A carriage wheeled toward them over the broken, soggy ground. It was a little hack with an enclosed bed like an army ambulance, drawn by a single bony mare in blinders. On the side of the box, in faded gold leaf, were the words
ATELIER BROWN
Cumberland, Mississippi
All Work Guaranteed
The professor brought it over the ground creaking and groaning on ungreased axles and reined up in front of the prisoners.
“As I live and breathe,” said Peck, grinning down from the seat. It was not a long seat, and Peck and Wooster crowded the professor, who sat hunched up over the reins, his shoulders pushed together like a vulture’s.
“Climb aboard, lads,” said Wooster expansively, as if he were the steward of the Queen’s coach.
“I ain’t ridin anywhere with you,” said Gawain.
“Me neither,” said Craddock.
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” said Peck. “A little like fallin downstairs on your ass, but better than walkin.”
Gawain noticed that Peck’s hands were not tied. Had he sold them out, too? Impossible. Still, the man’s good humor galled him. And Wooster’s. How dare he mock them.
Stribling, quiet up to now, said, “Henry, maybe you ought to explain yourself. I mean, before I jerk you off that seat and cut your balls off, if you have any.”
Wooster’s face lost its color, then flushed pink. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. When he found his voice, it had lost its buoyancy. “Sir, I … I understand how it must appear, but—”
Before he could go on, a fresh Second Lieutenant, the gilt of his shoulder straps still bright, approached the group. “Get in the wagon,” he said.
Thomas lurched forward and put his bound hands on the brake handle. He looked up at Wooster. “I want to know—,” he began, and stopped. He turned to Gawain, a puzzled look on his face. “I want … I just want—,” he said, then his eyes rolled up into his head, and his knees buckled, and Gawain, his hands tied, had to watch helplessly as he hit the ground.
The guards had to help them aboard. Moments later, the carriage was trundling and swaying through the Federal camp, then out on the Oxford road, the three men on the seat, the other six crowded into the back. Gawain figured they were going to the Shipwright house now, where the Federals had their headquarters. L. W. Thomas was out cold, his head in Gawain’s lap, his body in Stribling’s, his feet in Craddock’s. As they rattled over the Town Creek bridge, Stribling turned to Gawain, his face barely visible in the gloom of the former traveling studio.
“How you feelin now?” asked Stribling.
“How the hell do you think?” snapped Gawain. Then, softer, “Oh, I am sorry to be such an ass.”
Stribling patted Gawain’s leg. “Never mind,” he said. Then: “You know, he was in the willows, where I was yesterday.”
Gawain shook his head. “All right,” he said, “I will play. Who was in the willows? Molochi? I saw him.”
“No, Gault,” said Stribling. “I saw the sun glint on his field glasses.”
“How the hell do you know it was Gault?” asked Gawain. Stribling was about to reply, but Gawain shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “I am sorry I asked. If we live through this, you and me are gon’ find us some horse races. I’ll provide the dash and personality, and you can conjure. We’ll be so rich we can start our own church.”
Stribling grinned. The carriage bumped and swayed, and in a moment turned down the southerly road.
XX
Solomon Gault rode all Sunday night. He welcomed the storm when it came: not only did it keep people off the roads, but the wind, the thrashing trees, the cold, lashing rain seemed an appropriate backdrop for his mission. From time to time he’d imagined himself as the rain must have seen him, or the creatures huddling in their burrows. He made a fearsome messenger, he thought: illumined by lightning, poncho flying behind, silver water streaming from his downturned hat brim, the horse blowing flecks of foam as it galloped, hooves throwing mud and water from the road, or exploding over bridges. Along the way, in the yards of certain cabins, Solomon Gault called out, then waited in the lightning and the steady hammer of the rain, dogs roiling and barking around him. Soon, a figure would appear on the porch, against the candlelit rectangle of the door, always with a pistol or shotgun, and hush the dogs, and call into the darkness. In a little while, these, too, would be galloping through the night, spreading the word as in the old days.
At one such place, long after midnight, the door opened just a crack, a thin black line against the rain-streaked wall. Gault held his pocket pistol under the poncho and watched carefully, remembering the man behind the door. “Bill Huff!” he called. “It is Captain Gault!”
