Coal Black Horse (12 page)

“I will write you a letter,” the major said, “explaining your purpose and signed by me.”

“I had a letter before this happened,” Robey explained, “and it didn't do much good.”

“It is the best I can do,” the major told him, and when he gestured the young officer with the leather book of papers stepped forward, opened its cover, and laid out a clean sheet of paper, a pen, and bottle of ink on a stand. He then held the book as a surface to write while the major dipped the pen and in flourishing script stated Robey's business and his steward-ship of the coal black horse. He periodically cursed as ink spurted from the scratching pen and from time to time raised his hands that it should be blotted.

“Just sit quiet, son,” the major said to the book of papers as he wrote. “It won't be long and you'll be on your way.”

While they were still sitting by the fire the woman of the house ushered in a man and his wife. She said outside it had begun a plague of rain and the parlor was full and asked if the major would agree to sharing the fire with these itinerants, and to this he consented.

“Will my broiled chicken be much longer?” the major asked as he continued to write.

“There is a terrible downdraft,” the woman said, and then told him the fire was being fickle, but it was apparent that she had completely forgotten about the major's chicken.

She sat the man and his wife by the door where they maintained themselves in mute sadness. The man was bare-legged and carried a large bundle on his back. The woman carried an infant less than a year old, wrapped in a blanket, and the presence of the baby seemed to soften the major. Clearly, he himself was a fond father and Robey could only conclude it'd been a long time since he'd seen his children.

The child was placid in the woman's arms, making not a sound, and still she spoke to it, saying its name. They were both wet and chilled and about them was the mystery and awe of hunger. The major ordered for them a mug of hot cider, then entered into conversation with them while he continued to improve his letter on Robey's behalf.

The man stood when the major addressed him and listened like he was used to it. The man told how he was by trade a weaver and his wife was the great-granddaughter of the Reverend Mr. Lamb, formerly minister of Baskenridge Church. They had been burned out and were traveling west to escape the hostilities.

“You travel a long way from home,” the major said.

“Yes sir.”

“Is Emily your daughter's name?” the major asked, glancing down at the watch he again palmed in his hand as the young officer folded and enveloped Robey's letter of safe passage.

“It is,” the weaver said.

“It's a beautiful name,” the major said. “I also have an Emily.”

“God bless you,” the woman said.

“Satan especially hates women,” the major said with an exaggerated wink of his eye.

He then took out a purse and gave the woman a silver dollar,
telling her it was for the infant child, which overcame them both with gratitude. He called to the maid and ordered for them coffee, bread, butter, and honey, if there was any to be had. He then crossed the room and pulled back the curtains to let his knee rest on the sill and peer out at the street.

“Why haven't you joined up to fight for your country?” he asked the weaver, still staring out the window.

“They won't take me,” the weaver said.

“Why not?”

“I have a black heart.”

“Oh, Christ,” a sentry mumbled, letting the butt of his rifle knock on the floorboards.

“What is it that constitutes a black heart?” the major asked, without the least interest and as if in reply came the haunting banshee wail of an oncoming train whistle.

“He has a mind disorder,” his wife said with some panic in her voice.

Then came another long blast from the quills and the sound of exploding exhaust. The men in the room came to life as if from a long rest. Then was the sound of the engine's volcanic eruptions bouncing off the hillsides and splitting the wet night with their echoes, with great back blasts of soot, as the engine hammered up the last grade and began its run into town.

At that moment the front door flung open and a soldier yelled down the long hallway, “The train is coming,” and the sound through the smoky and orange lamplight, past the portraits set in gilded frames was raw sound in its coming from some far-off place, booming through the streets and entering the house. The major turned on his heels and made for the
open door, his guards following close behind with his coat and sword.

Robey waited expectantly, but they seemed to have no more concern with him. The woman carried her baby to the window to look out, but she could not see so she unlatched the window and let it swing open. She called out the arrival of the train and when she left the window's opening the drapes followed her on a wind that would not let them down. The sound increased and the room was washed in a sweep of white light, and he thought it would be a good time to slip away to reunite with the coal black horse. But something was wrong. He felt it before he knew it and then he knew it.

