Jacob's Way (17 page)

“You look wonderful, Mama.”

“Ben—“ Marianne pulled back, dashed the tears from her eyes, and then attempted a laugh. She took his arm and said, “You come into the house right now! Why, you're skinny as a snake! I'm going to fatten you up.”

Ben held back for a moment. “I wasn't sure whether I should come or not.”

Marianne's joy seemed to fade for a moment. “Your father will have to change. Come on, you look tired.”

Ben began coughing halfway up the steps, and Marianne looked at him with a worried expression. “That sounds terrible. It's deep in your chest. You're going to have pneumonia if we don't take care of it.”

“I'll be all right, Mama.”

Marianne led him into the kitchen where a black woman, tall and round, turned from the sink. She had a paring knife in her hand, but it dropped to the floor, and she clasped her hands together and said, “Ben! Ben Driver, you is home!”

Ben moved across the room slowly. “Hello, Dorrie,” he said.

The black woman came and threw her arms around him. She was a tall woman and powerful, and she hugged him hard, which brought on another spasm of coughing.

“What's wrong with you? You're sick!”

“Just a cold.”

“Cold nothin'! You set down there. I gonna make you some of my special toddy.”

Ben Driver had never felt so bad in his life. He was lightheaded, and his throat was so sore that he could barely swallow. The women swarmed him, and soon a hot meal was set before him. He ate a few bites, then began to cough. The coughing went into a spasm, and both women were horrified. Dorrie quickly began fixing the toddy.

Marianne put her arm around her son. “Ben, how long have you been sick?”

Ben could not answer for a moment. When he could, he just shook his head. “I'll be all right.”

“Here. You drink this.”

Ben took the tumbler of amber-colored liquid, drank it down, and then began coughing again.

“You needs to be put to bed,” Dorrie said. “You gonna die if you go on like this.”

Before Driver could answer, he heard the sound of footsteps. He turned, and at the moment his father entered the room, Driver got to his feet, saying nothing.

John Driver was a tall, erect man, well preserved. His hair was salt and pepper, and his light blue eyes now were fixed on his son. He had served as a colonel under Longstreet throughout the whole war, and had come home to try to redeem his plantation. This had been as bitter a struggle in many ways as the battles he had fought.

Ben nodded and whispered, “Hello, Father.”

John Driver said in a short clipped tone, “Eat your meal. But I don't want you in the house when I come back.”

“John!” Marianne cried and moved quickly to stand beside him. But her husband shook his head and whirled and left the room. “Mr. John is wrong! He dead wrong!” Dorrie protested angrily. “You got to be took care of.”

Driver had expected nothing less than this from his father. He said, “I've got to go. It's his house.” He turned his cheek to his mother, took her kiss, then another from Dorrie, and while the two women both begged him, he turned and walked out of the room.

The women turned and followed after him down the steps, but his long legs carried him away.

Dorrie said, “Mr. John is wrong. We got to do somethin', Miss Marianne!”

“I've tried to get John to see how wrong he is. We've been married a long time, and this is the only thing we've ever disagreed on, Dorrie. He refuses to even talk about Ben.”

“I don't understand Mistuh John!”

“He's proud of his family name—too proud, I think. I remember when he drove Ben out of the house. It broke my heart.” Marianne's eyes filled with tears. She turned away, her heart so full she could not speak.

Driver walked blindly away from his father's house, almost unconscious of where he was going. He only knew he had to get away. There was no fixed plan, but when he reached the main road, he turned and walked for a mile. To his surprise, a wagon headed in his direction stopped and a tall, rawboned farmer hailed him. “Headed for Richmond?”

Ben nodded, and at the farmer's invitation, he climbed on the seat. “I'm going to Bentonville if that'll help you.”

“Be fine—thanks a lot.” Driver was desperately tired, and did his best to keep up the conversation. The farmer's name was Silas Tuberville, and he was a garrulous sort. Ben alternated between coughing spells and dropping off into a coma-like dazed sleep. He was vaguely aware of passing through Richmond, but at some point his chin dropped on his chest and he fell asleep.