The door creaked a little then, and from it a voice growled the names of a half dozen dogs, and the dogs went silent and slunk back under the cabin. “Hell of a night, Cap’n,” said the voice then. Gault could see no one, but he knew the man: shaggy, bearded, with the tiny, unblinking eyes of a feral hog.
“You remember what we talked about last time I was here?” asked Gault.
“Aye.”
“Tomorrow, then. The Wagner place by daybreak.”
A long silence followed. In the flicker of lightning, Gault could see the half-opened door, the littered yard, the shingled roof dripping water. Finally, the voice came again: “Daybreak comes mighty early, Cap’n. By the way, Ben Luker was here a while ago.”
“Don’t say,” replied the Captain calmly, as if he’d expected that news. “A social call?”
“Oh, he wanted to stay the night,” said the other, “but you know how it is.”
“Surely,” said the Captain, though he didn’t. Another silence followed. Gault was tired and cold and wet, but he kept his impatience in check. “What’d Ben allow?” he said at last.
The other laughed. “Said old Wall’s been active—shot a man this afternoon over to Cumberland.”
Gault tightened his hand on the pistol and waited. At length, he spoke again. “What else did he say?”
“Said the cat’s outen the bag, Cap’n. They run him out of the state tonight—why you reckon they didn’t hang him?”
“I don’t pretend to know,” said Gault.
“Sure you do,” said the voice. “He traded you for his own hide—you and Wall both, and the whole plan. They’ll be expectin us now.”
“Maybe,” said Gault, “but they won’t believe. The harder they look, the more surprised they’ll be. Think of the sport of it. You ain’t crawfishin, are you, Bill?”
“Oh, not me, Cap’n. No, indeed. Only, maybe the wages is gone up.”
Gault ground his teeth. “Come out where I can talk to you,” he said. “Or let me come in.”
The door swung open then, and the dim light of a candle flared inside. Gault dismounted and splashed across the yard to the cabin, the pistol in his waistband now. He stood just inside the door, letting the water run off him, and looked around in the candlelight. The man Huff was standing by the hearth, a shotgun in the crook of his arm. He was naked from the waist up; his body was shaped like an enormous pear, and covered with dense black hair. A table and two rickety chairs, the only furniture in sight, stood in the center of the room. On a pallet in the corner, a woman and child huddled, blinking in the light.
“Who was it Wall shot?” asked Gault.
The other grinned. “Why, Cap’n, I thought you’d know. A Fed’ral soldier it was, in the tavern yard. That was real smart, Cap’n—that really got their attention.”
“What makes you think I—”
“Aw, bullshit, Cap’n,” said the man. “But never mind—what you do is your own business, at least ’til they start hangin folks. Tell you somethin else Ben found out. Stutts is dead. Frank Harper’s boy caught him in ambush and hauled his freight. Now guess who’s got your Henry rifle?”
At this revelation, Gault could not conceal his shock. He pulled a chair away from the table and sat down. “That damned fool,” he said.
> “Don’t take it so hard,” said Huff. “You still got me.”
“What do you want?” asked Gault.
“Question is, what do you want, Cap’n?” said the other.
Gault looked at the floor, his mind racing, bringing together the things he’d learned in the last few minutes. Stutts was dead. Good. Harper had killed him. Irony, but no harm. Luker was gone. Good. A Federal soldier had been killed. Gault took that knowledge and turned it every way he could, and as he studied it, the thing began to glow with the light of possibility. Finally, Gault smiled and looked up at Bill Huff. Slowly, he drew the pistol from under his poncho and laid it on the table. Huff watched with his little eyes. “I’ll tell you what I want, Lieutenant,” said Gault. “In six hours, I want a hundred men, armed and mounted and ready to go, in the woods by the old Wagner place. I want a skirmish line to the north along the old fence line. I want an ambush, say twelve men, along the road just below the Leaf River bridge. Then I want to kill yankees. Now, what do you want?”
“Lieutenant’s fine,” said the other. “That’s real good for a start. But all that’s a tall order—and maybe you won’t want me to mention to the boys that you got the yankees stirred up like goddamned ball-face hornets.”
“Some things only we officers need to know,” said Gault amiably.
“It’s a heavy burden,” said the other.
Gault nodded. “Maybe two thousand U.S. would lighten it some.”
“How ’bout five?”
