The Black Flower Read online

  “Sure, sure you do, you chicken-shit, shoulda never thowed dirt in my face son bitch you know everthing you think you wanta trade I’ll tell you by God trade the cunt for Bishop trade cunt for. …only thing, I get to fuck her first—”

  Anna cried out then, tried to twist away, but Simon Rope clapped his hand over her mouth, pressed the knife until it brought a little bead of blood that ran down Anna’s cheek and dangled on the point of her chin and Bushrod kept his eyes away, kept them on the clearing—

  “You hear me? You can have her after that you can even watch me son bitch then I get Bishop—”

  “No,” said Bushrod. He was backing up now.

  “What?”

  “No trade,” said Bushrod. He straightened, dropped his hands, kept his eyes off Anna’s face. “No trade, Simon. Crows gone get you.”

  Simon Rope watched him, Anna watched him, the crows and the dead men watched him. Bushrod began to sway, like a man dancing to unheard music.

  “Crows gone get you, Simon.”

  Simon Rope opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. There was a sound in his head, the words were right there, but he couldn’t make them come out. Then he felt it, and looked down. Something was pushing out the front of his shirt.

  “Crows’ll get you now, Simon,” said Bushrod. “Listen to em up yonder.”

  But Simon Rope wasn’t listening. He forgot everything, absorbed in the mystery of what was happening to him. He watched the thing break through the rotten fabric of his shirt and angle out into the light; it was coming out just under his breastbone, gray and greasy, smeared with blood—

  He felt the girl break away, but no matter. He didn’t care, wanted only to study the thing coming out of him. He recognized it, the threaded end of a steel ramrod, something wet and dark dangling from the tip—impossible, yet there it was—

  Then the pain struck him, brought him to his knees. Everything seemed to let go then, he watched his hand open, watched the knife fall slowly, gracefully, into the grass. He saw the girl running. He tried to reach for the knife but his hand wouldn’t work—it was right there in front of him but he couldn’t pick it up, the damndest thing. Then he let that go too, he couldn’t remember what he needed the knife for anyway.

  Something black and silky swept across Simon Rope’s vision. He clawed at it with his hands, but it slipped away. Then there were more of them, lots more, wheeling around him, but he could handle them all. Never mind—he’d been hurt lots worse than this. Lots worse. He heard voices. All right, he said. Come on you sons of bitches see what happens. Then he began to crawl.

  Bushrod tried to catch her, but Anna twisted away and struck him hard across the face. “No!” she cried. “Don’t touch me! Don’t any of you—”

  “God-dammit!” sobbed Bushrod, holding his nose, wanting to smash his fist into the fragile bones of Anna’s face.

  “Keep away!” she cried. “Keep off me!”

  Meanwhile, Nebo Gloster had pulled the bloody ramrod out of Simon Rope. He turned it in his hands, crying, making sounds, then he drew back his arm and hurled the ramrod away; it whistled across the clearing and disappeared in the trees. Nebo began to hop from foot to foot. “Miss Anna!” he sobbed. “Miss Anna!”

  Simon Rope was crawling, clawing at the grass. He passed over the knife; Anna saw it, dove on it, scrabbled for it, gasping for breath. Finally she had it. She lurched to her feet and went after Simon Rope, the knife raised—

  “No!” cried Bushrod. He grabbed her wrist, wrapped his arm around her waist. She fought him, tried to cut him with the blade.

  “Turn loose of me!” Anna sobbed. “I got to kill him! Let me kill him once and for all!”

  Bushrod squeezed her wrist as hard as he could, knowing he was hurting her, wanting to hurt her, until her hand opened and the knife dropped away. “Enough!” he cried, his mouth pressed against her ear. “Enough! You will have enough bad dreams as it is!”

  He held her, let her fight him, wrapped his arms around her and squeezed tighter until he’d squeezed all the breath out of her. She groaned and Bushrod pushed her face into his shoulder and eased his grip—and as soon as he did, Anna bit him, hard. Bushrod gritted his teeth and held on. He would not let her go, not ever.

