The Cellar (10 page)

“I had to check on our guest, Marcus.  I
am much concerned about his health.”  She said, ignoring the big man’s
concern.  She was drenched to the skin, having come out with no umbrella or
other covering to ward off the rain.  Her hair was plastered to her skull and
her clothing was soaked and clung to her body.  For once she looked her age and
then some.  Ike found himself sharing Marcus’ concern for the woman’s health.

Mrs. Pendleton picked up the lantern and
held it high so she could examine Ike.  She scanned him from head to foot as he
stood before her.  She paid particular attention to his face and spent some
time examining it.  Her manner made him squirm as she stared into his eyes.

“Are you feeling well, young man?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m fine.  I think you should
get dried off as soon as possible though, you’re shaking.  Please let Marcus
take you upstairs and get you situated, he is concerned about you.  I’ll be
fine.”

Still staring at Ike as if he might be a
vision she spoke slowly and flatly. “I received a troubling letter from General
Forrest’s staff today.  Todd has been wounded, he will survive, but I’m afraid
he will be marred for the rest of his life.  I do not understand how this could
have happened.  I was so sure that he would be under God’s care and would be
spared from harm.” She paused and began to sob.  “It…isn’t….fair. 
It…just….wasn’t….supposed….to…..happen…this….way!” She said, her sobs
punctuating the words as she spat them out.  She collapsed into Marcus’ arms
and continued her crying.

Marcus carried his now wailing mistress
back up the steps.  The door was left open and Ike closed it himself to keep
out the rain.  He stood at the bottom of the steps and looked at the unbarred
door.

“Ikey……this might be your chance.”  Johnny
said softly as if someone else might be listening.

Ike listened to the footsteps above for a
few moments.  He looked around for anything that might be of use to him.  He
grabbed the poncho off the spike and took the knife from the serving tray and
stuck it in the top of his right boot.  He looked around the room that had been
his home for months.  His eyes fell on the Volume of Sir Walter Scott and he
paused for a few moments as if thinking of bringing it with him.

“Ikey, you need to move…now!”  Johnny’s
voice came with more urgency.

Ike swallowed hard and bolted up the
steps.  He took the steps two at a time, being careful not to make too much
noise and started out into the rain.  He stood in the yard and tried to decide
on a direction.

“Go to your right Ike….now!”  Johnny
shouted.  “The creek will be up so you got to go to higher ground….get movin’
before you lose your nerve!  Go around towards the road!”

Ike went around the side of the house and
headed toward the lane that he remembered marching down in what seemed like
some other life.  He was stopped in his tracks however by the sight of the four
graves.  Carved wooden markers had been placed at the heads of each of the
mounds.  Grass and ivy had begun to cover them and flowers had been planted
near the markers.  He had the urge to stop and pray over the remains of his
friends but Johnny was screaming at him to move on.  A lightning flash revealed
the name on one of the markers…. “Joseph Pendleton 1843 -1862”

“Ikey, you can’t stop!  You don’t have
time for that!  Get into those woods, Marcus is comin’ for you!” 

Ike had just started toward the woods
where the attackers had waited in ambush for his squad when something thumped
against the back of his head and dropped him to the muddy ground.  He was
knocked unconscious before he could complete his escape.

Once again Ike awoke in darkness.  His head throbbed
and he felt feverish.  A bandage was wrapped snugly around the top of his head
and another looped downward over his right eye.
 
 He had to cough and
when he did everything hurt even worse, especially his eye.  He had never felt
so miserable as he did at this moment.  His chest was congested, his head hurt,
and his eye, something was very wrong with his eye.         

“Ikey, can you hear me?”  Johnny’s voice came sounding
tentative.

“Yes, Johnny, I hear you.   Where am I?”

“Back home in your cellar I’m afraid.”

“What happened?”

“You didn’t move fast enough.  Marcus heard you come
up the steps and he caught you and conked you in the head with a piece of stove
wood so you wouldn’t get away.  He was mighty afraid that he killed you.  The
big fella carried you back down to the cellar like you was a baby or
somethin’.  He cried like a baby himself ‘til he figured out your skull wasn’t
crushed.  I think you may ‘of got you a case of newmonie from bein’ out in that
rain.”

“My eye, Johnny!   What happened to my eye?”  Ike
moaned.

“She took it out, Ike.  She kept a mutterin’ about how
her boy Todd lost an eye in a battle and it made her so plum mad at God for
lettin’ her boy get hurt that she decided to get even with him and take it out
on you.   I know it don’t make no sense but that poor woman has just clean lost
her mind.”

Ike’s aching head reeled with the realization of what
had happened to him.  The thought of having lost an eye was sickening.  He felt
like he was going to retch and went into another coughing fit and nearly passed
out.

“Johnny, did Marcus help her?”

