V’s fugitives traveled slowly, stuck to the back roads, tried not to call attention their way.
ON THE ROAD, the refugees all coughed. Sometimes V could hear the deep rattle in their lungs—their hawking and spitting—before she could see them. Sometimes refugees traveled mixed together, black and white, unclear what rules applied when elemental concepts like slave and free suddenly became uncertain.
Former slaves, whole plantations of them, followed after the Northern army, hoping to be fed and cared for. And then mostly they had their few possessions stripped from them before being told to move along. Some, lacking a better idea, returned to the plantations they came from. But V met others still wandering the roads looking for something hard to articulate beyond the vague but essential word Freedom. Bands of people as high as twenty-five or thirty members roamed with no money and no real sense of how money worked. For most of them, their only knowledge of the world was what little had been afforded them within the tight boundaries of a plantation.
One lone man—barefoot, wearing half-leg pants and a collarless linen shirt—carried four rifles by their leather slings and three pistols in overlapping holsters around his waist. He said now that he was free he aimed to be an American, and he knew you needed guns for that.
A black girl, maybe eight or nine, led an old white man, half blind and mostly deaf and holding a rusty ear trumpet. She carried what had been a smoked hog leg by its foot. They’d shaved the meat away to a few maroon petals clinging to the bone.
HEART OF THE WASTELAND. The day pressed deeply humid, air laden so heavy with moisture and pollen that the color of the sky was a matter open to argument. The edges of things—tree leaves, tree bark, the features of a loved one’s face—from fifty feet away looked soft and blurred, barely identifiable.
They stopped in the remains of an empty one-street town. Houses and a few stores scattered on either side of the main road. Two of the buildings were painted white and the rest varied in color depending on how long the bare wood siding and shingles had faced the weather.
They walked into a half-burned hotel. A dark-headed girl played a dreamy nocturne at the lobby piano, notes spaced at careful intervals.
—Are rooms available for the night?
The girl looked around confused, her face the color of cake flour and her eyes dark. She said, Nobody’s here. The piano still plays, so I thought I’d play it.
—Is there someone we could ask about rooms?
—Everybody’s gone and nobody cares. Look on the second floor. Go left at the top of the stairs. Some of those rooms might still be dry.
V said, Please keep playing.
The girl stood up and closed the key-lid. She said, I don’t care for an audience.
THOSE STRANGE DAYS, a lot of people used up parts of themselves they could never regenerate. Everyone in the territory they passed through had lost so much and were being offered many thousands in Federal gold—money to last a lifetime—if they provided information leading to the capture of the fugitives. Who would blame hungry people for claiming such a treasure?
THEY PASSED THROUGH rolling country for a few days, and the towns seemed little more than collections of sheds, but they took names from Greek and Roman cities. V remembers an unexpected steep hill pitching down to just a little creek, the way the horses squatted on their hocks against the grade. It was sunset, but people stood by the side of the road and stared, and when V said Good day, they looked away without a word.
Then a day where they didn’t even break camp, hard rain from dawn to sunset, lightning and thunder making the children shriek. After the rains, they traveled three days through drowned pineland where mosquitoes flew so thick the fugitives couldn’t sleep even when they dragged bedding directly into the smoke of the fire. More time went lost when everyone except Bristol and Ryland fell sick, a terrible purging. For three days, unrelenting fever and chills and raging bowels. The children were pitiful, and the adults alternated sleeping and rushing to the woods. Delrey tried to take care of the horses and mules, but stopped over and over to hump with his hands on his knees and heave. Same for V and Ellen when they tried to comfort the children.
The navy boys—so young they still grew pale down on their cheeks and shaved only out of vanity—worked dawn to dark doing the best they knew to nurse them all. Fetch water and clean children busy vomiting and having the flux. Whenever an adult could sit up to take liquids, they would steep herb tea or brew a bit of precious coffee.
