Fallen Land: A Novel

by Taylor Brown

  It was too late. Another enemy sloop hove into view, emerging from a hidden cove, and opened up with its thirty-two-pounders. Callum felt the night tremble as the shells streaked overhead, ripping the air apart. Then the ship quaked beneath him, struck, and he lost his legs, falling flat on the planks like a landsman. There were shouts of a fire belowdecks, and he scrambled to help. The captain ordered hard a-starboard and full steam, and they were soon within range of the eight-inch guns of Fort Fisher.

  The sea erupted all around, driving back their pursuers, but black smoke was churning out of the ship. Crewmen with handkerchiefs tied over their mouths brought two badly burned men to the deck. Callum fed them water between their moans. Then the crew started bringing the powder kegs topside, rolling them over the gunwales into the river. They worked quickly, like men who wanted to live. But the fire was spreading, and soon seamen were jumping ship, even officers. Callum was not sure what to do. The port was too far. He would jump.

  One of the burned men grabbed his ankle.

  “Don’t leave me,” he croaked.

  Just then the first powder keg ignited, a blast that bulged the deck, illuminating the spaces between planks. Then darkness. The next thing he remembered—clearly—was the beach, and the old man scouring it for loot that washed ashore, not expecting to find a boy spit up as if by the incoming tide.

  * * *

  Callum watched the tavern for another quarter hour. Finally, Swinney’s rotund body swelled through the door and trod down the side of the building. He was walking heavily, uncertain, one hand sliding along the boards to impart confidence, the other resting on the vast protrusion of his belly. He was facing the wall, fumbling to open his fly, when Callum came up behind him. He thumbed the pistol’s hammer to full cock.

  Click.

  “You old ash-shitter.”

  Swinney turned slowly around, white-eyed with fear, his fly half-open.

  “Boy,” he said.

  Callum reached out and gripped the lapel of the older man’s coat with his free hand. He pulled him out of the light and around to the far side of the storehouse. The pistol was sufficient prompting. There they stood across from each other, old man and young, the pistol quivering long-barreled between them.

  “You shoot that thing off, you’ll be dead in a heartbeat,” said Swinney.

  Callum decocked the revolver with one hand, unsheathing his knife with the other.

  Swinney pincered the paste-ridden corners of his mouth between thumb and forefinger.

  “Best watch them comeuppins, boy. They could be out for you.”

  “That’s what I’m here about.”

  Swinney said nothing.

  “It wasn’t me that killed the Colonel. It was some soldiers came out of nowhere. Regulars, in uniform. It wasn’t me that did it.”

  Swinney nodded slowly. “I didn’t figure it was,” he said.

  “You didn’t?”

  Swinney shook his head. “No.”

  “Then why the hell y’all chasing us?”

  Swinney blew a long sigh out of his mouth, bulging his cheeks. “Bounty.”

  “What?”

  “Bounty, boy. Money.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Swinney laced his fingers together and rested them on the top of his belly. He looked down at them a moment, then back up.

  “Back in ’62 the Yanks put a bounty on the Colonel’s head. Five thousand dollars. Same’s they done Mosby and some them other Partisan Rangers. Colonel was furious. Called it unsoldierly and unsporting and ungentlemanlike and everthing else.” Swinney tugged at his beard between steepled thumbs. “So you know that train he robbed, got him unstrapped of his commission?”

  Callum nodded.

  “He took them banknotes and railroad gold and made up a bounty his own. Posthumous. Five thousand dollars to whichever man could kill the man that killed him. Made Old Lawyer Sawyer with the spectacles keep a copy of the will in his saddle. Made him the egg-secutor.”

  Callum felt a tremor slip across his bottom lip. He took a step closer with the knife.

  “Well, that’s all fine and dandy, Swinney, but I didn’t kill the son of a bitch. Might would of, but didn’t. So you can just call off the dogs, and I’ll be on my goddamn way.”

  Swinney’s bulk deflated.

  “Wish it was that easy,” he said.

