None shall look back, p.23
None Shall Look Back, page 23
The crowd cheered tumultuously and cried, “Forrest! Forrest!”
Forrest was riding toward them. His hat was still off, a lock of black hair had fallen across his forehead. His expression was stern then as if he had just realized what the woman’s action meant, he smiled and held up his hand for quiet. The people, he said, must go to their homes. The town was safe, the Yankees would not get it again but the soldiers still had work to do; the detachment of infantry across Stone’s River was yet to be dealt with. He let his hand sink to his side. His face resumed its usual stern expression. He was riding off through the crowd, his escort pressing close behind.
The crowd began to disperse. Here and there torches were extinguished. Those that were left flickered palely as the morning light grew. People started and looked at one another when from behind the courthouse a single shot rang out.
Rives, standing with the others, drew in deep breaths of the cool air. He had seen a man led off to die, had just heard the shot that killed him. He knew that he himself would not be standing here in this fresh morning light if the Confederates had not captured the town and his eyes followed the towering figure on the gray horse till it was lost in the crowd.
6
LUCY came out of the house and walked slowly across the back yard. In front of the smokehouse Susan Allard and old Rivanna were at work. They had brought in armfuls of the wild castor bean plants late yesterday afternoon and now they were expressing the oil in the great scalding kettle. Susan stood beside it now, stirring the contents with a stick. Old Rivanna was squatting on the ground a little way off, pounding more beans in a mortar.
She looked up as Lucy approached. “Going over to the swamp now, honey? I’d go with you if I didn’t have to stay here and help Miss Sue.”
Susan stepped back from the steaming pot. She wore a faded calico blouse. Her heavy homespun skirt—it had been made too big for her or she had got thinner in the last few months—sagged at the waist and showed a little strip of pale flesh. She seemed unconscious of her appearance, however, as she lifted her hand and pushed gray strands of hair back from her heated forehead. “What’s there to be afraid of, Rivanna?” she asked coldly.
The negress got to her feet, yawning. “Your meat’s showing, Miss Sue,” she said matter-of-factly. “You ain’t afraid of the devil and high water, but it ain’t natural for a young gal to go traipsin off in them swamps by herself.” She leaned over and ladled up a little of the liquid from the pot. “Smell it, honey.”
Lucy drew back, wrinkling her nose. “I wouldn’t take a dose of castor oil if I were to die for it.”
“Humph,” Susan said, “you might be glad to get it, Miss.” She took up the ladle where Rivanna had let it fall, tilted it so that a few heavy drops fell out. “See, almost transparent. I believe this is going to be as fine as that Mr. Gossett showed us.”
She was looking at her daughter-in-law, her strange bright eyes shining. Lucy’s face softened. “I believe it is,” she said. “Well, you ought to get nearly a gallon out of this boiling.”
Molly, the fourteen-year-old negro girl, came up, leading the horse, “Yankee.” Lucy took the halter from her and they went out of the yard and up over the field. They walked in the shade of the fence row, the horse ranging out beside them. The ground—it had not had any crops on it for two years now—was bare or covered with short, harsh grass. Still the horse managed to find a bite here and there. Lucy let him stop and browse where he would. He would need all the strength he could muster for the trip to the cane brake and back. She herself was glad to walk along slowly in the sparse shade. If she were not taking the horse to get fodder she would be in the office with Mitty, tramping back and forth beside the spinning wheel or, worse, reeling the thread she had spun.
They came to the wagon road that bisected this field. Molly was pointing. “ ’Long about here, Miss Lucy, warn’t it?”
Lucy said “Yes,” her voice sounding harsh in her own ears. It seemed a long time ago. She and Mitty and Cousin Susan had been sitting down to an early supper when Molly came into the dining room, screaming: “Miss Sue, yard’s done full of soldiers.”
The three of them had run out into the hall. A Yankee officer was coming in the door. He said, “Madam, I want to use your roof for observation,” pushed past Susan, and was up the steps when a voice sang out from the porch: “No use, Schofield. Here they come now.” The Yankee officer was out of the house and up on his horse in two seconds. Men were crowding up around him. He pointed to the road across the field, jumped his horse over the low-paling fence. They were all after him in a minute.
