Brave Enemies (2 page)

“We'll give you good quarter,” Pickens said.

The pipes kept playing their tune. It was strange, like everything else that day. The sound of the music made it hard to hear what was being
said. A patriot stabbed the bag of the pipe with a hunting knife and the music ended in a sour wheeze. The Highlanders dropped their muskets and raised their hands.

The cannon on the left had not been surrendered. The artillerymen were trying to reload again. In their blue-and-red coats they worked furiously ramming in a charge. They worked as the soldiers around them fled or gave up. The man with the burning match stood ready to light the vent, but I don't think they knew where to aim the three-pounder. Prisoners were so mixed up with Continentals and volunteers they couldn't fire in any direction without hitting redcoats.

“Halt!” one of Washington's cavalry called to the crew of the cannon. They wheeled the grasshopper around at him and the fuse man touched the powder vent. But I reckon the barrel was set too high, for after the cannon jumped back and smoke punched out of the mouth, the shot whined across the field, but the horseman kept riding toward them.

The artillerymen started reloading again just like they were behind their own lines. From where I lay I heard the cavalryman yell “Halt!” again. The fuse man reached his burning linstock toward the vent of the cannon and the cavalryman shot him.

Other volunteers had seen what was happening and they shot the artillerymen one by one as they tried to fire the cannon. The last artilleryman pulled out his sword and thrust at a volunteer, and the patriot shot him in the face. From where I lay under the field I could see it all.

It felt like I was rising under the battlefield toward the surface of the ground. I was floating to the surface. As I rose higher the voices got louder. I rose past layers of rock and veins of water, past roots and bands of clay and old bones, past groundhog dens and nests in rocks where hundreds of rattlesnakes were sleeping through the winter all tangled together.

When I broke through the top to daylight, it was like a gun was fired in my face. The air was so bright I could hardly open my eyes. And when I did look around, my eyes hurt as if they were scalded. The sun flared in
the clouds like a torch a few inches away. I looked way up in the air where crows were circling and there was just a break in the clouds. I looked so deep into the sky it was as if I was falling away from it forever. The air was damp and cold and there was nothing beyond the crows but blinding clouds. There was nothing out there to hold on to. I was scared and I looked over at the light above Thicketty Mountain, and the light drove me back against the ground.

A man bent over me and said, “Let me look at your wound, laddie. I'm a doctor.” He wore a tartan cap and epaulets on his jacket. He was a Highlander officer.

Men lay all over the field, and prisoners were gathered in bunches huddled in the broom sedge. Flags lay in the weeds and peavines. Here and there men had started fires and warmed their hands over the flames. The air was damp and cold, now that the smoke had blown away, and the sun was so coppery it was obvious not much time had passed since the battle had started. It was still early morning, but it felt like hours and maybe days had passed.

“Hold still, lad,” the officer said. I must have jerked without knowing it. He cut away the lacings and rags of canvas and they were all wet with blood. “Steady does it,” he said.

He pulled out a blue bottle and spoon and poured the spoon full. “Drink this,” he said.

I could tell from the scent it was laudanum. I took the stuff on my tongue and it tasted like mold from deep in a cellar, mixed with old ink and juice of metal. Soon as I drank it, something warm went down through my belly, and then it turned cool, and a cool flame reached out through my arms and legs, soothing the terrible pain in my foot.

The officer picked the bloody bits of rag and thread out of my foot, but I didn't seem to care. It didn't matter that he was taking all the wrappings off and making the wound bleed more. I'd been hit on the ankle, and he picked out threads and pieces of leather and bone. The cold air made the wound bleed worse.

“Look away,” the officer said.

I looked over to the left and saw Gen. Daniel Morgan ride up and get off his horse. He walked between the groups of prisoners, shaking hands and slapping boys on the back. “Benny Tarleton is running for tall timber,” he said. The general's face was red in the morning air. He had a big scar on his cheek that twisted his face a little sideways.

Old Morgan patted a Maryland private on the back and shook hands with a lieutenant. “We kicked his arse all the way to the Broad River,” the general said.

