Prayers to Broken Stones (36 page)

The incident must have disconcerted Captain Montgomery as well, because as soon as his leg popped free of
the hole he staggered back a few steps and sat down heavily with his back against the stone wall. “This is good enough, Boy,” he panted. “We’ll wait here.”

It was a good place for an ambush. The vines and grass grew waist high there, allowing us glimpses of the field beyond but concealing us as effectively as a duck blind. The wall sheltered our backs.

Captain Montgomery removed his topcoat and canvas bag and commenced to unload, clean, and reload his pistol. I lay on the grass nearby, at first thinking about what was going on back at the Reunion, then wondering about how to get the Captain back there, then wondering what Iverson had looked like, then thinking about home, and finally thinking about nothing at all as I moved in and out of a strange, dream-filled doze.

Not three feet from where I lay was another of the ubiquitous holes, and as I fell into a light slumber I remained faintly aware of the odor rising from that opening: the same sickening sweetness I had smelled earlier, but thicker now, heavier, almost erotic with its undertones of corruption and decay, of dead sea creatures drying in the sun. Many years later, visiting an abandoned meat processing plant in Chicago with a real estate agent acquaintance, I was to encounter a similar smell; it was the stench of a charnel house, disused for years but permeated with the memory of blood.

The day passed in a haze of heat, thick air, and insect noises. I dozed and awoke to watch with the Captain, dozed again. Once I seem to remember eating hard biscuits from his bag and washing them down with the last water from his wineskin, but even that fades into my dreams of that afternoon, for I remember others seated around us, chewing on similar fare and talking in low tones so that the words were indistinguishable but the southern dialect came through clearly. It did not sound strange to me. Once I remember awakening, even though I was sitting up and staring and had thought I was already awake, as the sound of an automobile along the Mummasburg Road shocked me into full consciousness. But the trees at the edge of the field shielded any traffic
from view, the sounds faded, and I returned to the drugged doze I had known before.

Sometime late that afternoon I dreamed the one dream I remember clearly.

I was lying in the field, hurt and helpless, the left side of my face in the dirt and my right eye staring unblinkingly at a blue summer sky. An ant walked across my cheek, then another, until a stream of them crossed my cheek and eye, others moving into my nostrils and open mouth. I could not move. I did not blink. I felt them in my mouth, between my teeth, removing bits of morning bacon from between two molars, moving across the soft flesh of my palate, exploring the dark tunnel of my throat. The sensations were not unpleasant.

I was vaguely aware of other things going deeper, of slow movement in the swelling folds of my guts and belly. Small things laid their eggs in the drying corners of my eye.

I could see clearly as a raven circled overhead, spiralling lower, landed nearby, paced to and fro in a wing-folding strut, and hopped closer. It took my eye with a single stab of a beak made huge by proximity. In the darkness which followed I could still sense the light as my body expanded in the heat, a hatchery to thousands now, the loose cloth of my shirt pulled tight as my flesh expanded. I sensed my own internal bacteria, deprived of other foods, digesting my body’s decaying fats and rancid pools of blood in a vain effort to survive a few more hours.

I felt my lips wither and dry in the heat, pulling back from my teeth, felt my jaws open wider and wider in a mirthless, silent laugh as ligaments decayed or were chewed away by small predators. I felt lighter as the eggs hatched, the maggots began their frenzied cleansing, my body turning toward the dark soil as the process accelerated. My mouth opened wide to swallow the waiting Earth. I tasted the dark communion of dirt. Stalks of grass grew where my tongue had been. A flower found rich soil in the humid sepulcher of my skull and sent its shoot curling upward through the gap which had once held my eye.

Settling, relaxing, returning to the acid-taste of the
blackness around me, I sensed the others there. Random, shifting currents of soil sent decaying bits of wool or flesh or bone in touch with bits of them, fragments intermingling with the timid eagerness of a lover’s first touch. When all else was lost, mingling with the darkness and anger, my bones remained, brittle bits of memory, forgotten, sharp-edged fragments of pain resisting the inevitable relaxation into painlessness, into nothingness.

And deep in that rotting marrow, lost in the loam-black acid of forgetfulness, I remembered. And waited.

