“No, darlin,” he said. “You almost did, but you didn’t, and that is what you have to think on. Besides—” He grinned. “That shotgun wasn’t loaded anyhow.”
“What!”
“Empty as a jug.”
“Gawain Harper!”
She sat down in the grass, and he knelt beside her. He did not speak, only watched her face, hoping she wouldn’t slap him, though he wouldn’t blame her if she did. Finally, she laid her hand on his knee.
“All right,” she said. Then she looked him in the face. “I have only one thing to say to you, sir, and that will be an end on it. School is out. No more lessons.”
“No more lessons,” he said. He spit in his palm and held it out. She shook his hand like a man would, then pushed him over into the grass.
They strolled down to the lane and back. “Papa will holler pretty soon,” she said. Then she stopped again. “Gawain, where is Captain Stribling? Why didn’t he come to supper?”
Gawain surprised her again. He pulled away a little and shoved his hands in his pockets. She could barely see his face now, but she could sense the puzzlement in it, and what might have been anger or hurt, she couldn’t say which. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Oh, he is gone,” he said, and in his voice was hurt and anger both. “Harry is gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
Gawain shrugged. “Just gone.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“We left Shipwright’s and walked home,” he said. “We didn’t talk much; my head was hurting pretty bad by then, and Harry … I don’t know. Seems like he was locked up inside himself. Anyhow, we got home, and I laid down on the porch for a minute, and when I woke up three hours later, I found this.”
Gawain fished in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. It had come from one of his sisters’ letter stock and still smelled of the drawer where it had lain for a decade, and faintly of perfume. “I was goin to show you,” said Gawain morosely.
“It’s all right,” said Morgan, and took the paper. She unfolded it and turned it to the light.
Friend Gawain:
Now you know what a coward I am, for if I was half a man, I would wake you and say goodbye. You can’t raise the dead, Gawain, it is fatal to try. So don’t try. Promise me that, when you are done being mad at me.
I had a good time. I would stay if I could & steal Miss Morgan Ray away from you. Say goodbye to her and Aunt Vassar & all the rest. I will remember you always & hope you think kindly on
Your Pard,
Harry
P.S.: Your daddy’s pistol is right off the bank by a big willow tree. You could get a boy to dive for it for a dollar, I bet. If you find mine, you can have it. Leave the Henry where it lays.
H.
Morgan folded the paper again and tucked it in Gawain’s pocket. She daubed at her eyes and wondered how many more things she’d have to cry about before the day was over. But it was all right this time. It was better than not being able to. “I am sorry,” she said. “Are you mad at him for goin?”
“Some,” he said.
“How did he know that … about the pistol?”
Gawain shrugged again. “He knew a lot of things he oughtn’t to,” he said. Then he frowned. “Dern it,” he said, “we might of had a nice time.”
She held him then, pressing him close, listening to the watch ticking in his pocket. The rabbits were gone now, and the priest had quit his chopping for want of light. In a little while, they went back toward the house. The Judge was waiting on the gallery, his arm in a sling. “Morgan Rhea,” he said, “do you realize what time it is?”
“Aw, Papa,” she said. Then the whippoorwills began, and a solitary mockingbird, away off in the fields of night.
HARRY STRIBLING WATCHED from the shadows of the cemetery road. He could see them walking among the oaks, could hear their voices rise and fall. When they started for the house, he almost called to them, but it wasn’t any use; by now, they could not have heard him anyway. Just as well, he thought, and knew it for a lie, and made himself believe it just the same. Then they were gone, and the yard was left to the fireflies. “Come up, Zeke,” he said, and turned the horse’s head eastward. He looked one last time at the house, watched the windows light one by one. Then he looked no more.
At the cemetery gate, he reined up again. Molochi Fish was sitting with his back against one of the brick pillars. “How is it with you, old Molochi?” Stribling asked. Molochi looked at him and blinked. “You been here all day?”
“I run off from all them people,” said Molochi.
“What about them people?” the horseman asked. He waved his hand toward the cemetery where the grave markers gleamed against the dark grass. He saw the stone maiden there, her hand outstretched as if she would catch a firefly rising. She might have moved, or the breeze moved in her gown, or her eyes raised to them—but the horseman knew that was only the light, beguiling.
“They ain’t but the dead ones here,” said Molochi.
“Hmmm,” said Stribling. He reached back and unbuckled his saddlebag and rummaged around in it until he found his pipe and tobacco. He loaded the pipe and stoked it with a lucifer. “Now, Molochi,” he said through a cloud of blue smoke, “what about all that business with Miss Morgan?”
Molochi hawked and spat into the grass. “What bidness is that?” he said.
“You will surely try a man’s patience,” said Stribling. “But I am inclined
to be charitable, and offer you the consolation of my philosophy. You see those birds yonder?”
Molochi peered into the dusky burying ground and saw the dark birds—more than he’d ever seen before—gathered on the stones and huddled in the branches of the trees. They were restless, preening and ruffling, muttering to one another. “I see em,” he said. “I been seein em all my—” Then he stopped and looked again. He thought he saw the old woman, hunched over, wringing her hands, her mouth moving without sound. And the Indian woman, and the pale fog that meant the dogs were moving yonder in the far trees. Molochi had never seen them away from the cabin, and now here they were in town. He made a mewling sound in his throat and gathered his shirtfront in his hands. The rotten material tore under his fingers.
“What’s the matter?” asked Stribling. “You said yourself there wasn’t any but dead people out here.”
