Heaven and Hell (24 page)

She felt a tightness in her chest, yet she was composed, in a cool sort of way. She laid the Oriental box in the case. "How long have we got?"

"An hour's all I could pay for."

"It'll have to do. We'll go by the back stairs, and through the storeroom. Did you--?"

"Yes. I did everything," he said, snappish because of his fear.

"The horses are in that little shed around back. But--"

"But nothing." Ashton began caressing his forehead with her fingers.

His skin was no longer cool or tangy with wintergreen, but slick, clammy. "Sit down, Will. Sit down and we'll wait till it's a little noisier. Luis gets noisy when he drinks. It'll be all right, trust me."

From a pocket of his old frock coat Fenway took a silver watch, A Winter Count 149

which he snapped open. He placed it on the bed. Both of them stared at the black hands. Ten past nine. The bigger hand ticked over a notch.

One more minute gone.

Ashton stood behind him, expertly kneading his tight neck and shoulders. "Now just don't worry. We'll pull it off, slick as anything.

Partners as smart as we are, no one can stop us."

Except possibly Luis, who helped himself to another drink so noisily that Ashton and Fenway heard the bottle clinking against the glass.

Page 160

As time ran away from them, their luck appeared to do a miraculous turnabout. Luis began to serenade himself in a loud tuneless baritone.

Seriora Vasquez-Reilly said, 'Wo mefastidies," but he kept right on. Five minutes later--nine minutes before ten, the hour at which the senora would ascend the stairs and order Will out--the rainstorm intensified, complete with heavy rolls of thunder.

"We're going to make it, Will. We're going to do it--now."

Ashton tied her lacy mantilla under her chin, a wispy scarf, but better than nothing. Pressing the closed case into his hand, she took the loaded Allen and opened the door. She examined the dim, rancid hall, lit by a single stubby candle in a tin sconce.

The hall stretched straight back to the dark rear stairs, empty. Ashton's breath hissed in and out as she edged forward. She whispered, with her mouth against his ear, "Step easy. Parts of the floor squeak if you come down hard."

With almost exaggerated tiptoe steps, they crept along the hall past the first closed door. Ashton heard the girl inside snoring. Then, on the left, they passed the second door, where they heard no sound at all from Rosa.

Ashton risked going faster on the stairs. It worked until she reached the second step from the top, and Fenway put his weight down on the first one, which gave off a sound like a cat with its tail twisted.

The rain had slackened. The sound carried. And their luck reversed cpmpletely again.

Rosa's door opened. Naked, she stepped into the hall, carrying her slops jar. Because of the stair noise, she immediately looked to the left--and saw them.

Her scream probably carried all the way to Fort Marcy. "/Senora!

iSenora.' /La puta Brett, se huye!"

"That's it," Ashton cried, grabbing Fenway's lapels. "Go fast, lover.''

She went plunging down the risers two at a time, and if she had hissed one by chance, if she'd fallen, she'd have broken her neck.

As if to tease the fugitives along with a little good fortune now 150 HEAVEN AND HELL

that they'd been discovered, Ashton and her partner made it to the storeroom
Page 161

without so much as a stumble. Rosa, however, kept howling, and the instant Ashton started to slip through the maze of old broken crates, the senora's voice joined in, exhorting Luis to hurry.

The door from the cantina opened. An amber rectangle of light laid itself across the floor, revealing the fugitives near the back door.

Luis charged toward them. Ashton fired the pepperbox. Through the smoke, she saw Luis fall to one side. Then she saw the senora, in the cantina, wiping blood from her cheek. Blood from flying splinters; Ashton's ball had hit the frame of the door, and Luis had merely taken a dive to save himself.

"Come on, Will," Ashton cried, yanking the back door wide and jumping out into the mud and rain.

Panting, Fenway followed. He pushed her to the left and, in doing so, gave her kneecap a ferocious whack with his sample case. She staggered, almost fell. Fenway caught her elbow and guided her. "Not far.

That little shed. Here we are, here."

She smelled and heard the fretful animals. Luis appeared at the back door, pouring out a torrent of profanity. He lunged into the open and darted after them, only to pitch over when his right foot slipped in the mud. The way he yelled as he went down told Ashton he'd broken or torn something.

