The Black Flower Read online

  The Professor moved through remembering, among images he did not know he remembered. Close now, he looked hard at the rider’s face, was about to speak when the mare made a violent side-step that brought her nearly to the fence. The Professor shrank away as the rider, shaken out of his reverie, tightened the reins and spoke softly to the horse. She calmed immediately and stood with all four feet planted firmly in the road, nodding her head and blowing. When she was still, the horseman turned his head and looked at the Professor for the first time—

  My boy, said a voice above him. Why do you weep so? Young Calvin Jones looked up to see the Archbishop himself, who had marked him with the ashes, who had said that he was dust. The boy shrank away, even as he heard himself speak—

  Dust? said the Archbishop. He was in a plain black cassock and shawl; he gathered his skirts and sat down beside the boy on the cold stones. Ah, me, he said—

  “I know you,” said the Professor.

  The horseman nodded.

  “But where? I—”

  The horseman turned in his saddle, his gloved hand on the cantle, and looked back down the road. The Professor sensed that something was approaching, looked himself, saw nothing. “What is it?” he said, and turned again to the horseman, but the road was empty. There was only the silver dust hanging in the air.

  The Professor gripped the fence rail and stared at his hands. He heard a wren, loud and insistent, calling in the trees. From the town, half a mile away, floated the chimes of the courthouse bell: two o’clock.

  Dust? the Archbishop said again? He took the boy’s hand in his own—

  Then something changed. The Professor looked up, feeling it, like the drop in temperature before a summer storm. The people were silent now, staring down the road with their handkerchiefs limp in their hands. They stood with expectant faces, hands draped over the fence, watching. Presently there came a creaking, groaning, a jingle of trace chains. The Professor looked down the road, saw a wagon approaching drawn by a pair of weary mules, their heads nodding. The ungreased axles popped in the soft air. Behind this wagon was another, and behind that, as far as the Professor could see, were still others. They came slowly, and the people watched.

  Soon the first wagon was abreast. The driver was a jaundiced country man in a ludicrous stovepipe hat. His jaws worked around an enormous plug of tobacco. When he saw the Academy girls, his face opened in a brown-toothed grin. “Hidy!” he said. When he got no response, the driver laughed and spat a long stream of ambure over the brake-handle. He slapped the reins, the mules jerked, and from the wagon bed rose a howl. “’At’s right, boys,” said the driver over his shoulder. “Yuns wake up—we comin into town. Hey, Gully—somebody out here wants to see yo’ face!”

  The Professor stiffened. Something was about to happen, he knew it—

  Feel my hand, said the Archbishop, Is it dust?

  No, said the boy.

  You are afraid of the dark, aren’t you?

  Yes, said the boy.

  Ah, said the Archbishop. So am I, sometimes.

  You? said the boy.

  A thing rose above the wagon box and draped its arms over the side, and for an instant the Professor thought it was some giant, ungainly bird until the dark and blistered face took shape and the Professor saw that it was a man who had no jaw. Where the jaw had been was a moist vacancy rimmed by the upper teeth from which the tongue dangled like an iris beard. The man shook his head and the tongue waggled; a girl shrieked hysterically and young Fitter fainted dead away and the driver laughed: “How ’bout that, ladies? Ever see a thing like that before?”

  The young ladies of Cumberland Academy dropped away from the fence like leaves from a vine. They turned and fled, sobbing, or backed away slowly, eyes alight with a terrible understanding. The men shook their fists in outrage at the driver, who laughed again and slapped the mule with the reins.

  Meanwhile, the Professor stared in shock at the jawless man. He could not have imagined that such a thing was possible. The wagon passed and another took its place, groaning and creaking like the first, and the Professor went on staring—

  The Archbishop touched the boy’s forehead. Do you remember how I marked you here? So you would remember death?

  Yes, said the boy. Yes, you—

  Now watch, said the Archbishop. He took the boy’s hand and with it made the sign of the cross on his breast. Now I mark you here, said the Archbishop, so that you will remember the light. Between these two signs lies the truth. Can you understand that?

