Days Without End

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

WE CAN SEE LIGE’S need straight off even as we move along the trail. Beautiful creek running like an endless frosted beard. Field upon field of worried-looking land. Tall blackened weeds and some festering crop half won. This yellowed land and then the frighted-looking sky stretching away to heaven and all on the horizon the stubs and spikes of unknown black trees. Then hills heaping away into the distance and stubborn forest and even further maybe mountains with their Jewish caps of snow. But not enough hands to make good these fields that’s clear. Don’t have the spruced-up spank of work. Ain’t in army order nor shipshape neither. We come slow up to the house and there’s old Lige with his crown in blessed white and his smile cutting open his mouth above a long white-speckled meg. No hat and the hair a fume of smoke. Queer to see him in civilian garb that’s certain. Colour Sergeant Magan. That bore the colours of the regiment. Come down his steps onto the tamped sand and took our hands in his. By God his eyes are shining. Hey, Lige, how is it? It’s good, it’s good.

Then we telling him about Winona and the man with the whiskers and Lige says he knows that man. He ain’t no colonel but was something in the yellowleg army right enough. Those boys with him was boys of his command. They been ranging round doing mischief and hanging blacks. We said we seen his work along the way. That’s it, says Lige. You might expect to see that man again if he live, he says. Tach Petrie is his name. Tach Petrie, I think they call him, says Lige.

Man we got a lot to do other than worry about Tach Petrie and his possible demise or resurrection. Lige got a nice woman called Rosalee that tends Winona. She fetches in and lifts her to the house. My dress kinda lifts in the breeze and slides onto the ground. Whose dress that? says Rosalee, that Mrs Cole’s? Where she? We don’t have an answer for that. That Rosalee sets Winona on a trestle by a big long fire. Trying to think back when I saw Lige so happy. Guess he’s mighty relieved. Rosalee got a brother works with Lige. Tennyson Bouguereau. They’s freed Negroes and Tennyson works five acres for a share. All they had before us was a winded mare to plough. A mule worth three times a horse up here, says Lige. Mule like gold. He’s so happy to see four. I say these the best mules ever lived in my opinion. Told him about the pack mule and Winona’s riderless mule running with us. Hot damn, says Lige. Who’d a known a thing like that was possible. We ask him has he heard from Starling Carlton and how’s he doing. Lige says he hears everything west of the North Platte river and the plains in general all gone to pot. Sioux rampaging. Caught-His-Horse-First been seen and has a new band. All going to hell in a bucket. Says he heard Dan FitzGerald come home from Andersonville and is topping trees in Alaska. That real good, I say. Surprised to hear that. Thought he was a goner for sure. Yup, says Lige, he made it.

We kinda settle in like settlers. Find the tune of Tennessee. At this time I got a wounded mourning dove put by accident into my keeping. John Cole finds it in the woods with a bent wing. He is as close as ever man was to a vole for creeping round. There are days when no sound is heard. When veins of long light to the solemn earth descend. Sometimes it get so still and quiet I hear no one and it’s like the world is over. God damn it John Cole steals in one soundless noon with a wooden box. He sits with me a while and all the while he is chattering I am hearing this rattly hemming and hawing in the box. I am looking at it. It’s amusing John Cole to catch me curious. John Cole was talking about the new opera house in Memphis and how we should go down and see it. John Cole got such a big beard these times he look like he was on the Rebel side. Could of fought at Appomattox under Lee or something worse. He looks like a goddamn yellowleg colonel but I don’t like to say so immediately. Because he beautiful anyhow. Time goes by and he’s waxing about the singers that tour about the country like queens and such and then he spreads his arms and sorta cocks his face as if to say, well, I guess you was wondering what I brought? Well, I was, a little. So then he opens the lid and up pops this head, all curvy beak and beady eye. He says would I like to nurse her back? I said I would like, mostly. What mighten you want to call her? he says. Well, I’ll call her General Lee, since that’s what you kinda look like these days. You ain’t kind, he says. General Lee hops out of her box and takes command. Then she’s shitting on the old table.

