Varina(69)

Bristol drew his navy pistol and pulled two shots faster than the mind could register. One hole in the forehead and an ugly red mess blowing out the back onto the plaster wall. One heartbeat, and all that bragging falsehood Ryland made up on the rail platform in Richmond became prophecy.

Elgin wasn’t surprised any more than a candle flame is surprised when you lick your fingers and pinch it out. Light, then dark. He fell as if he had just suddenly decided to lie down. But he was dead before he hit the floor.

And before Bristol even recognized what he’d done, V wheeled and slapped him hard. A roundhouse blow to the side of his head. He still held his smoking pistol aimed toward the space the dead boy had occupied before collapsing. Ryland lay peaceful ten feet away as if asleep, and Bristol looked too stunned to form tears in his eyes.

V looked at the two dead boys and back at Bristol and began to view that arrangement of bodies anew, as a feature of her current world needing to be understood.

She said, I’m sorry I did that.

She tried to hug Bristol, but he wouldn’t stand still for it.

All the children, both groups, either cried and wailed or were too terrified to move. Belle’s people hushed their children and put themselves, their bodies, between their children and V’s people. Billy had burrowed up under the pile of quilts and lay sobbing. Maggie still had her eyes closed and held her hands over her ears, and Jeffy and Jimmie stared at the bodies in disbelief. V and Ellen and Burton got to their knees and hugged the children and patted heads and tried to turn the little boys away, but Jimmie and Jeffy kept looking back at the bodies and the blood. Delrey stayed where he was, with the shotgun ready and watching everybody closely.

When it seemed like the shooting was done, Belle went to Elgin and touched his neck where the pulse would have been, and then she took an indigo kerchief from her apron pocket and spread it over his face.

—What are we going to do now? Belle said.

—Sunrise, new world, Bristol said.


DAWN JUST A HAZE TO THE EAST, V and Ellen carried the sleeping children out to the ambulance in blankets while Delrey tacked and harnessed the horses.

Burton and Bristol dug two holes in the plantation cemetery. No boxes, just red rectangles cut deep in Georgia clay. Wide pine floor puncheons for markers, names and dates scratched by knifepoint. When they finished digging and had the bodies settled, Belle and her people came out of the house and stood over their little dead master before he got shoveled under. V came from the ambulance and stood with Bristol and Burton.

Belle looked down in the hole at Elgin, arms crossed and the kerchief over his face. She turned to Bristol and said, I think you ought to say some words.

—You knew him since he was a baby, Bristol said. You should say something in his favor.

—Not my place.

Bristol turned to Burton, and Burton lifted his shoulders a fraction. V looked Bristol in the eye and gripped his wrist a second and nodded yes.

Bristol stepped up to the hole and said, I didn’t have one thing against you, Elgin. All we wanted was to get out of the rain. We didn’t know this place was anything but a burnt plantation. We shared our food. I’d made it through my part of the war without killing or getting killed. And then you shot Ry for no reason but ignorant pride. I’ll never forgive you, and I’ll try every day to forget you. But I probably won’t be able to. You don’t deserve to be remembered one minute past right now. I’m done talking, and if anybody here wants to argue, this is the time.

Belle’s people looked at each other, and then Belle said, I wish you’d finish by saying those words you said last night.

—New world coming? Burton said.

—Yes, Belle said. That’ll do.

The freed slaves turned and walked back toward the burned plantation house.

Delrey left the horses and walked over to the graves and removed his hat. Ryland rested chalky in the bottom of his hole. Bristol climbed down and X-ed Ryland’s forearms over his chest and heaped clean-smelling pine boughs to cover him.

When Bristol finished all the tasks except the shoveling, V said, Do you want to say something?

Bristol said, Ry’s gone. And what he’d want would be for me to tell a joke. But I don’t know anything funny enough right now.

Bristol patted palm to chest three times and started shoveling. When he had a mound of red Georgia clay he pitched the shovel away and walked to the horses and wagons. V walked with him. She said, Did you mean that? About worrying you’ll remember that boy forever?

Bristol said, I won’t even know whether I meant it for a long time. But right now I’m more afraid your children will dream all their lives about the killings. Pictures of me with a gun in my hand triggering the last shot.

V touched his shoulder and said, They’re so young. I’ll shape their memories so last night won’t be anything but thunder and lightning and a warm place in a nest of quilts by the fire.

The fugitives headed on down the road toward Terra Florida, escaping to its wildness and freedom. Ryland’s mule trailed on a hemp line from the back of the wagon, trotting easy without a burden.

*

James watches the landscape flow across the railcar window, left to right. A sprinkle of rain beads on the glass and deepens the greens of grass and leaves.

He looks over his notes from the day, and at the end he writes,

I don’t even know whether past feelings and memories deserve any respect at all. Maybe they’re no more important than a pinch of pain from an injury decades old. Feelings and memories rise and pass every day, like the weather. Only important at the moment. Why not just notice them and let them go?