Those Across the River

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I NEVER GOT back to sleep, then I decided that was all right and I got my service pistol out of the desk drawer and took it downstairs to oil it. When I say I took it out of the desk drawer, I should specify that I mean the desk drawer in the office, not the drawer of the nightstand. Eudora didn’t like guns in the house, but she was willing to tolerate them as long as the sanctity of the bedroom was respected. I had balked at that initially, but when she pointed out that I might wake up wrong from one of my nightmares and mistake her for Kaiser Wilhelm, I conceded.

It was good to clean the .45. It was good to keep my hands busy rather than dwell on what had happened the day before, or to consider the prospect of going into those woods. Drop the magazine out. Slide the rack back and check the chamber. Turn the bushing. Then say “goddamnit” under my breath when the spring pops the spring plug loose and it hits the kitchen floor. I was on my hands and knees looking for it with the oil lamp in my hand when I remembered looking for Dan’s glasses in the dream, and I wanted to curl up and sob, but I pushed that down and found the plug.

Several men were standing around in the town square when I got there at first light. Someone raised a hand to me as I approached and I saw that it was Buster Simms. People were standing near Buster because he was so big he made them feel better, as though he were too big to be hurt or to let hurt come to those who stood with him. His size made the lever-action rifle he carried look like a toy. I shook with Buster and Buster’s hand closed around mine like the larger of two nesting dolls. His grip was strong, but he held strength in reserve. Paul Miller used to shake hands putting some extra squeeze in it so it was clear who the bigger man was. When Buster shook he reined it in a little, as if the other man had offered him some fine porcelain thing that might crack if borne down upon.

Estel Blake came now and stood upon a bench so everyone could see him and he could see who had come. It was getting light enough to see the color in faces.

There were more than he wanted here. He sent Old Man Gordeau home because he had a bad cough, and Gordeau fought him on it until Estel pointed out that his hacking would make it impossible to get the drop on anybody. He sent home a young widower who had kids, and he tried to send Saul Gordeau home with his daddy but Saul wouldn’t have it.

“Now, Lester here is twenty and one and that’s alright, but you ain’t but seventeen and this might get rough. Probly it will.”

“Reckon it already has,” Saul said. “Sons a bitches burnt up my dogs and dug up my daddy’s uncle.”

He said it just like Old Man Gordeau would have and it got a yellow little laugh out of them.

“I’m just sayin you’re young for this and it don’t set well with me.”

“Sir, I might be young, but I don’t shoot young.”

I noticed the rifle Saul carried was an American Enfield, the doughboy’s rifle. My old rifle. Bolt action, six shots, deadly, deadly accurate in the right hands, and, since 1918, cheap. I later found out that no fewer than nine households in Whitbrow held copies of that rifle. After the war, a man in a navy peacoat had come around and sold them out of the back of his truck for ten dollars apiece. Harvey at the Drug Emporium had one, but never shot it. Hal the butcher kept his slung under the counter. It was the gun Tyson Falmouth had carried when he went to check on the pigs.

Saul looked like a child, but he was only a little younger than I had been when Uncle Sam had stuck an Enfield in my hands and nearly shut me in a coffin.

I had only been a passable marksman.

Not Saul.

Estel Blake assessed the slight blond boy who was standing with his feet planted, holding the big rifle like it was part of him.

“It’s true,” Lester said. “He’s better’n I am or ever will be. You remember that rabbit he hit on the run when we went huntin last year. You were joshin him how it was luck, but I’m here to tell you it wasn’t.”

“Alright, young man,” Estel said. “But if you change your mind out there and want to get on back, there ain’t no shame.”

“Same goes for you, Sheriff,” Saul said.

We left.

We numbered fifteen.

“WE’RE LOST.”

“We’re not lost. I know I seen that before.”

“Knowin you been somewhere before and knowin how to get back is two different things.”

“Well, when did we leave the path? When was the last time someone saw somethin they knew was on the path?”

“Hour ago we seen them pine trees with the cuts in em.”

“Yeah. Hour ago.”

“Now, what is this? Anyone know if this has got a name?”

