The Year of Jubilo

by Bahr, Howard;

  “Why you reckon Solomon Gault killed that boy under the bridge?” Stribling said.

  What little sound had been in the room ceased, and the men turned to look. Thomas covered his face in his hands. The sheriff’s eyes grew wide. “Well, goddamn—,” he began, but was interrupted by the clatter of an overturned chair as Rafe Deaton rose unsteadily, his eyes fixed on Stribling’s face.

  Stribling held up his hands. “Now, I don’t mean to say Gault did it himself, you understand—he would’ve sent a man to do the actual deed. I just don’t understand—”

  “Well, goddamn—,” began the sheriff again.

  “Gault who?” said Rafe Deaton. “Who is Gault, and where is he?” The sergeant moved around the table, steadying himself with one hand on the tabletop. He crossed the room and approached the two men at the bar; when he stopped, his face was an inch from Stribling’s. “And who are you anyway?” he said.

  “Now, you get out of it,” said Luker.

  “Fuck you, you little sawed-off son bitch, you,” replied the sergeant.

  “Watch your mouth,” said Luker. “I’ll—”

  Rafe whirled, cocked his fist, but he was too far gone for such a move. He stumbled backward as Luker put his hand to the butt of his pistol and began to draw. Thomas was quick—he already had his hand on the truncheon under the bar—but Stribling was quicker with his pocket gun. Before the sheriff’s pistol was halfway out, the muzzle of Stribling’s Colt was pressed under his chin, pushing his head back.

  “Don’t worry,” said Stribling. “It’s only a little .31, it won’t hurt much prob’ly.”

  “Well, God damn,” said the sheriff.

  Stribling laughed. With his free hand, he removed the sheriff’s Navy Colt from its holster and thrust it into his own waistband. Then, still pressing the pocket gun’s muzzle under Luker’s chin, Stribling turned the man and backed him across the room and out the door. When Luker reached the edge of the gallery, he teetered a moment, windmilling his arms, then fell backward down the steps and into the mud. He rose quickly to his hands and knees and looked up at Stribling.

  “You know Solomon Gault?” Stribling asked.

  Luker rose to his feet. The sun was bright after the gloom of the tavern. Zeke, tethered by the woodpile, raised his head and studied the two men, his ears pricked with curiosity. At his feet, Beowulf slept on. The cat sat on the woodpile, studying the mockingbird in the limbs of the hackberry tree. Ben Luker wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I know him,” he said. “You have played hell. Now, you gimme my pistol back.”

  “No,” said Stribling. “You tell Mister Gault that the hand of Providence is about to close on his nappy head. Now get on away from here before I forget I am a Christian.”

  Luker backed away a few paces. “You gon’ be sorry you talked to me like that,” he said. Then he turned and lumbered away toward the square. Stribling watched him go, and for a moment he felt painfully small and petty and dirty. He looked over at Zeke, who was watching him suspiciously.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” Stribling said to the horse. “I attach no virtue to humiliating a man.” Then he turned and went back through the tavern door and this time closed it behind him. In the candlelight, he sought out Nobles and Peck. They were on their feet now (Peck with his crutch thrust under his arm), and as Stribling watched, they began to clap politely, like gentlemen at the opera. Stribling blushed and crossed the room to the bar.

  “Have a beer on the house,” said Thomas. “Then you can tell me—”

  “Who are you, anyway?” asked Rafe Deaton, who was sitting on the floor now, his back against the bar.

  Stribling nodded gratefully at Thomas and took a long draught from the beer. When he put the mug down, he looked at the sergeant. “A philosopher,” he said.

  Mister Wooster approached then, his gray derby hat perched on the back of his head. “Just a minute of your time, sir,” he said.

  “Surely,” said Stribling.

  “Let me introduce myself,” said Wooster, and did.

  “I am pleased to meet you, sir,” said Stribling. “I have never known a yankee journalist, though I have always wanted to.”

  Wooster flourished his mechanical pencil. “That was an extraordinary display,” he said. “Tell me how you felt when the sheriff drew his pistol.”

  “He didn’t draw it,” said Stribling.

