by Jeff Mann
“I know you want to…take me from behind, and I swear I want that too, but…”
“I know, big man,” I say, fingering his navel with one hand and giving his rump an appreciative squeeze with the other. “As agreed upon before, we’ll save that sort of loving for a place and time less perilous. And less chilly.”
Now my hand ranges over his furry chest. Finding a soft nipple, I squeeze it, evoking a low groan from Drew. “We’ve had far too many close calls in the last few days to feel safe. And who knows what tomorrow will bring? Who knows what raiders or murderers or soldiers might ride this road? Tonight, we should stay clothed and keep our weapons near at hand. But…still…I’ve got to taste you.”
I hitch Drew’s shirt up and take his nipple into my mouth. His hands fall upon my head. He quivers beneath me, arching his chest against my face. “Ian, oh yes. That, oh…oh, that maddens me. It..makes me ache…to know you, to…know you and hold you…to grip you…deep inside me.”
“It’s the dead of night, Drew,” I whisper, flicking my tongue over one nipple while gently pinching its twin. “No one’s near, I trust. Let me love you. Just a little? Please,” I beg, squeezing his bulging crotch, scrabbling at his trousers’ button and belt. “I want…I need you in my mouth. I need to drink you, to taste you.”
“Yes, Ian. Please.” Drew undoes his pants, shucking them down just far enough to give me access to his musky groin. “Pleasure me, little Reb. Please.”
I lie atop him, straddling his legs, kneading the great muscles of his chest, then sucking fiercely at his nipples, both hard with arousal by now. Sliding lower, I cup the firm orbs of his ball-sac and take the very tip of his sex upon my tongue. A droplet of juice greets me there. Blissfully, I lick up its salty gift.
Drew’s hands grip my hair. He releases a loud, guttural moan.
“Quiet, big man, or I’ll have to gag you like I’ve done before.”
Drew chuckles. “This ain’t your Rebel camp. Ain’t no one around to hear. But you do what you will. I know by now what excites you. And what excites you excites me.” He fumbles in the dark, then presses something soft into my hand. “Your bandana, friend. The one I’ve been wearing around my neck to hide my collar. Go ahead. Guess I’m still your prisoner. God willing, I’ll always be your prisoner.”
“Lord, Lord, I love you,” I sigh, taking the rag from him. Holding it by the ends, I spin it into a tight roll. I give him a deep, grateful kiss before pushing the rag between his lips, pulling it tight, and knotting it behind his head.
“All right?” My cock is throbbing in my trousers.
“Uhhh, huh! Ahhh, yehhh.”
“Looks like I caught me a Yank,” I mutter, nuzzling his gagged mouth. “Guess I’d better treat him right. I’m going to have my way with you, soldier. You ain’t going to give me any fight, are you? Ain’t going to try to get away?”
“Huh uh! Naah.”
Shifting position, I press my groin against his face, wrap my arms around his waist, and take the full length of his substantial cock down my throat. He grips my hips, bucking and moaning. My mouth’s stuffed full with his hard flesh; his seeping pleasure coats my tongue. He trembles and thrusts; I tighten my mouth around him, sliding up and down till my own saliva mats my beard.
“God, you taste so good,” I grunt around the head of his thick sex, taking a quick gulp of air before sucking him harder. Drew massages my rear, his mouth rubbing my groin, bumping my stiff prick through my trousers. I moisten a fingertip, run it along his mossy crevice, nudge his tight hole, and push. I’ve only inserted the very tip of my finger when Drew gives a great, muffled moan, pumps violently against my face, and finishes, his seed flooding my mouth in thick waves I greedily gulp down. When he presses his face against my crotch, I spend as well, splashing my underclothing with seed.
For a few moments we lie panting, Drew’s big head resting upon my hip. Then my Yank gives a low laugh and pulls me up into his arms. When I start to untie the rag in his mouth, he shakes his head.
“You sure?” I say, tugging the blanket over us.
“Uh huh,” Drew grunts, rolling onto his side and nestling back against me.
“Because you know how much I savor you so?”
“Uh huh.”
I kiss his whiskered cheek. “What a blessed day, the day we met.”
