Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War (39 page)

“I’m ready to taste you,” he mutters into between
kisses.

“But I ain’t clean. Haven’t bathed in days.”

“I couldn’t give a damn.” He presses his face into my
armpit and breathes deep. “Smells like forest, like barnyard.
Smells downright tasty.”

“All right. Just keep quiet, in case someone
outside—”

“Nothing to worry about there, Reb. They’re long
gone, and I plan to keep my mouth busy with better things than
talk.”

He’s as good as his word. His tongue plays over my
lips, laps my beard, and descends to my torso. Pretty soon he’s
sucking my right nipple softly. I press my hand against the back of
his head, pushing my chest harder against his face. It’s been years
since a man touched me this way.

“Does it feel good?” Drew whispers. “Am I doing it
right?”

“Hell, yes,” I moan. “You’re wonderful, Drew. Just
keep it up.”

As he sucks, his hand’s ranging over my cock,
flicking the head, squeezing and stroking the shaft. “I love your
hard little muscles. I love all this bear-fur on your breast,” he
says, resting his face in my chest hair, kissing it before shifting
his attentions from one nipple to the other. “And here on your
belly,” he says, ruffling the fuzz there before filling his mouth
with my chest-flesh again.

“If…you…don’t…stop,” I grunt, fucking his fist,
tugging at the long hair falling around his face.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Drew mumbles. “Not yet. I got
other explorations in mind.”

I gasp, gripping his head hard as he licks the tip of
my cock.

“Ummm,” he growls, wrapping his arms around my waist.
“Like salty satin…” Another few laps, then he takes the head into
his mouth. He sighs, sucks, and inch by inch pulls me farther into
him. I slide inside till I’m bumping the back of his throat. He
gags. “Easy,” I say. “Hold still for a bit; get used to it.” He
looks up at me, nodding, grinning around my cock and sucking in air
before tightening his lips around me. I look down at him in the
sparse gray light, at his wide blue eyes, his unkempt hair, his red
lips and blond beard wrapped around my flesh, his mouth stuffed
full of me. So sweet, manly, and submissive: an amalgam
heaven-sent.

“You couldn’t be more beautiful,” I say, touching his
face. Just as my sex fills his throat, awe at the sight of him
fills mine.

“And you couldn’t taste better,” he mumbles. “I think
I like your meat better’n pie.” He takes a gulp of air, then starts
in again, tongue flicking about the head, mouth moving up and down
the shaft. More choking, more gagging—“Sorry!”—then he’s at it once
more, chewing and slurping, nibbling and nuzzling. A few stabs of
discomfort as his teeth catch me; more mumbled apologies. We find a
rhythm. He tightens one arm about my hips, kneading my balls with
his other hand. I stroke his hair, his beard, arching up into his
wet mouth.

He pulls off, gasping, saliva dripping off his chin.
“Hhhuuhhhh! Let me catch my breath.” His cheek rests against my
hipbone; he wipes his lips, then his spit-moist hand takes up where
his mouth left off.

I gaze down at him, humping his fist.

“That’s quite the grin you got there, Reb. You sure
as hell taste fine.”

“That’s quite the mouth you have, Yank. Just take
your time. Those western hills can wait.”

“You know I ain’t ever…sucked a man before. But since
I met you, since you first sucked me, I’ve been eager to try. I
want your seed bad, Ian.”

He’s on me again, mouthing the head, taking the whole
thing down his throat till he’s choking again, then pulling off,
letting me cool down, then beginning anew.

I’m seriously hurting now, aching for release, and he
knows it. He rolls us onto our sides and I hammer his face in
desperate earnest, arms locked around his head, his drool slicking
up my thighs. Then I’m bucking and shaking, choking back a shout.
“Ohhh, hell, here we go,” I warn, burying myself inside him, and
now my rapture’s filling his mouth and he’s gasping on my semen,
coughing, softly laughing, gulping down each of the several waves
he’s coaxed from me.

“So that’s how a man’s seed tastes,” Drew says,
smacking his lips, then climbing up to fall wearily beside me. His
arms encircle me; he pulls me to him, my back to his chest. “A damn
sight better than hardtack or white beans.” He chuckles. “A regular
diet of Ian ought to keep my strength up for the trip ahead. You
don’t mind if I take a regular sip from you, do you, Reb?”

“As long as I can do the same,” I say. “How about,
after I hug on you a little, I return the favor?”

