ADAIR AND HER horses approached the crossing of the Current River near the place where Jack’s Fork came in, called House’s Ford. She waited until it was late evening and then rode to the edge of the river.
It was a deep river, and dangerous for all the trees it had taken down, rolling their great revolving wheels of roots along the bottoms. The spring rains had taken the bank of the ford away, and it was now a ten-foot bluff on this side, but low on the other. The bottom was clear and appeared to be hard.
Adair would cross now and go on in the night. She would travel in the dark until she was well beyond this crossing, for both armies used it frequently. It was just at sunset. Flights of mourning doves and wild pigeons wheeled in the darkening air.
Dolly went to the sloping bank and stared into the water and its insubstantial reflections.
Adair sat on Whiskey and looked at the broad river and knew this was going to take some doing. It was deep and fast. Dolly snorted angrily for she knew she was going to be asked to cross it, and knew it was unnecessary, for there was very good grass on this side of the river.
They all stood on the bank of red sand; the far shore was a low sandy beach. Great sycamores stood in the bottoms and made shadows on the glittering water. In between the trees she could see Stanger’s Steep going on.
It was dangerous to cross a river sidesaddle and so she took the saddle from Whiskey and put it on Dolly, for the gray mare to carry across. Adair took off the big brass-colored twill dress and stuffed it in her carpet sack, and made sure the carpet sack and pack and all were secure on the sidesaddle. She would cross in her chemise, for the great yards of skirts would tangle and drown her for sure. She tied her shoes round her neck. She got up on Whiskey by jumping across his back on her stomach and then righting herself.
Whiskey, go on, she said. If you go Dolly will go.
The gray mare with her black eyes stood at the ten-foot-high bluff. She hesitated. She saw no reason to plunge into this mysterious water. The tops of the sycamores and oaks on the other side were still tipped red with the last light and so were reflected on the fast black water. To Dolly it seemed that these were evil illuminations below the surface. Where the Underwater Panther housed herself and in slow watery strokes trod the currents.
Adair broke off a stick of cane. She took hold of Dolly’s lead-rope and rode Whiskey to the edge and pulled hard. Whiskey was eager to get into the river but Adair did not want to leave Dolly hesitating on the bank. The chemise rode up to her thighs and its insubstantial lawn was no more than a dirty gray film over her body and it was tearing in several places, so worn it was. She smashed the cane crop down on Dolly’s haunches and yelled
Go on!
Dolly wavered back and forth, back and forth, and so Adair struck Whiskey with the cane. Whiskey sat back on his hocks and slid down halfway, bringing down with him an avalanche of dirt and rocks. Then sprang into the dark water in a long leap. This snatched Dolly’s lead rope out of her hand with a skinning rip.
It seemed they were in the air for long moments. They fell through the air of dusk and sank into the water. It was so cold Adair cried out and then went under.
It was very dark under the water. Whiskey was surging upward so violently that his mane was torn out of her hands and she was swept away. Adair fought for the surface. She burst out into the air and saw she was being flung downstream faster than she thought. She clawed at the water as if it were a ladder or a stair but it dissolved beneath her and she went under again. She was swept onto Dolly, and the gray mare’s thrashing front hoof struck Adair in the forearm with such force Adair thought she felt it break but then she had hold of the sidesaddle and clung to it with both arms. The shoes were swept from around her neck and went down the current and were forever lost.
Dolly fought toward the far bank as if she were some great engine, steadily, mechanically. Fountains of water marked her passage and at a slant she roared up out of the shallow water, onto the low sandy beach, and stood. Adair let go of the saddle and dropped down on the sand. Dolly shook herself so that she seemed surrounded by a fine mist. Then Whiskey came trotting up.
Adair was gasping for air. She pulled on her wet stockings. They were all on the other side and alive. The trees of the bottoms were swagged with grapevines and darkness was developing in their shadows. Then Dolly lifted her head and saw Stanger’s Steep going on in the last of the day’s light, and began to trot down it, into the tunnel where the trees overhung the ancient trace.
Wait! said Adair. But Dolly did not like being on this dark shore, so near to the dominion of the Underwater Panther, and the night growing blind and sinister all around them. She trotted down the old trace at a good speed to get past the heavy woods of the bottoms and into some upland before full midnight was on them.
Whiskey fell in behind her and Adair ran between them, her chemise sticking to her wet and cold, but she could not stop them. The horses pulled on past her and were now independent of her, for their needs were their own and none of hers. At last she stopped running and walked. She walked and listened to their diminishing hoofbeats. Dolly gone with the grip and everything she possessed on her back. They were gone into the wilderness of Shannon County and she was in nothing but her chemise and her stockings. She could hear them far down the road begin to gallop, then they were gone entirely.
ADAIR WALKED FOR several miles because she could do nothing else. Soon enough the road came up out of the bottoms and climbed switchbacking to a ridge and there the night wind blew through her threadbare chemise with a severe bite. Stars stood out in their millions.
