Cold Mountain (23 page)

2004-3-6

页码，94/232

blue eyes and pulled in several directions at his clothing as if he had just woken up from sleeping in them. Then he stood and examined with great fascination the nail to his left index finger. It was near as long as the finger itself, the way some people will grow them for cutting butter and dipping lard and other such tasks.

The old man stood with the shotgun covering the three of them and surveyed their various armature.

—What do them niggers use their long cavalry sabers for? Hold meat over a fire to roast? he asked Teague.

There was a long moment of silence and then the old man said, What are you up here after?

—You know, Teague said. Catch up outliers.

—They're all gone, the old man said. Long since. Laying out in the woods where they'll be hard to find. Or passed on over the mountains to cross the lines and oath allegiance.

—Oh, Teague said. If I take your point, we best just go back to town then. Is that what you're saying?

—Save us all trouble if you do, the man said.

—You don't watch out, we're liable to hang your old ass too, Teague said. They were gone, you wouldn't be meeting us in the road armed.

At that moment the white-headed boy fell prone in the dirt and yelled out, King of kings!

The first instant that the old man's attention collected on the boy, Ayron lunged with a grace unexpected in one of so much size and struck the man a clubbing blow to the head with his left fist.

He followed that with a slap to the hand, knocking the shotgun away. The old man fell on his back, his hat in the dirt beside him. Ayron stepped over and picked up the shotgun and beat the old man with it until the stock broke off and then he beat him with just the barrel. After a time the man lay still in the road. He was somewhat conscious but had a puzzled look in his eyes. Something ran from one ear that had all the features of red-eye gravy.

Byron spit at the ground and wiped away the blood on his head, and then he drew his saber and put the point of it under the old man's lapped chin and pressed until he caused a runnel of blood equal to his own.

—Hold meat over a fire, he said.

—Leave him be, Ayron said. There's no harm left in him.

Both men, despite their size, had little keen voices, pitched high as birdsong.

Byron took the sword from the man's chin, but then, before anyone could make out his intentions, he took the haft in both hands, and in a motion that looked no more effortful than plunging the dasher into a butter churn, he skewered the old man through the stomach.

Byron stepped away with his hands held out open to either side. There was nothing to see of the sword blade, just the scrolled guard and wire-wrapped grip sticking from beneath the old man's chest. He tried to rise but only his head and knees came up, for he was spiked to the ground.

file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...

2004-3-6

页码，95/232

Byron looked at Teague and said, You want me to finish him?

—-Just let him fight it out with his Maker, said Teague.

The boy rose from where he still lay on the ground and went and stood over the man and gawped at him.

—He's ready for death, the boy said. His lamp is burning and he waits for the bridegroom.

They all laughed except for the old man and Teague. Teague said, Shut up, Birch. Let's move.

They mounted to ride to the house, and as they did the old man breathed his last and died with a wail. In passing, Byron leaned low from his saddle, agile as a trick rider in a tent show, and drew out the saber and wiped it on the mane of his horse before returning it to its scabbard.

Byron went to the gate and kicked it open to break the latch, and they rode through it and right up to the porch.

—Come on out, Teague called. There was a note of the festive to his voice.

When no one appeared, Teague looked at Byron and Ayron and tipped his chin at the front door.

The two dismounted and looped their reins around porch posts and set about making circuits of the house in opposite directions, pistols drawn. They moved as a partnership of wolves will hunt, in wordless coordination of effort toward a shared purpose. They were naturally quick and their movements were easy and fluent, despite their being so bulky. But in a clench was where their main advantage was, for between the two of them they looked to be about able to dismember a man with their hands.

After they had orbited the empty house three times they burst through the front and back doors at the same instant. In a minute they came out, Ayron with a fistful of tapers paired by their wicks and Byron carrying part of a ham, which he held by the shank of its white bone like a chicken leg. They put them in panniers on the horses. Then without word or gesture of command or even suggestion, Teague and Birch climbed down to earth from their mounts and they all walked to the barn, where they threw open the doors to the stalls. They found but one old mule inside. They trod about among the hay in the loft and ran their sabers into the deepest piles and then they came out and turned their attention to the fodder crib, but as they approached it, the door sprung open and the three outliers broke to run.

The men were hindered in their escape, for they carried improvised weapons that had the look of artifacts from a yet darker age—a sharpened plow point swinging at the end of a chain, an old spade beaten and filed into the semblance of a spear, a pine-knot cudgel spiked at its head with horseshoe nails.