“Won’t be hard to remember. Looks like that leanin tree is a ole man tryin to push that big rock uphill.”

“Alright. We’ll call this Uphill Rock. Let’s keep walkin straight east. Frank, keep tight on that compass.”

“Sisyphus.”

“How’s that?”

“Sisyphus. He was condemned to roll a big rock uphill every day, and when he got it to the top it would roll back down and he’d have to start all over again.”

“Seems like I know that feelin.”

“What was that fella’s name again?”

“Sisyphus.”

“Think I’ll just call it Uphill Rock if it’s all the same to you.”

BUSTER SIMMS BROKE up a big, round wheel of corn bread his wife had made and handed some around to the ones closest to him, myself included. I was quickly sorry I took it because my mouth was too dry to eat it. Walking armed through the forest with a party of armed men, not knowing when there might be gunfire, was driving me apeshit. I had one foot in these Georgia woods and the other back in the Argonne. Birch trees reminded me of the birches there, with their tops missing and caked in mud from shellsplatter. I was straining to listen for sounds I was no longer capable of hearing; branches snapping, hushed words in German, the cocking of a weapon. I rubbed my hands on my pants and looked around, wondering if anyone could tell how hard my heart was beating. Nobody seemed to notice.

It was mid-afternoon now and the others were tired and hot and ready to see anything that would break up the routine of marching forward through these woods.

I hoped we wouldn’t see anything.

My anger at those who had desecrated the dead and traumatized Dora had been eclipsed by barely containable feelings of panic and a strong desire to sprint out of these woods for good.

I felt that we were being watched, but then I second-guessed myself and reasoned that it was just the memory of that feeling kicking up silt. Gooseflesh went up my left side as I remembered what had been watching me the last time I was here. Jesus, was I just as scared of that creepy boy as I had been of stumbling into a machine gunner’s sights? Maybe. Even with a party of armed men around me, I didn’t want to see the boy with no pants again. Not ever.

But there was no way I was turning back.

The watched feeling got more urgent.

I went up to Estel Blake and put my hand on his arm to get his attention. His arm was tensed and stiff like wood.

Estel turned and whispered something to me; I saw his mouth make the words I know.

He had heard something. I now sensed how tightly wound the others were and knew that they had all heard something. They were jumpy. And they were bunched up.

I touched Estel’s arm again.

“Get these men in a line,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Put these men one behind the other and space them out before they shoot each other.”

Estel nodded and went from man to man until it was done.

But we went on like that for a long time before anyone fired a weapon, and only one of us saw what was in the woods.

IT WAS MAYBE half past three when we discovered the bones of the horse. The horse had died some time ago, and my first thought was that perhaps we had stumbled across the battlefield; that this was one of the many Confederate horses who died beneath or on top of their masters that day in 1864, its topsoil perhaps washed away in hard rain. But the ground here was high and the topsoil well anchored by roots. And this horse had been eaten. The smaller bones had been cracked open and the marrow licked out. I saw the scowls on the other men’s faces and knew that my face was expressing the same contempt. There’s something in a man that loves a horse and hates to see one desecrated.

The sheriff was the most affected, and I can only venture that the sight of those gnawed bones reminded him too sharply of the boy he had so recently found beneath the locust tree. He muttered something to himself, or so I thought until I saw by the way he closed his eyes that he was remembering his Psalms again.

“What the hell is out here?” Lester said. “That ain’t no dog. Dogs did not do that.”

“I don’t know,” Estel said, “but we gonna find out.”

He said it, but nobody believed him. Nobody wanted to meet what made those deep grooves. Not in his heart. Not if he was honest.

About four o’clock something moved and several men shot at it. Estel stopped them and they watched the smoke clear and several of them went in that direction to see what they had hit.

“What are you doin? Dammit, get back here!” Estel said, but they went anyway.

The brush was thick and soon the men were out of sight.

“Hey!” Estel said, but stayed where he was and the remaining men stayed, too. A long moment passed.

“Where are you?” a voice called.

“We’re here!” the sheriff said. “Follow my voice.”