  Then he felt the girl go limp, and he put his good hand against the back of her neck and stroked her, petted her. “Go ahead,” he said. “Go ahead, go ahead.” And she was really crying now, she was shrieking, the sound muffled by the stinking wool of his jacket. But that was all right. That was a good thing. …

  PART THREE

  BANQUO’S RETURN

  Mother, you will be glad to know I am no longer afraid of the dark.

  —Letter, Bushrod to Jane Pegues Carter

  Corinth, Mississippi

  April 9,1862

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In the last hour of his life, Jack Bishop spoke hardly at all. When he did, Bushrod leaned close and listened, but he could never make much out of it. Jack was someplace far away from Franklin, and Bushrod would not have called him back even if he could, not even to say goodbye.

  They had not tried to move him; Jack had so little time remaining, and it seemed useless to trouble him. So they stood watch in the clearing: Bushrod and Anna and Nebo, the dead men and the crows.

  When Anna had done crying, when the hurricane of fear and anger had passed, Bushrod had expected her to leave, to go back to the house where her folks were, to flee as far from Bushrod Carter as she could. He would not have blamed her. So he was surprised when she asked him to find something she might use to rest on.

  “I must sit down before I fall down,” she said. Bushrod started to protest, but she waved him silent. “It is all right,” she said. “I am worn out with soldierin, is all.”

  So Bushrod, fearing that if he pressed any harder she really would leave, went once more among the Departed. He found a man who still had his blanket roll. It was an old quilt, actually, made in the double-wed-ding-ring style. “Beg pardon, I’m sure,” said Bushrod, and took the quilt, and spread it upon the ground for Anna. She allowed him to take her hand while she lowered herself to the quilt; she sat, and spread her skirts around her, and looked at Nebo.

  “Can you understand how grateful I am to you?” she asked.

  Nebo blushed and a painful look crossed his long face and his eyes darted to Bushrod.

  “Maybe you could make us a fire,” said Bushrod. He pointed. “There’s a little blow-down yonder, ought to be some good dry wood.”

  Nebo limped thankfully away. Bushrod caught Anna’s questioning glance and held up his hand for peace. “He knows,” Bushrod said. “It’s just. …well, he ain’t schooled in the social graces.”

  “Hmmm,” said Anna, but she left it alone.

  Bushrod tried to get Jack to take some water, but it was no use, it only seemed to hurt him. Bushrod sat back on the edge of the quilt and hung his head.

  “He was your good comrade?” said Anna softly.

  “Uh-huh. He was.”

  “Like the other boy? Virgil?”

  “Virgil C.,” said Bushrod. “Virgil C. Johnson. And this was Jack Bishop. We were all from Cumberland, in Mississippi, a long time ago.”

  “Oh, me,” said Anna. She clutched her silver cross. “I do not believe there is anything I could say that wouldn’t sound paltry and empty as a gourd—but I will say it anyway. I am sorry, boy.”

  “I am obliged to you for stayin. It won’t be long, and then. …”

  “Then what?” said Anna after a moment.

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Bushrod. “I have learned not to plan too far ahead.”

  “Bushrod?”

  “Yes, Anna?”

  “I should like to ask you a question, if I may.”

  “You can ask it.”

  Anna put her hands together. “If you hadn’t seen Nebo comin when you did. …would you have taken the trade?”

  Bushrod pondered for a moment. “Well,” he said, “let me put it this
way. I do not believe old Simon was really in the mood for tradin.”

  “But would you have taken it?”

  Bushrod brushed a fly from his cheek. “No,” he said.

  Anna gave an abrupt nod of her head. “That was the right answer,” she said.

  Anna slept after a while, and Bushrod sat close beside Jack, fanning the flies and listening, waiting. He watched the girl, too, in her fitful sleep. She jerked and whimpered at times and once Bushrod tried to pet her but she flinched away, frowning, so he let her alone. Meanwhile, Nebo Gloster sat by his little fire, head bowed, rocking slowly back and forth. Now and then he would talk quietly to himself and look at his hands.

  Jesus and Mary, thought Bushrod—a woeful lot we are indeed. He tried to imagine what they must look like to the crows lurking in the branches. Bushrod didn’t really mind the birds; he liked them for the same reason he liked tom cats, though he couldn’t have said what the reason was. No doubt they were enjoying the melodrama unfolding among the mortals below.

