Rebel surgeons.
Where’d you get hit?
I was damn near—back home. Just a few counties away—up in Pennsylvania. Twas at—Gettysburg.
A red glare swept Coral’s gaze. For a moment he could not see the shriveled youth in rags before him, could not see the shriveled face or the foolish visorless cap, could not see the rotten embroidery of the red clover leaf; nor could he see the barred wings of the hawk he’d shot, or gloom pervading there in loneliness.
What day? . . . God damn it, I asked you. What day of the battle?
Second day, I guess it was. Right by that—wheatfield.
Oh, by God. We come against you! I was with the Fifty-third Georgia. I’ll be buggered with a cob!
The Yankee sat without moving. Then shudders began to disturb his body as if he suffered an attack of ague. His lips were jelly; he hadn’t lost all his teeth, you could hear some of his teeth clattering against each other as he shook.
Look at what you done to my foot! Coral swung his leg forward. Think you’re the only one got hit? I’d rather be shy a hand like you than shy a foot like I am!
This shrunken scarecrow spook could be made to say nothing, he could not be made to look up. Coral tore a crutch from beneath his right arm and wrapped his hand around the stem of it. By God, I’m going to bust you . . . but the cudgel remained suspended in air. Coral’s breath was burning out of his lungs in blasts, and saliva trickled from the corners of his open mouth. Slowly he lowered the crutch. At last he slid it into his armpit again.
Yank. Come on. Going to take you in!
The boy tried to arise; he seemed to try to arise; again he slid back among cypress knobs.
Catch-dogs ought to have got you and that’s a fact. How come they never got you last night?
I held—to—wet places. And used—pepper.
Pepper? Where’d you get pepper?
Bought—it—from a guard.
Come on, you Yank!
Feebly the Northerner shook his head. Can’t do it.
You can’t move? You claim you can’t move?
Naw. Can’t—move.
Then I got to knife you or blow the damn head off’n you.
Now fierce tiny blue eyes glinted up from dark sockets of the skull. Blow—damn—head off me? What with?
Why, dad blast it, I got a shotgun back in them bushes! What’d you think I shot that hawk with, anyway? Here—give me my hawk.
The Yankee didn’t move, so Coral steadied himself and employed a crutch to work the muddied hawk forward into his own possession. He tied the weight of it to the cord looped around his neck; yes, it was heavier than anyone might imagine. It was remarkable, how a hawk could look so light and cloudy, wheeling above trees; yet it seemed to weigh as much as a fox when you were carrying it.
—Can’t make up my mind, said Coral.
—Can’t you make reply? Didn’t you hear me tell you I couldn’t make up my mind?
—Whether to stick you with this here knife.
—Shotgun’s back yonder. Couldn’t see you from there, count of all the brush. So I’d have to clamber all the way back here.
—By God. Dirty damn Yankee! Not fit to waste a charge of powder on.
—Yank, what was that name you give me?
—Oh. Nazareth Stricker! Chicken-shit name for certain.
Coral Tebbs toiled back through the canopy of gum branches and stickery vines. In two minutes the mute crouching ragged figure of Naz Stricker was masked from his sight. If Coral had breathed in trumpet blasts before, he was breathing in engine blasts by the time he reached the tree where hung his shotgun.
He owned the loose extravagant imagination common to many primitive people who have dwelt as outcasts, who have dwelt in lonely places. His hates were simple, unreasonable, intense; in time perhaps he might grow to love with as little reason and with as great an intensity. . . . He pictured the Yankee, Nazareth Stricker (somehow it sounded like Bible talk) as struck by his shotgun pellets, bursted and ripped as Coral had seen other boys bursted beside him. Good enough for him; there was nothing good for a Yankee except killing. Pennsylvania . . . so that’s where he came from. Funny place, peopled by a herd of foreigners who couldn’t even talk like white folks. Coral remembered standing with other shaggy dusty hungry boys outside the door of a brick farmhouse; he recalled the barn which stood beyond; damndest looking stable or what-do-you-want-to-call-it he ever saw. Stable was about as big as a county courthouse, and it stood on a hillside, and part of it was built straight out in the air, and there were cows standing underneath the built-out portion and feeding there (not for long: the foragers herded them away) and there were queer round signs and symbols painted on the barn in color . . . Lieutenant Anglin talked to Captain Tyree, and Coral overheard the lieutenant saying that those queer arrangements had something to do with the Evil Eye. What Evil Eye? Bunch of God damn foreigners and hirelings, like most of the Yankees. . . . He stood there with others, and two fat pink-faced women gazed out at them with swollen eyes gleaming in terror.
