The Year of Jubilo

by Bahr, Howard;

  Now old Harper was in the yard again, sitting in a rocking chair in the sunshine, a shawl wrapped around his legs, his long, spidery hands folded in his lap. He was watching the buzzards, too. Behind him, the house rose paintless among the oaks, silent, intersticed with shadow. Molochi could smell the breath of the house, an exhalation like rotten leaves in the wintertime stirred by the passage of horses. Molochi could smell the old man too, and wondered if the buzzards could. As if in answer, one of the great birds broke away from the circling flock and glided over the intervening field, dipped behind the oak canopy a moment, then reappeared over the yard riding sideways on the breeze, so low that Molochi could see the separate feathers of the wings and the eye tilted toward them. The shadow of the bird passed over the yard and fled away toward the wood again.

  “Who is that?” old Harper said, squinting at Molochi.

  Men on horseback always seemed to think that, if they didn’t gallop and jump fences, it wasn’t a chase. Molochi knew better: they need go no faster than Molochi himself could trot on foot. The men urged him on, fumed at him, cursed, but Molochi jogged along, his truncheon in his hand, through woods and plowed fields and ditches, following the dogs, though they made no sound.

  “Here, I say!” croaked old Harper, tilting his head like the buzzard. “You keep away from me!”

  They had him in an empty corn crib; when Molochi came through the door, he could see the little nigger balled up in the corner among the blood-spattered shucks and rat droppings, the dogs feinting at him, slathering, silent as the shadows that filled the crib. Molochi could hear the click of their teeth, and the crib stank with their breath. As Molochi watched, one of them, the young bitch whose blood Molochi would one day keep in a bottle, jumped in and took the boy by the shoulder where his shirt was gone. The dog worried the flesh until she had a piece of it, jerked her head so that a gobbet came away and the bone showed white and glistening, and all the while the nigger never made a sound. The dogs were all over him then, still silent but for the rasp of their breathing. Then Harper was there, dragging his boy by the arm. The boy stumbled and landed on his hands and knees; he scuttled back and pressed himself against the wall of the crib while Harper raged at Molochi: Get em off! Get em off, goddammit! he said, and Molochi looked at him and said You get em off, he’s your nigger. Then another sound, a high wailing like rabbits made when the dogs got them, and it should have been the nigger, but it was the white boy, pushing himself against the wall, his hands full of corn shucks, his face wet and smeared with dirt. And Harper: Shut up, damn you, can’t, you be a man one time, just one goddamned time and snatched the truncheon from Molochi’s hand and raised it at the boy, his face twisted in fury and in a pain Molochi neither understood nor acknowledged, but that the boy seemed to recognize so that he stopped his wailing. He hid his face in his hands, his stomach heaved, and in a moment, the sour bile was running through his fingers. Then Harper turned the truncheon on the dogs; it rose and fell among them until they slunk away, while the nigger boy watched with eyes that were already dead.

  “Ellie!” cried old Harper. “You sent him, didn’t you! Call him back, damn you, Ellie!”

  Molochi went on then. Behind him, in the warm, sweet morning that smelled of grass and sunlight and rain, old Harper cried and cried.

  Presently, Molochi came to a low stone wall. He recognized it right away as the place he’d seen in his vision, back at the cabin before the storm. When he raised his eyes, he looked up through the funnel of buzzards; so many, and not a sound from them. All the sound was behind the stone wall. Molochi touched the gris-gris bag in his pocket and peered over a clump of honeysuckle and morning glories humming with bees.

  The neighborhood dogs had evicted Wall Stutts from his shallow grave; he lay now under a shoving crowd of birds, their shiny black backs humped as they jostled for position. They squawked and croaked at one another, their hooked beaks tearing. Now and then one would lift its head from the mass with a rubbery strip of meat dangling from its beak. He might throw his head back and gulp it down, his long neck working, or another might snatch it away. Here one hopped awkwardly around the fringes, there one spread its great wings and went aloft, feathers whisking.

