Far Bright Star (15 page)
Authors: Robert Olmstead
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #War & Military, #Historical
25
T
HAT NIGHT WHEN
he unrolled his blanket in the grass he had the odd thought he was too tired to sleep. He imagined a pillow, stuffed with goose down, where he could rest his head and settled back and let his head to the good soft pillow he imagined.
This land had surely taken some years off his life and he could not blame the landed men on a night such as this, their cool rooms and their beds so soft. Their houses ticking quietly as they shrugged off the day, as they ever so slowly responded to the earth’s invisible movement.
He rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. He could not remember the last bed he’d slept in, but that was okay. The bed he’d made for himself was comfortable enough. No matter how tired he was from the road and how comfortable his made bed, for a long time his mind wandered at the edge of wakefulness.
The night heavied and he wondered if there would be a storm again. He reached out, his waterproof close by, the knife with the jigged-bone handle, the .45 closer.
The dead began to unbury themselves.
Let it happen, he thought.
He wondered how many more days to the river and the St. Louis Bridge. Soon there’d come a night, the automobile running smoothly beneath a moon set in the sky like a silver dollar, the western side of the big river, running north atop a levee, the pale-faced moon bloody on the red earth where it went down to the water and the moon path whitening and glittering across the water, the stars so deep in the water and their lights beneath the water’s surface and a shooting star coming out of the sky and lasting but a few bright seconds before disappearing, the river’s glister shining and the braiding channels lit from within by the path of submerged and burning light.
He can see the river. He can see its surface catching a dim blur of lights. In his eye he catches the bounce of glitter-white light coming off the wide flowing water. Then there is a bending in the river and it is gone. Then the bridge and across the river. It will be soon now when the automobile will rattle over the high bridge above the wide water and cross to the other side.
He smiles and in the forward cast of his mind he can see all the way home to a day in the future when they’ll come for him.
They’ll be sitting on horseback outside the door, his brother and Teddy, and between them the Rattler horse on lead. When the Rattler horse sees him, a black sideways gleam comes into its eye. The horse nickers and stamps and the jar of its hooves cracks the frozen ground beneath. Sparks flash from steel shoes against rock and ice. He touches at the Rattler horse and under his touch he feels its trembling neck. He drags his fingers over the hard scars where the bullets found their entry.
“That horse went for quite a wander,” he says.
“It has seen more of the world than most,” his brother says.
Then another rider is arriving in the dooryard and he cups a hand to shade his vision.
“There’s someone wants to see you,” his brother says.
The rider is bundled against the cold and invisible until he unwraps his woolen scarf and it’s Bandy.
“Cold enough for you?” he says to the boy.
“Cold as the nose on a froze dog,” the boy says.
That night the cold sky is smokelike and the moon orange and holds place in the sky as if set aloft from the earth solely for their benefit.
There is a flowery smell in the air, like that of a woman, strange and sourceless, and from the stables the occasional tromp of slow bodies shifting hooves. There is the murmur of a storm, currents of warm air. The stars, they pale.
Then the sky overclouds and a wind springs up and they listen to the heaving of the wind through the trees. It’s a warm wind, the first warm wind in months. Ruminant and lost, the years disappear and there is a childlike look in their eyes as each man appreciates the other’s silent recall.
“You find enough of what you’re looking for?” his brother says.
“No. Not yet.”
“Maybe you have to look harder.”
“Maybe.”
His brother tells him they are requested to proceed to France at as early a date as practicable.
“The General said it wouldn’t be quitting if you decided not to go.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Go,” Xenophon said.
“I’ll go then, if that’s what we are doing.”
“Which horse will you take?”
“I don’t know. Part of me wants to leave the old cutthroat here, but I am afraid he will kill someone. What do you think?”
“Better take him. Where we’re going we’ll need all the killing we can get.”
When they awake the winter morning is cold and purple hued. The fires are banked and the cookstove cherries at the joints.
“What o’clock is it?”
“It’s six. It will take seven days to cross the ocean,” his brother says, looking at his pocket watch as if it were a watch of days and not minutes and hours.
“The horses are packed?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps we should go.”
“Yes.”
He steps out into the morning beneath the gray sheet of the cast sky. He takes the Rattler’s face in his hands. He adjusts the headstall and tugs at the buckle on the throat latch. He draws the cinch tight and taking the reins in hand he swings up into the saddle.
The black horse his brother rides suddenly erupts in a high ballotade and then makes to the side, cantering backward on three legs. It performs a reverse pirouette with feet crossed and then moves forward with grace and tranquillity. His brother raises his hand in tierce as high as his right ear and thrusts to the front. Their father raises his own hand and they hold rigid and smiles break across their faces. The dogs—they begin to bark.
His father turns to him and salutes and he snaps off the samelike gesture and they smile on each other.
“Take keer of yourselfs,” their father says.
“We will, Daddy. We will take care of ourselfs.”
He knows this day is coming and when it does he will stand in something like sunlight and together they will ride out of there. It will take them fourteen days to Norfolk and seven more days to cross the ocean where they’ll arrive in the green of the new spring in France.
