The Judas Field Read online

  Here lies a man who found beauty in all things; in birds, in the uncurling of a fern, in the shadows made by candlelight on a tent wall, and he would say to them, Is that not beautiful? trying to teach them how to see. They had learned from him, and because of him the world would never seem without grace in the smallest things. Now he has no eyes at all.

  Here a man is crawling, intent on some destination only he could name, if he would. But there is no name for it he could give them that they would understand. He pulls himself along by handfuls of broom sage, unmindful of the coils of his innards and the coppery, dust-covered bag of his liver dragging behind. A while ago, he was a cheat at cards, a thief who bragged of Negro girls he had taken in the corncrib at home. Now he whimpers and crawls like an infant, and at last is still. The soldiers cover him with a blanket, and one of them remarks that here is ol’ J. D. Cunningham, who had never run from a fight until now, and they laugh. But they remember one cold midnight when he walked into a burning house to find if any could be saved. That is what they will tell, as long as any remain to tell it.

  In a bombshell crater lies a man who fell in love with another’s sister. He saw her in a tintype dropped from a letter: a plain girl in white, hands folded, sitting in a chair. He was smitten and begged permission to write, and the brother had a little fun with him, then gave him the picture for his own. Jes’ so long as the chaps don't look like you, said the brother, though later he told them all in secret, Here is a good man for young Polly; let’s see what comes of it. What came of it was this: a half-dozen letters interchanged, a promise made and accepted, and now the brother’s body in fragments at the smoking bottom of the hole, and intermingled the lover’s broken limbs, his face buried in the mud, while Polly, somewhere, snaps peas in a bucket, unaware for a little while of what she has lost.

  Now here is a boy with both his legs splintered at the knee, the white, shattered bones gleaming wetly. Beside him lies his severed hand. The living man kneels, ponders the hand turned upward, the curled fingers, the grooves in the palm black with dirt. A month ago, when Roger Lewellyn was weak with fever, this hand had made a letter for him in fine cursive script: Dear Sally Mae, I am feeling poorly so have asked Charlie Ables to write a few lines in response to your thrice welcome letter received in May. I hope this finds you well, as it leaves me. Now the hand lies mute and helpless, and young Charlie Ables lifts his head from the bloody grass. “Cass, is it bad?” he says.

  “Oh, no, Charlie,” says the living man. “It is nothing.” There is one hand left, and he takes it. The hand fastens on his own, so tight there is no pulling away. The living man sits a long time, unwilling to loose the fingers, while all around men’s voices call to one another, and a burst of firing erupts on the flank, and the hot sun travels overhead as if nothing at all had happened. The regiment is in line again, and the old flag broken out and whisking its tattered fringes in the breeze. On the cotton bunting they have painted, one by one, the names of their battles. These are barely readable now, but no matter; they are sufficiently graved in memory. An officer passes, touches Cass’s shoulder.

  “Come along,” he says gently. “We must leave them now.”

  “All right, Perry,” Cass says, though he knows there is no leaving. Still, it is what they say. He pries the fingers free and closes the dead man’s eyes. He touches the rosary about his neck, a reflex like the jerk of a cooling muscle. He picks up his musket and takes his place. Behind him, the drums begin. The officers shout. The regiment moves forward.

  So they grieved and were ashamed, though only in the secret provinces of their hearts. To the citizens lining the fences, leaning from the windows of houses, or peering from their shops, the men appeared reckless and defiant in their long ragged columns. They seemed dangerous under their banners and the gleam of their bayonets, in the cadence of their drums, among the prancing of the officers’ horses. And so they were dangerous, though not by any implements of war. They were all more or less insane now—the mild ones, the dull-witted ones, even those who believed and accepted that God’s inscrutable Will was being done. This, above all, made them dangerous. The citizens would not comprehend, but the soldiers understood it in one another, and none of them had been surprised when Roger Lewellyn, mildest of boys, offered to kill the first sergeant on the road to Atlanta. Certainly Cass Wakefield, who knew him best, was not surprised.

