None shall look back, p.20
None Shall Look Back, page 20
Rives walked off a little way and paused beside a great twisted poplar. “We could have the house here,” he said. He stepped off the paces in a great rectangle then walked into the center of it, laid his hand on a tall oak. “This fellow would have to go,” he said, “and those three young maples but you wouldn’t have to cut down any more of the big trees.”
Lucy was still following with her eyes the rectangle he had paced off. She went now and stood a little distance from the oak tree. “The front gallery would be here,” she said. She shut her eyes. It seemed to her that she was standing on the gallery. She opened her eyes upon the white trunk of a young poplar. “We could leave that one standing,” she said. “We wouldn’t need to cut that one down, Rives.”
He came and stood beside her, measuring the distance with his eye. “It would be right near the gallery. Trees rot a house.”
“You could see it from the front windows,” she said. “It would be nice in spring.”
He did not answer. He was listening for something. After a second the call came again. They could see a woman’s figure framed in the doorway of the house below. She was making a trumpet of her hands to call “Rives! Rives!”
“We’ll have to go,” Rives said.
They went back down the hill. Once Lucy looked back. She could almost see the house standing there.
Part
Three
1
RIVES had expected to rejoin Colonel Forrest’s command at Huntsville where he had been furloughed but on his way up from Dalton he heard that the colonel had been incapacitated by a wound in the thigh and his command disbanded. Rives therefore went straight to Chattanooga. There he met Colonel Lawton, a friend of the family, who arranged to have him enrolled in his regiment, the Second Georgia. In the office where the men were mustered in, he met a man whom he had known at Donelson, Joe Troup. The two soldiers, after their papers were made out, set off on a stroll about the town.
They walked along Market Street but progress was difficult. The street was crowded with citizens who had gathered to watch the parade of some incoming regiments. Brass bands blared. The military police kept soldiers and citizens alike moving on constantly. Joe was disgusted. “Come in,” he said, “less get out of here.”
The place to which he led Rives—“Hell’s Half Acre” it was called by the citizens of the town—was the favorite rendezvous of soldiers off duty. It was crowded tonight. Lanterns swung from the boughs of trees and pine knot torches flared. The crowd, which included women in frayed finery, oscillated between the sutlers’ wagons drawn up in rows on the edge of the field and the roulette wheels and faro and chuckaluck spreads.
Rives and Joe, too restless to settle down to any particular pleasure, passed by a roulette wheel operating under the light of a pine knot torch. A crowd surrounded it, those on the outside reaching over the shoulders of those nearest the wheel to lay their bundles of Confederate currency on their favorite color. A little way off a ragged, Ishmaelitish-looking man was preaching.
Rives and Joe passed on to where a group of men were gathered under an oak tree. There was a tall man in the center whom Rives recognized as one of the men who had come out from Fort Donelson with Forrest. Rives knew this man by reputation as an experienced scout. He was a man who knew his own value but tonight his bearing was more assured than usual, perhaps because he was telling the assembled men something that seemed to interest them greatly.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “it was the middle of the night when the message come but it was all over camp before morning. There was a hot time around there for awhile, I tell you.”
Rives pressed nearer. “What’s he talking about?” he asked of the man next him.
The man clicked shut the blade of an enormous knife. “He’s talking about General Forrest,” he said, “when he come up from Corinth.”
“What?” Rives said. “Have they made him a general?”
The man nodded. “They done put him in command of all the cavalry round here. But they wouldn’t let him take his old regiment with him, just let him pick out ten men for his escort. Tom Miles there, he was one of ’em. He’s my brother.”
Something in the man’s face made Rives ask, “Were you one of ’em too?”
The man’s face had been alert and shining as he talked. It composed itself now into more decorous lines. He spat onto the root of a tree. “Yep,” he said. “Me and my brother, Tom, we was in the old Forrest regiment. But we’re in the escort now.”
