The Black Flower Read online

  “Now, Virgil C.,” said Bushrod. “We all get tangled up now and then. Who was it loaded his rifle all the way up to the muzzle during that fight at—”

  “I believe that was you,” said Virgil C.

  “Well, nevertheless,” said Bushrod. “You see my point.”

  “I know, I know” said Virgil C. “I didn’t say it to be mean. It’s just—well that fellow ain’t got any business up here soldierin.”

  “Who does?” said Bushrod.

  They waited for something to happen. Down the line, Handsome Bob Wheeler was telling a story about a fat girl, and Eugene Pitcock was snoring, and Nebo was fiddling with his ramrod. Virgil C. began to fret. He tugged at the cloth under all his straps and belts. His blunt fingers moved aimlessly over his chest. Finally he wiped the sweat from his face with the grimy sleeve of his jacket and said, “I swear to God I am freezin to death up here, Bushrod. Wish I hadn’t lost all these buttons on my coat. Say, pard, would you sew some more on for me after while?”

  Bushrod, who did all the sewing for the company, said, “I will if you promise not to pull em off again.”

  “What you mean, pull em off?”

  “You know damn good and well—”

  “Whoa!” said Virgil C. “There goes Jack again.”

  Jack Bishop was quietly, modestly, vomiting between his feet, taking care to avoid splashing the stock of his rifle which he held out before him for support. There was not much on his stomach to come up: water, a little coffee, some bacon, the biscuit a woman had given him on the march from Spring Hill.

  “Great God, Jack,” said Bushrod. He could never get used to the fact that Bishop did this every single time before a fight.

  “It is nothin,” said Jack, waving his hand. “Just lemme alone, goddammit.”

  “The word ‘snappish’ comes to mind again,” said Virgil C.

  “You are lookin a little peaked, Jack,” said Bushrod. “Is your hurt botherin you?”

  Bishop tilted his canteen, swished water in his mouth, and spat on the ground. “I have a headache,” he said. “Otherwise, I am havin just a wonderful goddamn time.”

  “All right, Jack,” said Bushrod.

  The regiment stood fast in the midst of great confusion. The grounds of the big house were full of soldiers, interrupted in their passage like water boiling against a jam. Beneath the disinterested gaze of the house, Loring’s Division boiled against the jam of Time, seeking desperately to arrange itself for a swift run to the sea. A steady murmur of voices rose in the twilight; across that restless susurration the officers’ sharp commands broke like the cries of birds. Always the rustling, always the dull metallic clamor as troops shifted back and forth under their gliding bayonets, their drummers beating tick-tick-tickticktick on the dented rims of the swinging drums. From the shadows of the oak grove, where exploratory tendrils of smoke wove among the branches, the skirmishers were returning with worried faces, their minds working over what they had seen, their mouths black with powder. Beyond the grove, the noise of the battle was swelling to an incoherent roar, pierced by the weird, falsetto chorus of Pat Cleburne’s men going in on the run. It would not be long now. An Alabama regiment knelt to pray.

  Byron Sullivan, the Captain of Bushrod’s company, stepped out in front of the ranks, plucking nervously at the frayed French-blue cuffs of his frock coat. A regiment was passing in column behind him, their feet whispering in the grass; the dust they raised trapped a wandering spear of sunlight and suddenly Captain Sullivan seemed to stand in the glow of a great lamp. He faced the men whom he had led for nearly three years. They watched him in expectant silence. The Captain removed his hat and studied the inside of the crown. He had the look of a man who had forgotten what he wanted to say. Bushrod felt for him; he wanted to tell the Captain not to worry, that there was nothing he could tell them they did not already know. Finally the Captain looked up, not at them but at a point above their heads where the cold stars waited for night. “Now, boys,” he said, “we are fixin to go in, and. …and you must make a good fight of it. Just keep your dress and look to the colors. We will all meet—”

  A crash of musketry beyond the trees blew the Captain’s words away like smoke. He stood a moment more with his hat in his hand, looking at the faces of the men. Then he turned and walked away.