  They fell back on Atlanta in the summer of ’64, and in that time Cass discovered he wished Roger Lewellyn dead. He would be wandering among the dark trees of his dream, and the thought would come suddenly from the air, darting, buzzing like a foul horsefly: If he were dead … Then the Death Angel would stroll by, lean into Cass’s ear, whisper, Did you hear that? Wouldn’t everything be simpler then? Cass knew it would. He could run away then, and Janie would not forget him, and Sally Mae would forgive in time. And Roger would forgive him surely, looking down from the stars. Then, with daylight and waking, Cass was horrified and ashamed at what he had made in his dream. He clung to Roger Lewellyn like a tick and prayed for forgiveness. He watched for Death, to interpose himself if he could—a vanity that always made the Death Angel smile.

  Once, in the works before Atlanta, when Cass was in the dark place, the shade of Rufus Pepper came again. This time, Rufus was not soldiering but wandering through his days before the war. He was dressed in linsey-woolsey trousers held up by a single gallus, a faded gingham shirt, and a straw hat wide as an umbrella. He was barefoot. His long, mud-crusted, calloused feet with their horny nails were appalling to Cass, who was revolted by the sight of any male feet but his own.

  Hidy, said Rufus.

  “Damnation!” said Cass. “See here—what you haunting me for anyhow?”

  Rufus was hurt. Well, you was my pard, he said.

  “Yes,” said Cass, “but sometimes you scare the dog shit out of me, dropping by like this.”

  Well, I’ll jes’ go on, then, said the man, and began to dissolve.

  “Now, hold on,” said Cass. “I don’t mean to offend. Don’t go away. I am glad for your company—honest Injun I am. You just take some getting used to, is all.”

  Rufus was satisfied and made himself solid again. He squatted on his heels, his toes splayed in the mud, and looked about. This is had ground, he said. You ought not to come here.

  “It is not a place I come to by choice,” said Cass. “You ought to know about that.”

  I do know, said Rufus. From his pocket, he extracted a peeled willow twig and began to work it among his yellow teeth.

  “Well, I suppose you have come to tell me about Janie again,” said Cass after a moment. His visitor shook his head and was silent. “Then I expect you want to see what moves in the stream there,” said Cass. “Perhaps that will interest you.”

  Rufus chewed on his twig. The mysterious light of that place shadowed the planes of the man’s cheekbones, the sunken hollows of his jaws, the stubble on his chin. Rufus picked up a black gob of mud and let it slip through his fingers; left behind in his palm was a wriggling mass of worms. Rufus flung them in the water. There ain’t nothing real here, Cass, he said.

  The tree limbs rattled as if in protest. An indistinct shape slid from the bank and swirled the scum among the reeds.

  “Those worms were real,” said Cass. “The mud, the trees, that water there, the things that swim in it—they are real as anything.”

  No, said Rufus, you make it all up.

  “Don’t be saying that,” said Cass. “I do not choose—”

  Look yonder, said Rufus, and lifted his hand.

  Cass followed the pointing finger. The trees had parted, leaning inward toward a channel of dark water where a black steamboat, gleaming all of polished ebony, was nosing down the stream. Its wheels churned the water without sound; its chimneys brushed the gray curtains of moss, but no smoke rose from them, nor any steam from the pipes. All the railings were hung with crepe, the windows shuttered. The pilothouse was dark, though something moved there, Cass thought. He
knew the movement: the pilot crossing from the wheel to the window and back again.

  “What does it mean?” said Cass, his voice hushed.

  "What you will, said Rufus.

  Now the boat grew closer, and Cass discerned on its bow a catafalque adorned with dark angels, and beside it the Death Angel, smiling, wings folded like a black frock coat.

  What you will, said Rufus again.

  On the catafalque lay a patent iron coffin with an oval glass, a window on the dead, and toward this the Angel moved his hand. Cass felt himself rise up among the moss. He smelled the boat’s cold chimneys and its rotting wood, felt the chill breath of water dripping from its wheels. He looked down on the coffin, and in the glass saw a thin pale face watching back, the lips open in a smile, forgiving—

  “I don’t mean that!” cried Cass Wakefield, and sat upright, the blanket flung away.