He sprawled on his side, groping toward the fugitives with his left hand. A faint glare of lightning showed his mud-slimed face. From the door, the senora screamed, "Levdntate, Luis. Maldita seas. Levdntate y siguelos.

"No puedo, puta, me pasa algo a la pierna."

"Mount up for Lord's sake," Fenway wailed. He was already in the saddle, clutching the handle of his sample case. Ashton seemed to spend an eternity in the few seconds she stared at the tableau behind the cantina: the senora standing there demanding that Luis get up, Luis groping toward them with his outstretched hand while his pained face said he couldn't.

In that momentary eternity, a vivid cavalcade of large and small slurs, insults, unkindnesses passed through Ashton's mind. The senora and Luis were equal offenders, but Luis was the nearer. She stepped two paces toward him, aimed the pepperbox with her arm rigid, and put a ball into his head.

They clattered across the empty central plaza, rain-washed and gleaming. Ashton's horse led. She'd pulled her skirt up between her thighs and rode astride, bent low, watching for obstacles.

Page 162

f

A Winter Count 151

From behind, Fenway cried, "Why'd you shoot that man? You didn't have to shoot him, he was down."

"Luis abused me. I hated him," she screamed over her shoulder.

Ahead, a pair of soldiers from the fort stepped into her path, rubber ponchos shining in the lightning flashes. One pulled the other back at the last moment; both fell.

As Fenway galloped, the lightning revealed deep dismay on his rain-pelted face. He knew the little Carolina tart was stone-hearted, but he'd never imagined she would, go so far as to slay a helpless man.

What kind of creature had he hooked up with anyway? Nearly sick from excitement and the motion of the horse, he no longer felt liberated by their escape. Instead, he was gripped by a queasy sense of entrapment.

Accustomed to horses since childhood, Ashton rode expertly, head down over the nag's neck, her only guidance the occasional feeble flare of the lightning. She rode as if hell was behind her and nothing ahead would stop her, and her partner felt dragged along, captured, and pulled by her incredible force of will.

He heard her cry, "We'll make it, honey. We'll outrun those greaser dogs. Keep riding!"

He might indeed outrun any pursuit, he thought as the horse carried him over the slick road like a cork in a typhoon sea, but he doubted he could ever outrun her. It was too late; she'd hooked him.

And she'd committed murder.

With his assistance.

The deputy marshal for the territory and the commandant of Fort Marcy together questioned Senora Vasquez-Reilly, who said to them:

"Of course I can tell you who murdered my sweet, innocent brotherinlaw.

I can describe her to perfection. I always doubted that she gave me her real name. So whether you ever catch her is up to you."

16

Page 163

In Richmond, a young doctor made the rounds of the Almshouse wards guided by the matron, Mrs. Pember. The doctor was new, a volunteer, like the others who tended these sad lumps of human refuse.

Here and there a patient gave him a vacant glance, but most paid no attention. One man crouched beside his cot, exploring an invisible wall with the tips of his fingers. Another held a lively silent conversation with unseen listeners. A third sat with his arms crossed and tucked under, strait-jacket fashion, weeping without a sound.

The doctor dictated notes to the matron as he proceeded from cot to cot. Near the cot at the end, a man sat hunched on a packing box by an open window. Even this late in the year, smoke still drifted from the burned sections of the city, hazing the thin autumn sunshine.

The man on the packing box was staring out the window, south cast, toward the monuments in the city's Jewish Burying Ground, which was separate from Shockoe Cemetery. His loathing was evident. With her voice lowered, Mrs. Pember said, "Found unconscious in front of the State House, some weeks ago."

Pale and already exhausted by the ordeal of his rounds, the doctor studied the man with mingled disgust and sorrow. Once, the patient might have had a certain physical presence; he was tall enough. Now he looked decayed, shrunken. Skin striations indicated obesity at some past time. Privation had pared away all the fat except lor a si/able paunch.

The patient's left shoulder tilted lower than his right. He was barefoot and wore one of the hospital's coarse gowns beneath a lilthy old velvet robe donated to the Almshouse. On his head sat a battered plug hat. He glared at Mrs. Pember and the doctor.

Still whispering, the matron said, "He claims Ik's in constant pain."

"He looks it. Any history?"