“Say, young feller, I'm turning off here for Bentonville. You want to go all the way with me?”

Ben's head snapped as he woke out of a dazed sleep. Looking around, he saw the road fork, and scarcely knowing what he was doing, he mumbled, “No, I'll get out here.” He climbed painfully out of the wagon, then stepped back as Tuberville waved a hand. “Looks like more rain comin'. Better find a place to get out of it.”

Ben was too tired to do more than nod. He took the left fork, having a vague idea that an old companion of his lived in the area. For a time he followed the main road, then turned off onto a smaller road, a shortcut if he remembered correctly. He had gone a quarter of a mile when he reached a creek, the same creek he had caught sunfish and perch out of as a boy. His throat was swollen and painful, and his lips were dry. He knelt down and tried to drink, but a few swallows were all he could bear. He rose and started across the creek, but the rocks were slippery. He fell headlong and rolled over, getting completely drenched. He struggled to his feet, shook his head, and staggered to the far side of the creek. His path was erratic, and he could not think clearly. He had not eaten anything substantial for twenty-four hours, and his one good eye seemed blurred.

He tripped, falling full length beside the road. Red lights seemed to flash inside his head, and though he struggled to get up, the power seemed to have been drained out of his body. He tried to lift his head, but he was unable to. He let it fall back, his cheek pressed into the yellow mud, then knew nothing. He lay there like a dead man in the road as the drizzle of rain began again.

Fourteen

“
W
e do good,” Dov said. He was carrying the huge pack on his back, but it seemed to be no weight at all.

Reisa looked up at him and smiled. “Yes, we did. We must have sold at least twenty dollars worth, and we made some friends.”

The two were trudging along the road headed for Sam and Phineas's house. It was late afternoon, and Reisa was tired, for they had walked far and had talked much. Dov, walking along beside her, suddenly said, “Look,” and waved forward.

Reisa lifted her eyes and saw there on the road before them a man lying facedown in the mud. Her heart gave a lurch, for she thought at first he was dead. “Come, Dov,” she whispered, and the two moved forward. When she reached the man, Reisa leaned over and touched his face. With relief she felt that the flesh was warm, and then he coughed and his body gave a convulsive shudder.

“He's been hurt, Dov. We must get him to the house.”

“I take him.” Dov leaned over, rolled the man on his back, then pulled him to a sitting position. With ease he lifted him up and draped him over his shoulder. The unconscious man coughed, and his head moved back and forth, then he slumped and lay still.

“It's over half a mile to the house. Can you carry him all that way, Dov?”

“Yes,” Dov said. “Is easy.”

Dov walked quickly, and Reisa followed by his side. The man's face bumped against Dov's back, but he did not move nor speak.

When they reached the house, Sam was sitting on the front porch. He got up as soon as he saw them and came running to meet them. “Who is this feller?”

“I don't know. We found him unconscious on the road by the creek.”

“Well, better bring him inside, Dov.”

Dov carried the sick man inside and placed him on the spare bed in Jacob's room. Jacob followed them in, and he reached over and put his hand on the man's face. “He's burning up with fever,” he said.

Indeed, the face of the unconscious man was flushed.

“Listen to his breathing,” Reisa said. “It sounds rough.”

“He's got pneumonia. That's what he's got,” Phineas grunted. “You done brought him here to die.”

Sam gave his partner an indignant look. “Why don't you look on the bright side of things for once? He won't die.”

Phineas snorted, but Sam said, “Let's get them clothes off of him, Phineas. We'll wet some towels with cold water. That'll bring that fever down. And I'll go get my ile.”

“Ile? What is
ile?
” Reisa said.

“Ile for anointing,” Sam said. “Don't you Jews do that?”

“Oh,
oil!
We do use oil in some of our ceremonies.”

