The Titans Read online

  “You’re just as mean as the worst white soul-driver!” Maum Isabella shrilled. “Just as mean. Twice as mean!”

  “Old woman,” Price warned above the cries of protest and agreement, “you stay away. Else I’ll drop you with this here.”

  Jeremiah hit the larder door with his shoulder and took two long strides across the piazza, the Kerr coming up in his right hand while his left steadied it.

  Beyond the well, where Price stood with his legs widespread on the rim, menacing the half circle of slaves, Maum Isabella halted all at once. Her eyes popped at the sight of Jeremiah. Several of the other blacks saw him too. On his right he glimpsed Serena, her red hair limp, her face sooty.

  He smelled the unmistakable aroma of wood catching fire. The wind was spreading a huge flag of flame from the gin house and the collapsing cribs, blowing banners of sparks against the end of the main building.

  Jeremiah had a clear target: Price’s massive body. The big buck saw the reaction on the black faces. He started to turn, just as a yellow-skinned slave pointed and yelled, “Behin’ you, Price!”

  The yellow-skinned man hurled himself forward, perhaps in the hope of knocking Price off the well rim, out of danger. Both hands locked on the Kerr, Jeremiah aimed carefully, fought an impulse to let his rage drive him to a fast, inaccurate shot.

  Price spun, sought his target, whipped the Enfield to his shoulder. Jeremiah fired.

  The bullet took Price in the left arm. Drove him up on tiptoe as it sprayed blood and fragments of splintered bone like red needles in the firelight.

  Price started to topple forward. The buck bowled into him, knocking him sideways off the well.

  The slaves scattered, shrieking, as Price disappeared. Running toward the well, Jeremiah shouted, “Maum Isabella, grab the Enfield!”

  The yellow buck got it first.

  Jeremiah was about six feet from the well when the buck’s distorted face popped up on the far side. The man was trying to help Price to his feet. Maum Isabella darted toward them.

  A bloodied right hand grasped the well’s rim. Like some kind of dead creature rising from its grave, Price appeared, pulling himself up. Now he was using both his right hand, and astonishingly, his left, even though his left sleeve was soaked red and pierced by jutting pieces of bone.

  Price’s hate-filled eyes found Jeremiah. His face and neck glowed with sweat. A vein in his throat throbbed.

  Jeremiah still had both hands on the Kerr. His forearms were trembling as he extended the gun. He nearly couldn’t bring himself to look into those fiery eyes. Maum Isabella was darting and feinting at the yellow buck who jabbed with the Enfield’s muzzle to fend her off.

  Why doesn’t Price fall? No man is that strong.

  “Maum Isabella?” Jeremiah’s voice had a cracked sound. “Stand back!”

  Price’s red hands gripped the well rim a moment longer. His eyes glowed bright as the blazing gin house. Then will and rage seemed to drain from him. He searched for Jeremiah again, found him. This time, his eyes seemed duller.

  “Mr. Jeremiah? You hit me bad. Leave me be now.”

  Jeremiah laughed. “Finally remembered my name, did you?”

  “Please.” Price lifted his gory right hand. “Leave me be now!”

  A memory of Major Grace’s remark about the thunderbolt darted into Jeremiah’s mind. He glanced at Serena. Price uttered an almost plaintive cry as he watched Jeremiah’s face change.

  The yellow buck was still sweeping the Enfield in an arc to drive back three slaves—Leon and two others. But Maum Isabella had retreated. All at once Jeremiah seemed to see Serena in place of Price. He wasn’t frightened any longer. He felt quite different from when he’d defended himself against Skimmerhorn. He and the Kerr were welded into one—and there was joy in the thin curve of his mouth. He fired.

  Price shrieked. The bullet blew a black-and-red hole in his tattered shirt just below the breastbone. The nigras screamed. Price fell.

  The yellow buck was obviously unfamiliar with the operation of the Enfield. Jeremiah twisted at the waist, still holding the Kerr double-handed. The muzzle pointed at the buck’s ear. The buck dropped the rifled musket and ran toward the dark at the front of the house. Maum Isabella flung a stone after him.