The women watched them tearing over the field, saw them disappear in a grove of trees, and then the Confederate cavalry was in the yard. Mitty and Lucy ran to meet them. Lucy remembered that she had run up to the brown-bearded captain, panting: “Take me. I’ll show you.” But he shook his head and went on through the gate, his men following. They went slowly, compared to the Yankees. It seemed a long time before they heard any sounds of fighting, and then all of a sudden bullets whined and smoke was drifting up over the silver poplar trees.
They went inside the house. Mitty sat down at her place at the table. The girl Molly got in that corner between the sideboard and the wall and kept moaning. Susan and Lucy went back out on the porch, but they couldn’t see much. After a little, bullets did not come so often, then they stopped. Susan turned to Lucy. “We’d better go down now,” she said. She walked into the dining room. The girl was still crying. Susan fetched her a clip on the head. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, crying like that, when men are over there wounded and dying?”
She had been snatching old tablecloths out of the sideboard drawer as she spoke, took down from somewhere a basket of lint. They ran over the field and down into the road. Soldiers were there. All gray now except for one or two blue on the ground. The brown-bearded officer had stood beside this tree, a bitter, school-teacherish-looking man with the smell of sweat and blood upon him. He did not seem to know that one of his arms was hurt, tried to raise it to the felt hat that clung to the back of his head, then winced. His mouth was wry with the pain, but he spoke formally to Susan: “Most kind, Madam . . . yes, one or two of our boys. . . .” His face went soft suddenly in the middle. He passed his good hand before his mouth. “Captain Linton,” he said in a different voice, “if you would just . . . Captain Linton . . .”
Captain Linton was lying on his back in a clump of iron-weed. Blood was all over the front of him. She bent over, said, “Can you walk?” He looked at her and his fair eyebrows met. A whistling sound came from him. He got to his feet. She thrust her shoulder under his—he was not tall—and they went slowly up the slope. Mitty saw them and came running. Together they dragged him into the house, laid him down on the parlor sofa. She did not know what to do and neither did Mitty. His face was pasty green and the whistling sound had started again. Mitty went to the kitchen to get some water. She stood over him. He was lying back, his eyes closed and suddenly he sat up. He put his hands to his chest. Something was inside, trying to get out. It was tearing him to pieces. His eyes rolled back in his head, but he was still looking at her. She ran out of the room, through the hall, out on to the porch. She stared at the trees, the sky. But they looked strange. She put her head down on the wooden railing.
Susan was beside her. She said: “That man in the parlor has to be moved to a bed.”
Lucy got up and went back into the house. Uncle Mack was waiting there to help move the wounded man. They got him on to the bed in the spare room by the hardest. He lay back, cocked one eyebrow and fainted. As soon as he came to, Susan hurried out into the other room. There were three other wounded soldiers, two lying on her big bed and one who would not sit or lie down but stood with his right arm dangling at his side. Susan said his arm was broken and she sent Molly on the horse for the doctor.
It was three miles there and back. The doctor arrived at five o’clock. Lucy heard him step up on the front porch, then go through the hall into the chamber. He stayed in there a while, then came out, closing the door behind him. He and Susan talked. She heard him say, “Better now than later,” and then bawl out for somebody to be heating water, quick. A few minutes later Susan came into the little bedroom. She had her sleeves rolled high, her blue, checked apron was spotted with blood. She went to the cabinet and took down several bottles. One was the chloroform bottle. Lucy knew then that they were going to cut the man’s arm off.
She thought she could not stand it. She walked up and down the room, her shoulders hunched over, her hands pressed tight against her eyeballs. Then she heard a strangled cry from the bed. Captain Linton was sitting up. His head shook from side to side. His poor hands kept tearing at his throat. She went and sat on the edge of the bed and put her arms around him and caught both his hands and held them down. When he managed to get his right hand away from hers she caught it and held it in the vise of her knees until the spasm passed and he lay weakly back on his pillow. This hemorrhage had been worse than the last one. Her hands and her gown were sticky with blood and blood was still oozing from his mouth on to the pillow. She went out and got a basin of water and fresh linen and sponged his face—she did not dare touch his throat—and then as gently as she could slipped a fresh pillow case under his head. His neck as she lifted his head felt limp. She thought that perhaps he was dying and drew back with the wet cloth in her hand and then suddenly he opened his eyes and caught her hand and pressed it. When she would have taken her hand away it seemed to her that the limp fingers held on to it so she drew a chair close to the bed and sat beside him, holding his hand.