Reisa stood by as Phineas stripped the coat and then the shirt from the unconscious man.
He's so thin!
she thought. When Phineas rolled him over, she saw a scar on his back over his right flank. There were other marks, too. This man had been hard used.

Sam returned with a bottle of cooking oil. “Well, I ain't never actually done this, but I know the Good Book says that if a feller gets sick, you're supposed to call the elders of the church and anoint 'em with oil.” He looked at Jacob and said, “I reckon you're the closest thing to an elder we got. Would you care to do the job?”

Jacob looked confused and said hesitantly, “Perhaps it would be better if you did it, my friend.”

“All right. Here I go.” Sam turned the bottle over and poured oil all over the forehead and hair of the sick man. It soaked into his rather curly hair and onto the pillow.

“That's enough, Sam!” Phineas said, snatching the bottle away. “You want to drown him?”

“You can't get too much of a good thing,” Sam said. Then without warning, he lifted up his eyes and said, “Lord, you know this man, and we don't. And you know how sick he is, and you done brung him to this place. So I just ask that you do what you done when you was on earth. Reach your hand down and heal him. In Jesus' name. Amen.”

“Well, if you'll get out of the way,” Phineas said, “we can get down to business.”

Without warning, he loosened the man's belt and pulled his pants off with one swift motion. Reisa flushed and turned her head away. “I'll go get a bucket of cool water and some towels,” she said.

She went to the well, her face still burning. She could not help but think of the man's body. He was very tall and lean and would have been strong, except he had lost weight until he was almost emaciated. Quickly she forced the sight of his almost naked body from her mind and went to the well, bringing back two buckets of water. She stepped inside the room and set them down, keeping her eyes turned away for a moment. Phineas reached and got a towel, dunked it, wrung it out, and then laid it over the man's legs. He grabbed another and continued until the sick man's whole body was swathed with cool wet cloths.

Now that the man was safely covered, Reisa went to stand just beside Phineas. She studied the face, which was a strong one. The black patch over his right eye drew her attention, and she wondered how he had lost the sight of that eye.
He would be handsome, she thought, if he weren't so thin.
She took in the wide mouth and the firm jaw that terminated the wedge-shaped face. The bristles of his beard glistened with the water as Sam laid a cloth on his forehead. “I wonder what kind of a man he is?” she said.

“Probably a no-good one,” Phineas grunted.

Sam cast his eyes on Phineas with wonder. “Now why in the blue-eyed world would you say that, Phineas? You don't know nothin' about him.”

“Because most people are no good.”

“I'd purely hate to have your outlook, Phineas,” Sam said. He was standing on the other side of the bed and looked down at the face. “He looks like a right good feller to me. A might hard used, but when Jesus gets him healed up, we'll put some meat on him. Then he'll be a nice appearin' feller. Don't you reckon, Miss Reisa?”

Reisa listened, startled. “If you say so, Sam,” she said quietly.

Everything was either burning hot or freezing cold. He moved from one extreme to the other for what seemed like endless time. There was actually, however, no sense of time. The pyramids could have been built while he struggled between the extremes of heat and cold.

At times he would be vaguely aware of voices—different voices—but they seemed to come from far away, and they were not voices that he knew. Most of them were harsh male voices, but one was softer. And he came to associate this softer voice with a touch on his forehead along with a cooling touch of water.

A dream came to him, of the Battle in the Wilderness when he along with Lee's veterans had fought a furious titanic struggle against the enemies dressed in blue. He lived again the time of the roaring of cannons and the whistling of musket balls as they cut the leaves from the trees so that they came pattering down on the ground. He had been knocked to the ground by the concussion of a shell going off. And then the woods had caught on fire. The heat rose, the fire crackling about him with the acrid smell of smoke. He could almost hear the screaming of those men too wounded to crawl away as they burned to death.

Then the heat faded away, and he was cool again.

