Ghosts of Yesterday

by Jack Cady

  Back during the war, when bivouacked between battles, men became ill. No one got sick in battle. After battle, though, and when men let down, disease stalked the army as a vengeful presence. And, the moment we let down, it stalked us.

  First Charles, then I, fell like men slain before the hand of disease. Charles lay rolled in blankets, gasping like a man in the final stage of consumption. I held out for three more days, illness grasping toward me. I weakened while hauling stones for fire rings. Ephriam built a cabin, using the cliff and ledge as a back wall. I pulled in massive amounts of wood, and told myself to conquer the disease. Then, in spite of all effort, I collapsed; racked with choking and nigh breathless.

  A blank space exists in this record. I grew hot, then cold, and lay wrapped a-tremble in blankets. I recall babbling, calling the names of women long ago betrayed, of comrades long dead; and I talked to remembered faces of men I had killed.

  Charles the same. Charles babbled the names of horses, and he called to the memory of his mother in the same way he spoke to horses. Sometimes his mother was a horse, or so it seemed in his mind. Sometimes Charles cursed. Unusual, because Charles does not curse. Yet, when I gained a few lucid moments I heard him out-swear a sailor. And it seemed, he too, had betrayed loved women, but done even worse with women; and had murdered prisoners. In my delirium I wondered if what Charles babbled was true or only make-believe.

  We owed our lives to Ephriam, to Bester, and to Indian medicine that Charles had traded for back in August. Ephriam and Bester were heroic. They kept a stout fire going, night and day. They forced bitter medicine down throats that tried to close. When we fought against the medicine they forced our jaws open. Ephriam spoke to us, crooned to us, even joked to us. When I was so dazed that a comfortable slide into death held certain beauty, Bester pummeled me, insulted me, invited me to be angry at him; enough anger to propel me back into life.

  The illness crested, fever broke, and I began feeble movement within the small cabin. Ephriam did not speak as kindly after my illness, as during. No doubt I had babbled things best left unsaid.

  I had lost the date. “How many days?” I asked Ephriam. And he said, “Too many. Maybe ten all told.”

  Thus, while time might move all around us, my sense of time become provisional. Entries start with apologies, as for example: “18th day 11th month, or perhaps the 17th, and certainly no more than the 20th, 1879….”

  Even worse, time grew frantic. It jumped like Mexican beans. We heard the soft tramp of horses in the forest. We heard the cries of men; commanding, swearing. At other times we saw creatures resembling men, but not fully. And, sometimes, music sounded through the forest, brass bands playing oddly syncopated rhythms, or church choirs singing. At other times, only a great depth of silence.

  We recovered slowly. My huge frame seemed to me, thin. For three days I could take little food, and that mostly broth boiled from deer bones. Charles suffered worse. After a week he became able to feed himself, but was not able to walk for another week. When he once more stepped from the cabin an ice-filled wind blew through the forest, and the rushing stream had dwindled. Ice formed along its banks. Snow lay tramped, and showed where Ephriam and Bester had searched for wood.

  When I tried to thank Ephriam he said, “Seems like in battle the first man killed is always the ship’s doctor. A sailor learns how to make do.” His voice was not cordial.

  I have always been stronger than other men, and have taken strength for granted. If not Herculean, I could at least pick up and reset a cannon while other men could not. Weakness had been unknown, but now I sat dumbly and scraped hides. I was good for nothing else. The shale scrapers crumbled as I worked; shale a poor substitute for flint. As strength gradually returned I knew I would never again be as strong. I reflected on the difference between humiliation and humility. I am not the first bookish man to have done so.

  While Bester and Ephriam worked, time flashed. Sometimes we woke, only to discover dawn turning to dusk. Entire days scampered away, then other days would repeat: the same weather, the same incidents in forest or stream, all of it the same; repeated.

  Charles remained close to being invalid. He walked timid as an ancient man stepping on cobblestones. Ephriam cut a stout stick for Charles, and throughout December Charles hobbled.

  Christmas came and went. I noted its passage, more or less, but the glorious event failed to inspire. Bester hummed to himself, but it was not a hymn. Ephriam spent most of the day alone in the forest. Charles murmured about Christmas ham.

