Black Angels (6 page)

The berries were good, but by morning her stomach felt empty again. She hated to think of the sun coming up because she had to tell Caswell. Otherwise he'd be yelling about his Mamadear forever. They had spent another night in the shed, because Luke said they needed to wait until morning to start out again. Besides he heard voices of men over on that battlefield and he knew that they were probably soldiers burying the dead. They were all hungry, but looking for food meant going out there where there were dangerous men and dead bodies.

Daylily was lying wrapped in her coat. A bad smell hit her nostrils as soon as she was fully awake. It was still dark. They were all sleeping warm for the first time in two nights. She took a sip of water from her canteen and Caswell sat up slowly. He looked terrible. His eyes were red rimmed. He had been crying for two days and had thrown up yesterday.

“I got to go,” he said to Daylily. She glanced in Luke's direction. He was sleeping hard. There was no sense waking Luke yet, but she knew Caswell was going to raise a ruckus. She put her finger across her lips, indicating he should be quiet, and took him outside the shack, checking first one direction and then the other.

They seemed to be entirely alone. The sky was a soft gray, just before sunrise. Daylily looked quickly toward what she knew had been the Burwell place. Still, she took him behind a scrubby bush near the shed.

“I got to tell you somethin,” she said softly as he unbuttoned his pants. In the two days they'd been on the road, he'd given up hiding himself from her, and watched her face as he peed. He always had trouble closing his pants back up. Daylily thought he couldn't have been more than six or maybe seven. The boy was probably used to some mammy doing that for him. She finished the trouser buttons and put her hands around his waist and sat him down on the ground. “I got to tell you bout your mama.”

“You don't know nothin about my mama,” Caswell said. He picked at a bug bite of some kind. “You jus a nigger gal. How could you know something about my Mamadear? She's a lady.”

“I knows where the Burwell place was,” Daylily insisted, and she hurried on now, wanting to get it over with. “And it's all gone. It's burned down, Caswell. It's gone.”

He spit out his lower lip, which was beginning to tremble in spite of the scorn he tried to show. “How do you know that?”

“Because I been there. I been there with my granny. It's not a far piece from here. We was almost there day before yesterday when we saw this shed and I smelled the smoke. You can see the place from here. Used to be on a hill, and you can see it all gone. You was too sleepy last night for me to tell you.”

He was up and running into the gloom of the early dawn before she had the words out. Suddenly, he disappeared in the tall grass. She darted after him; as he fell, she caught him by the pants. His elbow was bleeding a little.

“Show me,” he wailed. “Show me. I don't believe you!”

Daylily knew that he would never be quiet until she did, so she stood him up, and together they walked to the fork in the road. They went close enough to see in the distance a strange blackened hole with great chimneys and what had been a grand entranceway that now led to nowhere. Early morning mist floated about in the ruins. It stank of smoke and fire. “That was it, Caswell. That was where you was headed.”

He just stood there as if nailed to the ground. And then he clutched himself around the waist and began to rock back and forth. He rocked and wailed, “Nononono.” The only witnesses besides Daylily were satiny blackbirds who began to caw, and the mockingbird who answered Caswell with its beautiful morning song.

Daylily held on to him. She gave him what nobody had given her, rocking him like a baby, but moaning for herself. Their cries rose over the field ruined with blood and ash, and up into the dawn pink with the sun's fire.

CHAPTER 8

FISHING FOR DINNER

Luke woke with a start and looked around for the others. They were not there. His heart began to beat faster. He was sweating and trembling some, and he had dreamed of being buried alive by soldiers who had no hands or faces. Today, there'd be more soldiers here; he knew that. It would take more than one day to bury all those men. He scrambled up, yearning for a biscuit, and then that awful death smell took his yearning away and he took a swallow of water from a canteen instead.

They had to hurry. It was dangerous to stay here any longer. He knew the soldiers were out there.

A few minutes later he found Caswell and Daylily outside sitting together in silence, their faces streaked with dirt and tears. Luke looked like a traveling junk man. He had put on one of the coats and brought along everything else, the bayonet and rifle under his right arm, two coats under his left, one pair of shoes on his feet and one under the coats. Three canteens were draped around his neck, clanking as he walked, and his pockets were full of gunpowder and pellets. There were three hats on his head, and his curly hair stuck out all around the caps. In the distance he could hear the sergeant giving orders to the burial detail.

Daylily looked up at him as he approached. “I done tole him,” she said. “I done tole him his mama gone, and he done pitched a fit worse'n a mad dog.”

“We ain't got time now, we got to go,” Luke said, shifting all his burdens. “Here, put on these coats.”

“What's stinkin' so bad? Smells like more dead folks,” said Daylily.

“They be just over that hill burying dead folks,” Luke answered. “Here, you all. Put on these coats. We got to go.”

Instead of taking the coat Daylily only stared at it.

Luke looked at her with a steady gaze. His jaw was set. He didn't flinch. For a minute he thought of telling Daylily that her coat had been on a dead man, and scaring her half to death with all the pictures that were in his head of blown-off hands and exploded stomachs and worse. But he couldn't. He knew that two days ago he would have done it just to hear her holler, to see her throw her coat on the ground and run, and he knew she'd have said something like, “Boy, take this ugly thing away from here. It be cursed or something!”

