The Judas Field

by Bahr, Howard;

  She was buried in the colored section of Holy Cross Cemetery, among wooden markers and markers hand-carved of sandstone, the names slowly leaching away, and graves decorated with bits of colored glass. The air that day was hot and full of dust and almost palpable, and the voice of the black minister rose against the hypnotic cicadas’ chant that L. W. Thomas always said was the finest sound in the world.

  Cass and Roger watched the funeral from the shade of an oak tree on the hill. When it was done, when the people had dropped their handfuls of earth into the grave and departed, the two men walked back through the cemetery together and sat on an iron bench in the dusk. The day, like the mourners, departed slowly, reluctantly, for even in September the light was master and would have no sudden falling toward the dark. In that season, the day released its hold little by little, sometimes painting with yellow twilight; sometimes, like today, merely softening, but holding on long after the sun had passed below the trees and western ridges.

  The cemetery plot before them was ringed with cedars that were already gathering evening. The grass would hardly grow beneath them, but a thick crop of sweet william and four-o’clocks—yellow and tired, but still blooming—flourished around the fence where the sun could reach. The fence itself was twined with iron vines and berries and surrounded a pedestal crowned by a weeping angel. Close beside was another stone, the kind that the government provided for its former enemies, an upright stone, dignified in its simplicity:

  Lucian Wakefield

  Pvt Co C

  21 Regt Miss Inf

  Once they were settled on the bench, Cass and Roger lit cigars to keep the mosquitoes off and talked awhile. Cass told once more of how Queenolia had birthed him, then kept him from being thrown out with the bedclothes. He remembered the Citadel and things that had happened there, then went on to tell other stories Roger already knew, but Cass told them anyhow, and Roger listened, for by such means do men anchor themselves in the stream of time. Surely this was the best time of day for stories, and the best season, in a fragile, melancholy twilight as the world tilted toward autumn and night. At such a time, everything seemed to pause, and the old hours rose like fireflies or the smoke from chimneys, or like shades whispering to be heard.

  A thunderstorm was growling to westward, coming fast, pushing a wind before it. The stone angel’s face glowed pink in the failing light. After a moment, Roger pointed his cane at Lucian’s marker and said, “We were not in Company C.”

  “You have mentioned that before,” said Cass. “Several times.”

  “Yes,” said Roger. After a moment, he said, “If she hadn’t asked, would you have put him beside her?”

  Cass shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t have known to. I guess I’d have put him over there with Janie and Mama.”

  “No,” said Roger. “No, you wouldn’t have. You’d have put him with Alison anyhow.”

  Cass spat between his feet. “Well, if you already knew that, what did you ask me for?”

  “Just making conversation,” said Roger. He leaned forward and tapped his cane on the hard, dry ground. “I don’t remember much of what happened up at that house. Have I mentioned that?”

  “No,” said Cass. He watched his comrade’s face. On this subject they had hardly talked at all, each assuming, as men will do, that the other would speak in his own good time—or never, if that suited him. Cass said, “It’s no wonder you were knocked in the head pretty bad.”

  “Not so bad,” said Roger. “You know, I followed you all because—well, I guess I was mad at being left out. If I hadn’t come …”

  “It’s no use thinking like that,” said Cass. “Anyhow, I’d of done the same. So would Lucian.”

  “I know,” said Roger. “I remember we shot a man, then we burned his house down and got away with it.”

  “Are you sorry we did?”

  “Which one?” asked Roger.

  “All of them,” said Cass.

  “No,” said Roger, “not in the least. Only—” He thought a moment, moving his cane back and forth in the dry grass. “Only that’s the trouble. It was all so easy. That seems a thing one ought to forget how to do, or even want to do.”

  An image drifted through Cass’s mind: Roger Lewellyn clawing his way through the ditch at the cotton gin. A leaf turned, and there was Roger again, bayoneting the dead at Shiloh. Cass said, “I guess some things you learn, you’re not allowed to forget.”

  Roger laughed. “All I ever wanted to do was play the piano.”

  “I know,” said Cass.

  The sun was gone now, save for a single bright ray lancing through the clouds, and the air was cooler and smelled of rain. Roger stood up and pointed once more at the graves. “You did the right thing, Cass. They are in good company.”

