Cold Mountain Part 33

Then he added, I met a number of folks on the way. There was a goatwoman that fed me, and she claimed it's a sign of G.o.d's mercy that He won't let us remember the reddest details of pain. He knows the parts we can't bear and won't let our minds render them again. In time, from disuse, they pale away. At least such was her thinking. G.o.d lays the unbearable on you and then takes some back.

Ada begged to differ with a part of the goatwoman's thoughts. She said, I think you have to give Him some help in forgetting. You have to work at not trying to call such thoughts up, for if you call hard enough they'll come.

When they had momentarily exhausted the past, they turned to the future. They talked of all kinds of prospective things. In Virginia, Inman had seen a sawmill, portable and water powered. Even in the mountains, clapboard houses were overtaking log, so he thought that such a sawmill would be a fine thing to have. He could haul it to a man's land and set it up and saw out the material for a house from the man's own timber. There would be an economy in that, and a satisfaction for the man as well, for he could sit in his completed house and delight in all its parts coming right from his own land. Inman could take payment in cash, or lacking that he could be paid in timber, which he could then mill and sell. He could borrow money from his family to buy the equipment. It was not a bad plan. Many a man had got rich on less.

And there were other plans. They would order books on many topics: agriculture, art, botany, travel.

They would take up musical instruments, fiddle and guitar or perhaps the mandolin. Should Stobrod live, he could teach them. And Inman aspired to learn Greek. That would be quite a thing to know.

With it, he could continue the efforts of Balis. He told her the story of the man in the hospital, his lost leg and the sheaf of papers he had left behind him at his sad pa.s.sing. It's not without sense they call it a dead language, Inman said in conclusion.

They talked on, and time was what they discussed. They detailed an imaginary marriage, the years pa.s.sing happy and peaceful. Black Cove put in order to Ruby's specifications. Ada described the plans in detail, and all Inman wished to amend was the absence of goats, for he would like to keep a 2004-3-6.

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few. They agreed they neither gave two hoots now as to how marriages were normally conducted.

They would do as they pleased and run their lives by the roll of the seasons. In autumn the apple trees would be bright and heavy with apples and they would hunt birds together, since Ada had proved so successful with the turkeys. They would not hunt with the gaudy Italian piece of Monroe's but with fine simple shotguns they would order from England. In summer they would catch trout with tackle from the same sporting country. They would grow old together measuring time by the life spans of a succession of speckled bird dogs. At some point, well past midlife, they might take up painting and get little tin fieldboxes of water-colors, likewise from England. Go on country walks, and when they saw a scene that pleased them, stop and dip cups of water from a creek and form the lines and tints on paper for future reference. Contest with each other to see which might more successfully render the scene. They could picture ships navigating the treacherous North Atlantic for some decades to bring them fine implements of diversion. Oh, the things they would do.

They were both at such an age that they stood on a cusp. They could think in one part of their minds that their whole lives stretched out before them without boundary or limit. At the same time another part guessed that youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment.

spirits of crows, dancing By the morning of the third day in the village the clouds broke open to clear sky, bright sun. The snow began to melt. It dropped in wads from the bent limbs of trees, and all day there was the sound of water running under the snow on the ground. That evening the moon rose full from behind the ridge, and its light fell so bright as to throw crisp shadows of tree trunks and tree limbs on the snow.

The pearly night seemed not day's opposite but a new variant of it, a deputation.

Ada and Inman lay under covers for some time twined and talking, the fire low and the door to their hut open, letting a brilliant trapezoid of cold moonlight project onto their bed. They composed a plan for themselves, and it took much of the night to talk out. The shape of light moved across the floor and its angles changed, and at some point Inman put the door back in its place and stoked the fire.

The plan, despite the length of time it took to form, was simple and in no way unique to them. Many other pairs of lovers in those last days reached identical conclusions, for there were but three courses to pick from, each dangerous and in its own way bitter.