“But not them,” said Molochi. “They don’t belong here.”
“Sure they do,” said Stribling. “They don’t belong anywhere else. Now go on home. Leave it to em.”
“They’ll stay here?” asked Molochi.
“I guarantee it,” said Stribling.
“All right,” said Molochi.
“Well, goodbye,” said the horseman.
Molochi Fish, who had never been said goodbye to before, only looked at the man, at his shape against the sky. He saw him go, the horse’s hooves making no sound, then rose and stood watching in the road until he could see the horseman no more. Then came a rustling in the graveyard. Molochi looked and saw the birds, hundreds of them, in a black cloud flying toward the night. He watched until the last one disappeared in the darkening east, then he turned and made his way toward home.
A HALF MILE down the road, Harry Stribling came to a ridge. There he stopped again and turned in the saddle. Behind him lay the pale ribbon of the road, the twinkling fields and the dark shadows of the trees. He could see no lights of houses, nor anything of Cumberland now. He supposed that if he were to feel regret, this would be the time, for the last gate was closing, and there would be no returning. He waited, wondering which of his many wrong turnings would come to mock him this side of the bourne. Certainly they were all out there in the darkness; having pursued him this far, they might well pursue him yet.
But the starlit road was empty; the shadows harbored no sins, and the only voices were the katydids and the frogs in the bottom. Then Stribling knew that he had outrun them at last: the guilt and shame, the little cruelties and
the secret moments of cowardice, the gossip, the pettiness and envy. All these passed away into Time where they belonged, and they left no ashes behind.
He rode a long time in the darkness, and at last drowsed in the saddle, as in the old times on campaign. Sometimes he would wake to fields opening away on either side, and sometimes to the deep woods, the trees meeting overhead and hiding the stars. Zeke moved steadily, plodding along at a slow walk, for he knew they were in no hurry. When the moon rose, dim and waning now, it cast among the trees a yellow light of no more luminance than a candle.
When at last Zeke stopped, Stribling woke in confusion. His first thought was that the column had halted and the infantry were clogging the road again like so many sheep. Then he came to himself, and remembered that he was alone. Looking around, he felt the solitude close in on him, and he shivered with a sudden panic. Then he discovered he was not alone after all.
The road fell away to a creek bottom here, and a bridge, then curved into the deep shadows of a cedar grove. A man sat on the plank rail of the bridge, holding the reins of his horse. His face was round and jovial; he wore a forage cap pushed back on his head, and a frock coat with a high collar. The heels of his boots were hooked over the bottom rail, and his spurs gleamed in the starlight. “Well, Harry,” he said. “You been a long time comin.”
Stribling pushed closer. “Major?” he said. “Major Cross?”
The man stood up then and stretched himself. He grinned at Stribling. “The same,” he said. He came and took hold of Zeke’s bit and rubbed the horse’s nose. “I am glad to see you,” he said to Stribling. “The last time was Nashville—the Granny White Pike, as I recall.”
“Yes,” said Stribling. “It was a gallant charge we made, wasn’t it?”
The Major laughed. “Mighty gallant,”, he said. “I am sure it saved the army.” He yawned then, and consulted his watch. “Well, all that was a long time ago, and best forgotten, though I don’t suppose we ever will, eh?”
Stribling yawned in sympathy and rubbed his neck. “No, sir,” he said, “I wouldn’t know how to forget it. I am obliged you’d wait for me.”
The Major smiled. He patted Zeke’s neck in the unconscious way that horsemen have, then moved back across the bridge. His boots made no sound on the planking, but when he mounted, the leather of his saddle creaked. He looked up the road a moment, then turned to Stribling. “I wish it could have been different,” he said.
Stribling nodded. “It’s all right,” he said.
“You’re not scared, are you, after all our adventures?”
“A little,” said Stribling. He lifted his face to the stars, saw that they had shifted in the night’s passage. It was late, and the morning could not be far away. He looked at the Major again. “I was always scared a little,” he said.
The Major nodded. “I know,” he said. “Well, come along. It ain’t far now.”
“Where we goin?” asked Stribling.
The Major laughed. “Why, we are goin home,” he said, and turned his horse.
Stribling took one more look at the stars. They were diminished now, and the whippoorwills had hushed, and a little breeze was stirring in the trees. When he looked down again, he could see the Major waiting for him down the road, one leg cocked up on the pommel of his saddle. Stribling was about to move onto the bridge when he discovered it was not empty; a boy stood there, steadying himself against the low rail, his blind eyes turned toward the sound of Stribling’s horse.
“Well,” said Stribling, “you have come a long way too, I reckon.”
The boy nodded. Stribling eased forward. The boy put out his arms, and Stribling lifted him up, settled him behind on the rolled blanket. Then Harry Stribling touched Zeke lightly with the spurs. They caught up with the Major just beyond the bridge, and together they rode into the cedars.
About the Author
Howard Bahr is the author of four novels: The Black Flower (1997), The Year of Jubilo (2000), The Judas Field (2006), and Pelican Road (2008). A native of Meridian, Mississippi, he served in the US Navy during the Vietnam War and worked for several years as a railroad yard clerk and brakeman. From 1982 to 1993, Bahr was curator of Rowan Oak, the William Faulkner homestead and museum in Oxford, Mississippi. His last post was as writer-in-residence at Belhaven University.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by Howard Bahr
Cover design by Greg Mortimer
ISBN 978-1-5040-5054-8
This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
HOWARD BAHR
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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