heat, but hadn't yet spoiled. The squash was shriveled but whole. And the soap…
Wilkie put the soap to his nose. The scent made him think of Susan, her clean hair, the meadow behind her father's cornfield.
Wilkie gazed gratefully into the dead man's eyes. 'Why?' he asked.
The pale lips parted, and Tibbets's words came like a lost creek breeze. 'You cried.'
Tibbets turned and headed back toward the stand of jack pine.
Wilkie bit into the neck of one of the summer squashes. It was real. The impossible had become probable, and all that was left was for Wilkie to accept the evidence of his eyes, ears, hands, and mouth. 'Wait,' Wilkie called after Tibbets.
The dead Yankee paused, tilted his head as if heeding some distant command, then slowly waved for Wilkie to follow. Wilkie looked back toward the stockade, where nothing waited but the duty of another day's death watch. He peered through the branches to the dead-house, where maggots roiled. When he looked back, Tibbets was gone, the pine limbs shaking from his passage.
Wilkie stuffed the food and soap into his pockets. Leaving the musket, he slipped into the pines and wandered until he saw Tibbets far ahead. Wilkie walked, occasionally breaking into a run, never gaining on Tibbets. His limbs were heavy with fatigue, his uniform soaked with sweat. A blister rose on his big toe. Surely he had followed for hours, yet the sun still hung high in the sky.
At last he heard the soft twanging of a mouth harp, the duet of a banjo and guitar. Laughter came from behind the next stand of trees, and wood smoke filled the air. Someone was broiling meat over a fire. The clank of flatware and tin was accompanied by the rich aroma of brewed coffee. An unseen horse whinnied.
Wilkie burst into a run, using the last of his strength. He fought through a tangle of briars and scrub locust, kicking at the vines that kept him from those delightful sounds and smells. Finally he fell from the grip of the forest into an expanse of twilight. The air had gone crisp with chill. Campfires dotted the horizon as far as he could see. Around them huddled groups of men, joking, eating, drinking, writing letters or playing music.
Rows of tents stood lined in uniform rank, not a rip among them. This had to be a Union camp. If so, he would gladly surrender for just one good meal and a chance to hear that peaceful laughter and camaraderie. Wilkie approached the nearest campfire.
Two men rose from the log they were sitting on. One was dressed in a Union cavalry uniform, bright with polished leather and buttons. The other was Tibbets, in his prisoner's rags. Tibbets made a motion with his hand for Wilkie to sit. Wilkie nodded to the cavalry officer and sat rubbing his hands before the flames.
'This is Wilkie,' Tibbets said.
Wilkie glanced up, about to ask the dead prisoner how he knew Wilkie's name. But in the land of the impossible, why shouldn't he?
The officer gave the open-handed Rebel salute. 'Welcome.'
Wilkie wondered why no one brought weapons to bear on him. Then he noticed that none of the men were armed. He studied the men sitting across the fire from him. They wore gray Confederate jackets. One of the men had cornbread crumbs in his beard. The soldiers nodded in greeting, then turned their attention back to the warm pork that filled their hands.
'Where do I go to surrender?' Wilkie asked the officer.
The officer's mouth fell open, then, after a moment, a laugh rolled from deep inside his chest. The other men around the fire joined in, along with several groups from nearby campfires. When the officer regained his composure, he said, 'You don't have to surrender, son. Why, the war's over.'
'Over?' Wilkie knew the South was getting beat, after Chattanooga and Gettysburg everybody recognized it was just a matter of time, but there was still plenty of Confederate pride and bodies yet to be used up. He couldn't imagine Lee handing over his sword without playing a last trump card or two.
'It's over for all of us,' Tibbets said, waving his arm to indicate the entire camp that seemed to stretch on toward the stars.
'But you're dead.'
The laughter fell away. Wilkie looked around, expectant, a sheen of fear on his cool skin.
'How many did you see die?' the officer asked quietly and not unkindly, like a wise uncle explaining something to a wayward nephew. 'How many did you help kill?'
Wilkie looked at Tibbets.
'The bullet bites both ways,' said Tibbets. 'Doesn't matter whether you're breathing or not. You're still dead.'
'This is a war,' Wilkie said.
'War's over now,' the cavalry officer said. 'A civilized camp is in the best interest of both sides.'
The officer sat and pulled a stick from the fire. It bent with the weight of a hunk of cooked ham. He passed the stick to Wilkie.
Someone strummed the guitar chords to 'The Battle Hymn Of The Republic.' The officer began singing in a rich bass voice. The Confederates wiped their lips with their sleeves and added their voices to the chorus that rose across the camp. Wilkie didn't know the words, so he listened as he ate, listened, listened, as the night fell on, forever.
MURDERMOUTH
If only they had taken my tongue.
With no tongue, I would not taste this world. The air in the tent is buttered by the mist from popcorn. Cigarette smoke drifts from outside, sweet with candy apples and the liquor that the young men have been drinking. The drunken ones laugh the hardest, but their laughter always turns cruel.
If they only knew how much I love them. All of them, the small boys whose mothers pull them by the collar away from the cage, the plump women whose hair reflects the torchlight, the men all trying to act as if they are not surprised to see a dead man staring at them with hunger dripping from his mouth.
“ Come and see the freak,” says the man who cages me, his hands full of dollar bills.
Freak. He means me. I love him.
More people press forward, bulging like sausages against the confines of their skin. The salt from their sweat burns my eyes. I wish I could not see.
But I see more clearly now, dead, than I ever did while breathing. I know this is wrong, that my heart should beat like a trapped bird, that my veins should throb in my temples, that blood should sluice through my limbs. Or else, my eyes should go forever dark, the pounding stilled.
“ He doesn’t look all that weird,” says a long-haired man in denim overalls. He spits brown juice into the straw that covers the ground.
“ Seen one like him up at Conner’s Flat,” says a second, whose breath falls like an ill wind. “I hear there’s three in Asheville, in freak shows like this.”
The long-haired man doesn’t smell my love for him. “Them scientists and their labs, cooking up all kinds of crazy stuff, it’s a wonder something like this ain’t happened years ago.”
The second man laughs and points at me and I want to kiss his finger. “This poor bastard should have been put out of his misery like the rest of them. Looks like he wouldn’t mind sucking your brains out of your skull.”
“ Shit, that’s nothing,” says a third, this one as big around as one of the barrels that the clowns use for tricks. “I seen a woman in Parson’s Ford, she’d take a hunk out of your leg faster than you can say ‘Bob’s your uncle.’”
“ Sounds like your ex-wife,” says the first man to the second. The three of them laugh together.
“ A one hundred percent genuine flesh-eater,” says my barker. His eyes shine like coins. He is proud of his freak.
“ He looks like any one of us,” calls a voice from the crowd. “You know. Normal.”
“ Say, pardnuh, you wouldn’t be taking us for a ride, would you?” says the man as big as a barrel.
For a moment, I wonder if perhaps some mistake has been made, that I am in my bed, dreaming beside my wife. I put my hand to my chest. No heartbeat. I put a finger in my mouth.
