Varina(46)

—Were you still there when Richmond fell? Burton said.

—Yes, sir.

—Y’all got names? Delrey said.

The tall one said he was Ryland and the smaller blond was Bristol.

Ryland said, We left town on the train the president escaped on. Like fleeing hell.

Bristol said, We’ve mostly been under General Duke since Greensboro, after the rail bridges got blown up and we had to travel by horse and wagon and afoot.

—Is Basil all right? V asked.

—Yes, ma’am, Bristol said. Last I saw of him, General Duke had a metal mirror tacked to a tree and was shaving and looked like he was going to a ball.

—And Judah?

—Mister Benjamin was telling jokes and smoking big Cuban cigars, Ryland said.

—And reciting poems, Bristol said. Especially “The Death of Wellington.”

Ryland said, I heard him say that one so many times I remember a line that goes, Hush, the Dead March wails in the people’s ears. And then something about sobs and tears and black earth yawning. The way Mr. Benjamin said that rhyme—ears and tears—was pretty funny.

—I expect it was, V said. And Mister Davis?

Ryland said, He didn’t look good at all for a while. Then after Charlotte when things went really bad and it was clear the war was lost, he got sort of happy seeming and rode along talking about horse bits and bird dogs and books he read a long time ago. Except probably he wasn’t figuring he’d soon have a fat bounty on his head.

—Bounty? V said.

—For conspiring to kill Lincoln. And—goes without saying—for treason.

—Lincoln’s been killed?

—Yes, ma’am. And by a Southerner. The big money reward’s on your husband, a hundred thousand. But they claimed pretty much anybody close to him or high in the government aided and abetted and conspired, so they’ve got a price on them too. Clay, Stephens, everybody big. You too, Mister Harrison. Twenty-five thousand apiece.

—That’s nothing but rumors along the road, Delrey said.

—Not exactly, Bristol said. We read it for ourselves. General Duke showed us a newspaper before they paid us and cut us loose.

Burton stepped his horse over to the ambulance. He and Delrey and V mumbled about the boys, the requirements to get in the academy, and the training the cadets would have gotten. Not to mention the family connections they would have needed in the first place. And since the fugitive party had dwindled to such a small hard core, they could use help.

Burton circled his horse back to the boys and said, You wouldn’t mind riding with us for a few days, would you? If what you say is true, we could travel faster if we had help making fires and washing pots and pans and dishes, taking care of the horses and that sort of thing? Doing whatever comes up? If you’re willing, we’ll be making camp in a couple of hours, and we’ll put you right to work.

—Happy to be of service, Bristol said.

—We can’t pay much at all, Burton said.

Ryland laughed and said, That also goes without saying.

V said, Maybe later you can tell us about that last day in Richmond. We haven’t gotten reliable news for a long time. Third-or fourth-hand at best.


THEY STOPPED EARLY to camp and cook supper and feed the horses and mules, and to let the children run around before dark. Also to plan how to deal with the latest threat, how to avoid people, how to become invisible. They made camp a good way off the road in pinewoods by an abandoned hayfield greening up after winter. Ellen cooked and the navy boys untacked and fed horses and mules and took them in pairs on lead lines to graze.

The children played in the new grass at the edge of the field, happy to be free from the wagon-bed. They chased each other, and Maggie spun with her arms out until she fell over dizzy and stared at the sky until the world stopped whirling. And then the boys all did it too. They cartwheeled and tried to walk on their hands and tumbled like circus acrobats. Jimmie showed them how to pluck a wide blade of fresh grass and hold it just right between the joints of their thumbs and blow across it and work their mouths to make high-pitched buzzing music.

V sat on the trunk of a big deadfall shortleaf pine and watched them and looked across the hayfield, its perspective flowing away in an hourglass shape, the borders and pinched waist delineated by dark tall incursions of pinewood. The sun fell low, and the light in the sky above the far end of the field stained upward from apricot to indigo. Tree shadows stretched across the new grass. How wonderful if that could be sufficient to our needs, a vision of static beauty without motion or change.

Burton and Delrey came and sat on either side of her, and she cupped their wrists with her hands and gripped them tight. Ellen came and stood with her arms crossed, holding her elbows

V said, That can’t be true, what they said about Lincoln and the bounties?

—Exaggeration probably, Delrey said. But, smoke and fire. There’ll be truth somewhere in it.

Tears welling in her eyes, she said, We’re all lost now. They will punish us for the war, fair enough. But Lincoln would have let us up easy. Now, they’ll hunt us all down. Even the friends who helped us in Abbeville will face charges. The Burts and Mary Chesnut arrested for aiding and abetting. Every preacher where we slept in a chapel to get out of the rain, that farm where the widow let us sleep in her dry barn.

Delrey said, Ma’am, we don’t know what’s coming behind us. Worry about staying in motion, going forward. They don’t catch us, they can’t hurt us. We make it to Florida and find a boat running south down the Gulf, nothing they can do. We’ll be sailing blue water, eating fried grouper instead of moldy old bacon and musty grits. Skip down through the Keys and cross the Florida Straits to Havana. After that, Yankees can call us whatever brand of criminal they care to. We start over again without reference to their opinions. I ain’t scared. I’ve lost everything I had two times already and built it back. I’m not so old I can’t live through it one more time, and I’m the oldest one among us by at least ten years.