  Screaming, milling, the remaining nigras didn’t know what to do until Serena wheeled on them.

  “Buckets from the kitchen! Hurry, damn you—Leon! Willis! Get a move on!”

  Jeremiah stuck the Kerr back under his shirt, comforted somehow by the heat of the metal against his bare skin. He swabbed sweat from his eyes.

  Serena quickly organized the nigras into a fire-fighting line. The stony smile remained fixed on Jeremiah’s face as he walked around the well. Leon and some of the others began frantically passing buckets down a hastily formed human chain as two women—one of them Maum Isabella—worked the well’s crank arm. To reach it, she had to stand on Price’s body.

  Jeremiah glanced down at the openmouthed corpse. He felt no remorse. He could halfway admire Price now. The man had been vicious but, in his own way, brave. A worthy adversary.

  Jeremiah was proud of having killed him.

  Serena rushed to him, pushing hair off her forehead. There was an odd, almost frightened light in her blue eyes as she gazed at his curiously amused expression. He ignored her for a moment, glancing toward the house. Some of the bucks were piling onto each other’s shoulders to empty buckets and wet down the end of the building. Even though the barns, the cribs, and the gin house with its baled cotton and packing screw were gone, the heart of Rosewood would survive. It was the only memorial he could leave to the colonel.

  But Henry Rose had been right there in the field hospital. War—Sherman’s thunderbolt—was a destroyer. It destroyed hope. He’d learned the lesson; and it had transformed him.

  Serena flung herself into his arms. “Oh, Jeremiah, I thought they’d carried you off, or something worse—”

  He shoved her away. Seized her wrist, his fingers biting so hard she winced. He dragged her toward the piazza.

  “Jeremiah, let go! What’s wrong with you?”

  He paid no attention.

  He pulled her through the larder to the kitchen, then flung her away. She caught herself on the iron stove, her eyes huge and terror-stricken as he stepped behind the block bearing Catherine’s body. His mouth remained a bloodless line.

  iii

  “Jeremiah, I don’t understand why you’re treating—”

  “You whored for him.”

  “What?”

  “Whored!”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Grace. You whored for him. Skimmerhorn said so. Before I shot him.”

  “You shot—?” Disbelief in her eyes.

  “That’s right. Back in the pines, this morning. Grace spared this house because you whored for him.”

  “Sweetheart—”

  As she said it and started around the block, he called her the foulest name he knew.

  She stopped, stunned. “Jeremiah, I—I had to!”

  “You said you cared about me. You don’t. I was taken in for a while, but now I know it’s just the money you want, not me. You wanted the house too. And there’s not a thing you won’t do to get what you want, is there? Lie. Whore—”

  “Don’t keep saying that!” Serena lunged at the still body. “She called my mama that name. ‘Whore,’ she said. ‘Whore, whore!” She struck Catherine’s waxy cheek: The pale head flopped over on the boneless neck.

  Recovering, she pleaded, “Jeremiah, I had to do what Grace asked!”

  “He didn’t ask. You begged. Skimmerhorn told me.”

  Caught, she started to say something else. But he saw the truth on her face. All at once her eyes looked crazed.

  “Admit you begged him, Serena.”

  “Yes.” She spat it again. “Yes! He was good, too. Almost as good as a lot of the others. Better’n you’d ever be! You’re just a boy!”

  “A dumb boy wi
th money you wanted. Christ, you’re as dishonorable as the rest. Catherine tried to warn me. But I was too stupid to listen. Well, I’m not going to stay here. You’ve got the house now. I wish your father or Catherine had it instead of you, but”—a tired shrug—“nothing I can do about that.” Then, louder: “You should have died instead of your stepmother.”

  “I’m glad she’s dead. I’m glad some soldier whose name I’ll never know caught her and drowned her. Maybe he raped her again before he pushed her in the water. I hope he raped her till it hurt. Till it drove her crazy!”

