Across the Spectrum (31 page)

They were good boots, made by a Mexican bootmaker in San
Antonio, and they had lasted me more than a year of hard marching. This was
better than most of my comrades had fared, many of whom were barefoot.

Our last issue of clothing and shoes had been back in March,
and we were looking pretty rag-tag by now. I had drawn neither shoes nor clothing
at that time. The uniform my sister made was still holding up, and the boots
had been all right then.

The only thing I could have used was socks, and we weren’t
sent any by the quartermaster. I had taken to wearing both my pairs of socks at
once, and when we had a little time to rest, I’d wash the outer pair and switch
them with the inner pair. I thought about doing that now, but decided against
it. With the rain they might not dry in time for our next march, and there
would surely be a march tomorrow, for we knew a big fight was coming.

The Yankees had their lines drawn up in sight of ours.
Hood’s Division would be called up in relief the minute we were needed.

“Where the hell’s Carter with our rations?” Bill grumbled.

“Him and Wade are having a feast of it all to themselves,
likely,” said Giles, holding out his stick to Bill, who took the apple slice
from it and yelped as it sizzled his fingers.

“How many Yankees you boys kill today?” Bill said, tossing
the apple from hand to hand.

I looked at Jimmy, who hadn’t said a word since we got into
camp. “I didn’t keep count,” I said.

“You didn’t? Afraid I’d beat you out, eh?” Bill said.

I didn’t bother to reply. I was watching Jimmy, who sat
staring into the fire, looking glum as a wet polecat. His thin face was even
more pinched than usual, and I knew it wasn’t just hunger.

“Hey, Jim?” I said softly, “What was it about that dead Yank
that bothered you so?”

Jimmy swallowed, and looked at his knees. “When I first saw
him I thought he was—he looked just like my Uncle Tim.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Stupid,” Jimmy muttered.

“No.”

There was not much conversation after that. The rain
drizzled on and there was no singing, no laughter. Just wet, weary Texans
waiting for our rations. Finally the rain stopped and we slept a little, tired
and blue as we were.

The supply wagons arrived just before dawn, and we lined up
eagerly for our ration. It was only flour, but that was better than anything
we’d had for days, so we quick made up loops of dough and twined them on our
ramrods to bake over the fire.

By that time it was starting to get light, and the artillery
commenced to lobbing shells at the Yankees and theirs lobbed shells back at us.
They did not trouble us, however, as we were well behind the front line.

It was foggy and the mist muffled the sounds of fighting,
but we could hear the rifles spitting at each other again off to the west. We
sat around the fire watching our dough bake with single-minded attention. Candy
gave a sharp bark, as if to explain to us as how he’d enjoy sharing our
breakfast. He would have had his fill, but just about then a shell burst in the
woods about twenty yards from our fire, and more came screaming and roaring
overhead.

“God damn you to hell,” Bill shouted, shaking his fist
toward the Yankee guns to the north.

We had all jumped to our feet, and another shell burst in
the air right over our heads, making me drop my ramrod in the fire. I cussed as
I fished it out, the dough flattened and covered with ashes, which I tried to
brush off.

Bill squatted back down and thrust his dough in the fire,
but it was too late. Sergeant Fletcher came stomping through the woods shouting
to us to fall in.

“Go to hell,” Bill shouted.

In a flash Fletcher grabbed the front of his shirt and
screamed into his face. “You send them Yankees to hell, boy, what else are you
here for? Get into line!”

Fletcher shoved Bill away and for a second Bill looked ripe
to murder him, but Fletcher was already going on, rousing the rest of the
company into their ranks. Bill contented himself with cussing and we fell in.

I swallowed the half-baked, ash-covered ruin of my breakfast
and wiped the ramrod clean on my pants before loading my rifle with the first
round of the day. This has a Yankee’s name on it, I thought, and tried to get
mad, but the fog and the lump of raw dough in my gut kept me cold.

We advanced out of the woods to find a farmhouse burning
east of us, with our artillery on the high ground between it and the Dunker
church. We crossed the turnpike and moved north toward the Cornfield, which
looked nothing at all like it had the night before.