  The Professor raised his hand and with it made the sign of the cross on his breast—

  Remember me when the dark comes and you are afraid. Remember me, and through me remember the One whose sign has marked you forever. It will be we three: you and I, and the One before whom no darkness can last. We three, always. Do you understand?

  Yes, said the boy, and he understood.

  Will you remember?

  Yes. Yes, I will remember.

  The wagons passed, and the men. Some sat on the tailgates with their bare feet dangling, watching across the sunlit afternoon at the girls fleeing over the green. Others walked beside the wagons, tottering like old men, their eyes fixed on some distant place. The dust rose about them all. And by the fence, the Archbishop of Canterbury spread his arms, loving them, while from his heart bright birds arose to wheel above them, offering praise, offering grace and humility and love. The Archbishop wept, and the young men saw and believed.

  All afternoon the wagons passed, bearing the wounded from the great battle of Shiloh, and all afternoon the Archbishop moved among them. Prince Rupert followed with a cedar bucket of spring water; the Archbishop dipped cup after cup for the thirsty men, bathed their faces, their feet, their hands, and spoke to them—not of God’s will but of His suffering, as if God Himself were lying in the reeking straw of the wagon beds—and the young men listened and believed. And when the people saw the thing which the Archbishop had begun, they returned to the road—girls, matrons, the bearded faculty, all—bringing water and food from the kitchen, and coffee, and fresh bandages torn from sheets. All that afternoon and night they labored as the wagons passed, and the young men were grateful.

  Next morning, the Archbishop made his way home. He climbed the steps, fumbled at the door, then stood blinking in the gloom of the hall. From the back of the house a woman appeared, wringing her hands in her apron. “Calvin!” she cried when she saw him. “Oh, Calvin, for God’s sake where have you been? Have you heard—” Then she stopped, and for a moment watched him where he stood smiling wearily in the hall, his hat in his hand. “Calvin?” she said at last.

  “Ah, Mrs.Wexford,” he said. “It has been a long night indeed,”

  Agnes Jones’ shoulders fell. She came to her brother, took his arm. “No doubt it has, Your Grace,” she said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  That summer of 1862 Calvin Jones, once Professor of Music at the Cumberland Female Academy, enrolled in the Confederate army as a bandsman. When it was done, he went home and told his sister.

  “You are an old fool,” said Agnes Jones. “What business have you marching around in the hot sun like a militiaman? And what if they shoot you, eh? What then?”

  The Professor shrugged. “Well, it is music anyhow,” he said.

  He was sent to Mobile where, among the sand fleas and mosquitos of Fort Morgan, Bandsman Jones learned the mysteries and evolutions of military life. By and by he caught a fever, and was in hospital. Then he was felled by sunstroke and was in hospital again. He practiced the saxhorn, wrote his sister, and studied the cries of the gulls that wheeled over the refuse dump. He waited for the war to discover him.

  Then at last, just before the Battle of Mobile Bay, the Professor was sent north with a draft of older men to join the Army of Tennessee. They traveled by the cars and arrived, like tardy guests, among the confusing backwaters of the Fall of Atlanta where they were immediately captured en masse by a regiment of Indiana cavalry, only to be recapt
ured by Confederate infantry that same afternoon. Presently the Professor became separated from his comrades and, having discovered that no one really cared what he did, wandered through the army until he found Adams’ Brigade of Loring’s Division of Stewart’s Corps, in which he had heard there were some Cumberland men. He reported to the Principal Musician, told some picturesque lies about his travels, and was taken into the band. With Adams’ Brigade, then, he set off on the Nashville campaign under the gallant Hood, and on Thanksgiving day wrote his sister from the muddy banks of the Tennessee at Florence, Alabama:

  Mister T.J. Carter’s boy Bushrod is here and young Jefferson Hicks, Jack Bishop, and two or three others I do not know. There are not so many as there once was, of the Cumberland men, I mean. They are kind to me—they think me a curiosity, no doubt—though as a general rule they do not entertain a very high opinion of the Band. In that, I cannot fault them, as I have no high regard for it myself.

