Fallen Land: A Novel

by Taylor Brown

  Callum stopped the horse.

  “Y’all want me to bust them irons?”

  The men smiled, identically, and scrambled down from the roof.

  “All right,” said Callum. “Pull the chain tight.”

  He pulled the pistol from the saddle holster.

  The two men leapt back toward the boxcar, but the door was jammed shut. They cowered against it, shaking, their bleached palms held before their faces.

  “Jesus,” said Callum. “Somebody done a number on y’all, didn’t they?” He decocked the pistol and pointed it away. “I ain’t gonna shoot you, but it’s the only thing I got.”

  They nodded and came forward. They stretched the chain between the two of them, quivering, and Callum tried to touch the barrel to the middlemost link. They were shaking too much. He couldn’t.

  “I could do it, suh.”

  Callum turned to look. It was a sorghum-colored negro come out from the woods, wearing a chewed straw hat over a thin cotton shirt.

  “They ain’t ’fraid of me,” said the man. “Not like they is you.”

  Callum’s hand tightened on the pistol. He looked at Ava. She said with her eyes what he was thinking: no. He saw other faces peeking from the woods, from behind trees and out of brambles.

  “You,” he said, pointing to an old woman with a ball of silver hair. “You can do it.”

  The woman crept slowly from the trees.

  “I ain’t never banged no gun,” she said.

  “It ain’t hard,” said Callum. “You two, stretch that chain across that tie there.”

  The brothers did. The woman came up to the horse.

  “Don’t point it at nothing but that chain,” said Callum. “You got to cock the hammer first. I’m gonna give you this smaller one. It don’t have the same kick.”

  He handed her one of the smaller Colts, keeping the big Walker in his right hand. She took the pistol across her open palms, the way a priest would something at Mass. She squatted on her heels in front of the stretched chain, taking the pistol in both hands now, the barrel wiggling like a tuning fork. The two brothers were no longer afraid though they probably should have been. She used both thumbs to pull the hammer back. She put the barrel up to the chain and closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

  The chain blew asunder and she dropped the pistol, leaping back.

  “Lort God!”

  Callum laughed—he couldn’t help it—and the runaways watching from the trees began slowly to smile at the event, realizing they could. Soon they were chuckling, their hands over their mouths. The woman took up the pistol, careful, as if it might go off again, and handed it back to Callum. He took it, his right hand still on the Walker, and they rode on. The two brothers waved with the same hands as before, as if the chain had never been broken.

  Later that day, a town of some size began assembling before them, the largest they’d seen in some days. They thought of going around, but heavy curtains of smoke lingered on the outskirts, the places where arsenals and depots and factories would be. So they rode on into town, going slow, cutting their eyes left and right. There were big brick homes set back from the streets, largely intact, with broad green lawns and deep-shaded porches, here or there a broken window or smashed-in door, a dug-up garden or scorched portico where a flag had been burned. There were few men about—just women young and old, and children rolling around in the dirt and leaves. They did see a trio of white men come from behind a house, dressed in what looked inmates’ garb, with candlesticks and crystal gathered up in their arms like firewood. The men saw them and ducked out of sight around the corner.

  “Jesus,” said Callum. “Who let them sons of bitches loose?”

  “Who you think?”

  “Sherman don’t seem the pardoning type, not from what I’ve seen.”

  Ava patted his shoulder. “Why not, when those boys’ll do such good for society?”

  The town opened into a giant square at its middle, a grassy area in the center of which stood a great building of brown stone constructed of various-size blocks, the walls topped with toothlike battlements such as a castle might have. It had not been burned, but the grounds were covered in debris of all kinds, spewed down the steps and onto the trampled lawn. There were big leather-bound books with yellow pages flapping in the breeze, and loose papers of all sorts, and paintings of wigged men in fancy dress staring up at the sky. There were state bonds and notes strewn about, none signed, it seemed, and a scattering of heavy wing-back chairs not meant for the out-of-doors. A great many were smashed or upset, as if they’d given offense to the sitter.

