The Black Flower Read online

  “What!” Anna snapped. “What! What! Speak up!”

  “A surgeon—”

  “You gone need a surgeon, you touch me again,” said Anna, and the red fog was fading and she knew she had to get away, down the stairs where there would be somebody to help her, where she wouldn’t be alone. She turned. “Get out my way” she said, with the last of her anger. The men parted before her, and in an instant she was gone.

  There was a moment of quiet in the hall, then someone spoke out of the gloom. “Holy shit,” the voice said. “Warn’t she an angel, though?”

  Nebo Gloster had been upstairs in the great brick house for more than an hour, waiting for the man by the hearth to die. Nebo was a little put out—he’d come all this way to find the perfect spot, only to discover that someone was there before him. Still, he could be patient. Pretty soon now that fellow would pass, and when he did, Nebo would be right there.

  The man was staring at him, which made Nebo uneasy. He just stared and stared, never even blinking. Nebo smiled back and nodded his head as if to say he was perfectly satisfied crouching there in the corner—he wasn’t interested in a spot by the fire. But the man never blinked or smiled or spoke, just lay there with his arm torn off, staring. He probably knew that Nebo really wanted that place.

  There were lots of men in the room. They lay around the walls groaning and talking to themselves; the floor was covered with them too, lying every which way. The only light came from the fire, and that was why Nebo had to get close to it. He needed the light to examine his collection. He wished the man would just go ahead and pass if he was going to. Once he selected a ramrod and crawled over and poked the man just to see what he would do. Nothing. He wasn’t going to give Nebo the time of day.

  In the crook of his arm, Nebo cradled the thick bunch of ramrods he had picked up on the battlefield. A pair of shoes were slung around his neck by the laces. He had found a straw hat, too, and a long gray coat with two bars on the collar. He had traded his old quilt to a man for the coat—it was stiff and crusted with blood and had a big ragged hole in the back, but it was warm. Nebo crouched in the corner and watched the man by the fire—he noticed the man’s rib cage was showing, too, just like a side of beef.

  After a while, Nebo heard a door open and close. He saw a woman pass across the hall outside; she stopped for a moment and looked right at him, and he shifted uncomfortably and tried to draw back into the shadows. He pulled the straw hat down over his eyes. Then there was a big row out there, and men were shouting and the woman was shouting, and then it was quiet again and Nebo looked and the woman was gone.

  The sight of the woman was unsettling; he had not expected to find one up here, and he wondered if it might be a sign. Maybe this wasn’t the right place after all, maybe he would have to go back out in the dark again. He looked at the soldier by the fire, but the man was still staring same as ever. Nebo wondered how he could see out of those eyes. A wasp lit on the man’s cheek, crawled into his open mouth, crawled out again.

  This ain’t the right place, Nebo thought—but it almost is. He straightened his bundle of ramrods and rose stiffly to his feet. The shoes were heavy around his neck. With a last look at the man by the fire, Nebo began to make his way through the soldiers lying around him. In the hall he stopped and looked carefully about. The woman was gone, sure enough.

  Then he saw that of all the rooms upstairs only one had a closed door. The woman had come from there, and she had looked at him. Nebo nodded, he understood the sign now.

  He pushed his way through the crowded hall to the door. A hand clutched at him, but he whacked it away with a ramrod. He tried the knob, and the door swung open.

  Once inside, Nebo eased the door shut and looked around. It was deathly still, the room was full of furniture and there was a fire banked on the hearth and not a soul about. Nebo nodded again—clearly this was the place and not the other. He went to the fire and poked it until a little flame sprung up, and he was looking at the dancing light when he heard a rustle from the dark loom of the bed—

  “Anna?” said a small voice.

  Nebo jumped, clutched his bundle of ramrods, two of them slipped out and clattered to the floor. He froze, listening, but there was no more sound. After a moment he lay the ramrods carefully on the hearth. Then he moved toward the bed.

  Anna stopped below the turn of the stairs, in the light of the hall and out of reach of the men above. The red fog was gone, and with it the anger that had caused her to despise the wretches on the landing, and she felt half-ashamed. But only half.