The children suffered better than the rest. They fretted and cried, and their faces became gray with dark circles under their eyes, but they also slept a lot. Frantic and desperate one minute and then the next, without transition, dead to the world, unconscious yet still sucking a thumb, at least the youngest ones.
When they all recovered enough to travel, they only went two hours and then stopped for a day by a pretty river to wash and dry a pile of filthy linens.
Then for two clear days and nights they passed through country with few people and smooth roads. They went nearly twenty miles in one day—the first and only time.
LATE AFTERNOON, they took a side road to avoid passing through a town. For a moment V could see houses and stores distant across a cotton field growing up in weeds. No one in sight. Rain fell slow, and smoke from chimneys sank low to the ground. Then up ahead a group of people came around a bend in the road. They were wet and carried hoes and shovels and rakes over their shoulders the way men carry long rifles when they’re walking a distance. These were farmers willing to plant fields without mules or slaves in a time of so much disaster and uncertainty that it took great faith and hope to gamble on a harvest months into a future that looked a shambles.
It was too late to do anything but keep moving toward them. The fugitives had agreed that in such circumstances, Delrey should do the talking. So V ducked under the canvas with the children and tried to keep them quiet, but they were in a talking mood. So the best she could do was make a game out of whispering and sign language. As they passed the farmers, V could hear their questions and Delrey’s answers.
—Who is the lady?
—Mrs. Jones.
—Where you coming from?
—Up the road a ways.
—Where you heading?
—Down the road a piece.
—Pretty nice bunch of horses and mules.
—Because we’ve not allowed anybody to steal them from us.
—Who’s these other people?
—Family members.
—Any news of the war?
—It’s done’s all I hear, Delrey said.
—Heard some fool shot Lincoln and killed him. That true?
—You know more than I do, Delrey said.
—If it is true, we’ll all pay for it.
—Shit. Far as I know, Lincoln or not, we’re all paying, every minute of every day, Delrey said.
He flapped the reins, and a hundred yards on he leaned around and said, If somebody comes up behind asking the right questions, I doubt they’ll have forgotten us.
TWILIGHT THE NEXT DAY, a storm began brewing far westward. Clouds lit up with pale blooms of distant lightning. Faint thunder. The wind blew the storm their way, and it looked like a bad night to be on the road.
An hour later, lightning flashed a couple of miles away, jagged bolts. Ryland walked toward a dark plantation house, one end burned to nothing but black, crazed timbers in a heap and tall Doric columns scorched halfway up. Empty fields, deserted rows of facing slave cabins off to the side. Thin wisps of human-shaped smoke rose from the burn pile and stood in the last beams of moonlight pinched off through a closing crack in the clouds.
Lightning struck nearby and then immediately a swelling sound like shredding metal. Rushing wind climbed the hill and whirled limbs of pecan trees. In the flashes, stacked parallel rows of sapsucker holes in the trunk bark—bands of black dots—appeared and vanished immediately like unreadable lines of ancient text, a false prophecy. Big greasy drops of rai
n, widely spaced, hissed as they fell, and off in the woods, a yap of distant dogs carried in the stirring air, faint and wavelike in rhythm.
Delrey said, That’s the very way dogs sound when ghosts are roaming.
They stayed in the dark, watching, ready to flee while Ryland walked under the pecan trees and climbed the steps to the front porch. Horizontal jags of lightning silhouetted him. He knocked on the door, acting like a gentleman, and then tried the knob. The door swung open. He humped over against the wall to shield a match and lit a candle and went inside. One by one the windows of the front rooms lit up yellow as he scouted and then went black when he searched the back rooms. Soon the light grew brighter in increments as he pilfered around and found candle stubs and lit them. He came back onto the porch.
—Empty, he shouted.
The rain picked up and they all hurried unloading. Ellen carried Winnie under her shawl, and Burton led Maggie and Jeffy. Jimmie Limber and Billy walked fast across the weedy plot of lawn holding V’s hands.
