The Black Flower Read online

  The little horse moved restlessly beneath him. It was a hard thing, saying farewell—he could never get used to it. He turned in the saddle and regarded the twelve men, formed up in column-of-twos, who sat their horses behind him. They, too, seemed to be fading before his eyes. He shook his head. I am just tired, he thought—only tired is all.

  The Major looked toward the ford of the river where the dark trees waited. Yonder was tomorrow, and it would come soon enough, and it was all right. He turned again, rose in his stirrups, and lifted his hand. “Forward,” he said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The wood behind the McGavock house—behind the quaint kitchen with its chimney-curl of smoke and eternal smell of burnt grease—was not at all like the oak grove. This was a real wood, wild and dark, with great gnarled trees and deep, vine-choked gullies where the stock might have been hidden forever from the eyes of ravenous armies. A remnant of the old forest it was, unchanged since before the oldest McGavock’s time, where bobcats lived who squalled on winter nights, and foxes with beady eyes, and delicate, fog-colored deer who often at twilight stood just in the clearing, watching, then vanished with a flick of their tails.

  Other creatures lived in the shadows among the twisted branches and vines. These the Negroes told about, down in the Quarters summer nights, when they sat on up-ended oak slabs by a smudge fire. The Wampus-cat, they said, would get you if you went in there, and rip your belly open with his tushes. There was a Great Pig, a hundred years old, that stole bad children and left their bones gnawed and white in the blow-downs. There was the Lord-to-God bird, and a silver dog that came on the full moon before somebody died. There were plat-eyes, too—restless things risen out of the old slave burying-ground. These would make a shape to fool you—a little girl perhaps, or a kitten, or even your mama in a long white gown—and you would go down there and they would have you, and you would wander forlorn all the days of the world.

  Winder McGavock sat cross-legged on the sloping grass and considered the wood. He thought about the silver dog and tingled, knowing that, on the full moon just past, the creature must have come and walked this very ground in anticipation of a great harvest. Winder could almost see him trotting along, tongue lolling, glancing back over his shoulder now and then at the moon hung in the sky. The boy shivered and thought about what it meant to be dead. It was a raving and cursing and knocking against the door. It was being stiff with your eyes open and your fists clutched against your chest, and the secret blood that welled up and turned black in the lantern light. Death was Mother weeping sometimes, and little white stones with the names of children you didn’t know, and cousin Anna dreaming and talking of dark birds in the trees. Winder did not know how it all happened, but he’d come to learn that the ground between being alive and being dead was no broader than the track of the silver dog, and no harder to cross. It was not something he wanted to think about too much.

  In the boy’s lap was a soldier’s haversack, tarred and threadbare, with a tin cup hanging from the buckled strap. The cup was dented, rusty, smoke-blackened; a filthy strip of rag was wrapped around the handle. The boy touched the haversack and remembered the face of the soldier who owned it: Mister Bushrod Carter, who had come with cousin Anna to the room upstairs, way back at the first light of day. Now it was nearly evening and the early dark was coming on—

  Winder heard something flutter in the wood. He looked up sharply, expecting to see the dog sitting on its haunches, watching him. But there was nothing.

  He had carried the haversack all day, and a dozen times he’d been tempted to open it, and finally he’d slipped off down here to do it. Just a peek, and he would put everything back like it was, and nobody would know the difference. Still, he watched a while longer. Nothing stirred in the wood, and presently he heard voices drifting down from the yard, and a quick fragment of laughter. These things comforted him—and anyway, Mister Bushrod Carter would not mind if he looked in the haversack.

  He toyed with the buckle and strap. The buckle had a little roller on it. His hand moved over the tarred linen; tar stuck to his fingers like pine-sap in the summertime.

  The soldier’s canteen lay in the grass beside him, its brown wool cover speckled with rust. Winder unbuckled the haversack and placed the tin cup carefully with the canteen. He wondered what the rag around the handle was for.

  A crow flew overhead, cawing. Winder looked up and saw him against the slate-gray sky. He saw the sun, too: a white disc floating behind the clouds.