The logic they followed was simple. The war was as good as lost and could not go on many more months. It might end in spring and it might not. But by no act of imagination could it be pictured as continuing past late summer. The choices were these. Inman could return to the army. Short-handed as they were, he would be received with open arms and then immediately be put back in the muddy trenches of Petersburg, where he would try to keep his head down and hope for an early end. Or he could stay hidden in the mountains or in Black Cove as an outlier and be hunted like bear, wolf, catamount. Or he could cross the mountains north and put himself in the hands of the Federals, the very b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who had spent four years shooting at him. They would make him sign his name to their oath of allegiance, but then he could wait out the fighting and come home.

They tried to devise other plans, but they just spun out illusions. Inman told Ada of Veasey's dream of Texas, the wildness and freedom and opportunity of it. They could get a second horse, a camping kit, set out riding west. And if Texas proved bleak there was the Colorado territory. Wyoming. The great Columbia River territory. But the war was out there too. If they had money, they could sail to some far off sunny place, to Spain or Italy. But they had no money and there was the blockade. As a last resort, they could fast for the prescribed number of days and wait for the portals of the Shining Rocks to open and welcome them into the land of peace.

Finally, they acknowledged that there were limits to things. Those original bitter three were all the 2004-3-6.

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choices the war allowed. Inman rejected the first as unacceptable. And Ada vetoed the second as, in her estimation, the most dangerous. So by default it was the third they settled on. Over the Blue Ridge. Three days or four of steady walking, keeping to wilderness trails, and then he would cross the state line. Put up his hands and bow his head and say he'd been whipped. Salute their striped banner which he'd fought all he could. Learn from the faces of the enemy that, contrary to the teachings of various religions, the man that whips generally feels better than the man that takes the whipping, no matter who's in the wrong of the matter.

-But this too, Ada said to him. It's often believed by preachers and old women that being beaten breeds compa.s.sion. And they're right. It can. But it also breeds hardness. There's to some degree a choice.

In the end, what they both vowed to keep their minds on was the homecoming some months hence.

They would go forward from there into whatever new world the war left behind. Make their part of it match the vision of the future they'd talked out to each other during the two nights previous.

On the fourth day in the village, patches of brown leaves and black dirt began to open up in clearings, and mixed flocks of nuthatches and t.i.tmice came to them and pecked at something on the uncovered ground. That day Stobrod could sit una.s.sisted and talk so as to make partial sense, which Ruby said was about all you could expect of him, even in the brightest bloom of health. His wounds were clean and odorless and showed signs of soon beginning to knit up. And he could eat solid food, though all they had left was a little bit of grits and five squirrels that Ruby had shot and gutted and skinned. She had skewered them on sticks and roasted them with the heads on over chestnut coals, and that evening Ruby and Stobrod and Inman ate theirs like you would an ear of corn. Ada sat a minute and examined her portion. The front teeth were yellow and long. She was not accustomed to eating things with the teeth still in them. Stobrod watched her and said, That head'U twist right off, if it's bothering you.

By the dawning of the fifth day, the snow was better than halfway gone. There were needles thick on the banks of snow that remained under the hemlock trees, and the bark on the trunks was streaked wet and black from the melt. High clouds had blown in after two days of sun, and Stobrod proclaimed himself ready to travel.

-Six hours home, Ruby said. Seven at most. That's accounting for the poor footing and stopping some to rest.

Ada a.s.sumed they would all go as a party, but Inman would not hear of it.

-The woods feel so empty sometimes, and then so full others. You two can go where you want without being bothered. It's us they'd want, he said, flicking a thumb at Stobrod. No sense putting everybody in danger.

He would hear of nothing but that Ruby and Ada walk on ahead. He would come behind shortly with Stobrod astride the horse. Wait in the woods until dark. The next morning, if the weather looked promising, he would set out to surrender. They would keep Stobrod home and hidden, and if the war had not ended by the time he healed, they'd send him across the mountains to join Inman.

Stobrod had no opinion on the matter, but Ruby judged there was sense in what Inman said, so that is what they did. The women started out afoot, and Inman stood and watched them climb the slope.

When Ada disappeared into the trees, it was like a part of the richness of the world had gone with her. He had been alone in the world and empty for so long. But she filled him full, and so he believed everything that had been taken out of him might have been for a purpose. To clear s.p.a.ce for something better.