There was the little drummer boy that had been with the Maryland regulars. He still carried his drum and I don't reckon he was more than nine or ten years old. He stood by the fire warming his hands, and when Old Morgan saw him the general rushed over and picked him up and kissed him on both cheeks. “We done it, honey,” he said, “and you helped us too.”

He set the boy down and turned around. “What you did here this day will never be forgotten,” he said. “I take my hat off to you all. The people will honor you and the girls will love you.”

The general walked across the field roaring his thanks to the wounded and to men standing by fires. He stopped at a fire and held out his hands to the flames. Old Morgan was taller than the other men. The shoulders of his blue coat looked wide as an ox yoke. He turned and looked at me on the ground and stepped over and knelt beside me.

“Give me your hand, son,” he said. The general's eyes blazed in the light. I reached out and he took my dirty hand in his huge paw. He had the hand of a woodchopper, with hard calluses on the palm. I saw the awful scar on his cheek, like half his mouth had been torn away and then healed up.

“I will never forget what you have done,” he said. When he stood up I saw pain on the general's face. He winced and turned white like he'd been wounded. “This old rheumatism has gotten me,” he said and limped away.

A cheer went up across the field. Everybody except the prisoners was cheering him. He walked down the field stepping around bodies. Wagons were coming up the Green River Road from the south. It was Tarleton's baggage wagons that hadn't been burned. Slaves walked along behind driving cattle. There was a wagon with a chimney on it, the blacksmith's forge I'd heard about. A cheer went up when a wagon with two big grog barrels on it creaked by.

Where the cannons had been taken on the field, men stood around admiring them. The brass shone like gold. Something jerked my leg and I looked down and saw the officer picking at the wound with a knife and a kind of pin. “Hold still, laddie,” he said, “and be so kind as not to look.” He picked out pieces of bone red as painted splinters. I jerked again.

“You must hold steady,” the officer said. He looked at my wound like a man studying fine print. His army had been defeated and yet the Scotsman was doctoring me. He picked out more bits of skin and cloth and slivers of bone.

“Your foot may have to come off,” the officer said.

“No,” I yelled and tried to jerk away. But my arms didn't move the way they were supposed to. They were too little and weak. My hands felt far away.

“You'll not help yourself that way,” the officer said. He wiped his hands on a rag and stood up. I decided I'd not let him touch my leg again. I would slip away into the woods. I would find a spring in a thicket. My mouth was so dry my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my teeth felt stuck in glue.

“Do you want a drink?” a soldier said. He bent down holding a canteen. When he pressed it to my lips I could taste the damp cedar wood. The water was sweet as white honey as he poured it through my lips. Living water, I thought, remembering the Bible.

“You'll live,” the soldier said.

I drank more from the cedar canteen. My body was all dried out and I was parched to my fingertips. The man holding the canteen had a
blackened face, and I noticed the strangest thing. I was looking at him and the clouds beyond him. And it felt like the world started tilting up. The ground beyond my feet rose toward the sun so steep I was about to slide backward. I could hardly hold on to the ground.

Then it was like I was upside down and all this hot water and sand filled my mouth, and I was about to choke.

“Turn your head over,” somebody said. I tried to turn my head and hot water came scalding through my nose and down my chin. My throat gushed again and my nose burned and my mouth was full.

“Hold his head,” somebody said.

The ground spun around and somebody put a hand on my forehead the way Mama used to when I was sick. His hand was cool and my forehead wet as grass on a July morning.

“Where's Mama?” I said, and somebody laughed as if he were way off at the top of the world. I was so tired I couldn't move a finger. I couldn't blink an eyelid. I was washed out and limp as a rag. And then I felt this storm coming from somewhere, like the wind behind trees on the other side of a hill. There was a grumble and a low roar, and gusts breaking through. But the spate was in my throat, boiling and flooding.

“Turn your head,” somebody said.

But I couldn't move at all. The swill gushed into my mouth and rushed down my chin and on my neck. Somebody wiped it off with a piece of rag. I spat and spat.

