Devil's Dream (12 page)

“Just playen. Ain’t singen a word.”

“You know you want to get free same as I do,” Ben said.

At the word
free
, the grown folks who’d started drifting in the direction of the banjo all looked everywhere except at each other. Nancy and Alma hushed a minute.

“You be lucky you don’t get dead,” Zebulon said. He stopped playing and muted the strings with the heel of his palm. “Yankees get here, they set us free.”

“You don’t know they gone get here,” Benjamin said, “and you don’t know what gone happen effen they do.”

“How you know the Old Man word be good for what he say?”

“Forrest don’t tell no lies,” Ben said, scraping shavings more urgently from the cedar. He was talking to Zeb, but looking over the porch rail at the back of Nancy’s head. The knot in her kerchief, lying between the cords of her neck. “He got a mean mouth, and don’t we all know it. Hot temper and a hard hand, I know it better’n most.” Ben touched the scar that flashed out of his temple. “But I ain’t never known him to lie to nobody, and neither have you.”

A murmur of assent went round the group. Most of the quarters, young and old, had by now assembled, standing or squatting in a loose semicircle before Zebulon’s cabin.

“Jerry goen,” somebody said.

“Go on,” said Zeb. “Sho Jerry goen. Jerry go everwhere the Old Man go. Jerry ain’t never gone be free no way. Ain’t no freedom in that man head. You give him that free paper yesterday—he won’t be free today.”

Having pronounced the syllable
free
four times, Zebulon pressed his lips together and started playing another tune. Alma and Nancy were rocking their heads and when the chorus came around they took up singing like they couldn’t help it.

Wade…
in the water …

God gone to carry the
wa-ater…

Zeb broke off his playing sharply, as if the secret meanings of the song had spooked him. The women’s voices disappeared. Doves called, like breath across a bottle, as they rose to the shadowed eves of the cabins.

Zeb played the opening run of “Devil’s Dream.”

“White folks’ music,” Benjamin said.

“Ain’t no sech a thing.” Zeb kept the tune rolling. “All music for everbody, what I say.”

Sampson broke away from the group and into a quick buckdance. A girl a year younger broke away from the railing and did a little caper with him. Ben watched his oldest boy strut, thinking how Nancy had been carrying Sampson when Forrest went down to buy her back from Coldwater seven years before. It occurred to him that Forrest hadn’t said he’d set a body’s children free. More than likely he hadn’t thought about that part. It could add up to a lot of folks, and that would run to money. But then there weren’t so many men that had spoke up to go with Forrest so far, though Benjamin knew that a few more would if he himself decided to. If he was free, and Nancy was free, he could earn the money to buy his children free.

Zeb finished the tune and dampened his strings. “Bound to go, ain’t you,” he said to Ben.

“Man got rabbit in the foot.” Nancy had her back still set firmly to Ben, so it was more like she was talking to everybody, or herself, or to nobody. “Lawd, don’t I wisht he would stay here by me. Y’all know
I
ain’t goen. I got chillen here. Chillen ain’t goen. Marse Forrest ain’t invite no gals no way.” Another communal murmur went round, mostly among the women this time.

“What if I want to see the elephant?” Benjamin said softly.

“Ben,” Zeb said. “They ain’t got no elephant. That just a story they tells to tempt folks. Elephants is in Africa. Here they got blood, and they got death. They ain’t got nothen else.”

“I know that,” Ben said. “But maybe I still want to see it.”

Zeb moved his hand over the strings without sounding them. He peered over at the wood in Ben’s lap. There was scarcely enough light to see by this time.

“What that you maken?”

“Don’t know …” Ben was carving now entirely by touch, gazing out into the night sky, over the limbs of the hackberry tree. “Won’t know till I get there and see.”

“Well,” Zeb said. “I reckon that’s you.”

