Turner sat up in bed in the dark, his eyes open. It had been the death of Newton Carr again, one of the many deaths that visited him in the night. Strange, which ones came back over and over. Colonel Carr. The rebel on the hilltop. And the one-armed man he had killed so many years ago, buried across the river in what was now Michael Flynn’s hog lot.
They didn’t haunt him, exactly, and he didn’t know why out of the thousands of men he had seen die and dozens of men he had killed, these were the ones who inhabited his dreams. There was no particular fear or emotion, although afterward he felt an overwhelming sadness, a sadness that burdened him for days. The dreams were the same: he returned to the moments of their deaths and saw them die.
He looked to the window. No sign of any light from the sky. Might as well try to sleep, although probably futile.
It had been the boy who had stirred this all up again, no doubt. Wickman’s fishhook had caught the boy’s shoelaces—a remarkable coincidence, to be sure—and when he saw what he had dragged up, he had the sense to leave the boy in the shallows rather than try to pull him all the way out. He ran to find help, and when Turner and the other men arrived, they knew immediately to keep the women away, for the water had done its work and Angus’s clothing was the only thing keeping his body together.
Turner sent Wickman to the barn for a horse blanket. When he returned, they waded in on each side of the boy’s body, stretching the blanket between them. They lowered the blanket into the river, and once it became soaked they held it to the bottom on the downstream side of the body.
“Just grip it tight,” Turner said, and inch by inch they slid the blanket up beneath the boy until the moment when the current caught him and he drifted into it, and a man cut the fishing line and Wickman and Turner folded up the blanket with the boy inside, slowly, letting the water drain out, and carried him to the bank. Someone stepped up for a closer look, but Turner kept the corners tight in his hands. “Nobody needs to see,” he said. “John Wesley, bring your harness kit.”
They sewed the blanket shut and stood in silence. Then Wickman quietly recited the 23rd Psalm, a few others joined in, and that moment set them in motion again.
Everyone assumed that Michael Flynn would go mad when they brought the body back, so by unspoken agreement four of the men walked south to meet him when he came home from his railroad work, in case things went bad. But he took the news in silence and walked past them.
“We can help you bury him,” Turner said.
Flynn glanced over his shoulder. “Won’t need it.”
By the time they returned to Daybreak, the women had gathered up the body in its blanket and placed it on the ferry. Marie, revived with a splash of river water, rested her hand on it as Flynn silently pushed off from the shore and looped the ferry across on its heavy rope. Josephine squatted at the far end, gazing into the woods.
Since then they had seen little of them, though the children recounted from Josephine that Flynn had wrapped his son in another blanket that night and carried it, still dripping, into the far fields of his property, burying him alone and in darkness, and from that time had alternated between terrifying rages and equally terrifying bouts of silence. When pressed as to whether his rages had crossed into violence, Josephine was, as always, evasive. Turner’s dreams returned, always of those who had gone before, their faces, their voices, the strange angles of their bodies.
What came back to him about Colonel Carr’s death was that he had been looking straight at Turner when it happened. He was giving morning orders, and said, “Tell Williams—” when the Minie ball hit him in the eye. They always buzzed as they flew, a horrible whining buzz like an insanely powerful bee, so you knew one was coming an instant before it arrived. That one had a lower, spent sound; it had traveled a long way and was at the end of its arc. So for the smallest of moments, Carr must have heard his death arriving, maybe even seen it as it fell toward him. Too fast to react, and inevitable anyway. No dodging a bullet. Turner had been splashed with Carr’s brains and blood, but then the fighting started, and he had had no time to clean himself off for two days. And people wondered why he didn’t care to talk about the war.
Charlotte laid her hand on his back. “Is it morning?”
“No.” He had never told her about that day. He should have told her before now. Some sort of protective urge, he guessed. Not that Charlotte had ever shown a need to be protected from the truth. “Your father,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I was there when he died. I’ve told you that.”
She sat up, too. “Yes, you have.” She waited.
“There was nothing especially heroic about it. We were astride our horses, he was giving me instructions, and a rifle ball came out of the sky, and smack he was dead. Just like that. We never knew where it came from, a sniper, a lucky shot, maybe even an accidental discharge.”
She continued to rub his back. “Did he say anything?”
“No. Just fell off his horse.”
“So he didn’t suffer.”
Turner thought. Did he suffer? How was he to know? Did the sight of a rifle ball flying toward one’s head at unimaginable speed cause suffering, even if only for the merest of moments? Did the soul, the mind, continue in some state of existence, suffering, after the body had been struck down? But he knew this was mere philosophizing, and not what Charlotte was asking. “No. He was alive one moment, dead the next.”