“Wake up, Boy! It’s him. It’s Iverson!”

The urgent whisper shocked me up out of sleep. I looked around groggily, still tasting the dirt from where I had lain with my lips against the ground.

“Goddamnit, I
knew
he’d come!” whispered the Captain, pointing to our left where a man in a dark coat had come out of the woods through the gap in the stone wall.

I shook my head. My dream would not release me and I knuckled my eyes, trying to shake the dimness from them. Then I realized that the dimness was real. The daylight had faded into evening while I slept. I wondered where in God’s name the day had gone. The man in the black coat moved through a twilight grayness which seemed to echo the eerie blindness of my dreams. I could make out the man’s white shirt and pale face glowing slightly in the gloom as he turned in our direction and came closer, clearing a path for himself with short, sharp chops with a cane or walking stick.

“By God, it
is
him,” hissed the Captain and raised his pistol with shaking hands. He thumbed the hammer back as I watched in horror.

The man was closer now, no more than twenty-five feet away, and I could see the dark mustaches, black hair, and deepset eyes. It did indeed look like the man whose visage I had glimpsed by starlight in the old tintype.

Captain Montgomery steadied his pistol on his left arm and squinted over the sights. I could hear hisses of breath from the man in the dark suit as he walked closer, whistling
an almost inaudible tune. The Captain squeezed the trigger.

“No!” I cried and grabbed the revolver, jerking it down, the hammer falling cruelly on the web of flesh between my thumb and forefinger. It did not fire.

The Captain shoved me away with a violent blow of his left forearm and struggled to raise the weapon again even as I clung to his wrist. “No!” I shouted again. “He’s too young!
Look.
He’s too young!”

The old man paused then, his arms still straining, but squinting now at the stranger who stood less than a dozen feet away.

It was true. The man was far too young to be Colonel Iverson. The pale, surprised face belonged to a man in his early thirties at most. Captain Montgomery lowered the pistol and raised trembling fingers to his temples. “My God,” he whispered. “My God.”

“Who’s there?” The man’s voice was sharp and assured, despite his surprise. “Show yourself.”

I helped the Captain up, sure that the mustached stranger had sensed our movement behind the tall grass and vines but had not witnessed our struggles nor seen the gun. The Captain squinted at the younger man even as he straightened his hat and dropped the pistol in the deep pocket of his coat. I could feel the old man trembling as I steadied him upright.

“Oh, a veteran!” called the man and stepped forward with his hand extended, batting away the grasping vines with easy flicks of his walking stick.

We walked the perimeter of the Pits in the fading light, our new guide moving slowly to accommodate the Captain’s painful hobble. The man’s walking stick served as a pointer while he spoke. “This was the site of a skirmish before the major battles began,” he said. “Not many visitors come out here … most of the attention is given to more famous areas south and west of here … but those of us who live or spend summers around here are aware of some of these lesser-known spots. It’s quite interesting how the field is sunken here, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” whispered the Captain. He watched the ground, never raising his eyes to the young man’s face.

The man had introduced himself as Jessup Sheads and said that he lived in the small house we had noticed set back in the trees. The Captain had been lost in his confused reverie so I had introduced both of us to Mr. Sheads. Neither man paid notice of my name. The Captain now glanced up at Sheads as if he still could not believe that this was not the man whose name had tormented him for half a century.

Sheads cleared his throat and pointed again at the tangle of thick growth. “As a matter of fact, this area right along here was the site of a minor skirmish before the serious fighting began. The forces of the Confederacy advanced along a broad line here, were slowed briefly by Federal resistance at this wall, but quickly gained the advantage. It was a small Southern victory before the bitter stalemates of the next few days.” Sheads paused and smiled at the Captain. “But perhaps you know all this, sir. What unit did you say you have had the honor of serving with?”

The old man’s mouth moved feebly before the words could come. “20th North Carolina,” he managed at last.

“Of course!” cried Sheads and clapped the Captain on the shoulder. “Part of the glorious brigade whose victory this site commemorates. I would be honored, sir, if you and your young friend would join me in my home to toast the 20th North Carolina regiment before you return to the Reunion Camp. Would this be possible, sir?”

