The Year of Jubilo

by Bahr, Howard;

  “Go back to sleep,” Morgan said, and the dog’s tail thumped under the sheet. “You wake that boy and I’ll strangle you,” she said.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and discovered she was thoroughly awake. She thought of Gawain, and wished it was Tuesday. Morgan Rhea took a bath every Tuesday and Saturday, no matter what—no matter war nor conflagration nor death in any form. Her father thought it excessive, her brother believed it insane. Still, she bathed, and took her own time about it. If it was Tuesday, she would smell clean now, like the lye soap she used, and smell of rose water, and Gawain would breathe in the hollow of her shoulder and say how sweet it was. She blushed at the thought. Then she remembered that she hadn’t any rose water for two years now. But if it was Tuesday, she would smell clean anyhow, and maybe he would put his face against her breasts and say how sweet it was. This won’t do, she thought, so in the flickering dark, with the rain hammering outside, she tried to remember all the interesting facts she’d learned recently. A brick laid vertically with the broad side out was called a sailor, with the narrow side, a soldier. Gawain was a soldier, years gone into the dark and smoke, and he knew things she could not imagine. No, she told herself, and thought about old Mister Carter in the garden one afternoon, and she asked him why he always tied up gourd vines instead of letting them travel on the ground, and he said for the martins. A martin gourd wants a straight neck for hanging, he said, and if you let them travel on the ground, the necks will be crooked. That was an interesting fact. A martin gourd’s neck was thick and straight for hanging. Gawain Harper—

  “Oh, hell and damnation,” she said aloud. She rose then and moved across the room and out the door and down the stairs, just as she had done on the night Gawain Harper returned. No one was in the parlor now; the house was deathly still; save for the tick-tock of the hall clock where it kept vigil, its wheels and cogs moving by tiny increments, its little brass hammer waiting to strike. And strike it did, three times, just as she opened the back door onto the storm.

  The gallery roof was pouring a perfect curtain of water, and the yard was lit by lightning. Morgan took a deep breath and plunged through the silver curtain, the rain shocking cold on her back, her head. She splashed through the yard, laughing to herself, until she stood under the eaves of the barn. Her hair was soaked, and her nightdress wringing wet, and her feet muddy. The barn door was open a crack, and she slipped through into the sudden dryness, the ammoniac smell of horses and the sound of men sleeping. Zeke whinnied softly and stamped a hoof. “Easy,” Morgan whispered. She could see Thomas where he lay tangled in his blanket, and Stribling lying in his long underwear, an arm thrown across his eyes. And Gawain. Morgan moved silently across the barn floor, over the old cornhusks and damp straw, and stood over the place where Gawain Harper lay. He was propped up on Stribling’s saddle, breathing softly, his face composed like one who had no troubles in the world. He shot a man today, she thought. How many does that make? And again she wondered at the knowledge that lived in him that she would never reach if she lived a thousand years. A sadness wrapped around her then, and, soft, she pulled aside the rough blanket and lay down beside Gawain Harper and pressed her head against his thin naked chest, breathing the smell of him—the sweat and tobacco and horse smell, but nothing of death or remorse.

  Gawain woke then, and moved against her, and she felt his hand on the back of her head, and maybe he was dreaming, she thought.

  “Are you dreamin?” she asked, and Gawain started, his hand groping for the pistol until she spoke again. “It’s Morgan,” she said. “Don’t be scared.”

  “Aw, me,” said Gawain. “What are you doin, child?”

  “I’m damned if I know, sir,” she said into the warm skin of his breast. “What’s that thing around your head? You look ridiculous.”

  “It helps my head when it hurts,” he said.

  “Oh, is your head hurtin?” she said, and let her lips brush his neck. “Poor darlin.”

  “Well, not so much as it was,” said Gawain, and unwound the rag and tossed it aside and laughed.

  “Does a Jew not bleed?” Thomas muttered in his sleep, and threw his arm over Stribling, who stirred and muttered.

  “Damn, I wish the boys was elsewhere,” said Gawain into the wet tangle of Morgan’s hair.

  “What if they were?” said Morgan.

  “Well, I will show you,” said Gawain, and he did.

