Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War (19 page)

“Sure, buddy,” I say. “I’ll shut up.”

Drew nods, then presses his cheek against Virginia
earth again, closing his eyes. I dip up more salve, anoint more
bruised and scabbed flesh, gently kneading him. “That’s some
splendid touching, Reb,” he murmurs. “You surely know how to soothe
a man.”

Finished with the salving, I cap the jar. But now my
fingers veer back to his body, stroking the lush bush in the valley
parting his buttocks. The hard warmth, soft skin, and thick fur of
him are irresistible. “I can’t touch you enough,” I say, eyes
lowered and ranging over the gift of his nakedness. “I so badly
want to lie with you.”

“You ain’t about to rape me, are you, Reb?” Drew
says. I can’t see his smile, but I can hear it in the tone of his
voice.

I lift my hand, about to protest. Drew says, “Hell,
I’m joshing you. Keep that up. It feels wonderful.”

Permission granted, I snuff the candle and continue
my rapt exploration. I stroke the fine tufts of hair in his crack,
tug on them tenderly, rest my cheek against one buttock and stroke
his crack-fuzz some more.

“Ian? I ain’t ready for that over-the-hay-bale
fucking you and Thom did, but…other than that, since we got so
little time, you’re welcome to…take your pleasure of me. Do what
you want, whatever pleases you. I trust you. I know you know what
you’re doing. You got me all trussed up. This Achilles ain’t going
anywhere. So use me. Show me how it’s done. Just break me in slow,
okay?”

My lips are on his ass-cheek now. I kiss it softly,
brushing my chin-beard over it. Drew lifts his loins off the earth,
pressing himself against my face.

“My guess is I’m due to meet my Maker real soon,
so…this side of the grave, I’m yours.”

Gripping his lean hips, I part his ass-cheeks with my
thumbs. I rub my chin along the crack.

“You hear me, Ian?” Drew groans. “I’m yours. Fill me
up with kindness before I got to die.”

What I do next I never did with Thom. It’s something
I’ve never thought of before, never heard of. But it seems right.
His flesh smells like soap and blood, the salve’s herb-infused
lard, and the grassy musk that clings to men’s crevices and secret
parts even after a bath. I spread his ass-cheeks further and lick
the fuzz growing there.

Drew gasps. “Ian, what are you—?”

“I’m taking my pleasure, boy. You gave me that
permission. You’re a feast. I’m feasting on you.”

My tongue trails the crack, then drops deeper. Drew
bucks back against my mouth; I grip his hips harder. Then my
tongue-tip finds his tiny opening and laps it. There’s a musky
bitterness like black walnuts we used to crack and hoard at home, a
musky sweetness like sorghum we used to boil down from green
sugar-cane juice. My tongue circles his tight spot. I fumble for
his balls, find them, grip the base of them in one hand, wrap my
other arm around his waist, and push my tongue into him.

Drew’s making too much noise, I realize dimly. The
tent brims with his loud rapture. I lift my head long enough to
whisper, “Stuff your mouth with that rag and keep quiet, fool. We
don’t need an audience.” Then I’m on him again, brushing his crack
with my beard, prying the edges of his opening back with my thumbs
and wedging my tongue into him more deeply.

Drew obeys. He’s quiet now, only making an infrequent
cloth-crammed grunt as he pushes back against my face and I explore
him further, mouth and nose buried between his buttocks. We rock
together for long minutes. I’ve shifted my grip from his balls to
his very hard penis and have started stroking him when, outside,
there’s the shuffle of footfalls in dead leaves.

I push him to the ground, unholster my pistol, and
listen. There’s the shuffling again, nearer now, then stopping,
then recommencing only to recede. I part the tent flap and step
out. There’s nothing to see but tree trunks, their thin columns
black against black. Nothing’s unusual but a telling odor. I find
it by its strong scent, three yards from the tent: a moist plug of
chewing tobacco, recently spat out.

_

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

_

“Do they call this spooning where you’re from?” Drew
asks.

“Yep,” I reply. “Can’t imagine a better way to spend
a chilly mountain night.”

We’re lying side by side in the tent’s pitch dark,
speaking in whispers. My chest is pressed against Drew’s bandaged
back; my lap cups his butt; my arms embrace him. He’s nigh onto
naked, trousers still around his ankles; I’ve stripped to the waist
just so we can lie skin to skin. We curl together beneath the
covers, afraid to do more than cuddle until we’re sure whoever
might have been listening—most probably George—has not
returned.

