Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [137]
Goddammit! Forrest said, aloud without meaning to, loud enough Highlander tossed his spirited head at the sound, and Willie, riding a half-length behind, looked over at him, perturbed. Forrest’s head was pounding with the fight bottled up inside of him. By damn I wisht Joe Johnston hadn’t got kilt, he thought. That wish had come to him many a time since Shiloh. He spread his hand over Highlander’s mane, feeling the heat and the strong pulse of blood through the big horse’s neck. A magnificent animal, a gift to him from the citizens of Rome, Georgia, when he’d saved them from Streight’s raid, the previous spring. The flow of Highlander’s energy under his hand helped him calm himself a little, but not much. His voice submerged into his mind. Cain’t he see he’s spose to be the goddamn cat? he thought.
All day they skirmished through the hills and hollers west of the creek. True enough that it was hard to figure just where your enemy was in this country, but Forrest was getting an unpleasant suspicion that the Yankee units that had been scattered and isolated a few days before were now beginning to cluster and concentrate, like flecks of butter lumping in a churn. At day’s end he and his men broke contact and made a buttonhook to the south, to camp not far from Alexander’s Bridge, a ways upstream of their crossing earlier in the day. As the darkness grew, the pattering of small arms fire faded away in the distance like the end of a light rain.
“Let’s have a few of y’all desert,” Forrest said with a wink, once their scant rations had been shared out and swallowed.
“I’ll go.” Matthew was quick on his feet.
“And me.” Willie was up on the other side of the cook fire’s ashes, narrowing his eyes on Matthew, then looking away.
Forrest nodded to Matthew; to Willie he said, “You stay here.”
The party of so-called deserters scattered down the slope and fanned into the woods toward where the Federal camps might be. Forrest spread his duster on the ground beneath a pin oak, and stretched out on his back. He would have closed his eyes a minute, except his strapping son stood over him, fists on his hips behind his holsters.
“Why is it I don’t get to go?”
“Why is it I don’t want you hung for a spy?”
“Who says I would be?”
“Who says you wouldn’t?” Forrest paused, turned onto his hip. Acorns dug into him through the cloth of his coat. “I might jest have a feelen.”
“You always say feelings are for women and witches.”
Forrest exhaled through his flared nostrils. It was true that he did often say such a thing.
“You let Matthew go,” Willie complained.
“They won’t worry a nigger. They’ll reckon he’s contraband and let him alone. They’ll not want to have to take care of him neither. He can git in and out of thar easier’n a rabbit.” Forrest chuckled. “A lot easier if ye think about it, ’cause won’t nobody want to throw him in a skillet.”
Willie’s posture relaxed a little, his hands swinging loose. But he looked as if he might say something more.
“Git on with ye, now,” Forrest said, raising up on an elbow. “There’ll be fight aplenty for ye tomorrow. And the day after that, if I don’t miss my guess.”
When his son had gone off, Forrest peeled back his duster and brushed a handful of acorns from under it. Again he stretched out, looking up at the canopy of oak leaves. From the far side of the tree he could hear the whisk of Jerry’s comb on Highlander’s coat. His back hurt him some, from the wound he’d taken at Tunnel Hill a few days before. He made himself quit