Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [20]
Kelley raised his head, holding his place in the text with one finger, cupping his other hand behind his ear. As Strange opened his mouth to go on there was a nasty whistle and a rush of wind. A rag of iron crashed down to splinter the ice pack just past his boot toes. Strange went skipping backward over a fallen log and dropped out of sight behind it.
“Ah,” Kelley said deliberately. “Henri.” He was one of the few men among Forrest’s Rangers to give the name its proper French pronunciation. Others called him Henry, or more rarely Hank. Forrest, when he was feeling humorous, addressed Henri as Ornery.
“You wonder why I sit here reading?” Kelley asked, and Henri nodded, though in truth he wondered just as much why he himself kept standing there.
“As you know, the cavalry is not called to this engagement, it being chiefly a matter for artillery,” Kelley said. “The enemy compels us to study war, but he may not compel us to depart from our civilized practice and lapse into the ways of savagery. Thus I improve an hour which otherwise might be lost to idleness. Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established.” He smiled, sighting down the finger that held his place. “Proverbs, sixteen-three. But as for yourself, Henri, you are still more exposed than I. Have you no thought for your own safety?”
I was killed at Chickamauga, Henri thought to say, but it occurred to him that Chickamauga hadn’t happened yet, and another tumbling shell was blotting out the sun. He skittered backward from under its shrieking shadow, and fell over the fallen log himself, discommoding not only Sergeant Major Strange but also Ginral Jerry, who had taken shelter with them there. Below, the fort’s single 128-pounder coughed and roared, and the gunboats answered. A horse let out a screaming whinny, then fell silent.
Henri risked a peep above the log. The last chunk of shrapnel had sheared away the tent pole on which Kelley had been leaning (for the camp stool where he sat had no back to it). The minister stood up, arms akimbo, Bible pinned beneath an elbow, peering irritably at the mess of collapsed canvas. Weak sunlight glinted from his spectacles. A birdlike twittering emerged from between his lips.
“What the hell is that chatter?” Strange inquired.
“He cussen in Chinese, thas all,” Jerry explained. He had rolled onto his back and lay relaxed with one knee up and his hands laced behind his head; a straw or a splinter moved in the corner of his mouth as he talked.
“Chinese?” Strange propped up on an elbow, looking at Jerry, but Jerry was gazing further off, at a quartet of rag-winged buzzards turning in the cold wind above the fort.
“Chinese,” Strange said again. His tone shifted from outraged disbelief to a sort of resignation. Jerry rolled one eye toward him.
“He been a preacher ovah theah. In China,” Jerry said. Again Henri raised his head above the log. With a sigh, Kelley settled himself on the canvas triangle of his stool and bent his attention back onto the Bible. Henri snuggled into the cold gray wood. Another hail of shrapnel pelted down and Jerry rolled tighter against the log, which Henri himself embraced still more closely.
Then something changed in the pattern of the cannonade down by the riverside, as if a voice had left the choir, a bullfrog been gigged out of the pond. An exploding shell bloomed over Fort Donelson, and in its orange aureole the broad bearded face of Kelley appeared, hovering over the fallen log.
“Come on, boys, let’s get out of this mess,” he said, glancing over his shoulder as he slipped the Bible into his coat pocket. “There’s too much commotion to read anymore. And the colonel went down there an hour ago—I want to see what’s going on.”
Jerry only smiled and stayed where he was, curling closer to the log. Henri and Strange got up and followed Kelley. They found their horses in a grove of pin oaks in back of their camp. With Kelley leading they threaded their way through a peppering of hastily dug rifle pits to the right of the trenches which Buckner’s men occupied,