The narrator had come to the end of his tale. There was a great burst of laughter. The man who had been talking to Rives got up and edged into the circle. “Come on, Tom,” he said, “less go spin that wheel.”
The tall man said he didn’t care if he did. The two brothers walked off together across the hard, trampled ground. The crowd had been held together by the story. It broke into smaller circles, merged into other crowds. Joe Troup had been watching a group of men who sat around a stump playing poker. He said he believed he would sit in the game awhile. Rives went over with him, bought some chips and sat in a few hands then rose saying a man had just gone by whom he had to see.
He walked away from the poker table but soon began to drift aimlessly with the crowd. No game of chance just then could be as exciting as just walking around, seeing old and new faces and drawing into his nostrils the well-remembered odors of camp life. He found himself speaking amiably to a gambler whom he had once rejoiced to see run out of his regiment, then got away from the man to find a woman’s hand clutching his arm, a doll-like face turned up to his. He disengaged his arm and, smiling and shaking his head, walked over to where a great tree root arched up, and sat down. He had been sitting there for a long while watching the crowd when a man came up and touched him on the shoulder.
“Allard,” he said, “I been looking for you everywhere. Ben Bigstaff wants to see you.”
“Where is he?” Rives asked.
“He’s been in the guard house. But they took him out. Got him over at headquarters now.” The newcomer grinned. “You better start. They might court-martial old Ben before you git there.”
“All right,” Rives said.
Rives’ guide conducted him to within a few yards of the headquarters’ tent and left him. Rives had started on alone when a voice hailed him:
“Well, boy, where you been?”
Rives stopped, grinning: “Where you been?”
Ben Bigstaff looked up at his tall guard, shrugged his fat shoulders. “Boarding,” he said.
The guard clapped him on the back. “Well, Ben, here’s where I leave you. Don’t do nothing rash.”
When the soldier had walked away Ben turned to Rives. “It was old Jackson’s brandy,” he whispered. “Coming up from Corinth. I found out which wagon it was in and I just couldn’t stay out of it. Got me an auger and bored through. Put a pipe to it.” He rolled his eyes and smacked his lips. “Boy, it warn’t none of this pine top!”
They had been walking rapidly while this conversation was going on and were now at the entrance to the General’s tent. A burly, fair-haired officer whom Rives recognized as Captain Anderson was sitting at a table just inside the tent, writing. He looked up and acknowledged the two soldiers’ salute.
“Well, Ben,” he said mildly, “hear you been in a little trouble.”
Bigstaff stood stiffly as if on parade. “Yes, Captain,” he said. At the same time he let the lid of his left eye droop toward Rives as if to say that a man might find himself in stranger places than the guard house before he was through.
Rives, trying to stand at attention as rigidly as Bigstaff, looked past the Captain to the rear of the tent. The big man standing there with his back turned was the General. A black-haired, long-legged young officer beside him was bending over packing some saddlebags. The General was directing him what to put in.
In a few minutes they came forward. The General greeted Bigstaff, then passed out of the tent with the young officer. They stood a little way off under the trees and conversed in low tones. At last the young officer turned to go. The General leaned forward, laid his hand on his shoulder. Rives could see the expression on the General’s face, could hear his suddenly gentle voice: “Now, boy, you take good care of yourself.”
He came back into the tent. He was sitting down in a chair beside the table, a big man with towering shoulders and black hair streaked with gray. His eyes had been soft as he gazed at his young brother. They hardened as he turned to Bigstaff. “This the man you want to take with you, Ben?”
“Yes, sir.”
The General turned to Rives. “What’s your name?”
“Allard.”
“I’ve seen you before. Were you at Donelson?”
Rives said again, “Yes, sir.” He wanted to add that he had been among the men disbanded at Huntsville and that he had expected to rejoin Forrest’s command but Forrest was speaking before he had collected himself.
“You came out of Donelson with my boys, eh? . . . But I’ve seen you before. In Kentucky?”
