Totentanz (17 page)

He was awakened by the strike of something
flat and heavy against his ribs. He grunted and rolled over,
blinking at bright sunshine and the even brighter blue of the sky
overhead. A shape was partially blocking that light, and he soon
focused on it, pulling himself up into a sitting position. The
figure was gray-clad, and his heart sank.

"Get on up, Yankee boy," the soldier said,
prodding him hard with the butt end of his rifle. When Jeff made a
tentative move, his swollen leg collapsed and he fell back down.
The soldier butted him harder, in the same spot.

"I said get up, boy."

"I think my leg's broken," he told the
soldier, trying to sound reasonable.

"Bull-drop it is. Get up." Again the flat of
the rifle rammed into the same sore spot.

Not realizing what he was doing, Jeff rose
with a shout and grappled with the rebel. The graycoat gave a bawl
of surprise and fell back in the drying mud. They wrestled as if
they were in a farmyard pen back home. To his surprise, Jeff easily
mastered his adversary, taking his gun and throwing it off to one
side. He had planted two solid jabs on the other's jaw and drawn
his fist back again when he was hit solidly on the head from behind
and went down.

He awoke this time to find two soldiers
standing over him: the one he had beaten to the ground and another
who had apparently been doing sweep-up with him. He felt soreness
not only in his leg and on the back of his head, but in his ribs
and farther down his back, around his kidneys. They had obviously
worked him over after he blacked out. When he put his arm to his
head, another kick landed on his back, and he rolled over with a
loud exclamation.

"Seems we got us something real special
here," one soldier said to the other.

"Get up," the one who had originally found
him said in a harsh tone.

Jeff pulled his legs under him and sat up,
waiting for further blows and half covering his head.

"Sure hope you're a reb, boy," the second
soldier said.

"He don't look like no reb," the other said.
And then he laughed hoarsely. "Get th' hell to your feet."

Jeff got up, an ache at a time, and then he
discovered that his uniform was gone. He was clad only in his long
johns.

"Put your clothes back on," one of the two
rebels said. Jeff got his first good look at him. He was no more
than sixteen, without a trace of chin hair. He had mean, hard eyes.
The other looked ten years older but had the same grit-filled look
about him. The younger, smaller one indicated a pile of civilian
clothes on the ground at Jeff's feet.

"Where's my uniform?" Jeff asked.

"Them's your clothes; put 'em on," the older
one said.

"Give me my uniform," Jeff said, trying to
demand but knowing how weak his voice really was.

The older Confederate shook his head and
grunted. "Sure hope for his sake he ain't no spy," he laughed, and
then the other one stepped forward, and soon Jeff was on the ground
again.

When he rose to consciousness, it was
nighttime and he was in the back of an open wagon. The moon was up
and almost full. There was stationary torchlight off to his right,
which meant the wagon was standing still. He sat up, putting his
hands on his knees, and discovered that he had been dressed in the
civilian clothes: an overlarge jacket and vest, and too-short
pants, no shoes and unmatched socks. The pants itched him, but this
was the least of his worries. When he tried to lower himself from
the wagon, he saw that it was being guarded by two soldiers who,
with glaring looks, made sure he stayed where he was.

"Bring him here, Sergeant," he heard a voice
say in the darkness. In another moment he was half-carried,
half-walked toward what looked to be, in the moon and torchlight,
an officer.

The officer addressed him. "Can you stand on
your own?" With a leap of hope, Jeff noted that the man's voice was
not without kindness.

Jeff nodded; but when the sergeant and his
escort released him, he promptly sank to the ground. A camp stool
was brought for him, and he was made to sit on it. Someone gave him
a tin cup filled with coffee.

The officer let him drink for a moment and
then spoke. "I'm sure you're aware of the predicament I'm in—" he
began, but Jeff cut him off.

"I am Jeffrey Scott, Third Union Army,
Fourteenth Infantry. My uniform was forcibly stripped from me by
two of your men. I was put in these clothes against my will." He
looked as steadily as he could at the officer. "I am not a
spy."