“Yes, sir,” Drew says, squeezing me hard in his arms.
“You’re more than welcome.

“Tastes like strength, doesn’t it?” Drew’s voice is
full of wonder. “A man’s seed tastes like strength.”

_

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

_

It’s a sacrament, the sort of worship pagans once
celebrated in caves like this. Drew’s stretched naked on the
oilcloth, on his back. I lie between his spread thighs, massaging
his welted ass cheeks and his testicles, then with a fingertip
nudging his fuzzy hole. His sex-flesh is heavy, hard, and thick on
my tongue. Moaning, he rides my mouth, big hands gripping the back
of my head. It takes no time at all. He explodes, liquid spasms
that fill my mouth and throat, making of me an overfull goblet, my
lips and chin a trickling brim. I gulp Drew down as if he were wine
or bread, manna meant to see me through the wilderness. The last
gush I hold in my mouth, savoring the taste for a few seconds
before swallowing. Then I’m wiping my beard of a few spilt
droplets; Drew’s chuckling, murmuring thanks, and kissing the top
of my head.

It takes a while, washing Drew’s wounds with canteen
water, anointing them with plaster: face, chest, back, buttocks,
foot soles. Then the wrapping of makeshift bandages about his
torso, loins, and bare feet. “Feels good,” Drew sighs, patient as I
move his body this way and that. He takes his turn, working the
salve’s cool soothe into the stinging wounds the grapeshot left
between my shoulder blades and along my side, the red-oozing groove
the cavalryman’s ball cut along the crest of my shoulder. A few
minutes later, both bandaged up, we’re dressed, packed, and ready
to continue our journey.

No sounds outside, so Drew grips the stone. He
strains, heels sinking into earth. “Damn,” he gasps. For a second,
I’m afraid he can’t move it, that we’re entombed here, to slowly
starve together, to breathe our last together, our bones fated to
mingle forever in this dark room.

“Let me help,” I say, licking my lips anxiously.
We’re both soldiers. Surely we deserve a better death than being
buried alive.

“Naw, I can do this, believe me.” Drew gives me a
tight grin. “I got to impress my little Reb with my muscles.” With
that, he puts his shoulder to the rock and gives a bass grunt and a
heave. The great weight rolls back, reluctant as a hound might be,
forced to give up its bone.

Out we crawl on our knees, blinking and squinting
after the time spent together in subterranean dark, firearms at the
ready. No one. We breathe deep the fresh air. We stand in the pour
of morning sunlight, brushing the cave’s dirt off our knees,
looking out through the gray forest, new green rising here and
there through carpets of leaves. Cloud shadow and sun skip across
the hillside. A cold wind shakes the green-tipped boughs, tugging
at a strip of bandage that dangles from Drew’s hip. No sign of
humanity; we could be the only two men left on earth.

“Here,” I say, fetching each of us a piece of
hardtack. Quietly, we chew on the stale crackers. “Damn, I want
some coffee,” Drew grouses. “I’d even be thankful for that acorn
swill you Confederates brew.”

“There might be an inn at Eagle Rock,” I say. “With
any luck, we’ll get up there by nightfall. We should be able to beg
us up some victuals, maybe even a pair of shoes for your poor
tore-up feet. Folks are pretty kind, and they’ll feed Confederate
soldiers if their larders have anything left at all. You just keep
quiet, and let me do the talking. You don’t sound like you’re from
around here, you know. You Yanks talk funny.”

Drew chuckles. “Us?! You Rebs sound like you’ve got
molasses stuck between your teeth. Like you’re chewing
honeycomb.”

I study Drew’s mischievous grin. He’s so damned
handsome, bare-chested and hairy in the sunlight. The smears of
dirt and bloodstained bandages just highlight his heroism, how
precious and fragile he is. I turn, heart brimming, and point down
the mountain. “All right, clever brute, we should head that way, I
think, and—”

“Ian.” Drew’s voice is barely a whisper behind me.
“Turn around. Turn real slow. Look.”

The panther is a few feet above us, crouched on top
of the boulders that formed our shelter. It’s a golden brown, the
color of autumn oak leaves and winter broomsedge. It stares at us,
long tail twitching. Whiskers bristle from its long snout.

“Back up,” whispers Drew. “Real slow.”

I do so. So does Drew. As I move backward, I reach
for my pistol.