  “You felt the white heat of anger,” said Wooster, writing in his notebook. “Once more, unbidden, the lust of battle rose like a flame in your heart.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” said Stribling. “I felt … I felt the sting of outrage, to have come so far, over so many bloodied fields, only to be challenged by one of my own at the threshold of … of … ”

  “Of the home that for so long had been your beacon, your guide, now ravished by the iron heel of the oppressor,” said Wooster, writing.

  “Now, wait a goddamn minute,” said Rafe Deaton. He struggled to his feet, aided by Stribling and the journalist, one under each arm. “These goddamned rebels—,” the sergeant began.

  “Infidels,” said Wooster, writing.

  “Infidels?” said Stribling.

  “Perhaps that is a bit strong,” said Wooster. “Did I hear you say you were a famous outlaw?”

  “He is no outlaw,” said Rafe. “He is a goddamned rebel comin in here.” Professor Malcolm Brown approached the bar. He, too, wore a derby, and a white linen duster stained with chemicals and ink. “Stop by the studio,” he said to Stribling. “I’ll make your image. No charge.”

  Wooster laughed. “Studio? Hell, you ain’t got a studio, Mac.”

  “I got a tent,” protested Brown.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Stribling, holding up his hands. Still holding them up, palms outward as if he were delivering a benediction, Stribling moved out into the room. He turned, looking into the faces of the men sitting in the shadows. Nobles and Peck slouched in their chairs, watching him through eyes that seemed to have lost their focus. Bloodworth and Craddock, whom Stribling did not know, watched him, too. They still wore their short gray jackets, though all the buttons had been removed. Bloodworth seemed calm enough and regarded Stribling as if he were about to deliver an interesting lecture. Craddock’s eyes sparkled with amusement. He crossed one leg over the other, and Stribling noted the paper-thin sole of his Jefferson shoe. Finally, Stribling looked at the journalist, who stood at the bar with his pencil ready.

  “Mister Wooster, you can put down this,” said Stribling. “You can say that a citizen named Wall Stutts murdered the boy under the bridge, and Solomon Gault put him up to it.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, God damn,” said Thomas, turning in a full circle behind the bar, his hands in the air.

  “Stutts!” said Nobles. “How do you know—”

  “There it is, boys,” said Stribling. “But I am only a stranger here, and I am not used to your ways.”

  “You might be a little out of line,” said Nobles.

  Craddock’s eyes were glittering now, his face frozen in a half smile. “I’m in,” he said, rising to his feet, the chair scraping behind him. He looked at Deaton. “I ain’t seen one of you sons of bitches yet that was dead enough to suit me.”

  Deaton pushed away from the bar, his hands opening and closing so that the knuckles cracked. He lurched forward, stumbling, and Stribling moved to catch him, pressed hard against him and gathered the collar of his frock coat in his hand. “Wait,” he said, his mouth at the sergeant’s ear. “Wait a minute, keep your wits.” Deaton tried to push by, but Stribling easily forced him back against the bar. Then Stribling turned on Nobles. “Out of line? Well, I beg your pardon. Where I come from, murder and cowardice are not among the cardinal virtues, but I suppose the custom’s different here. Carl, where’d you go Friday night, anyhow?”

  “Goddamn you, sir,” said Nobles. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and at the same time, Marcus Peck hauled himself upright on his crutch. Henry Clyde Wooster moved behind the bar with Th
omas, writing furiously. Malcolm Brown held out his hands. “Now, gentlemen—,” he began, but whatever he might have said was cut short by the crash of the bottles and glasses Craddock cleared from the table with one sweep of his arm. Bloodworth leapt up, cursing his friend for a fool, but Craddock ignored him and moved out to the center of the floor where he stood with his fists cocked at his side. Suddenly the whole room was filled with movement, with voices making words that were sound only, the odor of cigars and sweat and stale beer overcome by the raw stink of anger, the smell (Stribling thought) of the end of the line, the last moment before something was done that could never be undone, and he, Stribling, the cause of it, because he had forgotten how deep hatred could run, because he had never hated any thing nor any man in his long life. And he might have said Stop, now—I take it back—I am only a stranger here—except he didn’t have to, for at that moment L. W. Thomas lifted a sawed-off, double-barreled fowling piece from under the bar and cocked both barrels and fired the left one into the ceiling of the Citadel of Djibouti. A jet of flame eighteen inches long illuminated the postures of the men like a tableau and opened a hole in the roof through which sunlight poured suddenly and unexpectedly like a message from God Himself. Then the right hammer, jarred by the detonation, snapped on its cap and set that barrel off; this time, however, the charge was damp: there was a great belch of white smoke, a pattering of shot like sleet, then a spew of sparks and flame like a Chinese firework. When it fizzled out at last, dense smoke swirled in the column of sunlight from the roof. The men stood gaping in attitudes of unbelief, their ears ringing, the thing they were about to create hanging in the air before them. The silence that fell upon them then was tangible and weighted like an anvil. It created a globelike vacuum that drew all their belligerence down to a black ball like solid shot, and into that empty place Stuart Bloodworth stepped, the front of his pants soaked in beer, his face calm, his voice without any inflection at all.