  She had a cat once, a surly tom that took up residence in the barn, and upon this cat she lavished affection far beyond his deserving, and one afternoon she discovered him returning from personal combat, staggering, panting, his round head (the size and shape of a middling cantaloupe) intersticed with bloody gashes. Filled with pity and grief, Anna swept the old tom up in her arms. It was a mistake. For in the cat’s heart still burned a deadly fuse and he turned against Anna’s innocent hand with a violence so bitter and mindless that, when she screamed, it was not with the hurt but with the sudden knowledge that something so vicious could be at all.

  Such a fuse burned in Anna’s heart now.

  She found herself panting, as the old cat had done. She tried to compose herself, but the notion only made her stomach knot. Oh, yes, she thought— In the asylum, the lunatics pause to compose themselves. Her hand tightened on the banister and she remembered that it was just here she had met General Forrest—weeks ago, it seemed—and she wished he were here now, and wondered what effect he would have up above, with his hard face and glittering black eyes. If I could only be him, just for a minute—

  She thought of the young staff officer whom she had come down these stairs to see before the battle, to whom she had given her name for no reason she could understand. Where was he now, when she needed him?

  They were too busy, all these men. Too busy killing themselves, like so many tom cats—

  And here came another, limping up the stairs. No, she thought, and stepped in front of him.

  He was bearded and shaggy, his clothes (he wore no piece of a uniform) little more than rags, and in the pale oval of his face his eyes were like blackened peas, and she could smell the strong stink of him.

  “There is no more room up there,” Anna said.

  The man’s little eyes grew even smaller. “So you say.”

  “Yes, so I say. Get out in the yard where you belong.”

  She saw the man’s stained and broken teeth. He plucked at his clotted beard and cocked his head and his eyes moved over her. Then he passed his fingers over the place where his ear had been and held them up before her. “Look at that—you know what that is?”

  Anna brushed his bloody hand away. “Don’t you put that in my face,” she said. “You’re no soldier—get out, or I’ll have the provost guard on you.”

  “Shit,” said the man. “I don’t give a goddamn for your provost guard.”

  “You will when they are stickin you like a hog,” said Anna. “Now get away from me.”

  The man studied her for a moment, looked around, then grinned up at her. “Sure thing. I’ll jes go right now, never meant a bit of harm.” He started to turn, stopped, faced her again. He held up a bloody finger. “’Fore I go, though, I want you to understand somethin, the way things are. You full of sand now, but there might come a time when they ain’t no pro-vost guard. That bein so, I might want to call again.”

  “I hope you will,” said Anna.

  The man laughed. “No, you still don’t understand.” He licked his fingers, then closed them around the baggy crotch of his trousers. “See?” he said. “Think about it—”

  “Get out!” cried Anna. “Provost!”

  “I was jes leavin, little puss,” he said, and at that moment he reached the bottom and stumbled over the legs of a soldier lying at the foot of the stairs. The man looked down, and laughed again. “Well, I’ll be goddamned if it ain’t ol
’ Bushrod! Man, I been lookin all over for you.” He kicked the soldier’s leg. “Where’s Jack? Hey, where’s my old pard Jack?” He kicked the man again. “You see him, you tell him—”

  “Provost!” Anna shouted again, but the man was gone, limping down the hall and into the dark beyond the door.

  Anna was trembling, the fuse guttering out inside her. Her legs had gone weak all at once and she had to cling to the banister to keep from falling. She moved slowly down the stairs and sat on the bottom step near the soldier who was moaning now. She clamped her knees tight together and took the silver cross in her hand. It was cool and she pressed it to her cheek, trying not to think of anything.

  “Yew holler for the provost, ma’am?”

  Anna looked up. Before her stood a scrawny, barefooted boy with smallpox scars on his face, clutching a bayonetted musket two feet taller than he was.

  “Who are you?” said Anna. “What are you?”

  The boy blushed and rubbed a foot on the shin of his leg.