“Here-here-here-here!” Buster said.

“Keep talking,” a voice said.

“Here-here-here-here-here!”

The men came back and rejoined the group.

“Did you see anything?”

“Nothin.”

“Who shot? Lester, did you shoot?”

He shook his head.

“Well, since you know how to keep your britches on, you and me are goin to walk up front. How about you, Mr. Nichols? You fire?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why don’t you take up the back.”

“I would do better near the front. Man in the back needs good ears.”

“That’s fine, then. Buster, you shoot?”

Buster shook his head.

“Alright, you take the rear.”

“I was afeared you was gonna say that.”

It was only when Buster almost tripped over Saul’s rifle that they realized Saul Gordeau was missing.

He had been the last man in the rear.

WHEN HE SAW that the boy was gone, Estel began to fall apart. We all knew that’s what was happening, but nobody tried to usurp what was left of his command because nobody else knew what to do either. It was getting late enough so we had to leave soon if we wanted to make the river by dark. Everyone wanted to make the river by dark. So we abandoned all pretense of stealth and shouted the boy’s name until all of us were hoarse. We tried to retrace our steps. We saw no sign of him. He was gone utterly and did not answer his name. I think many in the party were quietly glad to be moving back towards the river, and as long as search and retreat were both served by the same heading, there was no contention in the group.

When some of the men felt they were near the place of the shooting they slowed down and began to look more carefully. I proposed that we should walk in an ever-widening circle and keep a close eye out for blood or dropped items, and Estel nodded his assent. We called the boy’s name again and again until all the meaning washed out of it and it became like any other syllable, more related to salt or sod than to Lester or their father.

Estel touched his face a lot while we searched. I had the impression he was remembering flies, fearing to find another boy walked on by flies.

Nothing happened except that the light got weaker. One man suggested that the boy had gotten scared and headed back west. This made sense to other men who were eager to head home. A majority soon formed that professed to believe the boy had turned back, and would be waiting for them by the river or back in Whitbrow. Members of this same majority also pointed out that they had only one light, no food and very little water. By way of easing the general conscience, one suggested that if the boy wasn’t already home they could renew their search tomorrow. Lester nearly hit the man who said that. Buster came between them, but argued Lester’s part, saying if Saul was hurt they would be killing him to leave him out all night.

Estel spoke up then, saying, “He’s probably crossed the river. I’m sure he’s crossed the river home.”

And if he hasn’t, I can’t bear to find him, I could almost hear him thinking. My steps are heavy with the fear of bumping a foot into him; I will shake myself to pieces, Selah. Lord give me one night of rest before I see anything else that makes me see Thy throne empty and my own death close and final.

Those who wished to leave grabbed at the sheriff’s weakness, tried to hide their own behind it. They were sure the boy was home. They promised to come back tomorrow.

I was as scared as any of them, maybe more scared.

I have seen something in these trees, and something worse in others.

But still I spoke up and said,

The woods have not yet forgotten how to gobble men up

“Who volunteers to tell the boy’s father?

that monsters got his youngest boy

or do we let Lester do that?”

“I ain’t leavin without my brother,” Lester said.

“Now it seems we got to all go or all stay,” Buster said, “and I’m for all stayin.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“You damn fool, the boy’s gone home,” one man said. One of those who shot.

“That’s right,” another said. “He’s waitin on us.”

“Who’s goin to tell our wives if we stay?”

“And if he ain’t home, you gonna look your wife in the eye and tell her you left a boy in the woods? Cuz I will.”

The man wanted to say something back to Buster but didn’t.

His friend said, “Now, I ain’t no coward, but I ain’t no fool neither. Seems to me if they ain’t nothin bad out here, the boy’s alright. But if they is, they’s goin to give us hell tonight an us with no light or nothin.”

“I’d rather be a fool,” Buster said. “If we start now we can pick good ground and make a fire. Camp here and start first thing in the mornin stead a wastin all that time walkin home and back.”

I said, “Whatever we do, I agree that we should do it together. We’ve got good enough numbers now to discourage an attack, but if we divide, the smaller party will be…”

“Shit out a luck,” Buster finished.