  He shuddered. “You pretended to be very sorry when you thought you still had me fooled. You’re good at saying one thing and doing another. Almost as good as the Yanks and Billy Sherman.”

  “She called my mama a whore!”

  “I expect she was right,” he said, and turned away. “Good-bye, Serena.”

  iv

  He started toward the dining room, heard her breathing quicken; then a sound he didn’t recognize until she came rushing at him. The sound had been a drawer sliding.

  He spun, his back against the wall. He saw demented eyes reflecting the outside fire, a butcher knife raised in her grimy fist.

  She stabbed downward.

  Weary as he was, the fear pumping in him gave him just enough quickness. He jerked his head to the side. The blade raked his cheek and snapped in half when it struck the door beside his head.

  He caught her wrist with his left hand as she tried to cut him with the broken blade. Unaccountably, tears misted his eyes.

  “She said you weren’t moral. She never told me you were insane.”

  “Take your damn money! I don’t care. I’ll find someone else!” She was hysterical. “Someone who’s rich and—and—” She was spitting at him; he felt the spray wetting his already damp cheeks. Her right arm shook. He had to push hard to keep the shattered but still lethal knife from his throat.

  “And a man. Not a boy! Not a child! Not a baby. Baby, baby, baby!”

  As she screamed he pulled the Kerr with his right hand and fired the last bullet into her stomach.

  v

  Dark woods arching over a dark road. Faint fire in the sky, in the direction of Millen. He was running again.

  He didn’t dare do anything else. Maum Isabella had heard the shot and rushed in to find him standing over Serena’s lifeless body. She’d cried one word, “Murderer!”

  Where would he go? He didn’t know. But he had to get away.

  Westward, that was the best direction. Out of the path of Sherman’s army. As he limped along, it began to dawn on him that he could never go back to Virginia. The war would end; people like the Claypools would return to Jefferson County and ask how Catherine and Serena Rose had died. Maum Isabella would tell them, and one day, someone might come riding to Lexington to find him.

  He had to flee a long way, long way. Never tell Fan what he’d done. Never give her the slightest hint. To keep from hurting her. And to keep from being found.

  He’d tried to be honorable, and this was how it had ended. There was no place for honor in war. Or in the world.

  God, how Serena had gulled him! And he’d been so willing! Not merely willing. Eager. He’d had warnings about her, hints of her deception. He’d ignored them, permitting himself to succumb to her charms—and her lies: I love you.

  The experience had changed him, he knew that. He’d killed three people since sunup and hardly felt any guilt.

  That didn’t alter his desperate situation—a situation he faced with relative calm until he reached a ford in a creek near the Ogeechee. He halted on the bank, overcome.

  He sat down and wept for twenty minutes.

  At the end, he glanced up, wiped his face, blinked at the stars, and thought: I’m sorry I failed you, Colonel. You told me war ruined people, and you were right. It ruins them because they don’t understand how to fight and win. I understand now.

  He splashed into the ford, less emotional. He’d definitely head west. That was safest. Perhaps he’d go far west. Hundreds of miles away, he might be safe from the wrath of the unforgiving Yanks who’d keep the war going in their own way even after the South surrendered.

  He paused in the middle of the ford, gazing down at his fragmented image in the water. He felt naked and incomplete without a weapon.

  Should have gone back for the Enfield. It had been too dangerous with Maum Isabella screaming at him.

  He’d find another. Steal one. Kill for one, if need be. The war had taught him a good many fine, valuable skills.

  He kept gazing into the water. There lies Jeremiah Kent. Served dishonorably in the conflict between the states, died, and rose again—

  Rose as a new man who understood the world and how it functioned.

  Without honor.

  Without honesty.

  Without pity.

  Jeremiah Kent. He probably didn’t dare use that name any longer. What would he call himself?

  He shifted his left leg. The water image rippled apart, no longer recognizable.