She sat up beside him. “Don’t continue to mourn. He died doing his duty. No matter if he wasn’t waving a sword, leading a charge. He wasn’t the sword waver, anyway. You know that.”
He nodded and rested his head against hers. “I’m not mourning, exactly. I just can’t stop the thoughts from running. They run over and over.” He stopped, not wanting to sound too watery, but then continued. “I think of all the times I have been splashed with blood. Too many times.”
Turner felt that if he continued in this vein of thought much longer he would start to cry, but he didn’t really care. Charlotte had seen him manly, and she had seen him unmanly.
To his surprise she gripped the back of his neck, a little hard. “Don’t
indulge yourself,” she said, her voice intent. “I’ll not have the man I love
become one of those blubbering old veterans who gather on the courthouse lawn every Fourth of July. I saw too many of those when I was a little girl. They’d come up to the Point on the anniversary of their battles, tracing out their charges and fortifications like Uncle Toby, and goading the young ones into following their example with all their talk of honor and glory. Mourn as you have need, but don’t you forget that we have work to be done. My father led troops in Mexico, and he came here and built a barn. Both deeds did him honor.”
Then she stopped herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound harsh. But I grew so tired of the old warriors rehashing their old wars, and I don’t want us to become like them. This war is like a fever in our veins, and until we purge that fever, we won’t be well.” She paused and her grip became a caress. “I’ve been covered in blood plenty of times myself. Births and healings, mainly. But blood is blood. So we’re both marked.”
Turner was about to reply when he noticed the light of dawn flickering through the bedroom window. But it wasn’t right, there had been no dawn only a few moments ago, and this light was not the soft gradual brightening it should have been. In an instant he was out of bed, into his trousers, pulling on his boots while he threw off his nightshirt.
“Something’s on fire,” he said.
Charlotte was right behind him as he dashed out the back door. They ran north through the village to where the firelight was flickering through the trees. But as they got closer, Turner slowed down, and he gestured for Charlotte to slow down as well.
The firelight came from no burning house, but from torches carried by a dozen horsemen. They wore homemade masks made from flour sacks with grimacing faces painted on them, and they had arranged themselves in two lines, in front of and behind the cabin where Dathan and Cedeh sometimes stayed.
“So this is the famous Law and Order League,” Charlotte said in a disgusted tone.
A big man on the front center horse seemed to be their leader. He waved a revolver, a torch in the other hand. The other men were armed as well but kept their weapons low. Turner pulled Charlotte into the shadow of the empty Mercadier house next door to listen for a moment.
“Come out, nigger!” the man shouted.
There was no reply from the dark house, no sound, no sign of movement. The men stirred in their saddles.
“Don’t make us have to come in there!” the man shouted again. “It’ll go easier on you if you come out on your own. If we come in there’s somebody’s going to get hung!”
Turner thought of Lysander Smith, and stepped into the ring of light.
“Gentlemen,” he said.
The leader wheeled in his saddle, revolver leveled at Turner. Turner walked toward him steadily but slowly until he was standing between him and the front door of the house.
“You want to share this man’s fate, that’s your business,” the leader snarled. “But I’d advise you to get out of the way.”
“I’m not accustomed to talking to a grown man with a funny face on,” Turner said. “Makes me feel like Halloween came early this year.”
“Oh, a comedian,” the leader said. “We’ll see who’s laughing when I horsewhip you down the road a ways. Right after I hang this nigger and his Indian bride. You hear that in there?” he shouted to the house again. “You’re going to hang by sunup. But come out now and I’ll spare the woman.”
There was no answer from inside.
“You’ll have some problem with that,” Turner said calmly. “There’s nobody in that house. The man you’re looking for doesn’t live here.”
The leader’s head snapped toward a rider at the end of the line. “You said this was the house,” he said. “Is this the house?”
The man shrugged. Something about the rider’s build and posture seemed familiar to Turner.
“Well?” the leader asked again.
“Thought so,” the rider said. Even though the man’s voice was muffled by his mask, Turner could tell it was Charley Pettibone.
“God damn it!” shouted the leader. “What kind of ignorant shit is this? Either it’s the right house or it ain’t.”
Charley shifted uncomfortably in his saddle and shrugged again.
“I’ll show you,” Turner said. “Come inside with me.”
The leader pointed his revolver at Charley. “You go,” he said. “If anybody’s going to get a shotgun greeting, you’re the deserving one.”