A Winter Count 153

"Only what he chooses to tell us. Sometimes he talks about falling from a high bluff into the James River. Then again he says his horse threw him at Five Forks, after the Yankees broke through General Eppa Hunton's lines. He says he was with the reinforcements General Long street rushed from Richmond, too late to save--"

Page 164

"I know all about the fall of Richmond," the doctor interrupted, testy. "Does he have any papers?"

"Sir, how many men have papers since the government burned everything and ran?"

The doctor shrugged to acknowledge the point. He approached the patient. "Well, sir, how are we today?"

"Captain. It's Captain."

"Captain what?"

A long pause. "I can't remember."

Mrs. Pember stepped forward. "Last week, he gave his name as Erasmus Bellingham. The day before yesterday, he said it was Ezra Dayton

The patient stared at her with strange yellow-brown eyes that held a hint of malice. The doctor said, "Please tell me how you feel this morning, sir."

"Anxious to be out of here."

"In good time. At least do Mrs. Pembcr the courtesy of taking off that filthy hat when you're indoors." He reached for the plug hat. The matron uttered a warning cry as the patient jumped up and threw the packing box at the doctor with ferocious force.

The box sailed over the doctor's head, thudding in the aisle. The patient lunged. The doctor jumped back, yelling for orderlies. Two country boys in stained smocks raced down the aisle, rushed the man, restrained him, and wrestled him onto his cot. Even with youth and strength in their favor, the patient's flailing fists battered them badly. He hit one orderly so hard, blood oozed from his ear.

Finally, they subdued him, using rope to lash his wrists and ankles to the iron cot frame. The doctor watched from the aisle, shaken. "That man's a lunatic."

"All the other doctors would agree, sir. He's positively the worst case in the Almshouse."

"Violent--" The doctor shuddered. "A man like that will never get any better.''

"It's such a pity, the way the war damaged them."

Angered by the attack, he said, "These wards are too crowded to accommodate pity, Mrs. Pember. When he calms down, force laudanum
Page 165

on him, and a strong purgative. Tomorrow put him out on the street. Use the space for someone we can help."

154 ' HEAVEN AND HELL

The fire set during the flight of the Confederate government's highest officials on the night of April 3 had swept from Capitol Square to the river, burning away the commercial heart of Richmond--banks, stores, warehouses, printing plants--something like a thousand buildings in twenty square blocks. Even the sprawling Gallego Flour Mill complex was gone, as were the rail trestles over the James.

Few who walked through the burned zone in succeeding months forgot the sight. It was like prowling the surface of some world out among the stars, a world both alien and tantalizingly familiar. Its hills were mounds of brick and broken limestone. Black timbers were the charred bones of strange and mighty beasts. Sections of buildings stood like the grave markers of the alien race.

Two nights after the Almshouse incident, the patient came stumbling through the mammoth Gallego ruins between the millrace and the Kanawha Canal. He'd been given the shabbiest of used clothing and turned out. He would have paid back those who did it, but for the fact that more important prey demanded his attention.

This evening he was enjoying great lucidity. He recalled in detail his fantasy of parading in the Grand Review. He also remembered the identities of those who had kept him from taking his rightful place in the military history of his country.

Orry Main. George Hazard.

God, how much he owed those two. Ever since they were all cadets at West Point, Hazard and Main had regularly conspired to thwart him. Year after year, one or the other had turned up to interfere with his career. They were responsible for a dizzying succession of falls from grace:

Damage to his reputation in the Mexican War. Charges of cowardice at Shiloh Church. Punitive transfer to New Orleans, and desertion to Washington. Failure in Lafayette Baker's secret police unit, and, finally, desertion to the South, whose people and principles he'd always despised.

All

of it could be blamed on Main and Hazard. Their vindictive natures. Their secret campaigns to spread calumnies that had ruined him.

Sometime before he woke in the Almshouse, though exactly how long before, he couldn't remember, he had made inquiries about Main
Page 166

in Richmond. A veteran had recalled Colonel Orry Main's dying on the Petersburg lines. His other enemy, Hazard, was presumably alive. Just as important, each man certainly had a family. He remembered he'd tried to injure one of the Mains in Texas, before the war. Charles--that was his name. Surely there were many other relatives--