I tugged at the Captain’s coat, suddenly desperate to be away from there, lightheaded from hunger and a sudden surge of unreasoning fear, but the old man straightened his back, found his voice, and said clearly, “The boy and me would be honored, sir.”

The cottage had been built of tar-black wood. An expensive-looking black horse, still saddled, was tied to the railing of the small porch on the east side of the house. Behind the house, a thicket of trees and a tumble of boulders
made access from that direction seem extremely difficult if not impossible.

The house was small inside and showed few signs of being lived in. A tiny entrance foyer led to a parlor where sheets covered two or three pieces of furniture or to the dining room where Sheads led us, a narrow room with a single window, a tall hoosier cluttered with bottles, cans, and a few dirty plates, and a narrow plank table on which burned an old-style kerosene lamp. Behind dusty curtains there was a second, smaller room, in which I caught a glimpse of a mattress on the floor and stacks of books. A steep staircase on the south side of the dining room led up through a hole in the ceiling to what must have been a small attic room, although all I could see when I glanced upward was a square of blackness.

Jessup Sheads propped his heavy walking stick against the table and busied himself at the hoosier, returning with a decanter and three crystal glasses. The lamp hissed and tossed our shadows high on the roughly plastered wall. I glanced toward the window but the twilight had given way to true night and only darkness pressed against the panes.

“Shall we include the boy in our toast?” asked Sheads, pausing, the decanter hovering above the third wine glass. I had never been allowed to taste wine or any other spirits.

“Yes,” said the Captain, staring fixedly at Sheads. The lamplight shone upward into the Captain’s face, emphasizing his sharp cheekbones and turning his bushy, old-man’s eyebrows into two great wings of hair above his falcon’s beak of a nose. His shadow on the wall was a silhouette from another era.

Sheads finished pouring and we raised our glasses. I stared dubiously at the wine; the red fluid was dull and thick, streaked through with tendrils of black which may or may not have been a trick of the flickering lamp.

“To the 20th North Carolina Regiment,” said Sheads and raised his glass. The gesture reminded me of Reverend Hodges lifting the communion cup. The Captain and I raised our glasses and drank.

The taste was a mixture of fruit and copper. It reminded me of the days, months earlier, when a friend of
Billy Stargill had split my lip during a schoolyard fight. The inside of my lip had bled for hours. The taste was not dissimilar.

Captain Montgomery lowered his glass and scowled at it. Droplets of wine clotted his white whiskers.

“The wine is a local variety,” said Sheads with a cold smile which showed red-stained teeth. “Very local. The arbors are those which we just visited.”

I stared at the thickening liquid in my glass. Wine made from grapes grown from the rich soil of Iverson’s Pits.

Sheads’ loud voice startled me. “Another toast!” He raised his glass. “To the honorable and valiant gentleman who led the 20th North Carolina into battle. To Colonel Alfred Iverson.”

Sheads raised the glass to his lips. I stood frozen and staring. Captain Montgomery slammed his glass on the table. The old man’s face had gone as blood red as the spilled wine. “I’ll be goddamned to hell if I …” he spluttered. “I’ll … 
never!
”

The man who had introduced himself as Jessup Sheads drained the last of his wine and smiled. His skin was as white as his shirt front, his hair and long mustaches as black as his coat. “Very well,” he said and then raised his voice. “Uncle Alfred?”

Even as Sheads had been drinking, part of my mind had registered the soft sound of footsteps on the stairs behind us. I turned only my head, my hand still frozen with the glass of wine half-raised.

The small figure standing on the lowest step was a man in his mid-eighties, at least, but rather than wearing the wrinkles of age like Captain Montgomery, this old man’s skin had become smoother and pinker, almost translucent. I was reminded of a nest of newborn rats I had come across in a neighbor’s barn the previous spring—a mass of pale-pink, writhing flesh which I had made the mistake of touching. I did not want to touch Iverson.

The Colonel wore a white beard very much like the one I had seen in portraits of Robert E. Lee, but there was no real resemblance. Where Lee’s eyes had been sad and shielded under a brow weighted with sorrow, Iverson
glared at us with wide, staring eyes shot through with yellow flecks. He was almost bald and the taut, pink scalp reinforced the effect of something almost infantile about the little man.