He went behind the shebang and relieved himself, but standing still made him feel anxious.
He couldn’t place it. There was a strange smell in the air or a taste at the back of his throat, a tingle somewhere at the base of his brain. Something was wrong. More wrong than the usual wrongness of Andersonville. Without knowing why, he took off at a trot toward the corner of the stockade where Duane had died.
He passed two prisoners who were already playing chess with rocks in the dirt. One of them looked up at him and shook his head, as if he knew what was happening. But Cal understood that he was wasting energy moving so fast. He was a veteran by now of the prison system and should know better than to try to move quickly. That was all the other prisoner had meant with his gesture, but it felt like more than that. Cal didn’t slow down.
Until he reached the dead line.
Joe stood there by the low interior fence with his back to Cal. Cal called out Joe’s name, but his voice sounded soft and low even to him and he was certain that Joe hadn’t heard him. But Joe turned his head and smiled. He had been waiting for Cal. Joe pointed, and Cal looked across the line. Against the wall of the stockade, eighteen feet past the dead line, there was a patch of green against the brown. Cal squinted and the green blur came into focus as a stem with two small leaves that were spread out across the mud. At the top of the stem was a small yellow bud. It was a dandelion. The first growing thing that Cal had seen in five months.
He caught his breath and looked over at Joe, but Joe was already stepping over the low fence, passing the dead line. Cal called out, but the air was caught in his chest and his voice was a whisper.
“Joe.”
Joe didn’t turn, didn’t indicate that he had heard. He walked slowly, confidently, toward the tiny green and yellow plant. The dirt at Joe’s feet exploded, and Cal looked up at the guard tower. Grey Eyes leaned against the low railing of the deck, his rifle pointed casually in Joe’s direction. Cal reached out, but he couldn’t make his voice work, he couldn’t call out.
Grey Eyes pulled his trigger again and the leg of Joe’s filthy trousers parted at the seam, a puff of linen escaping into the air. At the same time, a pockmark appeared at Joe’s feet. He kept moving, seemed not to notice.
Cal reached out to Grey Eyes and the guard noticed him, smiled, and pulled the trigger again. Joe’s shoulder exploded in a spray of gristle and bone. He staggered, but kept his feet. Cal looked back at Joe, and a split second of time extended indefinitely as Joe slowly winked. There was no pain; Cal understood that. Joe smiled and there was something new in his eyes, and something gone from them. Cal understood what Joe was telling him: It was all over. Andersonville wasn’t there anymore. Joe was free. He was flying.
Joe reached out toward the dandelion, his face a mask of joy, and he couldn’t possibly have felt it when Grey Eyes’s fourth bullet smashed his skull and pounded a small piece of his brain into the dirt under the dandelion’s leaves.
Cal stopped himself, his fingers inches away from the dead line, and he looked up to see that Grey Eyes’s rifle was pointed at him. He looked back and watched as Joe’s legs buckled and he fell sideways, already gone, his good shoulder taking the impact of all that useless meat.
Cal closed his eyes and all he saw was Joe, that good man, that good friend, the only person who cared whether Cal lived or died.
Joe was winking at him that one last time.
22
A thin band of clear sky ran across the horizon east of Blackhampton. Above it was smooth grey cloud cover, completely unbroken. The sun rose and was visible for a half an hour from the main road of the village, then passed up behind the clouds and was gone again. Nearly an hour passed before the sky broke and the air filled with billowing pristine white snow, unsullied as yet by the pervasive ash from the mines.
By nine o’clock that morning, the road was invisible. So were the distant trees, the grass, the roofs of Blackhampton’s homes and businesses. Workers at the new seam were sent home for the day. Jessica Perkins didn’t go to the schoolhouse. She knew that parents would have their children working, shoveling snow from front stoops and rooftops before the weight of it could cause damage or even force their houses straight down into the tunnels below (as had happened to the Baggs family home the previous winter). And so no one discovered that the schoolhouse had been put to other use in the night. The grey-eyed American awoke and rolled up his bedding, cleaned and loaded his rifle, and headed out into the storm to find breakfast. At the inn, Inspector Day made a halfhearted attempt to wake his sergeant, but finally decided to let him sleep. Instead he went in search of something to feed his always-hungry baby bird. At the northernmost edge of the village, right outside the depot, young Freddy Higgins shivered in his carriage and listened for the warning bell from the train, which he hoped was still on schedule. He had brought heavy blankets with him, but could not seem to get warm. Constable Grimes passed the giant furnaces and headed out toward the woods, hoping to be there and back before the men from Scotland Yard woke up. Bennett Rose fed the inn’s twin fireplaces. He checked the various charms and wards he had hung around the ground floor doors and windows, and he closed his eyes in silent prayer for the visitors from London. Upstairs, Calvin Campbell lay on his bed and dreamed about his lover’s absent smile, and wondered if that smile would ever return to her face. Down in the deepest old tunnels beneath Blackhampton, a man paced back and forth, staring at an unmarked grave scraped out of the rock and dirt and wondering how things had gone so wrong. He had no idea there was a storm up above, but he had just decided to quit the tunnels and see if there was news in the village.
The storm blew on, howling through the village like a curse, and more than one person shuddered, recalling the children’s rhyme, the horrible singsong warning about Rawhead and Bloody Bones.
23
When Hammersmith awoke later that morning, he assumed it was still sunrise. His bedroom was dark and still. He sat up and spent a few minutes coughing so hard that his ribs hurt and his throat burned. When he had stopped, he rummaged through his suitcase for tooth powder and hurriedly readied himself, brushing his teeth and rinsing himself in the basin. He wiped his face with a clean towel and felt a sharp spike of pain. When he looked at the towel, there were streaks of fresh half-clotted blood. The gash in his cheek hadn’t healed.
There was a knock at his door.
“One moment, please!” he shouted.
He was still in his underpants and vest. He made a quick check of his suitcase and realized that he had forgotten to bring a change of clothing. He cursed himself under his breath. He would have to hope that the previous day’s clothes weren’t too worse for the wear. But his jacket and trousers weren’t in the wardrobe where he’d left them just a few hours before. His shirt hung there by itself. There was no iron in the room, and he’d never used one anyway, so he patted the wrinkles in his shirt with a damp hand, licked his thumb, and rubbed the worst of the dirt and blood stains. He put the shirt on and opened the door a crack, keeping his bare legs out of sight. Day was standing in the hall holding a wooden hanger up so that Hammersmith could see his own jacket and trousers.
“I took the liberty,” Day said. “You were dead to the world when I checked on you earlier.”
“Come in.” Hammersmith looked both ways down the hall and opened the door wider so that Day could enter the room, then he shut the door quickly and took the hanger from Day.
Hammersmith’s trousers had been brushed and pressed. The jacket was spotless.
“My father is a valet,” Day said.
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s not something I generally mention. But I’ve learned a thing or two from him. There was nothing I could do about your shirt.”