  “You are not a provost guard,” Anna said.

  “Yes’m,” mumbled the boy.

  Anna put her face in her hands and laughed, and when the tears came they surprised her; she had not thought that any remained in her.

  “You-uns is hurt?” asked the boy.

  Anna shook her head, brought out her handkerchief again and wiped her eyes. “No, I am not hurt,” she said. She sighed. “I need somebody to go down to the cookhouse, guard the biscuits and the ham. You do that for me?”

  “Uh-huh. Yes’m.”

  “Anybody wants to know, you say Miss Anna Hereford said for you to stay down there. Now go along, don’t be dawdlin.”

  “I won’t,” said the boy. He looked at her for a long moment. “Kin I have a biscuit?” he said at last.

  “Tell em I said to give you one. As many as you want.”

  The boy grinned, slung his musket and went away down the hall.

  Men were passing, they looked at her and looked away. Two came by with a litter, the wounded man was groaning and rolling his head back and forth and frothing blood. That one will be dead soon, Anna thought. She shut her eyes tight and tried to imagine the world without her in it. It was sweet and peaceful: she was not there, and the world went right along anyhow. For a moment she could almost believe it was true—but then, slowly, like people coming up a road, the voices came again, and the cries, and the little sound of a wasp batting its stupid head against the tin lantern in the hall. Got to go, thought Anna, and opened her eyes.

  “We got to be quiet,” Winder said, “else we’ll wake Hattie up, and then we’re in for it.”

  “Ain’t it the truth!” said Nebo Gloster. He was busy arranging the ramrods side-by-side on the hearth.

  A little while before, Winder had awakened to find Nebo bending over him in the bed. The man had put a finger to his lips and beckoned him to follow. Winder was unafraid; he knew the soldiers would not hurt him, and this man, from the bars on his collar, was a Confederate officer. So the boy crept out of bed, careful not to wake Hattie, and now he and the officer were crouching by the hearth examining the ramrods.

  “What you got all them for, anyhow?” asked Winder.

  “Got all what for?”

  “Well, all those things there. And how come your shoes is around your neck, and it wintertime?”

  “I am glad you axed me that,” said Nebo. “I was jes comin around to it. But if I tell you, will you not say a thing to a livin soul?”

  “Not me,” said Winder. “Honor bright.”

  “All right, then,” said Nebo. He beckoned, the boy moved closer. “These here,” said Nebo in a whisper, “repersent all the ramrods what was fired durin the great battle. One of em is mine.”

  The boy waited. After a moment, Nebo touched his sleeve. “One of em is mine,” he repeated.

  Winder nodded. “Yessir. What else?”

  Nebo raised an eyebrow. “What you mean, what else?”

  The boy shrugged. “Well, I mean, one of em is yours, and what else about em?”

  “Why, there ain’t nothin else about em. Don’t you want to help me figure out which one?”

  “Is that all?” said the boy.

  “Well, it’s what I come out for,” said Nebo.

  “But how will we ever tell?”

  Nebo stroked his bristled chin. “Derned if I know,” he said.

  When Simon Rope left the house, he didn’t go far, just a little way into the grove where the firelight couldn’t reach him. There he settled among the roots of an oak tree to wait for morning, and to think about the woman in the house. He closed his eyes and saw her again in perfect clarity as she stood in the dim light of the hall, and her voice came to him again, and the words, and the way she looked at him. He crossed his arms and huddled against the damp night and played the scene in his mind over and over again, changing nothing, not even trying to think of things he should have said instead of what he did. Then, when he had it all down, he expanded the scene to include Bushrod Carter. Now he smiled. Bushrod was there too, him and the woman, right there in the house together.

  It was cold, but Simon Rope did not care about the cold. He shivered and drew his collar tight around his neck. His ear burned with a heatless fire, but no matter. In time he slept, and his sleep was free of dreams.

