by Robert Hicks
“We don’t. And we won’t.”
He looked at me with sudden and unhappy understanding. I had given the order: leave the man to die alone. This is what I believed I had been taught to do. It had always thrilled me at the Academy to hear an instructor describe how we would have to make hard decisions, to eschew popularity for right, comfort for necessity. I had wanted to be that man. What I hadn’t realized then was that every decision didn’t need to be so damned hard. Hard-hearted, that is.
Sebastien walked away and ordered his men to mount up. They fell in with me, and we went off. Perhaps the boy would gain his senses and make it to safety. Perhaps he would die with honor, fighting Indians. Perhaps he would die and never be found. I would later declare him missing in my official report.
Sebastien let us go and walked back to the boy. I saw the smoke and the birds fleeing before I heard the shots. Two shots. Some of the men turned to go back, but I urged them on. They didn’t know what I had said to Sebastien, and some of them cursed him as a murderer. I let them think it. I had nothing to say. I could feel my hands shake. I had not thought what would happen to our little sharpshooter after we mounted out. Sebastien had, and the shots rattled me. My first kill, and it smelled of dust and horse sweat. Tasted dry.
He caught up to us a half mile or so down into the next valley. He rode at the back and said nothing for two days other than yes sir.
I had bound him to me. I knew he disliked me, perhaps hated me, but I was his only friend now, after those two shots. He would not explain himself to anyone, though some of the smarter men figured out what had happened and approached him diplomatically, with forgiveness. Go fuck yourself and get in line, he’d say. He didn’t speak to me, either, but when we bedded down he stayed close, and when we rode we rode together. He wasn’t afraid of the others. He simply couldn’t be one of them anymore, having killed their friend, no matter what the reason. He could put a gun to their heads and pull the trigger, and that made him an outlier. He wasn’t one of them anymore. He was one of me.
It was three days after the killing that I realized how I could beat the Comanche.
I nodded off in the saddle and jerked awake periodically. The rest of the men were in worse shape, and I knew that we had only a couple more days before we’d all be dead of starvation or thirst. Two men had deserted, riding off toward civilization, and I knew I had to act quick to finish things off or risk being recalled to the post and humiliated.
I was awake when we passed a strange rock for the second time. I remembered it because it had resembled a very large, bloody red liver. Birds had perched on it, streaking the rock with their dung. I had seen the rock seven days before.
A circle. If we were being led in a circle, what were we circling? There was something at the center very dear to the heathen Comanche.
It was only a day’s ride to the center. I was glad for the drought then, for the dust. We moved faster than we had for a week, raising a great cloud. I wanted them to see that I’d solved their riddle and that I was riding for their children and their wives. I wanted them to stop me. I wanted them to fight.
Sebastien rode beside me, shaking his head and pulling his slouch hat tighter down over his eyes. I knew this to be his one outward gesture of anger.
“You are not satisfied with the plan, Corporal?”
He scratched his horse’s neck slowly, gathering his words.
“I just would like to know what we’re going to do when we get there.”
“That will be up to them.”
“We’re going to beat them there.”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
“We shall see.”
I believe Sebastien was afraid. I believe he was afraid of himself. I believe that Sebastien was afraid of what I would allow him to do, what I would encourage him to do. The killing of the sharpshooter was the beginning. While riding beside him and observing him, I decided I had misjudged him. His men obeyed not because he disciplined them, which he didn’t, but because he was unknowable and therefore capable of anything. His silences contained possibility, and after he put down a man and his horse, those possibilities turned dark. If he was not insane just then, he would become insane under my tutelage. I pulled it out of him, used it for my own ends.
The camp was dirty and chaotic. The women, children, and old men lay in the shade of deerskin shelters, nothing more. They had little. The twisting breeze of the lower valley pulled the smoke from their fires into whirling cones that danced from shelter to shelter. I watched from an overlook with Sebastien and two scouts. The men, crippled by age, ambled from fire pit to fire pit, each built in a hollow part of a rock wall, or under an overhang. They had seen our sign and struggled to put out the fires slowly without releasing too much smoke. Too late, of course.