But something had happened that made him different. He didn't know what it was, but he couldn't bring himself to tease her that way. A part of him was gone, and some other part was there instead. Part of him wanted to understand why men would fight and die like pigs being slaughtered, and part of him wanted to prove that he wasn't afraid of what he had seen any more. For the first time he really knew he had blood in his body that could spill out in the dirt, and nobody might not even see it, or even care, not the way he cared when they beat his Mam to death. How could people just kill you and leave you in the dirt to rot? He wanted to understand that.

So he wasn't the same. He couldn't make fun of Daylily like he always did the girls back on the place, and he couldn't tease Caswell about his Mamadear, who was most likely dead in the fire. He ought to say something about Daylily's granny and Caswell's Mamadear, but he didn't know what the words would be, even if he tried, so all he said was “You right. Them's dead men you smell.”

Daylily opened her mouth, as if she had been told to take something that would make her sick.

“We ain't got time to talk now. We got to go,” Luke said, “fore they comes this way. We got to get back to the river road and get into the woods so's they don't find us.” His canteens banged together while he struggled with the coats, and the shoes fell into the dust. He dropped the three hats trying to hold on to his rifle.

Daylily started to giggle. She picked up the hats. It seemed a relief for her to laugh at something. She grinned and showed her two dimples. “You sure is a sight,” she said. “You is a sight with all them geehaws on you!”

Even Caswell had started to smile. He was fascinated by the canteens and kept touching the bayonet Luke had found. Finally he tried to take it out of Luke's hand.

Luke shook Caswell off and glared at the two of them. “Just you take these coats and hurry up about it. This ain't no time for lollygaggin now.” They scrambled into their coats, and he hung a canteen around each of their necks, tying the straps together that he had cut off the dead soldiers. “Here, these your shoes,” he said to Daylily.

She looked at him and wrinkled up her mouth.

“How I'm gon wear these? They way too big.”

“Just keep em,” he ordered. “You never know how far we is got to walk. Caswell's feet be fine. He got them good White folks' shoes on. Sides, his feet be way too small. Les go. Hurry up.”

“I want to carry the sword,” Caswell said, eyeing the bayonet.

Daylily carried her contraband shoes by the laces, and everybody had a hat on.

“Naw, you way too little,” Luke said. “Anyway, it ain't no real sword. It just part of a sword broken off a gun. It be too heavy for you, and sides, you might stab me and run away.”

Caswell's eyes began to fill up. He took Daylily's hand. “I want to carry the sword,” he said again. And then slowly, “Please, Luke.”

Luke gave in. “Oh, come on then, les go!” He handed Caswell the bayonet.

Caswell held the bayonet as if he had his very own precious treasure.

Luke was nervous. “They getting closer. Us got to hustle! And be quiet too. Don't you think I ain't watching you, Caswell.”

Caswell looked straight ahead and turned away from the Burwell place as they passed it. His soldier's coat dragged the ground. Luke was as tense as a deer, watching and listening for Confederate soldiers. They made a little battalion of their own, moving north into the trees, the sun coming up full in the east.

They had been walking for an hour with their own thoughts. Nobody had had much to say.

Finally Daylily broke the silence with a sneeze. “Lordy, ah'm hungry,” she sighed.

Luke stopped walking. “We need us a fish line,” he said to her. He looked in all their pockets for string they could tie to a pole. In one of the pockets there was something that looked like a wire.

“Catgut,” Daylily said. “That's what they use to string a banjo. That soldier must have played the banjo and stuffed the extra strings in the pocket of his jacket.” She searched for the right tree branch to use for a pole and tied the catgut strings together to make one long string.

She felt more peaceful today, like it didn't much matter what happened to them now. Digging in the mud with Luke's knife, she thought about Granny's kitchen garden, and the greens she used to be so proud of.

Luke and Caswell just watched her. They both sat down on the banks of the river. Luke brushed aside some twigs and got comfortable.

“You know what you doin, gal?” he said.

“It good night crawlers in here.” She ignored his put-down. “Us got to find a hook, y'all.” She moved a few feet away, looking for a good place to throw in the line.

“You find it, I'm plum wore out,” Luke answered.

“I'll be mighty glad to eat all my fish myself,” she said, busy with her pole and her worms. She took the knife and made a groove on the pole so the string wouldn't slip off.

Luke looked in his pocket.

“Ain't no hooks gonna be in this pocket,” said Luke. He shook his head, as if to say she was on a fool's errand. Then he saw the medal pinned to his coat. “Look like we in luck,” he called to her. “Come get this pin.”

“If you can't get up,” she shouted, “I'm eatin this fish myself. Me and Caswell. Caswell, bring me the hook.”

Caswell was gazing into the water, a million miles into the past.

“Wait now, wait. I got to fix it for you,” said Luke, all business all of a sudden. “Girl, you don't even know what to do with this here pin.” He broke off the hook on the back of the medal and put it back in his pocket. “Here, now, mind you don't lose it, you know how you gals is.”

Daylily looked at the little pin from the medal and then at him. “You got to bend it, boy,” she said. “You don't have no sense sometimes. You got to bend it for the crawler and the string.” She handed it back to him.

Luke worked with the hook until he had it shaped for a worm. “Mind you put that hook on the string good,” he said. “It's the onliest one we got. Some big ole fish swallow it and it be gone.”

“You just make a fire,” she said, stretching out her brown legs and leaning against a tree, “and leave me be to catch us some dinner.”

 

Daylily's fishing was a triumph and a lifesaver. She put the hook and line very carefully into her pocket. Their stomachs filled again, with a fish left over, Luke wrapped the little cooked sunfish in his handkerchief and they kept moving.