Deserter Read online

  Jake stroked his horse’s neck, marveling at the resilience—or perhaps the innate stupidity—of the equine species. A very few hours before, the mare was doing her best to run herself to an almost guaranteed broken bone or perhaps worse, in a state of abject terror. Now Mare was none the worse for the experience. Beyond shaking her head a bit more than usual because of flies pestering her tender left ear, she had apparently forgotten the entire episode, with no repercussions.

  Jake wasn’t quite as fortunate. He stopped early to make camp, scrounged about for an hour seeking dry wood for a fire, and found none. It was as if the entire planet had been submerged in a vast ocean and nothing remained dry. After unsaddling and hobbling Mare, he ate a few pieces of jerky from his diminishing supply, drank a few swallows of water from his canteen, and leaned back against a tree, resting, his thoughts as bleak and lifeless as the soaked and saturated world around him. He dozed on and off through the late afternoon and into the night, but never entered into a deep sleep. A sensation in his right hand—not pain, actually, more of an itchy tightness, a sense of heat—nagged at him like a hangover headache. The passing of time seemed sluggish, but in the many times Jake jerked awake from a doze, he noticed that the length of the shadows generated by the moonlight had changed, as had the position of the moon itself.

  Near dawn he found himself shivering as if he were sitting naked on a block of ice. His teeth clattered together with such force that jolts of pain ran through his jaw, and his entire body shook in a frigid palsy. Bizarre snippets of dreams and images flickered in his mind: the rainstorm, Ferris grinning at him, saying something Jake couldn’t quite understand, a Union officer standing for a moment before he toppled, his chest gushing blood, a wrathful President Davis, his eyes a fiery red, cursing Jake, Uriah’s bodiless head resting among a pile of severed arms and legs.

  When Jake awakened the next time, he was drenched in sweat, disoriented, not able to separate what was real and present from the panorama his mind had unfolded. Dawn was hours past and the sun high when he struggled to his feet and fought off the dizziness that threatened to drop him. He shook his head to clear the floating red shards that blocked his vision. His hand throbbed in unison with the pulse he heard in both his ears. He raised his hand to his face and inspected it. It was swollen, but not hugely so, and without much difficulty, he flexed his fingers and formed a loose fist. He held his knuckles under his nose and sniffed: There was none of the sickly sweet stench of infection. Still, the dull red trailers from the tiny lacerations bothered him.

  “It wasn’t a cottonmouth, Pa. I’m sure of that. It wasn’t anything more than a big old grass snake. I stepped on him and he bit at the back of my leg. I grabbed him and looked at his mouth—he had those little snake teeth but no fangs at all. Just a grass snake. It was my own fault for stepping on him. I let him go on his way.” He grinned at his father. “If somebody tromped on me, I guess I’d bite him, too.”

  Pa didn’t smile. “When was this, Jake?”

  “Day before yesterday, early morning, I was going to the barn for my chores.”

  “And you noticed the redness—those red lines—just today?”

  “Yessir. Doesn’t hurt so much as it itches. It itches like crazy, Pa.”

  “It’s infected, son. I’m going to send a rider for Doc Turner. I want you in your bed and staying still until he gets here.”

  “Pa—”

  “Do as I say.”

  Jake’s father wasn’t a man to hurry. He took everything in stride, made decisions calmly, acted decisively after sufficient thought. But he all but ran from the great room where they’d been talking, calling to a servant to fetch a rider. Jake had never heard a tremor in his father’s voice before.

  A day later Jake was in his bed, his nightgown and sheets soaked in sweat. The stink of the infection, even through the thick poultice that wrapped his lower leg, made the servants who looked after him gag. “Same damn thing up an’ killed my ma,” Cicero, an elderly houseman, told the boy. “Wasn’t no Doctor Turner for slaves, Massa Jake. You’s lucky.”

  Jake swam back from his memories. It suddenly seemed very important to him that he get moving, although he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to saddle Mare—and even if he did, to keep her headed in the right direction. Still, the almost frantic urgency was there. His clothing, still soggy from rain, dew, and fever-sweat, stuck to his body like a loose, diseased second skin.