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He waited awhile and then loaded Stobrod on the horse and followed. Stobrod sometimes rode with his chin bouncing on his sternum and sometimes he sat with his head up and his eyes bright. They pa.s.sed the round pool, and it was frozen over and the ice was unmarked by a drake or even the carca.s.s of one. It had drowned and sunk to the muddy bottom or flown away. There was no telling which, though Inman pictured it flapping and struggling and then rising into the sky, trailing shards of the ice that had clutched at the taut yellow webs of its feet.

When they came to the forking of the trail, Stobrod looked at the great poplar and the bright blazes of sapwood where the bullets had chipped away the bark. Son-of-a-b.i.t.c.hing big tree, he said.

They pa.s.sed by Pangle's grave, and it lay in the shade on the north slope, and the snow still covered it almost up to the lashed joint of Ada's locust cross. Inman just pointed, and Stobrod looked as they pa.s.sed. He told about Pangle crawling up to sleep at his back in the cave. The boy wanting nothing but warmth and music. Then Stobrod said, If G.o.d was to set out killing every man on earth in order of their demerits, that boy would bring up the hind end of the line.

They wayed on for some miles, dark clouds hovering over them, the pathway rough and steep. They came to a place where laurel thickets rowed the trail on either side and arched over like the roof to a tunnel. Galax thick on the ground, the leaves shiny and maroon. The laurel leaves were clenched in tubes from the cold.

They came out of the tunnel into a little clearing, and they walked on and then they heard sounds behind them. They turned, and there were hors.e.m.e.n moving out to fill the trail.

-Good G.o.d, Stobrod said.

Teague said, That's a hard man to kill. Resembles death warmed over, though.

Stobrod looked at the scouts and found them somewhat reconfigured. Teague and the boy he kept at his side remained. They had lost a man or two and gained a man or two in the days since they had shot him. Stobrod recognized a face from the outlier cave, white trash. And the Guard had gained, as well, a pair of mismatched dogs. Droop-eared bloodhound. Wire-beard wolfhound. The dogs sat slouched and casual. Then without prompt from anyone but herself, the wolfhound rose and began sidling toward Inman and Stobrod.

Teague sat astride his horse, the reins loose in his left hand. The other hand he used to monkey with the hammer to his Spencer carbine, as if uncertain whether pulling it full back were called for.

-We're obliged to you and the boy for setting us onto that cave. Nice dry place to sit out the snow.

The wolfhound cut back and circled, not moving fast, coming at an angle. She would not make eye contact, but everything she did moved her closer.

Inman looked around to gauge the contours of the land to see how it lay for fighting, and he recognized himself back in the familiar terrain of violence. He wanted a stone wall, but there was not one. He studied the Guard and he knew them by the look in their eyes. There was no sense talking with such men. Language would change nothing, no more than gabbling empty sounds into the air.

No sense waiting.

He leaned toward Stobrod and made motions to check the halter and lead rope. In a whisper he said, Hold on.

He hit the horse hard on its rump with his left fist, and he pulled out his pistol with his right. In a single curve of motion he shot the wolfhound that was coming toward him and then he shot one of 2004-3-6.

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the men. There was not hardly time between the two reports to blink your eyes. The hound and the man fell like-stricken, and they moved but little where they fell. Stobrod went bucking off down the trail like a man breaking a three-year-old to saddle. He was gone in the trees.

There was a moment of stillness, and then there was a great deal of motion. The horses all jumped and stepped in place with their hind ends gathered under them. They had no common direction, but they wanted badly to go somewhere other than here. The bloodhound ran among their legs and riled them further, and then he was kicked in the head and went down yelping.

The riders sawed at the reins to hold the horses back. The empty horse the man had been shot off of looked around for guidance, but finding none, it broke to run blindly. It had not gone three strides, though, before it stepped on its dragging reins and went stumbling into the other horses, and they all went to squealing and spinning, and the riders just tried to hold on.