Well, I have cut quite a figure as a lady of high degree here in the world, haven’t I? But in some way it was amazing that here she was nearly naked and afoot in the night in the most remote wilderness of the Ozark mountains and wondered if ever such a thing had happened before. She was perishing of the cold. The wind seemed to come down from the great cold spaces of the stars themselves. She kept on walking.
Soon the moon came up and this caused several startled songbirds to whistle. A mockingbird ran through its warbling and erratic music. The three-quarter moon shone through the trees slantways as it rose, as if a giant lantern had been lit somewhere in the woods. White boulders and stands of limestone shone among the oaks and she was as pale as they. Another mile along she saw a house in a small clearing beside the road. There was no smell of woodsmoke, nor of horse manure, nor yet any dogs arising to bark, nor any noise or light.
Adair stood in the faint trace of Stanger’s Steep within the moon shade of a massive white oak and regarded the house. It was of log but sided over, the windows shuttered, the morning glory and trumpet vine thick over the front veranda. Because of this she thought surely it was deserted. Adair held herself tight for the relief of warmth she got from her own arms. Whippoorwills started up suddenly and so close she jumped. They began their demented, repetitive song and would go on all night.
She sat down on the bark fragments and acorns under the white oak listening to the sounds of the night. She sat with her knees drawn up and her arms clutched over her breasts. She would have to go on hunting them tomorrow, surely they would stop at the first good stand of grass and graze for the day.
Back in the woods raccoons began to argue among themselves, they were swearing and cursing at one another in loud voices. Then she heard wolves, but they seemed to be several mountains away. It made her hair stand on end. Adair prayed that they would stay several mountains away. Their voices carried such great distances so as to silence everything else. Adair listened. They were the lords of the night and all speech of animals fell silent when they sang. Their crazed sopranos made all creatures hold their lives close and in silence. The raccoons stopped in midsentence.
Adair stared at the house; she wanted to go in. She wanted to sleep under a roof for a night or two nights. She decided not to. She could not sleep for the chill, but her head dropped forward on her knees and she began to dream of her cousin Lucinda Newnan, that she ca
me visiting from Tennessee but there was a snowstorm, and the kindling was wet, and they could not get the fire started. Adair said that they should burn the tablecloth and Lucinda said that was the stupidest idea she had ever heard. Adair said, Shut the door, it’s wide open, and look at the snow coming in. Lucinda said, I will go outside and see if there is not some shavings in the barn, and Adair heard her footsteps crunching in the dry grass.
She was indeed hearing footsteps shushing in the grass. And so feral and wary had Adair become that she woke immediately and did not lift her head for the white flash her face would make in the night. Only very slowly and just enough to peek over her forearms.
A man had come out of the house. He was walking in the weed-grown yard. The moon shone on him and he was entirely naked. He looked around himself in every direction and in one hand he held a large revolver. The man’s body was as pale as a mushroom. He took his private parts in one hand and began to piss and did so for a long time. His eyes roved from the forest behind the house to the road to the weedy grasses of the clearing. One side to the other and back again.
He must have heard her horses go by. He would be very alert. A soldier of either side or a refugee or a spy. Adair waiting, sitting unmoving in a state of simple and uncomplicated terror for him to see her. His body was long and thin, he was clean-shaven as an egg, a V of tan at his neck like a bib. Adair could not stop looking at his naked body. His sex was hidden in its dark frame of hair, his thighs were long and lashed with whipcord muscles.
He finished and stood a few moments longer, watching. The moon showed the broken rail fence as plain as at sunrise. Adair eased her face down again to give him no more to look at than the vague white of her chemise, which might well be taken as a stand of limestone. She heard his dry footsteps again, whispering back into the house and inside, across the floor. There was a flash of light from between the shutters; it glowed out of their missing slats.
Oh Lord he is going to sit up all night in there, Adair thought. She sat perfectly still in her own near nakedness for as long a time as she could. Lord help me out of this, she thought. There is no one else here on earth to do so. I can expect aid from no quarter but from Thee. Curse this man. Make him deaf. Make him fall over dead.
At last the moon slid behind the trees on the other side, sinking with its astonished face into the shifting leaves. And the light inside the abandoned cabin went out.
Adair stood up very slowly. Her joints hurt her, unbending from her clutch of arms and legs. She must walk down the middle of the road, as she would make too much noise beneath the oaks. The worst of it was that if he caught her here in her chemise, it was ragged and gray and something to be ashamed of.
She came to the edge of the road and its soft dirt and began to run on tiptoe at top speed. She ran along the edge of the road with her knees flashing and her chemise flying out behind her in pale waves. She spurted into the long aisle of trees on the far side of the clearing where Stanger’s Steep went on its way. She ran along the road as it bent sideways along the side of the mountains, her hair flying out of her braids.
She heard someone running behind her.
Adair couldn’t go on as long as he could. She was tired out already and she turned to see him running toward her, the shirtless top half of him very pale and the bottom half nearly invisible in dark blue uniform pants.
He came up to her in the dark like a spirit and grabbed her by the hair.
Were those your horses? he said.
What horses? said Adair. Let me go!
They turned around and around in the dark as she fought to get loose of him. But he was very strong and shifted his grip to her arm where Dolly had kicked her and she cried out in pain.
