Raintree County (105 page)

With sudden fang his hundreds doth he slay.

On many an eve seductive he hath hung,

A serpent pendent from a branch of bay!

WILLIE

stamping back and forth, cutting and thrusting with a sword, laying open thousands of books, shearing off sheets of other men's plays,

—Ah, what a creature is man, born to be beast, and like a beast a-borning, but being born, mark you, thou beast in being, thou bully bawcock, man, what be'est thou? say, boy, say!

PERFESSOR

—Why, we are born to fight and feed and flute, Will, and when we are faint with our fighting, then feed we, and when we are full of our feeding, then do we foot about our fluting, until with feeding, fighting, and fluting we fall into a fit. For 'tis but a brief road running from womb to tomb.

WILLIE SHAKESPEARE

hotspurring his horse into the reeds beside the river,

—'Tis an old story. Men will have that they will have. And when they have it, 'tis but a little hole that they have, being but big enough to hold your poxy, whoreson body. So the only begetter, the only begotten, is the earth, boys, under and dead and rotten. Goodby, lads, good-by, sweet lads. The horns blow prologue to the swelling act, our sails fairbellied with the favoring wind conceive the bully seed of war, and we—

SUSANNA DRAKE

Queen of Amazons, riding a white stallion stately treading, bearing in one hand a little spear and in the other a garland of oakleaves,

—Mr. Shawnessy, allow me to present to you in behalf of all these young ladies here present this wreath. To the victor belongs——

WILLIE SHAKESPEARE

herald's costume, rakethin legs in tights, proclaiming through megaphone,

—Now is she in the very lists of love. . . .

JOHNNY

mounted on a great white eagle, lunging here and there among the Amazons, silver arrows pattering on his shield and shinpieces,

—Careful, girls, I can't control this thing!

WILLIE SHAKESPEARE

strutting back and forth, declaiming in actor's voice,

—Cry covah! And lash on the gods of raw!

JACK FALSTAFF

tripping up a bank, looking keenly about, drawing sword,

—Here's a jolly fight toward and Fat Jack i' the thick of it. This be no place for a Falstaff—nay, nor a fallen one either for the matter of that. Well, we shall see whether this weapon have still an edge to it. Nay, here's a bit of keenness left, albeit 'tis damnably rusted for want of use. Cut me for a capon if I do not share a little in the sport.
Garde! Avant!
There! There! ‘Ware, warrior ladies! Give me a bony mount, lads. For—

Fat Jack and skinny Jill

Fetch far better over the hill,

While fat Jill and skinny Jack

Fetch far better coming back.

CHORUS

—Another part of the field.

CORPORAL JOHNNY SHAWNESSY

standing before plantation house, addressing a lovely Southern girl on the porch,

—'Tis the part of man to subdue; of woman, to submit. Submit!

SOUTHERN GIRL

archly,

—Subdue!

Without warning, she pounced on him, slapped his face, bit his shoulder, mussed his hair, scratched his cheeks, stepped on his toe, spit in his eyes, kicked his shins, writhed, panted, hissed, and screamed. She finally managed to get a good grip on him and pulled him down hard.

SOUTHERN GIRL

suddenly going soft, arching her back, purring warmly,

—I love it thataway. Go on, fo'ce me, honey.

OLD SOUTHERN PLANTER

in stentorian voice,

—Ah chahge that man with attempted rape.

SOUTHERN GIRL

—Take it easy, Paw. Give 'im anothuh five minutes, and we'll have a bettuh case.

Along the river, he saw how the warrior women had been driven to the water's edge. The hardmuscled legionaries rushed in among them. With hoarse cries of panic and surrender, the women threw
down arrows, sheaths, helmets. Their white forms were tumbled in the shallow water. Victors and vanquished clove together, grappling fiercely. He ran toward the rushes wondering if he could mitigate the fierceness of that old struggle. . . .

VOICE

musical, receding,

—Come back, lost boy. Come back to Raintree County. Before it's too late . . .

He awoke. He lay lost for a while on the immense, patient earth until the dream dissolved. All around him, his comrades lay, a stricken host. Warm pangs of love and fierce yearning still coursed over him.
Come back to Raintree County.
The voice that slew this barbarous dream had been tinged with anxiety. What were they doing there at home? Where was Nell Gaither? Was she lying by herself in a vestal bed, dreaming of Johnny Shawnessy as he of her? Did those slender arms yearn to clasp him and keep him from remembering battles? What was she doing there—back there, while he lay bemused among the alien corn?

And Corporal Johnny Shawnessy slept once more and rose another day. The Army of the West marched and camped for days without opposition in a vast Edenic garden. When the world found them again, they and their march were legend.

And as Johnny saw the Southern earth, secretly, as once long ago, he loved it and was moved by its bitter, proud resistance and the fatal mixture of its bloods. But being a soldier now and simple in his concepts, he never wavered in his belief that this earth, like that of Raintree County, belonged to the whole people by a mystic covenant called the Union.

And they went on, the young Northerners, marching to Savannah on the Sea, through days of Southern secondsummer. They came to the forests of the piedmont. For days they marched then on the level land, between dark ranks of southern pine, and at last they reached the outskirts of Savannah. And a day soon after came

WHEN BEYOND THE PINEFRINGED SHORES,
BEYOND THE SWAMPS THEY SAW THE
SHINING

. . . ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death . . .

The Perfessor was still asleep. Mr. Shawnessy was afloat on the ocean rhythms of Whitman's elegy.

—And I saw askant the armies,

I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,

Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with missiles I saw them,

And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,

And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)

And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.