  Now we will never know the meeting-place, thought Bushrod. He felt Virgil C.’s elbow in his ribs again. “What’d he say? I couldn’t hear him for all this racket.”

  “He said we fixin to get our ass in a fight,” said Bushrod.

  Virgil C. did not reply. He was worrying the last button on his jacket, pulled it off at last, and stood turning it in his fingers. He was staring off toward the trees. After a moment, he said, “Bushrod, look at him out yonder.”

  Bushrod followed his friend’s gaze. He saw many men against the trees beyond. “Look at who?” he asked.

  But Virgil C. only squinted toward the trees, turning the button in his fingers. In a moment it dropped to the ground and Virgil C. closed his hand.

  Bushrod shook his head. He stooped and recovered the button and put it in his pants pocket and a sadness drifted through his heart. He had noticed lately that the boys all seemed to have secret rooms they passed into from time to time, each one alone. Bushrod believed Virgil C. was in such a room now, and nobody could follow him there.

  The thought of rooms made Bushrod recall the great house, and for the first time he turned his attention to it. The windows were shuttered tight, the doors secure; Bushrod wondered if the folks were still in there, cowering in the gloomy shadows of the drawing room or huddled like mice in the cellar, waiting, like all of them, for something to happen. Perhaps they were watching through the shutters—what would they think of all this madness?

  The house itself seemed indifferent. It stood serene above the clamor in the yard: old-fashioned, melancholy, the white portico still holding the afternoon’s light. It was built of brick like so many of these Tennessee houses, and it seemed to have stood there since the creation of the world. Bushrod thought how it would still be rooted in time long, long after they were gone, when all that was left of all these boys would be a half-seen shadow among the oaks, a voice mistaken for the wind, a button or a belt buckle turned up by the garden plow. For a moment, Bushrod regarded the house with shame and yearning. He had done so much, come so far—if only he could quit for a little while, slip away somehow and hide himself among those quiet rooms until morning, when all this would be over and done and he could start afresh. He was tired, and he wished for the first time in his life that he could save himself from being forgotten.

  He could actually do it, he thought—any old soldier could. He could slip away, hide from the battle, then tomorrow show up in camp and lie through his teeth about all his night’s adventures. He considered it, and felt a guilty elation. Why not just this once? He had stepped off into the Mystery so many times—was it not reasonable that he be given this little respite from honor? Did he not, after all, stand at the very center of the universe?

  Fool, said the voice he knew so well.

  Bushrod smiled. Fool, indeed. Even after all this time, he could still catch himself believing that he walked into the smoke by choice, and could remove himself by choice. In fact, he had no choice at all—too many things conspired to make sure Bushrod Carter acted well his part. The shelter offered by the great brick house was illusory—within the hour it would be crawling with wounded and with officers and surgeons and stragglers blown out of the hurricane that awaited them, and there would be no peace there. Then there was Jack, and there was Virgil C.; there was the eye of God; there were the irresistible waters gathering themselves to sweep him along—

  All right, all right, he thought—But for God’s sake, let us get it over with—

  A staff officer came plunging out of nowhere on a lathered horse and passed so close that a fleck of foam lit on Bushrod’s cheek. He brushed it away in disgust. Why could these popinjays never control t
heir mounts?

  “It’s gettin colder, don’t you think?” asked Virgil C.

  It was indeed, now that the sun was nearly gone, and the thought of winter crossed Bushrod’s mind. Soon they would be cold all the time, hurting all the time, stiff from the stupid mockery of sleep, their chests raling, their eyes swollen from the smoky fires—the cold, lashing rain and the damned, eternal, everlasting, imperishable nights when men died of heart failure and froze to death in their blankets—Cold Moon, Wolf Moon, Snow Moon sliding reluctantly, each in its turn, toward another bitter spring—

  “Do you see him now?” asked Virgil C.

  “See who, dammit!” said Bushrod.

  “He’s right up there amongst the trees. You could see him if you’d just look.”

  “All I see are the goddamned trees, Virgil C.—them and about five thousand fuckin troops. You tell me which one you want me to look at and I’ll—”

  “Never mind,” said Virgil C. “It don’t make any difference now.”