Then we go burning land for Lige all January. Labouring at seed beds for his tobacco and then covering them with long linen rolls against the cold. Then snow beds us in and Tennyson sings old songs and Rosalee proves a lunatic on the washboard. Lige got a fiddle and you never heard such stomping. Winona heals and she the worst crazy of us all, whirling and stepping like a bronze flame. Lige got his salted beef and the mules are battened in the big tobacco barn which is caulked so good they must think they are in Typee. We tell them about our act for Mr Noone and then I’m obliged to don the frilled knickers and valise shoes and show them what we done. I don a straw dolly for a wig so it’s all in fun. That’s a two-candle act, says Lige, and lights another so he can see. Light from the fire makes my shadow big against the walls. I don’t know if they feel the effect but maybe Tennyson looks shook and stunned. I ain’t got the looks now but the light is kind. Guess a stranger peeking in would be mighty thrown. Two Negroes and a ancient farmboy gazing on. Inexplicable dame for sure. Gives me strange joy.

Snow goes then we’re ploughing like our lives depend which they do. Now the four mules are hitched and show their worth and plough forty acres back and forth three times. The land is lined for plants and then the little plants is brought into the fields and one spikes the earth with a peg and another plants a plant and another gives it water and a feed. And Tennyson sings his African songs and when we’re stooped in the trees for midday dinner Lige oftentimes plays the fiddle so that the notes go into the woods to twitch the sleeps of birds. Never work so deep and hard and never sleep so deep. Then we harrow the earth between our growing plants and walk along day after day topping and pinching flowers and cancelling sports. Winona the merciless killer of the hornworms. Fat green boys. The summer comes and blows the land with heat. Then it’s thin shirts and dirty hands and sweat abounding. And we grow in friendship like proper army boys. Lige’s pa sent Rosalee to school and she wise as Socrates on many things. She and Winona thick as thieves and I don’t know but we could of done with Tennyson in many a fight. I never saw a man shoot good as him except Lige. He sets a twig up on a fence pole then splits it from fifty feet. That can’t be done. Then weeks of harvest leaf by yellow leaf and leaves tied to sticks and sticks brought into the barn and the stove lit till the mules think they’re in hell. Bushels of sparks fly out the door and more wood goes in. Like the barn were a great steam engine bound for someplace. Then when the leaves are proper sere the doors of the barn is oped and the good heavy air of fall let in to plump them. Then they is bound in layers and flattened and bound in bales. Then down to market in the town of Paris and the big carts carry them down to Memphis. And Lige gets paid and then we try the small glasses of whisky as pure as salt. Go running down through Memphis town as alight as any stove and then do things that none remember and then home. Then we do praise the world for having good things in it. Lige buys a few horses. And now we’re November yet again and no crop needing more care and giving more back never known as tobacco. Lige’s paid in gold because that’s the only thing will do. The South is rank with notes. Might as well stuff them in the stove with wood.

Flowers draw bees and gold draws thieves. Guess that’s a rule. A law. Guess they know when you’re drawing home with pay. So we keep our guns primed and Lige obliges the succour of his fear by keeping two rifles just in case. We’re always armed and ready. The frost has crisped the farm again and the long weeds hang down black into the creek. Bears looking for winter houses. The birds that don’t crave winter disappear and the robin holds his ground. Half of our pride is in Winona and the other half in our work and in ourselves. Maybe me and John Cole restored. We’re strong and hard. Our faces cleared as if two fields by fire.

Oftentimes in that goosedown bed we talk of all our days. Lie side by side staring up at the spider-webs in the roof. We go back over things that occurred and talk them back into the present time. We believe we seen a fair bit. One way or another. John Cole wondering what we can do for Winona. Says she needs a skill. Blackface ain’t the thing. Got to be colleges somewhere for her kind. One thing he did in early fall was try to get her into schooling but the school in Paris wouldn’t take no Indian girl. And she a better girl than any living in America, John avers. Goddamn bitter-hearted world. Goddamn pig-headed world. Blind souls. Can’t they see what she is?

