Wilderness (16 page)

They have crossed this day the Newfound Creek and the Little Creek. Other, nameless branches meandering the countryside as
though they’d nothing better to do. They have heard trains in the distance, seen cavalry flinging themselves up and down parallel roads. But for the hard, fleshy rasping of their bare feet in the dust, the air is filled with birdsong, the sound of wind. Dexter can smell the perfume of new blossoms, of leafed-out trees and new spring grass, but all of it is tainted by his own stink rising against his nostrils. He looks down and sees he’s wet himself again. A dark stain spreads along one trouser leg, and he wonders will he weep aloud. Even after so long he is still numb in the places they cut him, still unused to the lack of sensation. When he does not sob, when he merely takes a breath, Dexter looks over at her as they walk, wondering if she has noticed. If she has, she does not show or speak it; merely walks along silently, fingers laced across her belly, steps steady, slow, and assured. He can see stains seeping through her dress front and stiffened cloth where her milk has spoiled. Dexter looks away, walks on.

Her name is Hypatia—a joke of her master, lately dead, for she had no notions of mathematics. For a brief moment she was a mother but is not any longer, and she has been walking northbound roads for over a month.

Together they top a little rise and see the road spool lazily northward. A dark stain of forest on the horizon where the road disappears. And closer, between them and the forest, a plume of dust and the watery impression of a shape within rattling steadily along. Hypatia settles down on a rock just off the road. A soft, satisfied sigh. With slender, strong fingers she prods her ankles and heels for the pleasure of it. Dexter stands in the road with his hands on his hips, watching the dust. Squinting, trying to decide if it be pilgrims like themselves or soldiers or home guard or any one of a dozen other dangers. Trying to decide should they leave the road for the fields and woodlots, for the beds of streams and runs and creeks. His skin is the soft ruddy color of a chestnut in the fall when the weather
turns cold. He shakes his head and says, “I don’t know. A wagon, I guess.”

“But you don’t know.”

He shrugs. “Nah.”

“Then you best get out the road. Up on this hill, they can see you plain as you see them.” With another soft sigh, she tilts her face skyward to let the sun fall upon it, then opens her eyes to look for shapes in the clouds.

Dexter looks about himself. The white road, the hill, a dark stand of pine within running distance. Shaking his head and muttering softly to himself, he ducks and scurries out of the dust, coming to a crouch near Hypatia’s rock.

“Figure you can make them trees if we got to run?”

Blinking, she looks for a long moment at his face, so tired and careworn and pinched with need and hurt. With the very tips of her fingers she touches an old, puckered scar tatting his cheek. Even with so light and inconsequential a caress, she feels him tremble, so draws back her hand. Shaking her head, she tells him, “You go on. There ain’t nothing more they can do to me.” A pause. “They can’t touch me no more.”

His throat bobs and he hangs his head a moment before answering. “I reckon I can wait with you.”

The wagon solidifies from the dust. An old white man on the bench seat with a rifle propped up on his thigh. Dexter raises himself to the balls of his feet, tensed, his arms away from his sides. Ready to throw himself before her and shield her. With her long fingers, Hypatia tucks an errant kink of hair back up under the black rag wrapped thrice around her head. She settles her calm gaze upon the wagon as it approaches and slows.

For his part, the old man brakes slow and easy after cresting the hill and looks down at them on the grass. He studies them there for a long time, then rubs his jaw and shakes his head. Setting the rifle
down, he raises his chin to Dexter. “You there, nigger. What the hell are you doing out thisaway?”

Dexter cannot meet the old man’s eye. He looks down, looks away. His shoulders sag and his expression slackens so as to give up as little of himself as possible. The old posture of submission. He cannot speak.

“We goin’ to see Lincum,” says Hypatia, rising from her stone.

“Jesus Christ.” The old man leans and spits and wipes his mouth with the back of one hand. He ducks his head to try and catch Dexter’s eye. “That true, you crazy buck? You look at me here now, boy.”

Dexter’s eyes roll up to the old man’s face. A hard face, cruel about the mouth, and the flesh around the eyes chased with age. He takes a deep breath, stands straight as he’s able. “Yes, sir,” his voice not more than a whisper.

The old man’s face sours and he curses and looks away. Looks back at Hypatia and studies her for a time. “Where’s your baby?” he asks.