When my mouth was finally empty I got cold. A chill came over me all at once and my bones started aching and rattling. The shiver went down to my toes and my teeth were clacking. I shook and couldn't stop. I shuddered and jerked.

“Get him a blanket,” somebody said.

They wrapped me in something, but it felt thin and cold as a tablecloth. I jerked so hard it seemed my bones were pulling apart. The air was blowing through my bones.

“Take this,” somebody said. He put a bottle to my mouth and poured in some more oily ink. I tried to spit it out but swallowed a mouthful anyway. It went down like a trickle of warm oil, filling cracks and running along veins and pooling up in corners. I started to warm up around my belly and the heat spread to my ribs and groin. Warmth spread to my shoulders and elbows.

They lifted me up. I reached out and felt all the arms holding me up. They were trotting and we moved faster and faster.

“Hold still,” somebody said.

It was as if I were floating in a warm swamp. There were flowers on the banks and a bird singing in the trees. It was a mockingbird that knew all the songs. There was grass way back under the trees and beyond the hayfields, and beyond that the haze of the mountains.

“Hold his shoulders,” somebody said. They gripped me harder. A purple moon circled somewhere above my head. I remembered what it was I was afraid of.

“You can't cut off my foot,” I yelled as loud as I could.

“Steady on there,” the officer said.

It took all my strength and all my will to say it. I had to pull strength from my toes and my fingertips and from behind my ears. The air was on fire and the crows were laughing high in the sky. Men were laughing too.

“Oh Lord,” the doctor said.

Hands were touching me, hands on my hips and on my belly. Hands on my chest and on my throat.

“I never saw the like,” somebody said.

I tasted the flower of fever, a taste thick as porridge on my tongue. I had sleep in my mouth and thick batter drying on my tongue.

“I never would have thought it possible,” somebody said.

I knew I had to find my rifle. I'd dropped my rifle. But I couldn't recall anymore. Mama would ask me what happened to the rifle. I stayed in the swamp, sinking deeper and deeper into the warm mud. There was
silt and salt and rotten leaves, and leeches in the mud. I settled until my eyes were level with the water. There were lizards and crawfish on the bottom.

I tasted the dry fever flames and the crust on my tongue. It was fever water, swamp water I sank into. Things floated in the pool, scums and slimes, crusts that shone like metal, skims and spiders. Bugs and water dogs crawled up my britches leg. Mud squeezed between my toes.

I was pushed back and down, and the breath got sucked out of me. And then I raised up and the light hit my face. My nose stung inside and my eyes burned. My ears gurgled as I was thrown back and the water streamed off me. I tasted hot mud and couldn't get my breath. My eyes were full of mud.

“Is my baby all right?” I said.

Everybody all around me laughed.

D
ID YOU EVER SEE
somebody stamp a terrapin, just stand over it and come down with a boot heel on its shell? Mr. Griffin would do that. Now a terrapin never hurt a thing, except a strawberry or tomato that was lying on the ground. A terrapin is the quietest creature. Even when it moves through the leaves or sticks you don't hear a thing. They say a terrapin will bite you and won't let go till it thunders. But I never did see a terrapin bite anybody. You come close and they pull their wrinkled neck and beak into the shell, and even their legs. They act like Mama did when something bad happened, they pull all into themselves.

But my stepdaddy, Mr. Griffin, would find a terrapin in the yard or on the road, or eating a dewberry at the edge of the woods, and he'd say to me, “Josie, this young fellow thinks he's safe, all closed up in his armor.”

I never would answer, because I knew what was coming. Since Mr. Griffin married Mama when I was twelve, I'd been keeping away from him all I could.

“Thinks he's safe because he can't see nothing,” Mr. Griffin said, and
kicked the terrapin onto hard ground. And then he stood over the wrinkled shell and brought his foot down like a hammer. You would have thought the terrapin was a big walnut the way it cracked into pieces. Mr. Griffin raised his boot again and squashed the pieces so blood ran out and guts, and the feet looked like little wings mashed into the dirt.

“Let that be a lesson, Josie,” Mr. Griffin said. “Can't nothing hide in this world.”