The officer tapped the fingers of one hand
against the back of the other and regarded Jeff soberly.

"I probably shouldn't say
this," he said. He paused, clasped his hands behind his back. "In
fact, I know I shouldn't. If I chose, I could have you tried right
now, even in the condition you're in; could have you shot in the
morning. But I know those boys of mine who brought you in, and I
know they're lying. Your clothes don't fit. You're a Union man, all
right, but you're no spy. Why in hell would a spy, dressed in
civilian clothes, be out in the middle of that battlefield?" He
stopped, turned his back on Jeff. "I don't like the North. I don't
like what it's done to this country or the way it's running this
war. My job is not to like Union soldiers." His hands gripped one
another tightly. But I don't like what's been done to you. It's
just not . . . right. I've got people up North, family; always have
had." He turned around, and Jeff saw how angry he was. "And dammit.
I can't stand not to act like a
gentleman
!" He moved closer. "This
is what I've done. I've sent an envoy to your people, asking for an
exchange of prisoners. I want two of my soldiers for their one
captured spy. If they respond, I'll send you back.
Otherwise—"

"What about the two men who did this to
me?"

The officer furrowed his brow. "I've got a
whole company to worry about. I think you know what would happen if
I dressed them down for bringing in a Union man."

Before Jeff could respond, the officer turned
away. "That's the best I can do.”

It was cold that night. No one offered him a
blanket, though they did let him edge close to the meager fire that
burned near the wagon. An eerie silence had descended over what had
been a day before, one of the bloodiest battlefields of the
war.

Groups of men huddled outside their tents and
in front of their fires and joked or swapped boasts about women or
their battle prowess. Jeff could hear the same activity in the
Union camp across the field. Occasionally, when the wind was right,
the strains of a lonely harmonica reached his ears. Someone gave
him another cup of coffee, but no one offered to engage him in
conversation.

Just before dawn he managed to stretch out in
the back of the wagon and fall asleep. But almost immediately he
was awakened by a sergeant with long moustaches and tired eyes. The
sergeant looked at him coolly for a few moments and then spat
deliberately on the ground.

"Seems them bastards across the way want
nothing to do with you." he said.

Jeff was stunned. "I can't believe that."

"Say they know nothing about no spy. They
even deny they know anybody by the name of Jeff Scott." Behind the
sergeant, Jeff saw the first tint of morning, giving the man a
faint orange silhouette in the chill air. The sergeant spat again
and wiped a bit of spittle from his untrimmed upper lip.

“Captain seems to think they just can't be
bothered since you was found without your uniform on."

Jeff's pulse began to race. "Can they do
that?"

The sergeant shrugged. "Union Army,
friend."

"Oh, God."

"Yep," the sergeant said in a drawn-out way.
"Seems we got to shoot us a spy this morning." He spat yet again
and added, "Unless of course he was to get away."

Jeff lifted his head, seeing the slight,
ironic smile on the man's face.

"I don't like them two boys brought you in,"
he said. "Me and the captain had a talk and we decided you ought to
escape. Might mean I'll take a day in the stockade. But I think I
can see to it that those two boys take the blame for me."

"You'll do that?"

The sergeant put up a restraining hand. "Hold
on now, sonny. It ain't all peaches. You may even get shot on the
way back over there. Then again, if you make it, you'll have to
spend the rest of this war with them Union bastards." He spat
again, wiped a sleeve across his mouth. He snorted. You see,
there's a war, and then there's the right thing. Sometimes the two
don't mix. But sometimes they do. We don't have no blue-boy uniform
to put on you so you'll have to take your chances." He stepped
closer, and Jeff could smell tobacco juice. "And I got to tell you
that if this battle heats up later today and I meet you out on that
slab of mud, there's nothing on God's bastard earth that'll make me
hesitate before putting a ball of lead in your heart. You hear
me?"

