They were lazing on the bank of the Crooked one early afternoon, their catfish lines out, when he suddenly sat up and said,
“Boys, I’m for heading back.”
“About damn time,” Butch Berry said. He flung the coiled slack
of his handline into the river. “I’ve
The tangerine sun was almost descended to the treetops and the air
was hazed in gold as they closed to within a half-mile of the Parchman place. When they saw there was no show of chimney smoke
above the trees in the direction of the farm, they halted and looked at
each other, then chucked up their horses and went forward with pistols in hand. The birds were holding silent, the only sounds the fall
of hooves and the low chink of harness metal.
They advanced in pairs along the narrow trail through the heavy
woodland, Bill and Jim in the lead, the Berry boys some twenty yards
behind and watching their backs and all of them alert for ambush.
Where the path entered Parchman property it was flanked on one
side by a stone wall and on the other by a fence of split rails.
They reined up at the edge of the farmyard and looked upon a
place made shambles. The barn was a charred ruin with three black
walls still upright and casting long shadows. The house was intact
and looked unburned in any of its visible parts, but the front door
hung askew on its lower hinge and the window shutter was fallen
onto the porch and the porch roof was partly collapsed at one end
where the support post had been knocked away. The corn crib was
absent several of its side slats and stood emptied. The hog pen railings were down, and most of the rails of the horse corral. There was
no stock in sight, no sign of the red hounds. Bill put his index fingers
to the corners of his mouth in some secret fashion and let a whistle
so high that none but dogs could hear it, but no dog answered his
call. Beyond the outbuildings, portions of the cornfield had been
burned and much of it trampled by horses and most of it lay in a
blackened tangle of broken stalks and ears.
“Sonofabitches,” Butch Berry said. He hupped his horse out of
the trees and headed for the house at a lope. Bill Anderson heeled
Edgar Allan after him. Ike and Jim came behind at a slow trot, warily scanning to right and left as they advanced into the open.
Bill and Butch dismounted at the house and went up the porch
steps with their Colts cocked. Every item of furniture lay broken.
The floor was littered with clothing, some of it the Parchmans’, some
belonging to the Anderson girls.
“Josephine!” Butch Berry shouted. He hastened to the door of
the kitchen room and looked within, then went to the loft ladder and
climbed it high enough to see that no one lay hidden or dead up
there. He came down and kicked the wall, then stalked to the door
and yelled,
“Quit hollering,” Bill Anderson said. “If they were around
they’d let us know.”
They tethered the horses alongside the house and put down their
bedding amid the ruined furniture within. The pantry of course
stood bare. The root cellar too had been cleaned out. But the creek
was still running clear and so they had plenty of fresh water. They
went out to the trampled cornfield and by the weak light of a crescent moon collected a dozen intact ears and roasted them for supper
over a firepit they dug in front of the house. They took turns keeping
watch on the porch steps through the night and each man in his turn
heard the others tossing on the floor in fitful sleep.
Bill Anderson’s was the last watch before dawn. He sat on the
porch steps and observed the eastern sky as it lightened to gray
above the silhouetted treeline. Somewhere a cock crowed and he
wondered if the rooster was one of theirs that had escaped the
raiders. The trees began to take form in the receding darkness. As the
eastern sky reddened he set about raising a cookfire. He thought he
would go into the woods and see what he might shoot for breakfast.
He checked the Navy’s loads and tucked the pistol in his waistband
and started for the near woods just the other side of the creek.
Midway between the house and the creek the ground sloped
down, and he had just reached the crest of the incline when his left
arm was slapped forward and he heard the rifleshot as he spun halfabout and went tumbling down the slope.
He lay stunned and staring up at the crimson sky. Shouts in the
distance. A pounding of coming hooves and an outbreak of gunfire.
His brother shouting, “
He tried to sit up but could not—and his arm came awake to
such pain that he cursed through his teeth. The house was thirty
yards away and from this angle he could see only its roof. It sounded
as if the attackers had reined up short of the house, had likely taken
cover at the barn and the corn crib. The gunfire was furious. A horseman loped over the crest of the slope and saw him and heeled his
mount into a sprint directly at him. He drew up his knees to make
himself smaller and he fired up at the animal as it bore over him.
His next awareness was of looking the horse on its side in the
risen dust, shrieking and coughing blood and trying vainly to regain
its feet. The rider lay a few yards beyond the animal and was making
his own efforts to rise. Bill locked his teeth against a dizzying pain
and propped himself on his right elbow, the Colt still in his hand.
The man sat up and looked at him. Bill cocked the piece and adjusted
its angle and fired and the ball struck the man in the face and he flung
backward and lay still. Bill saw now that the man wore red gaiters.
He fell back. The sky looked askew and the cracking and the
popping of gunfire seemed louder now and to be coming from every
direction. And at some remove but closing fast came yet another
assembly of gunfire and with it a howling to prickle the scalp. Then
the red sky reeled and the wild cries seemed as close to his ear as the
screams of the crippled horse and then he saw and heard nothing.
I am a poor wayfaring stranger
traveling through this world of woe.
Yet there’s no sickness, toil or danger
in that bright world where I go.
He was unsure if he was dreaming the music or was awake and
actually hearing the song and the plunking banjo strings, if his eyes
were open to darkness or simply closed.
Going home to see my mother,
going home no more to roam.
Going across the River Jordan,
I’m forever going home.
His head felt thick and heavy and it was a moment before he
became aware of its pulsing pain. And of the pain in his arm. He
was lying on his back and his eyes were closed. The strength
required to open them seemed more than he could muster and he did
not even try.
I know dark clouds may gather round me,
I know my way is hard and steep.
But I must ride the road before me,
and travel far before I sleep.
Other voices now. Some loud and nearby, some at a distance, all
of them a garble. A hornpipe ditty. Laughter. Nickerings and snufflings of horses, jinglings of bridle rings. His eyes still closed, he put
fingers to his head and the sensation was of guiding someone else’s
hand. He felt gingerly of a bandage there. Then explored his arm and
found that it too had been attended and was bound. His right thigh
ached as well but it was unbandaged and felt dry to his fingers and it
could stand the hard squeeze of his hand and so he knew the leg was
both unbloodied and unbroken.
He opened his eyes to the underbranches of a maple tree and
through them saw fragments of bright blue sky wisped with white.
Sitting crosslegged on the ground beside him was a hatless smiling
man with a sandy pompadour, rampant chin whiskers and shaven
cheeks. He had been scribbling in a small notebook and now closed
it and put it and his pencil in a shirt pocket. Then turned and called
to someone, “It’s Lazarus returned to the living.”
Jim Anderson appeared and hunkered beside Bill and smiled at
him. “How you doing, Billy?”