Charley clambered down from his horse and walked slowly toward Turner, torch in hand. Feeling the revolver at his back, Turner led him toward the door of the house, hoping that he had been right and that no Dathan awaited them with a cocked shotgun. He lifted the latch. It opened easily.
The light from Charley’s torch threw shifting shapes on the bare walls as they stepped inside. There were some pans on the floor, and the head of a hoe, but otherwise the room was empty.
“You can take your mask off if you want, Charley,” Turner muttered. “I know it’s you.”
Charley’s head jerked toward Turner, but he said nothing. Nor did he remove the mask, which had a pair of red rings painted around the eye-holes and a jagged red mouth, meant to look terrifying, but in the torchlit room it merely looked silly.
“Let’s look in the back,” he said.
They walked to the back room of the cabin and stood in the still darkness.
“You need to get away from these people,” Turner said.
“That’s kind of complicated.”
“I know. But you need to figure it out. This is not going to end well for you down the road.”
“Ain’t much ever has.”
“You don’t belong with those people. You belong with us.”
“Only thing I ever belonged to was the Confederate Army, and that ain’t a going thing anymore. It’s just my own self I belong to now.”
“You’re wrong there, Charley. Even if you don’t think you belong, you still do. Be careful what you belong to. For that’s what you become.”
A laugh came from inside the mask. “You were always a good man with the words, Mr. Turner. Take more than words to help us now. Those boys outside are primed up to kill somebody, and if they don’t get the one they want, they’ll just pick the next man. Could be you, could be me.”
He turned on his heel and walked to the front door. “He’s right,” he called, stepping into the yard. “It’s empty.”
“Did you check the rafters?”
“Of course I checked the rafters. First place you look. Ashes in the fireplace were cold, too.”
“You weren’t in there long.”
“How long does it take to check two goddam rooms?”
The leader raised himself in his saddle. “Come out of there, you!”
Turner stood in the doorway. “I’m right here. Believe me now?” In the light of the torches he could see that some of the citizens of Daybreak had gathered and were watching.
The man snorted. “I wouldn’t believe you if you told me my pants was on fire. Now where’s that nigger?”
“I already told you I don’t know, so you can either believe it or not.”
The man lowered his revolver toward Turner and pulled back the hammer.
“What, you think that’s going to make knowledge pop into my head?” He was about to speak further, but Charley stepped in front of him.
“I think I know where we can find him,” he said. “I think they stay in them old huts on the ridge.”
“We rode right past them huts, you idiot!”
“Didn’t think about ’em then.”
The leader released the hammer on his pistol and tucked it into his belt. “All right.” He turned to his men. “But first, burn this house.”
He stood in his stirrups and threw his torch on the roof. “It is not proper for niggers and whites to live side by side!” he shouted. “People take notice!” He pointed at Turner. “If this happens again, you’re the responsible party. Keep that in mind.”
Two other men threw torches into the windows of the house, then the gang rode into the street and turned north toward the river crossing. Charley mounted his horse to follow.
“Remember what I told you,” Turner said.
Charley didn’t speak, but nodded briefly, then yanked his horse’s reins and spurred it to catch up with the rest.
As soon as the horsemen were out of sight, everyone rushed wordlessly to their homes to fetch buckets and pans. Wickman had a ladder against the side of the house in an instant; Turner guessed he had slipped away as soon as he saw the first torch fly and had been waiting in the shadows with it.
The riders’ hasty efforts to burn the house were extinguished within a half hour, leaving nothing but scorch marks on the floor and roof. The commotion had awakened the community’s children, who dashed from place to place in ineffectual excitement—except for Adam, who took his hand and led him to the steps of the Temple of Community, where they sat down together. Turner suddenly realized that he was weak in the knees.
“Was this what the war was like?” Adam said.
“Not really,” said Turner. “Men with guns, yes. But lots more of them, not as organized. You didn’t see people face to face very often.”
“Scarier than this?”
“No. This was plenty scary.”
“I was scared.”
Turner put his arm around his son. “Anybody not scared would have to be plumb crazy,” he said. “But you do what you need to, scared or not.”
“Are they going to hurt Mr. Dathan?”
Turner held the boy close. “I’m guessing that Dathan figured out what was happening when they rode by the first time and made sure they wouldn’t find him when they rode back. But when sunrise comes we’ll go up and see.”
Charlotte joined them on the steps, a smudge of ash across her face.
“Where’s Newton?” Turner asked.
She nodded toward the cabin. “Inspecting the work. Making sure we doused everything sufficiently.”
They exchanged smiles in the breaking dawn.
“Let's go to bed,” she said.