Ashes (7 page)

"I . . . I didn't mean to kill you," Wilkie
sputtered.

Tibbets said nothing.

A single sentence flew out from the chaos of
Wilkie's thoughts: You can't talk when you're dead.

But neither could you walk. Neither could you
stand there before the man who had shot you and make some silent
pleading demand.

Tibbets raised his arms higher, then looked
briefly heavenward. Wilkie followed the dead man's gaze. Nothing up
there but a rag-barrel's worth of clouds and the screaming orange
eye of the sun.

When Wilkie looked again at Tibbets, the
corpse's hands were full of goods. Eggs, squash, a small rasher of
bacon. And soap. Wilkie hadn't seen soap in six months.

Tibbets held his hands out to Wilkie. The
meaning was clear. The goods were a gift to Wilkie. He set down his
musket, trembling, and reached out to the corpse.

The eggs were cool to the touch, cooler than
the dead fingers. The bacon had oozed some grease in the heat, but
hadn't yet spoiled. The squash was shriveled but whole. And the
soap . . .

Wilkie put the soap to his nose. The scent
made him think of Susan, her clean hair, the meadow behind her
father's cornfield.

Wilkie gazed gratefully into the dead man's
eyes. "Why?" he asked.

The pale lips parted, and Tibbets's words
came like a lost creek breeze. "You cried."

Tibbets turned and headed back toward the
stand of jack pine.

Wilkie bit into the neck of one of the summer
squashes. It was real. The impossible had become probable, and all
that was left was for Wilkie to accept the evidence of his eyes,
ears, hands, and mouth. "Wait," Wilkie called after Tibbets.

The dead Yankee paused, tilted his head as if
heeding some distant command, then slowly waved for Wilkie to
follow. Wilkie looked back toward the stockade, where nothing
waited but the duty of another day's death watch. He peered through
the branches to the dead-house, where maggots roiled. When he
looked back, Tibbets was gone, the pine limbs shaking from his
passage.

Wilkie stuffed the food and soap into his
pockets. Leaving the musket, he slipped into the pines and wandered
until he saw Tibbets far ahead. Wilkie walked, occasionally
breaking into a run, never gaining on Tibbets. His limbs were heavy
with fatigue, his uniform soaked with sweat. A blister rose on his
big toe. Surely he had followed for hours, yet the sun still hung
high in the sky.

At last he heard the soft twanging of a mouth
harp, the duet of a banjo and guitar. Laughter came from behind the
next stand of trees, and wood smoke filled the air. Someone was
broiling meat over a fire. The clank of flatware and tin was
accompanied by the rich aroma of brewed coffee. An unseen horse
whinnied.

Wilkie burst into a run, using the last of
his strength. He fought through a tangle of briars and scrub
locust, kicking at the vines that kept him from those delightful
sounds and smells. Finally he fell from the grip of the forest into
an expanse of twilight. The air had gone crisp with chill.
Campfires dotted the horizon as far as he could see. Around them
huddled groups of men, joking, eating, drinking, writing letters or
playing music.

Rows of tents stood lined in uniform rank,
not a rip among them. This had to be a Union camp. If so, he would
gladly surrender for just one good meal and a chance to hear that
peaceful laughter and camaraderie. Wilkie approached the nearest
campfire.

Two men rose from the log they were sitting
on. One was dressed in a Union cavalry uniform, bright with
polished leather and buttons. The other was Tibbets, in his
prisoner's rags. Tibbets made a motion with his hand for Wilkie to
sit. Wilkie nodded to the cavalry officer and sat rubbing his hands
before the flames.

"This is Wilkie," Tibbets said.

Wilkie glanced up, about to ask the dead
prisoner how he knew Wilkie's name. But in the land of the
impossible, why shouldn't he?

The officer gave the open-handed Rebel
salute. "Welcome."

Wilkie wondered why no one brought weapons to
bear on him. Then he noticed that none of the men were armed. He
studied the men sitting across the fire from him. They wore gray
Confederate jackets. One of the men had cornbread crumbs in his
beard. The soldiers nodded in greeting, then turned their attention
back to the warm pork that filled their hands.