“Uhhhhh huh!” Drew fumbles for my hand, finds it, and grips it. We lie in the dark, listening to the wind, a Bowie knife loose in its sheath on one side of us, a loaded pistol loose in its sheath on the other. I stroke Drew’s hair till he falls asleep. I pray silently for a while, for my family, for Drew’s family, for the generous folks of Eagle Rock, and for the South, the long-fought cause that my love for Drew has prompted me to abandon. I listen to night sounds, trying to stay alert for the approach of any danger. Finally, I press my face against my Yank’s wide back and give in to slumber.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Our rest is fitful. Drew mumbles and jolts with bad dreams. On and off I wake, convinced an enemy’s near, listening for his approach, only to hear nothing but wind and to slide into uneasy sleep again.
Come morning, I wake to the weight of Drew’s head on my chest, his thick right arm thrown over my belly. Sun’s slanting through the cracks in the shed’s walls. The blanket’s tight and snug and warm around us. Outside, a crow caws and is answered by another.
Drew shifts, stretches, and yawns around the rag still tied between his teeth. He looks up at me and smiles. I brush thick golden hair from his forehead, kiss him between the eyebrows, and unknot the wet rag, returning it to its customary place around his neck. “Morning, boy.”
“Morning, you ferocious Confederate. I dreamed last night that you overpowered me and used my body in ways both passionate and glorious.”
“Me overpower you?” I snicker. Rolling him onto his back, I lie on top of him. His trousers are still bunched around his thighs, his sex half-stiff. “You’re twice my size,” I say, pulling softly at his wiry pubic bush, giving his cock a loose stroke.
“True enough,” Drew says, clasping me around the waist. “Though you’re more than large enough in one important respect. But, despite your smaller frame, somehow you conquered me. I fought and begged, but you took possession of me anyway.”
“Even the way you talk gets me hard,” I say, rubbing the evidence of that truth against his flank and giving his own stiffening member another admiring rub. “You Yankees and your sly tongues. I have half a mind to take your great prick into my mouth again.”
Drew’s smile fades. “Ian?”
“Yep? You wanting some breakfast? How about we split one of Mizz Sadie’s tasty biscuits?”
“Later. Now we should bury that lady and her baby. Maybe there’s a shovel roundabouts.”
“Yes.” I roll off him and rub my eyes. “Yes. That duty falls to us today.”
We rise and dress. Drew unbolts the door and peers out into the bright sunlight. We relieve ourselves in the weeds behind the shed. Then my golden Yank leads the way up to the house. “I’ll fetch ’em. You see if you can find a proper place for a grave.”
Before I can respond, he disappears into the ruinous dimness. I circle the property. In a small section of the barn the flames didn’t reach, I find a shovel. On a knoll behind the house, the traditional spot for a family graveyard, I find what I expected to find, a rusty fence surrounding high brown weeds and a few scattered headstones among cedars. Craig is the name etched on the markers. Perhaps this creek was named after their ancestors or kin.
I’ve just gotten back to the front lawn when Drew appears on the porch, carrying a blanket-wrapped form. His face is twisted with both revulsion and sorrow. “This way,” I say. He strides after me up to the graveyard. Depositing his burden beneath a little dogwood tree, he takes the shovel from me and commences to dig. When he tires, I take a turn, sweat beading like a chilly dew on my temples.
At last we deem the hole deep enough. Drew fetches the bodies, falls to his kne
es, bends over the hole, and gently, as if those forms still possessed the capacity to feel discomfort, places them on the bottom of the grave.
Drew has the hole half filled in and I’m trying to remember some sort of appropriate Bible verse or poem, having said so many over the graves of fallen comrades over the last four years of war, when the clopping of a horse’s hooves causes Drew to drop the shovel and me to draw my pistol. We sprint into the woods, though, so leafless at this time of year, the trees provide little shelter.
From up the creek, the clopping moves closer. Around a bend in the road, the rider appears. He’s an elderly man, skinny and poorly clad, apparently harmless, atop a pitiful-looking mule. Relieved, we edge out of the woods. He looks up, sees us, lifts his hand, and turns his mount’s head toward the house. We descend the hill to meet him.
“How y’all?” he says, reining in the beast beside us. His voice is thin and hoarse, as if he hasn’t found the need to speak for a long time. “I’m Ambrose Crouch.” His mule curls her lips at us, showing big yellow-brown teeth, then falls to on the lawn’s grass, a few patches of which are faintly green.
