Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [30]
CHAPTER NINE
GINRAL JERRY HUNKERED over a greenwood fire, turning hot grease in his iron skillet, tilting the crackling fat to the rim so the aroma drifted toward Forrest where he lay on a pallet of green boughs, resting from the wound he’d taken that last day of Shiloh. It was rather strange that he lay on his back since it was there the bullet had struck him, low and dangerously near to the spine. On the packed ground beside was a bare saber and on the other side a Navy six. His hands were folded over his breastbone and his cheeks sunken, skin waxy and pale, though Henri knew he was not dead. His nostrils flared slightly at the odor of the sack sausage Jerry was slicing into the sizzling grease, but his eyes stayed shut, shifting in dream beneath the lids.
Ginral Jerry worked cornmeal mush in a tin cup. Matthew sat on his heels beside him, balancing a bowl of pastel-colored birds’ eggs he had been climbing trees to forage. Henri heard rustling in the brush, over the brow of the hill behind the hollow tree, and he got up to investigate, covering the six-shooter in his belt with the palm of his hand. Montgomery Little and Nath Boone were climbing toward him, one holding back a snag of blackberry bramble for the other to pass. Henri was a little surprised to see them there since Little didn’t die till Thompson Station in 1863 and Boone, in fact, survived the war.
“My my,” Boone said, “Don’t that just smell good.” And Little: “Y’all mighty handy at foraging.”
Ginral Jerry showed them the whites of his eyes and said nothing, setting small white hoecakes into the grease. Henri looked the other way. Boone was all right but he was a little wary of Little, who’d been the one to point out to Forrest that Henry wasn’t exactly a white man, back when their paths first crossed that morning on the Brandenburg road. His Y’all meant you people meant you niggers maybe.
“How’s the Old Man?” Boone’s shadow fell across Forrest’s pallet.
“He resten,” Ginral Jerry said. “He ain’t got no appetite.”
“A shame,” said Little. “When for once there’s something to feed him.”
Ginral Jerry’s eyes showed a little white. He pushed hoecake and sausage to the walls of the skillet. Matthew leaned forward and broke the tiny birds’ eggs one by one into the hot black ring of bare metal. They bubbled up quickly and were done almost at once.
Ginral Jerry served a portion onto a clean shake of wood and ran it under Forrest’s nose. When the commander didn’t stir, he set it down on Forrest’s chest, above his folded fingertips. Then he passed food around to the others.
“One?” said Little, looking at his miniature fried egg.
“One,” Ginral Jerry replied.
“They ain’t very big.”
“They ain’t very many of’m neither,” Jerry told him.
Little subsided. “Lord we ask you to bless this food. And to preserve our lives for your service.” He glanced toward the Roman, who whispered in Latin, eyes half-shut, clicking beads around the circle with his thumb.
They ate.
Forrest’s portion rose up and down on his chest with his slow breath. Little watched the regular movement. Henri felt that the white man was not sated and that his hungry attention would soon shift to him.
He opened the cylinder on his pistol and shook the cartridges out in his hand. Idly he spun the cylinder with his thumb, peering as if he meant to clean it. At the end of one tube of oiled metal he saw a vignette of Forrest, raising the head of his dead brother who’d just been shot, and in another he assiduously turned a grindstone against the edge of a long blade. Here was Henri himself, diving out an upstairs window of a Louisville tavern, and there he was again, running barefoot and breathless after a young doe.
“Well, Hank,” Little said. “I’ve oftentimes wondered.”
Henri sighed. He reloaded his pistol, snapped it shut, and tossed the chip of wood from which he’d eaten onto the fire.
“What exactly were you up to that day we found you on the road?”
Nath Boone, squinting a little, picked at his teeth with a wisp of straw.
“You had the look of … a runaway.