"Where do I go to surrender?" Wilkie asked
the officer.

The officer's mouth fell open, then, after a
moment, a laugh rolled from deep inside his chest. The other men
around the fire joined in, along with several groups from nearby
campfires. When the officer regained his composure, he said, "You
don't have to surrender, son. Why, the war's over."

"Over?" Wilkie knew the South was getting
beat, after Chattanooga and Gettysburg everybody recognized it was
just a matter of time, but there was still plenty of Confederate
pride and bodies yet to be used up. He couldn't imagine Lee handing
over his sword without playing a last trump card or two.

"It's over for all of us," Tibbets said,
waving his arm to indicate the entire camp that seemed to stretch
on toward the stars.

"But you're dead."

The laughter fell away. Wilkie looked around,
expectant, a sheen of fear on his cool skin.

"How many did you see die?" the officer asked
quietly and not unkindly, like a wise uncle explaining something to
a wayward nephew. "How many did you help kill?"

Wilkie looked at Tibbets.

"The bullet bites both ways," said Tibbets.
"Doesn't matter whether you're breathing or not. You're still
dead."

"This is a war," Wilkie said.

"War's over now," the cavalry officer said.
"A civilized camp is in the best interest of both sides."

The officer sat and pulled a stick from the
fire. It bent with the weight of a hunk of cooked ham. He passed
the stick to Wilkie.

Someone strummed the guitar chords to "The
Battle Hymn Of The Republic." The officer began singing in a rich
bass voice. The Confederates wiped their lips with their sleeves
and added their voices to the chorus that rose across the camp.
Wilkie didn't know the words, so he listened as he ate, listened,
listened, as the night fell on, forever.

###

MURDERMOUTH

If only they had taken my tongue.

With no tongue, I would not taste this world.
The air in the tent is buttered by the mist from popcorn. Cigarette
smoke drifts from outside, sweet with candy apples and the liquor
that the young men have been drinking. The drunken ones laugh the
hardest, but their laughter always turns cruel.

If they only knew how much I love them. All
of them, the small boys whose mothers pull them by the collar away
from the cage, the plump women whose hair reflects the torchlight,
the men all trying to act as if they are not surprised to see a
dead man staring at them with hunger dripping from his mouth.

“
Come and see the freak,”
says the man who cages me, his hands full of dollar
bills.

Freak. He means me. I love him.

More people press forward, bulging like
sausages against the confines of their skin. The salt from their
sweat burns my eyes. I wish I could not see.

But I see more clearly now, dead, than I ever
did while breathing. I know this is wrong, that my heart should
beat like a trapped bird, that my veins should throb in my temples,
that blood should sluice through my limbs. Or else, my eyes should
go forever dark, the pounding stilled.

“
He doesn’t look all that
weird,” says a long-haired man in denim overalls. He spits brown
juice into the straw that covers the ground.

“
Seen one like him up at
Conner’s Flat,” says a second, whose breath falls like an ill wind.
“I hear there’s three in Asheville, in freak shows like
this.”

The long-haired man doesn’t smell my love for
him. “Them scientists and their labs, cooking up all kinds of crazy
stuff, it’s a wonder something like this ain’t happened years
ago.”

The second man laughs and points at me and I
want to kiss his finger. “This poor bastard should have been put
out of his misery like the rest of them. Looks like he wouldn’t
mind sucking your brains out of your skull.”

“
Shit, that’s nothing,” says
a third, this one as big around as one of the barrels that the
clowns use for tricks. “I seen a woman in Parson’s Ford, she’d take
a hunk out of your leg faster than you can say ‘Bob’s your
uncle.’”

“
Sounds like your ex-wife,”
says the first man to the second. The three of them laugh
together.

“
A one hundred percent
genuine flesh-eater,” says my barker. His eyes shine like coins. He
is proud of his freak.

“
He looks like any one of
us,” calls a voice from the crowd. “You know. Normal.”

“
Say, pardnuh, you wouldn’t
be taking us for a ride, would you?” says the man as big as a
barrel.

