Rosalind turns from him to you. Almost as if she just saw you. Almost as if she’s surprised. Beside her is a gun.
“Someone shot him,” she says clearly. “A man came in with a gun, and shot my husband! Did you see him? He left right before you got here. I’ll bet you can catch him. Help me! Go catch him! Take this! Then run!”
Everything moves very slowly. With an easy movement (she’s still wearing gloves) she swoops up the gun and tosses it your way in a slow, gentle arc.
And reflexively—
(At the same time things are moving very fast in your head, as it suddenly resolves, every incident with Rosalind playing like a movie on fast rewind. Your texts to her, your phone calls, her borrowing your phone, your encounters, more texts, strange requests, photos of her fairly close, hands up, telling you not to take her picture, more pictures of her taken at a distance, doing ordinary things. The Rorschach has been made very clear. You had been looking at it one way, but you had it upside down. It was all there but you didn’t make sense of it in time. It’s a different picture now. You don’t know everything, but you know exactly how screwed you are.)
— you catch it.
Ron Rash
Neighbors
from Epoch
They came at dawn, ground crackling beneath the trample of hooves, amid it the sound of chickens flapping and squawking. Then voices, one among them shouting to dismount. The corn shucks rasped as Rebecca rose, quickly tugging her wool overcoat tight against her gown. She waked the children who shared the bed. As they rubbed questioning eyes, Rebecca whispered for them to get under the bed and be absolutely still. Hannah’s chin quivered but she nodded. Ezra, three years older, took his sister’s hand as they raised themselves off the mattress. He helped Hannah under the bed and followed.
A pounding on the door began as Rebecca gathered the salt pouch from the larder, the box of matches off the fireboard. She considered lifting the loose plank beneath the table and placing what filled her hands in the firkin, but the pounding was so fierce now that the latch looked ready to splinter. Rebecca shoved what she’d gathered under the bed too, whispered a last plea for the children to be quiet. She waited a few moments, some wisp of hope that the men might simply take the chickens and the ham in the barn and leave. But the man at the door shouted that they’d burn out those inside if the door didn’t open.
Rebecca knew they would, that these men had done worse things in Shelton Laurel. Just months ago, they’d whipped Sallie Moore until blood soaked her back, roped Martha White to a tree and beat her. Barns had been burned, wells fouled with killed animals. There’s nary a meanness left for them Seccests to do to us, Ginny Lunsford had claimed, but she’d been proved wrong when eleven men and a thirteen-year-old boy were rounded up, marched west a mile on the Knoxville pike, put in a line, and shot.
Rebecca lifted the latch. As she pushed the door open, boot steps clattered off the porch. A low swirling fog made the horses mere gray shapes, those mounted upon them adrift from the earth, like revenants. Rebecca stepped far enough onto the porch to show her empty hands. A rein shook and a horse moved forward, its rider a man whose age lay hidden behind a thick brown beard. He alone wore an actual uniform, though his butternut jacket lacked two buttons, his officer’s hat stained and slouched. He raised a hand but before tipping his hat he caught himself, set the hand on the saddle pommel. The man asked if anyone else was inside.
Rebecca hesitated.
“I’m Colonel Allen, of the North Carolina Sixty-Fourth Regiment,” he said. “You’ve heard of us, of me.”
“Yes.”
“Then you know you’ll rue any lie you tell me.”
“My chaps,” Rebecca said. “They’re but seven and four.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“Bring them out here,” Colonel Allen said, and turned to a tall man behind him. “Go in with them, Sergeant.”
Rebecca went inside, kneeled by the bed and helped the children to their feet. Hannah was whimpering, Ezra’s eyes widened with fear.
“Will they kill us, Mother?” Ezra asked.
“No,” Rebecca answered, her hands huddling them onto the porch. “But we must do what is asked.”
They stood beside the cord of wood Brice Fothergill had cut for them in October, charging nothing for his labor. Rebecca took off the overcoat and covered the children. After all of the men had tethered their horses, Colonel Allen and the sergeant stood in front of the porch as the others gathered behind them. The chickens had calmed and several clucked and pecked nearby.
“Come a little closer, chickees,” one of the soldiers said, “and I’ll give ye neck a nice stretch.”
Hannah started to cry. Rebecca stroked the child’s flaxen hair as she whispered for her to hush.
“Them young ones look stout for their ages,” the sergeant said. “Must be eating well.”
“A nit makes a louse,” a soldier wearing a black eye patch said, and another man loudly agreed.
Allen raised a hand and the men grew quiet.
“Your man,” he asked, “where is he?”
“Likely hiding up on the ridge,” the sergeant said, “waiting to take a shot at us once we’re headed back. That’s their way up here, ain’t it?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Allen said, staring at Rebecca as he spoke. “They’ll not face us like men. They leave their women and children behind to do that.”
“I’ve got no man,” Rebecca said.
“What about them children,” the sergeant scoffed. “They just sprout out of the ground like turnips?”
“My husband’s dead.”
“Dead,” Allen said skeptically. “How long’s he been dead?”
“She’s lying,” the sergeant said when she hesitated. “Him and some of his bluebelly neighbors is probably beading us right now.”
“Aaron’s been dead two years,” Rebecca said.
The sun had climbed the ridge now, and yellow light settled on the yard and cabin. The fog began unknitting into loose gray strands and all could be seen — the outhouse and spring, the barn where a ham wrapped in cheesecloth hung from a rafter, stored above it hay for the calf her closest neighbor, Ira Wilkey, would bring once it was weaned. Unlike many in Shelton Laurel, Ira had enough land to hide his livestock, so offered the calf for a quilt Rebecca made from what clothing Aaron left behind. We’ll not make it through these times if we don’t look after each other, Ira answered when she protested the trade was unfair to him.
The sergeant stepped to the side of the cabin, his eyes sweeping the clearing.
“I don’t see no grave.”
“He ain’t buried here,” Rebecca said.
“No?” Allen said. “Where, then?”
“In Asheville.”
“Which cemetery in Asheville?” the sergeant asked.
“I can’t remember its name,” Rebecca said.
“I told you what we do to liars,” Allen said.
“I argue he’s close by, sir,” the sergeant said. “He could be hiding in the barn.”
Allen turned to a man.
“Take two men and go look, Corporal,” Allen said to the man with the eye patch.
“Where’s your pa, boy?” the sergeant asked.
Behind them now, Rebecca pulled the overcoat tighter around the children.
“All he knows is his daddy’s dead.”
“That right, son?” Allen asked. “Your pa’s dead?”
“Tell him your daddy’s dead,” Rebecca said.
“Yes sir,” Ezra said softly.
“Where’s he buried, boy?” the sergeant asked.
“He don’t know none of that,” Rebecca said.
“That right, son?” Allen asked.