  The dogs slunk around outside the huddle of birds, or lay gnawing on a prize held in the forepaws. These lucky ones snarled and snapped at the birds when they hopped too close, or at their comrades who crept by them with lips pulled back and hackles raised. The dogs lunged at the birds and fought with one another. Their muzzles were bloody and their legs were caked with mud. There were six of them; the seventh, a terrier with a blue ribbon around its neck, lay dead, attended by its own party of birds.

  In the air, and along the ground among the leaves and trampled grass, moved the lesser guests: gnats, butterflies, dung beetles, carrion beetles, wasps and bees, iridescent blowflies, marching ants. So many there were that the ground itself seemed to move, and the air buzzed with them.

  All these creatures ignored Molochi Fish—all but the flies, and the gnats that swarmed around the rheum in the corners of his eyes. Molochi waved them away with the rag he carried for wiping his eyes. He watched without curiosity, waiting for whatever it was the scene would reveal to him. Finally, the dogs made a concerted rush and drove the birds off a portion of the corpse, and Molochi caught a glimpse of the ravaged face. It was picked nearly to the bone, but Molochi knew whose face it had been once. He thought The injun will have him now, and the notion caused him to nod his head. Maybe she wouldn’t come around so much after this.

  In a little while, Molochi turned away. He didn’t go back by the Harper place but went through the broomsage toward the railroad cut where the blackberries rambled and copperheads sunned between the rails. Presently, he passed the depot and came in sight of the willow grove. There, bending the lithe branches, his own dark birds waited for him once again. As he moved toward them, he saw a man on horseback emerge from the willows and move out across the field.

  OLD UNCLE PRIAM, hunting squirrels in the fall, would come upon the last remnants of Wall Stutts: his boots, a belt and buckle, a few rags of clothing and a jawless skull where a field mouse was building his winter nest. Uncle Priam would lean his shotgun against the stone wall and light his corncob pipe and remember the hot afternoon when Gawain Harper killed Stutts with the Colt revolver. In the melancholy light of October, all that would seem alien and distant; were it not for the evidence, the old man might think it was a memory he had made himself from the fragments of dreams.

  Old Priam would ponder what Molochi could not: how Gawain had freed the wasted shred of the man’s soul, loosing it from all meanness and harm; how Wall Stutts, when he died in this place, made something good at the last, turning back to the ground what he had taken from it all his years. When the field mouse poked his whiskered nose out of one of Wall Stutts’ eyeholes, Old Priam showed his yellow teeth and laughed. Then he went on his way, through the cool umber shadows and under trees gone scarlet and gold.

  The leaves of that fall would cover the graves of Tom Kelly and Rafe Deaton, and the ashes of the Citadel of Djibouti, and drift in silent courses over the relics of Wall Stutts. The field mouse would sleep, waking on warm days to forage, and that summer would raise his family where once a man’s thoughts made bitter passage. When the next October came, he would not return, nor any of his kin. And while all persons and all things followed time, living out their moments to good or ill, the leaves would fall and cover what they left behind.

  OLD HUNDRED-AND-ELEVEN WAS standing in the shade of his umbrella, his tattered Bible under the crook of his arm, thinking about Miss Morgan Rhea. He had never found any ginseng for his love potion; in fact, he had not had a chance to search for any since the events of yesterday. The memory irritated the old man. He’d thought, since Gawain Harper seemed to know the lady, that an introduction of some kind might be arranged. Then the man Stutts had interfered, and the rest of the day was taken up with killing and burying him. From the swirling ke
ttle of buzzards to the north, Old Hundred-and-Eleven deduced that they had perhaps buried Stutts a little too hastily. Well, it served the bastard right.

  Now here was another interruption, in the shape of the rider approaching from the railroad. He was a civilian, a gentleman by the look of him, though a little frayed around the edges. Old Hundred-and-Eleven rattled his umbrella and frowned. “Boys,” he said, “here is a man oozing curiosity. I think I know him.”

  Dauncy peered into the bright sunlight. “Ain’t that the gentleman farms without niggers?”

  “If you mean Solomon Gault, I believe that’s him,” said Old Hundred-and-Eleven. “You all run fetch Gineral von Arnim.”