Bristol and Ryland ran back and forth in the flashes of storm carrying food and bedding while Delrey settled the mules and horses under the trees. Then all three of them collected downed limbs and broke them up the best they could, stomping them into firewood.
Inside, V and Ellen sat with the children and arranged their nest of quilts in front of the cold hearth. The house was all chaos, gaumed up beyond belief. Everywhere scattered plunder, broken things. A wide drag-trail parted the clutter. All denominations of Georgia bills littered the floor, and Burton drew the worthless paper together to strike a fire. A few thousand dollars did the job. Twigs and spindles from dining chairs served as kindling.
Black windows flashed white, projecting images of pecan limbs like etchings against the glass, and then went black again. The fire caught and the chimney drew. Burton closed the curtains to keep firelight from showing down at the road.
The navy boys took candles and went exploring the back of the house, and returned shortly with a crock of strawberry jam and another of dark-colored honey, almost coffee black.
Ryland said, There’s a case of wine sitting back there if anybody would care for some.
—Yes, please, V said.
She began digging around in her reticule, down past her pretty pistol, and came up with a corkscrew. Ryland set the case of Chablis down beside her, and she opened a bottle.
—Did you notice wineglasses? she said.
—Be right back, Ryland said. He and Bristol returned with Bristol carrying the candle and Ryland holding six stems upside down between spread fingers, and the bowls chimed against each other as he walked.
Burton and Delrey stood on either side of the fire. Delrey’s clothes hung dark and nearly soaked on his frame, and as the fire heated up, he started steaming. Rain fell hard and drops sizzled in the hearth where they found a way down the chimney throat.
NO MILK FOR THE CHILDREN and everybody too weary for much cooking, V said, A good night for bacon and warmed-up biscuits.
Delrey said, Good Lord, a few more days like this and we’ll be shoveling for terrapin eggs along the creek banks.
V said, Delrey, I count on you for optimism.
—Scrambled terrapin eggs—mighty good eating. Tastes like duck eggs but with a lot more tang.
—Thank you for the effort, V said.
Ellen fried two skillets of thick-cut bacon and then fried the old dry biscuits in the grease for a minute to freshen them up.
A sound carried from the second floor—a squeak of floorboards, a bump. Then silence.
Burton said, No worries. Just a possum or a bird that’s gotten in and can’t get out. But the boys and I’ll go check. If you hear anything more than just the three of us walking around, get out and go to the wagon. We’ve left the teams fed and in the traces and ready to roll if there’s trouble.
Burton and Bristol and Ryland went upstairs, searching for the source of the noise, and Delrey waited near the fire with his shotgun ready. Hardly sooner than they got up the steps, V heard many feet thumping on floorboards, raised voices, the sounds of things falling. Ellen and Delrey grabbed the younger children under their arms and V yanked Maggie by the hand. They fumbled out of the house and into the rain. Winnie cried, and then most of the other children started crying.
Before they reached the wagon, though, Burton came onto the gallery carrying an oil lantern in one hand and a pistol in the other. He said, Ease up. Safe to come back, I think.
Inside, a huddle of people crowded around the fire, remnants of two or three families formerly enslaved. A grown man and three grown women and some exhausted and frightened children and two crying babies. And also a greasy blond boy about sixteen.
Ryland held out a stubby pistol for V’s inspection. It rested in his palm hardly weightier than her little suicide shooter.
Ryland said, Not even any live loads in it. I pulled it off that one.
He nodded toward the white boy, who grew less beard than the fuzz on a mullein leaf. Yellow strands of sticky-looking hair drooped across his forehead in front and hung limp to his shoulders in back. Everything about him glowed pallid and shiny. He wore what had once been a fine suit, now fraying at the collar and sleeves and cuffs, its carefully tailored structure wrinkled and broken down and bagged until it rode him like a spirit from the past.
V looked to the women and said, Are your people all right?
The white boy said, Address your questions to me.