  “What about it ain’t?” said Callum. “I didn’t do it. That’s the truth. Plain as day.”

  “You got any evidence?”

  “I didn’t know I’d be needing any, seeing as how I didn’t do it. Thought the truth’d be enough.”

  “The truth?” said Swinney. He turned his head and spat a dark clot into the shadows, as if doing away with the word. “Problem is, it looks awfully like you was the one done the killing, and that’s the most profitable truth for everbody. They’re all planning to split that bounty money, with twenty-five percent going to the bounty hunter and twenty-five to the trigger-puller, and the rest divided evenly. Good dividins for everbody. I believe you weren’t the one that done it. But you got to realize my voice is just a single one among so many others, too many, my truth trumped by all else’s. None of these sons of bitches gives a good goddamn whether you done it or not. Old Lawyer Sawyer decides whether the head brung in is the right one, and don’t think he don’t got his own head to worry about with so many notes on the plate.”

  Callum’s eyes seared, wet, his lips quivering beyond his will. A mad impulse gripped him. He wanted to wound Swinney however he could.

  “You yellow fat-bellied son of a bitch,” he said, looking for the hurt in Swinney’s eyes. When he saw the pain, it didn’t help him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand.

  “Well, you sons of bitches are gonna have to chase me from here to Northern Virginia, maybe farther north than that. See how you like it up there.”

  Swinney didn’t take the bait.

  “You be careful, boy. We heard Atlanta’s occupied now. Sherman.”

  “What’s that matter to me?”

  Swinney shook his head. “Nothing, I reckon.” He wiped a single finger hard across his bottom lip. “I’ll do for you what I can. But listen, this bounty hunter we hired up, he’s getting somebody to meet him with his dogs soon. Can track a horse good as a nigger. You ain’t gonna have long after that.”

  “Clayburn,” said Callum.

  Swinney’s jaw dropped, surprise in his face.

  Callum smirked. “Don’t think I ain’t been watching you, Swinney. You and the rest of these sons of bitches.”

  Swinney straightened from the wall. “Then you know you got to stay clear of him,” he said. “Get you some distance. I reckon we didn’t even quite know what we was getting into when we hired him up on the border. Thought he was just a good tracker. The best. And had some skin in the game. Some blood.”

  “Blood?”

  “Don’t you know? You know every damn thing besides. Clayburn, he’s the Colonel’s brother.”

  Callum’s voice stuck in his throat.

  “Not that that seems to matter,” said Swinney. “Not to him. He wants that bounty, same’s everybody else. But this son of a bitch—” Swinney shook his head. “The man’s got ways and means—”

  Callum didn’t want to know.

  “You just worry about your own damn self, Swinney. Like maybe I ought to gut you right here, make sure you don’t go telling everybody in there I’m out here. Telling him.”

  “I won’t,” said Swinney.

  “Maybe I ought to make sure.”

  “Goddamn you, boy. I said I wouldn’t. Like I wasn’t the one pulled you flat-bellied from the beach that time, took you in.”

  “Yeah, well maybe you ought to left me. Hell of a lot easier way to go than being hunted down like a dog.”

  “Boy, you got your own self into this mess chasing after that damn girl.”

  “She ain’t just a damn girl, Swinney.”

  The older man’s eyes grew suddenl
y softer, sadder. He might have been looking upon some damned specimen, a firefly in an airtight jar. His bottom jaw moved back and forth inside the gray of his beard.

  “I’m awful sorry, boy.”

  Callum stepped forward, the point of his knife prodding Swinney just below the navel, prodding him hard.

  “Awful ain’t half as sorry as you are,” he said.

  Then he pulled the knife away, unblooded, and shot off into the darkness, gone, Swinney left gasping all the air he might have lost. Slowly the big man sank against the wall, holding his face in his hands.

