“No,” Granny said. “Louvinia’s resting. She’s had about as much of this as I want her to stand. Go back upstairs. Give her some more wine if you can’t think of anything else.” And she told Ringo and me to go somewhere else, anywhere else, but even in the yard you could still hear Cousin Melisandre talking to Philadelphia. And once we even heard Granny though it was still mostly Cousin Melisandre telling Granny that she had already forgiven her, that nothing whatever had happened and that all she wanted now was peace. And after a while Louvinia came up from the cabin without even being sent for and went upstairs and then it began to look like we were going to be late for supper too. But Philadelphia finally came down and cooked it and carried Cousin Melisandre’s tray up and then we quit eating; we could hear Louvinia overhead, in Granny’s room now, and she came down and set the untasted tray on the table and stood beside Granny’s chair with the key to the trunk in her hand.
“All right,” Granny said. “Go call Joby and Lucius.” We got the lantern and the shovels. We went to the orchard and removed the brush and dug up the trunk and got the dulcimer and buried the trunk and put the brush back and brought the key in to Granny. And Ringo and I could hear her from our room and Granny was right. We heard her for a long time and Granny was surely right; she just never said but half of it. The moon came up after a while and we could look down from our window into the garden, at Cousin Melisandre sitting on the bench with the moonlight glinting on the pearl inlay of the dulcimer, and Philadelphia squatting on the sill of the gate with her apron over her head. Maybe she was asleep. It was already late. But I don’t see how.
So we didn’t hear Granny until she was already in the room, her shawl over her nightgown and carrying a candle.
“In a minute I’m going to have about all of this I aim to stand too,” she said. “Go wake Lucius and tell him to saddle the mule,” she told Ringo. “Bring me the pen and ink and a sheet of paper.” I fetched them. She didn’t sit down. She stood at the bureau while I held the candle, writing even and steady and not very much, and signed her name and let the paper lie open to dry until Lucius came in. “Ab Snopes said that Mr. Forrest is in Jefferson,” she told Lucius. “Find him. Tell him I will expect him here for breakfast in the morning and to bring that boy.” She used to know General Forrest in Memphis before he got to be a general. He used to trade with Grandfather Millard’s supply house and sometimes he would come out to sit with Grandfather on the front gallery and sometimes he would eat with them. “You can tell him I have six captured horses for him,” she said. “And never mind patter- rollers or soldiers either. Haven’t you got my signature on that paper?”
“I ain’t worrying about them,” Lucius said. “But suppose them Yankees…”
“I see,” Granny said. “Hah. I forgot. You’ve been waiting for Yankees, haven’t you? But those this morning seemed to be too busy trying to stay free to have much time to talk about it, didn’t they? Get along,” she said. “Do you think any Yankee is going to dare ignore what a Southern soldier or even a patter-roller wouldn’t? And you go to bed,” she said.
We lay down, both of us on Ringo’s pallet. We heard the mule when Lucius left. Then we heard the mule and at first we didn’t know we had been asleep, the mule coming back now and the moon had started down the west and Cousin Melisandre and Philadelphia were gone from the garden, to where Philadelphia at least could sleep better than sitting on a square sill with an apron over her head, or at least where it was quieter. And we heard Lucius fumbling up the stairs but we never heard Granny at all because she was already at the top of the stairs, talking down at the noise Lucius was trying not to make. “Speak up,” she said. “I ain’t asleep but I ain’t a lip-reader either. Not in the dark.”
“Genl Fawhrest say he respectful compliments,” Lucius said, “and he can’t come to breakfast this morning because he gonter to be whuppin Genl Smith at Tallahatchie Crossing about that time. But providin he ain’t too fur away in the wrong direction when him and Genl Smith git done, he be proud to accept your invitation next time he in the neighborhood. And he say ‘whut boy’.”
While you could count about five, Granny didn’t say anything. Then she said, “What?”
“He say ‘whut boy’,” Lucius said.
Then you could have counted ten. All we could hear was Lucius breathing. Then Granny said: “Did you wipe the mule down?”
“Yessum,” Lucius said.
“Did you turn her back into the pasture?”