“Don't you go out there,” the bare-legged weaver hissed at him, hunching at the window to see into the night.

“You stay here, boy,” the woman said, shifting the baby from one arm to the next and sliding a revolver from the blanket's folds.

Still, he went down the hall to the open door where the old woman was fingering her pearls as she and her maid stood looking off in the direction of the train yard and the major and his guards mounting into their saddles and departing on horseback.

“Don't you go down there,” the woman warned, and she reached for his collar to hold him back as he passed her by. He could feel her crabbed fingers at his neck and dragging across his shoulder as he slipped her grasp.

Already he was leaving through the open doorway and into the chaos of horses and teamsters, officers yelling out orders and cavalry dashing over the cobblestoned street. As he passed through the streets he detected the townspeople watching
from behind their fallen drapes and from between the slats of their shuttered windows. Men broke from doorways still stepping into their boots and dragging their suspenders over their shoulders, their shirttails flagging behind them.

He didn't know why, but he crossed the square and walked the street in the clear direction of the glistening engine, its rods slowly rising and falling. Shotgun blasts of steam filled the black vault of the night. Frightened horses were rearing in harness and had to be quieted. A shaft of white light still bayed from the tinplate reflector, splitting the wet darkness as white carmine-tinted plumes swept past the reflected light.

A cavalryman yelled at him and he jumped back as the horse and rider surged over the spot where he had just stood. Inside the light was visible the red star of the headlamp while the iron clapper continued its tolling on the bronze walls of the bell, as if calling to him again and then again: come see what you have never seen before in your young life.

Robey gazed at the shining steel and copper of the engine that pulsed before him. A red line bordered in gold made a long stripe down its wet glistening barrel. The black-faced men were slowly being herded forward, treading warily, as if they feared they would be fed into the very noise of the engine.

The doors of the boxcars banged open and lanterns were lit inside the cars and they became incandescent and shown from within as the men collected forward and began handling the boxes and crates from the cars' interiors and into the wagons. The black skin of their raised arms was wet and silvery in the light and their faces streaked as if they were crying silent endless tears. A red mouth would open or the light would catch
the white of an eye, and this would cause a soldier to shift and raise his rifle and yell and then another soldier would yell and the yelling would erupt down the line.

He turned away and it was then, through a white blast of steam issuing from the cylinder cock, that he saw webbed in the sweeping steel slats of the low pilot the torn and masticated head of the bay horse, its eyes huge and pearly and fixed on the distance forever. He turned over inside himself and felt his jaw fixing and reminded himself of hatred and how anger was more useful than despair. But still that a horse should receive such an outcome, even in death. Then the strangest feeling came into him as he marveled at how powerful the machine and the way it'd cleaned the bay horse's head from the rest of its body. He found his breath again and thought to find the coal black horse, a revolver, the infested little man who shot him so cold-bloodedly.

Then a soldier screamed, God almighty, and fell and he could hear a sound coming from the walls and cobbles like hot spattering grease. Then, beside his ear, he heard the crying sound the air makes when it splits. Then another soldier was toppled and then a rider hove up and the word went out that a large force had struck the pickets and they'd been drove in. Then came the first of the pickets pouring over the river, the rail cut and in from the countryside, and in the same moment was begun the screaming sound of artillery in the night and in stark detail. It was as if the whole world about him was suddenly flying apart.

From out of the darkness continued a coruscating gunfire. Spent bullets were flattening on stone walls and dropping to the cobbles below where they hissed in the puddled water, or whining through the leaves of dogwood and cutting the green needled trees and falling to the street like elements of heavy rain. He saw a young soldier boy struck in the hand from a great distance and the force of the bullet seemed to fling the hand from his body and spin him in place until he fell down in the street to dumbly stare at his hand, as if an appendage newly attached and sourced with a baffling pain.