  As Dauncy and Jack clambered out of the hole, the rider spurred his horse. “Hold on, there!” the man said, and the two men stopped and removed their hats and stood waiting. Old Hundred-and-Eleven looked at them. “Didn’t I tell you to go fetch the Gineral?” he said.

  “Yes, sir, you sure did,” said Dauncy. He shifted uncomfortably but didn’t move. Before the old man could say more, the rider drew up, his tired horse blowing from the short canter.

  Whatever notion of freedom the two brothers might have had, it did not include running when a white man said not to. True, Old Hundred-and-Eleven had ordered them to go, but he’d been countermanded now. In the blood-deep social code of the region, Solomon Gault, a gentleman, had taken charge. Now he sat his horse and looked down at them with the customary, assumed superiority (to which all classes agreed and acquiesced) of a mounted, well-dressed man of polished speech and property. Old Hundred-and-Eleven understood this too, and it rankled him. “Well, if it ain’t Mister Solomon Gault,” he said. “I believe I heard Gineral von Arnim mention your name just this mornin.”

  “General, hell,” said the horseman. “Anyhow, what is it to you?”

  “Well,” said the old man, “I expect your hide would bring at least five dollars on the northern market about now.”

  Gault laughed. “Hell, I can beat that,” he said. He dug into his waistcoat pocket and produced a twenty-dollar gold piece. Jack and Dauncy stared wide-eyed at the glittering thing. Gault flipped the coin once in his palm, then flung it down at the old man’s feet. “There’s the five dollars for my hide, and fifteen to keep your goddamn mouth shut while these niggers open that coffin yonder,” said Gault. “Be quick—I don’t have much time.”

  Dauncy and Jack looked at the horseman, then at Old Hundred-and-Eleven. The old man nudged the coin with his bare toe. “Naw,” he said, “we ain’t openin any coffins today.” He looked at the brothers. “You boys run along. You ain’t workin for him.”

  During his long night ride, Solomon Gault had carried a big Dragoon Colt in addition to his pocket gun. The Dragoon was kept in a saddle holster by his right knee; he drew it now and laid the long barrel across the pommel. He looked at Dauncy and Jack. “Boys,” he said, “you get down in that hole and prize that lid. I want to look on that man’s face.”

  “Now, see here,” said Old Hundred-and-Eleven. “That was a good man in there. I won’t have you—”

  “I am speaking to your niggers, sir,” said Gault. “Now do like I say, and be quick.”

  Jack bent and picked up the spade, but Dauncy stepped forward. “I knowed Mister Rafe Deaton, sir. Please don’t ask me to do that.”

  “Well, by God,” said the horseman. He raised the pistol. “You don’t have but a minute now.”

  It was bright morning in a season when all things grew into life; in the veins of young men, the blood ran hot and joyous, aching with every possibility save that of death. But not for Dauncy. Death was there in the box that still smelled of fresh-milled pine, lying in the water at the bottom of a hole. And Death had come riding across the grass, meadowlarks rising before the horse’s hooves, under the good sun that warmed them all. Dauncy thought there might be more of Death than anything else in that bright landscape, and maybe that was where freedom was. Or maybe that was the test of it, if what Old Hundred-and-Eleven had read them from the book was true. Dauncy couldn’t say; he only knew that it was the Year of Jubilo, and if he was ever going to be a man, this was the time. He moved close to Jack and took him by the arm. “No, sir,” he said. “We goin now.”

  Solomon Gault nodded. “Well, by God, times have changed, make no mistake. But I reckon I’ll always be a little old-fashioned in a lot of ways.” He cocked the pistol; the cylinder made a loud ratcheting in the morning air. “Which one of you insolent chattel shall I shoot first? I’ll let you choose.”

  Old Hundred-and-Eleven dropped his umbrella. “No, now, wait a minute. Wait, we’ll—”

  “Too late,” said Solomon Gault. “Which one.”

  “Lord Jesus, Dauncy,” said Jack, twisting his hands on the spade handle.

  Dauncy dropped his brother’s arm and stepped away. “You gon’ be in hell a long time, you shoot us. But if you do—” He pointed to Jack. “Take him first. I don’t want him to see me die.”

  “All right, then,” said Solomon Gault, and shot Dauncy in the chest.

