A Book Of Tongues

CHAPTER SEVEN

Nine months before the twister. That was when Rook had first heard the Lieutenant say —

“And this’d be Private Pargeter.”

A grey day, that first camp even greyer, all their uniforms dirt-stiffened and indistinguishable. But Chess still stood out, hair and beard bright as a brand. He’d been butchering livestock yanked as tribute from a local farm, and his hands were bloody to the wrists.

Looked up mildly from cleaning his knife, to answer — “Lieutenant. Reverend.”

“Pargeter’s our very best man for close work, ’specially during nighttime incursions,” the Lieutenant told Rook, an odd note in his voice blurring what seemed like praise with something else. “He rode after us when we passed through California, rarin’ to volunteer. Fair scout, excellent killer.”

Eyes like sweet poison, too, Rook thought, and blushed.

Chess caught him at it, and grinned. “You’re thinkin’ how I’m small-made, to merit that kind of reputation,” he said.

“Oh, no, I . . . hadn’t thought about it, really,” Rook replied, reddening further. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Accuracy hardly counts as insult,” the Lieut said.

Chess nodded. “Oh, I ain’t insulted. But then again, that’s the glory of the army, ain’t it? For folks like me.”

“Meaning?”

Those green eyes narrowed, as one hand sought out his most convenient gun-butt, caressing it the way most men might a pretty girl’s dropped handkerchief. “Meaning, Lincoln may aim to free the slaves, Rev, but it was Colonel Colt really made all men equal — my size, your size. And everything else, to boot.”

That night, Rook gave a homily from Jeremiah, 7-26 to 7-34, as martial a passage as any he could think of. The Lieut sat there nodding, his transplanted Bushwhacker hair groomed like Custer’s, while the other men mainly got about their business, not ignoring Rook, exactly, but not exactly cheering him on, either.

All but Chess, that was, who watched him with a quirked gold brow and an odd little smile playing about his mouth — those deft hands of his cleaning and reassembling his guns by rote, without any need of close attention, while his gaze travelled the length and breadth of Rook’s long body . . . complimentary and predatory, at once.

The next two weeks brought three separate engagements, fast and hard as anything Megiddo’s plains might eventually deal out. Almost every day, the Lieut received fresh intelligence by bird, inevitably coded — and since only he had the cipher, they were forced to take his word for each subsequent target. Their primary duty, he often told them, was self-sacrifice. To rush any given breach, paving the way for more potentially damage-inflicting crews like Captain Coulson’s, who moved far more slowly, on account of the cannon they still dragged along behind them.

The cost was dear, both in men and morale. Rook buried three in shallow graves that fourteen-day span alone, and one sewn in a sack, far too crushed for any sort of memorializing. The Lieut told Rook to cheer them up, or at least on, and he did what little he could — thumbed the Bible for inspiration, looking out on a narrowing clutch of faces whose eyes slid from his, increasingly emptied of anything but fear and doubt.

And there in the background, Chess, always whistling at his work, untouched by any of the above. Chess, for whom war seemed a form of recreation — something he revelled in excelling at, with no hint of regret that such victory always came at someone else’s loss.

They were fighting hard over some sand-bar, one day, with mortar-fire felling trees in the distance. Rook found himself trapped by the coattail behind an overturned stagecoach that Kees Hosteen had set flame to, in order to create a brake and cover their retreat. As the older man tugged at his sleeve, a pair of Northerners managed to spill overtop and came down thrashing, blind, out to do whatever damage they could. One spitted himself on Hosteen’s buck knife, knocking him to the ground, where they scrabbled around in gruesome play — Hosteen carving out loops of gut, as the man tried hopelessly to stuff them back in.

Meanwhile, Rook wrestled with Bluebelly Number Two, the both of them too entangled to do each other much damage, yet unable to quite break free. As Rook laid the man up against the stage’s undercarriage, he saw him glance up, and followed the eye-line to see a new gun barrel pointing downwards, right at his head, wielded by yet another suicidal Abolitionist.

“Die, you secesh fucker!” this one spat out, then slumped face-forward, his eye a red mess of ruin. Rook’s dance partner eked a garbled name, but fell silent when Rook cross-punched him in the throat, freeing himself up to look back — and catch Chess Pargeter maybe forty paces behind, gun still a-smoke, smiling at the damage he’d done.

“Best keep alert, Rev,” he called. “Odds are, there’s more where that one come from.” A thin, hungry grin: “Sure hope so, anyhow.”

And turned away once more, with a rakish tip of his blood-spattered hat-brim and both guns up, already discharging fatally in two entirely new directions.

