen across the side planks of a stall. There was headroom enough to sit up comfortably, but not quite enough to stand.
Ezekiel Adderly lay flat on his back on one side of the open space, unmoving and utterly wretched. Mel might have taken him for dead if he hadn’t heard him speak a moment before. He was bare to the waist, and all that remained of his trousers were filthy tatters. His right leg was swollen to twice its normal size, a hideous, blackened, unnatural thing that oozed pus and body fluids from a ragged hole midway on his thigh.
Mel realized that what he smelled as he crawled in was undoubtedly his neighbor’s rotting leg.
Henrietta Adderly was off in a corner pulling feathers off the chicken, her back to Mel, so for a moment his presence was unnoticed.
“Lord Almighty,” Mel mumbled. “I would have tried to get here sooner if I knew things were so bad.”
Ezekiel Adderly blinked his eyes a couple of times but didn’t move his head. His eyes were fixed on a spot above him. The muscles of his face worked in twisted grimmaces, no doubt trying to keep a host of agonies at bay. Mel couldn’t even imagine the depths of pain that a rotting leg like that must cause.
“They took Ham on off with them,” the old woman said unexpectedly. She didn’t turn her head toward Mel, and he was struck with the odd notion that she seemed to be explaining her son’s plight to the chicken. “Said they’d make a soldier of him. My little Ham. My little gravy-eater.”
The Adderlys had four offspring, two sons and two daughters. The oldest, Jaipeth, had left over a year before to fight, and months at a time had passed with no news of him. The younger son, Ham, who would be about sixteen now, was a lean, solid youth, quiet to a fault, and hardworking. It was hard for Mel to picture him running up a hillside with a musket in his hands, ready to kill some fellow from Arkansas.
“What about the girls, Miss Henrietta?” Mel asked quietly. He felt ashamed for showing his concern for Rochelle, with these two here in the shape they were, but the honest truth was that she was the reason he had come. “Where’s Rochelle and Becky?” There was no answer from the girls’ mother. The chicken held her attention.
Mel crawled forward and touched Ezekiel Adderly’s arm, then shook it lightly. The old man blinked and cocked his head slightly to the side. Tears trickled out of the corners of his eyes and ran down his cheeks into his beard. His ears were crusted with rivulets of dried blood.
“Who are you?” Ezekiel asked.
“It’s Melvin Carroll, sir,” Mel told him. “I’m so sorry. I would have come sooner if I knew how bad things were here.”
“You’re not one of them . . .” The old man’s eyes searched Mel’s features, and a glimmer of recognition came to them. “Wait, I know you. You’re that Carroll boy, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I’m Mel.”
“Before all this I was coming after you soon as my mare foaled.” His eyes darkened and Mel was put on his guard. “I o
nly learned last week what you done to my girl, my Rochelle, and I was coming for you.” Even now, in this place and this condition, a flash of anger and outrage still lit the old man’s face, but the pain and misery soon drove it away.
For his part, Mel hung his head, feeling a sudden, unexpected shame that had not troubled him since that night with Rochelle at the dance weeks ago. But how could he explain to this man, who was the girl’s father, who could not hear, and who was almost dead, that he had fought all the way over here to do the right thing by his daughter?
“Them caves is drafty and damp and full of bats,” Henrietta told the dead chicken a few feet away. She was cutting the bird up and dropping the pieces into a dented pot, although her plucking job was hardly perfect. Mel couldn’t figure out where or how she planned to cook it.
“Maybe you can carry on thataway with some of them girls from town, boy, but my Rochelle’s a God-fearing and decent . . . ,” Ezekiel said.
“It’s not a fit place for no young girls.” This from Henrietta.
“You need to remember the Lord’s got his eye on you all the time, boy. He seen what you done, and I’m sure it broke his heart, same as it did her mama’s and mine.”
“They oughtn’t to take my babies off to no caves like that. Those were black-hearted men, sent by Satan, that last bunch was.”
Suddenly Mel stopped listening to the old man’s reproaches, although his sermon continued in halting gasps.
“Who took the girls, Miss Henrietta?” Mel blurted out. “Was it after the army left? Was it deserters?”
Henrietta Adderly looked over at Mel, and he could see in her eyes that her addled brain was trying to make some sense of his presence here, and perhaps all the rest. “We wasn’t expecting company for dinner,” she said. “We don’t have much.”