Inman charged straight at the disordered party of scouts. There was no cover worth the name, just thin trees. No wall to get behind. No direction to go but forward, no time but now. No hope to do anything but run into their midst and try to kill them all.

In full stride, he shot one rider from the saddle. That left but three, and one of them looked already to be in retreat, or his horse had bolted. It went off capering sideways, uphill into a stand of hickory trees.

The two remaining riders were bunched together, and their horses jumped again at the sound of new gunfire and then one of the horses was down and squealing and scrabbling in the dirt to get its hind legs back under it. Its rider was grabbing at his own leg, squeezing it to find the damage where the horse had fallen on him. When he touched a ragged end of bare bone broken through skin and pantleg, he hollered in anguish, and some of it was just sounds and some of it was words, and those were prayers to G.o.d and harsh comments about what a heavy thing a horse is. He hollered so loud as to about smother the sound of his horse squealing.

The other horse wheeled out of control. It spun in a tight circle with its neck bent around and its feet bunched under it. Teague yanked at the reins one-handed and held aloft the carbine in the other. He had lost a stirrup, and there was daylight between him and his saddle. He was about to come off, and he fired an involuntary shot into the air. The horse jumped again like you had run a hot poker through it. It wheeled even faster.

Inman ran into the still place around which the horse spun. He reached up and yanked the Spencer from Teague's hand and let it drop to the ground. He and Teague locked eyes, and Teague reached with his free hand to his belt and pulled a long knife and hollered, I'll black my knife blade with your blood.

Inman c.o.c.ked back the shotsh.e.l.l hammer of the LeMat's and fired. The big pistol about leapt out of his hand, like it was trying to get away. The charge took Teague in the chest and opened him up. He went tumbling on the ground and lay in a heap, and his horse hopped off a few steps and stood with its eye whites showing and its ears pinned to its head.

Inman turned and looked at the howling man. Now he was howling curses at Inman and scrabbling toward his pistol, which lay in a mess of slush. Inman reached down and picked the Spencer up by the barrel end. He swung it one-handed and took the man in the side of the head with the flat of the b.u.t.t stock, and the man quit howling. Inman picked up the man's pistol and stuck it in his pant waist.

The downed horse was on its legs again. It was grey and in the low light it looked like the ghost of a horse. It went and stood alongside the other riderless horses, and they all seemed too stunned to flee.

They whickered back and forth, seeking any signs that could be interpreted as a comfort to them.

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Inman looked around for the last rider. He expected the man to be long gone, but he found him off in the thickest part of the stand of hickory trees, some fifty paces distant. Far enough to make a pistol shot somewhat open to doubt. There was snow still under the trees and a mist rose from it and also from the horse's wet coat, and two puffs of breath rose from its muzzle. The horse was a skewbald mare, and she patterned up so well with the snow and the trees and the patches of open ground that she appeared to be melting into them. Behind the hickories, a steep broken pitch of rock.

The rider tried to jockey the horse to keep a tree between him and Inman, but he was only partly successful at it. In the times when he was exposed, he revealed himself to be but a boy. Inman could see that he had lost his hat. His head was white. He looked to have German or Dutch blood in him.

Maybe Irish or some inbred product of Cornwall. No matter. He was now American all through, white skin, white hair, and a killer. But he looked as if his first shave lay still ahead of him, and Inman hoped not to have to shoot a boy.

-Come on out of there, Inman said, pitching his voice loud enough to be heard.

Nothing.

The boy stayed behind the tree. All that showed was the rump and the head of the horse bisected by the hickory. The horse stepped a pace forward and then the boy reined her back.

-Come on, Inman said. I'm not asking again. Put down what arms you've got and you can ride on home.

-Naw sir, the boy said. Here's fine.

-Not with me, Inman said. Not fine at all. I'll just shoot your horse. That'll flush you out.

-Shoot her then, the boy said. She ain't mine.

-d.a.m.n it, Inman said. I'm looking for a way not to kill you. We can do this so that twenty years on, we might run into one another in town and take a drink together and remember this dark time and shake our heads over it.

-Not and me throw down my pistol we can't, the boy said. Have you shoot me anyway.