  No doubt they would peck Simon Rope’s eyes out pretty soon.

  Simon Rope’s body in death was an uncanny mirror of Anna’s in sleep. He was curled on his side, knees drawn up, hands tucked under his chin. But he was having no bad dreams, not in this world, anyway.

  Simon Rope had not crawled far before he gave up the ghost, and Bushrod wondered why the man had died so quickly. His wound was mortal, probably, but it was not the kind to suck a man’s life away in the space of a few moments. It was almost as if there had been nothing at all inside the shell of Simon Rope’s flesh to sustain him or linger or prop up the will. Of all the many Departed Bushrod had seen, Simon Rope was the loneliest, the saddest. For a moment, Bushrod allowed himself to mourn for the man. Then, with his good hand, he dug among the grass until he had a handful of rocky dirt. “Hey, Simon,” he said aloud, and flung it in Simon Rope’s dead face, and was satisfied.

  His arm was hurting, and he wondered why, when it was his finger that was shot. He contemplated removing his jacket to take a look, but decided against it. He cradled the arm to his chest. It would quit hurting by and by, tomorrow perhaps, maybe even this afternoon if he could bathe it in the river.

  Thinking of the river had comforted him once, but it pressed heavily on him now, for there would be no gathering there. He remembered the vision he had made—was it only yesterday?—and how it had sustained him, but it was gone now, like all those who might have gathered with him. All the old boys, camping this night along a far shore where Bushrod Carter could not follow.

  And then, back at the house, he had told himself—even told R.K.—that the river by the village of Franklin was as far as he meant to go. In that, too, he had been mistaken.

  As Bushrod sat among the sleeping and the dead, he began to understand. It came as it often did, slowly, like morning coming, when the dark grew transparent and the shadows diluted with something not yet light but not darkness either; then shapes all at once, and lines, and a little color and then a little more, until suddenly the world was back again, fresh and new, looking a little surprised to be here. So it was that Bushrod Carter woke to find himself back at the center again—found Anna, too, and the strange, ragged man who’d saved them—found them all: the broken, the grieving, the dying, the lost. Even Simon Rope was there, working out an irony that the dark birds would appreciate, for it was Simon Rope, more than any other, who had brought him back again.

  Jack Bishop groaned and muttered a few disconnected words that had meaning somewhere perhaps. Bushrod felt sorrow nudge at him, but it was not time for sorrow yet. He was too tired, and there was too much death. So he lay down beside his comrade, pillowed his head on the legs of the Departed, and slept for a time.

  And dreamed of rivers and calm waters, of all the boys passing down through sunlight and patterns of shade on a slow current that bore them home—

  Something woke him, the birds perhaps, or the flies. He had only slept a few moments but his mouth was full of foul cotton and his eye was gaumed shut and he was cold. He found the canteen, cupped some water in his hand and rubbed it over his face. He wanted to be down at the river right then, to shuck his rags and let the river wash him clean, no matter if the water was freezing cold or the woods full of sharpshooters—no matter what. Tomorrow perhaps, or this evening. He looked at Anna, but she was still sleeping. He was about to rise and join Nebo at the fire when he turned to look at Jack.

  So there it was, and a long way they’d come to this little clearing in Tennessee. Bushrod watched for a moment, thinking of nothing, feeling nothing, aware of nothing but the memory of quiet waters carrying them home. Then he rose stiffly to his knees and made the sign of the cross.

  “Well, old Jack,” he said.

  Jack Bishop’s eyes were open, looking out at the trees. Bushrod closed them, and brushed the greasy hair out of Jack’s face. He opened the stiff, bloody jacket and searched the inside pocket, found a blood-soaked letter, a spectacles case, Jack’s filthy handkerchief. Bushrod put all these things in his own jacket pocket. Clumsily, he fastened the top button of Bishop’s coat, smoothed the front, took the boy’s hands, still warm, in his own and held them for a moment, then crossed them on the thin breast.

  Jack Bishop, hurrying to catch up with the column.