  MOLOCHI FISH WAS awake; he could never sleep when his mother was in the yard. She was out there now, howling, stalking back and forth with her winding sheet dragging behind, tearing at her hair. The cabin was stifling with the door closed and the window boards down, and it was dark as pitch. He could hear the dogs moving in their pen, made restless by the old woman. But there were no children tonight, nor any niggers. That was good. That meant he could go outside, even cross the river if he wanted to.

  He thought about whether he should go or not. He had gone over the river yesterday, early in the morning, and found himself in the willows by the railroad. The soldiers were burying somebody in the graveyard, and Molochi watched. He could hear words drifting over the morning. Suddenly he shivered, as if an ague had taken him. He looked around, expecting to see the dark birds. Instead, a man was sitting horseback a dozen paces away, the same man who was with the Harper boy up on the big road that other day when the dogs killed the fyce. Molochi couldn’t figure how he’d missed him when he came into the willow grove. At that moment, the horse caught wind of Molochi and shied, and the man calmed him, then spoke to Molochi. Molochi said something in return, and the man let him use his spyglass, and there was Solomon Gault. After a while, the man was gone. Molochi never heard him go.

  Now, in the sweltering cabin, Molochi’s head stirred with a collection of murky images inhabited by figures he could not name. Then another picture came, this one clear and distinct: a wood in moonlight, a stone wall, a dog sniffing at the fresh-turned earth while lightning flickered to the west.

  Molochi Fish rose stiffly from the floor where he had been sitting for hours. He felt in the dark for his hat, then groped for the bolt on the cabin door. When he pulled it back, the door swung open on its leather hinges. The moonlight burst upon him all at once and made him blink. He stepped down into the yard.

  His mother stopped her howling and looked at him. She was thin and hunched over nearly double, and he could see the black O of her mouth. Molochi picked up a rock from the fire pit and flung it at her; it passed through her as if she wasn’t even there. Down the slope, almost to the trees, the Indian woman was watching him. In the trees themselves he could see a moving white line, like a tendril of fog. Those were the dogs, the ones he’d cut their throats and didn’t save their blood. He did not give a goddamn about them. Molochi reached in his pocket and took out a leather bag with a dried frog in it. Clutching it tightly in his hand, he moved down the slope toward the trees, the river, the town.

  MIDNIGHT, AND THE candle lanterns still burned in Colonel Burduck’s office. The moon was gone now, lost in the storm. Through the window came the smell of rain, of something blooming, of wood smoke from the soldiers’ dying fires. The wind trembled the candle flames; the moving light made shadows on the face of Rafe Deaton.

  Deaton’s body had been in the hot sun almost an hour that afternoon, and the agents that would return him to dust had got a good purchase. They announced themselves now by a faint odor that persisted in spite of the open window, the cool breeze, the blooming things. Rigor had set in and pulled Deaton’s eyes open and drawn his lips back from his teeth, so that he appeared to be grinning at some secret joke on the ceiling. His hands were swelling and had lifted themselves from his chest, as though he were preparing, by infinite degrees, to rise from his couch.

  Henry Clyde Wooster lay on the horsehair settee, his hands under his cheek, snoring lightly like a child. Colonel Burduck sat alone by the window, his feet propped on the sill. He was not aware of the corpse, nor of the grumbling sounds its stomach made from time
to time. In fact, he was aware of nothing but the rush of the water moving under the keel, the groaning of the shrouds, the clink of a tin lantern swinging from the eave of the deckhouse.

  The storm was pushing a wind ahead of it. A gust found its way through the window and ruffled the hair of Sergeant Rafe Deaton and blew out the struggling candles. The wind might have blown Solomon Gault’s note off the table, too, had it not been weighed down by the star-and-crescent badge of the sheriff of Cumberland County.

  As the wind drove them eastward, the stem of the ship plowed deep into the sea, churning bursts of phosphorus, like liquid stars, from the ink-black water. All around lay the great dark; it seemed so infinite, so immortal in the night watches, yet it too, like all things and all persons, followed time. Soon it would yield, not to light yet, but to a lesser dark illumined by the morning star. Then, sudden and unexpected, a red smudge would flame over the lip of the world, as though a ship were burning there. That would be tomorrow.