“Yes, sir. At old Mr. Fontaine Allard’s.”
The General nodded. “My men camped in his yard one night. The old gentleman gave me a fine horse. Killed at Donelson. . . .” He nodded again and as if the colloquy were ended he turned to Bigstaff. “Ben, you sure you want to take this boy with you?”
“He knows the country,” Ben said.
The scout and the General exchanged a look. Whatever other questions the General might have asked seemed to be answered in that look for he suddenly turned away, to Anderson. “Charley, where’s that stuff?”
Anderson hauled up a saddlebag and spilled its contents out onto the table. A stack of blank paper sheets, pale blue, heavily embossed at the top. Ben walked over to the table, picked up a sheet. He gave a whistle. “Provo’ marshal of Kentucky, hunh?”
Anderson was grinning. “Captain Jeffrey Forrest was going by and he thought this stuff might come in handy.” He picked up a sheet and handed it to Bigstaff. “How’s it look?”
Bigstaff studied it a moment then handed it back. “Captain, you write mighty pretty.”
The Captain was modest. “I worked an hour before I set my hand to the first sheet. Look all right?”
“It looks all right,” Ben said.
The General had been sitting, head bent down, evidently in deep thought. He looked up, spoke brusquely. “Ben, I’ve got to get somebody over into Tennessee, as far as Murfreesboro. Here’s the way we’ve got it figured. You take your papers signed by the provost marshal and work your way through. The Yankees have got home guards in most of those towns. Well, you’ve got a message for the captain of every one, from Jere Boyle. . . . How does it look to you?”
Ben turned his head slowly to one side, studied the lantern flame. “I don’t see nothing wrong with it,” he said. “Of course I couldn’t hit nothing but the high spots with those papers and I’d have to come back another way. . . . Me and this boy’d travel in Yankee uniform, of course.”
“You’d have to,” Forrest said, “to work this dodge. Can you think of anything better?”
“Naw,” Ben said, “I can’t think of anything better.” He stood, reflecting, one stout leg advanced, his plump hands weaving before him an imaginary cat’s cradle. “Naw,” he said again, “it sounds all right, for that kind of trip.”
“Well, what about it then?” the General asked at length.
Ben raised his head. His curious, light-colored eyes dwelt calmly on Forrest’s face. “General,” he said, “I ain’t going to volunteer for nothing. Course anything you tell me to do I’m going to do it best I can.”
The blood had surged into Forrest’s face. He knit his thick brows. An angry retort was evidently on his lips but he checked himself, took two or three quick paces to the side then turned to Bigstaff. “All right,” he said curtly. “When can you start?”
Ben’s face had changed in the last few seconds. It now wore its customary look of good humor. His voice was bland and cheerful. “Right away,” he said. “This boy’s papers ready?”
Forrest had sat down at the table beside Captain Anderson. “They’re over at the quartermaster’s,” he said, “and the uniforms.” He stood up. His voice softened suddenly. “Good-by, boys.”
They left the tent, crossed the enclosure to the quartermaster’s tent. When they were out of sight of the General Ben slapped his leg and chuckled. “I got him that time, didn’t I?”
Rives was bewildered. “How you mean, Ben?”
“Didn’t you see him stand up there and take his medicine?” He hates to order a man out on a trip like this. But he made me mad, about that brandy. I made up my mind then I warn’t going to volunteer for awhile.”
They walked on. Ben was talking about Jeffrey Forrest, the General’s young brother whom he loved, Ben said, better than his own son. Jeffrey was a long-legged rapscallion in Ben’s opinion. “Warn’t that just like him now, to capture a lot of that provo’s stationery just so some poor devil’d have to risk his neck using it!”