  He muscled his saddle to his shoulder, stood weaving for long moments, and then lumbered through the brush to where Mare was cropping grass. He tripped once and went to his knees. When he looked back he saw that nothing beyond low weeds had been in his path. I fell like a goddamn rummy in a saloon. I can’t ride today, he thought. I’ll topple off Mare, knock myself silly, and lose my horse and saddle. Goddamn that Ferris’s mouth—it must have been as foul as shit house runoff. I should have gunned him instead of punching him.

  Mare watched without much interest as Jake stood precariously, tottering in the sun, and stripped off his shirt. When he sat to take off his boots and pants, she went back to grazing. Jake spread his shirt and pants over a bush where the sun would hit them and found a piece of shade to rest in, gun belt buckled and draped over his shoulder.

  The shivers started again the moment he sat down. He considered moving out into the direct sun, but before he could act on the thought, his face was running with sweat and jagged black spots were floating in front of his eyes. He fell back, prone, dirt and grit sticking hotly to his back. He brought his right hand to his face, held his knuckles under his nose, and took in a long draft of air. The stench—the thick stink of rotting meat—caused him to gag, bile spilling from between his lips. “Damn,” he mumbled. “Damn.”

  Jake saw himself in his bed at his home, Dr. Turner and his father hovering over him, the physician holding a length of cloth a couple of feet long wrapped around a damp claylike substance that smelled strongly of mustard and salt and lamp oil.

  “This is a poultice, Jake,” Turner told him. “I’m going to wrap your leg with it. You’ll feel some heat but it shouldn’t hurt too much. See, what the poultice’ll do is draw the poison—the infection—out of you.” The doctor drew back the sheet and nodded to Jake’s father, who elevated the boy’s leg a foot or so above the surface of the bed. Doc Turner worked quickly, dexterously, taking three quick wraps around Jake’s lower leg and then securing the poultice with strips of white cloth. The heat—the one he was told wouldn’t hurt much—began almost immediately, escalating from mild discomfort to a screaming pain that brought tears to Jake’s eyes. He looked away from the doctor and his father and pawed the tears from his face with the back of his hand, ashamed.

  “Is it bad, Son?” his father asked.

  Jake had to swallow a couple of times before he could trust his voice. “Not so bad, Pa.”

  Leighton Sinclair nodded, his eyes showing he shared his son’s pain. “Sometimes a man has to put up with hurt, Jake. No way around it. Just hold on.”

  The phrase “Just hold on” twisted its way through Jake’s fever-ravaged brain, helping him get to his feet, forcing him to move, to take some action against the infection that, even in his fogged state of mind, he knew could drop him into his grave. He looked at his hand. It was hugely swollen now and the red trailers had become more pronounced, extending beyond his wrist, toward his elbow. He couldn’t clasp the hand, couldn’t come near forming a fist. His fingers were fat, pasty-white sausages that stretched the skin that covered the bones until it seemed ready to rupture from the pressure. Jake stood, foolishly naked, swaying like a tree in strong wind, doing his best to force himself to think coherently, pushing away images of his father, of Dr. Turner.

  “A poultice,” he whispered hoarsely. “Gotta make a poultice.”

  Mud was the only component he could find, but there was plenty of it, thanks to the storm. He stumbled to the bush where he’d spread his shirt and pants and reached to his naked hip for his bowie knife. For a h
eartbeat, clarity returned. Even so, he had no idea where the knife may have been. He dropped his gun belt to the ground, tore a sleeve from the shirt, and then pulled on the remaining part of it. His face, neck, and forearms were deeply tanned, but the pallid white flesh of his back and abdomen and legs hadn’t seen sun in a long time, and he was already beginning to burn. He sat down and hauled on his pants and then his boots. He was able to buckle his gun belt around his waist.

  Pockets formed by the roots of trees held the thick black mud Jake sought. Clumsily, using his teeth and his left hand, he tied off the lower part of the sleeve and knelt in the spongy soil in front of a puddle to fill the fabric cylinder with mud. It was soupy at the surface, little more than dirty water, but lower the mud was a composite of soil and decayed leaves, cool to the touch, with an earthy smell that wasn’t at all unpleasant. When the sleeve was half-full, Jake eased his right hand into the muck until he felt the knot he’d tied at the end. The cool mud offered some relief from the burning sensation, and that alone made the whole exercise worthwhile.