In the other room the terrible loud groaning kept on. Once a man’s high voice cut across it. “Shut up, Joe! They got to do it.” There was a cry after that more bestial than any of the others and then that too died away into a faint whimpering that might have been made by an injured dog trying to go to sleep.
The light faded from the room. She still sat there holding the man’s hand. After a while Molly came, bringing a candle and after her, walking heavily, the doctor. He knelt beside the bed but he did not touch the wounded man; merely leaned forward and peered out of his bloodshot eyes that had heavy pouches under them. Once he put out a stubby forefinger, seemed about to touch the man’s throat, but the finger came back and he got to his feet, shaking his head. “In a coma now,” he said. “Morphine won’t do any harm,” and he got out his hypodermic syringe and showed Lucy how to give the injection in the fleshy part of the forearm. “You might have to do it again and you might not,” he said wearily and was gone from the room.
Mitty came. She said that she had already eaten and would stay with the captain while Lucy ate. Lucy went into the dining room and got a piece of cold cornbread and a glass of milk. She drank the milk but when she swallowed a piece of the cornbread it felt harsh in her throat and she put the rest of the pone down and went back into the bedroom.
Mitty had lit a candle on the mantel shelf. She was standing beside the bed, looking down at the soldier. He was lying as Lucy had left him on his back. His wide-open eyes appeared to contemplate the ceiling, but the lower part of his face was contorted and blood oozed from the gaping mouth down on to the pillow.
Lucy bent over him a moment then looked up at Mitty. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” Mitty said helplessly. “I was just standing by the window and I heard a little sound, not anything like he made at first and I turned around and saw all that blood. . . . Lucy, what ought we to do?”
“Nothing,” Lucy said. She looked abstractedly at the candle flame, then as if with an effort withdrew her gaze. Her eyes fell on the negro girl, staring in the doorway. “Molly, bring me a basin of water.”
Mitty held the candle and Lucy washed the soldier’s face and hands. She would have turned away when she had finished but Mitty still stood irresolute. “We ought to shut his eyes,” she whispered.
“I can’t,” Lucy said harshly, then she knelt down beside the bed and with her finger tips stroked the eyelids shut. One of the soldier’s hands was clenched at his side. She straightened the fingers and then brought both hands up and crossed them on his chest. Mitty would have pulled the sheet up over his face but Lucy stopped her. “Let’s don’t do that now.”
“All right,” Mitty said.
Lucy looked at her and saw that she was trembling all over. “You’d better go to bed,” she told her.
They left the room. Mitty went upstairs to bed. Lucy said that she wanted a breath of air and stepped out on the porch. Behind her the house was quiet except for an occasional footfall on the stair or in the hall. Old Rivanna had finished washing up in the kitchen and she and Molly were moving slowly along the path to the quarter. Lucy could hear old Rivanna’s weary grunt as she stepped over a stick of stovewood that somebody had left in the path and then their voices died away and everything was quiet again.
She sat down on one of the benches that ran along either side of the porch. Now that she was still she realized that her feet and legs, even her arms ached. There was a dull ache too at the base of her neck. She laid her head down on her folded arms but when she shut her eyes she kept seeing pictures: a man jumping his horse across a gulley, the first spiral of smoke over the poplars, a stern face under a black felt hat. . . . She raised her eyes. The three days’ old moon rode high over the pine trees, spilling its silver light. The field that stretched away on this side of the house was bathed in light. There was a place on the nearer edge where the pearly blades of grass were all trampled. The Confederate soldiers jumping their horses over the fence had landed there. Somewhere, not many miles from here, the stern-faced major, father to the boy in there on the bed dead, was still riding. Her lips trembled. If she thought of him she would cry. But she had no tears for the young captain. It seemed to her that he had died a long time ago. It seemed to her too that she had known him a long time. There was something about him that reminded her of George Rowan. Or was it that the night itself reminded her of George? She remembered a night—it was long ago before George had ever thought of falling in love with her—when he and she had ridden home from Sycamore by moonlight. In late summer—it must have been because you could smell new-mown hay in the fields along the road—and a moon so full that every little leaf on the roadside bushes was picked out in silver light.