They arrived at the station. Blue uniforms were handed them, one with a corporal’s chevrons, the other plain. They stripped and put them on. Ben, who seemed in high feather now, was explaining the way they would work it. The first thing, he said, was to discard the horses furnished by the government. He knew one of them, an old side wheeler, and the other probably just like him. He knew where there were two good horses, though, just what they needed, in a man’s stable down by the river. He passed one day and saw them horses and he’d been keeping his eye on them ever since, knowing he might be needing a horse any day. Soon as they finished dressing and had a snack to eat they’d slip down to the river and get the horses. Lucky it was such a dark night.
Rives listened. He hardly realized that he was about to set out to steal a man’s horses, dressed in a Yankee uniform. He was still thinking of the young captain, Jeffrey Forrest, and of the General who had laid his hand on Jeffrey’s arm and told him to take good care of himself.
2
THEY were sitting at dinner when the little negro boy brought Rives’ letter in. Lucy read snatches of it to the others. When she had finished Mitty gave a long sigh. “I’m glad he’s with Coloned Lawton,” she said. “I’m glad he’s with him instead of that Colonel Forrest.”
“Why, pray?” Susan demanded.
“I don’t know,” Mitty said, confused as she always was when any notice was taken of anything she said, “I thought—well, you didn’t like him so much when you saw him at Brackets, did you, Lucy?”
“I only said I thought he looked stern.”
Susan helped herself to black-eyed peas. “Sternness is a virtue in a military man,” she said. She handed the sparse dish of peas to Lucy. “Eat, child. You and Mitty need to keep up your strength when you’re spinning half the day.”
“I believe Lucy’s mastered it, Mama,” Mitty said enthusiastically. “This morning she ran the thread on the broach without a tangle.”
Susan glanced at Lucy. “Yes,” she said kindly, “but she mustn’t stay at it too steady. Whyn’t you go lie down a while after dinner, child?”
“I believe I will,” Lucy said and got up and left the dining room. She mounted the stairs quietly but the fingers that clutched her letter were tense. The door of her own room shut behind her. She went quickly to the window and began reading the two closely written pages over again. Downstairs before the others she had read the news in the letter. Now her eyes skimmed eagerly over those sentences to find the phrases that were meant for her alone. “Last night before I went to sleep I thought of you for a long time. . . . Joe Troup is here. He says. . . .” No, that could wait for a second reading. Her eyes flew on, to the end: “I can’t believe that you love me as much as I love you. Write and tell me so. I won’t believe it but I will love to hear you say it. Yes, I will write every day that I can and you do the same but, darling, if a day should pass when I can’t write don’t let that stop you. . . .”
She gave a long sigh and, still holding the letter in her hand, walked over to the deal table that she used as a desk. She got out a sheet of paper and dipping her pen in the ink—red ink that they had made from oak galls—began to write: “Dearest, dearest Rives. . . .” Then she laid the pen down. If she wrote now she would have to do it hurriedly. In a half-hour or at most an hour they would expect her back in the loom room. It would be better to wait until tonight when alone in her own room she could think of what she wanted to say.
She lay down on the bed. Lying there staring at the ceiling she re-lived the morning of Rives’ departure. In imagination she traversed the path up over the slope and then down the steep descent to the spring. She had drunk cold water from his cupped hands and then they had flung themselves down on last year’s leaves under the oak tree. The sun had been hot coming through the field but the woods still kept some of their winter chill. He said, “Love, your hands are cold,” as he drew her to him. They had stayed there a long while. It seemed to her that she could hear time, hear it running through the woods. Or no, you could stop it, hold it at bay for a little then some bird would call or the woods about them would stir and time would begin again. Once some small animal ran through a near-by thicket and she started up. He laughed, pulling her down beside him. “You remind me of a little mare I had once named Kitty.” “Why?” she asked. “I don’t know. The way she turned her head, I reckon.”
She knew that he meant that she was wild and restless and that as Mammy once said she had eyes like a nervous colt. She got up on her knees and faced him. “I wish I was different,” she said. “I wish I was the best person in the world.”