They were all dressed as vagabonds. They wore torn shirts taken from trash heaps, leather shoes and boots that didn’t fit, snap brims and slouch hats. They had accepted our refuse, made it their own. A strange people.
There were eleven old men, eighteen women, thirteen children. Their warriors had discovered our gambit, and I could see their own dust trail moving toward us like a snake. They were no more than an hour away, and I reckoned they were fifteen strong at least. We were an equal force, though starved and weak and feverish. I decided we would fight a defensive fight to multiply our strength. Make them attack.
Sebastien stared down at the encampment, mumbling to himself. I had seen him do this while writing letters home, to whom I have no idea. He scratched at paper with a nub and chewed his fingers, searching for the perfect word. I guessed it was a woman. Someone who made him anxious, twitchy. He mumbled to himself then, as he did now.
I sent the two scouts down to where the rest of the men had found cover. They were to get them up and prepared, ready for a fight finally.
“Corporal, what do you think?”
“The Comanche will be here soon.”
“We’ll have to take the camp. They’ll fight if we have their women.”
I could hear him grinding his teeth. He put his hand up to his head and brushed his hair back. The pocks on his head looked as if someone had taken a carving knife to him. It was a landscape, now furrowed.
“Take their camp.”
“That’s right.”
“Then what?”
The question again. I smiled. Why did I smile? Why such joy? I felt every drop of blood cascading through my body, I was aware of every thing around me. I could see with my hands, with my skin, I could feel sound on my cheek, I sensed the earth and the air move, turning and turning. You’ll have to make the hard decisions. The hard decisions were cruel and necessary, they marked the man who knew the world from the man who lived with gauzy hope for beauty. One could not know good without knowing evil. The hard decision.
“We’ll see.”
He pulled his knife and I thought he would attack. I was surprised he hadn’t tried sooner, and I rolled to my feet and drew a pistol. But he was only pulling it to sharpen its blade, which he spit on and tested on the dark, wiry hair of his arm.
“You’re going to finish this, aren’t you, sir?”
“If by ‘finish’ you mean defeating the enemy, then yes.”
“You mean for us to do more than that, even if you don’t say it. Even if you don’t know it yourself. You mean for something else to happen.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You will. You’ll know it when you see it, sir, and you should know that you did it.”
“Go back to your men.”
He held the knife up in the sun and let it flash in his eyes.
“Yes sir.”
We took the camp, it wasn’t difficult. No shots fired, no one hurt. We divided the men from the women from the children, three small groups seated on the ground in the shade of rock and scrub. They were silent, no one spoke, which I found odd. I imagined screaming and yelling, I had dreaded it actually, but it had all gone well.
When we were done we took our defensive positions—there was really only one way into the camp, the rear of the camp was blocked by a boulder field. Not long afterward the Comanche were standing above us in the rock a couple miles away, looking down. There were more of them than I’d realized, perhaps twice as many, but we had the defensive position and the advantage. We had set the terms of the fight.
For an hour we remained like that. Our captives barely moved, never spoke. Our men became restless, or fell asleep. The Comanche didn’t move, just stared and stared. It was shortly after noon, the sun fell down upon us and pressed. I felt rooted to the ground. We had set the terms of a fight, and there was no fight.
Sebastien came over, head down, kicking pebbles out of his way. Everywhere Spanish bayonet plants grew up out of the ground as if the earth had armed itself.
“They ain’t coming,” he said.
“They’ll come.”
“No they won’t. They’ll wait us out. They know we can’t stay here forever, that we’ve lost our strength. They’ve been watching us for days. Weeks. They know it. They’ll wait us out.”
“We have their camp.”
“What do they care, sir?”
“The women and children.”
“They look comfortable to me, and to them up there with their arrows and rifles and lances. They haven’t even taken a shot, they haven’t moved.”