“No. No, Ian. No. Just keep moving.”

Twigs pop beneath my brogans; leaves give off a
brittle crunching. Each noise makes me wince. The big cat curls a
lip. I catch a glimpse of fang. Then it sits up. It stares at us,
black-edged eyes as golden as Drew’s chest hair. It blinks. It
lifts one paw, licks it, then it turns, leaps off the side of the
rock, and lopes down the hill without a backward glance. I can hear
its progress through the leaves for only a few seconds. Then the
forest is silent.

“That’s the way we need to go, right?” Drew says,
wrapping an arm around my waist. “After that cat?”

“Oh, damn. Well, yes. But let’s us wait just a bit
and let that King of the Painters get ahead of us a safe distance.”
My thighs start up a fine trembling. “Lord, that animal could
have—”

“No malice there, little Reb. Just power. I’d rather
meet up with an entire pack of mountain beasts than any more of
your graycoat friends.”

“Or any more of your bluebellies, remember?” I
gingerly pat my bandaged shoulder. “Like you said, anyone we meet
might prove to be an enemy.”

We shoulder our packs and our rifles. Down the hill
we pick our way, taking in deep draughts of air. Almost immediately
we come out on another table rock, a flat overlook facing west. I
point toward the remote ridges of the Alleghenies. They look like
frozen surf, still painted the blue-grays and brown-grays of
winter, fringed with the black silhouettes of trees. Here and
there, like moored clouds set against those distant dun slopes, are
the white puffs of blooming sarvisberry trees.

“We follow a creek, then a river, and we’ll be
home.”

“How long?”

“Depends on whether we can procure a horse, on what
kind of obstacles we encounter. Goodly number of days, I’d say, on
foot. A week? Two? I can’t say.”

“But you’ll take care of me, Reb, right?”

I look up at Drew. The wind’s strong up here; it
ruffles his shaggy hair.

“Hell, yes.” On my tiptoes, I give his cheek a quick
kiss. “Okay, boy, let’s go,” I say, tightening my pack. “We got a
long, long way to travel.”

“Yes. But Ian?”

I turn to find Drew staring out over the valley of
the James, toward the distant mountains. The sun’s risen high
enough to bathe their pinnacles in light.

“Do you think anyone will remember us? Will imagine
us?”

“What do you mean, buddy? Our families and friends
will always remember us, even if we…even if we don’t make it home.
I know it’ll be dangerous, but we got to try, we got to—”

“No, I mean the men who come.” Drew swallows hard,
resting the butt of the rifle on the rock beneath us. “Who will
come to be born. Men like us. Men who, well, touch one another like
you and I touch. Like in the Whitman poems you read me. Like in
The Iliad
. It’s a comfort thinking that
they are there, somewhere. That they might be there, long after
we’re gone, there thinking of us. Looking back for us. From some
more fortunate place.”

I wrap my arms around my lover’s waist, this big,
scarred boy from Yankee-land, my erstwhile foe. I kiss his
breastbone, the fur soft against my face.

“It’s a comfort indeed. I’d say it’s a surety. And,
by the way, I feel pretty fortunate, war or not. The war led me to
you.”

Drew kisses my forehead. “Yes. Whoever those men are
or will be, I wish them all the blessings you and I have found
together. I hope they know somehow that we were here.”

With that, Drew shoulders his rifle and we descend in
the very direction the painter-cat vanished. In a little while,
we’re on the road again. We follow the James upriver, here where
the valley widens, here where it narrows again. We pass huge
riverside sycamores, stone walls marking an abandoned homestead, a
burnt cabin we cautiously skirt. For a few minutes we rest beneath
another blooming sarvisberry. The petals drift about us; I daub
blood off Drew’s feet. We each take a gulp from my canteen, and
then we resume our journey. Behind us, the stony head of Purgatory
recedes from sight. Before us, the mountains of home await. There
we will find shelter. There, with luck, we will share long years
together after this bloody war is done.

_

BIBLIOGRAPHY

_

I read many books in order to educate myself further
about the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression, as we
Southerners sometimes call it). Here’s a list of some I found
especially helpful.

Rebel Cornbread and Yankee
Coffee: Authentic Civil War Cooking and
Camaraderie—
Garry Fisher

Cooking for the
Cause—
Patricia B. Mitchell

Confederate Camp
Cooking—
Patricia B.
Mitchell