Lady. You got some bread to spare us?
Ja. Bread we got. Today was baking.
Meat. You got any meat?
Ja. Pickled pork we got—
Got any beef?
Nein. The beef is all.
Cakes? somebody shouted behind Coral.
Ja. Crullers we got. Today was baking.
Well, the damn Yankee womenfolks could cook like sin. Coral and the rest made themselves a meal, they made themselves a meal under peach trees until they like to popped their bellies open. . . . He saw Naz Stricker as coming from such a house. Except Naz Stricker could talk straighter talk than the rest of those hirelings at the North . . . shooting was too good for him. Because he came from a pinkish-reddish-brick house, and there was the springhouse yonder where were spread wide pans of milk with cream rising slowly, and Coral remembered how he stood with a tin pan of milk held in his quivering hot hands . . . he drank slowly and tenderly and continually until the friend next to him—fellow name of Jo Coppedge—said, Look, Cory, this here’s the way to do it. Jo Coppedge put down the pan he was holding, put it on the damp cool stones, and lifted from inside his shirt a big wedge of solid cherry pie, and using that pie as a utensil Jo Coppedge skimmed slowly across the surface of the milk in the pan, he pushed the dripping chunk of thick rosy-crusty pie all the way across the pan. When he took it out it was coated with golden cream, it was dripping with rich cream, and Jo bit deeply into pie and cream, pushed his hot thin dusty face into the mass of pie and cream, and his brown eyes rolled bright above the thick paint he had thus put upon his face, and he said, Oh, Mister! . . . Damn Yankee hirelings . . . shooting too good for them . . . not worth wasting powder and shot . . . Jo Coppedge got killed right in front of that same wheatfield that Coral and the Yank were speaking of.
Nrrrrwhuck.
Dad blast it, Jo! Coral reached down and lifted Jo’s arm, and gave it a jerk, and then let go, and the arm fell back. The sound of nrrrrwhuck, the sound of the bullet’s whacking, it resounded in Coral’s ears even after the bullet had passed through Jo Coppedge’s face and had broken through the softness of his brain and had splintered scraps out of the bones of his head and had gone crooning tenderly into space beyond, and had left the cream of Jo’s brain a-dripping . . . white-yellow of cream, red of the cherries, nrrrrwhuck, dad blast it, Jo! Captain Tyree waving his pistol, pointing his pistol, he was crying an order, but there was too much noise, you couldn’t hear a word. Whoooooo, said the Fifty-third Georgia and began to stumble forward, and Coral Tebbs was moving with the rest, firing and loading, ramming down another charge, firing into smoke, seeing no Yankees to shoot at, but squeezing the trigger into smoke, until someone dropped a big rock on his left foot and ankle, and it felt numb after the first blow—it felt as if the rock were still lying on top of his foot and ankle, pressing off
all feeling. A voice boomed against his ear, saying something about The Rear; so he started picking his smoky way backward, away from the thicker lower newer smoke, using his gun and another gun he had picked up, using the two guns for canes, and he kept putting his wounded foot down upon the earth, taking regular steps with it, but he couldn’t feel the ground underneath it each time he pressed it on the ground. . . .
Coral Tebbs took his shotgun from the tree, examined it with a crafty smile playing under tufts of silky black beard which grew longer and less silky, week by week, in weeks when he neglected to shave with his father’s old razor. He cocked the shotgun, looked at the swamp from which he’d emerged, thought of Naz Stricker sodden and weak and helpless (all Yankees should be sodden and weak and helpless) and then thought, What a weary way, back through all them logs and brambles, and my crutches sucking down into the marsh the while. He thought of Naz Stricker throwing his arms wide and going over backward or forward as lead wrenched through his body at high speed. He thought, Wish every Yankee in this here world had the shit shot out of him.
It would be a long way, back through those tangles.
