James Burke - In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

No, I didn't simply see them; I was in their midst, under fire with them, my throat burning with the same thirst, my hands trembling as I tried to reload my weapon, my skin twitching as though someone were about to peel it away in strips. I heard a toppling round throp close to my ear and whine away deep in the woods, saw the long scarlet streaks in the leaves where the wounded had been dragged behind tree trunks, and was secretly glad that someone else, not me, had crumpled to his knees, had cried out for his mother, had tried futilely to press his blue nest of entrails back inside his stomach.

The enemy advanced across an open field out of their own cannon smoke, their bayonets fixed, their artillery arching over their heads and exploding behind us in columns of dirt and flame. The light was as soft and golden as the season, but the air inside the woods was stifling, filled with dust and particles o'f leaves, the smell of cordite and bandages black with gangrene, the raw odor of blood.

Then I knew, even in sleep, what the dream meant. I could see the faces of the enemy now, hear the rattle of their equipment, their officers yelling, "Form up, boys, form up!" They were young, frightened, unknowledgeable of politics or economics, trembling as much as I was, their mouths too dry now even to pray, their sweaty palms locked on the stocks of their rifles. But I didn't care about their innocence, their beardless faces, the crimson flowers that burst from their young breasts. I just wanted to live. I wanted every round we fired to find a target, to buckle bone, to shatter lungs and explode the heart; I wanted their ranks to dissolve into a cacophony of sorrow.

My head jerked erect on the pillow. The room was hot and close and motes of dust spun in the columns of weak light that shone through the curtains. My breath rasped in my throat, and my chest and stomach were slick with perspiration.

The general sat in a straight-backed chair by the foot of my bed, with his campaign hat resting on one knee. His beard was trimmed and he wore a brushed gray coat with a high gold collar. He was gazing out the window at the shifting patterns of light made by the pecan and oak trees.

"You!" I said.

"I hope you don't mind my being here."

"No, I-you simply surprised me."

"You shouldn't have remorse about the kinds of feelings you just experienced, Mr. Robicheaux. A desire to live doesn't mean you lack humanity."

"I opened up on the Buick too soon. I let off the whole magazine without seeing what I was shooting at."

"You thought your life was at risk, suh. What were you supposed to do?"

"They say I killed an unarmed woman, general."

"Yes, I think that would probably trouble me, too." He turned his hat in a circle on his knee. "I have the impression that you were very fond of your father, the trapper."

"Excuse me?"

"Didn't he once tell you that if everyone agrees on something, it's probably wrong?"

"Those were his words."

"Then why not give them some thought?"

"General, somebody has done a serious mind fuck on me. I can't trust what I see or hear anymore."

"I'm sorry. Someone has done what?"

"It's the same kind of feeling I had once in Golden Gloves. A guy hooked me after the bell, hard, right behind the ear. For two or three days I felt like something was torn loose from the bone, like my brain was floating in ajar."

"Be brave."

"I see that woman, the back of her head… Her hair was glued to the carpet with her own blood."

"Think about what you just said."

"What?"

"You're a good police officer, an intelligent man. What does your eye tell you?"

"I need some help, general."

"You belong to the quick, you wake in the morning to the smell of flowers, a woman responds to the touch of your fingers, and you ask help of the dead, suh?"

He lifted himself to his feet with his crutch.

"I didn't mean to offend you," I said.

"In your dream you saw us retreating into a woods and you saw the long blue line advancing out of the smoke in the field, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Were you afraid?"

"Yes."

"Because you thought time had run out for you, didn't you?"

"Yes, I knew it had."

"We should have died there but we held them. Our thirst was terrible. We drank rainwater from the hoof prints of livestock. Then that night we tied sticks in the mouths of our wounded so they wouldn't cry out while we slipped out of the woods and joined the rest of our boys."

The wind began blowing hard in the trees outside the window. Last fall's leaves swirled off the ground and blew against the house.

"I sense resentment in you," he said.

"I already paid my dues. I don't want-"

"You don't want what?" He pared a piece of dirt from under his fingernail.

"To be the only man under a flag."

"Ah, we never quit paying dues, my friend. I must be going now. The wind's out of the south. There'll be thunder by this afternoon. I always have a hard time distinguishing it from Yankee cannon."

He made a clucking sound with his tongue, fitted his campaign hat on his head, took up his crutch, and walked through the blades of the window fan into a spinning vortex of gold and scarlet leaves.

When I finally woke from my sleep in midafternoon, like rising from the warm stickiness of an opium dream, I saw Alafair watching me through the partly opened bedroom door. Her lips were parted silently, her round, tan face wan with incomprehension. The sheets were moist and tangled around my legs. I tried to smile.

"You okay, Dave?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You were having a dream. You were making all kinds of sounds."

"It's probably not too good to sleep in the daytime, little guy."

"You got malaria again?"

"No, it doesn't bother me much anymore."

She walked into the room and placed one hand on the bedstead. She looked at the floor.

"What's the matter, Alf?" I said.

"I went to the grocery down at the four-corners with Bootsie. A man had the newspaper open on the counter and was reading something out loud. A lady saw us and touched the man on the arm. Then both of them just stared at us. Bootsie gave them a real mean look."

"What was the man saying?"

"A lady got shot." Her palm was cupped tightly on the knob of the bedstead. She stared at the floor, and there were small white discolorations in her cheeks like slivers of ice. "He said you shot the lady. You shot the lady, Dave."

I sat up on the edge of the bed.

"I had some trouble last night, Alafair. Somebody fired a pistol at me and I shot back. I'm not sure who fired at me or what this lady was doing there. But the situation is a lot more complex than maybe some people think. The truth can be real hard to discover sometimes, little guy."

"Did you do what they say, Dave?" I could see the shine of fear in her brown eyes.

"I don't know. But I never shot at anybody who didn't try to hurt me first. You have to believe me on that, Alf. I'm not sure what happened last night, but sooner or later I probably will. In the meantime, guys like you and me and Bootsie have to be standup and believe in each other."

I brushed her bangs away from her eyes. She looked for a long time at the whirling blades of the window fan and the shadows they made on the bed.

"They don't have any right," she said.

"Who?"

"Those people. They don't have the right to talk about you like that."

"They have the right to read what's in the newspaper, don't they?"

"The lady at the counter was saying something just before we walked in. I heard her through the screen. She said, 'If he's gone back to drinking, it don't surprise me he done that, no.' That's when the man started reading out loud from the newspaper."

I picked her up by the waist and sat her on the bed. Her muscular body felt as compact as a small log.