The noise from the hall reels clumsily about the landing. It comes up in bursts and crashes from the entry-way downstairs. I figure it out in pieces—: scuffling, curses, the voices of three men. One of the voices, high-pitched and coarse, is a new one to this house. I walk to the landing bare-footed and numb.
I’m just at the banister when Virgil appears below me. “Where’d you catch him?” he says to somebody—: Kennedy or the Colonel. His face is red and fretful.
An answer comes. He bobs his head. “There’ll be others,” he says. “Others behind him—: a whole company, most likely.”
Then he’s gone under the landing.
I pinch my cheeks to redden them, arrange my hair, and tip-toe lightly down. To the parlor, as usual. Always the parlor. But this time the door has been left open wide.
Let there be others, I think. Let them come and catch us, Virgil. We’ll be gone from here then, gone away from this house, and there’ll be an end to things. I have no fear of that. The R— will find me wheresoever I get sent. If the soldiers come I’ll bring each of them a cup of cold well-water and kiss them on the lips. Let them come all at once, a power of them, a flood—; let their fury be swift and holy.
Virgil is afraid, of course. But Virgil is an empty bottle.
The first of them I see is Oliver, hanging back inside the door the way men do when they’re not needed. He doesn’t look at me. In the room are the Colonel and Virgil and Kennedy. And a man in a gravel-colored coat.
“Now!” says the Colonel.
The man in the coat is sitting on the settee the Colonel usually favors. The Colonel is sitting on a busted stool.
“Now, sir! I trust that you are comfortable—”
“Who in Sam Hell are you people?” the man yells. “What you fooling with me for?”
Kennedy scratches at his face. “You was puh! — puh! — poaching on this land.”
“Poaching hell,” the man says. “Ain’t nobody cautioned you there’s a war on?”
“Yes, young man. We have all of us been cautioned,” the Colonel says. “I served in the army myself. We appreciate about the war.”
The man looks down at nothing. “Which army you serve in?” he mutters. “Ours or theirn?”
“The army,” the Colonel answers. “Back when there wasn’t but one. I served under General Sterling Price.”
“Price,” says the man. “What you messing in Confederate business for, then, uncle?”
“This here is private puh! — puh! — parpetty, corn-pone,” Kennedy says in a friendly way. “You mistook yourself if you thought of it as otherwise. You must of missed the postings on the trees that said ‘Corn Pone Disinvited.’ You must of been looking down the fly-hole of your puh! — puh! — puh!—”
“Mr. Kennedy!” the Colonel barks out. “The man before you is a sergeant in the Confederate Army. As such he is doing his fighting best to preserve the prerogatives of our Trade—”
“What damn trade?” the man says, looking round.
“What’s your name, corn-pone?” Kennedy says.
The man makes a face at him. “Ain’t sayin’.”
“I apologize for this gentleman’s rudeness to you, son,” the Colonel says. “I profoundly regret it. I would, however, counsel you to answer him in full.”
The man curses at them both—: queer, butternut-sounding curses I’ve never heard the like of. Now he sees Virgil tucked away in the corner. Virgil smiles and waves hello.
“Get him talking, Kennedy,” Virgil says.
Kennedy looks at Virgil and lifts his eye-brows. “Right! I’ll just go and fetch my works,” he says. He goes off happy as an eel.
“There’s no cause to set up walls between us, Sergeant,” the Colonel says. “We are in no way your natural enemies—”
“Ain’t nothing natural about you, far as I can tell,” the man mutters.
I laugh at this—; I can’t help it. The man looks at me. He shakes his head once, then again, as if to clear it. Then he looks past me at Oliver.
“You! Boy!” the man calls out. “Maybe you can explain to your masters here. I’m a representative of the Twenty-seventh Tennessee and Mississippi—”
Out in the corridor Kennedy sniggers. Oliver makes a little sound. An instant later he’s crouched low beside the man with his knuckles twitching on the floor.
“I’ll explain something to you, friend,” he says. “We here are the gang off of Island 37. And you’re going to spend the rest of the war at the bottom of a barrel.”
The man’s eyes go round and starting and I’d be telling a lie to say it didn’t tickle me to see it. “Murel’s gang,” he stammers.
“Just tell us your name and placement, Sergeant,” the Colonel says softly.
The man looks round the parlor, blinking. Then he breaks into a buck-toothed grin.
“Ha, ha!” he says.
“You going to tell us?” says Oliver, rolling back his sleeves. But the mention of the gang has struck the man right dumb. He googles all around him like a fish.
Kennedy comes back now, cradling a satchel. It clanks and rattles as though it were full of cutlery. “Ain’t he talking yet?” he says. He says it like a hosanna.
The man’s face goes soft. “Eukah David Foster,” he says. His eyes go to Virgil. “You the chief? I thought Murel was a old midget.”
Virgil’s mouth opens.
Kennedy shows his teeth. “Shall I start in?”
“Let’s have your company and regiment, Foster,” Virgil says. “Let’s have it quick.”
“Sartoris Company,” Foster says. He rubs his nose between his fingers. “No regiment to speak of. We just barn-burners now. Lines done moved to Tennessee.”
“Tennessee, eh?” the Colonel says. “What’s the latest?”
Oliver jerks his chin at Foster. “You won’t get much out of this one, Colonel. He’s one of those that fell through the cracks and liked it.”
“That’s true enough, I reckon,” Foster says. He grins. “That what you all hoping to do?”
No-one says anything to that.
“How many of you buh! — buh! — barn-burners you say there was?” Kennedy says, coming up to the settee.
Foster looks down at the satchel. “Twenty-eight,” he mumbles.
“They cuh! — cuh! — coming up behind?”
Foster shakes his head. “No, sir. It’s only me.”
Kennedy looks at Virgil. Virgil looks at the Colonel. All of us know Foster won’t be leaving on his feet.
“Where’d you find him?” the Colonel asks Kennedy.
“This side of the shanty-town,” Kennedy says. “But only just.” He sets the satchel down. “Round where Virgil and his muh! — muh! — mulatto picked off that scout.”
“That was past the shanty-town,” Virgil says.
“Were that a few day back? That were our boys, all right,” Foster says. “Didn’t none of us cross that creek till yesterday, account of whether it be Yankees.”
“Those were Union men,” Oliver says loudly.
Foster shows us his buck-teeth. “Nope. Those boys were ourn.”
The Colonel looks pained. “What can you tell us, Sergeant, about the Union strength up and down the river?”
“Take what you see and reckon it times four,” Foster says. He spreads his arms wide. “They more Yankees in the woods than maggots in a pie. Mostly down at Wayte’s River, account of the junction there.” He sticks his chin out. “That why we come down here—: that rail-way line. We mean to bust it.”
“Jesus Muh! — Muh! — Mary,” Kennedy groans.
Virgil shakes his head. He turns his face toward mine and I see the worry on it plain as cake. Wayte’s River Junction is less than three miles from this house.