  Winder opened the haversack and looked inside. He was struck by the odor of rotten vegetables, like the turnip bin at the end of winter, and a rank smell like bacon grease left too long in the. pan. Among these were other smells, climbing upward like vines around a fence post: sulphur, lye soap, something like the cistern when it was drained, laundry when it was dirty, straw when it was wet, the feathers of a dead bird. One by one, Winder began to remove the things from the haversack and lay them beside the cup and canteen.

  There was a tortoise shell comb, a bone toothbrush, a fragment of soap. A tin of George Hummel’s Celebrated Essence of Coffee. A piece of blue ribbon. A dirty rag. Another dirty rag. A stub of candle. Loose minie-ball, rusty tin plate, wooden spoon, a fork with “B.C.” carved in the handle. There was some string, a bundle of letters, a deck of playing cards, two clay marbles and a pretty rock. There was a piece of wire with a loop on the end and a thing that looked like a little wrench—one day Winder would learn that these were a nipple pick and an Enfield rifle tool.

  There were books. Winder puzzled out the title page of one: The Book of Common Prayer. It seemed to be about Sunday school. The other book was hopeless, a clothbound affair crowded with close writing in pencil that Winder couldn’t read. The pencil itself was stuck in the binding.

  Finally, there was a tintype wrapped in muslin. It showed three soldiers, younger and fatter and cleaner than any soldiers Winder had ever seen. They stood in front of a curtain painted with odd-looking trees, their hands on each other’s shoulders, their faces solemn.

  That was all there was in the haversack.

  Winder peered into the odorous depths of the bag, hoping he’d missed something; nothing was left but a few shreds of tobacco and a dried apple slice. He studied the things laid out in the grass. It was a disappointing, impoverished collection, everything broken, rusty, dirty, bent, tattered. Only the little book with the close writing suggested that there was anything mysterious about being a soldier. He would have to ask Mister Bushrod Carter about it. Perhaps, having entrusted Winder with the haversack to begin with, the soldier would reveal some of the secrets of the book.

  A blue jay began to cuss down in the wood. There was a squirrel too, chirring and carrying on— Winder could see his tail flicking in a bare hickory tree. These signs made the boy uneasy. He looked around, saw no one—the grassy rise suddenly seemed a very lonesome place. It was quiet, too, in the way a room is quiet when you look up and find everyone gone. It all had a bad feeling.

  Time to go, Winder thought.

  He gathered up Mister Bushrod Carter’s belongings and stuffed them back into the haversack. He hung the tin cup on the strap and closed the buckle and was about to get up when he saw the tintype still lying in the grass.

  He picked it up and looked once more into the soldiers’ faces. They gazed back at him in flat, stony silence. Winder had seen so few such images in his life, and all were of people who were dead: Grandfather McGavock in his high collar and cravat; an old aunt, severe of face, her long fingers woven together in her lap; a boy—one of the Dead Children—propped in Mama’s bed, clutching a handful of flowers on his way to the little stones—and now here were these soldiers in their short jackets and waistcoats and caps tilted over their eyes, and Winder reasoned that they, as well, must be dead. In the picture their cheeks were tinted like roses and their buttons were gilded—But they are dead, Winder thought.

  The boy wondered who they were, and why Mister Bushrod Carter carried their i
mage about. These three are dead, thought the boy again, and imagined them lying with their chins tilted up and their hands crossed on their breasts and their eyes like clay marbles. Then Winder’s thoughts stumbled over the memory of the long night. He saw the door flung open to the little room where the daylight was peering through the shutters—something crying like a calf, knocking at the door—the soldier coming in with a pistol, trying to shoot Nebo, saying mean things to cousin Anna until she slapped the fire out of him. The soldier was Mister Bushrod Carter, and his face was broken, like everything he owned except the tintype of the dead soldiers with rose-tinted cheeks. Winder looked at the image again. It seemed so real, and there was something he knew about it that he couldn’t make into words. He stared at it so hard and so long that the men’s faces began to move against the painted backdrop as if they, too, were trying to make it into words—trying to tell him what it was that he knew. The boy stared so hard that when he looked up he could see the pale ovals of the dead men’s faces against the dark wood, and out of the place where their faces were came the dog.