Jeff nodded. Almost before he knew it, the
sergeant had him down off the wagon and out on the battlefield. He
was given a thirty-yard lead, and then the sergeant sent up an
alarm. Soon there were shouts and a few tentative rifle shots over
his head. He ducked low and crawled on his belly toward the Union
lines, which were farther away than he had thought. He moved
quickly, with intermittent shots still ringing over him. Twice he
hit an obstruction that proved to be a dead, rigor mortised body.
Once he almost moved straight into a bayonet-tipped rifle lodged at
an angle in the now-hard mud and just missed losing an eye to it.
After a while, the shots behind him faded and he was able to
rise.

He found himself eye-to-eye with a blue-clad
figure, someone he vaguely knew from his own regiment. Before he
could open his mouth, the man had raised his rifle. There was a
sudden burning pain in his thigh where the bullet found its mark.
Then he was on the ground, looking at the growing blue-red light of
day dawning as the soldier whooped, "I shot a reb! I shot him!"

I'm going to die,
Jeff thought.

A hatred as he had never known, a hatred
mixed with the solid fear of death, especially of this unjust
death, filled every pore of his body. He screamed, clutching at the
dawning day with his fingers, trying to hold it. He could taste the
hate and the fear. The blue sky began to pull away, and there was
blackness behind it—stark, rock-solid blackness that was curling
down around him—and there was someone very close, just behind or in
front of him, sucking voraciously at the fear and hatred, and
turning to ask him

But in an instant it was all gone, the blue
sky back and the hate and fear diminished. The boy who had shot him
was crying, "My God, it's Jeffrey Scott," and someone else,
interrupting in a calm, hard voice, said, "He'll be all right,
he'll live. . . ."

Yes,
he exulted, his mind bursting with joy, and the fear and the
hate bled out of him.
I'll
live!

But then he was on the
scaffold in Montvale, and Mayor Poundridge was staring up at him
calmly, and the ground gave way, and that horrible bursting
pressure came into his chest and head and eyes, and then everything
exploded, and the hatred returned, along with the fear, only this
time it didn't go away. It got worse instead.
I'm dying!
he thought, and the
hatred filled him as it had on that battlefield, but now it spilled
over and exploded along with his head and eyes and lungs. Even as
the last molecule of air was wrenched from his chest by his
screaming blood, as his red corpuscles cried desperately for more
air and found none, his body, his blood,
all of him
, screamed hate. His eyes,
burning like coals in their aching sockets, looked out at
them—those he had grown up with, played with, fought with—and
wanted to see them
dead
. All of them. They were responsible; and even more than the
continuation of his own life, he wanted their lives ended. The
mayor, the sheriff, the Major boys, Melissa Poundridge (who had
promised herself to his brother Tom and then, when Tom went off to
fight, hooked into and married Tom's best friend, Bill Gantry,
whose rich father had bought his son's way out of the war), all of
them.

Death!
he screamed, using not his lungs because there was nothing in
his lungs to make the word with, but his soul.
Death!
he screamed, and their
astonished faces must have thought he was speaking of his own,
though he meant theirs. The death of Montvale was what he
beseeched—and then the fear and hatred consumed and ate him up, and
the sky turned black, the world was pulled away like elastic and
the black dropped down around him, and that voice, that voice, was
once more beside him, breathing into his mouth, fanning the flames
of hate and fear and at the same time sucking them out of him,
saying "Yes" to his prayer of death, the mouth of this thing on his
mouth

Jeff Scott heard laughter, and he looked up
from the floor of his trailer to see Ash's shape looming over him.
Ash was in the trailer with him, but he also seemed to be
everywhere else, occupying the whole frame of Jeff's mind as well
as his vision. For a moment it seemed that Ash's face was pressed
to his, that fishlike, slit red mouth on his own, but this was only
a memory, and then he looked up and saw Ash's shape, distinct and
man-sized now, turn from him and walk to the door of the
trailer.

"I'll be back for you soon," Ash said, still
chuckling, and the door to the trailer opened, not quite banging
shut before Ash continued, "You'll be ready." And Jeff Scott, in
despair, knew it was true.