Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [103]
“That all the gun ye got right thar?” Forrest said, and the boy nodded.
“Have ye got a pair of shoes?”
“Not right now I don’t,” Price said.
“Hit don’t matter,” Forrest said. “Oncet we get to Johnsonville we’ll fit ye out proper.”
The boy’s face brightened and then clouded. “I reckon I cain’t jest go off’n leave my sisters here.”
Henri looked at the older girl. She had a long jaw, like an ax blade. The boy did too but not yet so pronounced—probably the girl was older. Henry felt like he’d seen that jaw somewhere before.
The boy was thinking. “Y’all could go to the Washburns,” he said.
The girl transfixed him with a bony finger. “You ain’t tellen me whar to go nor what to do when I git thar neither.”
“Miss,” Forrest took off his hat. “I don’t believe you kin really stay here.”
“Why not?” The girl held his stare. Forrest fingered his hat brim and studied the cabin. The door had been stove in that very day by an eight-pound shot and the roof tree had caved in at the middle long before.
“Hit—Hit don’t look like a good place for young ladies to stay on their lonesome,” Forrest said. “Whar’s yore Mam and Pap?”
“Mam died,” the younger girl said, and shut her mouth on a tight white line.
“Fever,” the older one added. “And y’all took Pap a long time ago and he got kilt at Shiloh. Somebody sent us a letter about it. And y’all took Briley, that was not but last winter, and we don’t know if he’s kilt yet or not—we ain’t heard nothen.”
Briley. The long jaw. Henri couldn’t quite put it together where he’d seen it. “Briley’s all right,” Forrest was saying. “I believe he’s gone to Fort Heiman with Buford.”
Was he making this up, Henri wondered, but it was just as likely Forrest might actually know it.
“Tell me about these Washburns.”
“Well,” Price said. “The men’s all gone but hit’s a couple of niggers stayen with’m yet. And they still got two milk cows.”
“Two milk cows!” Forrest turned to Matthew. “Y’all still got that wagon?”
“Yessir,” Matthew said. “Back in the woods.”
“Take these young ladies to the Washburns then,” Forrest said. “I reckon they can tell ye how to go.” He turned to Price. “Young sir, you can come along with me.”
· · ·
“THAT SOW WAS OURN,” the elder girl said, as she slung her rag bundle into the wagon beside the carcass, and climbed in after it. Once settled she took a Bible with a dry-rotted black leather cover from under her elbow and centered it in the lap of her grubby skirt.
“Get up, May,” she said, but the younger girl had already dragged her own bundle in beside her.
“I expect your brother will get a piece of that pork,” Henri said. “And it sounds like you’ll find milk at the Washburns.”
“Oh, if we got to go the Washburns.” The girl stretched up toward Ben on the box. “Just go down that road yonder a piece. Hit’s in a bend of the river.”
Matthew was looking at the girl curiously. “What have you got against these Washburns.”
The girl sniffed. “Secesh, fer a start.”
“Secesh!” Henri blurted. “Your brother just joined the Confederate Army.”
“He never ast my leave to do it neither,” the girl snapped. “Ain’t no good come of it. Jest everbody dead or gone and the ones that’s left is starven.”
She set her long jaw and stared down the road. Now it came to Henri where he’d seen that bleak regard before: on long-jawed Briley, that was him, standing beside the grave he’d been ordered to dig for himself when he and eighteen more West Tennessee recruits had been caught trying to skip off home last winter. Forrest had reprieved their death sentence at dawn, which meant that he might well remember who Briley was, and know where he was for that matter.
“Rebs ain’t brought nothen but trouble,” the girl said. “Besides hit ain’t right.”
Ben turned from the wagon box to look at her. “What ain’t right?” he said.
“Holt men in bondage.” The girl turned almost prim, tapping the crumbly