Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [95]
A cheer went up. Willie slowed the horse to a canter as he brought him around in the next intersection, then came trotting back, preening his mustache with the thumb of his free hand. Hands reached up to pat his knees. Some people were counting out money to pay their bets. Witherspoon leaned sideways in the saddle to shake hands with Willie. Forrest dropped Mary Ann’s hand and strode down the gate. He fixed Willie with a cocked forefinger.
“William! Go and walk that horse till he’s good and cool. And I mean do hit yoreself, hear me? Don’t ye hand it to nobody else to do for ye.”
“Yes sir,” Willie said, his triumph now just slightly muted. Forrest had already turned from him and was walking up the slope of the greensward toward Mary Ann, his face the same struggling mix of annoyance and excitement. She took his arm and they stood there a moment more, watching the crowd dissolve.
“Well, he’s too big to whup I reckon,” Forrest said, a little ruefully. “I’d dock his pay but ain’t nobody drawen none!” He shook his head. “That boy cain’t think of a thing more fun than a war.”
ON THE MORNING of the tenth day of his leave at LaGrange, Forrest woke to a muttering he took at first to be the sound of a light rain. But when he opened his eyes the windows streamed with sunshine. It was a little too warm in the bedroom, from embers of the fire Mary Ann had insisted on lighting the night before. Now she knelt before the window, her bare toes snug on the oval carpet, her knees pressing through the cotton of her gown onto the bare poplar boards beneath the windowsill.
That muttering he’d heard was prayer. For a moment he watched her between the bedposts, the bluish tint of her eyelids shifting as her eyes looked one way or another into the world of the unseen. Sunlight flowed through her yellow hair.
He got up quickly and pulled on trousers and his boots. She did not ordinarily pray where he could hear her and it troubled him to see her do it now.
But now she tied off her amens, he supposed, and rose to face him with a fragile smile. “You don’t look like you mean to tarry.”
“Time’s up,” Forrest said, shrugging into his tunic. “I got to git on to see that man I aim to see.”
“I know it,” she said, lowering her eyes for just a moment before she raised them back to his. “My love goes with you.” She tightened a blue ribbon at the throat of her gown. “And my prayers.”
Forrest looked away from her, though he was not a man who flinched.
“General Forrest.” She took a barefoot step toward him. “Have you never thought to pray?”
“You know the answer,” he said shortly. “I ain’t never got down on my knees and hung my head to beg nobody for nothen. And I never—” He stopped. “The Lord he’ps those as he’ps themselves,” he said. “Momma used to say that sometimes. I reckon it’s the only prayer I know. And I say it standing on my own two feet.”
He paused and thought for a minute more. “I don’t want to be beholden to nobody.”
Mary Ann raised her head. “Not even to God.”
“To God least of all,” Forrest told her.
She nodded. “So be it, then.”
He had taken two steps toward the door when he turned back suddenly to catch her in his arms.
“I’m not about to leave you like that,” he said. He lifted her chin with the ball of a finger. “I love you with all I got in me, Mary Ann, and I’ll come back to you forever, while I live.”
She tucked her cheek into his collarbone and they stood so for a moment there. Presently Forrest broke the embrace and left the room without waiting to look into her face again.
THE FIRE in General Forrest’s bedroom had burned to ash. Jerry was suffering a touch of arthritis, so Henri and Matthew carried in fresh wood. Matthew tumbled down his load every which way on the hearthstone, but in spite of the clatter Mrs. Forrest didn’t seem to look at him.
She stood at the end of the neatly made half-tester bed, in a gown, and plain cotton slippers, and a shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders. It was scarcely cold enough for a fire