  Callum walked the horse into the square, closer.

  “What the hell is this place?”

  There was a round-backed woman bent behind an overturned pew of some kind, muttering at something on the ground. She had on a coarse gray sweater with holes at the elbows, her legs hidden behind the nicked-up wood.

  “Ma’am?” said Callum. “Ma’am?”

  The woman looked up, her hair frizzled and silver around a rugged red face.

  “Yes?” she said. “Yes?”

  “What is this place, ma’am?”

  When the woman came from behind the pew, a large goose followed along beside her, waddling at her feet, attached to her wrist by a small leash. It had beady black eyes and a pointed beak, an imperial air that said it shouldn’t be crossed.

  “Boy, this is the State House, don’t you know? Everybody knows that.”

  “Oh,” said Callum.

  “I was in there the other day,” said the woman, nodding. “I was, too.”

  “Here?”

  “For the assembly, boy. In the Senate Chamber. Them blue-bellies parliamenting, drunk as lords, too. I never seen such legislating.”

  “They pass them some new laws?”

  “They did too, boy. What was they? Ducky, you remember?” The goose looked at her. “That’s right,” she said. “That’s right. They was resolutions. One, that secession was a indiscreet ordinance, and injudicious as well, and ought well be discouraged furthermore. They said that. And two: that the aforementioned ordinance was naught but a damned farce, in fact, and hereby repealed. And three, that Sherman would play him the devil with the ordinance of secession, and with the state, too. Vi et armis.”

  “What’s that?”

  “With force and arms, boy. Don’t you know Latin?”

  “It’s been a while,” said Callum.

  “Anyhow,” said the woman, “I got to be getting on. I can smell ’em on my heels.”

  “Who?”

  “Them damn loon hunters, boy, from the asylum. They hunting us that got loose.”

  “Oh,” said Callum.

  “Tell you what, you see ’em, you tell ’em I left with Sherman’s army. You tell ’em I was on the arm of a real pretty boy from Indiana. A officer. You could do that for me?”

  Callum looked at Ava, who was smiling.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I believe we could.”

  They slept that night in an abandoned house on the edge of town. There was no wood for a fire, and they didn’t want to burn the furniture. They slept fitfully, without fire, in a room with two ways out. Several windows had been broken by looters, and Callum spread the broken glass at the entrances, like Lachlan had done at the edge of his yard.

  “Feels strange, don’t it?” said Ava as they bedded down.

  “What?”

  “A night indoors, after so many out.”

  “It does,” said Callum. “I can’t help but feeling trapped.”

  “Get over here and keep me warm.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They lay enmeshed beneath Ava’s quilt, Callum’s buffalo blanket used as a pallet. She had her head against his shoulder, her finger tracing the patchwork that covered them.

  “I’ve never seen the ocean,” she said. “Just know it from books and such.”

  Callum squinted, as if seeing it again.

  “It’s got all these differen
t colors, like moods almost, and same for the motion. It can be glass-smooth or corduroyed in ridges, risen up in hills and mountains even. Whatever its whim. You get the feeling how small you are, that’s for sure. How little you count.”

  “Did you like it before the wreck?”

  “Like it, I don’t know. I didn’t see much on the way across. They had us packed in like cattle belowdecks, worse even than the workhouse. I can still remember the stench, so thick you could hardly breathe. Now the blockade-runner, well, anything was better than Louisiana at that point.”

  “What about the coast?”

  “The coast ain’t so bad. There’s all these islands, each of them surrounded in marsh grass, and a whole maze of creeks and inlets and backwaters. They got that Sea Island cotton down there the Brits pay big money for, and I know they dike and flood the marshes for rice.”

  “Sounds like easy living compared to the mountains.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it easy, exactly. The heat’s fearsome—Swinney used to say that—and the mosquitoes, too. In summer you might think you died and went to hell, same’s Louisiana. Big planters got most of the land.”