“I cherish the pressure of your body against my
back,” Drew says, snuggling closer. “Makes me feel safe.”

“Ha! How a little guy like me could make a golden
colossus like you feel safe is beyond me.”

“I saw you take out George. You were on him like a
catamount. And didn’t you tell me—well, warn me, rather—that you
were a crack shot when we first met? Not to mention a
battle-berserker?”

“Yep. Guys my size got to compensate.”

Words taper off. I stroke the thin hair on his
temples, the denser hair upon his cheeks and chin, while we listen
to night sounds. Somewhere nearby, birds ruckus in a treetop roost,
then settle down. There’s a slow soughing that comes and
goes—mountain wind through hemlock or white pine. So far, no
repetition of leaf-rustle, no further indication of a spy.

“Tell me about the man in the barn,” Drew says. “The
one you mentioned before, when you were trying to explain why…you
like to see me tied.”

“All right. As much as I want to do more than talk…I
want to pleasure you all damn night, Drew, while we’re still here
together…I can’t get enough of how you feel and smell and taste,
but…”

“I know. You’re afraid someone’s listening. You think
George is out there, waiting, hoping to hear something damaging,
something he can tell your devil-kin.”

“Yep. He might have already heard you moaning. Hell,
if he even heard us talking, we’ll be in trouble, since I’ve been
ordered to keep you gagged. George is angling to be…assigned you, I
think. If that happens…”

“I won’t last but a few days. I know that too. I can
see the evil in his eyes. So, here, now”—Drew grips my hand and
kisses it—“look, we’re together, this is enough. Just hold me,
buddy, and let’s talk. We still got a few nights, God willing.”

“And tomorrow night, let me get this clear, you’ll be
ready for more than kissing, right?”

Drew laughs low. “Yes, sir. Count on it. It’s true
that, before tonight, I’d never done anything with a man—or a
woman, for that matter—but kiss, but I was certainly relishing your
Southern hospitality earlier this evening. I think you could tell
from the racket I made. Your tongue’s a treasure, Reb.”

Slipping one arm over his hip, I tug at the hair
around his navel. When did touching get to be so easy?

“All right, big man. So, you want the story about
what I saw in the barn when I was ten. The man was an outlaw. My
father had caught him trying to steal a horse from our stable.
They’d scuffled; Daddy punched him out. He tied him up in the barn,
set my older brother Jeff to watch him, and rode off to fetch the
sheriff. I was curious, of course, so in the middle of the night I
sneaked out of the house.

“It was summer, I remember, hot, a night full of
lightning bugs and the sound of whippoorwills. Jeff wasn’t all that
pleased to see me—he didn’t want me near the prisoner—but I offered
to fetch water and food from the house when Jeff wanted it, so he
let me stay. He thought it was funny when I said I wanted to help
him guard the man, since I was so young and puny, and I guess it
was funny, though even then, I suppose, I had a protective streak
when it came to those I cared for.”

“Thank God for that,” Drew murmurs into the dark.

“Well, but, when I saw the man, my feelings got
confused…like they are with you. Divided loyalties, or, rather, in
that case, family loyalty mixed with some kind of fascination I’d
never felt before.”

“I’m assuming, since you’re telling me this to
explain how you like to see me with metal locked around my wrists
and ankles, that you liked looking at him?”

“Damn, yes. He was about your size and about your
age, with black eyes, eyebrows like a crow’s wings, and thick black
hair that kept falling over his face when he woke from his stupor
and started to struggle. His beard was just as black, and bushy, as
if it hadn’t been trimmed for a year. He was hairy like you, and
muscled too. I could tell ’cause Daddy had torn his shirt open in
the struggle. What I saw across his chest was not skin’s white but
wooly black, as if he were half-animal. Daddy had hogtied him—hands
bound together behind his back, then cinched to his roped feet. He
made a lot of noise when he came to, once he realized his state and
figured out the law was on its way and he was liable to be hanged.
When he got to cussing Jeff—nobody messed with Jeff, he was a
hothead—Jeff kicked the man in the side, pulled a bandana from his
back pocket, and, with some effort, ’cause the man fought like
crazy, gagged him.”