  It was almost as if he’d expected it. That’s what you get, he thought—that’s what you get for foolin around where you got no business. Out of the dead men’s faces walked the dog, and the boy’s blood turned to cold molasses in his veins and all of time narrowed down like the neck of a funnel. He would be taken now, doomed to roam forlorn in the gnarly wood—no doubt he deserved it—his mother would mourn—from somewhere, invisible, he would watch her kneel by the little stones and weep—

  He shut his eyes and waited, listening to his own breathing. In his hand the tintype was cold and lifeless, as he himself must be directly. Death was here—the knocking at the door, the flutter of dark wings against the window glass—and soon he would rise out of himself, become a fog or a foxfire or a cold, empty space in the night air—

  Waiting. Breathing last and shallow like a Frog. He wondered what it would be like, if he would see the dead men walking in the air, if they would touch him with their cold hands, if he would weave among them like smoke. He wanted to open his eyes, but he knew that, if he did, he would see the dog’s face, or a dead soldier’s, or the stringy old aunt pointing her finger. So he kept his eyes tight shut, but of course that was no good either, for in the darkness there all the grievous sins of his life paraded, mocking him—

  He opened his eyes.

  He was surprised at how bright everything was, and how it all looked just as it had before—no dead men, and no slathering, silver-tipped dog loping toward him up the grass. Instead, down by the woodline, there was a thing like a possum shuffling along: squat, bowlegged, not silver at all but a dingy white, as if it spent all its time crawling under greased axles. It was a dog all right, but as a herald of doom it was in a class with the shabby articles in Mister Bushrod Carter’s haversack. As the boy watched, the creature lay down in the grass; it did not seem to be interested in the boy, or anything else in particular. It was, evidently, a real, ordinary dog, and not much of one at that.

  Winder found his breath again, and felt his blood flow warm in his veins. The thought occurred to him that if he could lure the dog up into the yard with a biscuit, perhaps his mother would let him keep it, though that was unlikely. Still, it was worth a try. He slipped the tintype into the pocket of his roundabout and was about to rise when someone began singing in the wood:

  One morning fair as I did ro-o-oam,

  All in the blew-ming spring—

  I overheard a mai-den,

  so carelessly did—

  Then: “Damn the damn briars anyhow!” followed by a thrashing in the brush that sent a blue jay flying overhead in raucous outrage. Again the boy sat transfixed, like a rock in the field, his mouth open and his eyes big and round as the buttons on Nebo Gloster’s coat. Presently the voice began to sing again:

  Fain crew-el were my par-ents,

  Who me did sore deny-y-y-y!

  They would not let me tarry with

  My bonny laborin b-hoy!

  With the last note, the apparition of a man clad in black from head to toe emerged from the shadows of the wood. An ivory-handled pistol was thrust in his breeches-band, one of his fingers was hooked through the ear of a clay jug.

  It’s a plat-eye, sure as you’re born, thought the boy with renewed interest. Now surely he would be lured to his doom—he would wander forlorn forever, his mother would mourn—

  But the plat-eye, like the dog, seemed to take no notice of the boy. It stopped at the edge of the wood and looked about, as if surprised to find itself where it was. Then it raised its arms, the jug dangling, and embraced all the grassy rise. “Jehovah!” it cried. “Delivered out the wilderness, praise God!” It followed this amazing utterance with a long pull at the jug. This accomplished, it wove unsteadily for a space, and then it spied the dog. “Ol’ Hunnerd!” it said, but the dog took no notice. “Why, you ungrateful son bitch,” said the plat-eye, and raised the jug to throw it. This was poor judgment. The jug spun backward into the trees, and the figure fell flat on its back in the grass. “Well, I’m a son bitch,” it said.

  In all, Winder thought this unusual behavior for a plat-eye, though he’d been warned never to trust the shape they took. ,

  The figure struggled like a narrow black beetle, using words the boy found unfamiliar. He wondered if they were an incantation of some kind, but soon dismissed the idea—they seemed too common for that. In fact, there was something decidedly soldier-like about them, and the boy had to come to the disappointing conclusion that he was seeing only a man after all.