  The New Year arrived. Approximately. The year 1880 did not look promising.

  We huddled near the fire as red glow flashed in the west. Snow covered the ground, melted, returned; then came ice. Freezing rain formed on trees and great branches crashed to ground. The stream dwindled further, froze, and we melted ice to gain water.

  “A month more,” Bester said. “Gain strength. We’ll make an end to this in a month.” He and Ephriam laced together cloaks using strips of scraped and tanned hide. “Not too tight, sailor,” he told Ephriam. “… must be a bit of give or they’ll bust.”

  We sat in the cabin before a small fire. Smoke wound its way along the back wall, up the ledge, and through a trough that Ephriam had hacked from the limestone. “What lies yonder,” Ephriam asked. “What lies beyond these hills?”

  “Tennessee,” Bester told him, “or Kentucky, if north. Due south ought to be Georgia.”

  “Flatland and big rivers,” Charles murmured. “Steamboats. Trains. Commerce. Civilization.” Charles’ voice held yearning that said, even he, had a bellyful when it came to ethnology.

  “Or, maybe not.” Bester’s dark skin no longer glowed beneath firelight. His fatigue was great, but he only allowed it to show after the day’s work. “I won’t even declare we’re in North Carolina. We should have got beyond these hills a good while back.”

  “We’re in Purgatory,” Charles murmured. “Don’t talk to me about North Carolina.”

  The month passed. Each evening we looked toward the west where red turned to orange, and then orange turned to a sullen combination of silver and blue. Snow and ice covered the forest, but westward looked even colder. Only one noteworthy thing happened. The lost mule either stepped through time, or wandered into camp.

  On a cold morning, with silver mist hovering above the stream, the once-vanished mule scavenged thin forage. It was still hobbled, and while we were thin, it was gaunt. The animal’s hide was dull and patchy, its withers obviously weak, its ribs prominent.

  “Shoot the creature,” Ephriam said. “T’will be a mercy.”

  That was not to be. The appearance of the mule breathed new life, or at least hope, into Charles. “It is my mule,” he told Ephriam, “and we’ll not shoot it.”

  “It is your mule,” I admitted. “You financed this adventure.” I knew Charles well. He would not stay with us much longer. Bester and Ephriam did not see what to me was obvious. They likely thought that when we broke camp the mule would be freed to find its fate.

  Charles stayed for one more week, and he spent that week finding forage for the mule. Then, on a gray and silver morning when mist seemed frozen on the mountaintops, Charles spoke to Bester. “We’ll break camp, trek south into Georgia.”

  “We’ll not,” Bester told him, and Bester was calm. “We have a duty.”

  “I have a duty,” Charles said, and he sounded plaintive. “My belly has digested enough roots and venison and varmints. I’ve got a duty to get warm and clean.” He looked toward me. “And ethnology can go to the Devil.”

  “Take a robe,” Bester told him. “Don’t catch a chill.” He turned away in disgust.

  “Go on,” Ephriam told Charles, “Ride all the way to hell if that’s what’s pleasing to you.”

  I had nothing to say. I could only wonder if a Yankee headed south was a lesson to the mule, or to Georgia. The last I saw of Charles was his thin figure astride a starved animal that plodded southward. He was, after all, a man who
loved horses.

  IV

  With Charles departed, a sense of ease, or even accomplishment filled our camp. Ephriam did not whistle or jest, but he no longer seemed displeased with every word I spoke. Perhaps my choosing to stay, rather than fleeing south, caused Ephriam to see me as separate from Charles.

  “Pitiful,” Ephriam said, and looked in the direction Charles had taken.

  “He was capable during battle,” I told Ephriam. “He was an officer, I a gunner.” That was as much explanation as I was willing to give.

  Thunder rumbled from the east. Without our noticing, Thunder had moved from west to east, and now it urged us toward the west. If we had thoughts of retreat, we could forget them.

  Westward the orange sky had long ago faded, and the sky now glowed in tones of blue and silver that made one think of ice. Charles might fail his duty, but we could not fail ours. At the same time, one could not help but shiver when looking west.

  For two more days we paused because Bester balked. He seemed undecided, although he did practical things. He cleaned his weapons. He rolled and unrolled his pack as he decided how much he might carry. Bester was so meticulous that anyone could see he delayed while making up his mind. Finally, on the second night, he decided.

