The Judas Field

by Bahr, Howard;

  “Perry?”

  Lucian turned, and there was Alison in a green cape with the hood thrown back, and her hair all in disarray—she had cut it since he saw her last. The skin under her eyes was dark, and her cheeks were hollow, and she blinked in the sunlight. “Perry?” she said.

  “No,” said Lucian. He snatched off his spectacles and tucked them away, thinking how far away her voice sounded, thinking, Her hair—“No,” he said, “it’s—”

  A flock of pigeons clattered from a ledge above, startling them both. They watched the birds wheel aloft and disappear behind the roofline across the street. Lucian spoke her name, and she looked at him. “Why, Lucian Wakefield,” she said. “Way off up here.”

  “You … ain’t mad, are you?” said Lucian.

  She opened her mouth to speak; Lucian saw the words shape themselves, but no sound came to him. He remembered a close room smelling of camphor and a woman’s face in the candlelight, blurred by the pain that seemed to have no end or bottom to it. She was all in black, bending over him. Her hand was cool on his forehead, but he shrank from the touch of it, afraid. Lucian wondered how the woman came to be there—and then he understood. She had come to carry him off to where Cass and Mister Lewellyn had gone, away from the smoke and flame and struggling men. A moth flew around the lantern, circling madly, its shadow dancing on the wall. The little flame of the candle speared through his head, and he cried out against it, wishing she would go on and carry him away. Instead, she leaned over and snuffed out the light. Darkness then, and the coolness of her hand, and her breathing, and her voice making words he could not understand.

  Then all at once, her words came together, like drops of mercury swirled in a bowl, and Lucian was outside the hotel in Franklin again. A heavy wagon was struggling past, dry axles popping, horses straining against the mud.

  “Hardly mad,” she said, “and hardly surprised.” She put her cool hand against his forehead. “You look pretty frayed this morning. Do you understand why we are here?”

  “I know what we have come to do, Miss Alison,” said Lucian. “The ‘why’ don’t matter so much.”

  “Don’t it?” she asked. “Well, let us cross the road then, and find Cass Wakefield, and see what we can see.”

  They found Cass down the street. He was playing marbles with a black boy on the porch of a brick church. The two rose and pulled off their hats, and Cass said, “Well, Miss Alison.”

  She laughed. “You would not find people playing marbles at a Presbyterian church.”

  “Puritans,” said Cass. He indicated the black boy, who had snatched up his broom again. “This here is Madison. He has taken me for six bits with his infernal glass shooter.” He came down the steps and swatted Lucian with his hat. “I see the orphan found you—or did you have to run him down?”

  Lucian heard Alison’s voice in reply, then Cass’s again, but the talk was far away and did not concern him. He was trying to remember something important out of time, something he saw once at the beginning of things. He let go of Alison’s arm and went up the steps to where the black boy was standing with his broom. He saw a square of dirty canvas with a circle drawn in chalk, and the clay marbles inside the circle. Lucian knelt and picked one up and rolled it in the palm of his hand. He said, “If I was you and was goin’ to play marbles, I’d get a table outen that house yonder.”

  The boy looked at him. “Say what, Cap’n?” he asked, and moved back against the porch rail.

  Lucian felt a hand tighten on his coat collar. He dropped the marble and let Cass pull him up. Cass shook him gently and whispered at him. “We are going down the pike.”

  “All right, Gass,” he said.

  They went down the Columbia Pike to the top of the ridge. Beside the road was a brick house, neatly made, with a modest front after the Federal style. An old gentleman was sitting on the front steps, shaving off slivers of a cedar limb with a pocket knife. When the visitors approached, the old man rose and bowed to Alison in an old-fashioned way. “It’s a cane,” he said, holding up his work. “I like a cedar cane.”

  Cass said it was the best wood for such when you rubbed it down with linseed oil. The old man agreed.

  “We were passing,” said Cass. “Looking for the gin house.”

  “A little late for ginning,” said the gentleman.