“Dead, sir.”

“Dead where?”

She looks back down the road the way she’s come and blinks slowly. “Back behind me now,” she says.

“God damn,” says the old man. “Just God damn it.” Taking a deep breath, he stands and steps into the bed of the wagon, where he roots around through various boxes and sacks, telling them, “You got a fair piece of travel ahead of you. God damn God damn. You have any idea what’s happening up the road? What’s coming thisaway? Do you?” He does not wait for them to answer. “Them armies is coming together, is what’s happening.” Pausing, he makes two fists and bangs them together in the air. “There’s goin’ to be fightin’ like you can’t imagine, and they’re coming right through here. Right down this road. You watch and see if they don’t. Now, you listen. If you
can, find you a Union soldier, a soldier in blue. Pick you a young one if you get the choice and just go on up and tell him you-all is contraband. Do you know that word?”

“Yes, sir,” says Dexter, bobbing his head, looking down at the dust.

“God damn it.” The old man spits and transfers items from various boxes into a little canvas sack. “Now, I ain’t givin’ you any God damn weapons. Not even a blade, and I hope I am well in my grave ’fore niggers start walking around my homeland armed. But here.” He hands the sack down to Dexter. Hypatia walks across the grass and stands looking up at the old man. “There’s food,” he tells them. “A little cornmeal, some salt beef. I put a hunk of cheese, some soft bread, and a jar of milk in there too, but that’s for you,” he tells Hypatia. “You understand me?”

“Yes,” she says. “We thank you.”

The old man steps back onto the bench and takes up the reins. “Stay on this road,” he says. “But God damn it, be careful. You end up with the wrong army, and that’s it. I don’t have to tell you what they’ll do to you. You got that, boy?”

Dexter’s hands fist and unfist, then fist again. He nods.

“All right then. Now. You see that dark patch up yonder? That mess of woods? Called the Wilderness. You’ll be there in a day. Maybe two, the way she is.” He looked at Hypatia and shook his head, then indicated the long view toward the Wilderness from the top of the hill. “Anyway, odds are the armies’ll come out on this side and get down to business. Ain’t no white man goin’ to start a fight in them woods but they’d be good for hiding. You two head on north, make for the trees, and watch yourselves. A little luck, and you’ll be all right.”

They thank him together—Dexter still off-looking to some point in the air just beside the old man’s shoulder and Hypatia meeting his tired, careworn gaze without blinking. “What are you two?” he asks them. “Husband and wife? Kin?”

“Nah, sir,” says Dexter, shuffling his feet in the dust. “We just meet up on the way.”

“What’s your name, boy?”

Dexter squeezes shut his eyes, opens them again. His name is not Dexter any longer. They took that self six months ago when they cut him for not turning down his gaze quick enough when the missus came out into the yard. The master had been especially worrisome, especially watchful, with the way the war was going and so had Dexter taken to the shed. They held him down. A fast memory of the blade. A curve of metal as silvery and cruel as the crescent moon, quick and ice-cold against his thighs until the warmth of his blood spilt over them. He takes a deep breath, raises his chin, and opens his eyes. “My name?”

The old man frowns. “Yes, God damn it.”

“Grant,” he says without pause, without lowering his eyes. “Sherman Grant.” He squares his shoulders and shows the old man his teeth.

The old man looks stricken, shaken, then sniffs and nods. “Well by God, by God. Don’t tell nobody else that.” Grins. Says, “Well, Sherman Grant, there’ll be time enough for the two of you, I reckon.” The old man pauses, leans and spits, then looks over the countryside round about. “Used to be a hell of a country,” he says quietly. “A hell of a place to be. This land here, this good farming soil … it won’t be worth a good God damn in a couple days.” And without another word, he shakes the reins over the old swayback’s flanks and the dust comes up and he and horse and the wagon are vanished in it.

That was in the morning when the red sun radiated across the rolling hills. Making the pale undersides of the leaves to shine and spinning rubies into the little creeks where they crossed the road. By afternoon of that day, the second of May, 1864, the sky was wholly darkened. The air alive with electricity. They sat out the storm
beneath a live oak and Grant drew his blanket up around them. They sat huddled, sharing warmth against the wind and wet, and he could feel her heartbeat against his chest. A shift of a hand stole his breath and unmanned him and he began to weep without control or sound. With soft whispers, Hypatia calmed him, stroked his brow and cheek, and held him tightly in his sorrow. He told her what they’d done to him, what they’d taken from him, and what he’d never known and, now, would never know, and she said nothing. She held him, and he slept. By morning, the storm had blown itself out and they rose without speaking and walked on up the road.