  We huddled in the cabin. We had used extra skins lashed with rawhide to cover outside walls. They attracted varmints but protected against wind. In this early February, with ice skimming the land, the skins did not stink. Warmth inside the cabin was seductive. We did not relish a trek into winter.

  “We leave Thunder here,” Bester began. His brow wrinkled. Firelight softened his dark skin but the wrinkles were shadowed and black. “No. Thunder leaves us.” He hesitated. He did not want to say what he knew he must say. “Beyond yon ridge we leave everything: forest, old woman… I know not what else.”

  “The old woman told you?”

  “We can choose to see this through together, or we can go our separate ways. As near as I can figure, we’re looking at a different kind of battle.”

  “We’ve come this far together.”

  “Problem is,” Bester told me, “there’s weight between us. We got to get it settled. We got to be together in fact, as well as name….”

  “The war is over.”

  “You’re dreamin’,” Bester told me. “North will never respect the south, and south will never get done despisin’ the north. The war will never get over.”

  “I didn’t burn cabins,” Ephriam said. “I helped burn prizes to the water when we had no prize crews left. I fired on blockade runners. I killed men, but I never burned no cabin.” It was not exactly an apology.

  “If the war is never over, why in the name of Old Ned are we talking?” I didn’t challenge Bester. It was an honest question. “You soldiered,” I told Bester, “and I soldiered. I don’t know what you did, and you know damn-all about me.” I looked to Ephriam. “And you don’t know either.”

  “You told tales whilst sick.” Bester was grim.

  “You were present at the telling, but not the happening. You weren’t there.”

  “Damn good thing.”

  “What tales might you have to tell?” I asked.

  They sat quiet, and they thought. For the space of some minutes neither spoke.

  “I can see how a man might have had his reasons.” Bester yawned, but the yawn was forced. He pretended he didn’t care. “You in or out of what comes next?”

  “I’ll think about it,” I told him, then paused. The other choice was to go it alone. That seemed awful. “I’m in. Someone has to watch over you gentlemen.”

  Ephriam chuckled. “In,” he told Bester. “If only to view the show.”

  ……

  Thunder stood at our backs like an encouraging hand. We left the cabin and most of our equipment. We walked heavily robed. We carried light packs, bedrolls and weapons. For the moment, Thunder seemed a friend, or at least an ally. It rumbled like a giant clearing his throat as we climbed to the western ridge.

  A tortuous climb. Once, in the long ago, I could lift cannon. Now it seemed almost impossible to place one foot before the other. My boot soles were thin as paper, my breathing shallow and forced. If it had not been for the strength of Thunder, I could not have pressed forward. My comrades the same. Ephriam huffed and puffed. He had lost weight and was no longer shaped like a barrel. Even Bester seemed thin. He led, but slowly.

  Once on the ridge we looked down onto a landscape of a thousand smokes. Sunlight pierced gray mist, was swallowed by mist. Chill rose through the sunlight like the cold of a grave. It was enough to make the strongest heart turn back. Sunlight funneled into mist, like milk in a churn.

  Struggles went on down there, but of what kind and quality I could not say. It seemed that smokes from not a thousand, but many thousand fires rose black through silver mist. Although cold rose from the valley, red flashes glowed hot as anthracite.

  I thought of turning back and dismissed the thought. I could not fail Ephriam and Bester. Then I told myself to be honest. The long trek down to an empty cabin seemed more awful than being swallowed by mist.

  Our descent produced layers of dread. If Thunder had not mumbled like a sleepy animal, the descent would have been impossible. Thunder then faded, and was gone.

  “We’re on our own, gents,” Bester muttered. “I figger we’re headed to a place where no one rules.”

  Dread arrived during the first thousand yards. We did not know where we were, but it was certain it was not the Great Smoky Mountains. Or, anywhere else frequented by living man. Of the dead, though, there were a-plenty.

  “A cloak, a cloak.” The voice quavered like that of an ancient man, but I saw no man. At the same time, the voice sounded familiar, if haunted. Ephriam turned, bewildered, looked all about. Bester shook himself, like a dog shaking water from its coat. He looked confused, and Bester was never one to be confused.