At his feet, Rook could hear Hosteen breathing ragged, almost like he was sobbing. “C’mon,” he said, scooping him up, kicking the disembowelled soldier aside, “your boy’s right, and so were you. Better fall on back.”

Hosteen nodded, shoulders heaving. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Why’n the hell did I ever come here — why’d I even join up? To kill them, or get myself killed?”

“Little of both, I expect,” Rook replied, dragging him along.

Much later, when the fire and drunken joshing had both died down, Rook heard whispers, and opened his eyes to see Chess deep in negotiations with the old Hollander. They muttered together a while about the varying utility of knives and such, from what little Rook could make out, ’til Chess finally said: “Okay, fine, that’s settled — now take them down, and be done with it. I ain’t got all night.”

Hosteen cleared his throat, and looked down. “That . . . ain’t what I want, this time.”

“Oh no?” Chess’s voice hardened. “Well, best be careful, old man — sure hope you ain’t forgot so soon about Chilicothe and his pals, for your own sake.”

“Chew coal and shit-fire, Chess, don’t take on — we all of us remember Chilicothe, the Lieut included. God damn, but you can be a mean little bastard!”

“Got that right.” A pause. “What do you want, then?”

Hosteen bent to Chess’s ear, voice dipping too low to follow. Chess listened, then snorted — half a hiss, half a snicker. “You’re an ill old buzzard,” was all he said.

Hosteen’s face fell, comically swift. “Just ’cause some of us got human feelin’s. . . .”

“Yeah, yeah. Cry me a river, grampaw. I want that knife first thing tomorrow, handed over in front of God and everybody, the Lieut included — like we bet for it at whist, all legal.”

“It’s yours.”

Chess huffed, lips twisting. “Oh, men really are fools, like my Ma always says,” he announced, to no one in particular. “Dogs, too. Do any damn thing they take a mind to, long as they think they’ll get what leaves them feelin’ happiest, after.”

Here he pushed Hosteen backwards, without warning, ’til he had no option but to let Chess sit down on him — one hard shove, far too quick for Rook to quite take it in. And straddling Hosteen’s lap just a shade primly, almost side-saddle, he admitted, with a further smirk, “And as for me . . . I’m certainly no exception.”

Then he twined his fingers in Hosteen’s shaggy grey hair, letting the man draw him close enough to kiss and met him open-mouthed, without restraint, tongue-first.

Oh, Rook thought, numbly. So that was it.

He didn’t stay to watch much longer, merely turned away, as quietly as possible. It seemed more than a bit uncouth — almost impolite — to treat their revelry as a sideshow. Particularly since it struck him as not so much revelry as maybe . . . necessity, on Hosteen’s part. Maybe even kindness, on Chess’s.

It did startle Rook a bit, however — as a Christian — to realize that he hadn’t previously thought Chess might have any real kindness in him.

Later, in his journal — just notes scribbled down in an aidememoire, leather binding sewn ’round a tablet of block-paper — Rook wrote:

His fine looks and indubitable skill aside, Pvt. Pargeter lives most securely in a state of nature, which is, as we know, also a state of sin. Yet does the prospect of damnation really hold any terror for one so utterly unrepentant? He seems almost soulless, and happy to be so, like an animal; guiltless in his actions, and thus (perhaps) blameless of their consequences.

Much later still that same night, Rook woke suddenly, so stiff in the trousers it made him sore — thinking on Private Chess Pargeter’s green eyes, his freckled shoulders, that smooth dip where his belly met his belt. And thought: Ah, so my sin — my liking for the Other, in any form — has come upon me, even here. . . .

He lay there quite some time with both eyes open, searching the sky for stars, and finding none.

“Oh, Pargeter’s a harlot in trousers, to be sure,” the Lieutenant said, dismissively. “The very worst sort of Sodom-apple. Rumour has it his dam’s some ’Frisco lily-belle — and she certainly must know her business, too, for that son of hers has managed to sully more than half my men, distributing his favours without qualm. That a thing like that should seem so outright made for war, meanwhile. . . .”

He trailed off, shaking his head, before concluding: “Well, it’s a conundrum I simply cannot fathom. But there’s no sentiment in the creature, thank God, sparing us all the usual fluttery Grecian nonsense inherent in such attachments. So while we have need, we’ll gladly pay the fee to use him . . . as is traditional, no doubt, in his family.”

“No doubt,” Rook said.

“Private,” he spoke up, around noon-time, as Chess passed him by, toting a pair of looted shotguns, “might I speak with you a moment, perhaps, tonight?”

“Well, that depends. What on?”

“A matter of Scripture?”