  “I was never a very good soldier,” he said. “Never could drill, and I always hated uniforms, even when we didn’t have any. I stayed to the end”—he looked at Nobles—“but I don’t intend to waste another hour of my life on this horseshit. You better talk to the man while you still can.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Craddock. He righted his chair and sat down, his elbows on the table. Nobles remained standing, his right hand touching the tabletop, his eyes cast down like a man peering over a precipice. The smoke had settled to the floor now, and Bloodworth, still in the center of the room, seemed to be standing in a ground fog. When he moved to his chair, the smoke swirled around his ankles.

  “Rafe,” said Thomas. He stretched his hand across the bar and touched the sergeant’s shoulder. Deaton tried to turn his head, but it merely wobbled on his shoulders. “You need to go on home,” said Thomas. “You come back later, I’ll fetch you a bottle of the nastiest Irish whiskey you can drink, on the house, if they’s any house left.” He turned to the journalist. “Mister Wooster, will you—”

  The journalist closed his notebook. His face was shiny with sweat, a wet strand of hair curling from beneath the brim of his derby. “Of course,” he said. He came around the bar, glanced at Stribling. “That’s S-t-r-i—”

  “Come on, Henry, dammit,” said Thomas.

  “Of course, of course,” said the journalist, and took the sergeant’s arm. Deaton’s eyes were unfocused now, his jaw slack. He tried to speak, but could make no words.

  “Likely he’s gon’ be sick,” said Thomas.

  “Goddamned rebels,” said the sergeant at last.

  Wooster led the man across the room, their shoes crunching in the glass that littered the floor. Craddock turned in his chair to watch them, the glittering, light in his eyes dulled with sudden self-awareness.

  “Leave the door open on your way,” said Thomas.

  The sunlight and air that the open door admitted seemed unfamiliar to Stribling, as though he had been long underground. He blinked and turned away from the brightness, and found himself looking into the eyes of L. W. Thomas. The man gestured toward the smoky room. “It’s your party,” he said. “What’d you say your name was again?”

  Stribling was about to answer when a single shot clapped sharply across the afternoon. Stribling and Thomas looked at each other, their faces mirroring the same question. Then there was a clumping from the porch, and the doorway darkened, and the patrons of the Citadel turned to see Henry Clyde Wooster standing in the rectangle of sunlight, holding out a hand that was smeared with blood. “Gentlemen,” said Wooster. Then he spun dramatically and collapsed on his back among the sawdust and spilled beer and broken glass at Patrick Craddock’s feet. Craddock bent down and prodded the journalist, then lifted the man’s eyelids one by one. “Aw, he ain’t hurt,” Craddock said. “Just swooned.”

  Stribling was the first one out the door, with Thomas behind him. Zeke pulled nervously at his tether; Beowulf was on his feet, watching toward the cedars beyond the road. Rafe Deaton lay on his face in the mud like a toppled statue, his arms by his sides, the palms of his hands turned upward. The back of his frock coat was ragged where the ball had passed out, and already a trio of greenbottle flies circled the wound.

  “Aw, mankind,” said Thomas. He and Stribling clattered down the steps and knelt by the dying man. “Aw, no,” said Thomas. “Not after all that way.”

  Stribling turned the sergeant over. He smelled of whiskey and bile; the wound in his chest sucked air as he tried to breathe. He lifted his hand, closed it on Stribling’s sleeve, tried to speak but coughed blood in Stribling’s face instead.