Mrs. Evelina Brown stood in the attitude of victory leaning on a sheathed sword. Her face was tender, her voice sweet with compassion.

—I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,

And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,

I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,

But I saw they were not as was thought,

They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,

The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,

And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,

And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.

We have reared the great shaft almost to the top. A woman in stone awaits those who have climbed to the summit. A little longer, comrades!

But I had forgotten awhile (though never really forgotten) this old tableau. I will tranquillize its writhings in the serenities of everlasting stone. I will show a fallen form, stone tears, the hand of a comrade soothing a comrade's brow; and in the distance the pillared image of Columbia, a woman fair, the goal of our exertions.

Great God, must there be deaths within sight of the goal?

(Then did you fight in that Great War to preserve the Union?
Did you march in the last march from Savannah northward? Did you see the burning of those cities? Did you weep as all men must for the death of comrades?)

O, let us believe in the simple concepts of Raintree County! Let us believe in the perpetuity of the Republic and its images! Let us believe that the stringbreakers, the strong competitors, the old soldiers never die! Can young fury and lust to live be stilled by a lead ball? Can the most vital figure in the Court House Square be slain? Can death and the Great Swamp overcome the strongest man in Raintree County, the greatchested one, the laugher?

The Perfessor gasped in his sleep, and his chin sank deeper into his coat.

Sleep on, watchdog of cynicism. And I will carve a last memorial stone to the dead comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic! Let us believe also in the great fact of loyalty! For this is the best commandment in the decalogue of Raintree County—that a man shall die for his comrade!

—Passing the visions, passing the night,

Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' . . .

back to the yard where Johnny had been standing in conversation with the woman. At first Johnny couldn't tell what Flash was yelling over and over. Then it came clear.

—Rebel horsemen!

Johnny waited until Flash reached him, and the two ran down a lane that led through an orchard back of the house.

—About twenty, Flash said. They seen me.

—How far?

—Half a mile. I was standin' right out in plain sight by the barn when they come over a hill. The officer pointed, and they all broke into a gallop.

Johnny and Flash with other regimental foragers had crossed the river ahead of the main armies closing in on Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. The Rebel forces in this vicinity were supposed to be thin or non-existent, and the two comrades had gone alone, perhaps unwisely, far to the left flank of the Army to find forage which could later be collected for the brigade.

The day had been bright, warm, and peaceful, despite a steady wind from the north. It was around noon. Johnny had been thinking all day of spring returning.

As they ran, he could hear the thunder of hooves on the road.

—The woman will tell, he said to Flash.

—I know it, Flash said.

There was a railfence back of the orchard, and beyond that a wide field rising gently toward a stone wall.

—Let's git to that wall, Flash said.

They sprang over the railfence and ran across the field. Beyond the field, only a quarter of a mile away was the river. On the far side there would be more foragers and detachments of Union cavalry.

The noise of the horses slowed down and came to a scuffling halt
before the house, now hidden by trees. Johnny and Flash ran hard, holding their muskets unslung. Johnny's legs were beginning to go dead with the long run to the summit of the field where the wall was, and his breath was spent.

The field was uneven ground, planted in hay the year before, now stubbly and with a beginning of spring grass. The wall rose cleanly along the summit of the field and ran off slanting, vaguely parallel with the river. If the horsemen followed right away, they would just about catch him at the wall, winded and with one shot in his gun.

Five minutes from now, he might be dead. It would be a dumb, dirty little death, and completely unnecessary, but so had been every other death of the War. But perhaps it wasn't true about Rebel cavalry killing the bummers without quarter, whenever they could.

Looking back again, he saw the Rebels. They had ridden farther along the road before the house, instead of coming up the lane. The officer was pointing down the road, and some of the men were looking at the two Unionists.

He and Flash climbed over the wall. They leaned against it, sucking air and watching the Enemy on the road. It didn't seem to make much difference now which side of the wall they were on.

—Must be some Union cavalry around here somewhere, Johnny said. Maybe these fellows don't want to mess around with bummers. Don't fire at 'em.

The great hope now lay in being unimportant.

The Rebels split into two groups, and all but six rode on down the road toward the river. The remaining six turned back toward the house and disappeared behind the screening trees.

—Those six that went back are probably for us, Johnny said.

—Hell, if they's only six! Le's move up to the angle here, Flash said.

Johnny looked around. Another stone wall approached from the direction of the river and joined their own about fifty yards away, forming the stem of a vast straggling T. They had been moving along the roof of the T. The stem, which they now reached, ran downhill to a thick woods that bordered and concealed the river.

What a line to post a division on! Johnny thought. They were two men trying to get shelter from death on a bare field behind a system of walls a mile long.

They climbed over the abutting wall and were hidden from the road. They kept watching the house and the lane.

—If we could reach the wood there.

—No use, Flash said. They might catch us halfway there. We could fight 'em from here.

A minute passed. Two minutes. Five minutes. Johnny had his breath back. They couldn't see any Rebels now. The larger group had ridden down the road, which curved behind the field and disappeared into the woods along the river. They could hear horses fording the river.

—Maybe those six went on back to the rear, Flash said.

—Perhaps we ought to run for the woods now, Johnny said.

He said it without conviction. As they remained in their absurd position on the crest of the hill, the desire to run to the woods began to fade. It began to seem very dangerous to leave a place where they were unharmed and go to a place that might be full of danger.

Then another large body of Rebel cavalry came along the road past the house and down to the river.

—Where's our goddam calvary? Flash said.

—I don't know, Johnny said. But look over there.