Chess turned back at this. “Really,” he said, and narrowed his eyes, then broke out into a wide smile.

“Well hell, Rev, why not? You may’ve grilled the Lieut on all my bad habits, but you never peached on old Hosteen — that’s worth somethin’.”

“So . . . you knew I was there, the whole time.”

“You’re a damn man-mountain, Reverend Rook. Whenever you walk, it’s like a tree movin’ ’round, no matter how quiet you may dream you’re bein’.”

“You don’t seem too upset I asked the Lieut about you, though.”

Chess stretched the smile into an outright laugh. “Oh, you’ve probably already figured out just how much of a damn I give what people think of me.”

Predictably, however, there was no single part of that evening’s personal sermon which went anywhere near the way Rook’d hoped it might, when he’d first issued Chess that fateful invitation. He came prepared, with all the relevant sections of his Bible premarked; preached mightily on Lot’s visitors and the destruction of Gomorrah, on it being better to marry than burn, on trouser-wearing women and other such unnatural oddities. But Chess just sat there while he gesticulated — interested but unimpressed, with the same tiny smile playing about his lips that’d annoyed Rook since the day they’d met.

Rook paused, finally, and sighed. Then asked: “Is any of this getting through to you?”

Chess shrugged. “Not much. But feel free to keep on talkin’, anyhow, ’cause I sure do admire how your lips move.”

“What do you mean by — ”

“Oh, Rev. Just what in the hell d’you think I mean?”

For a second, Rook almost convinced himself he didn’t understand.

“I’m . . . flattered, Private Pargeter,” he said, at length. “But even leaving the strictures of my calling aside, I’m really not that way inclined.”

Chess shrugged again. “Oh no, course not. Man of God, and all — what was I thinkin’.”

“I very much hope you’re not mocking my faith, Private, because . . .” Rook trailed away. “Have you even read the Bible?”

“Enough to know it ain’t got too much to do with me, or them that’s like me. I’m a bad man, Rev — that ain’t debatable. So I don’t aim to debate it.”

“Leviticus, then — how ’bout that. Ever heard of it?”

“That’s the part of your Book says all queers should die, ain’t it?”

“Essentially. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Seein’ how I’m funny as Union script?” Chess snorted. “Look, Reverend. Anyone wants to string me up just for who I’m drawn to dance with, I invite them to go ahead and try. If I can see them comin’ and they still manage it, then it was probably my time. ’Til then . . .” Another thin grin. “Well, you’ve seen me at my exercise. What’s your opinion?”

“I think you’re the best pistoleer I’ve ever come across, though I’m sure the Lieutenant’d say your soldiering leaves a bit to be desired. What I don’t understand is why pursuing this line of . . . abomination means so much to you, ’specially at the risk of your immortal soul.”

“Where I’m from, we’re all born bound for the Hot Country. I ain’t lookin’ for no chariot to Glory, not even if you’re offerin’.”

“What about those others you’re pullin’ down, though? Can’t you see you’re draggin’ any man you let take advantage of you straight into the fire along with you? Hosteen, for example. You seem to care — ”

“I don’t ‘care’ ’bout shit but me, myself and I, thank you kindly. As for the rest — I never put a damn gun to anybody’s head to get them near me, and they sure weren’t complainin’, either.” He turned back. “Oh, and speakin’ of which: God’s the one made me this way in the first place, Reverend. Maybe you should just take it up with him.”

Rook sighed. “Hell doesn’t have to be a foregone conclusion, Chess, that’s my point. Salvation — that’s God’s promise, open to all who want it, no matter what they may have done beforehand. There’s no sin so black it can’t be washed away, if you only ask for it to be.”

“Yeah? Thanks for that, anyhow.”

“The option to be redeemed? That’s God’s, not mine.”

“Naw, that you can keep — probably wouldn’t take, anyhow. But thanks for callin’ me by my given name, Reverend. Maybe you’ll even let me return the favour, one of these days.”

Flirting with him, still. The man was damn well incorrigible. Yet Rook found himself smiling back, all the same.

“Maybe,” he heard himself say.

Things continued bad, shading fast toward worst. There were rumours everywhere — that recent action at Five Forks and Sayler’s Creek had left the Confederacy crippled, that General Lee himself was on the verge of surrendering to that drunken farm-burner Ulysses S. Grant. That Lincoln had been either assassinated or elected king by popular acclaim.

That afternoon, the Lieut received one last message, read it, then broke the pigeon’s neck, before crumpling the offensive cipher up and throwing it into the fire.

