Varina(44)

—Sure, Jimmie said.

—Well, I believe I’ll take me a nap, then. Wake me up when we get to Florida. You’ll know we’re there when you start seeing alligators.

Delrey slouched down a little on the wagon bench and pretended to snore.


A NIGHT LATER AT CAMP, almost bedtime, they heard horses trotting on the road and then heard them stop. As they had planned, Ellen eased the children off into the woods out of earshot, and Delrey hid outside the ring of campfire light with his shotgun and pistol ready in case of trouble.

At the campfire, V and Burton were joined by three bummers, raiders, deserters, or killers—whatever you want to call leftovers and scavengers from Sherman’s army. Maybe they were just stray northern shop clerks conscripted against their wills a year before and had spent their few months of war trying to figure out which end of the gun you aimed at the enemy and now were lost on their way home. Except that’s not at all how they looked and acted. They looked like they wanted what you had and would kill you to get it but would slightly prefer you just handed it over.

Burton sat on a log with his right hand loose by his side so he could reach his pistol. He talked polite. Had they come from the east? Were things bad there? Or from back toward Atlanta? He and V had agreed to be calm, friendly, not be angered by anything people said until they made their intentions clear. Not react to taunts or insults or rude words. If it went bad, hit the dirt fast and give Delrey room to fill the air with lead shot.

The man with the black beard and the red-haired man talked vague. The thin, pale man stayed silent. One thing rang clear in their voices. They did not come from around here.

V said, I can’t place your accents exactly, but I’m going to guess north of Baltimore and south of Boston.

—Easy guess, the red-haired man said. Most of the world’s somewhere between the two.

He stood up and walked about five steps from the fire and pulled his britches down on one side until it seemed like he intended to strip bare. But he stopped with just his hip exposed to the firelight, and on it a big pearly welted letter D. He patted it like a pet and said, Supposed to teach me a lesson. Down here you probably just shoot deserters in the head. We brand them.

The black beard man said, Good God, you can’t piss right here.

The red-haired man turned his back and looked over his shoulder and said, I’m not aiming to piss right here. I’m aiming to piss way over yonder.

He made a graceful gesture with his left hand and arm, the smooth arc of a dolphin rising to take a breath of air. And then he let fly.

The black beard man smiled—a white flash of teeth, and then his mouth snapped shut and the lower half of his face became nothing but beard again.

He said, Doesn’t really matter if you people know where we’re from or not, but we’re from Pennsylvania. Red and me got conscripted halfway through the war. It was us set fire to Atlanta and left on the Decatur Road with everything burning down. Blue sky ahead, black smoke behind. From there we angled southeast and left a black stripe nearly a hundred miles wide all the way across this shithole state to the ocean. We were a big machine. It took fifteen thousand horses and mules to haul our stuff. Just picture that. We had orders to seize everything we could eat, everything our horses and mules could eat, with a surplus of minimum two weeks. We took all their beeves and pigs and chickens, whatever crops still stood in the fields, whatever the farmers had put away, dried and canned and smoked. We had orders not to enter their houses and steal stuff unless we felt they’d worked against us—burnt bridges or hid food. Entirely up to our discretion, so that rule didn’t mean much. At big plantations, no rules at all. Just wide open. We were free to bust in wherever we thought there might be something valuable—cash money, boxes of jewelry, cupboards full of silver forks and spoons. In smaller places, you quit bothering because all you’d find was just pitiful cigar boxes of low-number coins.

—And him? V said, looking at the pale man. He’s from Pennsylvania too?

—I don’t know. Somewhere. He’s seen the whole show from the start. Name a bad fight and he was probably in it. He’s about done now.

—Done with the war? Burton said.

Red said, With everything you could name. He’s looking to venge himself against the world.

—I’m sure they’ll welcome you heroes back home with brass bands, Burton said.

The bearded man said, How many have you killed the past four years? We’ve shot so many men better than you it’s sickening.

Burton didn’t answer.

—What did you all do before the war? V said.

Red said, Shoe factory.

The bearded man tipped his head toward the pale man and said, Foundry. And for me, stockyard.

What is it you’re wanting from us? Burton said.

The bearded man smiled his quick white smile.

Red said, What you got?

The pale man leaned into the firelight. He looked consumptive, blue around the eyes and fragile. He stood at least six feet but wouldn’t have gone better than one-twenty. He had been hit bad in the face. Every piece of skin you could see had scars either gouged or burned. His mouth drew up on one side over his back teeth in a permanent wolfish grin. The eye on that side lay dead and milky in his face. About the only thing left normal about him was his nose and the other eye. And that good eye was the scariest thing about him. It looked out at the world like he was meeting God and didn’t give a damn how he might be judged.