  When Anna Hereford opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the body of the soldier lying at the foot of the stairs. He did not seem too badly hurt, at least by the rigorous standards of the night—a bruised and bloody face, a bloody hand where his finger had been shot or cut or bitten away. Anna wondered by what blind circumstance he had come to be here, brought out of the night and deposited at her feet as if circumstance expected her to do something about him. She yawned, and brushed at her hair. She ought to wash it soon, she thought, and maybe get Jeanne to cut it. But no, that wouldn’t do now. Jeanne was gone, nobody knew where, just gone. Run off with the Yankees, oh, a long time ago. Well, too bad circumstance didn’t bring Jeanne here, too, where she could look after Hattie and Winder and keep the ghosts away.

  The thought of the children nagged her. She had to get up, go and find somebody to help her straighten out the mess upstairs—she could do that, at least. She yawned again, and rested her chin on her drawn-up knees, blinked her heavy eyes and stared at the soldier while strangers passed in the hall and the wasp knocked against the lantern glass. She would get up in just a minute and go find cousin Caroline, who would know what to do, who would help her.

  The soldier looked like a pile of dirty, bloody rags, and he hadn’t any shoes. His face might have been pleasant once and his hands, dirty as they were, didn’t seem to be a countryman’s hands—they were long, slender, almost effeminate, a boy’s hands, not a man’s. Anna watched as the soldier raised his hands and pressed them to his face—it was a gesture she had seen men do countless times over the long night. He raised one knee then let it fall, and his heel thumped on the floor. He was talking behind his hands, but Anna couldn’t hear, didn’t much care anyway, wanted only to sleep—

  No! she thought—Wake up. Wake up and pulled her head up, and at that moment the soldier dropped his hands and looked right at her and said, “Remy Dangerfield!”

  “What!” Anna said, and the sound of her own voice made her jump.

  Bushrod Carter could not believe what he was seeing. In fact, he could hardly see at all, but there was the girl’s face, no doubt about that, so he said her name again: “Remy?”

  “Who?” said the girl. “Who did you say?”

  So he was not dead, and it was not Remy after all. Bushrod groaned in disappointment and covered his face again. After a moment, he heard the girl’s voice closer now, as if she had leaned toward him: “What’s the matter with you, anyhow?”

  Bushrod looked again and, sure enough, the girl was leaning toward him, watching him over her knees. “Who?” he said.

  “You, boy,” said the girl. “Who’d you think?”

  Bushrod was sick
at his stomach. His last memory was a complex and disturbing one: Virgil C. lying face down in the grass, Nebo Gloster running, an officer shooting at him with his pistol. And now he seemed to be inside a house, lying on the floor, and a girl he did not know was talking to him. He was sick, and felt like he might throw up.

  “I am fixin to throw up,” he said.

  “Well, go ahead,” said the girl. “Have at it.”

  So he did, and was ashamed. It was only bile, and not much of that, but the act angered and humiliated him. It was too much. The very idea—the very fuckin idea—

  “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t have time to fool with you,” said the girl, but then she was kneeling beside him, wiping his mouth with a rag or a handkerchief, and Bushrod was ashamed and turned his face away.

  “Don’t then,” he said. “Go on.”

  “Hush,” said Anna. She tried to turn his face, but he wouldn’t let her. She sat back on her heels and looked at him. “Well, I am only tryin to help you,” she said.

  The soldier did not reply. He lifted his right hand, the unwounded one, as if to wave her away.

  “All right, then, forget it,” Anna said, and stood up. “You are not much hurt anyhow.”

  All right, then how much hurt do you have to be?

  The thought came so unexpectedly that at first she believed the soldier had spoken it—but he was staring groggily across the hall, drifting again apparently.

  Worse than the one up yonder you treated like a dog?

  “That is not fair,” Anna said to the soldier. “I don’t have time to fool with you!” The man turned his face toward her, but Anna didn’t think he saw her at all—he seemed to be looking past her at something she really didn’t care to know about. She remembered the smoke, the snarling in the twilight. He was there, she thought— In all of that—

  “Ah, damn!” she said. She saw a bloody-aproned figure stumble out of the parlor, like a man drunk or walking in his sleep. “You, sir!” she said. “Are you a doctor?”