  Tomorrow, or the next day, we are to cross the River if the Pontoons come up. It is all a great Mystery to me, over there. Pray for us, dear Agnes. Pray for me, an old fool.

  So it was that Calvin Jones crossed the broad, slate-colored river into Tennessee, and eleven days later stood with his new comrades behind the line of Adams’ Brigade in the yard of the great brick house at Franklin.

  They had been playing music all afternoon, ever since the army had formed up at the foot of the hills. They had gone through “Listen to the Mockingbird,” “Ben Bolt,” “Dixie’s Land,” “Here’s Your Mule,” “The British Grenadier,” and, of course, “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” a tune Professor Jones often heard in his sleep. It was well that they had been so busy for, surrounded by the bleating and thumping of the band, Professor Jones had been able to keep himself inside a bubble of music—fragile, to be sure, but sufficient to keep at bay the reality that was rapidly taking shape around him. Even the explosion of the first shell and the body of young Jefferson Hicks (around which the band had to open files) had registered as little more than the dim reverberation of something that was happening elsewhere. But now, in the yard of the great brick house, they had been ordered to cease their playing so the commands of the officers could be heard, and for the first time Calvin Jones was forced to acknowledge that the war had discovered him at last.

  The Principal Musician had gone to confer with the Brigade commander. The bandsmen were at ease, their instruments lay about like strange metallic flowers in the grass. A cornetist, the veteran of many campaigns, said, “Well, I guess this is as far as we go, and damned if I ain’t satisfied.”

  Professor Jones looked off toward the gathering smoke. “Am I to assume, then, that the band don’t follow the troops into battle?”

  “Follow, hell,” said the cornetist. “We already in the goddamn battle. Didn’t you see them dead men back yonder?”

  The Professor nodded. “I had supposed—” he began, but at that moment the Principal Musician returned and the men gathered around to hear the news.

  The Principal Musician was fidgeting with excitement, which the men took to be a bad sign. They regarded their leader with suspicion, and groaned when he ordered them to fall in. He was the only member of the band to have a regulation dark-gray frock coat with musician’s bars across the front—the rest of them looked like farmers. Professor Jones thought the Principal Musician’s uniform made him look vaguely skeletal.

  “Gentlemen,” the Principal Musician said, “General Adams has informed me that the band is to follow closely behind the brigade as it advances. …”

  “Damn,” muttered the cornetist.

  “We are to play, to use his word, ‘lustily,’ to keep up the spirit of the troops as they—”

  “Who gone keep our spirit up?” asked the cornetist.

  “Quiet!” said the Principal Musician. “I expect every man to do his duty. I should not have to remind you that the fate of the Confederacy, not to mention the honor of this band, hangs in the balance—”

  Several of the men laughed, including the Professor, though he could not have said why.

  “Take your instruments!” snapped their leader. “Let me hear a ‘C’.”

  Beyond the Principal Musician, troops were moving and shifting in unfathomable evolutions. The band picked up their instruments and joined in blowing a “C” note. It was not unmelodious, though the fortunes of war had caused most of the horns to go flat, and the effect reminded Professor Jones of the foghorns of steamships along the Dover coast. Nevertheless, Professor Jones concentrated on warming his horn and tried not to think about the fact that he was here at all.

  The wall of men to their front began to move into the smoke. The Principal Musician raised his baton, the bandsmen lifted their instruments.

  ‘“Annie Laurie’,” the Principal Musician shouted over the growing din. “One two and —”

  What! thought the Professor, turning frantically through his part book—“Annie Laurie”! Ridiculous! Give them a march, a quickstep—this was no song for a battle, but for summer evenings when the lamps were lit. Voice and piano, the Professor thought—perhaps a viola. Yes, and a young tenor, preferably one in love with the pianist. Absurd that anyone would want to manhandle “Annie Laurie” with brasses in the middle of a broomsage field. One two and. …the band was well into the fourth measure when the Professor brought the mouthpiece to his lips.