Coral Tebbs hated Naz Stricker on principle, and hated him also because he came from Pennsylvania and probably came from a fine brick house, and probably had eaten cherry pie and thick cream all his life. Those foreign Yankees had every damn thing in the world: big houses, and barns built out into the air, and factories to make things, and buttons and shoes and blankets, and medicine if they got sick . . . had everything they needed, except good powder. Secesh powder was a hell of a lot better than Yankee powder . . . Coral had heard that it was foreign, the powder in his own cartridges—heard that it came from England or France or Africa or some such far-off place. Once, in a hospital, he lay for two days on a pallet right betwixt two Yankees . . . he wouldn’t talk to them, but he heard their talk. They talked about gunpowder, and how the dirt was so bad in their powder—regular black dirt, right out of the soil, they said, and manufactured so by some thieving contractor in a factory— The dirt was so bad that half the time you couldn’t fire at all. Never knew whether your gun was going to shoot or not. He guessed they were laying it on mighty thick, just for his benefit, because they knew he was Secesh. But finally they got taken away to a prison hospital, and then there were just Secesh alongside. That talk about the powder haunted Coral’s mind. Finally he asked an older man—a corporal, he was, from the Twelfth South Carolina, and also wounded at Gettysburg— Asked him if twere so. Hell, yes, said the South Carolinian. Once’t I was out on the field, a-seeking my young brother after we’d had a mean scrap, and I run smack into a clan of Yankees. Reckon you can believe that I laid low and pretended I was one of the dead. Well, boy, them Yankees wasn’t looking for wounded. No, sir, boy, twas powder they was a-seeking. Confederate powder, out of the pouches of us Confederates. They’d open up a pouch, say, Hell, he ain’t got none, he’s done fired all his cartridges, or words of that nature, and then go on looking for more. I was scairt piss-less they’d come grubbing around for my own pouch, but finally they went tother way.
Ever find your brother, Corporal?
Surely did. He was deader’n hell, and puffed up already. . . .
Slowly Coral Tebbs held his thumb against the hammer, retaining it against pressure of his forefinger applied to the trigger. Slowly he put the hammer down upon the cap.
If he had killed any Yankees in that battle he couldn’t know, but certainly he had fired his rifle until it fried his fingers to touch it, so he’d sent a lot of balls flying. If he had killed any Yankees in that battle they were the last ones he’d ever get to kill, on account of his foot being cut off . . . not even fit to serve as a guard on the stockade, like that vile little freak of a Flory. If he didn’t go back and shoot Naz Stricker now, he might not have another chance to do it. Because Naz Stricker might run away before he, Coral Tebbs, got back. . . . Oh, reckon not. Too tuckered.
—Come back with some guards from the stockade.
—Not Flory. That’d be a feather in the little stinker’s cap that he’d flaunt and pride himself on forever.
—Heard something about a reward.
—You mean to say you damn Yankees’ll eat a hawk? . . .I’d eat anything. . . . They—took it off. Right at—the wrist.
Twenty-five dollars reward? Maybe thirty? What was it folks said about Turner and Harris getting so much a head for every escaped prisoner that their dogs ran down?
—Twas thirty. That was what folks said, down at Uncle Arch Yeoman’s store. Thirty dollars a head. Course, that would be Secesh.
—Why, by Jesus. Here was home. He’d come all this way, toting that hawk, and it was a weary way.
Coral stood examining the house and The Crib and the whole area with suspicion. Couldn’t see a mule under the trees. Ma might be entertaining, but he considered it unlikely. She had entertained through practically the entire night; now it was nigh onto noontime, and doubtless she would be asleep. What with Flory messing with the soldiers, and Laurel gone to the Dillards’, the Tebbs family was surely eating high on the hog these days. Coral suspected that his mother was suffering in some degree from the Venus’ curse, for he had seen her dosing herself out of mysterious bottles. But always she was in good humor; it didn’t seem to interfere with her entertaining of visitors. With all the troops in the neighborhood (far less than in previous months, after that big batch of Yanks was taken away in September—but still hundreds and hundreds of those Georgia Reserves) and with citizens traveling in droves, to get away from Bill Sherman— Sure enough! High on the hog. Two less mouths to feed: just Ma and himself and the baby—and the old lady had a sight of shinplasters which he had seen, and he reckoned that she had more tucked away that he hadn’t seen. Once in awhile she even gave him money without his asking for it. She said, Coral, sonny, I do feel so shameful bad bout that foot of your’n. Now you take this currency, and go you down to Uncle Arch’s and buy yourself a nice plug tobacco.