  The voice rose from a scorched landscape and the voice surrounded us. I feared I would actually breathe it in, and tried to slow my breathing. “Poor him’s a-cold, poor him. A cloak, a cloak.”

  Fires burned here and there, and wrecked trees smoldered. Yet, the voice complained of cold. It grew faint as we passed downward. Cold wrapped the side of the hill, a cloak, no doubt, but a cloak that told of ice.

  “Trickery, trickery, dickery, dee….” It was a child’s voice. A waif skipped past singing. She stopped and turned. “Me lights was blowed out an’ I no longer see.” She was blind. And skipped.

  Bester sobbed. Caught his breath. Choked. I could see no reason for it, but he momentarily slowed.

  “Mad?” I questioned about the child.

  “Lunatic,” he said, but spoke not of the child.

  Then a woman’s voice. It murmured through mist, and then it wept. And then it rose in anger. And then retreated once more to murmur. Betrayal seemed to live in the air, and I remembered women, and the promises I had once made. And broken.

  This voice I could not remember. All I could understand was its immense grief, and from that I recoiled.

  “I’m not understanding much,” Bester said, his voice subdued. “But this is a time like no other time. Like a time that time forgot.”

  “I feel almost alive. At the same time, fairly-well not.” Ephriam pulled to a slow halt. He studied. “All the time that ever was is happening all the time?”

  Beneath our feet smoke drifted from burned soil. The stench of death was replaced by the stink of burning peat, yet frost covered the ground. From the gray and silver mist came the sounds of water breaking against a shore, a distant rush of water.

  “If you wish to return to life,” the woman’s voice whispered to us, “do not falter. Retreat is an acceptance of doom.” The voice carried little hope, and no trust.

  I could not tell from wither the voice came. And what did she mean, “return to life”?

  Ephriam made a decision on the strength of that voice. He walked toward the sounds of breaking water. We followed, and we advanc
ed toward a distant shore. Low surf murmured as we walked. An iron gray sea swelled around rocks, and not far offshore a barkentine carried torn sails. Fire climbed the aft mast. The vessel rode so low that burning sails seemed to rest on the surface of the sea; a hull about to take its final dive.

  A second vessel, a brig, stood close-hauled in a dead calm. Sails drooped and the commission pennant hung lifeless. Men worked to clear decks after battle. They said little: a distant curse floating across water, the cry of a man wounded, the faint slosh of sea water cast on decks to clear away blood. A marksman, rifle slung across his back, climbed to the crosstrees.

  “A cloak, a cloak. Poor him’s a-cold.” The voice came from one of two figures standing before surf. The one that spoke was old and hunched and thin. It trembled as it stood, and its call went across the surf and to sea; and its call went landward. I did not understand how such a feeble voice could cover such distance.

  The second figure was equally old, but it stood erect and at ease. It was still muscular and barrel-shaped. I knew before it turned who I would see, and Ephriam knew as well. He also knew who he would see when the thin figure turned. We stopped, stunned and for the moment, voiceless.

  “The time that time forgot,” Bester murmured after a long pause. “Is that what’s happening?” He watched Ephriam as Ephriam watched two versions of himself as an old man. Ephriam grunted, like a man hit. “Uh, uh, uh….” He looked seaward.

  Men from the sinking barkentine were in the water, while other survivors rowed two small boats. They attempted to rescue the swimmers. As they approached each swimmer, a rifle sounded faint across the swells, and a puff of smoke issued from the crosstrees of the brig. The swimmer would shake, the water would turn red, and the man would disappear beneath waves. Ephriam groaned.

  I looked toward the brig. In the crosstrees the sniper sported. He chose swimmers about to be rescued. His shots moved ahead of the small boats, searching for men, denying life. From the deck of the bark sounded a familiar laugh. Too familiar. Ephriam choked, made odd sounds in his throat. Finally: “I had charge of the deck. I could have stopped that.” He unslung his rifle. His face twisted with loathing, but the loathing was for himself. He looked at the rifle as if he tried to understand its use. I thought, perhaps, he would shoot at the man in the crosstrees. Then, for a moment, I feared he would shoot himself. Instead, he threw the rifle from him as if it were a thing diseased.