Teague let the men run a ways and then he put the carbine to his shoulder and shot down the two frontrunners, who fell with a great clatter of weaponry. The last man, the captive, stopped and raised his hands and faced them. Teague looked at him a minute. The man went bootless that day, and he dug his toes at the dirt as if looking for a better hold. Teague licked his thumb and wiped it on the fore sight of his Spencer and raised the carbine and fit bead to notch. The man stood there motionless. He kept his grip on the spiked cudgel so that he stood with it raised over his head as savages are depicted in bookplates.

Teague lowered the carbine and put the butt of it on the ground and held it loose in one hand by the barrel.

file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...

2004-3-6

页码，96/232

—Throw that stick down, or I'm sending these two over to pull you apart, he said.

The captive looked at the two big men and then dropped the pine knot at his feet.

—Good, Teague said. Now just stand there.

The men all walked over to the captive, and Ayron grabbed him by the neck and snatched him up like a pup by the scruff. They then turned their attention toward the two men on the ground. One was dead and had hardly bled enough to stain his clothes. The other had taken a bullet to the bowels. He yet lived, but barely. He was propped up on his elbows and had pulled his britches and drawers down about his knees. He probed his wound with a pair of fingers and then looked at them and hollered, I'm kill't.

The Guard came and stood around him but when they smelled the tang in the air they backed off.

The captive squirmed like he wanted to go to his downed friend and Ayron hit him at the side of the head, three flat blows with the meat of his fist heel. Birch took out a black twist of chaw and gripped one end between his teeth and took his knife and sawed it off at his lips and put the remainder in his pocket. When he spit he scuffed dirt with his boot toe over the amber spot as if fastidious about marking the ground, heedful of leaving sign.

The shot man lay back flat and blinked at the sky and seemed baffled by it. His mouth formed words but he made no sound beyond the clickings of a dry mouth. Then his eyes closed and for some time he might have been thought dead except that at wide intervals he worked his fingers. He bled beyond all reason. The grass around him was matted red and his clothes hung heavy and slick like oilcloth.

Even in the dim light it looked bright. Then the blood quit coming and he opened his eyes again without any effort toward focus.

They guessed he had died.

Birch offered to go spit juice in his eye to see would he blink, but Teague said, We don't need to test him. He's passed.

—This'uns preceded you in death like your old daddy, Birch said to the captive.

The man said nothing and Teague said, Birch, hush, and get me something to tie his hands and then we'll lead him back to town on the end of a line.

The boy went to the horses and came back with a coil of rope. But when Teague bent to tie his hands, the captive lost his mind. There was no accounting for his actions other than that he would rather die than be bound. He kicked out in fright, fetching Teague a glancing blow to the thigh. So Teague and the big men fought him and the man was so wild that for a time it was unclear who would prevail. He struck at them with every limb he had and butted with his head as well. He screamed the whole time, a high warbling scream that near to unnerved them all. But finally they threw him to the ground and lashed his wrists and ankles together. Even then he bucked and strained and reached with his head until he bit Teague on the hand, drawing blood. Teague wiped his hand on a coattail and looked at it.

—I'd rather take a hog bite than a man, he said.

He sent Birch back to the house for a straight chair and then they all worked at tying the man into it, binding him down with his arms to his sides and looping rope about his neck until he could do little but wiggle his fingers and twist his head about in the way turtles will do when flipped onto their backs.

file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...

2004-3-6

页码，97/232

—There, Teague said. Like to see him bite me now.

—Berserk, Birch said. I've read about it. It's a word for a thing people can go.

They paused and squatted and caught their breaths, and the man strained against the ropes until his neck bled and then he fell quiet. Byron and Ayron rested with their forearms on their massy thighs.

Teague sucked at his wound and then took out a kerchief and brushed the dirt from his black coat and wiped at the toe marks the man had left on the thigh of his pale pants. Birch held up his left hand and saw that in the struggle he had torn his long fingernail halfway across. He took out his knife and pared it away, cursing all the while at his loss.

Ayron said, We could take that little drag sled there and set him up in it and ride him into town harnessed to that chair.

—Could, Teague said. But I'm leaning right now toward carrying him up to the barn loft and roping his neck to a rafter and shoving him out the hay door.

—You can't hang a man a-sitting, Birch said.

—Can't? Teague said. I'd like to know why not? Hell, I've seen it done.

—Well, still, it'd look better if we brought somebody in now and then, Birch said.

The men stood and conferred and they evidently saw the reason in Birch's thinking, for they gathered around the chair and lifted it and carried it to the sled. They tied the chair to the sled and harnessed it to the mule and set off for town, the man's head jouncing for he had no will to even hold it level.

—This world won't stand long, the captive hollered in conclusion to his tale. God won't let it stand this way long.