  “Yes, sir,” said Cass. “We only want—”

  “You don’t have to explain,” said the old man. “You come back sooner or later, both sides. I look out the window, and there you are, standing in the street, gazing around as if you had forgotten where you left your horse tied.” He waved his cane at the yard. “The dead ones, too,” he said.

  “They are the ones we’re looking for,” said Alison.

  “Oh, they are here in great numbers, madam,” said the gentleman. “Late in the evening, all night, in the early hours, it’s a perfect convocation out here in the yard.” He looked at Cass. “Pray tell me who you were with, so I can adjust my lecture.”

  “Mississippi,” said Cass. “Adams’s Brigade. We struck the line at the gin house.”

  “Ah,” said the other. He told how his house was the center of the Federal line. He used his cedar cane to point out where the two lines of breastworks, still plainly visible, had been dug in his backyard. The guns, he said, were there and there. He pointed out where the rebels came pouring over, and where a full brigade of northern men came like demons in a mad, howling counterattack that stopped the rebels cold.

  Cass said, “I never knew what happened up here.”

  “Well, of course, you wouldn’t,” said the old man. “We didn’t either, till after. We were hid in the cellar, all of us—neighbors, children, niggers—all scared, the women praying—” He stopped and looked at the ground. “I never heard a sound like that, before or since.” He looked up at Cass. “Have you, sir?”

  “No, sir,” said Cass. “I have not.”

  “The gin’s down yonder,” said the old gentleman, pointing. “Take your time. It’s morning, there’s nothing to harm now.”

  Cass and Lucian and Alison crossed the yard lying peaceful in the sunlight and shadows. Red chickens strutted before them, squirrels bounded away. Jaybirds and blackbirds argued in the leafless walnut trees. Then they passed between the farm office and a brick smokehouse and gazed out on the fields beyond, the hills in the distance, and the gap between them where the army had come in its long, ragged columns to array itself on the plain. Cass thought about the yankee soldiers waiting here, crouching among the shadows, the day growing colder, as the Army of Tennessee spread out upon the plain. They must have heard us, even this far away. The notion gave him a shiver. We could never have won this fight, Cass thought. Even if we had all day and a hundred armies.

  Lucian had come up next to Cass. He glanced at Alison, then whispered, “A wonder we are not all buried in somebody’s backyard.”

  Alison said, “It’s so far,” and Cass knew she was thinking of Perry and Colonel Sansing, of the last ground they trod.

  Cass felt helpless and foolish. “We were there,” he said, pointing, though he couldn’t be sure it was the right place. “Then we went off that way and ended up over yonder.”

  “Why so far?” asked Alison.

  Lucian stepped forward and put his foot on the mound of the old breastworks. “It is how it was done,” he said.

  Cass turned toward the road then but stopped. “Look there,” he said. Alison made a soft exclamation. The men stared in silence.

  The southerly walls of the two outbuildings were sieved with holes, each the size of a man’s thumb, each representing the passage of a .577-or .58-caliber minié ball fired by a charging rebel. There were hundreds of chips in the smokehouse brick and hundreds of perfect holes in the wooden wall of the office, representing the hurricane of lead that came howling over this ground, crowding the air over a span of time hardly long enough for a man to make contrition—all this in only one portion of a field, in only one eight-hour battle. Never
mind Shiloh Church, Murfreesboro, Perryville, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Nashville, never mind the massive engagements in the east, or the ten thousand skirmishes no one ever heard of, fought in thickets and farmyards and along the banks of streams. Multiply hundreds by thousands by thousands more of minié balls, round balls, buckshot, pistol balls—of artillery rounds: solid, bursting, canister—all that lead and iron, rammed and charged, sent on its way toward living men who had to stand it somehow, who trembled behind their works while it hummed overhead, or walked upright into it, or ran away with it pursuing—or who met it, felt the terrific impact, the snap of bone, disbelieving (Cass Wakefield never saw a man shot who believed it at first), then knowing it had come at last, that thing which happened only to others—bowels spilling out, curls of fat and ligament, dark blood spurting, brains leaking—but still not believing, still denying. Is it bad? they would ask, always. How bad is it? And a comrade, bending for a moment, would always say, No, not bad—it’s nothing, nothing a-tall—before rising, driving forward into the storm again. Cass stepped forward and put his finger into one of the myriad wounds.