George had ridden in silence a while, his eyes roving the fields as if he did not want to miss any of it. Then he turned to her and began reciting:
“On such a night as this . . .”
She laughed to cover her embarrassment but he went on:
“. . . . When the sweet wind did gently woo the trees
And they did make no noise
Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan wall
And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents
Where Cressid lay . . .”
She laughed again—pert child of fifteen—and asked him who Cressid was this summer. He looked at her. His eyes were dark under the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat. There was an expression on his mobile lips she had never seen before. He said gently: “Little Lucy. You don’t know anything about that, do you? Well, you will some day . . .”
She got up and walked to the edge of the porch. As she rose she felt the sharp edge of Rives’ letter which she had folded and thrust into the bosom of her gown. This one had come yesterday: “. . . I went out reconnoitering this morning and saw the enemy’s position. Tomorrow we cross Lookout mountain and will, I suppose, make directly for the Tennessee River. It will be strange to be so near home and yet so far away. I have no expectation of any leave nor would I feel entitled to one at this juncture . . .”
She laid her head down on the railing. Her body shook with sobs so that she had to put her hands out and grasp the wood to steady herself. There were steps in the hall. Susan came out on to the porch. She stood there and sighed, the deep sigh of physical exhaustion. Lucy moved on the bench. Susan heard her and turned.
“Is Captain Linton dead?” she asked in a low voice.
Lucy nodded without raising her head from the railing.
Susan hesitated a moment then came and stood beside her. She put out an awkward hand, touched her shoulder. “Don’t cry, child. He’s better off.”
Lucy raised her head and looked at her mother-in-law out of eyes heavy with unshed tears. She cried out wildly: “I’m not crying for him!” and again as Susan fell back, startled, “I’m not crying for him!”
7
THE horse shambled on through the dust then came to a stop where a post oak threw its shadow across the road. The negro girl stepped up with her stick, then seeing how low he held his head, turned back to Lucy. “We better let him rest a while,” she said; “it ain’t on the cyards he gwine git to that cane brake.”
“All right,” Lucy said. She sat down on the bank. The horse, as if knowing that he had been the subject of conversation, moved deeper into the shade. He stood with his head lowered. His hind legs caved in until they almost locked together. Rumblings came from his gaunt belly. Lucy looked at him and looked away. She had come in the last few weeks almost to hate him. He was starving. The Yankees had taken all the corn long ago, of course. There had been pasture in the early summer, but that was gone too, a month ago. This beast—Cousin Susan had found him one day strayed on the road, a great sore half hiding the letters US branded on his hip—this horse and Uncle Mack’s mule were the only two work animals on the place now. They had subsisted for weeks on the sparse grass and the clover found in fence corners. Uncle Mack’s mule had died a few days ago of blind staggers. There was only this horse left.
She thought of horses she had known long ago. Cholera and Crevasse had been brought to the same pass as this wretched creature. The Yankees had stolen them. They had stayed away for months and then somehow had got back home. Jenny Morris looked out and saw them standing, their heads hanging over the gate. She went screaming into the house: “Mama, two old horses out here.” Fontaine Allard went out, looked at the pitiful creatures, then with a glance over his shoulder for spying negroes, said: “Drive these old horses off. No telling what diseases they’ve got.” Uncle Winston had driven them off to the pen in the woods. They had been there for two months, had got fat and sleek again, but had never got over being wary. Cally wrote that they would stand without moving a muscle if any alien step came near, but that they knew Grandpa’s and Winston’s step and whinnied when they heard them coming.
