Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [34]
Forrest could feel the blood beating hard in his temples now. He stopped a minute, fanned himself with the hat.
“Now here’s what I come down to say to ye. War ain’t just a-comen, it’s done already started. I aim to fight for the side I jest said. That’s all they is to it. But any man among ye wants to fight alongside of me—when the war once gits over with, I will set that man free.”
In the silence that followed he could hear a late-rising rooster crowing back behind him in the quarters. He thought he could hear water trickling in the creek a quarter-mile away.
“What about the women,” Zebulon said.
“Huh.” Forrest put his hat back on. He actually hadn’t thought about the women. “Now that’s a right reasonable question. Here’s what I say. If ye want to carry a gal free with ye, be shore ye step over the broom with her afore ye go to the fight. And not more’n one to a customer, mind.”
At that there was a little laughter and a louder rustle of whispering. Young Alma came up on her toes to say something deep into Zebulon’s ear. Forrest raised his voice a little.
“Ye can’t hardly lose with this proposition,” he said. “The Yankees win and ye go free thataway. Fight with me and I’ll set ye free.”
“And effen we gets kilt?” Benjamin said.
“Then ye’ll be dead.” Forrest looked at him, not especially hard. Benjamin held the gaze this time, till Forrest told him, “Don’t nobody live forever.”
ZEBULON HAD SAVED a long section of gut from last fall’s hog-killing, rescued it from the iron rim of the chitlin pot. He’d cleaned it and cut it into long thin strips and laid the strips to dry across the railing of the tiny porch that Benjamin had built onto the front of his cabin. He had softened the strips again and rolled them into slender, milky cords, then coiled them carefully to store away in a clean rag.
When he saw Ben coming through the twilight he went into the cabin and came out carrying the rag full of strings in one hand and the mostly finished banjo in the other. Alma set a chair for Ben, one of the two that they had in the cabin. There was just room for the two men on the little lean-to porch. Alma settled on a chunk of stone outside the rail and bent her head to a pair of britches she was mending.
As he stepped up, Ben took five pegs from his bib pocket and rattled them in his hand. With a smile Sap pointed to the empty chair and handed him the banjo. Ben had made it mostly himself, but all to Zebulon’s directions; it was the only instrument he had ever made. He set the drum of it on his knee and held the walnut neck up vertical. He’d made the headstock into a horse’s head, improving on the abstract form of fiddleheads he had seen. Little chips of white cow bone were wedged in for the eyes.
The banjo drum was a cedar hoop, with half a big gourd for a resonator. Ben had put all the parts together, impressed how Zebulon knew just how to tell him what to do. The only part Zeb had done himself was stretching the hide parchment over the hoop, soaking it soft and letting it temper up as it dried. He’d needed to get Forrest to give him a pass so he could go a dozen miles south to where there was a white man crazy enough to be raising sheep in the suffocating Mississippi heat.
Ben lowered the banjo head to the floor and, with the horse-headstock resting against his knee, began to set the cedar pegs in the holes already bored for them. Each peg was flattened at the top to accommodate the ball of a thumb. Two of the four he had to whittle a little more to get them settled right. Satisfied they’d turn and hold, he raised the banjo to his lap and pushed the fifth peg into place on the side of the neck. He tapped the skin head once, for a soft belling tone, then handed the banjo back to Zebulon.
No other note had yet been sounded, but little children began to turn up, to watch Zeb knotting on the strings. Little Hattie hung by both hands from the rail, peering in underneath it. Beside her, just tall enough to see over the rail, was Eli, Ben and Nancy’s next oldest child. A few more