By the time he was done talking, the sun had fallen well to the west, and Ada and Ruby turned from the courthouse and started walking home. They were both grim and initially wordless, and then later along the way they discussed the captive's story. Ada wanted to cast it as exaggeration, but Ruby's conclusion was that it ought to be viewed as truth since it sorted so well with the capabilities of men.

Then they argued generally for a mile or two as to whether the world might better be viewed as such a place of threat and fear that the only consonant attitude one could maintain was gloom, or whether one should strive for light and cheer even though a dark-fisted hand seemed poised ready to strike at any moment.

When they reached the west fork of the Pigeon and turned up the river road, the light was growing thin and a shadow already draped itself over the knob called Big Stomp, cast by the larger mountains of the Blue Ridge. The water looked black and cold, and the smell of river hung in the air, about equal parts mineral and vegetable. Though the river had fallen some since morning, it was still up from the last night's rain, and the rocks out in it were wet and dark where trees from either bank nearly met in the middle and kept the watercourse shaded all day.

They had not walked far above the fork when Ruby stopped and squared her body to the water, sighting on something in it as if to take range. She sank down in her knees just a notch, like a fighter lowering his center of gravity to compose himself for attack. She said, Well, look there. That's not a common sight.

Off in the river stood a great blue heron. It was a tall bird to begin with, but something about the angle from which they viewed it and the cast of low sun made it seem even taller. It looked high as a man in the slant light with its long shadow blown out across the water. Its legs and the tips of its file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...

2004-3-6

页码，98/232

wings were black as the river. The beak of it was black on top and yellow underneath, and the light shone off it with muted sheen as from satin or chipped flint. The heron stared down into the water with fierce concentration. At wide intervals it took delicate slow steps, lifting a foot from out the water and pausing, as if waiting for it to quit dripping, and then placing it back on the river bottom in a new spot apparently chosen only after deep reflection.

Ruby said, He's looking for a frog or a fish.

But his staring so heedfully into the water reminded Ada of Narcissus, and to further their continuing studies of the Greeks, she told Ruby a brief version of the tale.

—That bird's not thinking about himself at all, Ruby said, when Ada had finished the story. Look at that beak on him. Stab wounds; that's his main nature. He's thinking about what other thing he can stab and eat.

They stepped slowly toward the river edge and the heron turned to look at them with some interest.

He made tiny precise adjustments of his narrow head as if having trouble sighting around his blade of beak. His eyes seemed to Ada to be searching for her merits and coming up short.

—What are you doing up here? she said aloud to the heron. But she knew by the look of him that his nature was anchorite and mystic. Like all of his kind, he was a solitary pilgrim, strange in his ways and governed by no policy or creed common to flocking birds. Ada wondered that herons could tolerate each other close enough to breed. She had seen a scant number in her life, and those so lonesome as to make the heart sting on their behalf. Exile birds. Everywhere they were seemed far from home.

The heron walked toward them to the river edge and stood on a welt of mud. He was not ten feet away. He tipped his head a notch off level, raised a black leg, scales as big as fingernails, the foot held just off the ground. Ada stared down at the strange footprint in the mud. When she looked up, the bird was staring at her as at someone met long ago, dimly registered in memory.

Then the heron slowly opened its wings. The process was carried out as if it were a matter of hinges and levers, cranks and pulleys. All the long bones under feathers and skin were much in evidence.

When it was done the wings were so broad that Ada could not imagine how it would get out among the trees. The bird took a step toward Ada, lifted itself from the ground, and with only a slow beat or two of the immense wings soared just above her head and up and away through the forest canopy.

Ada felt the sweep of wings, the stir of air, a cold blue shadow across the ground, across the skin of her face. She wheeled and watched until the heron was gone into the sky. She threw up a hand like waving 'bye to visiting kin. What would that be? she wondered. A blessing? A warning beacon?

Picket of the spirit world?

Ada took out her new journal and whittled one of the charcoal pencils to a point with her penknife.

She made a quick, loose-lined memory sketch of the heron as it had stood in the mud. When she was done she was dissatisfied with the curve of the neck and the angle of the beak, but she had the legs and the ruff of feathers at his crop and the look in his eye just right. Across the bottom of the page in her runic hand she wrote
Blue heron/Forks of the Pigeon/9 October 1864.
She looked up at the sky and then said to Ruby, What time would you guess it to be?

Ruby cocked an eye to the west and said, A little after five, and Ada wrote down
five o'clock
and closed the journal.

As they walked on up the river they talked of the bird, and Ruby revealed what she felt to be her snaggy relationship with herons. Stobrod, she said, had often during her childhood disclaimed her, saying she had no man-father. Her mother, during her pregnancy with Ruby—when drunk and file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...