“Yessum,” Lucius said.
“Then go to bed,” Granny said. “And you too,” she said.
General Forrest found out what boy. This time we didn’t know we had been asleep either, and it was no one mule now.
The sun was just rising. When we heard Granny and scrambled to the window, yesterday wasn’t a patch on it. There were at least fifty of them now, in gray; the whole outdoors was full of men on horses, with Cousin Philip out in front of them, sitting his horse in almost exactly the same spot where he had been yesterday, looking up at Granny’s window and not seeing it or anything else this time either. He had a hat now. He was holding it clamped over his heart and he hadn’t shaved and yesterday he had looked younger than Ringo because Ringo always had looked about ten years older than me. But now, with the first sun-ray making a little soft fuzz in the gold-colored stubble on his face, he looked even younger than I did, and gaunt and worn in the face like he hadn’t slept any last night and something else in his face too: like he not only hadn’t slept last night but by godfrey he wasn’t going to sleep tonight either as long as he had anything to do with it. “Goodbye,” he said. “Goodbye,” and whirled his horse, spurring, and raised the new hat over his head like he had carried the sabre yesterday and the whole mass of them went piling back across flower beds and lawns and all and back down the drive toward the gate while Granny still stood at her window in her nightgown, her voice louder than any man’s anywhere, I don’t care who he is or what he would be doing: “Backhouse! Backhouse! You, Backhouse!”
So we ate breakfast early. Granny sent Ringo in his nightshirt to wake Louvinia and Lucius both. So Lucius had the mule saddled before Louvinia even got the fire lit. This time Granny didn’t write a note. “Go to Tallahatchie Crossing,” she told Lucius. “Sit there and wait for him if necessary.”
“Suppose they done already started the battle?” Lucius said.
“Suppose they have?” Granny said. “What business is that of yours or mine either? You find Bedford Forrest. Tell him this is important; it won’t take long. But don’t you show your face here again without him.”
Lucius rode away. He was gone four days. He didn’t even get back in time for the wedding, coming back up the drive about sundown on the fourth day with two soldiers in one of General Forrest’s forage wagons with the mule tied to the tailgate. He didn’t know where he had been and he never did catch up with the battle. “I never even heard it,” he told Joby and Lucius and Louvinia and Philadelphia and Ringo and me. “If wars always moves that far and that fast, I don’t see how they ever have time to fight.”
But it was all over then. It was the second day, the day after Lucius left. It was just after dinner this time and by now we were used to soldiers. But these were different, just five of them, and we never had seen just that few of them before and we had come to think of soldiers as either jumping on and off horses in the yard or going back and forth through Granny’s flower beds at full gallop. These were all officers and I reckon maybe I hadn’t seen so many soldiers after all because I never saw this much braid before. They came up the drive at a trot, like people just taking a ride, and stopped without trompling even one flower bed and General Forrest got down and came up the walk toward where Granny waited on the front gallery: a big, dusty man with a big beard so black it looked almost blue and eyes like a sleepy owl, already taking off his hat. “Well, Miss Rosie,” he said.
“Don’t call me Rosie,” Granny said. “Come in. Ask your gentlemen to alight and come in.”
“They’ll wait there,” General Forrest said. “We are a little rushed. My plans have…” Then we were in the library. He wouldn’t sit down. He looked tired all right, but there was something else a good deal livelier than just tired. “Well, Miss Rosie,” he said. “I…”
“Don’t call me Rosie,” Granny said. “Can’t you even say Rosa?”
“Yessum,” he said. But he couldn’t. At least, he never did, “I reckon we both have had about enough of this. That boy…”
“Hah,” Granny said. “Night before last you were saying what boy. Where is he? I sent you word to bring him with you.”
“Under arrest,” General Forrest said. It was a considerable more than just tired. “I spent four days getting Smith just where I wanted him. After that, this boy here could have fought the battle.” He said ‘fit’ for fought just as he said ‘druv’ for drove and ‘drug’ for dragged. But maybe when you fought battles like he did, even Granny didn’t mind how you talked. “I won’t bother you with details. He didn’t know them either. All he had to do was