For a moment, I wonder if perhaps some
mistake has been made, that I am in my bed, dreaming beside my
wife. I put my hand to my chest. No heartbeat. I put a finger in my
mouth.

“
I’m as true as an
encyclopedia,” says my barker.

“
Look at the bad man,
Mommy,” says a little girl. I smile at her, my mouth wet with
desire. She shrieks and her mother leans forward and picks her up.
I spit my finger out and stare at it, lying there pale against the
straw, slick and shiny beneath the guttering torches.

Several of the women moan, the men grunt
before they can stop themselves, the children lean closer, jostle
for position. One slips, a yellow-haired boy with tan skin and meat
that smells like soap. For an instant, his hands grip the bars of
the cage. He fights for balance.

I love him so much, I want to make him happy,
to please him. I crawl forward, his human stink against my tongue
as I try to kiss him. Too quickly, a man has yanked him away. A
woman screams and curses first at him, then at me.

The barker beats at the bars with his walking
stick. “Get back, freak.”

I cover my face with my hands, as he has
taught me. The crowd cheers. I hunch my back and shiver, though I
have not been cold since I took my final breath. The barker pokes
me with the stick, taunting me. Our eyes meet and I know what to do
next. I pick my finger off the ground and return it to my mouth.
The crowd sighs in satisfaction.

The finger has not much flavor. It is like
the old chicken hearts the barker throws to me at night after the
crowd has left. Pieces of flesh that taste of dirt and chemicals.
No matter how much of it I eat, I still hunger.

The crowd slowly files out of the tent. In
the gap beyond the door, I see the brightly-spinning wheels of
light, hear the bigger laughter, the bells and shouts as someone
wins at a game. With so much amusement, a freak like me cannot hope
to hold their attention for long. And still I love them, even when
they are gone and all that’s left is the stench of their shock and
repulsion.

The barker counts his money, stuffs it in the
pocket of his striped trousers. “Good trick there, with the finger.
You’re pretty smart for a dead guy.”

I smile at him. I love him. I wish he would
come closer to the bars, so I could show him how much I want to
please him. I pleased my last barker. He screamed and screamed, but
my love was strong, stronger than those who tried to pull him
away.

The barker goes outside the tent to try and
find more people with money. His voice rings out, mixes with the
organ waltzes and the hum of the big diesel engines. The tent is
empty and I feel something in my chest. Not the beating, beating,
beating like before I died. This is more like the thing I feel in
my mouth and stomach. I need. I put my finger in my mouth, even
though no one is watching.

The juggler comes around a partition. The
juggler is called Juggles and he wears make-up and a dark green
body stocking. His painted eyes make his face look small. “Hey,
Murdermouth,” he says.

I don’t remember the name I had when I was
alive, but Murdermouth has been a favorite lately. I smile at him
and show him my teeth and tongue. Juggles comes by every night when
the crowds thin out.

“
Eating your own damned
finger,” Juggles says. He takes three cigarettes from a pocket
hidden somewhere in his body stocking. In a moment, the cigarettes
are in the air, twirling, Juggles’ bare toes a blur of motion. Then
one is in his mouth, and he leans forward and lights it from a
torch while continuing to toss the other two cigarettes.

He blows smoke at me. “What’s it like to be
dead?”

I wish I could speak. I want to tell him, I
want to tell them all. Being dead has taught me how to love. Being
dead has shown me what is really important on this earth. Being
dead has saved my life.

“
You poor schmuck. Ought to
put a bullet in your head.” Juggles lets the cigarette dangle from
his lips. He lights one of the others and flips it into my cage
with his foot. “Here you go. Suck on that for a while.”

I pick up the cigarette and touch its orange
end. My skin sizzles and I stare at the wound as the smoke curls
into my nose. I put the other end of the cigarette in my mouth. I
cannot breathe so it does no good.

“
Why are you so mean to
him?”

It is she. Her voice comes like hammers, like
needles of ice, like small kisses along my skin. She stands at the
edge of the shadows, a shadow herself. I know that if my heart
could beat it would go crazy.

“
I don’t mean nothing,” says
Juggles. He exhales and squints against the smoke, then sits on a
bale of straw. “Just having a little fun.”