  A sentry stopped, looked once in his direction, then moved on. It was nothing; men were always crying out in the night. The moon was late, rising full, and the earth was crossed by the shadows of stacked arms, the rags of tents; of battery horses and the wheels of guns parked nearby; of restless men who moved among the pine grove. Beyond, encircling for miles, shrouded in wood smoke and the smell of frying fatback, lay the Army of Tennessee like a vast encampment of gypsies. Roger Lewellyn sat hunched by the dying fire, feeding it with scraps of bark. He turned; a brand flared up and lit his face. His long hair was pulled back in a queue, and his cheeks glistened with sweat.

  “What is it, pard?” said Roger. “Were you dreaming?”

  “Yes,” said Cass.

  “Well, don’t tell it before you eat,” said Roger, “else it will come true.”

  Cass propped himself on one elbow. His hand burned, and his skin felt as if it had been rubbed with bacon grease. A mosquito whined in his ear, and he swatted at it. After a moment, he said, “Roger?”

  “Right here.” The boy was turned from him now, a dark shape against the fire.

  “Roger, I will not run away again,” Cass said.

  “That’s good, Cass,” said the Boy. “Now, why don’t you try to sleep? You’ll feel better if you do.”

  Cass nodded and lay back again, settled his head against the sweaty leather of his cartridge box. He looked up through the pines at the glittering spray of stars, and he thought, for an instant, that a dark, familiar shape moved across them. Then he slept, traveling toward morning in the careful hands of God.

  7

  ONE MILD INDIAN-SUMMER AFTERNOON, THE ARMY of Tennessee was sprawled out all over the city of Decatur, Alabama. Their commander, General John Bell Hood, had given up Atlanta and been rewarded for his loss with an ambitious new campaign. Hood, the cavalier, planned to rescue the ladies of Nashville from the yankees and drive on up into Ohio. First, however, he had to cross the Tennessee River, and to that end, a sporadic, futile fight had been going on since daylight around the formidable yankee works, behind which a handy pontoon bridge lay beckoning. Adams’s Brigade, including the Twenty-first Mississippi, was in reserve and had not been engaged, so, after the custom of all soldiers, they improved the time by building big fires and making coffee. Some of them went chicken hunting. Hood was a great fighter but not a great provider.

  A little after one o’clock, a boy appeared suddenly, unaccountably, in the regimental midst. No one had seen him approach. “I am lookin’ for the Twenty-first Mississippi,” he announced to a group of men playing marbles on a gum blanket. The game was not going well, for the mud made a various landscape under the blanket. The soldiers looked up at the boy in wonder. “For what?” said a thin man in spectacles.

  The boy turned his head and spat. “If I was you and was goin’ to play marbles,” he said, “I’d get a table outen that house yonder.”

  “You would, would you?” said the thin soldier.

  “Yep,” said the boy. “I’d take the legs off and set it in the mud. Then you could play.”

  “How come you never thought of that, Jack?” said another man. He looked at the boy. “This is the Twenty-first,” he said, “but we are fresh out of sugar tits.”

  “Huh,” said the boy, and spat again. “I ’spect you are.”

  The man started to rise, but the thin soldier waved him down. “Look here,” said the thin soldier, and pointed toward the next house. “You go see General Wakefield over there. That’s his headquarters. He’ll fix you up.”

  The boy looked in that direction. “What’ll he be playin’? Dolls?”

  “You’ll have to find out for yourself,” the thin soldier said. “Now go away.”

  The boy made to spit again but didn’t. The soldiers watched as he turned without a word and moved away.

  Cass Wakefield, Roger Lewellyn, and Ike Gatlin had built a fire out of some boards from a house, a handsome dwelling far enough from the enemy’s works that it hadn’t been razed for their field of fire. The occupants had objected to the rebels dismantling their weatherboards, but Cass reminded them how lucky they were to have a house at all, and a few boards less wouldn’t matter, and if they didn’t go inside and be quiet, his boys would tear the whole God-damned house down around their ears and burn it all. After that, they had no more trouble; in fact, the scrawny old wife had slung them a mess of fall turnip greens and a pitcher of water.