Tach Petrie comes in his own good time. Guess that’s how it was. Guess he had wounds to heal. One morning early waking we seen him standing far out on the farmland just outside a covert of old trees. We’re standing in Rosalee’s kitchen drinking coffee. Yesterday hail fell in great rocks that would kill a dog but there’s no sign of them now. He looked alone there in his black clothes and his gun laid across his arm. The stalks of the baccy plants still sticking up waiting for new flames. Going to be doing that job shortly and all the long work to start again. It don’t daunt us. I remember it as thinking I known it was Tach Petrie but at that distance how could I have known? Memory don’t like nothing but itself. He came on and now far to his left and right arose two others. Suddenly were there like ghosts. Testing the ground maybe. Could have snuck up from the land along the creek but chose this instead. It’s early and we maybe sleeping but still he stops just out of rifle range. He knows that range like a measuring rod. Bullet would hit him and fall off his jacket like a acorn. Lige says his reputation were for a coward but he don’t look like a coward this bright cold morning. We got two rifles and our two muskets and Rosalee and Winona are detailed to reload them when needed. Rifles just quicker and a store of shots. Lige and Tennyson take them and draw a bead along the barrels and they sitting in old chairs and from behind they look like children asleep on a father’s shoulder bent like that. But they watching Tach. Lige as all the world knows is a sharpshooter and there ain’t a trace of doubt in him. Three men going to die and it ain’t going to be anyone he loves or likes. Goddamn foolish yellowlegs, is what he says. Lost the war and going to lose this too. Then up from behind Tach Petrie somewhere rises after all about half a dozen more men. This makes Lige raise his head from his gun. He don’t say a word. Best check out back, he says to Rosalee. Stick your head out and make sure we not cooked on both sides. Rosalee clatters back through the house. Now fear creeps in like a hungry cockroach. Pit of the stomach troubled by it. I think I just might throw up that coffee. We got muskets trained on the two flanking men but we don’t have no troops in reserve to serve death to those new men. We still got the shelter of the house. Guess they’ll be happy if they can kill us today. Guess that other evening must have rankled. Crazy thought jumps into my head that I should don that dress. Crazy head thinking crazy. Tach Petrie comes on. It got a kinda military feel to it. Now the men go down and start to work along fallen trees and fences and woodpiles and whatever shelters. Now they maybe in range. Rosalee comes back and says she can’t see nothing sinister. She put the bar on the back door. Shutters fast on the windows. There’s been rain and floods so great just recent the ground between the house and the creek be only a quagmire. No man would try that slope. That’s true, says Lige. But this no man, this a devil and killer of men. Rosalee Bouguereau puts a hand on her bosom. Even so, even so. Now the wide land in front of the house looks empty. Where those boys? It’s cold just waiting and the fire ain’t lit. We got the windows up for firing and here comes the frosty wind crowding in. Porch keeps our place in shadows and hopefully the front looks just blank and black. Then you see a man running like a jackrabbit to make a new hide. Down he goes. There’s another. Creeping up on you like a childhood game. Lige has his snout down on his gun muzzle now and his head cocked sideways and he’s still as a painting. No, he won’t want to fire till he sees at least three men and then he’ll be happy to let them know we’re awake. Probably don’t have a God’s clue. We hope. But anyhow then Lige fires. Beautiful long clean shot that tears the hat off a running man and top of his head too, you can see far off as it is the big splash of blood. Man falls heavily and then Tennyson got a bead on one and fires. Man that can split a twig at fifty feet ain’t got no trouble shooting a running man. That’s two, we’re thinking. Fire’s returned and they’re just hoping to pot a rabbit blind. Everything quiet for a little and then I see three men reach the tobacco sheds. Get in behind the gable. A long cloud of dark unhelpful rain takes the pitch of colour off things. Brown and black world suddenly with the old smear of red paint across the sheds. Weather and time a good stripper of paint. We know straight off someone’s going to have to go out and head them off. This creeping up and waiting no good. Got to make a new vantage. Looks like the other four keeping well spread apart. But the three at the sheds ain’t peering out so that must mean they’re snaking round the back. That’s got to be down to me since my brain thinking that way. John Cole knows what I’m doing. He gets it without a word. So then I’m stooping and cross the floor and I lift the bar on the back door and Rosalee puts it back behind me, I hear the loud scrape. Just got a little ways to go in the open. I’m going to make my way round the big barn and then expect to see those creepers. I got a musket but also Lige’s repeating pistol, I ain’t naked. Feel cool and calm like I was going quiet for trout. Trout lying under a dark rock and don’t make a noise on the bank. Go, go, go. I hear firing behind me, a big clatter of