Ryland looked around at Bristol and said, Good Lord, that little one features himself the leader.
V said, Ryland, step back, please.
The greasy boy lifted his two forefingers and abruptly hooked his hair behind his ears, as if he considered that a gesture of authority or at least defiance.
V looked him straight in the eye, and he glared back about two seconds and then looked down.
She said, Son, we’re short on supplies, but would you like a biscuit with a little piece of bacon? Or a biscuit with some of your honey or jelly? One of those three choices, not all. We’re sharing here and what we have has to go around.
You could see the gears engaging and the wheels beginning to grind with some effort.
—Bacon, he said.
—Bacon, please? V said.
The boy just glared.
—All right, V said. We’ll try again when you find yourself more composed. Meanwhile enjoy the warmth of the fire we built. By the way, what’s your name?
—None of your damn business what my name is.
V looked back to the women, and one of them said, He’s Elgin.
V said, And what’s your name?
—Belle.
THEY PASSED AND SHARED FOOD, including a bacon biscuit for Elgin, still sulled. He took a bite and stewed awhile and finally spoke up with great pent emotion. He swore that with the death of the Confederacy he would pine down to nothing within a few months and be the last of the Confederate dead.
V said, Elgin, if all you have to say is nonsense, stop talking. While you’ve been here hiding, everything has changed. It’s not the same world out there. You need real plans, not fantasies.
—I heard the government and army are moving to Texas. I might volunteer.
Ryland and Bristol both coughed a laugh.
—I’ve heard that same rumor about Texas, over and over, V said. Nobody sane believes it. The war’s dead and done. Lost. Think of a real plan. Starting with, for example, who holds title to this place?
The boy looked puzzled. He said, How’s that your business?
Belle said, Probably he owns it. His daddy went out on the porch to stop raider trash picking through the leftovers after Sherman’s army. Carrying a shotgun against a half dozen. He didn’t even get one barrel fired before they cut him down.
—And the mother? V said.
—Died first year of the fighting, Belle said.
—Brothers or sisters?
—Nope.
—Son, V said to Elgin, think hard about this pl
ace. It’s a real thing, not some theory or philosophy or crazy dream. It could feed all of you.
—I ain’t feeding every stray slave in Georgia. And I ain’t feeding y’all neither.
Ryland—real sarcastic—said, Brother Elgin, correct me if I’m wrong, but ain’t we mostly feeding you? You’re offering us shelter in return. Calm down and consider something. In your position, what would Jesus do? He’d say something about inviting strangers in, about how he loves a cheerful giver.
Elgin stood up and all-fervent said, Probably Jesus would yank you by your neck and then beat you to the ground like a drunk foreman with a long tomato stob. Don’t be talking Jesus to me. Just say Jesus one more time and see what happens. Come on. Say his name.
—You forget, Ryland said, rising to his feet, we’re the ones with guns.
Since everybody else was doing it, Burton stood up too. He had his right hand in his coat pocket. Delrey stayed where he was, leaning against the wall with the shotgun angled half down, watching close.
Bristol kept his seat and regarded the moment.
He said, Ry, maybe sit your ass down and shut your mouth for a whole minute.
Ryland sat. And then the others did too.
Bristol said, Can we leave Jesus alone? He deserves a rest now and then.
When his minute ended Ryland said, I’m curious, Elgin. With all your strong feelings about the Confederacy, how come you weren’t in on the fighting? You’re old enough.
Elgin said, I paid a dirt farmer to take my place, like the law allows.
Ryland said, A study in courage. Mr. Elgin puts his money where his big stupid mouth is.
Bristol laughed, and so did Delrey and V.
Elgin’s face blazed holly-berry red.
Belle said, You have to allow for him. He’s lost so much. Ten years ago on this place, three hundred of us, nearly. Cotton growing to the sky every way you looked. Hog pens and pastures with cows. Lots of cotton, lots of corn and vegetables.