It was good to clean the .45. It was good to keep my hands busy rather than dwell on what had happened the day before, or to consider the prospect of going into those woods. Drop the magazine out. Slide the rack back and check the chamber. Turn the bushing. Then say “goddamnit” under my breath when the spring pops the spring plug loose and it hits the kitchen floor. I was on my hands and knees looking for it with the oil lamp in my hand when I remembered looking for Dan’s glasses in the dream, and I wanted to curl up and sob, but I pushed that down and found the plug.
Several men were standing around in the town square when I got there at first light. Someone raised a hand to me as I approached and I saw that it was Buster Simms. People were standing near Buster because he was so big he made them feel better, as though he were too big to be hurt or to let hurt come to those who stood with him. His size made the lever-action rifle he carried look like a toy. I shook with Buster and Buster’s hand closed around mine like the larger of two nesting dolls. His grip was strong, but he held strength in reserve. Paul Miller used to shake hands putting some extra squeeze in it so it was clear who the bigger man was. When Buster shook he reined it in a little, as if the other man had offered him some fine porcelain thing that might crack if borne down upon.
Estel Blake came now and stood upon a bench so everyone could see him and he could see who had come. It was getting light enough to see the color in faces.
There were more than he wanted here. He sent Old Man Gordeau home because he had a bad cough, and Gordeau fought him on it until Estel pointed out that his hacking would make it impossible to get the drop on anybody. He sent home a young widower who had kids, and he tried to send Saul Gordeau home with his daddy but Saul wouldn’t have it.
“Now, Lester here is twenty and one and that’s alright, but you ain’t but seventeen and this might get rough. Probly it will.”
“Reckon it already has,” Saul said. “Sons a bitches burnt up my dogs and dug up my daddy’s uncle.”
He said it just like Old Man Gordeau would have and it got a yellow little laugh out of them.
“I’m just sayin you’re young for this and it don’t set well with me.”
“Sir, I might be young, but I don’t shoot young.”
I noticed the rifle Saul carried was an American Enfield, the doughboy’s rifle. My old rifle. Bolt action, six shots, deadly, deadly accurate in the right hands, and, since 1918, cheap. I later found out that no fewer than nine households in Whitbrow held copies of that rifle. After the war, a man in a navy peacoat had come around and sold them out of the back of his truck for ten dollars apiece. Harvey at the Drug Emporium had one, but never shot it. Hal the butcher kept his slung under the counter. It was the gun Tyson Falmouth had carried when he went to check on the pigs.
Saul looked like a child, but he was only a little younger than I had been when Uncle Sam had stuck an Enfield in my hands and nearly shut me in a coffin.
I had only been a passable marksman.
Not Saul.
Estel Blake assessed the slight blond boy who was standing with his feet planted, holding the big rifle like it was part of him.
“It’s true,” Lester said. “He’s better’n I am or ever will be. You remember that rabbit he hit on the run when we went huntin last year. You were joshin him how it was luck, but I’m here to tell you it wasn’t.”
“Alright, young man,” Estel said. “But if you change your mind out there and want to get on back, there ain’t no shame.”
“Same goes for you, Sheriff,” Saul said.
We left.
We numbered fifteen.
“WE’RE LOST.”
“We’re not lost. I know I seen that before.”
“Knowin you been somewhere before and knowin how to get back is two different things.”
“Well, when did we leave the path? When was the last time someone saw somethin they knew was on the path?”
“Hour ago we seen them pine trees with the cuts in em.”
“Yeah. Hour ago.”
“Now, what is this? Anyone know if this has got a name?”
“Won’t be hard to remember. Looks like that leanin tree is a ole man tryin to push that big rock uphill.”
“Alright. We’ll call this Uphill Rock. Let’s keep walkin straight east. Frank, keep tight on that compass.”
“Sisyphus.”
“How’s that?”
“Sisyphus. He was condemned to roll a big rock uphill every day, and when he got it to the top it would roll back down and he’d have to start all over again.”
“Seems like I know that feelin.”
“What was that fella’s name again?”
“Sisyphus.”
“Think I’ll just call it Uphill Rock if it’s all the same to you.”
BUSTER SIMMS BROKE up a big, round wheel of corn bread his wife had made and handed some around to the ones closest to him, myself included. I was quickly sorry I took it because my mouth was too dry to eat it. Walking armed through the forest with a party of armed men, not knowing when there might be gunfire, was driving me apeshit. I had one foot in these Georgia woods and the other back in the Argonne. Birch trees reminded me of the birches there, with their tops missing and caked in mud from shellsplatter. I was straining to listen for sounds I was no longer capable of hearing; branches snapping, hushed words in German, the cocking of a weapon. I rubbed my hands on my pants and looked around, wondering if anyone could tell how hard my heart was beating. Nobody seemed to notice.
It was mid-afternoon now and the others were tired and hot and ready to see anything that would break up the routine of marching forward through these woods.
I hoped we wouldn’t see anything.
My anger at those who had desecrated the dead and traumatized Dora had been eclipsed by barely containable feelings of panic and a strong desire to sprint out of these woods for good.
I felt that we were being watched, but then I second-guessed myself and reasoned that it was just the memory of that feeling kicking up silt. Gooseflesh went up my left side as I remembered what had been watching me the last time I was here. Jesus, was I just as scared of that creepy boy as I had been of stumbling into a machine gunner’s sights? Maybe. Even with a party of armed men around me, I didn’t want to see the boy with no pants again. Not ever.
But there was no way I was turning back.
The watched feeling got more urgent.
I went up to Estel Blake and put my hand on his arm to get his attention. His arm was tensed and stiff like wood.
Estel turned and whispered something to me; I saw his mouth make the words I know.
He had heard something. I now sensed how tightly wound the others were and knew that they had all heard something. They were jumpy. And they were bunched up.
I touched Estel’s arm again.
“Get these men in a line,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Put these men one behind the other and space them out before they shoot each other.”
Estel nodded and went from man to man until it was done.
But we went on like that for a long time before anyone fired a weapon, and only one of us saw what was in the woods.
IT WAS MAYBE half past three when we discovered the bones of the horse. The horse had died some time ago, and my first thought was that perhaps we had stumbled across the battlefield; that this was one of the many Confederate horses who died beneath or on top of their masters that day in 1864, its topsoil perhaps washed away in hard rain. But the ground here was high and the topsoil well anchored by roots. And this horse had been eaten. The smaller bones had been cracked open and the marrow licked out. I saw the scowls on the other men’s faces and knew that my face was expressing the same contempt. There’s something in a man that loves a horse and hates to see one desecrated.