Half its stalks were broken and battered and a pall of smoke
hung over it and the pasture to the south, where Yankees stood with heaps of
dead men at their feet, firing at Lawton’s command not thirty yards away. What
remained of Lawton’s men retired through our ranks as we came up, then we
raised a yell and fired such a blast into the Yankees that they retreated in a
hurry back into the Cornfield.

Yankee guns spat case shot at us from out of the corn, but
we fired on their gunners until they were forced to retire. We moved up to the
edge of the field, stepping over dead and wounded men of both armies, some
lying in ranks as though felled by a scythe.

The 1st and 5th Texas went into the corn while the rest of
us faced west across the turnpike. Jimmy and Bill and I were right at the edge
of the Cornfield, and we rested our rifles on the top rail of the fence along
the turnpike, peering across at the west woods where we’d tried to cook
breakfast. Some Yankees had gotten into its north edge and we started firing at
each other across the pike, while all hell seemed to be going on around us.

The Cornfield rattled with Yankee canister and shook like it
was alive and scared out of its mind. I glanced back and saw Candy dart into
it, and I screamed at him to come back but I doubt he heard me, in any case he
didn’t return. For some reason this made me mad at last, and I loaded and
fired, shrieking curses at the Yankees across the pike, aiming at anything that
moved.

Bill gave out a broken cry and went to his knees, his face a
mass of blood. Jimmy bent down to him but the next second he stood up again,
screaming with rage as he loaded and fired, loaded and fired.

The air was still as glass and thick with smoke. A ball zinged
by my ear so close it burned me, and icewater poured through my veins, but I
only cussed harder. I could see that some kind of commotion was going on across
the turnpike, though the smoke was so heavy the Yankees were only vague shapes.

I spotted a flag and aimed below it. My first shot had no
effect and I loaded to fire again. Just as I was taking aim, a roar of fire
blazed out from a cannon beyond the fence and a sheet of canister flew at us,
splintered the fence rails, and felled our whole rank.

Jimmy went down with the others. I could hear the balls
thudding into them. I was hit by only one ball which grazed my thigh, and I had
a fleeting thought that Momma’s prayers must have preserved me, because every
other man in the front rank was down.

I was alone with the groaning, writhing heaps of my
companions beside me. Without thinking I stepped to my right, into the
Cornfield.

Voices jabbered in my head, Momma praying and weeping,
Sergeant Fletcher scolding and Bill laughing and saying “How many Yankees? How
many, boy?” The most sensible voice, if any could be called sensible, was
brother Jamie of all people, telling me in a goddamn practical tone that the
corn was no more protection than the rails, less in fact, and that I’d better
do something.

I found I was breathing very hard. I started to crouch down
but there were dead men at my feet and I didn’t want to be close to them.

I heard Fletcher yelling and the second rank moving up to
fire at the Yankee gunners. I also heard a high, shrill yapping.

“Candy!” I hollered, and he barked back, and I went deeper
into the corn, trying to find him. It made no sense, and I knew it, but I was
moving and didn’t dare stop.

The Cornfield was a nightmare of smoke, broken stalks, and
dead and wounded men. I stepped on something slippery and nearly fell, then
hurried on without looking to see what it had been.

“Candy!” I shouted, getting hoarse from the smoke.

Something white moved at my feet and I looked down. It was
not Candy. It was part of a flag—the 5th Texas’s flag, made from the wedding
dress of General Wigfall’s wife. Our own flag was identical to it except for
the bullet holes, but ours had not been taken into the Cornfield.

What I had seen was the big, white Texas star in the center,
and it had moved because a Yankee soldier was trying to pick it up. He was not
ten feet away from me, had black hair and a moustache and beard trimmed all
tidy.

As we looked at each other he dropped the flagstaff to draw
a pistol from his hip. I aimed my rifle and fired at his face, which was a
mistake because he dodged enough that the ball only cut him, and I did not have
my bayonet fixed.