April 1862

L
ICK
C
REEK
was a lovely spot—clear water running over reddish rock, and as they waited for their orders, Henri and Matthew rolled up their trouser legs and waded, their calves soon going numb in the bright cold water. Matthew seemed to have a sixth sense for which stone had a crawdad underneath (and Ginral Jerry was following on with a gunnysack, bagging all the crawdaddies Matthew could uncover). Henri was more interested in the creek stones themselves—so smoothly rounded by the long caress of water that they scarcely even hurt his feet, and some were bright and intricate as jewels, though if he raised them from the stream they soon went dull.

Matthew caught his upper arm and held him back, pointing upstream where something dark came turning through a notch between two of the reddish boulders—a stick, Henri thought, but then he started when he saw it twisted, swam of itself, undulating in the silvery threads of the stream. The snake was more than three feet long, and patterned with two tones of chocolate diamonds.

“Mista Mossakin …” Jerry said through a gap between his blackened teeth. He straightened, stiffly, laying a hand on the small of his back. The burlap bag trailed in the water to keep his catch alive. To the east, in the direction of Shiloh Church, was the thunder of cannon and crashing of small arms. General Johnston had launched his first attack on Grant there at dawn.

Henri moved forward, toward the next bend in the creek. Beyond the red rocks was a long oval of still water, its blue so darkened he knew it was deep. There he might swim at his full length,
perhaps even dive. The water would be so cold his vitals would shrink within him when he first submerged—

Forrest was walking on the bank, stalking rather, slapping his hat against his thigh, muttering irritably under his breath,
I don’t see why I cain’t git no orders if they’s anybody hyar as is FIT to give orders … them eggsuckenlowwalkenyallercurdogs. …

Henri shook his head and headed to shore. He sat on a boulder, trying to dry his feet with his bare hands before putting on his socks and boots. Matthew was hopping toward the main body of their men, barefoot still, his shoes swinging round his neck by their laces. Only Jerry kept on upstream, watching for snakes and stopping for crawdads.

Forrest had drawn himself up before his company. “D’ye hear that racket over yon way?” he said, waving a pistol in his left hand toward the north, where artillery grumbled around Shiloh Church.

A few men piped up—
Shore we do
.

“And
do you know the meaning of all the shivaree?” Forrest called.

This time silence returned and the men looked at each other.

“Them’s our boys gitten shot full of holes over yonder right now whilst hyar we set watching over a goddamn crik—and this here regiment wa’nt never called for that—this here regiment ain’t never been known for that—I will be
damned
I will be
goddamned
I will be
double-dog-damned
if I stop and wiggle my toes in the water when they’s a good fight a-waiten on us yonder way and plenty Yankees to be kilt. Now come on boys, what do ye say!”

The yell went up and around them all like wildfire blowing over a grassland. The men got up and bounded for their horses.

“Boots and saddles.” Forrest said. “Let’s get after’m.”

Henri rode in a pocket with Matthew, Kelley, Willie Forrest on his other side. In a few minutes they had come onto a high section of the Corinth road below Shiloh Church, with the Tennessee River just out of sight on their left. It was an inauspicious place to halt, as Federal cannon were dropping shells on the road and all the horses shied. Forrest found Cheatham, who had just been driven back hard from his attempt to charge the Federal artillery posts, one in a blackjack thicket and the other in a peach orchard on the far side of the field west of the road.

“We cain’t stop hyar,” Forrest said. “I cain’t leave my boys under this fire. It’s go back or go on. What say we get up a charge all together?”

Cheatham gripped a sore shoulder and looked around at his wounded men, slumped against wagon wheels or stretched on the torn grass below the east side of the road. “I cannot give you any such order,” he said. “If you charge it will be on your own order.”

Forrest looked at him. In the thicket of his beard one side of his mouth turned up and the other down. “Hit don’t bother me!” he said, with a gesture of the six in his hand toward the thickets.

“Luck to you, then.” Cheatham sighed. “It’s a regular hornet’s nest over there.”