-I'm not one of you-all and that's not the way I do. But I'll kill you before I walk down this mountain worrying every step that you're behind a rock drawing a bead on my head.

-Oh, I'd be laying for you, the boy said. I'd be laying.

-Well, that about says it, Inman said. You'll have to come through me to get out of there.

Inman went and picked up the Spencer and checked the tube magazine in the b.u.t.t stock and found it empty. A spent bra.s.s cartridge in the chamber. He threw it down and looked to the cylinder of the LeMat's. Six loads left out of the nine, and the shot barrel fired. He took a paper cartridge from his pocket and bit the end offit and let the powder run into the big barrel. Then he pushed the paper of shot into the barrel and rammed it home with the little ramrod and fitted a bra.s.s cap to the nipple. He stood square to the world and waited.

-You're going to have to come out from behind that tree sometime, he said.

In a minute the horse stepped forward. The boy tried to break through the woods and circle back to the trail. Inman ran to cut him off. It was just a man on a mount and one afoot chasing each other in 2004-3-6.

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the woods. They used the trees and the lay of the ground, and they went jockeying back and forth, trying to find a clear shot but also trying not to get too close.

The mare was confused and had her own wants, first of which was to go stand shoulder to shoulder with the other frightened horses. Taking the bit in her teeth, she flared off from where the boy was trying to guide her with the reins, and she ran straight at Inman. When she was near to him, she half bucked and then brushed the boy against a hickory trunk and raked him from the saddle. With the bit loose in her mouth, she brayed like a mule and cantered off and went to the other horses and they touched noses and quivered.

The boy lay in the snow where he had fallen. Then he half sat and fiddled with the caps and the hammer to his pistol.

-Put that thing down, Inman said. He had the shot hammer back and the bore leveled at the boy.

The boy looked at him and his blue eyes were empty as a round of ice frozen on a bucket top. He looked white in the face and even whiter in crescents under his eyes. He was a little wormy blond thing, his hair cropped close as if he had recently been battling headlice. Face blank.

Nothing about the boy moved but his hand, and it moved quicker than you could see.

Inman suddenly lay on the ground.

The boy sat and looked at him and then looked at the pistol in his hand and said, They G.o.d. As if he had not reckoned at all on it functioning as it had.

Ada heard the gunshots in the distance, dry and thin as sticks breaking. She did not say anything to Ruby. She just turned and ran. Her hat flew off her head and she kept on running and left it on the ground like a shadow behind her. She met Stobrod and he held Ralph's mane in a death grip, though the horse had slowed to a trot.

-Back there, Stobrod said. He kept on going.

When she reached the place, the boy had already gathered up the horses and gone. She went to the men on the ground and looked at them, and then she found Inman apart from them. She sat and held him in her lap. He tried to talk, but she hushed him. He drifted in and out and dreamed a bright dream of a home. It had a coldwater spring rising out of rock, black dirt fields, old trees. In his dream the year seemed to be happening all at one time, all the seasons blending together. Apple trees hanging heavy with fruit but yet unaccountably blossoming, ice r.i.m.m.i.n.g the spring, okra plants blooming yellow and maroon, maple leaves red as October, corn tops tas-seling, a stuffed chair pulled up to the glowing parlor hearth, pumpkins shining in the fields, laurels blooming on the hillsides, ditch banks full of orange jewelweed, white blossoms on dogwood, purple on redbud.

Everything coming around at once. And there were white oaks, and a great number of crows, or at least the spirits of crows, dancing and singing in the upper limbs. There was something he wanted to say.

An observer situated up on the brow of the ridge would have looked down on a still, distant tableau in the winter woods. A creek, remnants of snow. A wooded glade, secluded from the generality of mankind. A pair of lovers. The man reclined with his head in the woman's lap. She, looking down into his eyes, smoothing back the hair from his brow. He, reaching an arm awkwardly around to hold her at the soft part of her hip. Both touching each other with great intimacy. A scene of such quiet and peace that the observer on the ridge could avouch to it later in such a way as might lead those of glad temperaments to imagine some conceivable history where long decades of happy union stretched before the two on the ground.

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