“Well, I ain’t leavin,” Lester said.

“And I ain’t stayin,” one of those who shot said.

I saw that the sheriff was gone to pieces and where a good leader might have kept the group together, there was none. God, I did not want to stay out if the group was going to split, but I saw that Lester would stay and I couldn’t leave the boy alone.

The light was going.

“Seems to me we should all stay,” Buster said again, but with less strength. I was suddenly sure that Buster would leave, too, and that’s what happened. Ten left for the river. Then the sheriff, looking beaten. Then Buster said, “Come on, you two. If these sons a bitches won’t stay.”

Lester shook his head and I stood with him.

Buster handed off Saul’s Enfield to me, saying, “Here, you might want somethin more than that piece on your hip.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking it. I hadn’t held one since I was nineteen, but it felt heavy and wicked and only too familiar in my hand.

“Hand down that light,” Buster said.

“We gonna need it to cross the river,” one of those who shot said.

“Hand down the light afore I break your head.”

He did.

Then Buster gave the light to Lester.

And then he left, smaller than he had been.

WE HEADED FOR Uphill Rock because it looked like a good place to have against our back. While we gathered wood by the last of the daylight Lester thought he heard something, so we got our rifles ready and Lester called “Saul!” but nothing happened. I thought of the boy with no pants and then I made myself stop thinking about it. We got a fire started just as night came on. We smoked, but didn’t talk more than we had to. We agreed to take turns sleeping but neither one of us could for the first part of the night, and then, near morning, both of us wanted to. Several times Lester heard walking and once he thought he heard voices and we pointed our guns, but we did not call out into that darkness. If the boy was out there, he’d see the fire and come to us. We were perfectly visible. I knew how easily we could both be shot with the fire going, but there was no question of staying in the dark. There were worse things than being shot.

I let Lester sleep for two hours but then I could keep my eyes open no longer and I began to dream. In my dream, a naked woman walked to the edge of the firelight eating from a pig’s head. Blood was all down her front and the pig’s head was so fresh it jerked. I jerked, too, and woke startle-eyed. I shook Lester awake and reclined into the moss and earth, trying not to think of anything except pennies, which I counted in my head, seeing each one fall into a mason jar. I had seven dollars before I slept again and this time I didn’t remember any dream.

Lester shook me. First light. The sky glowed dimly between the cane ash branches above us and the trees were alive with birdsong. The fire was out. We had both slept.

Lester leaned down over my face.

“They’s a bell. I hear a bell.”

“Like a cowbell?”

“Smaller. Tinkle-tinklin.”

“Where?”

We readied our rifles and walked crouching as Lester led me towards the sound. It would stop for a while and Lester would stop and wait, but then it would sound again. Soon we saw the bells.

Three bells.

Saul Gordeau stood shirtless, stumbling in the brush, his skin very white against the dark foliage around him. He was blindfolded with what used to be a strip of his shirt, and gagged with a crab apple and another strip. His hands were bound behind him with rope. The most disturbing thing, however, was the cruel iron collar he wore, with three iron rods coming up from the neck, each ending in a small, tinkling bell. Had his hands been free, a padlock would have been necessary to secure the collar. As it was, only a braid from a hank of rope held the contraption in place. Every time he bumped into something, or even moved, the bells announced his location.

The birds sang on with good cheer.

Lester walked straight towards Saul but I stopped him and made him hang back with the rifles while I went to the boy. When I got close enough for Saul to hear my steps, the boy started shouting hoarsely through his gag and whipping his head around so hard I thought he might injure his neck.

God forgive me, I was so tired and numb I didn’t want to take his gag off; I didn’t want to know what had happened to him.

THE BOY WOULDN’T talk for a long time after they got his bell collar off. I lent him my coat. Saul just sobbed and walked with us towards the river, Lester’s arm around him. His tremors came in waves. When at last he spoke, he wanted to speak to me away from Lester because he didn’t want family to know what he had to say. But he had to tell so someone knew what they were.