firing, and bullets whining, both from the house and from the field. That puts vinegar on my cuts. Where are these lousy sonsabitches? Lousy sons creeping up and why didn’t their mothers tell them it were wicked to kill men? I inch my face around the barn gable. I see the three now, faced away at ninety degrees. The rain suddenly falls and steams down on their heads and my head. They’re more in the wind’s way and the wind burns against them like an ally. Only one has a long black coat and the rest look cold as orphans. I shoot the back man with the musket, drop it down, and pulling out the pistol fire on the second. Think I only wing that man and then I got to rush the first man or the deal is done. Still the big firing from the house front, but I can’t see. I don’t have no contract with no God and I ain’t God’s soldier nohow but I’m praying He will guard and keep Winona. You in the middle of a gunfight all you will think about’s Winona. John Cole can watch hisself. He’s canny. Lige and Tennyson. Rosalee she grown and wise. But Winona a flower of a girl and she’s our task. This man I’m bearing down on I see him clearer now. One of those ragged blear-eyed wandering types. Looks like a man might have walked out of some old life. Irish, God knows where. Walked out of some old life to here, with some crazy man he don’t know running at him. I get off two shots but my wanderer he quick and gets behind a trough. Then I’m the duck in the window and I got to throw myself through the air to make a shelter. Big old lump of iron was the case of some old boiler. The man’s bullets strike the iron, one, two, and make a sort of chord of noise. The Tennessee rain stops short and anyone would swear that Mr Noone or his celestial brother raised a great curtain from this stage of death. Big light of Tennessee dropped down. A flood of white and silver. The house is firing like a great corps of men and between the sheds and the barn I spot that Tach Petrie running, and waving his hand at his men out of view. Ain’t going to hit with a pistol from where I am. Going to have to storm that damn trough and the pig behind it. Well, God help me too in this endeavour, I’m thinking. I make my play. Here is the one big card of Life thrown down. God assist me, won’t You? Up I leap and try to make the gap. I feel a bullet tear across my shoulder. Or maybe my ear. I can’t tell. Or maybe my head. But down I go. Goddamn fool. The pistol bursts from my hand and goes skittering across the ground. My foe jumps out and runs at me back-bent. Don’t move, don’t move, he says. All hisses and curses. Stands on my hand and says, you move, you dead. Just move that hand one inch, you dead. I believe him. I look up and his dark and bitter face looking down. Strange eyes and face all puckered with scars. Looks like the world’s worst tailor stitched him. Still the guns blasting away and then suddenly silence and then voices. You move, you dead, the man says again. I’m surprised even by his mercy so far. Why don’t he just kill me? But men are strange and killing men are stranger. Then the big shooting starts again and I see flashing in the gap the running men, maybe Tach Petrie and his men are trying a rush. Firing and firing and men calling out. Queer to be there at the back of the barn with the new sky rearing like horses and as if we was breathing in a puddle of quiet. Me and that squinty man. This where it going to end then I don’t want to live without Winona and John Cole. Great clatter of bullets again and then silence again. My man looks left quickly to see what’s what. He don’t know the outcome no more than me. Hey, Tach, he calls, Tach Petrie? He don’t get no answer back. Tach Petrie, God damn it? But then a miracle occurs. There’s another man comes stepping round the sheds. Another man, not ours or theirs. A big solemn hefty man with sweating face. Heavy staring oxlike eyes. I know that face. My foe don’t even see him. The fat man fires. Takes off half my new friend’s face. The blood falls on my head, mingles with my blood. Jesus holy Christ. Where did he come from? Starling Carlton.

He don’t even say hello and he goes to the gap between the sheds and barn and starts shooting there. I’m wiping blood out of my eyes and the world is a ringing bell but I drag myself along and stand at his big back and peer out and see Tennyson standing straight up on the porch with his rifle ranged and firing out across the fields at figures running for the scrubby copses. Rosalee standing with a box of bullets and Tennyson only pausing to reload his Spencer. Then firing like a veritable trooper and also Starling firing and maybe Tennyson thinks it’s me. One foe man nearly made it to the house but he’s splayed in death and another further back has fallen and is just a black brushstroke on the frost. The rain that fell has frozen on the earth and that’s the tale it told. Then curious peace descends and the firing echoes in your brain and it’s like we taste the moments ticking by for Death but Death retreats. I yearn to know what’s happened in the house and why is John Cole not took his share of firing on the porch? Why our old galooting friend’s sprung up might be another question. My ear is spouting blood and the bell of time is queerly tolling and maybe then down I fall. Before I fall completely Starling stoops and drags me up and hoiks me against his shoulder. Goddamn Irish, he says, never could abide them.