Forrest tightened the reins on his side-stepping horse and swung his arm down. His riders swept down the bowl of the field, horse hooves hacking up divots as they descended. Though the day was bright it had rained for several days before and the bottom of the field was a swamp. The Federals were hauling their guns around quickly to address the new targets and some of Forrest’s horses were going down to their hocks in the slough.

“Goddammit,” said Forrest. “Git out of this!” His own mount uprooted itself from the mud and he cantered straight for the peach orchard, followed by Willie and about half the regiment, at the same time that he signaled the others to go the other way, toward the scrim of hardwoods at the other edge of the field, on the flank of the blackjack thicket where the other battery was. Henri started off that way—this direction put him at longer range from the enemy cannon, at least at first.

Matthew was still with him, and Major Strange now—he didn’t see Kelley anymore. When they slammed through the tree line he felt a sting as if a snake had bitten his thumb but in a moment he had forgotten that. He could hear Forrest howling, half a mile off, as they fell upon the rear of the battery in the blackjack thicket, scattering the gunners and driving off the horses, some still dragging the caissons behind. A handful of Federal cavalry rode back with their sabers flashing above their heads, and Henri gritted his teeth and ducked his head and spurred straight into them, remembering Forrest always said a six-gun was worth a dozen of them overgrown cheese-slicers—
jest wait till ye’re not but one short hair from the point
a-tetchen ye and
—Henri fired and the first man went down—again and another empty saddle went by. The next blade scored into the shoulder of his coat but hadn’t cut flesh before Henri had shot this Federal cavalier from such near range he saw the powder blast of his pistol stain the blue coat. Empty air before him and he still had three shots left! The fourth Federal, wheeling to return, would have split his skull with a stroke from behind except that Matthew shot him down and rode on through, face buried in the chocolate brown mane of his horse.

Cheatham’s infantry was pounding up, shouting out gleefully as the men took charge of the captured cannon. They joined Forrest at the back end of the peach orchard.

“Hit’s a hornet nest shore nuff and we done busted it!” he hollered. “Boys, we have got’m on the run.” Forrest’s chest heaved. A man ran up and caught his saddle skirt.

“Captain,” he cried out, “give me a gun. This battle hasn’t got no rear!”

When Forrest registered his blue uniform he put his hand on the Federal’s shoulder. “You’re a prisoner, boy,” he said. “I reckon ye done laid down yore arms a’ready. Yore crowd may not have no rear but ourn is thataway.”

He laughed out loud when the prisoner had gone, then suddenly went still. “Where’s Willie.”

No one had an answer to offer him. Forrest turned a semicircle to survey the ground they’d just passed over, where still warm bodies lay anonymous, blue or gray. Snarls of blackjack closed the view in most directions that he looked.

“Ole Miss’ll have my hide if—” Forrest seemed to bite his tongue. His face had lost all of its color, only the two small pitted scars glowed red above his eyebrow.

“Henry, Matthew. Go hunt for Willie, y’all. Don’t stop till ye find him neither. Rest of us got to keep up the skeer.” He turned his horse, a speckled gray. “Come on, let’s get after’m.”

The battle sweat cooling on Henri’s skin had an unpleasant bitter tang. He raised his throbbing thumb to his mouth. During their careen through the thickets a thorn had run up under his nail and snapped off where he couldn’t reach it. He tried and failed to grasp it with his teeth; the effort sent a jolt of pain to his elbow.

“Be damned to Willie,” Matthew was grumbling, as their horses picked through the thicket back the way they had come. Henri stopped himself looking at corpses too closely. He only wanted to find Willie alive.

“You don’t wish him dead,” he told Matthew.

“I never said that.” Matthew twisted in the saddle to stare back at him, eyes ringed with white. “Do you think he’d’ve sent Willie out of a fight to hunt for me?”

Henri didn’t much think so, in fact. He was still hesitating when Matthew burst out, “I don’t mean to miss this one—not when we’re whuppen!” He spurred his horse in the direction Forrest had gone, toward the not very distant crash of artillery.