  PART 4

  Deo Vindice

  XIX

  The storm broke with a great display of lightning and uproar of thunder—the sharp, cracking kind that jolts a sleeper awake, then reminds him of all his unshriven sins. Rain fell in sheets and wind-driven waves; the creek rose, but there was no overflow this time. Finally, the storm went muttering and complaining off to the east, and behind it the stars winked on again. When the sun rose, people looked at it and said, “Gon’ be a hot one today.”

  The sun had not been up long when a sentry pounded on the side of the boxcar with his musket butt. Another pushed the door back, squealing on its tracks. A contraband set a steaming tub of cornmeal on the sill, then followed it with a clatter of tin plates and spoons. “Eat up, boys,” said the sentry, and pushed the door to again, leaving a narrow crack for light.

  Within, Marcus Peck sat up in his mildewed blankets and scratched himself. “Goddamn mosquitoes like to eat me alive,” he said.

  Nobles yawned. “They ain’t that many mosquitoes in Miss’ippi,” he said. He pressed his temples gingerly. “Mankind, who stole the top of my head?”

  Craddock said, “They never brought Luker back.”

  “Too bad,” said Peck. “I was havin fun watchin him shit his pants.”

  “Lord, I pitied the man,” Craddock replied laughing. “Our provost has a sense of humor, don’t he?”

  Bloodworth sniffed at the tub of mush. “Boys,” he said, “if this is our last meal, it lacks some.”

  “Looks fine to me,” said Peck.

  Professor Brown crawled out on all fours and examined the tub. He looked at Bloodworth. “Don’t be talkin about any last meal,” he said. “It gives me the fantods.”

  “Mac!” said Craddock. “That’s the longest speech I ever heard you make.”

  “Well, just don’t you all be talkin about that,” said the professor. “Here, give me a dollop.”

  Stuart Bloodworth dipped a plate of cornmeal for the professor and one for himself, and retired to a corner of the car. He listened to his comrades talk: bravado, and they knew it. Time and again, Bloodworth had heard that kind of talk from men going into a fight. Had talked it himself. But now, as then, they were scared, uncertain, walking into a dark cave. For himself, Bloodworth was not only scared, he was disgusted. Home a week, and already in the jailhouse. They had literally snatched him from his wife’s grasp before he had time to explain where he’d been all afternoon. Jesus. If the yankees didn’t hang him, little Amy would for sure. He laughed. Bravado again.

  Under the boxcar, Old Hundred-and-Eleven stuck his head out of the quilt he had wrapped around him. They’d had a lively time of it all night, with the storm blowing rain in on them and the lightning popping all around. A raccoon had sought shelter among them, had slept on top of Old Hundred-and-Eleven all night and was hissing at him now. The old man poked at the creature with his umbrella until it waddled away. Then he poked Dauncy and Jack. Dauncy pulled his blanket down and peered out. “He gone yet?”

  “Who?”

  “That coon. Who you think?”

  “Get up,” Old Hundred-and-Eleven said. He crawled out between the two sentries, stood, and shook himself. He looked at the sun. “Gon’ be a hot one today,” he said, and opened his umbrella.

  IN THE BARN behind the Carter house, Gawain was dreaming of Morgan Rhea. Specifically, he was dreaming about her legs; they were all stretched out on a featherbed white and billowy as a cloud. The room was full of sun, and a wren caroled just outside the window, and way back in the trees a redbird was saying Free-dom! Free-dom! Free-dom! and Morgan moved her legs on the featherbed. Gawain smiled. She won’t mind, he thought, and put out his hand, thinking to touch her ankle, when she prodded him in the ribs. Hey, she said. Gawain opened his eyes.

  “Hey,” said L. W. Thomas again. “Get up.” He was standing at the wide door now, peering through the crack. His face was gray in the shaft of light, his eyes puffy. In the stall, Zeke was whickering and moving restlessly.

  “What is it?” said Stribling, rising from his blankets, Luker’s Navy Colt in his hand.

  “Better put that away,” said Thomas, backing up from the door.