  Out of the roar of the big Dragoon rose a scream of rage and unbelief that seemed to split the day into fragments—hot Dauncy, who lay jerking in the grass, but Jack, running, screaming, the spade upraised, already beginning his swing when Gault shot him. The momentum of his charge brought Jack hard against the horse’s flank; Gault slipped his foot out of the stirrup and pushed the boy away, and he fell across his brother’s body, hands reaching toward the sky he could no longer see. Then it was Old Hundred-and-Eleven, running at Gault with the Bible raised in both hands. Gault waited, and at the right moment kicked out with his boot and caught the old man squarely on the nose. The Bible flew up and landed with a splash in the open grave. Old Hundred-and-Eleven reeled backward, his eyes crossing, then collapsed in the grass, blood pouring from his nose. “Oh, the meanness!” cried the old man. “Why’d you shoot them boys! They wan’t any of your niggers!”

  “They are now,” said Gault. “I gave you fifteen dollars for em.”

  The other struggled to his knees, his right hand pressed to his nose. “Whyn’t you shoot me, too!” he wailed. “Go on—see can you do it, goddamn ye!”

  But Gault wasn’t listening to Old Hundred-and-Eleven now. His heart was pounding, pushing fire through his veins. The act of killing, whether of a rabbit or of a man, infused Solomon Gault with an electric, almost sexual, love: not for the life taken, but for himself, as though he were suddenly burning with a radiance other men attributed only to God. At such a time, Solomon Gault felt the world order itself around him, no longer spinning on its own but hushed and waiting to see what he would do. And he could do anything, whatever he wanted.

  He slapped the spurs to his horse, and the animal, jaded though she was, gathered herself and leapt forward, almost trampling Old Hundred-and-Eleven where he crouched in the grass. Gault laughed and drove the horse at the cemetery fence; they cleared it and lit running, the horse’s ears laid back and her tail streaming, her heart in the race now. They topped the rise at full gallop, and Gault could see the camp swarming with men, officers shouting, drummers beating the long roll, all just as he’d known it would be—for King Solomon Gault had created this moment; it was his alone, shaped of his will, and from it there could be no turning.

  The sentries cried Halt! Halt! and fired their muskets, the smoke snatched away on the breeze. Gault flattened himself on the horse’s back and emptied the Dragoon at them with no more success than the riflemen had. Then he was inside the picket line, and not a moment too soon, for a company was forming up, grabbing at their stacked muskets—if they got off a volley while he was in the open, it would be too bad for Solomon Gault. But in an instant he struck the main company street and charged right down it; he was among the tents and fires now, faces flashing past, open-mouthed. The horse leapt a fire pit, scattering kettles and pans, and the air was filled with shouting. Then Gault could see the end of the muddy street, and beyond it the Oxford road, and something else, t
oo: a line of men formed across the width of the street, their bayoneted muskets at guard-against-cavalry. As the distance closed, Gault could see their faces, the points of their bayonets steady as if at drill. They cannot shoot, he thought. Not down the middle of camp. Then, at the last moment, he wrapped his hands in the horse’s mane and sank his spurs deep enough to draw blood.

  In a lifetime of riding, Solomon Gault had never made such a jump. He almost lost his seat when the horse left the ground, forelegs tucked under her, neck extended. The soldiers scattered—all but one, who held his ground and thrust with his bayonet, driving the steel into the horse’s belly. But the hind hooves struck the man a solid blow; he dropped his musket and reeled away holding his head, and again the horse landed at full stride, squealing in pain but still running. Gault clawed himself back upright in the saddle and struck the Oxford road; looking back, he saw a half dozen cavalrymen pounding out of camp behind an officer with a drawn pistol. That’s right! Gault cried to himself. Now let it commence! In an instant, Captain Solomon Gault clattered over the Town Creek bridge, flogging the horse with the barrel of his Dragoon Colt. He flew along the south side of the square, scattering citizens, and a moment later galloped past the surprised sentries at the Shipwright house. He waved at them, wishing the Colonel was in the yard. Then he was gone down the southerly road, laughing, hoping the yankee cavalry could keep up, hoping the horse would live to make Leaf River.