  Bushrod gave up. They ought to all be in the lunatic asylum, he thought—every last one of them, himself included. He started thinking about that, how they might all go together and have a big time, when the unmistakable hum of a stray round passed overhead. Somebody shooting high over there, beginning to lose his nerve, about ready to run Wait a minute, thought Bushrod— Hold on a minute, here! And suddenly he knew that Virgil C. had been right about one thing: it didn’t make any difference now. Time was run out.

  Damn, thought Bushrod. What have I been doin? He looked around in alarm. The staff officer had wresded his horse to a dramatic halt before the regiment’s colonel, gestured wildly toward the Strangers, and was now galloping back across their front. The rider seemed to pull a cold wind behind him that stirred in the regiment’s bones, and the men began to tug at their cartridge boxes, loosen their ramrods, push down on their hats. Officers checked the loads in their pistols, the Colonel called for the Adjutant, the Captain for the First Sergeant. These were signs Bushrod knew well—they were the last, the worst of all, and they meant that whatever was going to happen would happen quick now. But they had come before he was ready. He had been thinking too much, not paying attention, he should have asked Virgil C. once and for all who he saw in the trees up ahead but it was too late—the battle smoke was rolling in now, darkening the sky, and suddenly there was no more sun or moon or clouds or streaming blackbirds, only the smoke and the sound of the guns as the black flower opened before them—

  “Too-ra-loo,” said Jack Bishop. “Get your ass in the wagon, boys—we goin into town!”

  It was all happening fast now, time was broken and the waters were rushing down. The lead brigades were already in motion, passing into the smoke, their flags and bayonets swallowed up and gone. Now officers were shouting up and down the line of Adams’ Brigade; the forest of bayonets sprang up again and the colors blossomed and shook loose and trailed the smoke like pennants. “Attention, Company!” shouted Captain Sullivan in a high, cracked voice that did not sound like his voice at all. “Right-shoulder-shift! Right-shoulder-shift, boys!” A shell burst in the oak grove, bright orange flashed among the ghostly trees—

  And in the field of trampled grass, amid the false twilight and the rush of living water, Bushrod Carter looked at his hands. He was not afraid now—the worst of that was over, back at the foot of the hills when they could see the long plain stretching out before them and the works where the Strangers waited. He was not afraid, he just wasn’t ready, and he knew that if he had a hundred years he would be unready still. Too many things to say, too many thoughts he hadn’t shaped yet, too much life. So he looked at his hands, and through them he offered up all that he was and ever had been: all things he had made, good and bad, all the faces he had touched, all the bright threads that had passed through his fingers in his little time. It was the best he could do, it would have to be enough.

  The band was playing now, a song Bushrod recognized but couldn’t put a name to. It seemed important to think of it, so he listened, trying to remember, looking at his hands. What was it? Something remembered, like a face half-seen in a passing coach but never forgotten: his cousin Remy sitting at the hopeless, wheezing parlor organ his father had packed in from Virginia—

  Then it struck him. “Annie Laurie,” he thought, and us goin into a fight— But it didn’t matter, it was all right, better than all right, the band playing the old song and there was Remy watching him, rolling her eyes in mock distress, and the organ groaning and him and his papa both laughing like schoolboys—

  “Bushrod!” It was Jack, shouting over the noise. “Bushrod, come on! We fixin to go!”

  Bushrod turned, blinking in the smoke. Jack had shouldered his rifle, was supporting it with his left hand, thrust his right at Bushrod. “Once more, old pard!” he said.

  Bushrod blinked again, looked at the outstretched hand, then took it in his own, squeezing hard. “Too-ra-loo,” said Bushrod. “Care for a stroll?”

  Then Virgil C. was jabbing him in the ribs, grinning. “Come on, boy, get your rifle up, we fixin to start the ball!”

  “What?”

  “Shoulder your piece, ass-hole!” shouted Jack, grinning too.