  The exhaustion—the overpowering sense of sick fatigue—struck Jake like a bolt from the sky. He’d been dizzy and disoriented and weak, but now he felt unable to gather the strength to take another step, to check on his horse, to eat a few sticks of jerky. He made it to a patch of shade and collapsed.

  It took Sinclair some moments to figure out that it was very early morning and that he’d slept through the balance of the day and the entire night before. His mud poultice had almost but not completely dried during his unconscious hours. His hand throbbed in its soil cast, but the pressure created by the drying muck seemed to force any real pain into the background of sensation. The fever was still with him. He was terribly thirsty, and his gut rumbled with hunger, but the thought of food nauseated him. He gazed around where he’d slept. The early sun made the dew sparkle brightly, like bits of mica randomly strewn about.

  If I don’t get some help today I’m going to die in these woods. By tomorrow I’ll be too weak to climb onto Mare and I’ll sit here and boil to death in my own goddamn fever-sweat. He got shakily to his feet. Ferris said there was a town somewhere around here. A town might have a doctor or at least someone who knows some animal and human medicine. All I need to do is find the town.

  Mare, still securely hobbled, had been able to move freely enough to expand her grazing area to a shaded patch near a sinkhole of tepid water. Jake lumbered up to her, stroked her face while holding on to her neck to keep himself from toppling over, and, after sucking up some of the murky water from what amounted to nothing beyond a stagnant puddle, led her back to his gear. His saddle and rifle were untouched. There was no sign of his knife. Saddling Mare took what seemed like an eternity of hard labor and climbing up onto her back wasn’t much easier. Jake nudged the horse with his heels and reined her in a roughly west direction, letting Mare pick her way around trees and through the thick scrub. There was a breeze moving and it was a gift from heaven, drying Sinclair’s sweat and cooling his body. He was as at home on a good horse’s back as he would have been in a rocking chair. Like a seasoned cowhand riding watch on a quiet night, Jake was more asleep than awake, conscious only of the movement of the horse under him, his body adjusting itself to her easily, naturally. It was a lack of that motion that brought Jake awake. They’d come to a road—or at least a wagon trail—that looked recently used. A pile of horse manure was not more than a half day old. Mare swung her head back to look at Sinclair, her intelligent chestnut eyes all but shouting out to him, “Which way? You’re the rider, remember?” Jake squinted against the sun, peering down at the rutted trail. Most of the prints from shod hooves pointed to his left. He reined Mare in that direction, sitting more upright in his saddle now. His horse, too, was more alert, sniffing the air, perhaps catching the scents of civilization.

  Jake halted at a sign at the side of the road nailed to a stout post stuck into the ground. The sign was wooden, about two feet by two feet. The lettering was faded but still legible: TOWN OF PENDERTON. The thick wood was riddled with bullet holes, most of which appeared to be from small-caliber weapons. A couple of two-inch-wide gaps indicated the passing of a rifleman with a buffalo gun or similar piece. Sinclair’s face broke into a grin in spite of his dried and cracked lips. He recalled that posters for runaway slaves back home had served as targets, too. He and his father had, in fact, sighted in Jake’s brand-new birthday gift rifle on such a poster the day he turned fifteen.

