Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [47]
Day should have broken, but fog smothered the sun. It muffled gunfire, shouts and hard riding, to the advantage of the raiders. Forrest overtook Henri and Ginral Jerry and Dinkins at the corner of Beale Street. He was not in that state of possession he usually entered during a battle, Henri noticed. His eyes had not turned that wildcat yellow, though he did seem to be looking for something. Three or four blocks toward the river they could hear men shouting and women shrieking and glass breaking out of the windows of the Gayoso Hotel. But Forrest was looking the other way, at a woman languidly crossing Beale Street, leading two small boys along by the hands. A bigger lad trotted along behind. Henri couldn’t make out her face through the mist, but no white woman ever walked like that.
“Tom,” she called back in a low husky voice. “Why doan you hold the ginnal’s horse?”
The biggest boy caught King Philip’s reins just behind the bit. The horse tossed his head once, then subsided. Forrest turned his head to the others.
“You boys go on. I’ll be right behind ye.”
As they moved off, Matthew sat up in the wagon bed, and stared back at the boy holding the horse. The woman had moved close against Forrest’s saddle skirt, and the pair of them were silhouetted in silver by the mist.
“That’s curious,” Dinkins was saying. “Most of the time he’s right out in front of us.”
“Well,” Ginral Jerry told him. “You best not worry bout it.”
“YOU LOOK RIGHT PROSPEROUS,” Forrest said, gazing down at the smooth dark oval of her face, shaped by the blue dotted kerchief she wore knotted to the top of her forehead. Tongue-tied for a moment, he studied her full cheeks and deep eyes, gone ghostly in the mist. She had pressed herself up against his booted leg so that he could feel the whole warmth of her front working through the leather, but the real heat was in her eyes when she looked up at him.
“An’ you, Ginnal Forrest … you po’ as a snake nigh bout.” She gripped his thigh above the knee, and the thrill of that touch shot clean up his backbone. “All skin and bone, Mista Forrest.” She smiled. Her voice had the same saucy lilt he remembered. Sound teeth and a sweet breath. He’d remarked that from the very first.
“Hit’s still some gristle left on my bones,” he joked at her. “A scrap of meat here and there if it should be wanted.”
“Seein’s believen,” she said, reaching for his arm to draw him down. “So climb down off that horse and rest yo laigs a spell.”
Forrest unstirruped his right foot and let his seat go slack. He could hear the commotion from the Gayoso Hotel still, and another big disturbance down Union Street. More firing could be heard from the vicinity of Female College, better organized, but it seemed to stay in one place. He swung down to the muddy roadbed.
His legs were a little rubbery under him as he came down, for he’d scarcely been out of the saddle for the two days. In the guise of supporting him she ran a hand over the placket of his trousers. “Aw now, you tellen me the truth!” With her free hand she turned the brass knob on the door, which opened inward, as he knew. He knew the layout of the room but it was black dark inside with the windows shuttered, and she latched the door firmly when they had stepped in. The niggerish smell was like home to him. The bed was real low, he remembered too late, catching an ankle on it and beginning to fall back, rebounding from the sagging hammock of rope that spanned the frame, supporting a pad of old blankets. Aw now honey she was murmuring, catching him up a little with her arms as she pressed him further down with the weight of her body pressing into his. Somehow in the dark she had undone her bodice so that her firm chocolatey breasts caressed his cheek, and had unfastened his trouser buttons too, reaching around to grasp the goat tuft of hair at the base of his spine—thas you aright she whispered, thas old Bedford sho nuff. Bowled over by the warm weight of her, he