“Good day to you, sir,” I say, taking off my cap. “I’m Ian Campbell and this is Drew Conrad. We’re just passing through.”
“Y’all’re soldiers, ain’t you? Seems like it, from that gray garb of y’all’s.”
“Yes, sir,” I say. “We’re on furlough, heading toward New Castle. We hear tell there’s a hotel there.”
“Yep. Real nice place, and fine eating too. About twenty-five miles y’all have to go. Wild country. Y’all will need to watch out for raiders. And Yankee cavalry. Both crews’ll snap y’all up like a hen does a June bug.”
“That’s what folks in Eagle Rock said.” I shoot Drew an anxious glance.
“Sir,” says Drew, “was it local raiders who did this?” He points toward the house and the burnt barn beyond. “Or Federal riders? We found a lady’s body, and her baby’s. We’re about done burying them up on that hill.”
“Ah, y’all are brave boys. That house is crawling with haints. That’s why no one’s gotten nigh the house to bury them. That’s Mizz Sophronia Craig and her babe. First, her husband Peter was killed in the war. The Wilderness, I heard it was. Piece of shell took off his leg, then he burnt up in one of those forest fires. She ran mad after that. If you passed the house after dark, she was always in there, a’singing and a’sobbing while her baby squalled. How she kept body and soul together, God knows. We was all afraid of her. If she’d see anyone passing, she’d fly out the door, hair all a’tangle, and claw the air and scream. Then one night, them Iron Riders came by, and I suspect they didn’t get the reception or hospitality they demanded of her, so by dawn the barn was burnt, and she was never to be seen again. ’Cept, if you get too near the house, you can feel fingers a’tugging at your clothes. And you can still hear wailing and a baby’s whining when the moon’s bright. Like last night. Y’all hear anything?”
“No, sir,” I say. “We took shelter in the woodshed there, but it was quiet, except for the wind. The Iron Riders? Who are they?”
“Bad sorts. Boys from Iron Gate. They started as guerillas, sniping down Yanks and taking a fine pleasure in it. Then, as the war’s prospects got grimmer, they decided they had no country, no loyalties, so now they’ll shoot and rob anybody who crosses their path, Yankee or Confederate, soldier or civilian. Four of ’em, last time I seen ’em tear by. Only reason they don’t bother me no more is ’cause I got nothing left they’d want, not even this spavined old mule I’m a’riding. Mildred, God bless her. She cain’t do more than trot, but she’s the only company I’ve got. That, and a possum I got half-tamed.”
“You have no family, sir?” I ask.
“Nope. Wife’s been dead since ’50. Son fought on Culp’s Hill during the big fight at Gettysburg. Haven’t heard from him since. I fear…” The old man looks away, up the hill to the cedar-shaded graveyard. “I fear he fell up there in Pennsylvania.”
“I was at Gettysburg, sir. My little group, the Rogue Riders, was a partisan crew who fought by the Stonewall Brigade during most of their battles from Manassas on. We fought on Culp’s Hill. What was your son’s name?”
“Stephen Crouch. Served with the 2nd Virginia. Did you know him?”
“Short stocky fellow with a big laugh? Muscular, good-looking? Honey-blond beard?”
The old man’s eyes light up. “Yep. That sounds like my boy. How well’d you know him?”
“Not well. He played harmonica sometimes with a messmate of mine who picked the banjo. He was very well liked.”
“Do you know if he survived, son? Or if he fell up there?” The old man gives me a look of hope, as if I might have an answer that could finally ease his uncertainty and end his wait.
“No, Mr. Crouch. I fear I don’t. So many died there those July days. Perhaps he was simply wounded or captured. He might come home to you yet.”
He sighs. “Yes, I’ll cling to that hope. I’ll keep him in my prayers. Perhaps the Lord will send him back to me. Perhaps his fate won’t be as bitter as that poor lady up there on the hill.”
“Sir, we should finish our task,” Drew says.
“And then we should get on up the road to New Castle,” I say. “I’m guessing, sir, from what you said before, that you wouldn’t have a horse we could borrow for our travels?”