“No, he had went upstairs to get you some clean sheets
and stuff and she came down here with an ole’ black bag
that musta’ been her husband’s.  She did it quick
while you was unconscious.  She pulled it out and cut whatever holds it in with
a scalpel and plopped it in a jar fulla’ alkyhol or somethin’ like she was a
keepin’ it to look at or give to her boy.  She packed yer’ eye hole with some
cotton and salve to keep it from bleedin’ and just wrapped you up like she was
a settin’ a broke leg or somethin’”

“Marcus come in and stood there like somebody pole
axed him.  She just looked at him and proceeded to wrap you up.  He looked at
her and looked at yer’ eye in the jar and then he looked back at her kinda
angry like.  I thought for a minute he was a gonna’ kill her or somethin’.  He
raised that big hand up like he was about to strike her down, then he stopped
and just looked at his hand as he brought it down.  He just stood there and
stared at her like she was somethin’ he’d never seen before.”

“She finished with you and then she turned to Marcus
just like what she was a doin’ was the most normal thing in the world.  She
quoted a Bible verse to him; she said ‘And if any mischief follow, then thou
shalt give life for life,  Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot
for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’  And she
started puttin’ stuff back in that bag.”

“Then ol’ Marcus come back and says ‘Thou shalt not
avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself.’”  Johnny said in a deep serious tone as if he
was mimicking the way Marcus had spoken.  “That woman stopped what she was a
doin’ like she had been slapped and then she just locked eyes with him.  It was
like they was makin’ a contest out of it.  Them two just stood there and stared
at each other for a while until she finally blinked and started back up the
stairs.  The big fella’ stayed a gazin’ down at you and a lookin’ sad.  He
dropped to his knees and closed his eyes and prayed.  Now I ‘seen lotsa’ folks
pray before but I never saw anybody look any more sincere about it than he did. 
He looked like one of them pictures of Jesus prayin’ in the garden, I half
expected him to sweat blood.  They’s a lot more to that big darky than most
folks black or white.  The way he rattled off that Bible verse I bet he can
read ‘bout as good as you can.”

Ike lay and listened to Johnny’s account.  Any doubt
about the reality of his personal ghost or guardian was forgotten for now, he
was sure that things must have happened just as they had been described. 
“Johnny, do you think I’m safe?”

“You are for now, Ikey.  I don’t think Marcus will let
her hurt you any more if he can stop her, but she’s crazy as a bedbug and
sneaky to boot.  We need to get you out of here as soon as you heal up some.  I
sure wish I coulda’ done somethin’ to stop her from cuttin’ on you like that
Ike.  I hollered and carried on all the while she was workin’ on you.  She even
stopped and looked around once, but I didn’t get through to her.  I guess it’s
just not somethin’ I’m allowed to do.”  Johnny paused for a few moments. “S’pose
it coulda’ been worse, Todd coulda’ got his balls shot off like I did.”

“Thanks for the cheerful thought.”  Ike responded.  “I
think I need to sleep now, Johnny.”

Ike’s dreams were populated with specters of hideously
wounded men.  There were men with arms and legs missing, men with massive
disfiguring head wounds, men who had been burned so badly that their own
mothers wouldn’t recognize them and would be traumatized by the sight of them. 
He dreamed of walking up the path to his own home and seeing Emma.  She turned
her head to him and revealed a patch over her own right eye and then she
screamed at the sight of him.  Freddy was missing an eye as well and barked at
Ike as if he were a stranger.  

Nathan Bedford Forrest galloped through the landscape
of Ike’s subconscious.  Ike had glimpsed Forrest briefly at “Fallen Timbers”
and would long remember the man’s striking appearance.  Riding at the tall
Cavalier’s right hand was a one eyed young cavalryman.  The rider had Ike’s
face and bearing and wore a black patch over his right eye.  The blue left eye
winked at Ike mischievously.  He was dressed not in the uniform of the
Confederacy but wore a plumed hat, tall boots, and the archaic regalia of a
French Musketeer from an illustration in one of Jasper Pendleton’s volumes. 
The rider looked at Ike and shouted cheerfully “Don’t worry Ike; I still have
another eye left!”

Forrest looked at Ike as well and chimed in “Yes, he
still has an eye, and so do you…..for now!” before tilting his head back and
laughing so loudly that it made Ike’s head throb.  The riders screamed “the
Rebel Yell” and plunged into a cringing group of Yankees.  Ike’s own squad
quaked as they were savaged by Forrest and his men.  The laughing screeching
Rebels slashed the blue coats with their sabers and trampled their victims
under the hooves of their horses.  Todd drew a massive wheel lock pistol and
fired point blank at Sarge, whose head exploded in gore as the ball passed
through his right eye.

Ike drifted in and out of consciousness for several
days as his body fought to survive the ravages of his respiratory infection and
the shock from the blow to his head and the loss of his right eye.  Fever and
chills alternated as he fought off infections for which there were no remedies
available.  More than once he stood at the brink of death and on one occasion
he saw the dead members of his squad standing before him with welcoming smiles,
his brother Jim was with them, looking as fit and proud as had been on the day
he first received his blue uniform.  There was a shallow stream between himself
and his friends and his only thought was to cross it and join them.  Johnny
stepped forward and smiled “Not yet, Ikey!  You got a thing or two left to do
on that side old buddy!” Ike moaned in his sleep when he saw someone else among
the small crowd awaiting him, someone else who shouldn’t have been there.