  She nestled closer to him, nuzzling her cheek against his shoulder.

  “These Goslings, you think they’ll let us sharecrop a little plot, raise this baby up right?”

  Callum slid his hand over her belly, warm beneath the muslin. As he did, Ava hiked up the dress to reveal the bare flesh of her navel, warmer still, a softness coming into her eyes he’d not seen.

  “I hope,” he said, palming her there. “Blood is blood, right?”

  By dawn they were on a minor road out of town, coming soon upon a high bluff, below it a slate river vented with dark rips of current. Trees reached sideways from its banks, wet and black. They could not see the bottom. To the south, just before a bend, they glimpsed the empty pilings of a destroyed bridge.

  “Confederates burning the bridges to stop the advance,” said Callum.

  “Don’t look like it’s working,” said Ava.

  For they could see, nearby, the littered waste that marked the army’s crossing. Toeless boots and busted wagons and the bodies of lame animals left at the river’s banks.

  “Nuh-uh,” said Callum. “They got those pontoon bridges now. Something like this don’t slow them but for maybe a day. It’s putting bridge blowing out of fashion. Colonel used to get all steamed up over it. It was one of his favorite pastimes.”

  They headed downriver, looking for a bridge, a ferry, a fording. A hundred yards downstream, they found hoofprints leading down into the water. They could not see any reciprocal tracks on the far bank. They kept riding. Later they found a flat-bottomed ferry partially wedged beneath a dead tree in the middle of the river. Only the warped triangle of a single corner was not submerged. Around its edges the current grumbled and foamed. A spotted dog stood on the only section that was dry. He was balanced on front and rear paws that nearly touched, so narrow was his stance, his space. He watched them pass along the shore, dipping his head now and then to look at the water roiling underneath him. They could see his ribs. He barked twice at them. They kept moving.

  At the next bend they crested a bluff and heard voices. Song. Through the trees they saw people in the river, women mostly. Their pink flesh was quivering through wet pinafores, their shoulders quaking. The hems of their dresses fluttered sideways in the current. They were singing, their voices plaintive and strange, their words hardly decipherable. No matter, the loss could be heard in the cold strangle of their voices. They were facing a young boy with a girl’s face. He stood on a rock far out in the current, barefoot, unshaking in the cold. His hair was curled and gold, his mouth gaped in song. His lips an ellipsis of the brightest red, as if painted.

  The horse halted, no prompting from Callum. None conscious. The sound moved through the trees, high and lonesome. The world seemed sharper, clearer. These were poor people. It could be seen in their bony fingers, their notched backbones, the jagged blades of their shoulders. All these articulated against the thin, wet membrane of their clothes. The slate river in which they stood was fired with fallen leaves, gold and crimson. For a strange moment, Callum felt they were singing just for him, him and Ava, like the chorus to a play the singers would never see. The young boy looked up toward the bluff but didn’t seem to see them among the trees. Callum coaxed the horse forward. He hoped the boy’s vision was lacking, not prescient.

  They rode on, looking for a place to cross.

  “There!” said Ava.

  Callum looked where she was pointing. There was a spot where the near bank had caved under the hooved descent of a cavalry force. On the far shore they could see the treaded swallow where the horses had struggled black-legged up the bank. It didn’t look too old.

  Here was the place.

  Callum watched the river crash around the angular hunks of rock that jeweled the river. This was the longest crossing they’d faced. The most treacherous. Only the river stone closest to the shore could be glimpsed, pale under the dark current. Farther out it was too deep, the bottom lost. He waited for the fear to burn in his belly, that yellow bile. He waited, and nothing.

  He looked over his shoulder.

  “Ready?”

  Ava nodded.