  Bushrod looked up at the paling sky. The sun had disappeared behind the high thin clouds—a bad sign, for it meant cold weather soon. Overhead the trees were empty, the birds had flown. “Too-ra-loo,” Bushrod said.

  Then he heard his name, and turned. Anna was sitting up on the quilt, rubbing her eyes. He could see her ankle where her skirt was pulled back. She rubbed her arms and shivered and then she looked at him. A moment passed.

  “He is gone,” she said. It was not a question.

  “Yes,” he said. “Jack Bishop is dead.”

  She rose stiffly, awkwardly, like a colt on its unsure legs. Nebo, too, rose stiffly from the ground, and rubbed his hands on the front of his trousers.

  “You shouldn’t have let me sleep,” said Anna.

  “It’s all right,” said Bushrod. “It was only a little while.”

  She took a step, stumbled, caught herself. Bushrod made to rise, but she waved him down. “I will come to you,” she said.

  She crossed the little way and knelt beside Bushrod in the grass and together they looked at Jack Bishop.

  “He is peaceful now,” said Anna.

  “Yes,” said Bushrod. “It was not hard for him, I didn’t even hear him go. I. …I was sleepin myself. Great God, I—”

  “Hush, boy,” said Anna. “He knew you were there.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose he did. We were pards, and. …and he would know.”

  Anna lifted her hand. “May I touch him?”

  Bushrod felt himself smiling. “I expect he would like that, if you would.”

  Anna put out her hand, hesitated, then laid it carefully over Bishop’s. “There,” she said softly. “There now.”

  For a long moment, Bushrod did not move. When he did, it was to put out his own hand and close it over Anna’s.

  She did not pull away.

  Major R.K. Cross stood in the front yard of the great brick house. A lightly-wounded Lieutenant and ten enlisted men were gathered in a semicircle around him. All of them, officer and man, were silent, hollow-eyed, caked with the mud of new-dug graves. The Major regarded them a moment, then pointed with his pipestem toward the south.

  “Lieutenant, you must search those woods and the field beyond—Stewart’s Corps lost some comin through there. I see one right over yonder, in fact.”

  He pointed his pipe again, and the men turned their heads. There, barely visible in the grass a hundred yards from the house, was the gray, indefinite shape of a dead man.

  “Reckon how we missed him?” said the Lieutenant.

  “Hell, they all over the place,” said a snaggle-toothed man. “And they gittin so stiff you can’t hardly carry em no more. Reckon could we git us a wagon?”
>
  “There ain’t any wagons,” said the Lieutenant.

  “Boys, I hate it,” said the Major, “but you will just have to do the best you can. We can’t leave those fellows out there for the buzzards. Lieutenant?”

  “Yessir,” said the officer. “Two ya’ll get that feller in the yard, and Wylie, git you down to the barn yonder and see can you find a wheel-b’ar. Rest ya’ll come with me.”

  The Lieutenant saluted and shuffled away with his men. Major Cross watched them go. He watched the Lieutenant’s party disappear into the woods, watched the two men struggling with the grotesquely rigid corpse of the soldier who had been killed in the yard. He turned and looked at the house, old and stately and elegant from this elevation, with the autumn morning’s sun falling on the brick face. As the Major watched, a man appeared in the open parlor window. He was holding a leg. The leg was naked, starkly white—even from this distance the Major had the impression that it was finely haired with a graceful, almost feminine foot. The man dropped it onto the pile of legs and arms and hands and feet that rose nearly to the window sill. The Major bit off the end of his clay pipestem and spit it out. He turned his back on the house, cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Billy Bevins!”

  Across the yard, a man raised his head. “Comin, Major!” In a moment the man came sauntering across the yard leading an enormous brown horse. The man’s hat was decorated with a squirrel’s tail, from under the brim his eyes glittered merrily and hard. He sported a broad, unruly beard. His jacket was butternut brown, with dingy cuffs that might have been yellow once. “Hey, Major,” he said, making a salute.

  The Major patted the big horse on its nose. The animal had a “U.S.” brand on its rump; the former owner’s saddle and gear were still in place. It was the bearded soldier’s shotgun, however, that dangled from the pommel by a bit of plow line.