  Alison said, “What does it mean, Cass?”

  Lucian rocked on his heels. “Those are bullet holes,” he said simply.

  “Bullet holes,” said Alison. She came and stood beside Cass and passed her fingers over the wall.

  Cass thumbed his hat to the back of his head. “The rebels were attacking, uphill, shooting high,” he said. “These rounds had little effect, I suppose, but … look here.” He pointed to a hole in the corner of the building; the passage of the ball, entrance and exit, was clearly visible. “Can you see it?” he said. “Look through there. This one came from the yard. Look—you can see where the man was standing when he fired.”

  “A soldier was there,” said Alison. She stood on tiptoe and sighted down the hole. “Right there.”

  “A yankee soldier,” said Cass. “If you were a man standing here, it would of took the top of your head off.”

  Lucian laughed suddenly, then caught himself. He turned away. “You ought not to say that,” he said.

  Cass took Alison by the hand and led her back to the worn earthworks. He stood behind her, took her shoulders, and faced her toward the field. “This was the second line of works,” he said. He tightened his grip on her shoulders and whispered in her ear. “Now, Alison, if you were a soldier waiting here, you would of had a capital view of our advance. Look out yonder—what do you see?”

  Alison shaded her eyes. “I see … a broad field, the hills, the road—”

  “No,” whispered Cass. “You are a yankee soldier now, hungry, scared, wore out, and you know—you know—what’s fixing to happen. It is evening, the sun setting, colder than it was a while ago—a November afternoon, Injun summer, twenty years past. What do you see?”

  Lucian drove his foot into the earthworks. “Cass, for God’s sake.”

  “Quiet,” said Cass. “What do you see, Alison?”

  “I don’t know,” said Alison. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “You’re not,” said Cass, “so I will tell you, and you must try to imagine it.” Cass pointed over her shoulder. “Right out there, along the base of the hills, thousands of men in terrible array, thousands of bayonets, colors breaking out—that’s the Army of Tennessee in its last great show—the last time anybody will see such a sight in the earth. Just to look at them makes your heart beat to bursting—even if they wasn’t coming for you, you’d be scared—”

  “I don’t want to imagine it,” she said. “Why should I have to?”

  “I will tell you why in a minute,” said Cass. “Now, look—see how far they must come—it is impossible, but they must do it, even if it means death. Only you don’t think about their death; they are immortal, invincible. They are death—your death—and there they come, flags opening out, bayonets all aglitter—even this far you can hear their tramp-tramp-tramp, the drums and bands, officers shouting. You can’t make ’em stop, so you beg God to do it, but the hour is late, He can’t stop it either. You say, ‘Just this once, Lord,’ but it’s no good, and they keep on, tramp-tramp-tramp, and you feel the sound under your feet. You pray, ‘Then please don’t let me die,’ but God can’t help you now, too late for that, and the thought comes and closes its hand around your heart: in a little while you will be gone from the earth, no more sunlight, laughter, girls, no more apples in the fall, no more home, never again—”

  “No,” said Alison. She made to move, but Cass caught her arm.

  “Now, listen,” said Cass. “Hear the guns—that’s your artillery. It shakes the ground and makes your ears bleed, and you think, The guns will stop them. Sure enough, the smoke rolls out, the rebels vanish, you feel a little nudge of hope—but, no, there is the line again, still coming—only now, listen—hear the old cry, like ghosts, like demons, like women wailing for the dead. There’s no sound like it in the earth—”

  “Why?” said Alison.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Cass, “and you must never forget it. That’s old Cass Wakefield out yonder, Alison. Me and Roger Lewellyn, Ike Gatlin and Gawain Harper, your father, your brother—and Lucian, too. He is just a boy, but the name they gave him was Lucifer.” Alison turned her head toward Lucian, but Cass snatched her back. “Don’t look at him. You have to see him as he is out yonder where it’s twilight, how he’s scared and sick, with the blood running out his ears. You got to make yourself understand what he lost and won’t ever find again, and nothing anybody can do will bring it back. Not you, not anybody. That’s why you got to imagine it. That was us, once upon a time, death walking down to death—Jesus. …”