I fondle the cloth still knotted loosely around
Drew’s neck. He nods. “I’ll chew on that all night if it pleases
you. Once the story’s done. So what happened then?”

“The outlaw kept struggling and screaming, rolling
around over the straw, trying to get loose, till Jeff kicked him a
few more times and then pulled a knife and held it to his throat.
He settled down then. I fetched Jeff some water and some cookies
from the house, and a blanket for myself. I curled up on the
blanket; Jeff sat on a bale, ate and drank, then whittled a bit. I
studied that prisoner half the night, till sleep finally came to
me. I watched his chest hair glisten with sweat; I watched his
muscles strain against the rope; I watched his teeth grind the rag;
I watched his eyes glow with anger and fear.”

“All those things you’ve studied in me, right?” Drew
kisses my hand again.

“Yes. And I was hard for the first time, down below.
At least the first time I can remember.”

“But not for the last time?” Drew nudges his butt
against me, where he can no doubt feel the stiffness between my
thighs.

“No,” I chuckle. “Definitely not the last time.
Sorry. The story kind of riled me up. So, at any rate, that was
when all those things got melted up together in my mind: beards and
chest hair; ropes and gags; sweat and struggle; powerlessness and
fear. Seeing that outlaw marked me, you know? The way they say
trauma can mark a baby?”

“What happened to the man?”

“Oh, Daddy showed up that next morning with the law.
The horse-thief put up more of a fight; word was he was from a wild
family even farther up the mountain than us. The sheriff
pistol-whipped him, knocking him out. Last I saw of him he was tied
over a packhorse’s saddle, blood stringing from his mouth. I heard
they hanged him later. A year or so after that, when I first
learned how to…use my hand to relieve myself, it was that
trussed-up outlaw I thought of.”

“What about Jeff? Is he in the Rebel army? Sounds
like he would have made a fearsome soldier, as tough and mean as he
sounds to be.”

“Jeff’s dead,” I rasp. “The Yankees got him at
Antietam. It’s real hard for me to think of him or speak of him.
Real hard. That’s why I haven’t mentioned him much.”

“Oh, damn. Ian. I’m so sorry.”

“He and I volunteered together. We fought side by
side in this company for over a year. I hated Yankees for a long
time after he died. Wasn’t till I met some captured Feds, got to
know them a little, saw them suffer under Sarge’s hand—especially
big handsome Brandon…I was feeling some of this tenderness for him
by the time he died—that I started to winnow out whoever shot my
brother from…men like you.”

Pulling Drew closer, I press my face against his
bandaged back. My body soaks in his warmth the way my washcloths
absorbed his blood. “Let’s get some sleep, boy,” I say. “Tomorrow
will be hard for you.”

“Surely, Reb,” says Drew. “Will you gag me
first?”

“What?” Surprised, I rub his soft chin. “Are you
sure?”

“Yes, sir. I know you enjoy it. I don’t care why. It
doesn’t hurt me. It makes me feel…cared for somehow. The more
helpless I am when I’m with you, the more control you have over my
limbs and even my speech, well, the more I know I have you to
protect me, the more I know you feel obliged to protect me, the
more… I don’t know. Hell. Just put the rag in my mouth and hug me
close till morning, all right?”

I oblige. I loosen the bandana’s knot, push the
center between his teeth, and pull it taut.

“All right?”

Drew nods.

I knot it behind. “Not too tight?”

Drew shakes his head.

I fondle his face for a while, his bearded cheeks,
his moist lips, the cloth growing damp between his teeth. Then I
close my eyes and pray. I pray for courage. I pray for Jeff, for
Drew, for all the young men out under the cold skies, huddled under
oilcloths and by campfires, or rotting in graves, their pine boxes
collapsing, their uniforms molding, their splendid bodies melting
down to bone, their graves sinking in woodland or field,
innumerable little depressions like a finger might make in clay. I
might have loved so many of them, living or dead, if we’d been
given a chance to meet.

“I’m falling in love with you,” I say. “I’d do
anything to save you, Drew. I’ve fallen in love with you.” The
words wing out of me sudden, the way a hawk, out of nowhere,
swerves surprise through the sky.

Drew’s silence is a solid thing, a sharp bayonet that
could open me up and tear out the frailest parts of me. But then
his silence becomes a sigh, something liquid like dew or the
sweetness a country boy can sip from a honeysuckle flower.