The floor seemed to move as the suffering men drew breath, shifted, and squirmed. Some were covered with blankets or coats, others just lay in their rended clothes. A low fire burned in the hearth.
Sarah perched in one of the ornate chairs at the kitchen table, her head pillowed in her arms, apparently asleep.
“Who’re you?” a voice whispered from beside the front door.
Billy took the man’s measure. Maybe a couple of years older, oily black hair, a haggard expression on his thin face. He wore a filthy gray coat, the knees out in his pants as he sat with his back propped against the wall beside the front door.
“I’m Billy Hancock. I live here. Who are you?”
“Private Josiah Armand. Third Louisiana, Hébert’s Division.” He gestured wearily. “I stayed to help Mrs. Hancock and Miss Sarah. Got to go in the mawnin’ though. Reckon they’d think I’s a deserter if’n I didn’t show for muster. And ’sides, them damn Yankees is gonna be hot on our butts come sunup.”
“Where’s Maw?”
Armand gestured toward the bedroom. “Gone to ketch herseff a nap. Me, I ain’t hardly slept in three days. Just been marchin’, shiverin’, and shootin’. Cain’t figger why I can’t sleep now.” He smiled faintly. “’Cept when I close my eyes, all I see is horrors like hell broke loose on earth.”
Armand frowned slightly. “Where you been all day?”
“Up in the woods. Since your army took most of our food, I’ve been hunting, trapping.” He smiled crookedly. “And avoiding being took into the army.”
Armand nodded absently. “A couple ’o days ago, I’da called you a yellow-bellied coward, Billy Hancock. But after what I seen these last days, you be de smartest boy I know.” Armand’s eyes drooped. “Gonna catch some shut-eye now. You keep watch.”
Instantly, the man was asleep.
Billy wrinkled his nose at the smell, and picked his way among the bodies. Most, he discovered, had one of Paw’s thick books under their heads for pillows—some blood-soaked and now ruined. Adding to his unease, the floor that Maw had kept so spotless was tacky with pooled blood, dried urine, and other gore.
“Sis?” he asked, pulling out a chair next to her. “Wake up.”
“What?” She blinked, lifting her head. Her long blond hair was awry, clotted where she’d pulled it back with blood-sticky fingers. Red smudges, as though she had rouged her face, showed where she’d rubbed it with those same unwashed fingers. She stared at him through wounded and puffy eyes.
Billy glanced around. “Why’d Maw let them in?”
“You think we had a choice? Someone is supposed to come for them. Maybe tomorrow.” She reached up with blood-blackened fingers and rubbed her eyes. “We’ve finally got a line of the dead laid out in the front yard. Nine of them at last count. If Private Armand hadn’t stayed, Maw and I wouldn’t have been able to carry the boys out. We just didn’t want to have to drag them. Not in front of the others. It wouldn’t have been seemly.”
“How are you doing?”
“Billy … I’ve seen things. God in heaven help me, the worst is when they cry out and call on you to save them. I tell them that it will be all right. But it won’t.” She knotted her hands, forearms swelling. “It’s lying, Billy. I wonder … will God forgive me? Or am I just as damned as these poor fellows?”
“God led them into this mess, so I reckon He could care less.”
He looked out over the crowded floor where one of the men cried out, “Mary? Where have you been?” and then his voice dropped back to a mumble, his eyes blinking as he stared vacantly at the ceiling.
“Damnation,” Billy whispered. “Who’s Mary?”
“His wife.” Sarah shook her head. “He’s gut shot. God help me, Billy, but I wish he’d die. Somewhere today I heard that being gut shot … it could take four or five days.”
She seemed to suddenly come to her senses. “Why are you here? Soldiers could come anytime.”
Billy shrugged. “Hell, sis, nobody cares. There’s men all over. Half the country is crawling with Van Dorn’s fleeing soldiers. I’ll be gone come dawn.” He narrowed an eye. “Ain’t none of them been out of place, have they? They been treating you with respect?”
She gave him a disbelieving stare. “Are you insane? I’m surrounded by gut shots, bullet-broke arms and legs, head wounds, and blown-off limbs and you think any of these poor boys would be trying to sport me off to the woods?”
She dropped her head into her hands. “You amaze me sometimes.”
He took a deep breath. “Never can tell about a man.”
She peeked at him from between her stained fingers. “I did get two proposals for marriage today. One of them thought I was Amanda, and that I lived in Arkadelphia, the other insisted that I was Eudora over to Searcy.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them yes, you fool. And then I watched them smile, and we talked about weddings, and relatives … and then I watched them die! God help me, I don’t never want to spend another day like this. My soul can’t take it.”
“Come morning, let’s you and me head up to the trapper’s cabin. This is army business. Let the army take care of it.”
Her look pronounced him a fool again. “Do you really want to leave this all to Maw?”
“No. Hell, I don’t want neither of you to have to put up with this.” He paused. “What is there to eat?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t need much. Maybe a corn mush.”
Her eyes darkened. “We cooked everything today. Threw the last we had, flour, meal, dried meat, sugar, into the big pot and boiled it. They stripped the cupboards. Blackstrap molasses, the sugar tin, raw flour, our dried fruits. It’s all gone. They came at the smell. From clear down at