The horses standing in harness held their heads high as their lathered flanks heaved with every breath. They danced and trod heavily and then they too began to fall onto their haunches and sides but not before eight or ten bullets found their wet-sleeked hides, their withers, their long necks, their ribs, their croup, their powerful beating hearts. It was never the intention to kill the horses, but that was how thick and crossed the fire was in those first minutes of chaos.

He could see a cannonball striking sparks as it bounded over the rounded cobbles and then slowing and gently rolling his way. He jumped aside, but another soldier, his gaping
mouth still gobbed white with a paste of crackers and cheese, held up his rifle as if stepping into water and put his foot out to stop the cannonball and in an instant his foot was gone and blood was gushing out the stumped end of his leg onto the street where his blood showed like red glass in wet sunlight. A second cannonball blew a soldier's head clean off and continued on to smash another man to death. The headless soldier walked three more paces before falling to the street where his dead body shook fishlike before extinguishing.

Robey lifted on his toes to damp the tremors circuiting the ground and a shock of fear went through him and it was like candied syrup running the lengths of his extremities. His belly swooped low and dashed at his pelvis where it fluttered. This night was war. The falling rain was war. The clipped moon was war. The earth where they stood and the sky they stood under was war. He had to fasten his mind to stave off the urge to piss himself and when the urge passed he armed himself with a dead man's revolver and then a second one he jammed in his belt. He determined, as if it were his prerogative to do so, that he would not be shot again by any man on either side of that small earth if he could shoot the bastard first. War would not kill him.

Horses reared and shrieked as the din of noise rose again and then surpassed itself. They kicked over the traces and kicking out with their hooves became entangled. A jack, braying and honking, plunged across the square, its ears swept back and its tail straight up in the air, a muleteer running behind, slipping and falling with broken leads still in his hands. Streamers of blood flowed from its nostrils, breaking and flattening and spattering its hide. It ran headlong through an
iron fence and into a stone wall where it broke its neck and crumpled in a flower bed. Another soldier, his ribs blown out by an exploding shell, was revealed to him in lantern light, his throbbing heart, and he spoke on in delirium of a particular woman before he too expired.

Sparks flew from minié balls and grapeshot that hit stones in the hard gravel yards. The major, now mounted and crying out a babel of orders, rode up in a flurry of lather and sweat and stopped where he stood, and he could feel the fling of heat from the horse, panting and about to drop as it skittered to keep its tangled feet under it.

“Get down,” the major yelled at him, and when someone pushed him from behind he scurried for cover in the wet grass behind a spiked wrought-iron fence.

Sharpshooters were now picking off the teamsters, the soldiers in the train yard and the soldiers in the tight confines of the streets, their flesh blurred by bullets. The major screamed out in anguish as a bullet passed through his black boot and entered his horse. A surgeon approached, dragged the boot from his leg and insisted upon immediate amputation, but the major kept him at bay with his drawn revolver, and the surgeon bound the wound while the major stayed in the saddle and continued his steady contribution of incoherent orders. Another bullet struck his wrist and his gauntlet filled with blood before he let it slip from his hand and slap to the ground where it lay red and bloated.

Then, from back a lane unlit beyond the great fountained square, came the long dense sensation that comes in advance of a great force marshaling. Then there was the force itself and that alone was fearsome and powerful to witness and then he
heard the officer's command and the sound of slotted steel swords clearing their scabbards.

“Form fours! Draw sabers! Charge!”

Then came a sudden hurtling through space and behind it were the raiders materialized on horseback, kiting through the hedges and emerging from the alleys and gathering into the parallel streets where they charged like the bore from a burst dam, and then they were in their midst and abrupt explosions were erupting from the ends of their arms. Horses screamed and fell with groaning exhalations. A gush of blood spewed from another's mouth as it whirled on its hind feet and bolted. A blade flashed and a hand was cut off at the wrist. Another flashed and a man's head was nearly severed from his body and ropes of arterial blood tapped into the night's darkness.