  Straightening his shoulders, he stumbled up the other side of the ford, a last spill of starlight scattering on the white streak in his hair and his emotionless face before he disappeared into the wooded dark.

  Chapter VII

  “Let ’Em Up Easy”

  i

  THE BOXCAR TRUCKS CLATTERED. But not so loudly Gideon couldn’t hear the pale artillery captain reading from the paper.

  “‘After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.’”

  The artilleryman was seated with his back to the opposite wall of the car, about four feet to Gideon’s left. Directly across the way, another Confederate—a Virginian, flanked by two more paroled prisoners—puffed one of the cigars he’d bought in the B & O depot. His face grew more and more disgusted as the artilleryman kept reading for the benefit of those nearby.

  “‘I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard-fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them.

  “‘But feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that would compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest. I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.’”

  “Shit,” the Virginian said, and stuck the cigar back in his mouth.

  The artilleryman twisted his head to the left, frowned at the source of the interruption and went on. “‘By the terms of the agreement officers and men can return to their homes, and remain until exchanged. You will take with you—’”

  “Stop reading that!” the Virginian demanded, the cigar nearly bitten in half between his teeth. “It’s over a month old—and every line says coward.”

  The artilleryman gave him a cool stare. “I wouldn’t refer to anything written by our former commander as cowardly, sir. This is the first reprinting I’ve seen of his general order disbanding the army.”

  “Well, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Then don’t listen.”

  “Some of us want to hear it,” Gideon said. “Continue, sir.”

  The Virginian’s look was hostile, the artilleryman’s appreciative. The latter resumed.

  “‘—take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection.’”“

  The pale man faltered. He cleared his throat.

  “‘With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an—affectionate farewell.’”

  Slowly, the artilleryman folded the paper, murmured, “It’s signed ‘R. E. Lee. General’.”

  He let the hand with the paper fall between his knees. Be
cause of the bad light in the car, Gideon couldn’t be sure whether there were tears in the man’s eyes.

  None in the Virginian’s, though. He shook his head. Growled another obscenity. He was in his early thirties, lank and sallow. He wore a torn linen duster over a farmer’s shirt and trousers.

  “Yella,” he said emphatically. The soldiers on either side of him nodded tentative agreement. The artilleryman’s head jerked up; Gideon almost expected a challenge. But the Virginian was too busy focusing attention on himself.

  “One of Lee’s own officers had the right idea. Said all troops still in the field should head for the hills. Keep the war going!”

  The artilleryman shook his head, as if unable to comprehend such stupidity. He leaned back against the boxcar wall and shut his eyes.

  “But, no! The gray fox wouldn’t have it. Claimed the country’d take years to recover if the boys were in the hills, bushwhacking. I say what’s wrong with that? Strikes me old Marse Robert was just plain tired of fighting. So he put on his sword, sashayed up to that farmhouse, and rolled over for Grant like a tame dog. Then he wrote that piece of sentimental swill!”

  A stab of the cigar toward the artilleryman. There was no response. The pale soldier was dozing, or pretending to doze. He wouldn’t waste energy on the Virginian.

  Beneath the leather patch covering his left eye socket, Gideon felt an annoying itch. He fought the impulse to lift the patch and push at his upper lid. Instead he smoothed his long, tawny beard. He didn’t know which was worse, the itch or the Virginian’s ranting.

  To watch the man, Gideon kept his head turned a bit to the left. For about a month after Dr. Lemon had rushed him to the prison surgery, administered ether, and removed his burned eye, he’d been unable to focus his good eye properly. Gradually, though, he’d trained himself to keep his head turned slightly at all times, so one eye took in almost as much as two had before. By now the habit was becoming unconscious.

  Some of the forty Confederates in the car were still listening to the lanky man’s remarks. But not all. Down at the other end, one boy in butternut rested his head on his forearms, his forearms on his knees, and wept without sound, imprisoned in some secret grief. Most of the other men either seemed indifferent to the Virginian, or like Gideon, resentful.