“THEY SO STRONG, the men and women. When they grab you it’s like you’s a little kid again. I saw a white woman with curly wild hair and a nigger woman and a white man. They was more, but they pulled my shirt up over my head quick, so I didn’t see em all, an I didn’t know where they was takin me. They carried me and they went fast, but it don’t seem like we went all that far. They smelled bad. Like animals that’s been out in the rain or down in a burrow. We went down to a kind of cave cause I felt us go downhill and there was a echo. Everythin they said had a echo.

“They stripped me down and tied me down then and put their mouths to me. The men and the women. I didn’t want to, I promise I didn’t, but I came off and I never knew for who. One of them was the Devil. Had to a been. All them stories was true. He put my hand on his chest and changed hisself to a animal so I could feel the fur come in on my hand. I felt him drop to all fours and stand there pantin his stinkin breath on me and then he changed back. Said he could do that whenever he wanted cause he was old. But some of the others only did it when the moon came. That they had to then. That they liked eating pigs then, but they were gonna eat something, so why didn’t we just send the pigs?

“They never let me alone all night. They was laughin when they carried me back. I don’t know if they can die, Mr. Nichols, but I hope so, cause I have to kill em. I think they took my soul outta me and I’m goin to hell no matter what I do. So I might as well kill em.”

Saul got himself together after that, at least from the outside. He had regurgitated it and settled on a plan, and I knew that plan. Deciding to kill somebody or something can be strong medicine for a while, but it burns. And it doesn’t stop after it’s all over.

I didn’t know what the boy had seen. Not believing him would have been best, but you can’t counterfeit reactions like his. It doesn’t mean he hadn’t hallucinated, but I wasn’t sure he had, either; my parameters of belief were becoming more and more negotiable, and they weren’t nearly done stretching.

The three of us walked quietly to the river.

When we got there we realized the raft was on the wrong side so Lester cursed and took his shoes off and waded in holding his rifle over his head. Then Saul went in, with me close behind him; I feared Saul might wilt and let the waters take him downriver.

It was soon after that we saw the new posse coming towards us. Only six this time. Buster looked so ashamed I thought he might cry.

The nine of us limped home and when we got to Whitbrow, nobody was waiting for us.

AT THE CANARY House, I found Dora sleeping in her clothes on the couch. When she heard I was staying out all night she had tried to keep vigil, but hadn’t had enough sleep the night before. I leaned to her, and just when I was about to brush the hair at her temples with my fingertips, she woke and drilled her eyes through me. She had been prepared for something bad to enter the house, perhaps Estel Blake holding some item of mine and asking, “Did this belong to your husband?”

She sat up and grabbed me. The force of her embrace pressed from me the paternal feeling I had watching her sleep. It was like an Old Testament widow clutching her dead husband’s brother. Her new husband.

“You have to get me out of here, Frankie,” she said.

“You want to go up to bed?”

“No. Out of Whitbrow. We should go.”

“Dora, I’m exhausted. You’re exhausted. I saw things that I don’t have the strength to talk about. Let’s get some sleep.”

“No, Frank. This is the time to talk about it. We have to go. I feel it in my bones.”

“Go to what? To Johnny’s house again? Do you want to stand in a soup line? It might come to that.”

“Anything but this.”

“What about school?”

“There isn’t going to be any more school.”

“What about my book?”

“You aren’t going to write it. You would have already. Something in you, the part of you I love the most, knows the world doesn’t need it. Another bloody general. Another corrupt, petty feudal lord.”

“That’s your opinion. You don’t like history. Most women don’t.”

“There’s a reason for that.”

“I will write it.”

“You don’t mean it. You’re saying that because you think you have to. When are you going to write it?”

“When this is over.”

“This. What is this? When is this over?”

“I have to see it through.”

“You’re going to get killed.”

“No.”

“You’re going to get me killed.”

“Never.”

“Fine. Just you, then. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are they going to put a statue of you up by the pump well? Orville Francis Nichols, Yankee, who died that we’uns may live.”

“You’re being small.”

“Is this your chance to die in the war like you should have?”

“Stop.”

“You don’t owe him that.”