“How ’bout thirty-five hundred,” said Gault, “payable when the fight is over.”
Huff grinned and leaned the shotgun against the wall. He crossed the room and prodded the woman with his foot. “Git up, Addie, goddamn you, and gather some rations. Me and the Cap’n got a long ride ahead.”
Later, in the last moments of night, the stars appeared. When daybreak came at last, the sky was pale with no red in it. The trees dripped water, and the air was fresh and clean as the first day in Eden. In the old Wagner cookhouse, Solomon Gault dozed in a corner. Huff stood by the open door in his rain slicker. He had just dropped a cricket in a spiderweb and was watching the insect struggle. In a moment, the spider looked out from his crevice in the doorframe. “Breakfast,” said Huff. The spider leapt on the cricket, and Huff brought his fist down on them both. The noise woke Solomon Gault. “What!” he said.
Huff wiped his hand on his slicker. “Nothin,” he said. “Not a goddamned thing.”
Gault rose stiffly to his feet and peered out the door. “It’s just now daylight,” he said. “They’ll be here.”
“Sure,” said the other. “But what if they ain’t.”
“They’ll be here,” said Gault again.
“Cap’n,” began Huff, “do you really believe—”
Gault held up his hand. “Quiet,” he said. “Listen.”
There was a ground fog lying in the trees. It swirled through the underbrush and around the rain-darkened trunks. The voices in the grass were desultory; in fact, there was only the thin, reedy sawing of a single cricket, and of all the birds, only a mockingbird was awake. Then it came again: the squelching of a horse in the mud, and another, and another. A squirrel set up a fuss in the trees, then the voices of men, flat and toneless in the heavy air.
The shapes that emerged from the fog were those of horses and men. The riders carried no watches, but measured time by the sun, and the sun was drawing them to this place now. They rode by twos and threes, some bareback with rope halters, some on mules, some on good horses and some on bad. They brought with them weapons of every description, and they wore the sack coats and slouch hats and jeans breeches of farmers.
King Solomon Gault walked out in the clearing and watched them gather around, more coming all the while. He watched them dismount in silence or sit their horses with the air of men who did not give a goddamn what was about to happen to them. A few nodded in greeting, none of them spoke, all took their places and waited.
Solomon Gault had been around these men all his life, and had led them in the war, yet he had no idea what they were thinking. He had often tried to imagine what they thought, what they talked about, in their lonely cabins among their worn-out, slatternly wives and snot-nosed children. Their lives eluded him, as if they were inhabitants of some dying star, and he despised them for their blind and narrow passage. Yet he knew this about them, had seen it proven over and over again: they were capable of any violence, without premeditation, often without reason, and they seethed with a sullen, illogical pride that nursed every insult, every affront, as if it were the most important thing life could bring them. So Gault moved among these strange, silent men, touching their stirrups and the necks of their horses, speaking their names—John Surrat, the Pointer brothers, Pony Herrod, Log String and old Ivy Luker, W. B. Snell, Green Stanley, Frank Stutts—Here we are, boys, he said. It’s a new day, Jasper. Here’s old Gus Sewell—where’d you steal that horse, Gus? Ivy Rinkle, Carl Paice, Joe Wamble and the Wardlow twins, Doc Mangrum. They filled the ghostly wood. Hey, Cap’n, they said. We gon’ smite em today, Cap’n? We surely are, Nelse, said the Captain. Remember the Tallahatchie, Nelse? Remember the fight at the river, Sam? Remember how they tricked us, how they hanged those gallant boys? Remember them? Remember. Remember. Call back the way people looked at you in town, how the girls laughed at you, and the house niggers sent you to the back door with your wood. Remember what it’s like to suck hind tit, boys. How many carriages you ever ride in? How many niggers you got to plow and harrow, to chop and bust middles and pick while you sit in the shade on a fine horse? Remember, boys—remember every spring when you had to buy your seed on credit, every fall when you came up short again, every winter when the ague racked you. Where’d your teeth go, boys? Why do you look so old? And this, too: remember how they hunted you like foxes, burned you, hanged you. Remember these things, and rise up from the terrible plain where they left you to burn and suffer forever …
Gault paraded them in an overgrown pasture behind a screen of trees. He counted eighty-one men and boys, eighty-one horses and mules, and fourteen mangy, rack-sided dogs. He split them into two companies, appointed sergeants (he knew better than to turn this rabble loose on an election), and delivered a short oration on their glorious past (Remember, boys, remember) and the deprivations wrought by the invaders. Then he left Bill Huff in charge and carried fifteen men as far as the Leaf River bridge. These were spread out in the woods on the west side of the road and told that, if they would only be patient, their Captain would fetch some yankees directly.