Later that day, as the heat began to gather, they passed the body of a man hung from the neck until dead. He swung from a stout branch and his hands and feet had begun to swell and his hair was damp. He wore a wedding ring but no shoes and the eyes were gone from his head and three crows watched from the branches above. Grant and Hypatia walked on.

A stillness now, as if the world were waiting, breathless. The wind did not blow and the day grew warm. They slept that night on the banks of some nameless stream for the cool of the water in the close, hot dark, and when they rose they could hear a distant, tearing sound as of a sturdy piece of canvas ripped lengthwise. It came banging intermittently through the springtime air all morning and in the afternoon the tearing become a roar and the roar was constant. They could hear shouting. They stopped on a rise on the outskirts of a four-building village that lay abandoned. The Wilderness was before them, studded with powdersmoke that rose, slow, malignant, until the sun was darkened and the shadows grew long.

May 5, 1864

It was early afternoon when they came out of the woods across the field. They came as they always did: shouting and huzzahing like an organized mechanism geared for war and nothing but. Their lines
were as dressed as the Wilderness allowed, running north to south, and they were ranked by regiment in that close space. Small figures uncountable with distance, haze, and dust. The sun on their bayonets like star points against the nightblue backdrop of their uniforms and the greater dark of the woods behind them. They came marching out of the trees. You could feel them coming in the earth.

David’s knuckles were white upon his rifle, barrel and stock. His eyes stung with sweat and his own stink rose from his collar. He was distantly aware that his head had stopped its throb and his spectacles had slid down the long, thin line of his nose until he eyed the coming battle over their moon-round tops. He took as deep a breath as he could and looked at Abel. “Don’t look like they’re fooling around no more,” he said.

“About goddamned time,” said Abel. The older man took off his hat, gathered his long, dusty hair into a ponytail, tied it off with a thin strip of leather he kept for that purpose, then tucked the works back under his shirt collar and jammed the hat back on. Behind them, officers strode back and forth, their swords unsheathed, steeling the men with words and shouts and curses; getting them ready for what was coming and telling them to charge their weapons and, when they fired, to fire low. A young aide went about cutting blazes into the trees and telling them to fire beneath those marks, and they could see how his revolver shook in his hand.

David checked over his piece, steadying the barrel on a slim branch that lay atop the earthworks to his front. Next to him, Abel hawked up a great gob of phlegm and sent it in a long, dirty yellow arc into the field.

David shook his head, then ducked quickly as a spattering of bullets sent sprays of dirt over him and down through the holes in his wrecked hat. “How d’you do it?” he shouted as he shook out the hat and clawed his fingers through his hair. “My mouth’s dry as a stone.”

Abel didn’t answer. His face was unreadable. He reached out one grimy finger and gently pushed David’s spectacles back up his nose, then patted his shoulder with an air of the paternal. As he turned away, David touched his arm and leaned in close to shout, “You been hit.”

Frowning, Abel touched his neck. The sunbrowned flesh beneath his ear lay raked open. His fingers came back red and Abel crouched there staring at it amidst all the gathering roar of rifle-fire and shouting. He stared at his fingers with dumb amazement, then looked at David. “That’s my blood,” he said.

David winced and ducked as a bullet went clipping through the branches above them, sounding for all the world like an angry hornet. He glanced over at Abel’s outstretched hand and looked at his face. “Maybe you ought to go on back and find the surgeon. Make sure you didn’t take another one you don’t know about yet.”

Abel shook his head. “This is just the first I was ever shot,” he said. He looked at David a moment, then licked his lips and risked a quick peek over the earthworks. At the far left of their line, at the north end of the field, their men had begun firing and the smoke from the discharges moved down the line toward their own position like clockwork. The blue soldiers had not yet reached the gully in the center of the field and yet they had already begun dying. They lay scattered amidst the grass. Abel ducked back down. “Listen a minute,” he said. “I want to tell you something.”