He was right. I’d known he was right before he said anything. I suppose I had wanted it to happen this way, but couldn’t admit it to myself. I was glad to have someone else to say it for me, someone else to do it. When it came to it, someone else made the hard decision for me.
“We’ll have to stir them up,” I said.
“You want me to do it, don’t you see?”
“Yes, Corporal.”
“You knew this would happen. It was the only thing that could happen. When we turned off that track and came to this camp, there was only one way this would end, no? You’ll understand someday.”
I registered his insubordination, his snarls, the glancing look into my eye. Full of disdain and hate.
He dragged the first woman out into the clearing, visible for miles around, and cut her throat like he was butchering a hog. She was dead quick. One soldier started to run but thought better of it when Sebastien rounded on him, knife flashing, growling. The rest of the men stayed put, averting their eyes.
The Comanche stirred but didn’t charge. Sebastien took the woman’s child and killed him the same way, laying him gently next to his mother. Their blood mingled and was absorbed into the ground. Still the Comanche did not charge. Sebastien shouted at the men that they would die if they didn’t get busy, and when the men saw that the warriors were willing to suffer the sacrifice of a mother and child while waiting us out to our deaths, they understood. I watched.
Once the massacre began, there was no stopping them. One killing leads to the next, and so on. A man changes when he’s killed someone, so much of what was possible for him in life becomes impossible: innocence, grace, forgiveness, sweetness. A killer is always a killer, and once the possibility of redemption disappears there is only anger: at a world that led to damnation, at the dead themselves, at whoever was at hand. The anger is contagious, it moves through groups of men instantly causing frenzy. I didn’t involve myself. I watched the Comanche ride hard for us, screaming.
We shot, stabbed, and beat the women and children. We ripped their shirts off and mutilated them. Some of the old men, old warriors, fought back and were struck down quick. Some others of the Indians ran off, chased by others of my men. Some escaped. Soon it was over, thirty down. The Comanche were close and I ordered the men back to their positions. They were slow to move and I rode in among them, slapping at them with my sword. Get on and get down! Only Sebastien remained, eyes bright and body bent, putting his knife to each throat of the fallen, just to make sure. His shirt was brown with blood, as were the heels and toes of his boots. When he stood up I could see the tears running down each cheek. He didn’t look sorry, though, for what he had done. Some part of him wept while the other part brandished his knife and licked his lips. I’d never again see him weep, or show remorse for anything.
The battle was quick and hard. They drove off our horses and we fought on foot. Our rifles and pistols overwhelmed them ultimately. Our men fought for their lives, and they were maddened temporarily by bloodlust. We chased them down the dry draw of an old stream until it was clear they weren’t coming back. An arrow pierced my hand, a wound I can still see and sometimes feel in the night as a hot flame. I heard a man hollering something godawful down among the boulders and sage of the old streambed. When the shouting was done and the howling was over, Sebastien returned from the streambed with a blank look upon his face.
Twelve dead Comanche, and though we suffered no deaths during the battle, I wrote down in my notebook these words: One dead, the Kentuck fallen honorably.
When we were returned to the barracks, I wrote a report that described how we were tricked by the Comanche into a fight and how they used their squaws in battle. From what I remember of my official report:
Meantime, the Indians quickly as they discharged their arms, handed them to their squaws, who ran to the rear, reloaded and returned them. At this juncture I was pierced in the left hand with an arrow which passed through the reins and the fourth finger, pinning my hand to the bridle. I instantly broke the spearhead and threw it aside. Unmindful of the fact that the feathers could not pass through the wound, I pulled the arrow in the direction in which it had been shot, and was compelled finally in order to free myself of it to seize the feathered in lieu of the barbed end.
Thus raged this hand-to-hand conflict until all our shots were expended, and it was found that owing to the restiveness of the horses we could not reload while mounted. We then fell back about fifty yards and dismounted for that purpose. Soon afterward arose from beyond the burning heap one continuous mourning howl, such as can alone come forth from the heart of the red man in deep distress. These sounds of sorrow revealed to me that we were in little danger of a renewal of the assault, and I was, I may in truth say, most thankful for the truce thus proclaimed.