A little while later, Solomon Gault was hidden in the willows by the railroad. As he expected, the yankees were wasting no time burying their dead. He studied the scene through his field glasses and was impressed once more by the splendid discipline of the Regulars, and again he felt the old burn of envy. But that was all right. For all their discipline and strength, for all their victory, the Federals were at this ceremony because he, Solomon Gault, had willed it. All this—the troops, the open grave, the crude casket, the drums and unfurled colors tassled in black—were his doing, all set in motion by a few words spoken in the quiet of a Sunday afternoon. When the volleys were fired, and the wind brought the acrid smoke drifting thinly through the willows, Solomon Gault took it as an offering, like incense lifted in the temple of his namesake.
The horse, tethered in the trees, moved restlessly. The animal was tired and needed forage, and Gault himself was weary beyond belief, and his stomach gnawed with hunger. Gault had grown soft over the last few months, and the night’s business told on him more than it would have once. But there would be plenty of time for rest when the thing was done. Maybe forever. That would be all right, too.
Presently, the yankees formed up and marched away, and only the old lunatic and his niggers were left at the grave. A little rise separated the burying ground from the Federal camp. Over it, Gault could see the tops of a few Sibley tents and the flagpole where the national colors waved. The field was empty, the sk
y blue and cloudless and serene, as if the affairs of men had shifted elsewhere all at once. Gault returned his glasses to their case and mounted up. He moved to the edge of the willows and looked out over the field. Already the niggers were filling the hole; the breeze was blowing away from camp, and Gault could hear the chafe of their shovels in the earth and the splash of the clods in the water-filled grave. Suddenly he was grinning and no longer felt his weariness. He touched his spurs to the horse and walked out into the sunlight, into the sibilant grass that stretched away toward the grave.
MOLOCHI FISH HAD seen the buzzards circling over the wood near the Harper house. When he began to move in that direction, he found that the other birds had gone away, as though the sky had drawn them up. He knew they were there, watching to see what he would do.
Molochi did not care for buzzards. Years ago, on a summer afternoon, before he understood what they were, Molochi had shot a big turkey vulture out of the sky. It landed in a heap in the middle of a watermelon patch; when Molochi approached, the thing lifted its pimpled, naked head and watched him, its eyes burning with malice, until Molochi prodded it with his foot. Then the great bird stretched its wings and vomited its gorge over Molochi’s bare feet. When it died, the creature’s eyes were still quick with a hatred that seemed to embrace every living thing. Now Molochi followed the buzzards where they led, where they planed and sailed on their broad wings, swirling in a tall, airy funnel whose apex was death itself.
On the way, Molochi had to pass through the yard of the Harper house, where he had come once with his dogs to pick up the scent of the runaway nigger boy. He had not been here since that day, but the image returned to him—not as memory, but as a dim awareness, like wordless voices heard amid the din of a sawmill engine:
Winter, and the trees bare and creaking, horses and men and dogs breathing smoke. Constable John Talbot on his mule, old John Talbot with a patch over his lost eye and his beard tucked inside his overcoat, and Frank Harper mounting his big roan horse, and the boy on the gallery with his mother and the aunt who always looked at Molochi as if he were a bug or a garden snake. You, boy, said Harper. Get up here behind. And the aunt pulling the boy to her, saying He don’t need to go. Don’t make him go. And old Harper: Get that boy down here, I don’t want to have to come get him. The boy was crying now, but he came down the steps without a word, and old Harper jerked him up by the collar of his jacket and set him on the rump of the horse, and the boy wrapped his arms around his father’s waist, and the chase began. The dogs had their noses full of the nigger’s smell from a pair of breeches he’d left behind; they strained against their leashes, and finally Molochi let them go. The boy pressed his face against his father’s back, his legs gripped tight on the horse’s flanks.
The Year of Jubilo Page 37