  Cass stopped and wiped his eyes. Lucian stepped close and took Cass by the arm. “By God, sir, that’s enough—”

  Cass shook him off. He took Alison by the shoulders again, gripping hard. “Everybody has to learn what hell is like, Miss Alison—and there it is, and we are its instrument—”

  She wrenched away from him then, stumbling. Lucian made to reach for her, but she waved him away and turned to Cass again. “I don’t need you to tell me what hell is like,” she said.

  Cass took a step back. “I … I don’t mean that. I—”

  “You don’t know what you mean,” said Alison, and turned and walked off down the lane, pulling her cape around her.

  “Let’s go on down to the gin house,” said Lucian. “Get it over with.”

  Cass was watching Alison as she walked away. “Yeah,” he said, and spat upon the ground. “You know, we should of listened to Ike,” he said. “Should of burned it when we had the chance. Should of burned the whole goddamned town.”

  The gin, unlike the buildings in the yard, bore no signs of the violence that had once howled around it. The breastworks to its front were still evident, however—worn and grassy now—and the ditch had not been filled in save by weeds and the wash of rains. The winter sun lay kindly upon it, and the visitors could smell the warm boards, the cotton lint, the grease of the machinery.

  When Cass and Lucian arrived, Alison had already crossed over. The two men joined her in the field and regarded the ditch and the old breastworks behind it. In the works was a worn place bowed deep like a Mexican saddle. This had been a gun embrasure, and from its relationship to the gin house, the two companions discerned, as nearly as they could, the shore upon which they had dashed themselves twenty years before.

  Lucian turned away from Alison and drank a little from his amber bottle and wiped his mouth. He pointed to the embrasure. “That’s where that gun was, the one that—”

  “I know which one it was,” said Cass. “You are taking too much medicine.”

  “Would you like some?” said Lucian.

  “I got my own,” said Cass, patting his coat pocket.

  For a moment they were silent, as if waiting for some dreadful thing to happen, but there was only the quiet morning, the meadowlarks, a dove cooing in the rafters of the gin. Nothing to hurt, just as the old man had said. Lucia
n went down into the ditch and sat in the dead grass, moving his hand over it as if searching for a lost coin. “Well, it is not what I expected somehow,” he said.

  “What did you expect?” said Cass.

  “I don’t know. A monument, maybe. It is only a farm now. Only a ditch.”

  Cass knelt down among the cotton stalks and looked about him. There was the roofline of the gin house against the sky, and the image settled perfectly into memory. Cass heard the groaning of winter trees, the rattle of their branches. Alison called his name, but Cass didn’t answer. Lucian looked up from the ditch, his face gone pale. The dove had flown, and in its place a big crow lit on the roof of the gin and watched them. They had come a long way to this place the first time, and even longer now, but no matter. For all time’s turning, nothing important had changed; they still could not move forward, and they could not run away.

  Cass took out his flask and drank. Here was I, once, he thought. Here am I, again.

  12

  THE SUN WAS FALLING. LONG STREAKS OF PURPLE crossed the sky to the west, and the landscape was all red and amber. The soldiers had arranged themselves in long lines-of-battle, and Lucian sat on the porch of the great brick house and watched them move away. He watched until the last of them passed into the wood, then hopped off the edge of the porch and followed, though Cass had told him not to, saying, had, you have come far enough for today. Go sit on the gallery yonder—you can help when the hurt men came back. Go on, now—and don’t you move from this spot. Cass had told him not to follow, but Lucian followed just the same. The drums were beating, and off to the left a band was playing—the first band Lucian had ever heard, so that he did not know to call it a band. He did not know to call it music even. He knew singing, but he had never heard sounds put together in such a metallic way as this.