Finally the world seemed to settle down, and he heard the sound of a bird somewhere singing a song. He opened his eye into a slit. He could not see clearly, and he reached out his hand and touched something soft and yielding. Instantly a blow struck him on the cheek. His hand dropped back, and he fell back into sleep wondering what it all meant…

He slept then, and finally when he awoke his mouth was dry and parched, but the burning fever was gone and there were no chills. Slowly he opened his eye, and as he focused he jerked his head back with alarm. He was looking directly into the green eyes of a jet-black cat who was lying on the bed staring at him intently. Driver watched as the cat stood up, came over, and reached out a paw. The paw touched him gently on the face, and the cat suddenly bared his fangs in what appeared to be a grotesque smile. The teeth were white and sharp, and the eyes larger and more green than seemed possible.

“So, you awake.”

Startled by the sound of a voice, Driver rolled over on his back. A young woman was standing there wearing a blue dress with a white apron over it. Her hair was tied up, and she wore a pale green bandanna so that he could not see her hair. He stared at her in confusion, and then he tore his gaze away, staring wildly around the room. There was nothing familiar, and he tried to speak but found that his throat was too dry and his lips too parched.

“You are thirsty.” The young woman moved over to a table where a pitcher of water and a glass sat. She filled the glass halfway with water and then looked down. “You must sit up,” she said. With one smooth motion she reached down, put her arms around him, and pulled him to a sitting position. Still holding him, she pulled a pillow up behind him and then released him. Taking the glass, she picked up a large spoon and filled it with water and held it to his lips. He opened his mouth and received it—and the parched tissues of his mouth and his throat welcomed the cool liquid. He watched the woman, still confused, as she spooned the water into his mouth.

“Give me the glass,” he croaked.

“No. To drink too much is not good. You can have all you want—but a little at a time.”

She had a strange accent, one that he did not recognize. Consciousness was sweeping back to Driver now, and after he had taken several more spoonfuls of the water, he said, “Where is this place?”

“It is a place where you will get well.”

“How did I get here?”

“My friend and I found you on the road. We brought you here. Now, be quiet.” She filled the glass and handed it to him. “Now, you take just a tiny sip. You must eat.”

Driver took the glass and watched the woman as she left. She closed the door behind her, and he took a sip of the water and stared around the room. It was plain enough, with pine walls, a high ceiling, and one window over to his left. There was only one decoration, a picture on the wall, a lithograph of General James Longstreet—cut out of a magazine, apparently. A roughly made chest, the bed he lay on, another small bed, and a chair beside it made up the furnishings. There was nothing else, not even a rug on the floor.

Driver took the water in small sips, and memory came back to him slowly. He remembered most of all his father's statement,
Finish your meal and then leave my house
. He remembered bidding good-bye to his mother and to Dorrie, then stumbling down the road. He even remembered falling in the creek and getting up, but he did not remember falling on the road.

By the time he had finished the water the young woman was back. “My name is Reisa Dimitri. What is your name?”

“Ben Driver.”

“So, Ben, you will eat.” She gave it to him. “Can you feed yourself?”

“Yes.” Driver reached out, took the bowl, and realized that he was very hungry. She stood and watched him, however, her eyes vigilant, while he ate slowly. When he was finished, he handed it back. “Tell me again where I am.”

“This house belongs to two gentlemen—Sam Hall and Phineas Long. I am a guest here like yourself. My friend, Dov, and I were coming back from Richmond. We found you lying on the road.” She held the bowl and studied him thoughtfully. “Do you have a family? Someone we could send word to?” She waited, expecting an answer, but he gave none.

Finally he said without emotion, “I don't have anyone.”

Reisa took the bowl. “Do you want to sit up a while?”

Driver realized that he was sleepy again. He shook his head and moved down. She reached forward as she arranged the pillow beneath his head. She said, “You are very thin. You must eat and sleep a great deal to get better.”

As she bent over he caught the faint scent of violets, but he was falling into a deep sleep. The last thing he remembered was the cat, for as he turned over on his side the large black feline was still there, his green eyes observing Driver. He thought he saw the cat smile, but he was not sure, for he dropped off into sleep again.