“Why hit the rail line here, of all places?” the Colonel says.
Foster shrugs. “Hit’s the only one we can get at, uncle.”
“A peach, this Fuh! — Fuh! — Foster!” Kennedy mutters.
Virgil looks hard at Foster. “How do you boys manage to keep clear, with all those Federals in the woods?”
Foster shrugs again. “They plenty of Yankees hereabouts. That’s all I can tell you.”
“I think you can tell us more than that,” says Virgil. “A very great deal more.”
Foster looks ruffled. “Look here, now. If you all are really part of Thaddeus Murel’s—”
“Ssshh!” says Oliver. Kennedy puts his hands over his ears.
“We don’t speak that name aloud, Sergeant,” the Colonel whispers.
Foster blinks at him. “Why the hell not?”
“Superstition, child—; no more than that,” Parson says, gliding into the room like a dress-maker’s bust on wheels.
Foster stops and gapes. He makes a creaking sound behind his teeth. “Who is that?” he says in a small blanched voice.
Parson looks from one of us to the next. We stare down at the floor.
“Why did no-one wake me?” Parson says.
The Colonel squirms a little. “I sent Dodds up to fetch you, Parson. Heaven knows where that blasted nigger—”
“So you’ve poached yourselves a Yankee,” Parson says, cutting him short. “And now you’re having trouble with him.”
“No, no, Parson!” the Colonel says. “This man is a member of the Sartoris Company—: a Dixie man. One of our own. He tells me—”
“Oh! I think I’d know a Yankee,” Parson says. He winks at Foster. “If the wind was blowing right.”
Foster’s face goes softer still.
Nobody says anything for a good long while.
“Well, dip me in bread-crumbs!” Kennedy says at last, throwing the satchel open with a laugh.
“Why not leave Mr. Foster in my care, gentlemen?” Parson says.
The Colonel shakes his head at this but no-one minds him. Kennedy stops short, looks down at his works, and spits.
“Parson!” the Colonel says. “Please, Parson. This — this boy—”
“Shut your mouth, Colonel,” Parson says. The Colonel shuts it.
“Leave us for a bit,” Parson says, smiling at Foster. “All of you.”
Kennedy gets to his feet and curses each of us and walks out with his bag of tricks wide open in the middle of the floor. Oliver trails out after him. The Colonel looks so old and dried-up on his stool that I expect him to blow away like dandelion-seed. He looks at Parson, then at Foster. He bows his head and shuts his eyes.
Parson rolls up to the settee. The hem of his skirt scrapes stiff as a tea-cup across the parquet. He lays a hand on the Colonel’s shoulder as he passes. “Why didn’t you wake me, Erratus?”
“Let me stay with this boy,” the Colonel says. “Let me stay with you and this boy, Parson.” His voice is as thin as an onion-skin.
Virgil helps the Colonel to his feet. “Come along, old smoke,” he says. “This boy’s no boy of yours.”
“Let the old donkey stay,” Foster says. “I don’t mind.” His upcountry drawl has been neatly put aside.
Parson lifts his skirts like a lady climbing into a coach and sets himself down next to Foster. Foster’s nape bunches up like a kitten’s.
I hang back in the room a moment, watching him. If he’s a spy, then he must know something about us already. And if he knows something about us already, then he must be wishing to saints above that Parson hadn’t woken from his nap.
I turn to leave. “Miss!” Foster calls out. “Would you be so kind as to get me a cup of water from that pail in the kitchen?”
I stop and squint at him. The air in the parlor is close and still. “When did you happen to be in the kitchen, Mr. Foster?” I say.
“Get me some god-damned water,” Foster squeaks. His face is grayer than his coat. I smile. The wish of a man who expects the life to be sucked out of him drop by drop for a cup of water seems a funny one to me.
“Go on, Miss Gilchrist,” Parson says. “Get our prisoner his drink.” Parson has always preferred a drop of water in his soup.
I’m away perhaps two minutes. When I come back they’re both exactly as they were. Not a word has passed between them, by the look of it. Dew has begun to form on Foster’s temples. I set the jar of water at his feet. He takes no notice. Parson is looking up at the ceiling like a spinster thinking of a dirty story.
“By-the-bye, Miss Gilchrist,” he says. “Have you seen little Asa Trist?”
I think a moment. “This morning I did, by the orchard fence. Jabbering away at Virgil.”
His eyes come down at once. “Talking to Virgil?” he says.
I nod. “It looked to be quite an epic.”
His face gives a flutter. “How do you mean, ‘an epic’?”
“Just that,” I say. “There looked to be no end of poetry in it.”
Parson says nothing.
“I was watching from my window,” I say. “I couldn’t hear them, Parson.”
“From your window. Yes. I have no doubt that you were.” Parson looks me over. “But then, you hear all sorts of things through that window of yours—; don’t you, Miss Gilchrist.”
I keep my face shut to him. “Have you and Asa had a fight?”
Parson sits back with a sigh. “You might say that we’ve had a parting of the waters,” he says.
“A religious matter, was it?”
His eyes go cloudy. “You might call it that.”
Foster lets out a choked-sounding breath and reaches for the jar. He moves his arms as though they were borrowed from some other. He takes hold of the jar and lifts it to his mouth. He hasn’t once looked at Parson or at me.
“I’ve always considered you and Asa birds of a feather,” I say to Parson. “You both make me want to run screaming for the hills.”
“Asa Trist is a bird,” Foster announces, setting down the jar.
It takes me a moment to recover my voice. “What did you say, Mr. Foster?”
Foster’s mouth shuts. His face is like the weather-side of an old frame house.
Parson gathers up the hem of his gown and studies it. He moves his thumb back and forth across a stain. He purses his lips. “Go on, Mr. Foster,” he says.
“Asa Trist is a bird,” Foster says again. His voice is as unlike the voice that asked me to fetch the water as my own voice is to Parson’s.
“A plucked pigeon,” Foster says. “A fallen snipe.”
I turn stone-faced to Parson. “I’ve seen this trick before,” I say. “It holds no charm for me.” But even as I say so a faintness gathers against my skin and I understand he’ll do exactly what he likes. He’ll do exactly what he likes with me.
Parson sits forward with a yawn. Foster crumples like a cast-off glove.
“Let’s chat a bit, Clementine,” he says. He pats the empty stool beside him.
From Parson’s Day-Book
This in the language of Christ’s murderers is hokmah nistarah, the clandestine wisdom, passed from one generation to the next since the death of Abraham, to whom it was revealed by G*d. The sin which sequesters us from His boundaryless glory is not that of vice, but of ignorance. Our eyes were given us to see.
The link between G*d and the world is indirect. G*d is a pier-glass from which pours forth a bountiful light. The light is reflected in a second glass, from which it passes to a third, a fourth, and so on until the mortal coil is reached. With each reflection the light loses something of its strength, till at last it falls dimly onto the floor of this our earth, finite and desecrated, that we may look upon ourselves and weep.