  He clenched Reiver’s wide ribcage with the insides of his legs. The horse stepped carefully down the bank, his head lowered, and entered the river. The cold gunmetal of the current stunned them when it reached their boots, their knees, their thighs. Callum had known some cold in the mountains, fuel too wet to burn. Fingers white. Noses red. Peckers held with both hands when taking a piss, to keep them warm. That was a long battling with the element. Attrition. But here was cold quick to the bone, sharp enough to kill.

  Reiver rocked back and forth, fording, his hooves probing the bottom. The river broke against his body as against a giant black rock, the current eddying in dark whirlpools that slid downstream, unraveling. The shore neared; they began to rise out of the water. The sheen streamed off his body like shed armor. He climbed the bank, dipping his head with effort, and finally stood to blow on the high safety of the bluff. His black coat smoked in the air.

  “Good boy,” said Callum, patting the enormous neck.

  The horse turned his head to him, one dark planet of an eye lashed like a slattern’s, and blinked. Cool, unpanicked. Then he dipped his head to graze. Callum just leaned back in the saddle, against Ava, and let the big horse eat.

  The terrain on this side of the river was immediately flatter, wetter. Gray beards of moss haunted the low overhang of the trees. Before long even the smoke seemed changed, a dusky pine haze that coated outbuildings and cotton fields. Harder to see, harder to be seen. By sundown, Callum could make a fist and see pale fissures revealed at his knuckles, the rest of his hand dusted like that of a smithy or coal miner.

  He knew a number of rivers cut across the state, some parallel. They had strange Indian names that he couldn’t remember, not exactly. Some started with an O—he remembered that much. He reckoned they’d crossed one. More lay before them.

  The sun had fallen low against their backs, a fiery peach, when they crested a small rise and looked down upon a vast expanse of cotton fields and pasture, angular green planes partitioned by red roads. The plowed reaping land contrasted with worthless islands of scrub pine, some oak, many of these cradling the smoking hulks of torched homesteads and barns. The army’s advance was clear, the land jetted with smoke. It was as though they were merely hacking into the earth until the hot core of the world bubbled up in fire.

  “I remember my daddy talking about this,” said Ava.

  Callum looked at the devastation, raised an eyebrow.

  “He some kind of soothsayer now? Future-reader?”

  Ava shook her head. “More the opposite. He said these prehistoric shorelines cut across the land at places, specially down here. Said the land, it goes suddenly flat like this because it used to be underwater. All this”—her hand sw
ept a panorama of the vista before them—“all this used to have fish swimming in it. Sea monsters with giant teeth that aren’t even around anymore.”

  Callum looked out over the smoking red land and imagined the low reefs of cloud as oceanic leviathans, creatures flicking their tails through a lightless depth.

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  “Serious,” said Ava. “They can still find remnants, images compressed in rock that look like something from a whole other planet.”

  Callum rubbed his chin. “So not only do we got a team of sons of bitches on horseback to contend with, now we got to worry about giant sea-ghosts swimming in the heavens over us?”

  Ava leaned against him, patting his leg.

  “There, there,” she said. “I’ll protect you.”

  Her hand stayed on his leg.

  The next day they hit mires of lowland swamp. The trees grew straight out of obsidian water, the surface coated here and there with specious green islands of lilies and algae. They cut southward until finding trails corduroyed with new-cut saplings. The going was slow, wet, dirty. The army had left a stench of shit in their wake. The soldiers could not venture very far from the road here. Their shit and the shit of their horses and mules littered the road and roadside in ropy piles, each of them crowned with emerald flies that swirled into the air when passed, tiny whining cyclones, before alighting again on their mounded bonanzas.

  At least there was little way for their pursuers to flank them here. Still they were relieved each time the trail broke out upon dry ground, cutting between fields shot through on the margins by yellow geysers of goldenrod. They were growing hungry again, the bellyfuls of pork long gone, and Callum watched the beetles and other black-legged husks tick across the serrated leaves and egg-shaped blossoms.

  “You ever ate a bug before?”

  “Once I did,” said Ava. “On a dare.”

  “What kind?”

  “Just a worm.”