Coral rolled his chew in his mouth and thought about it. Suddenly he found himself wondering whether that damn Yankee, Naz Stricker, chewed tobacco. Stricker hadn’t asked him for any—hadn’t said, like most folks you encountered, What’s the chance for a chaw? Give me a chaw. Lend me a chaw. Hain’t had a chaw all the day.
I’d eat anything.
There was something about that damn Yankee that was important—yes, sir, damn important. Coral’s brows squeezed together as he tried to consider what that important element might be, as he pegged and swung his way toward the house with the hawk bumping against him (and he reckoned he’d be chafed sadly from the continual bounce, bounce of the dead hawk). In solitary cogitation of the solitary way he went, Coral had acquired a habit of searching for whys and wherefores. He pried silently, constantly for reasons. The reasons he found were seldom the right ones, the purposes he ascribed were often bizarre, the motives and imagined results were apt to be fantastic. His lonely speculations exceeded the limits of his intelligence, but there was no one to tell him that he might be wrong. He kept pondering.
He froze suddenly, he was motionless for a second or two; an astonished grin widened his mouth. If both hands had not been occupied with crutches and with retaining the shotgun on its homemade sling, he would have slapped himself across his ribby chest. He had found the answer.
Naz Stricker was the first person he had talked to, since he came home, who had lost a foot or a hand in battle! And, by Jesus God, he got wounded on July the second, nigh that same wheatfield where he, Coral, felt his own left foot and ankle crushed and going numb.
—Long way off.
—Like a nigger song. Oh, long, long, long, long way.
—Course, they did give Coral a lot of whiskey before they started cutting. They said, Boy, get yourself drunk fast. They had a big barrel of Pennsylvania whiskey, and it was good whiskey, and you could hear a little firing in the distance, but it was nighttime—there wasn
’t much firing.
—Would the Secesh surgeons give whiskey to a Yank when they were going to go to slicing and chopping? Well, by God. He ought to ask the Yank about that.
—Boy, get yourself drunk fast. The dipper coming closer, someone holding the dipper, whiskey splashing and Coral swallowing and gagging, and the whiskey burnt like coal oil and it gagged him, and moths and other critters were going like fiends against the big bright lanterns hanging under the tent fly up above . . . surgeon said, Where’ll we go on this one, Luce? Articulating surface? Right above the nodule. Single flap or double flap? . . . Farther up. Single; he’s got the hide to spare . . . ahhhh! And that was his own first fierce scream, coming back to ruin his ears, coming back sometimes in the middle of the night to be echoed again by his own throat, to make the baby wake up and yell in sympathy, to make that rotten little Flory say, Aw, shut your trap and try to act like white folks, you.
—Long way off, Gettysburg place.
—Naz Stricker said that he lived not far away from there.
—But what about the whiskey? Hell no, you could bet on it. Good whiskey was too scarce all over the South; they’d not go to wasting it on some damn Yankee.
—But that was in Pennsylvania, where Stricker got shot, where he got captured. Well, they had plenty whiskey there—wagonloads of it. Stole it in that town yonder, name of Chambersburg—great big kind of warehouse chock full of it. They called it Monongahela or some such foreign name; said they could read it right off’n the barrel label.
—Ought to ask the Yank about that.
Coral Tebbs moved beneath a stunted magnolia tree which twitched its hard papery leaves next to the stoop. Zoral was playing beside the step, playing with a small dead chicken from which a mink had sucked the blood . . . minks got a chance’t of chickens nowadays. Coral had sat up two nights with a lantern, trying to intercept the enemy, but always he nodded and went to sleep . . . maybe minks were too smart for him. Zoral wore a jacket which the widow had hacked out of a Federal blanket, with the broad stripe showing, and he had a string tied around the chicken’s neck, and he was dragging the chick after him, making train noises. He paid no attention to his half-brother Coral, sometimes he paid no attention to anyone, sometimes not even to his mother. The Widow Tebbs insisted that Zoral had had brain fever when he was just a mite, and like to died of it. Coral regarded this disgusting baby and his disgusting sport with equal disgust, then went jigging up onto the stoop and into the house. His shotgun caught against the tilted post and nearly threw him backward; he cursed in loud fury, and awakened his mother in the bedroom where she slept (she had slept with Laurel when Laurel was at home, and Zoral occupied the foot of their bed) when she was not at The Crib.
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