  There was a gunshot nearby, and men shouting, but the band was already marching across the yard, through the oaks, into the fields beyond, following the Brigade into the fight. Because the bells of the band’s instruments pointed backward, the Professor had difficulty hearing the balance of sound—but what he could hear was not really so bad. Needed a little more bottom perhaps, but the bass saxhornist had been invalided with measles, so he was told, and there was no help for it now. The Professor surrounded himself in his bright, fragile bubble of sound.

  The ground was rough, it was impossible to keep in step, the smoke was vile. The Professor considered that he ought to be afraid, felt mildly puzzled that he was not. He concentrated on his part-book, noted the rise and fall of the Principal Musician’s baton, kept his time—nothing to it, really. Lots of noise, smoke, shouting, but so far it was all a blur and seemed to have nothing to do with him. And surely it would be over soon: how long did a battle last, anyway?

  They played through “Annie Laurie” three times and the Professor was getting weary of the tune and almost wished something would happen, then he stumbled and bruised his lips on the mouthpiece of his horn. He turned his head to spit, and when he looked again the Principal Musician, almost frantic with excitement, had turned to face them and was walking backward, his baton held horizontally over his head—

  Like on parade, the Professor thought, as the band ceased playing and the drums began to beat cadence. It’s just like he was on parade—

  Their leader opened his mouth, said something that none of them could hear, opened his mouth again, shouted, “‘Dixie’s Land’! Give them ‘Dixie,’ boys!” and lowered his baton. The band began to play the quickstep; the Principal Musician seized his baton by the ball end, threw it up in the air, turned with a flourish as the baton twirled above him; the Principal Musician put out his gloved hand and made a perfect catch and evaporated in a blinding flash of light, in a spray of blood and bone and flesh that spattered the men in the front rank even as the concussion of the shell knocked them sprawling and the rest marched through the empty place where the Principal Musician had been—

  That is not possible, thought the Professor— A man cannot simply disappear—

  The band bunched up on itself, cursing and faltering now but still playing “Dixie’s Land” as they had been told to do. A heavy bank of smoke rolled over them and they passed over a carpet of dead and wounded men and a riderless horse, wild-eyed, stirrups flapping, ran across their front and was swallowed up by the smoke and the Professor rubbed his eyes and lost his place in the score. He listened, trying to hear the others, but the fragi
le bubble had burst and there were only ragged shards of music around him as each man played on his own. The Professor blindly fingered the keys of his horn, trying to find his place, but there was no place—

  The Brigade to their front began to execute a left wheel but the movement was only a blur in the smoke so the band marched straight on for a time and ended up on the far right of the line, and it was then that the Professor found himself alone. He had no idea where he was or where his comrades had gone, he could not think what to do so he stumbled on, walking blindly into the smoke and the angry hum of balls and somewhere up ahead the click-clack of bayonets and a sound like rending wood. The chaos of the battle possessed him; the noise was a solid wall now, a seamless roar of musketry and bellow of guns and the mad snarling and crying of men. The Professor had never heard such sound before; some part of him was captivated by the density of it, he could feel it on his face, had to push against it as if he were in a tower where great bells tolled, the great huddled bells waking—

  Suddenly he tripped, fell headlong, his instrument went flying and he jarred against the earth. For a moment he was stunned, his face pressed to the ground; he smelled the grass, considered the rocks, the gravelly soil, the line of ants that marched busily under his nose— Ants! he thought, astonished by that detail, almost offended by it; they seemed to mock him, going about their business while he—

  Then the noise crashed around him again and he struggled to his hands and knees and looked for his horn and found instead the thing that had tripped him: a man, impossibly old, with a grotesque beard, lying on the thick, ropy coils of his own bowels that spilled out beneath him. The Professor cried out, tried to scuttle away, but the man grasped his trouser leg, held him fast. “Get away!” shouted the Professor and kicked at the gray face and still the wounded man held him. “What!” shouted the Professor. “What do you want!”