“It’s official,” he told Rook, a tic in his brow fluttering wildly. “The rats have infiltrated. All further communiqués must from now on be reckoned a mere tissue of Abolitionist lies.”

“Yes sir,” Rook said. “I’m very sure that you’re right.”

That night, he dozed off, then came to, to find himself restrained by a hard little set of limbs, as somebody hissed: “Sssh!” in his ear.

“Damn, Rev,” Chess Pargeter said, shifting to pin him closer. “You want to get us both swung?”

Rook breathed out through his nose, slow, while simultaneously struggling to resist the urge to see exactly how far he could kick the smaller man, if he only gave it a good enough try.

“Get off of me, Private,” he replied, finally.

The same snicker again. “That an order? Hell, Rev, you’re three times my size, at least. What is it you’re ’fraid of, exactly?”

“Of . . . hurting you, mainly.”

“Uh huh? Well, that’s nice, but don’t worry yourself overmuch — it’s been tried.”

“You want to talk? Then let me up.”

Chess shrugged. “Okay,” he said, and moved back.

“So,” Rook said, once he’d regained his dignity. “What was it you had in mind, Mister Pargeter? Besides the obvious.”

“Oh, I wasn’t even thinkin’ of that,” Chess lied. “All seriousness, though . . . you do know the Lieut’s gone stark starin’ crazy, right? How he’s probably right now dreamin’ on the best way t’get himself killed for the honour of the South, and take us all along with him?”

“I don’t see what either of us can do about it, saving desertion . . . or worse.”

“Like blowin’ his brains out in his sleep? Yeah, I’ve thought ’bout cuttin’ his throat, too — or maybe smotherin’ him, since that wouldn’t leave much of a trace. But I ain’t got anything on me exactly suitable to the purpose, more’s the pity.”

“Private!”

“Aw, Rev, I was ‘Chess’ just a week back. Can’t we try for that again?”

“Not if you’re counselling murder, we can’t — ’cause I won’t stand for that sort of cold-blooded mortal sin, not even as a joke.”

Chess sighed. “Desertion it is, then.” Continuing, as Rook’s heart rose in his throat: “Listen — I’ve done most’ve these boys a service here and there, as you know, but they won’t listen to me, ’specially not shit-scared of the Lieut the way they are. Not like they would to you.”

“You want me to — incite a mutiny.”

“I want you to tell them it’s all right to leave while they still can, given the circumstances. You got that Book on your side; tell them God told you special. For all we’re privy, the damn War’s been over a sight longer than it took that bird to reach camp, and throwin’ yourself in the cannon’s mouth after Lee’s already kissed Grant’s ass ain’t honourable, just stupid.”

“So?” Rook shot back. “Best go on, then, if you’re goin’ — which I’m sure you aim to, considerin’ that’s how you feel. Go on, and good riddance.”

Yet here he saw Chess was biting his lip, a flush beginning to pink his face, for once.

“You really do care,” Rook realized, aloud. “Chess Pargeter actually cares what might happen to somebody, other than him — on occasion, anyhow.”

“You need to maybe just shut up with that Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By charity-school crap, Rev,” Chess said, between his teeth. “I really do mean it. ’Fore — ”

“’Fore what, little man?”

Chess looked up at him. “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Goddamnit, Asher Rook,” he said, low — then hove in and kissed him, same’s he’d kissed Hosteen.

Except this time it was Rook’s mouth that pink tongue was hard at work in, all rough and hot and silky. Rook’s lap taking Chess’s full weight, the delectable print of Chess’s ass cupping him through two pairs of pants at once, rendering him instantaneously hard. Before he quite knew what had happened, Rook had both hands dug deep in Chess’s fiery curls, just letting Chess keep on kissing him with never a word of protest, ’til they were both left gasping.

“Oh my,” Chess said at length, emerging, that devilish smile of his already back full force. “Oh my, Reverend. Sure you don’t need some of my more — specialized — help? ’Cause from where I sit — ” (and here he ground his hips just a bit for emphasis, half trick-rider, half gaiety-hall girl) “ — it pretty much feels like you could pound nails with that thing.”

“Never said I didn’t want none of your stock in trade, you contentious tease,” Rook replied, hoarsely. “Just how I at least know that wanting it — let alone doin’ anything to get it — is wrong.”

Chess smirked.

“Wrong, huh? Well, let’s try it one more time, to be sure — maybe I ain’t brung out all my best tricks, just as yet.”

Now it was Rook’s turn to grind his teeth, ’til they fairly squeaked.

“I can’t,” was all he said.

