Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [69]
A great spirit of destruction soared over this land, and Henri’s heart flew up to meet it. He rode with his knees guiding his horse, his palms turned up and arms raised high. At his right hand Matthew’s upturned face was bathed in a similar exaltation. “Koupé têt,” Henri called to him. “Boulé kay.” He knew the boy thrilled to the words even though he didn’t understand them. They had paused before a grand white-columned house whose brick was cracking under the heat of the fire that swirled between the open front and back doorways of the entrance hall, and rocketed up the helix of the spiral staircase. Soot-streaked blacks kicked their heels through heaps of ash in the yard, singing out a joyous rage. A Yankee officer cantered up to three of them, pale-faced.
“Make it stop,” he panted. “This—General Smith never ordered this. We’re supposed to destroy railroad and depots and supplies, not burn down the whole state of Mississippi. Even Sherman didn’t order this.”
Henri looked at him. “No human hand can make this stop.”
The Yankee officer gazed blankly at him for a few seconds more, then wheeled his horse and rode away. Presently the three of them prodded their mounts and set off, a bit more slowly, in the same direction the bluecoat had taken. The notion of strategy he had introduced was cutting into Henri’s transport of elation. He felt the leaden weight of Sherman, waiting for Smith to meet him at Meridian, wanting to rip the belly out of the whole South like a wild dog eating the viscera of its kill. Forrest knew full well that this was Sherman’s dear intention, and Forrest had it in mind to thwart it if he could. It was for that that Sherman hated and feared Forrest and would if possible have him killed.
“Koupé têt,” Henri said again in a lower tone; he didn’t really feel it now. “Boulé kay.” It didn’t feel the same.
“What’s that mean?” Matthew said, and Henri felt that the glow of the moment before had left him too.
“Cut off heads,” Henri said. “Burn down houses.” He sighed. “I’ll tell you later.”
As they rode into Okolona he began automatically to calculate numbers of cannon and wagons and men. Either side of them Matthew and Benjamin were doing the same, Henri felt sure. As Nath Boone predicted, bewilderment in the town was so general that the Yankees took no note of their passage.
But at the south edge of Okolona, Henri pulled his horse up sharply.
“Can somebody please tell me why we’re going back to Nathan Bedford Forrest right now?”
Benjamin looked at him sidelong. “They’s some as would like to ax you the same question.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Henri said. “Right now I’m asking you.”
Benjamin touched a fingertip to the source of the scar on his temple. “Them niggers haven a big time now,” he said. “Tomorrow they won’t know what to do. Fulla fight as they is, they ain’t got nobody to lead’m.”
“Why not us?” Henri said.
“I ain’t taken that up today.” Ben faced south along the road. “Get along, mule. Let’s us go see can we find Jeff Forrest.”
The mule’s ears revolved in a backward circle. Henri’s and Matthew’s mounts fell in on either side.
“Freedom comen,” Benjamin said. “One way or t’other. It gone come hard.” He met Henri’s eyes straight on this time. “I don’t know what you hold to in this world. I got my wife down to Coahoma. Nancy, her name—I hope she all right. Yankees come there, they ain’t gone take no better care of that place than they done these’ns around here.”
“Let it all burn, then,” Henri said.
Benjamin smiled into himself. “Time was, my mind was bad like that,” he said. “Back when Ole Bedford put this knot upside my head.” Again he traced the scar’s zigzag with his fingertip. “Oh yes, I seen you looken at it. He flown out and done it before he thought.”
“You wouldn’t call him ‘Ole Bedford’ if he was in earshot.”
“Reckon I might not.” Ben clucked