Let me go, she said. I haven’t done nothing.
You’ve spied out my cabin, he said. And there’s likely more of Freeman’s boys somewhere behind you. He started off down the road in the moonlight in the direction that Dolly and Whiskey had gone with her arm in one hand and the revolver in the other.
Look there, he said. What’s that?
Ahead of them in the road was a black bulk. Bright things lay all around it. She stopped. It appeared to be a hunched troll squatted in the road and sorting among his collected trash.
It was her carpet sack and the bundle of bedding. Dolly had bucked it off. He held his revolver on her and said, Go pick it up.
Adair collected her silver dish, which she could see glinting faintly, and her tin cup. Then she started to pick up the carpet sack.
Leave that alone, he said. You could have a sidearm in there.
All right, Adair said, and held it upside down and shook it, and grabbed at the things that fell out. She got down and snatched up the green brocade slippers and the matron’s big dress and her silver brush and shawl and the candy dish. She raked the Zouave jacket toward her.
I said leave it alone!
Adair put on the bedroom slippers and pulled the dress over her head.
Don’t you tell me I can’t get dressed, she said.
He picked up the tow sack. Is there corn in there? he said. She saw in the moon’s light that he was medium tall and his eyes were hard. He watched her and untied his uniform shirt from around his waist and put it on.
Yes, she said. Corn. She was breathing in heavy gasps.
Stand on that bluff of rock and shake that bag of corn, he said. He buttoned his shirt.
On ahead of them the Steep led to a shelf of rock where they could see out over the valley as if placed there by a kind Providence for travelers to sit upon and look out over the nighttime valley, even now silting up with shadow as the moon extinguished itself. She looked out over the valley ahead of her and thought it must be Pike Creek Valley from what Greasy John had drawn on the backs of the telegraph forms.
No, she said.
He didn’t say anything, but bent and jerked open the carpet sack and spilled the rest of her things on the ground.
Just so there ain’t no sidearm in there, he said. Now, go on. Shake that bag of corn.
No. Shoot me. Sue me in court.
He took Adair by the arm and went to stand on the shelf of rock and shook the bag of corn.
Come boys! he called. Come boys!
Before long Whiskey and Dolly came trotting up the trail. Dolly was a pale bulk but Whiskey was nearly invisible in the dark. They came and nosed at the bag.
The man took them both by the halter rope and the reins and laughed.
Good. I ain’t got no use for that saddle, he said. Pull it off.
Adair unbuckled the cinch and pulled off the sidesaddle.
Don’t take my horses, she said.
My mama didn’t raise no idiots, he said. You been out slipping around in the dark, spying out my camps, and your horses got away from you. You got some patrol close behind.
Well, what are you doing up here by yourself?
You ain’t asking the questions. He took Whiskey’s reins and Dolly by the halter rope, and led them to a tree. He tied Dolly on a low limb. I got my horse stolen two days ago, Reeves jumped me and Billy Simes and took Billy off and shot him somewhere. Now these are just what I need.
Ain’t the war over? asked Adair. You can’t take my horses if the war is over.
Not here it ain’t, he said. Not for a long time.
Suddenly Dolly reared back on her tie rope, bracing her front legs and jerking wildly.
Stop that, you bitch, said the man, and kicked Dolly on the hindquarters. She bolted forward, turned to face the man with her round dark eyes and her ears cocked. I said cut that shit out. He approached her and she pulled back on the halter rope again, fighting hard to break it. He said, I hate a horse that pulls back. He walked up to her and kicked her hard in the chest, and then Dolly reared up and pawed the air. She stood out pale in the night with her big horse belly exposed to them, striking with her front feet.
The man shot her in the head. His revolver bucked in his hand and flame poured out of the muzzle. Adair screamed in
a long diminishing tremolo that repeated itself from hill to hill. Dolly jerked rigid, her legs stiff as pipes and trembling wildly. Then the gray mare went down very slowly, a large hole high up on her jaw. She lay down as if performing a trick she had never done before. Blood dripped from her mouth. She lay down on the leaves with her head still held up by the halter rope. Her eyes closed very slowly, inch by inch. Whiskey stood strained back on his reins, thrashing his head.
Oh don’t kill my horse! said Adair. Oh look how you’ve hurt her!
I done killed her. He walked to Whiskey. Now what is this one going to do?
Nothing, said Adair. He won’t do anything. She went to Whiskey and patted him. Be good, she said. Be good now. Dolly still hung by her head and the blood was dripping from her mouth. Whiskey stood and his skin trembled all over his body in waves.
Then you come on, you ain’t running off to go tell Reeves’s fellows where I am. He pulled Whiskey’s reins free and walked along leading the dun horse, and had her in the other hand. If you do anything I will kill this horse too. He’s your pet, ain’t he?
Adair said, I just traded for him a couple of days ago. He don’t mean anything to me but I got to get home. Give him to me, and she reached for him.
He knocked her hand down. I bet you’re a Snider. I bet you’ll hightail it back to the Sniders’ and bring them all a-running, he said.
Enemy Women Page 27