  * * *

  Callum was fifty yards from town, wet-eyed and running toward the far-off slopes, toward Ava, when he tripped over a sleeping figure he’d missed on the way into town. A picket. He was thrown face-forward into the dirt, then up and lunging back with the knife in hand, without thought. He drove the blade across the waking man’s throat before he could cry alarm. Then stood. The wound bubbled and gurgled like a mouth, trying to speak. Callum stood over the sight a long moment, watching, unable not to, then bolted. He ran and ran, running until his lungs seared like burning wings, as if fleeing what the wound was trying to tell him.

  Chapter 9

  Callum did not know if the rope would be there for him. He did not know if he deserved it to be, if he deserved to escape this place. Perhaps he was a creature marked and fated to remain here, his sins worth whatever bounties had been set upon his head. He ran in headlong flight, panic-struck and reckless, as though the valley he crossed were the floor of some nightmarish underworld, every rock and bush and tree an enemy leering from the darkness before him. He felt wholly alone, forsaken, the only man he’d trusted lost to him, maybe the only girl as well.

  He saw nothing for a long time. The far-off ridge was mottled and dark, scarce moon to illumine anything. When the line of rope appeared finally upon the slope, he spurred himself harder, collapsing finally at the foot of the ridge. Stars swarmed his vision, crooked and quick. The ache in his thigh had become a thunder. His face burned; he could not quit from heaving. His limbs had gone willowy on him, weak. He rolled onto his side and vomited.

  He could not stay here. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, studied the valley for pursuers or pickets. Nothing, just the hovering red ash of the other posted man, unalarmed. Callum’s breathing began to slow. He turned and grabbed hold of the rope and began the ascent, using roots as footholds in the loose ground. It felt like his arms might quit him.

  They didn’t.

  Ava was waiting for him, squatting on her haunches near the edge where she could peer down to watch him. When he crested the slope, she stood and turned wordlessly from him and walked to the horse.

  They rode unspeaking until dawn, and then kept on riding. Ava had let the horse graze while he’d gone into the valley, and they didn’t need to stop. When finally they did, the mist yet unburned from the ground, he told her all that had happened, end to end. She did not say I told you so like he’d thought she would. She only nodded, as if what story he relayed was no mystery to her, as if she’d seen it all coming.

  When he told her what last thing he’d said to Swinney, his eyes welled up and his throat took to convulsing on him. This seemed to surprise her least of all. They were sitting underneath a large oak. He lowered his head between his knees and buried his face in his palms. He tried to stop the sadness from welling out of him. She rubbed a slow circle between his shoulder blades with her palm. He pressed his wet face against hers. He remembered the soft cheek of his sister and mother, both lost so long ago, and the rough cheek of his father, too, whose face he could hardly remember. Everything before this shore like a myth to him, unreal, all his memories sunken in the earth so dark underneath the peat. But this, that cheek—it went to the core of him, to all he’d lost.

  Ava had begun talking to him. “It’s going to be okay,” she was saying, her lips just inches from his good ear. “We’re going to make it to the coast. To family. Peace. Away from all this.”

  If they kept moving south, they would break out of the mountains soon, into hills and lowlands. He knew this from the droving road. And the prospect of crossing open country with so many riders upon them—many of them sprung of these lands—did not sit well in his mind. A group of their size would move faster across such ground, enjoying the advantage of a citizenry to tell them what they’d seen passing through, and whom. It was a long way to the coast, and the odds seemed to be multiplying against them.

  Even so, Callum found himself nodding to Ava’s words. They were rhythmic, recurrent. He was nodding as much to soothe her as to soothe himself, he realized. And all the time wishing for a second good ear, so he could listen for the distant howling of hounds.

  * * *

  The riders stood around the slit-throated man in a ragged and unrealized halo. They were shift-footed and long-shadowed here at dawn, the night’s whiskey scum fermenting on their tongues. The slave hunter was taller than the rest of them, his cape clean and eyes clear, no drink to cloud or sunder him from the sight at hand. He squatted down to the corpse, the mouth and throat red-gaped as if in song, a dry-dark puddle of unstaunched spirit encircling the head like some blasphemy of sainthood.