Unconvinced, Chess went to kiss him again, but Rook grabbed him by both his wrists and bent them behind his back — not in a nasty way, not calculated to hurt, just to immobilize. Still, Chess must’ve felt the emotion that drove it, ’cause he slumped forward, suddenly boneless, to lay his passion-flushed brow against the hollow of Rook’s equally feverish throat.

“Maybe not,” he replied, quietly, right into Rook’s clavicle-skin, like he was trying to reach the Rev’s heart by sheer osmosis. “But you do know there’s nothin’ good gonna come of lettin’ the Lieut have his way, and that’s a damn fact. You know it, Ash.”

“No. I don’t.” Adding, as he shifted to deposit Chess safely back on the ground, with far more gentleness than many might have thought the situation merited: “And I never yet said you could use my Christian name, either. Did I?”

Chess turned his head away, and replied: “You did not.”

“You’re a dangerous man, Chess Pargeter.”

Another snort. “Bad, too. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

To which Rook simply shut his eyes and commenced to pray, not quitting ’til he finally heard Chess move away. Then opened them again, only to find himself once more alone.

The Lieut came out of the bushes, tucking himself away, just as Hosteen was pouring Rook a tin mug of coffee. He had a wilder look than usual in his eyes, and Rook perceived that both his pupils seemed blown, as pin-prick as any concussion case’s. Hell, he even had his hat on backwards.

“All right, boys!” he announced. “Due time for a last hurrah, don’t you think?”

“Sir?” Rook asked.

“I have received fresh intelligence, Reverend, and sent for reinforcements accordingly. We, along with Captain Coulson’s troop, are to immediately assault the local township of Farnham Ridge. We must then burn it to the ground and kill all within, so that the pernicious seeds of kiting Abolitionism shall flourish no more unchecked. Hallelujah!”

Hosteen spoke up: “But — that’s over the border, ain’t it?”

“What matter, if it is?”

“Well . . . sir . . . that’s what direction the bird come from, yesterday. So . . . I’m thinkin’ it’s probably all already been took by Union forces, and . . .”

A bit further back, Rook could spot more soldiers nodding. He didn’t glimpse Chess amongst them, for which he was thankful.

Cut and run, he thought. Practical as the very Fiend himself, is our little Mister Pargeter. Well, good. I should’ve too, and that’s the truth. We all should.

Too late now, though. As demonstrated.

“Plus, how’d you get new word so fast, anyhow,” someone else called out, “considerin’ you killed that damn pigeon? Let alone call in Coulson, on top — ”

The Lieut drew and shot him while he was still speaking, cleaving his jaw like a split log — then waved the gun’s barrel slightly to dispel the smoke, and told the rest of the company, “I will brook no opposition, gentlemen. We are come at last to the moment of Apocalypse, where each must make his choice. Stand together, or fall forever. Are you rabble? What say you?”

Rook caught Hosteen’s eyes, widening further than their orbits seemed made for, and shook his head just slightly, wondering: Will Bible-quoting even work here, or is the Lieut far too gone for even God’s word to resonate? Think fast, damnit: false revelation, uh — dreams sent by Satan, not by the Almighty — Daniel versus the Babylonians, Joseph in Egypt?

Before Rook could choose, however, one more shot rang out, cracking the Lieut’s head apart like a blood-orange set up for target practice. He gave a little spasmic shiver, then fell without complaint.

Behind him stood Chess, who’d simply walked up in the Lieut’s blind spot as he blathered on, clapped gun to skull, and pulled the trigger. He gave the corpse a single sharp kick and reholstered, asking it: “That do, for an answer? Sir.”

Rook felt something on his face, and found on closer inspection that it was the Lieut’s blood, already a little tacky to the touch. By mere trick of proximity, more had sprayed on him than had ever touched Chess, who looked immaculate by comparison.

“I do wish you hadn’t done that,” Rook said.

Chess shrugged. “Somebody had to.”

Then Hosteen stepped in, suggesting: “Better get goin’. We wanna be elsewheres when they find this fool’s body. Which way, Reverend?”

Chess looked to Rook, lifting a brow. Rook swallowed hard, and pointed. “That-a-way, I guess,” he said, at random.

Which did seem a good enough route, to be sure — in those few minutes before they met Captain Coulson’s boys coming back over the very same ridge, to rendezvous with the Lieut before that fabled final charge.

“Who did this?” Coulson demanded, staring right at Chess, who bared his teeth, shifting both hands to his gun-butts. But there were twenty of them, all armed, to maybe twelve of the Lieut’s ragged Irregulars, too ground down by fatigue and shock to offer much response beyond a general gasp. And Rook knew what he had to do.

“I did,” he said, at last, stepping forward.