  Now Cass was sitting on his gum blanket against a paling fence, smoking. He was a sergeant again, elevated by simple subtraction in the battles around Atlanta. He could hear the rattle of musketry, the shouts of men, but it wasn’t his fight yet, so he pushed these portents to the back of his mind. What rankled him at the moment was the ungrateful conduct of the citizens, whose interests, theoretically, the army was here to accommodate. True, the old wife had brought them some greens, but she’d been grudging about it. Probably they were full of boiled worms or spiders. Well, Cass thought, if the boys stayed long enough, they would burn the fence, too, except the part he was leaning on. He could smell the greens cooking and wished they didn’t cause him to bloat up so. He might eat some anyhow, he thought. He was debating the issue when a shadow fell across his legs.

  In the pale afternoon sunlight, Cass saw a boy of perhaps sixteen, slender of frame, with blond curly hair and a face that was not handsome but beautiful. He wore linsey-woolsey breeches too short for him, and a stained gingham shirt, and carried a carpetbag, which he put down at his feet. “You General Wakefield?” he said.

  “Beg pardon?” said Cass.

  The boy produced a paper and handed it down to Cass. It was a note from the provost marshal, a single line:

  Sullivan: Here is a boy. Good luck.

  Cross

  Cass pulled himself reluctantly to his feet and knocked his clay pipe against the fence. “This ain’t for me,” he said. “It’s for Captain Byron Sullivan.”

  “Huh,” said the boy. He shrugged and thrust his hands in his pockets. He had round brown eyes with long lashes, and a spray of briar scratches across his nose. “You all got anything to eat?”

  Ike and Roger came up. “This a fresh fish?” said Ike.

  “Just hatched,” said Cass.

  Roger had a little corked bottle of salt in his hand. He examined the boy. “He doesn’t look like much,” he said.

  “You don’t look like much yourself,” said the boy.

  They all laughed at that. Cass gave the note back to the boy and said, “Well, you’ll have to see the captain, then the colonel, then the general, but they are all busy today. Come back tomorrow.”

  “Oh, let’s keep him, Cass,” said Ike Gatlin.

  “I ain’t goin’ no fu’ther,” said the boy, and sat down on Cass’s gum blanket.

  Roger said, “Come along, Ike. We should leave Cass and his orphan to get acquainted.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Cass as they strolled away. “He ain’t any of mine.”

  In a moment, Ike and Roger were hunkered by the fire, watching some boys haul a table out of the empty house next door. “He ain’t my orphan,�
� shouted Cass, but the men around the fire grinned and ignored him.

  A swell of musketry broke out upriver, accompanied by the mad cheering of the yankees. We will never take this place, thought Cass. It is all a waste of time. He looked at the boy. The sound of the fight did not seem to move him; in fact, he appeared to be asleep, leaned against the fence, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

  “Now, see here,” said Cass, “you have got my place.”

  The boy opened his eyes. “I never seen your name on it.”

  “Well, you are a smart-ass anyway,” said Cass. “You’ll fit right in. Where’d they find you?”

  “Aberdeen, Mississippi.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lucifer,” said the boy.

  “The hell you say!”

  The boy shrugged. “It’s the name they give me down at the orphantage. They said it means ‘light.’ ”

  “Well, that’s one thing it means,” said Cass, “but probably that’s not why they gave it to you. I guess you really are an orphan.”

  “Born and bred,” said the boy.

  “What’s your other name?”

  “They never give me ere other. I reckon they thought the one was enough.”

  Cass wanted to question the lad further, but all at once the drums of the regiment began the unwelcome summons of the long roll. Cass groaned, and a slender knot of fear tightened around his heart. He did not want to go anywhere. He wanted to stay in this backyard and camp out and wash his shirt, sleep awhile, smoke, drink coffee, and talk to the boys. Nevertheless, he started for the color line, buttoning his jacket. He was almost there when he stopped, walked back to the fence, and kicked the boy’s foot. “You, Lucifer,” he said.