  The bounty hunter placed two fingers along the gash, tracing the edges as if they could tell him all he needed to know of time and origin. There was grit in the wound, the flesh carved with the slight raggedness of a well-used blade. The laceration a single action, no slowing or second thought.

  He spoke without looking at the men. “Build a fire,” he said. He took the knife from the dead man’s belt and held it out behind him, handle-first. “And put the blade in the coals.” Someone stepped forward and took the knife from him, gingerly, so as not to cut or threaten to cut the hand that held it.

  Clayburn stood and drew a silver case from his coat pocket with his one hand. His hand crept over the stained pewter like a great white spider, his fingers long-boned and bloodless. He removed a thin cigar, then shut the case with his pinkie. He put the case away and at the same time drew from his coat pocket a cigar cutter, ivory-handled with a cutting hole on one end, a tab button alongside to work the razor. He stuck the cigar in his mouth backward and cut the nub end and turned it right side around and lowered his hand to his side. He dangled the cigar cutter on the crook of his finger, by the cutting hole.

  “Who was posted to either side of this man?”

  Two men stepped forward a half step.

  “You didn’t see anything.”

  One of them shook his head, hat in hand. “No, sir,” he said. He looked at the ground.

  The other shook his head, too, and spat on a nearby rock, then squinted into the far sky. Clayburn cocked his head and watched the black-juiced clot seep partly into a crack in the granite. He stepped across to the man and caught him by his wrist. He yanked the man’s fingertips to his nose and flared his nostrils and sniffed. Before him the man stood frozen, both he and his comrades wide-eyed.

  “Smoking last night on picket duty, were you, friend?”

  The man’s head quivered horizontally. “I ain’t stupid,” he said.

  “We missed him because of you.”

  The man started to speak again, but Clayburn moved a long finger to his lips to shush him. The man’s eyes were wide a long moment, then darkened. He tried to pull away. Clayburn wrenched the man’s arm under his own, locking them arm in arm. He raised the cutter.

  “The hell?”

  Clayburn clipped off the tip of the man’s finger at the outermost joint. It made a sickening pop. Then he turned and thrust himself away from the embrace, standing suddenly empty-handed as by some magician’s legerdemain, cutterless.

  The man lifted his disfigurement to eye level. It began to spurt, spurt, spurt—a startle of red in the morning grim.

  Clayburn watched him silently, intently, as if in study.

  “Hurts, don’t it?”

  The man screamed.

  “Fetch him that blade from the fi
re when it’s hot enough,” he said. He turned away. “He can burn it closed.” The ring of men parted for him as he walked back to his horse.

  Later the men scoured the ground for the cut-off end of the man’s finger. They found nothing, no sign, and when somebody said something must’ve run off with it, nobody laughed.

  * * *

  “Atlanta,” she said.

  Callum looked at her. They were nooning beside a brook that ran through a cold blue meadow. The wind sheared through the grass. Cold coming.

  “What?”

  Ava gestured at him with the dry cracker she held.

  “Swinney said Atlanta was occupied, right?”

  Callum nodded.

  “Maybe he was trying to tell you something. They can’t go anywhere near the Union army, but I bet we could slip in there easy, just the two of us. It’d be a lot closer than the coast, at least for the time being.”

  They were already nearing the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge. Callum looked out to the east and south. Sharp ridges softened into lower hills, lower and lower, rolling toward the central pine barrens. Beyond those lay the swamps and plains, far out of sight. It was a lot of open ground to cross, with fewer places to hide.

  “You don’t think we could make it?”

  Ava had a big bite of the stolen hardtack in her mouth. She swallowed and shook her head. “I been seeing the look on your face,” she said.

  “What about a couple days back, all that talk about the coast?”

  “Just trying to make you feel better.”

  Callum pursed his lips and squinted into the distance, then back at her, wishing the idea had been his.

  “Atlanta, then,” he said. “We’ll start heading southwest. I reckon that’ll keep us in the mountains until we’re pretty close to the city.”

  “I got a good idea or two, don’t I?”