  “What, Rafe?” said Thomas, bending close, his hand on the man’s chest. “Tell me.”

  Deaton whispered, shaped a single word, and died. His eyes remained open, his face musing, as though he had at last discerned the mystery that lay beyond the ridge so long ago, in the emptiness where hawks floated, and time held no meaning, and dreams fashioned themselves out of light and air.

  Stribling had to pry the man’s hand loose from his sleeve. He rose and turned away, wiping his face with the handkerchief he kept in his sleeve. “My God,” he said. “I never saw this. I wouldn’t of come here.”

  “It wasn’t you,” said Thomas. He fixed the body, crossing the hands on the breast, closing the eyes. Then he looked off toward the cedars beyond the road. Beowulf was over there now, walking stiff-legged along the edge of the road. “He was over yonder, just inside the trees.”

  “Yes,” said Stribling. He looked down at the body. “What did he say?” Thomas didn’t answer. He shifted to his other knee and went on looking at the cedars, the muscles in his jaw working. Beowulf returned from the road and crept around the body and thrust his muzzle under Thomas’ hand. Thomas absently stroked the bony head.

  By now, the patrons of the Citadel had gathered in the yard, all but Wooster, who was sitting on the top step in his shirtsleeves, mopping his face with the wet rag Mac Brown had used to revive him. Patrick Craddock knelt by the body and examined the wound.

  “That one dead enough to suit you?” asked Stribling.

  Craddock looked up. He was curly headed, his face smooth and unblemished as a boy’s. “Let it go,” he said.

  Stribling looked at the blood on his handkerchief, then tucked it back in his sleeve. “Sure,” he said.

  “I figure we got about two minutes before von Arnim shows up,” said Nobles. “What did he say to you, L.?”

  Thomas rose to his feet, wincing, his hand pressed to his side. “Henry,” he said.

  “What?” asked Stribling.

  “That’s what he said. ‘Henry.’”

  “Henry who? Do you know?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Thomas said.

  “Well, who is it? Not Wooster, surely?”

  “No,” said Thomas. “It ain’t a who atall, it’s a what.” He turned to Nobles and balled his fist in the other’s face. “You know what I mean,” he said.

  Nobles pushed the fist away. “Don’t be raisin you
r hand to me,” he said.

  Marcus Peck balanced on his one leg and pointed with his crutch up the road. “Boys,” he said, “I recommend we move this discussion to another venue, for yonder comes the cavalry.”

  They looked toward the square. A dozen Federal cavalrymen were coming at the trot, crowding the road in column-of-fours, their harness and sabers jingling. At their head rode Lieutenant von Arnim, his pistol in his hand.

  “Time for the big skedaddle,” said Craddock.

  “No!” said Thomas. “Wooster saw it all. He can—”

  “Are you daft?” said Nobles. “After the other night, they’ll have us decoratin the trees by suppertime. Besides, we got to parley. I mean right now.”

  Thomas turned and looked at the Citadel of Djibouti. Wooster had retrieved his hat and coat and was bent over his notebook, writing. Mac Brown was reading over his shoulder. Thomas saw, as clearly as if he were standing there, the dim back room with its barrels and crates, the tattered playbill, the box with his possessions, and, under the cot, the leather valise full of U.S. greenbacks. Nobles was right, of course: the Federals would be stirred up like hornets now. He started for the door.

  “Where you goin?” said Nobles.

  “I got to get somethin,” said Thomas. Then, as if they were planning an outing on Leaf River: “Where you all goin to be?”

  Nobles raised his hands. “I don’t—”

  “Come on, boys,” said Stuart Bloodworth. “My wife don’t look good in black.”

  “Well, Jesus,” said Stribling. He thought quickly. “You boys know the Carter house, up by the graveyard?”

  “We’re on our way,” said Nobles. He put out his hand. “Come along, Marcus.”

  Stribling took Peck by the arm. “You can ride,” he said, and led the man to the woodpile where Zeke was tied. “Quick now, put your stump in here,” said Stribling, cupping his hands, but Peck shook him off and clambered up the woodpile and flung himself across the saddle as Stribling watched in astonishment. “Oh, never mind me,” said Peck. “I am hell on retreat.”