In near lucid moments Ike saw Marcus staring down at
him.  The broad brown face showed anguish as the big gentle hands tended to
Ike’s needs. 

Micheline Pendleton’s face swam into his field of view
on a few occasions.  Her concern for his well being was obvious but she was
kept at a distance.  Ike sensed Marcus was keeping her from approaching too
closely.  She also appeared in dreams.  One time she was carrying Ike’s eye in
a jar of clear liquid.  The eye seemed to stare at Ike as the woman chanted “If
thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out!”

After nearly two weeks of fighting for his life Ike’s
fever broke, his body had won out over the infection and he was beginning to
heal.  He was still weak from the ordeal but he was recovering.  He was no
longer coughing as much and he was awake more and able to think rather than
merely dream.

When he was able to sit up and look around he noticed
to his horror that there was a shackle on his left foot attached to a chain
whose other end was fixed to a ring that had been mortared into the stone wall
of the cellar.  The shackle was padded with soft cloth apparently to keep it
from chafing his ankle.  The two halves of the shackle were held together on
one side with a rivet and the other with a sturdy padlock that connected the
whole affair to the end of the chain.  It was obvious that Marcus sympathies
went only so far.  Ike was not meant to leave.

Ike stared at the old fashioned “smokehouse” style
lock that kept him fettered.  The keyhole stared back at him with a one eyed wink,
as if it knew some secret knowledge that he had yet to discover. 

Johnny murmured reassurances to Ike from time to time
in what Ike thought might be his more sane interludes.   The fact that he felt
more rational having conversations with a dead man was disturbing in itself,
but Johnny’s voice was a comfort to him in his isolation.   He couldn’t escape
the thought that somehow his mind had been affected by his original head wound
during the ambush and Johnny was a symptom of the damage.   

Ike had seen plenty of other soldiers who were
mentally or emotionally impaired by either physical wounds or by the exposure
to so much violence.  Some merely sat and stared into space, seemingly unaware
of their surroundings.  Others developed tics and talked to themselves or spoke
with invisible companions.  The distinguishing difference between these men and
their conversations and his communication with Johnny was that they talked out
loud and ignored actual persons who were present.  It was not unusual at all
for soldiers to have night terrors and wake up screaming from having relived
some battlefield horror beyond their conscious mind’s ability to process during
waking hours.

“Ikey, you must be gettin’ a wee bit better.  You’re a
layin’ there with your eye open and thinkin’ ‘bout whether or not I’m real or
some sort of mental problem.”  Johnny cackled.

“I don’t know if you are a mental problem, Johnny, but
I do believe that you had a mental problem when you were alive and you don’t
seem to have improved much.”

“Why Ikey, I’m just as sane as you are!”  Johnny said
laughing raucously.  “I know you’re better now, since you’re so cranky.”

“Johnny, do you remember me standing beside a creek
and seeing a crowd on the other side?”

“I was in that crowd Ikey.  You were almost to the
point of comin’ over to us, but your time ain’t at hand yet.”

“Johnny, why did I see Emma with them?”

Johnny took a few moments to respond.  Ike had the
impression that his companion was consulting with someone else.  “She’s on the
other side alright Ike.  She’s waitin’ for you.  I know you tried to forget
that she died ‘cause it was too painful for you to remember.  You’re gettin’
stronger now and you’re gonna have to deal with it sometime.  Ikey, she says it
wasn’t your fault even though you somehow got it in your head that it was.  The
lightnin’ hit the house and set it on fire.  She tried to get out but she
knocked over a lamp and the oil caught fire and it was over for her pretty
quick.  She said her last thoughts were about you.”

“You talked to her?”  Ike said, feeling a pang of
something like jealousy.

“She loves you Ike.  She always loved you, even when
you was a drinkin’ too much.  She wants you to know that.”

“Why can’t I talk to her, why am I stuck with you?”

“Don’t know Ikey, that’s way above me.  I don’t think
most folks even get somebody like me, you just seemed to need somebody and I
had some work to do yet and here I am.  Hey, you coulda’ got ol’ Charlie Olson
and you know what a stutterer he was, and besides he didn’t know you as well as
I do.”

“I need to get out of here more than ever Johnny, but
now I’m chained.”

“I think ol’ Marcus might a lot more sympathetic now,
he either has the key or knows where it is.”

“But he’s the one that put the chain on me I’m sure.”

“And he might just be the one to unlock it too Ikey. 
Don’t give up hope, it’s one of them three important things the apostle talked
about you know; faith, hope, and charity.”

“You’re starting to sound more like an angel.”

“Well, I always liked it when people put things simple. 
Them three things always made sense to me, I cain’t quote chapter an’ verse
like you and Mama Pendleton, I just know that it was Paul a writin’ one of his
letters, but I always tried to understand things on my level.  Right now you
need all three of those good things, I know that the last one may be pretty
hard for you.  It’s gonna’ be hard to be charitable towards that crazy woman,
but I think you have to try to love your enemies.  You got love on your side
though, God loves you, Emma loves you, and I love you.  I think that’s one
reason I got so lucky, you was the best friend I ever had and somehow that gave
me the job of lookin’ out for you to help redeem my sorry self.”