“I said let’s stop.”

“He wouldn’t want it. Dan, right?”

“I don’t like you talking about him. I don’t like you using him to get your way.”

“My way?”

“You want us to run out on these people. Something has to be done about them. The ones in the woods. They’re so vicious.”

“I saw.”

“I saw more. They’re so bad.”

“We don’t really live here, Frankie. Have you noticed? We don’t go to church with them. You go to that store and play checkers and listen to their conversations like you were looking at them through a glass, the same way you would at a pub in London or a café in France. But you don’t live here any more than you lived in France. And things are just as bad here as they were there, aren’t they?”

“Actually,” I said, genuinely surprised by my answer, “they’re not.”

“Not yet.”

“And what you said about not going to church with them. That’s not entirely true. We go to their funerals.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“And we go to their town hall. Have you forgotten that?”

She was silent.

“This is happening because of the pig ritual. We voted to stop it. We came into town and you stood in front of them and spoke your reasonable, logical words. And I believed that what you said was right. And together we put our finger on the scale, and the scale tipped. Maybe it would have anyway. But we own it now.”

She nodded a little, looking dazed.

“I suppose I see that,” she said quietly. “But that’s a principle. I don’t care that much about principles. I don’t want to find dead people in schoolhouses and wait around on the sofa wondering if you’ll be carried home and laid out on the table for me so one of those good ole boys can tip his hat and say, ‘Sorry, ma’am.’ I want to have your babies, Frank. Big, healthy babies with your patient eyes and fine little wisps of hair just your chestnut brown, and I don’t even like babies.”

“Dora…” I said softly, and reached out to stroke her hair. She pulled away a little.

“I know I can’t have that. I don’t need you to tell me I can’t have that.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“But I want to make love to you as if I could. As if every time you put your seed in me it might just take anyway. I want to lay with you every night and every day I want to work a job where I feel I’m doing some good. To hell with principles. I do the best I can and if it isn’t enough I cut my losses. Sometimes you can’t win and you have to change your plan. That’s smart, isn’t it? Aren’t we smart people?”

I chewed on this for a moment.

“Alright,” I said.

“Alright, what?”

“We’ll go. I’ll ring the movers in Chicago and get them to come down. And I’ll ring Johnny and let him know he’s going to have guests again.”

She sobbed and gripped me tight again, saying, “Frankie, thank you, thank you, my love, thank you.”

I NAPPED BRIEFLY on the couch but did not fully sleep. Dreams like muddy fish drew close, then darted off, and I was glad to let them go.

Where are your pants, my friend?

I thought about how good the boy had been at throwing stones. Did he hunt birds that way? He threw the first stone when I had pointed the camera.

But I did take that picture. It had been waiting in the guts of the camera for me to remember it and to have the courage to develop it.

I quit trying to sleep now and went to the little darkroom I had made for myself in the closet under the stairs.

It was nearly two when the picture came out. Blurry but identifiable. Just beginning to crouch for the stone, his right arm drawn across his body. Farther away than I remembered. Some part of me had hoped the image wouldn’t come in. That I had dreamed it. But it wasn’t so.

I would go to see Martin Cranmer the next day and I would ask him who the boy in the picture was, or what. And if I got no real answer I would not speak to the man again.

I rang the movers that afternoon and found that they couldn’t get a truck down to Georgia for a week. Dora was crushed, but a week didn’t seem so long to me, especially since we would need time to pack.

“Let’s use our time wisely,” I said. “Let’s go to the courthouse and ‘git hitched’ the weekend before they come.”

“Really, Frank?”

“Really.”

“No, I mean are you really asking me that standing up?”

I dropped to one knee.

“Marry me, Eudora. Give me the deed to that lovely little property below your navel, and let us live in sin no more.”

“Yes,” she said. “Gladly. After which you’ll get me the hell out of here?”

“I promise.”

She spat in her hand, I spat in mine and we shook on it.

Dora and I ate a big dinner that night. We laughed easily. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty. To hell with star-crossed Whitbrow, we seemed to be saying.

Let it bury its own dead.