  Bushrod realized he was still at order arms. He dropped Jack’s hand, brought his musket up and shoved it hard against his shoulder. It felt good riding there, the old Enfield, worn out like himself. He was all right now, doing what he did best, whether he liked it or not no matter. He looked up at the bayonet. Damn soldierin, he thought, and remembered the Other and hoped he would come when he needed him. But it was all right for now. “Annie Laurie,” he thought. Carry me home to die.

  The big guns across the river were firing smartly now, engaging the lead brigades. The smoke rolled over the trees, over the great brick house, over the men of Adams’ Brigade straining like race horses—

  Bishop put his mouth to Bushrod’s ear and shouted: “Listen! When the charge commences, you get on t’other side of Virgil C. and we’ll go in like that!”

  “All right!” said Bushrod.

  “And if you or me get the chance, whack that goddamned conscript in the head before he hurts somebody!”

  “All right!”

  “I mean, don’t knock his brains out or anything, you understand!”

  “No, no,” said Bushrod, “just hinder him some!”

  “Right-o!” said Jack. “Now, come on, boys, let’s drive these squareheaded sons of bitches!”

  Bushrod laughed. “Where you want to drive em, Jack?”

  “Hell, it don’t matter, long as it’s someplace we can’t chase em!”

  “Amen!” said Bushrod. “Then let’s quit and go home!”

  “Hell, let’s just go home now,” said Virgil C.“Save all that trouble!”

  They laughed, and again Bushrod felt the red joy of life burst in his heart like a Congreve rocket. He wanted to get on with it, wanted to be moving, driven by the drums and carried along on the rushing water, on the long swinging stride of the Army of Tennessee, raising the old yell in the smoke and the hurricane—

  He heard the band again, and he thought they had never played so well and that made him laugh and think You are asylum-bound for sure, when all at once Jack Bishop began to sing at the top of his voice, not “Annie Laurie” but another song from another time:

  Well met, well met, my own true love,

  Well met, well met, said he—

  Bushrod looked at Jack in amazement; he never knew Jack could sing at all, yet here was the boy’s clear tenor voice singing:

  I’ve come from far across the sea,

  And it’s all for the love of thee—

  “Listen to that, Virgil C.!” shouted Bushrod. “You hear? It’s ‘The House Carpenter’!” And Bushrod turned laughing to his friend just as Nebo Gloster, still trying to decide if his rifle was loaded or not, fired his ramrod and a .577 caliber ball into the back of Virgil C. Johnson’s head—

  PART TWO

  NIGHT W
ATCHES

  Some times I do not think I shall live to be very old—but should it be God’s will for me and any come to me and ask how it was in the old War times, I will say—that there was really no victory, and no defeat. There were only brave men.

  —Bushrod Carter’s Commonplace Book

  Florence, Alabama

  November 16, 1864

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A soldier’s candle lantern stood on a table in the hall of the great brick house. The taper was short, and the flame, feeding on the pooling wax, leapt and threw fantastic shadows on the wall. The shadows were of men, blown out of the hurricane.

  Other lanterns and the fires roaring on the hearths added figures to the dance. The shutters of the house were thrown open now, light spilling out onto the broad back gallery and the yard. Beyond was the night, where smoky fires and torches burned.

  Out there, in the night, the earth crawled with struggling apparitions. These, too, were men. They moved among the glare of the fires, searching. The air they breathed was heavy with death and terrible with the birdlike cries of wounded men. Many weary of the dark were drawn like ponderous, wingless moths to the light, to the great house gleaming in the oaks. But these men brought the night in on their clothes, it clung to them like the smell of death itself, and so there was really no escape: what they had thought to be light was only a different, crueler darkness. They fled again, many of them, but others remained. Perhaps it was the comfort of walls that held them, or the nearness of simple things—patterned wallpaper, a rug bunched in a corner, the indefinite memory of life. For whatever reason, they stayed, holding to the light that mocked them. They stood about, hollow-eyed and mute, always in the way, oblivious to the wounded and even to the whicker of bone saws, which alone was enough to drive some men back into the dark. At first the bloody-aproned surgeons cursed them, the provost’s men drove them out the door with musket butts. But after a while they drifted back, one by one, to stand forlornly in the shadows, and in time they were forgotten.