“Lord, no. The Iron Riders have stole just about all the horses in this valley. I think they might even sell them to the enemy. Low as lice, those boys are. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a mount between here and New Castle. Sorry I can’t oblige you, soldiers. I would if I could. I’d feed y’all too, but I’m down to the dust at the bottom of the meal barrel, some taters, and some fatback I have to scrub the mold off of before it’s fit to fry and chaw. I could spare y’all a cushaw squarsh, that’s about it.”
As much as we could do with more provisions, this skeletal gentleman before us looks like he needs a cushaw more than we. “Thank you, sir. We have some food left from the hospitable folks at Eagle Rock,” I say, “though it’s mighty kind of you to offer.”
“You’re Southern soldiers, boys. You deserve whatever we civilians can rustle up for you. Problem is, that ain’t much these days. Well, good luck to you. I’m glad you’ve giving that poor madwoman Mizz Craig a Christian burial. Folks round abouts, we were all too afraid of them haints to manage it.”
“I hope your son comes home soon, sir,” I say, as he moves off.
“Goodbye, sir,” says Drew, tipping his cap.
“Git on, Mildred. Don’t be dilatory. Day’s a’wasting.” Mr. Crouch digs his heels into the sway-backed mule’s sides, she lifts her head long enough to muster a half-hearted bray, then they take to the road and head down the creek in the direction of Eagle Rock.
We return to the hilltop, where Drew fills the grave. Clouds are gathering overhead; a stiff breeze begins to blow. We make a cross of fallen wood, using twine we find in the house’s fetid kitchen, and hammer it into the ground at the head of the grave with the back of the shovel. We stand by the grave, hats in our hands.
“Ma’am, you were as much a casualty of war as your husband. I hope you’ve found one another in the afterlife,” is all I can think to say. “I hope you’re at peace. Perhaps soon God will send our poor country peace as well.”
“Amen.” Drew links his arm in mine. “Though an end to this war might not come soon enough to save us. Hell, the Iron Riders and Federal cavalry? Mortal dangers both. We got to be careful going up this creek. If one of us has to die, I pray it’ll be me.”
“Lord, Drew, don’t talk that way!”
“Never can tell. We’ve been damned lucky so far. If I fall, I pray you’ll make it home safely. I’ll look over you, little Reb, if there’s a heaven that allows such guardianship. Just come visit my grave, if you will. And I hope you find another man to…”
“Another man? I don’t think I have room in my heart for another passion as great as this,” I sa
y, lifting his hand to my lips and kissing it. “And if I come to your grave, it’ll be after decades and decades of living together, homesteading together, until that great golden beard of yours has turned white and hangs to your waist. You’d probably want biscuits on your grave instead of flowers. Am I right?”
Drew hugs me and laughs. “Yep. Guess so. Speaking of biscuits…”
“Yes. Time for breakfast.” A few drops of rain fall as we pull on our caps and head down the hill to the woodshed where my haversack and Mizz Sadie’s biscuits wait.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mizz Sadie’s already sliced the biscuits in half. In between she’s put thin layers of butter and smoky, salty ham. Gratefully, we gobble up a biscuit apiece, along with swigs of canteen water. Then we shoulder our belongings and head up the creek.
Slowly the valley narrows. Just as slowly, the road takes on a gentle slope, leading us toward higher altitudes. All morning, the skies grow darker; rain comes and goes, shifting from drizzle to downpour, then back again. We take refuge in thick stands of pines and wait the wet out. A little after noon, hearing a band of riders galloping down the road, we slip over the bank and hide behind a clutch of boulders. When they’re well past, we have a quick lunch of corn dodgers from my haversack before continuing our journey.
By late afternoon, the rain’s moved off, replaced by snow flurries and a drop in temperature as the valley makes a sharp angle to the left and continues its gradual climb. Around a turn in the road, we stumble upon a flock of turkeys. They regard us with nervous suspicion, then scatter across the road and into the trees.
“Lend me that pistol, Reb,” Drew says. “I’m going to try to fetch us some fresh meat.”
“Good luck, Yank,” I say, handing him the weapon before sitting heavily on a lichen-spotted stone beside the road. “I’m just going to sit here a spell and rest my feet.”
“I’ll be back.” Grinning, Drew disappears into the brush, making a noisy rustle through leaves in his pursuit.