  “The best company,” said Cass.

  The two men were quiet for a moment, then Roger looked to the west and said, “Storm coming. I should go home and see what the cook has for supper.” He turned to Cass. “You come with me. Sally Mae would like that; she would know you this time.”

  “That is a kindness,” said Cass. He rose and looked away across the hills. “I’ll come another day, I promise.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Roger, smiling.

  “Ah, well,” said Cass. “Love to my good cousin.”

  The two men shook hands, and Roger Lewellyn walked away in his old green swallowtail coat and plug hat, swinging his cane. He passed through the gate and into the Pontotoc Road, and there the light seemed to absorb him, and in a moment he was gone.

  Cass thought how all the roads the armies had traveled must have their visions in this hour of remembering, and perhaps a watchful rider might sense them: quick shadows, figures glimpsed but not really seen, cold patches over bridges, voices heard amid the chatter of birds or under the noise of moving water. A great moth might flutter past the rider’s face, come out of the brooding trees and gone again, that quick, and the rider’s horse might well grow restless, and he would spur her on toward village or town or cabin and leave the road to the coming night. He would not see then—nor was he meant to see—the lean, gaunted figures striving in the dust under their slanted rifles and cased colors, their long stride bearing each to his own meeting with the Angel of Death in some field or wood beyond. The rider, safe now in a place where lamps would soon be lit, would not see them, but he would know—as he was meant to know—that he had passed through their phantom columns, and later in sleep he would dream, perhaps, of a circle of fires under the black kettle of the sky.

  Cass walked slowly down the hill and up another, and in time he came to the Wakefield plot with its own iron fence and planting of cedar trees. Cass’s mother had an old-fashioned rounded stone carved with a weeping willow. Janie’s stone was in the current ornate style, with a descending dove. Cass had a colored man keep the weeds cut and the periwinkle trimmed in summer, and he painted the fence himself every other fall. He never cleaned the stones, however. It seemed right to let the moss and lichen grow, while the cedars and the rain darkened the stones with the soft patina of time. Often Cass wished that Spanish moss, with its dignity and air of sorrow, grew this far north.

  Cass rested his elbows between the iron spikes. Lightning flickered against the darkening sky, and the cedar tops began to rustle in the wind. Inside the fence, a little tabby cat perched on Janie’s stone, eyeing a mole she had rooted out, which now squirmed blindly in the brittle grass. As Cass watched, the cat pounced on the mole and batted it into the periwinkle. She crouched, waving her tail, and pounced again, disappearing into the cover. After some rustling of shrubbery, she emerged with the mole in her jaws, dropped it, batted it out of sight again. Cass threw a pine cone and whacked the cat on the head. The cat glared at him, then lifted her tail and stalked off in such a high dudgeon that Cass had to laugh.

  The fence was all laden of honeysuckle in late bloom. Cass plucked a blossom, drew out its stem, and sucked the sweet nectar. He did not blame the tabby for wanting to kill the mole;
that was only her way. In spite of all he had seen, Cass still believed in the fundamental decency of cats and men. He knew that God believed in it, too, in spite of all He’d seen—in spite of all His grieving and all the lies told about Him down the bloody ages. He was God after all, and had made all creatures, and He had taken the noble chance of granting to one of them a will of its own, and in the end, the gift had been worth all the trouble. Maybe the right to choose was the best gift of all and the best proof of love. It was more precious even than life itself, for without the possibility of defeat, the victories would have no meaning.

  The cemetery was aglimmer with fireflies, and as he watched them, Cass thought about something Bushrod Carter told once after the Stones River battle: how he had seen the souls of the slain rise like blackbirds toward heaven. Cass had held fast to that image ever since, but now he thought he might let it rest. If Bushrod had lived, if he had come home, if he were standing here now, perhaps he would agree that souls, at the end of day, rose more like fireflies, their lights burning for a little while longer over the tired earth.

  Cass flipped up the collar of his frock coat and looked toward the Pontotoc Road. Then he turned southward across the hills, the long way home, while the first drops of rain fell around him and a whippoorwill called from the trees.

  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 book 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 © 2006 by Howard Bahr

  Cover design by Greg Mortimer

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-5053-1

  This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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