Several things happened the week we returned. I received a letter from the commanding general of the Department of Texas, describing our horror this way: “Lieutenant Hood’s affair was a most gallant one, and much credit is due to both the officer and men.” Thus was born the Gallant Hood legend. I received a promotion and a new command and our unit broke up. Every other man requested a transfer.
Sebastien Lemerle came to see me off as I was packing the cart that would carry me over to Fort Mason and my new duties. He had cut his hair nearly to his scalp. This time he looked at me directly, coolly, almost without blinking. He was looking for something.
“Back where I come from, Hood, they say the mark of the Devil can be seen. You got to look close, but there it is, always. On marked men, that is.”
“You should rest, Corporal.”
“Your secret is safe, Lieutenant.”
“I have no secrets.” A lie, but I had already begun the march to becoming the great disgraced General Hood, and I would become an excellent liar.
The Comanche had fled from me, and my men had feared me. They had marched until they were starved and dry as the sand in their boots. They did this because I told them to do it. The Comanche stopped to fight because I had driven them to it. Men shot each other, clubbed each other, sent arrows into our hands and hearts. I had ordered it so. The skies fractured into so many mirrors, each reflecting back my great glory. I did not notice this then, as I was fighting for my life. But I remember the light, numb feeling of watching the fight spread out from me like cracks in glass, and as man tumbled with man to the ground with knives and teeth flashing, I was myself enlarged to contain it all. I was its cause, its mind, its soul. The arrow that pierced my flesh had already been part of me from the moment I’d been born, perhaps before. The pain was extraordinary, perfect
, a point on my body in which everything—warriors, soldiers, magpies, brush, rock, blood, the unintelligible language of the savage—was stilled and made known. I was simultaneously the boundless and ancient battlefield and the point of one arrow in one flesh. I was young and I had destroyed worlds. I was ruined and awed by myself. I required obedience.
“You have no secrets from yourself anymore, that is true.” His voice sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of a very deep well. Distant, and yet reading my thoughts.
“Step back, Corporal, and shut your mouth.”
“You and me, we are like brothers.”
“I have no affection for you.”
“I have none for you. But we are, what you say, the same. We are reborn from the same womb, out of darkness. Twins.”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Never. Not once in my life. But I will admit the world looks much different now.”
I mounted and rode off.
“See you later, Lieutenant!” he called. My hand began to bleed on my saddle. Soon it was dripping onto the ground, which absorbed it quickly as if it had never existed.
So, yes, I knew Sebastien Lemerle, native of New Orleans, son of Creole whores and privateers. I didn’t at first recognize him that night at the ball. He dressed fine and he talked with grace and power, nothing like the stoppered and shifty young man I had seen kill silently and with resentment. I saw a man enjoying himself, a man in command. He had become something greater and more awful than I’d known back in Texas. I had known him as a skilled but reluctant killer, a man who knew what he had inside and had wished desperately to keep it screwed down forever. I had forced it out of him, and then there he was, beating a colored man with a poker and making sport of it.
Can a man say he has created another man? Once a stranger but now something remade, a piece of a man’s neglected and rotten soul broken off and given form, life? Would that man be a brother, as Sebastien had suggested ten years before? I denied it then and convinced Anna Marie I’d never met the man. But now I am not so sure. I believe that the presence of Sebastien in my city—or, more precisely, my presence in his city—was not so much of an accident as I at first suspected. When I pray to God and when I dream, I hear the howl out beyond the scrub, in the streambed, and I wonder if the events that followed that night at the ball, and the people caught up in them, weren’t somehow sung into existence by the beast who gave forth that howl. Poor Paschal, Rintrah, Father Mike, Anna Marie, Sebastien, me, and even that amiable idiot Eli Griffin. Something was loosed on the world, and there in New Orleans it fell to us to silence the howl somehow.
