Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [22]
There came a long deep droning sound like wind over the mouth of a long bottle, and a hole opened up into the next world where the Old Ones sat cross-legged smoking their pipes and playing their strange music, then out of the hole a tapered artillery shell came majestically sailing; it entered Forrest’s fresh horse just behind the crook of Forrest’s own knee, and then the horse exploded.
Henri lay facedown, embracing the frozen dirt. He had stopped feeling the cold during the first charge that morning, eight hours before. But now he felt frozen all the way through and the only warm spot in the entire world was his horse’s nostrils nuzzling the back of his neck, wanting to know that he was all right, wanting him to get on again. But the last place Henri wanted to be was on a horse right now.
“Git up if ye don’t want me to kick ye.” Forrest’s long shadow stretched over him; Forrest shaking his head. “Git up now, Henry, if ye ain’t dead.”
Reluctantly Henri sat up. He let Forrest help him to his feet.
“Goddammit!” Forrest said, his beard’s point shaking. Henri felt his sorrow transmuted to rage. “That’s two good horses in less’n five minutes—by damn, them Yankees need to pay—”
Down the slope, General Pillow was calling for his men to retreat to their breastworks.
“The devil!” Forrest hollered. “Goddammit to the eternal fires of Hell, cain’t ye see we got’m on the run? There’s three good hours of daylight left, we ought to be killen Yankees with that!”
Henri leaned against his horse’s shoulder, stooping enough to shelter his head from whatever projectile might yet come hurtling out of the next world in his direction. Forrest’s face had turned that hot-iron color. He kicked shale loose from the frozen ground.
“Goddamn if I aim to go back to any goddamn breastworks,” he said.
AT DUSK they gathered around a campfire Ginral Jerry had built in the lee of a snowbank, which did something, though not exactly enough, to cut the bitter rising wind. Forrest sat on a tripod camp stool, his long arms wrapped around his knees, reflected firelight flickering from the deep hollow of his eyes. Though he was in his shirtsleeves he didn’t seem to feel the cold. Is he even human? Henri thought.
Kelley sat across the fire from Forrest, quietly contemplating him. No one spoke except for Jerry, who was counting out loud slowly.
“Thirteen, fo’teen … Cunnel Forrest, you done leff me a whole lotta menden to do … Fifteen bullet holes in dis here coat … doan even know as I got enough thread …” Jerry spread the coat so that the firelight shone through minié ball tears, to Henri it looked for a second as if the coat was studded with glowing jewels, or more like a dozen-odd lightning bugs had lit among its folds.
“I got a mind to ax Ole Miss to he’p with dis job a work,” Jerry grumbled.
“Miz Forrest has gone back to Memphis,” Forrest said.
“May God keep her safe there,” Kelley added.
Forrest looked at him thoughtfully, then turned to Jerry with a smile on at least one side of his mouth. “Don’t know as she’s so far off yet she caint hear ye callen her ‘Ole Miss,’”Then he stood up, as Jerry mimed a cower at the thought of Ole Miss’s wrath. Forrest’s gangling shadow lay back a long way from the fire. “Hand me over that coat,” he said, reaching for it. “Ye can sew on it some more later, I reckon. Right now I got to go down to Dover and parley with them ginrals.” Shrugging into the coat, he turned from the fire and spat into the snow.
“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” Kelley said.
“That they do.” Forrest looked into the shadows beyond the ring of firelight. “Brother Bill?”
“Brother