James Burke - White Doves at Morning

"I'll send a telegraph message to him this evening."

"In that case, it's very nice of you to invite me to your table," Abigail said.

As he held a dining room chair for Abigail to sit down, he smelled the perfume rising off her neck and felt a quickening in his loins, then realized the black woman named Ruby was watching him from the kitchen. He shot her a look that made her face twitch out of shape.

AFTER Willie reported to Camp Pratt and began his first real day of the tedium that constituted life in the army, he knew it was only a matter of time before he would empower Rufus Atkins to do him serious harm. One week later, after an afternoon of scrubbing a barracks floor and draining mosquito-breeding ponds back in the woods, he and Jim Stubbefield were seated in the shade on a bench behind the mess hall, cleaning fish over a tub of water, when Corporal Clay Hatcher approached them. It was cool in the shade, the sunlight dancing on the lake, the Spanish moss waving overhead, and Willie tried to pretend the corporal's mission had nothing to do with him.

"You threw fish guts under Captain Atkins' window?" Hatcher said.

"Not us," Willie said.

"Then how'd they get there?" Hatcher asked. "Be fucked if I know," Jim said.

"I was talking to Burke. How'd they get there?" Hatcher said. "I haven't the faintest idea, Corporal. Have you inquired of the fish?" Willie said.

"Come with me," Hatcher said.

Willie placed his knife on the bench, washed his hands in a bucket of clean water, and began putting on his shirt, smiling at the corporal as he buttoned it.

"You think this is funny?" Hatcher said.

"Not in the least. Misplaced fish guts are what this army's about. Lead the way and let's straighten this out," Willie said. He heard Jim laugh behind him. "I can have those stripes, Stubbefield," Hatcher said. "You can have a session with me behind the saloon, too. You're not a bleeder, are you?" Jim said.

Hatcher pointed a finger at Jim without replying, then fitted one hand under Willie's arm and marched him to the one-room building that Rufus Atkins was now using as his office.

"I got Private Burke here, sir," Hatcher said through the door. Atkins stepped out into the softness of the late spring afternoon, without a coat or hat, wearing gray pants and a blue shirt with braces notched into his shoulders. He had shaved that morning, using a tin basin and mirror nailed to the back side of the building, flicking the soap off his razor into the shallows, but his jaws already looked grained, dark, an audible rasping sound rising from the back of his hand when he rubbed it against his throat.

"He says he didn't do it, sir. I think he's lying," Hatcher said. Atkins cut a piece off a plug of tobacco and fed it off the back of his pocketknife into his mouth.

"Tell me, Private, do you see anyone else around here cleaning fish besides yourself and Corporal Stubbefield?" he said.

"Absolutely not, sir," Willie replied.

"Did Corporal Stubbefield throw fish guts under my window?"

"Not while I was around," Willie said.

"Then that leaves only you, doesn't it?" Atkins said.

"There could be another explanation, sir," Willie said.

"What might that be?" Atkins asked.

"Perhaps there are no fish guts under your window," Willie said.

"Excuse me?" Atkins said.

"Could it be you still have a bit of Carrie LaRose's hot pillow house in your mustache, sir?" Willie said. Atkins' eyes blazed.

"Buck and gag him. The rag and stick. Five hours' worth of it," he said to the corporal.

"We're s'pposed to keep it at three, Cap," Hatcher said.

"Do you have wax in your ears?" Atkins said.

"Five sounds right as rain," Hatcher replied.

WILLIE remained in an upright ball by the lake's edge for three hours, his wrists tied to his ankles, a stick inserted between his forearms and the backs of his knees, a rag stuffed in his mouth. A stick protruded from each side of his mouth, the ends looped with leather thongs that were tied tightly behind his head.

Water ran from his tear ducts and he choked on his own saliva. The small of his back felt like a hot iron had been pressed against his spine. He watched the sun descend on the lake and tried to think of the fish swimming under the water, the wind blowing through the trees, the way the four-o'clocks rippled like a spray of purple and gold confetti in the grass.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rufus Atkins mount his horse and ride out of the camp. The pain spread through Willie's shoulders and wrapped around his thighs, like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

Jim Stubbefield could not watch it any longer. He pulled aside the flap on the corporal's tent and went inside, closing the flap behind him. Hanging from Jim's belt was a bowie knife with a ten-inch blade that could divide a sheet of paper in half as cleanly as a barber's razor.

Hatcher was combing his hair in a mirror attached to the tent pole when Jim locked his arm under Hatcher's neck and simultaneously stuck the knife between his buttocks and wedged the blade upward into his genitals.

"You cut Willie loose and keep your mouth shut about it. If that's not acceptable, I'll be happy to slice off your package and hang it on your tent," Jim said.

Two minutes later Corporal Hatcher cut the ropes on Willie's wrists and ankles and the thong that held the stick in his mouth. Willie stumbled back to the tent he and Jim shared and fell on his cot. Jim sat down next to him and gazed into his face.

"What's on your mind, you ole beanpole?" Willie said.

"You have to stop sassing them, Willie," Jim said.

"They cut bait, didn't they?" Willie said.

"What do you mean?" Jim asked.

"I outlasted them. They're blowhards and yellow-backs, Jim."

"I put a bowie to Hatcher and told him I'd make a regimental flag out of his manhood," Jim said.

"Go on with you?" Willie said, rising up on his elbows. "Hey, come back here. Tell me you didn't do that, Jim."

But Jim had already gone out the tent flap to relieve himself in the privy.

Willie got up from his cot and walked unsteadily behind the mess hall and picked up the severed pieces of rope that had bound his wrists and ankles and the salvia-soaked gun rag that had been stuffed in his mouth and the sticks that had been threaded under his knees and pushed back in his teeth. He crossed the parade ground to Corporal Clay Hatcher's tent and went inside.

A small oil lamp burned on the floor, a coil of black smoke twisting from the glass up through an opening in the canvas. Hatcher slept on his side, in a pair of long underwear, his head on a dirty pillow, his mouth open. The inside of the tent smelled like re-breathed whiskey fumes, unwashed hair, and shoes someone had worn for long hours in a dirt field.

Willie kicked the cot. Hatcher lifted his head uncertainly from the pillow, his pale blue eyes bleary with sleep.

Willie threw the sticks and pieces of rope and thong into his chest. "God love Jim for his loyalty to a friend. But you finish your work, you malignant cretin, or one morning find glass in your mush," Willie said.

Hatcher sat up, his lips caked with mucus. "Finish my work?" he said stupidly.

"Did your mother not clean your ears when she dug you out of her shite? You and Atkins do your worst. I'll live to piss in your coffin, you pitiful fuck."

Hatcher continued to stare at Willie, unable to comprehend the words being spoken to him, the bad whiskey he had drunk throbbing in his head.

Willie started for him.

"I'm coming. I got to relieve myself first," Hatcher said, jerking backward, clutching his groin under the coarse cotton sheet. His throat swallowed in shame at the fear his voice couldn't hide.

EXCEPT for the house servants, Ira Jamison's slaves were free to do as they wished on Sunday. Until sunset they could visit on other plantations, sit upstairs at a white church, play a card game called pitty-pat, roll dice, or dance to fiddle music. Even though Jamison's slaves were forbidden to possess "julep," a fermented mixture of water, yeast, and fruit or cane pulp, Jamison's overseers looked the other way on Sunday, as long as no slave became outrageously drunk or was sick when he or she reported for bell count on Monday.