He aimed his pistol and I swung the muzzle of my piece at
his arm, trying to knock the gun out of his hand. He kept hold of it and I
kicked him in the chest to knock him over, then dropped on top of him trying to
wrestle the gun away. He clubbed me with it before I could get hold of his arm,
and for a second I couldn’t see straight.

He tried to hit me again but I caught him this time and
twisted the gun out of his hand. I put the muzzle against his chest and we sat
there, staring murder at each other.

And I thought, this is a man and he has a family and a wife
maybe and children. This is a man like myself and why am I about to kill him?

And the voices all burst into argument in my head and the
simple answer cut through them: “Because if you don’t he will surely kill you.”

Right or wrong had no part in this. It was a matter of
staying alive, and if killing one Yankee could mean that and moreover mean keeping
a man of my company or my brigade from being killed, then by God it was worth
doing. I pulled the trigger, and the blast deafened me and blood spattered up
in my face.

I got up, shoved the pistol through my belt, picked up my
rifle, and dragged the 5th’s battle flag free. I did not raise it as that was
not my duty or privilege, but I did carry it out of the Cornfield.

When I got back to the pasture I saw our regiment retreating
from the turnpike, back south toward the Dunker church and our fires of the
morning. I followed, furling the flag as I stepped across the heaps and rows of
dead.

Sergeant Fletcher saw me rejoin the line of retreat. His
cold eye was on me but he said nothing, nodded once, then looked forward again.

Half our regiment fell in that field on that day, but we
were not the hardest hit. That honor went to the 1st Texas, who lost four out
of every five men in the Cornfield.

Candy was taken prisoner by the Yankees—one of our wounded
men saw him in a band wagon and he never returned to us. At least he made it
out of the Cornfield alive.

After that I never thought twice about killing a Yankee. It
was part of the war; it was what we were there for. But I never joked about it
again.

And I never kept count.

This one is probably my favorite of my short stuff, because it
is one that has had everything from people telling me it was too dark and
powerful to people not understanding it or thinking it repeated other stuff in
a novel and was unnecessary. “Ducks“ started as a scene in the novel
Night Calls.
John Silbersack bought the book,
but Chris Schelling was Exec Editor by the time we were editing, and he told me
he didn’t think there was anything new in the chapter and wanted it cut. The
only magic is the bird, not explained here. I wasn’t sure if this was his not
getting rites of passage, or didn’t like no overt magic, or what, but I cut the
chapter and carefully crafted three paragraphs to bridge from an earlier
reference to the duck hunting. Years later, dealing with life issues, I wanted
to give something to my fans for their long wait. I wondered if I could create
a short story from the fragment. So I went to a literary convention,
ArmadilloCon, and chose to read it to a small gathering. Most there knew the
novel, but a few people didn’t know my work at all. After I was finished, there
was a long silence, and then a well-known writer said, “Oh, I think there’s
something there worth keeping.” Lots of nodding heads. So I turned it into a
short story, and it became part of a small chapbook through Yard Dog Press. I
think this is about the price of killing, and why no death should ever be an
unnecessary one.

∞ ∞ ∞

A rising run of notes echoed through the woods, trilling
like a flute, and I paused, still bent over a tussock of reeds.

I knew that bird . . . it had haunted me from
the first moment I had heard its song. Sometimes in dreams I saw myself
standing outside in the gloom, my shawl pulled tight around my shoulders, the
withered shoots of garlic at my feet . . . the echo of music
quavering from the woods beyond.

I could not hide from that bird! Why had it sung in winter?
Why was it still singing in the month of Sun, long after most eggs had hatched
and babies were fledging? How could I be so sure it was the same bird, when I
was miles away from where we had run our trap line?

Was
it a bird? I was not so sure . . .

“Hurry up, Allie,” my brother Josh said impatiently as he
took my handful of rushes. “We need to get into the water. Papa expects us to
get a duck today.”

As if I needed the reminder. One last glance over my
shoulder, and I turned back to the water’s edge. There were four of us in this
classroom of sorts—myself, my older brother Joshua, and our neighbors Shaw
Kristinsson and Wylie Adamsson—but these classes were for me. I was the one
with the second sight . . . I was the one who heard werewolves
keening and dreamt true dreams.