  Sinclair passed a neat little log-constructed cabin with a couple of toddlers playing with a pair of puppies in front of it. He was about to rein in when he locked eyes with a stout, hatchet-faced woman in a washed-out gray dress. Her mouth was a grim, hard line. She held a 44.40 across her chest with a finger inside the trigger guard. Jake nodded and kept moving. He could feel her eyes following him until he was far down the road. After another mile he passed a house—a frame structure this time—and then another not far beyond it. The road he followed got heavier use here; it was wider and there were few weeds growing up in the ruts and craters. He followed a sweeping arc the road made and then the town of Penderton was laid out before him—what little of it there was. The main street was arrow straight and wide and the wind stirred up dust devils along its length. There were buildings on both sides of the street, some of which had false fronts, making them appear larger and more permanent than they were. No building was taller than two stories. Most were one. Closest to Jake was a stable and blacksmith operation with a corral behind it. There a few rental mounts pushed flakes of hay around listlessly in the sun. Down the street was the largest structure in Penderton: A long, pristinely white, black-lettered sign proclaimed it to be VanGelder’s Mercantile. A kid of twelve or so was washing one of the large glass display windows at the front of the store. There was a plank sidewalk in front of the mercantile. Next came an empty lot and then a saloon with batwing doors. Three nondescript horses were tied to the rail in front. An alley separated the gin mill and an undertaker’s establishment and next to that, a feed mill. At the far end of the street a whitewashed structure with a cross over its large front doors stood like a sentry watching over the town. The opposite side of the street held a restaurant with a hand-painted sign that stated simply EAT HERE, a two-story hotel with a few old gaffers sitting on benches under the front overhang, a sheriff’s office, an apparently vacant building with a board nailed across its front door, and a farm tool and carriage store with a shiny phaeton parked in front of it. There was little pedestrian traffic on the street: Two women were looking into one of VanGelder’s windows, and a farmer-looking fellow was tying up in front of the saloon. Jake swung Mare over to the man.

  “I’m wondering if there’s a doc in town,” Sinclair said, his voice cracking a bit.

  The farmer turned and looked Jake over before he answered. “You sure look like you could use one, all pale and sickly,” he observed.“What’s that on your arm?”

  “A poultice. Look—is there a doctor or anybody who can give—”

  “Jus’ down beyond where that carriage is parked is Doc’s house. I’ll tell you this, though, he won’t take no farm produce or Reb scrip—only good Union cash. Otherwise, he’ll turn you away as sure as chickens don’t have no lips. Doc, he’s got more money than God. Built kind of a hospital right onto his house is what he done.” The fellow paused, as if collecting his thoughts. Jake had already begun turning Mare. The windbag he’d encountered was beginning to fade in his vision and the floating spots were moving in.“Now, was you to stop for a drink here”—the farmer motioned toward the batwings—“ol’ Weasel, he’ll take damn near anything in trade for a taste of whiskey an’ a beer. He’s got ice, too—the beer is cold. Every winter, me an’ the boys, we go to the river an’cut a full wagonload. Freeze our eggs off too, you can bet on that. Weasel don’t pay worth a shit, but we—me an’the boys—sure fancy that cold beer long about this time of . . .”

  Jake rode toward the end of the street after mumbling
his thanks for the directions. Even through the haze of fever, he asked himself, Weasel? What the hell kind of name is Weasel? Did I hear that right?

  It seemed like the hitching rail in front of the doctor’s office and home was trying to dance away from Jake’s left-handed attempts to wrap his reins around it. The buzzing in his ears was back, sawing away inside his head, and he could feel that his face was dripping sweat. “Here,” a man’s voice said, “let me get that for you.” In a moment Jake felt a strong arm around his shoulders, half leading and half carrying him toward the office. “Easy now,” the voice said. “Let’s get you inside.”

  The reek of chloroform on the cloth covering Jake’s nose and mouth took him back to the battlefield, to a surgeon’s tent where he’d hauled a kid with a lower leg wound. The doctor had put the soldier under with chloroform and sawed off the leg at the knee. Early in the war, the anesthetic was available. Now, two years later, neither side had much of it. When the severed limb struck the floor Jake had run from the tent, the vile smell of the chloroform sticking to his hair, his clothes, his skin. Now, drugged and confused, he kicked at the imaginary surgeon with the gleaming saw.

  “Easy,” the now familiar voice said. “Easy now. There’s no need to fight me. Calm down now.”

  Jake focused on the face of the man leaning over him, pinning his arms and chest to the long wooden table he was stretched out upon. “My leg . . .” Jake mumbled.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your legs. Your problem is quite a bit higher—in your right hand and arm. I cleaned it out real well. You’re going to be all right. Hear? You’re going to be all right.”

  Jake squinted against the sunlight pouring in the surgery window. “Who’re . . . what . . . ?”