  Gawain rolled over and put his eye to a crack in the boards. All he could see were the fetlocks of horses. “Oh, my God,” he said.

  “Yep,” said Thomas.

  As they watched, the door creaked open and filled the barn with sunlight. Lieutenant von Arnim strode in rubbing his hands, two cavalrymen flanking him with carbines. “Good day, lads,” he said brightly. “Better get dressed, and make it fast. Ah, Thomas—there you are, you slippery devil, you.”

  AT THE SHIPWRIGHT house, Colonel Burduck rested his hand on the blanket-shrouded form of Rafe Deaton. He wondered if Wooster had covered it sometime in the night, or if he had covered it himself. In any case, it didn’t matter. Wooster was gone, and morning had come. Burduck looked up at the two privates standing just inside the door. “All right,” he said. The soldiers unrolled their litter and set it beside the makeshift bier. When they lifted the body, it sagged between them and groaned, but the men were veterans and had seen worse than this. In a moment, they had maneuvered the litter out the door and were gone.

  The Colonel turned to the window. At the creek, two negro boys were preparing to fish, their long cane poles waving in the air. A soldier stood with them, giving advice, his frock coat open and hands thrust in his breeches pockets. “Too much fresh water,” the soldier was saying, his voice drifting through the window on the morning breeze. “You’ll want to go deep.” On the ruined carriage, a mockingbird was flicking its tail. Old Mister Shipwright wandered through the yard, and the mockingbird flew away. The old man stopped, looked at Burduck a moment, then shuffled on around the corner of the house.

  I could have told them, thought Burduck, his hands gripping the windowsill as the ship took a long roll to larboard.

  WHEN MOLOCHI FISH awoke, he was lying at the foot of the stone maiden in the cemetery. He had been there throughout the storm, huddled against the base with his knees drawn up while the lightning slashed around him and filled the air with that peculiar smell that Molochi could put with no other thing he’d ever known. From time to time, he would look up at the figure above him; blinded with the rain, he could still see the woman’s face by the lightning flashes, the water streaming from her outstretched arm. She seemed to be leaning into the force of the wind, her garments swirling around her legs, eyes searching the ground as she struggled through the dark.

  When the daylight came, it brought the blackbirds. The figure was still now, gone to stone again, and the birds lit on the arm and the crown of the hair and the bare shoulder, and they croaked at Molochi and watched him with cocked heads. The skin of Molochi’s hands was shriveled like a drowned man’s, his clothes soaked and clammy. The sun, when it rose at last above the trees, hurt his eyes and made him creep to the shadowed side of the great stone shaft. Presently the birds rose in a cloud; they circled aloft for a moment, as though t
aking their marks, then settled down on the iron archway of the gate where they jostled one another impatiently. Molochi rose then, and made his way to the road, the birds flying ahead. In a moment, he was passing the Carter house. Two cavalrymen sat their horses in the front yard, their carbines unslung and resting on their thighs. One called to Molochi, but Molochi went on, following the birds.

  THE TROOPERS IN the yard of the Carter house were part of the headquarters guard left behind when the cavalry was pulled back to LaGrange. All of them were glad to be in the saddle, having grown weary of peace and garrison life. In fact, many of them had not been in the war at all and figured the closest they would ever get to any real action was tracking down fugitive rebels as they were doing now. They envisioned exciting chases, bloodhounds straining at the leash, ambushes, desperate gun battles. They saw themselves jumping their horses over back-yard fences in pursuit, rescuing loyal citizens, bringing down swift justice on the heads of traitors. And while some of those adventures might actually befall the troopers in the next few years, they were not going to experience them this morning. Instead, they slumped in their saddles in the humid dawn while an old man still in his nightshirt moved among them, touching the flanks of the horses, touching the legs of the young riders and looking into their faces. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” the old man intoned. “Gentlemen, please.” Another old codger, this one in frock coat and cravat, stood on the back gallery and glared at them fiercely and twisted his hands on the knob of his walking stick. As for the rebels themselves, they turned out to be a great disappointment, at least to those who had never seen an actual rebel before. Von Arnim led them shuffling out of the barn and into the lot where they stood sullenly, blinking, yawning, hatless, coatless, straw clinging to their hair.