  Finally the man was on his feet again. He hunched his shoulders and shook out the skirt of his frock coat and looked about him. This time he saw the boy. “Aha!” he said, and began to tack up the rise. The dog, with the air of one who has nothing better to do, followed him. In a moment, the boy could see the little red crosses on the collar of the man’s coat; then he was looking into the man’s face where it swayed against the pallid sky. The face was broad and ashen and the eyes were sunken, but it was not an unkind face.

  “Par’n me,” said the man. “Mind if I set down?”

  “Is that your dog?” asked Winder.

  The man whirled about. “Aha!” he said, and drew the pistol. “Where is that scabrous wretch?”

  “Please don’t shoot him, mister!” said the boy. “He’s only just a dog.”

  The man snorted. “There’s some would argue that.” He sat down heavily and cradled the pistol in his lap. “Now that’s better. The air was gettin a bit thin up there.” He fished in his pockets, came out with a cunning clay pipe carved in the likeness of a turbaned head. He stuffed it with tobacco from a leather pouch and lit it with a Lucifer. Clouds of wondrous smoke swirled about them. The boy’s eyes were fixed on the pipe.

  “Like that, do you?” asked the man.

  “It’s first-rate,” said the boy. “I never seen one like it.”

  “Ah. Well, it represents a Turk, my lad—one of the heathen tribes. It was give to me by the prominent laity of the Yellow Leaf Methodist Church—you can always tell em, they wear their spectacles on a ribbon ’round their neck. Not the Turks—the others, I mean. Care for a draw?” He held out the stem. Winder shook his head, though he did want to try it.

  “As you will,” said the man, “though it’s never too early to start cultivatin your vices.”

  Winder wanted to ask about the dog again, but was afraid he might inspire the man to violence, so he said, “That’s a dandy pistol, too. I wisht Mother would let me have one—I wouldn’t never shoot anybody, just have it, you know. Maybe she would, if it was a nice one.” The boy pondered a moment. “Maybe I’d shoot squirrels,” he said.

  “How ’bout dogs?” said the man. “Would you shoot them?”

  The boy winced. “Oh, no—I’d never shoot a dog, ’less he got to killin the chickens the way old Brownie did, or had a fever on him. One day last summer—”

  “Look out!” shouted the man, and snatched u
p the pistol.

  “What!” said Winder. The dog pricked up its ears and looked interested for the first time.

  “Down there!” said the man. He drew back the hammer and aimed the pistol at the trees. “Sons of bitches! See em?”

  “No,” said the boy, looking fearfully toward the wood.

  “Damn woods is full of em,” said the man. “Won’t let a fellow alone for a minute. Aha!” he pulled the trigger, the hammer snapped on a spent cap. “Damn!” said the man.

  “What was it?” asked Winder. “What’d you see?”

  But the man didn’t answer. Still holding the pistol, he struck another Lucifer and puffed on the Turk’s-head pipe. The dog lay its head on its paws and watched them. Presently the man pointed with his pipestem. “That’s Ol’ Hunnerd there. Boys call him The Marvelous Dog—don’t know why. Son bitch stayed with me all night—Holy Jesus, what a time we had of it.” The man half-cocked the pistol and twirled the cylinder. “Wonder where I got this?” he said.

  “Are you a soldier?”

  “Sometimes. Other times, I am not. What’d you say your name was?”

  “I am Winder McGavock, my sister’s name is Hattie, my papa is Mister McGavock, my mother is Caroline McGavock, cousin Anna is visiting, we live in that house yonder, I know a soldier, his name is—”

  “There!” howled the man, and flung up the pistol. Cock, snap. Cock, snap. On and on, the cylinder turning under the hammer.

  “Mister!” said Winder.

  The man stopped. He regarded the pistol. “Damn thing’s broke,” he said. “Wonder where I got it from?”

  “What is your name?” asked Winder.

  “This whole country,” said the man vaguely. “Whole damn country, everywhere we been, just a big open grave. Valley of ravens. Jesus.”