Devil's Dream (3 page)

She seemed to be mostly made of whipstitch and whalebone and weighed no more than a shock of hay. He held her chest-high, to be sure that her skirts would not trail in the wet. He climbed the far bank and set her down, supporting her shoulders till she was sure of her balance.

“Thank you,” she said. “I hardly know what we would have done …”

Forrest looked again at the two mounted dandies. Rodham made as if to touch his hat brim, but didn’t, quite. He had on kid gloves. Both of them wore knee-high calfskin boots which doubtless they didn’t mean to spoil in the mud.

He waded back toward the buggy where Mary Ann Montgomery was waiting. He had seen her a time or two on the streets of Memphis, where she went to buy her clothes, and the second time he had turned right around and watched her out of sight. After that he had learned that she was second of four children and that her mother was a widow who had lived for three years in the new Mississippi town of Horn Lake, where her brother had been appointed pastor of the church. He knew that Mary Ann had been to a finishing school in Nashville and lately had come home to stay with her mother. He knew it was not very likely that they would ever be introduced.

She folded her parasol and stretched out her arms to him with a smile. “Off to the races, are we?” she said. Her voice was weightless and gay. As he caught her up she settled her arms around his neck and kept on smiling up at him. Her hair was light and fine as corn silk. Though she was slender, there was more heft to her than to her mother. When he felt her haunch slip against his belly, soft and warm through the cloth of her dress and his shirt, there was such a surge of hot blood up his thighs that he wondered if maybe she felt it too. Her eyes had fluttered halfway shut and there was a pretty
flush on her cheek and her red lips were slightly parted. He was near enough to know her breath was sweet.

When two fighting blue jays swooped out of the maples, he saw that he had stopped, stock-still, midstream. He came to himself and carried her the rest of the way and climbed the bank and set her down. She held on to his hand in both of hers as she thanked him, then let it go. He felt the damp air move between his loosened fingers.

It was then he realized he did not at all care to leave her in the company of Rodham and Burke.

“If you ain’t the sorriest shitsucken sonsabitches God ever let live,” he told them. “Setten on yore fine horses with yore fangers up yore fat asses that way. The sight of the pair of ye makes me want to puke.”

Rodham colored a little and raised one gloved hand. “I resent that.”

“You’re welcome to. I wish ye would.”

Rodham moved his hand toward the inside of his coat.

“Think twice,” Forrest said. “I’d hate to waste a bullet on ye.”

“You dare to speak that way to my face?”

“If ye ever had any face ye done lost it,” Forrest said. “If ye don’t want a good horse-whuppen, with a roll in that slough to finish it off, git yore sorry asses out of my sight.”

Rodham dropped his hand and glanced at Burke. Both men had now turned pale. Without a word they wheeled their horses and trotted off down the road to Horn Lake. Forrest turned to face the ladies. Mrs. Montgomery seemed to have stopped a titter by placing her fingers across her lips, though by her expression she was not truly amused. Mary Ann was looking at him with the kind of fascination one might feel for a wild animal in a traveling show. Forrest could think of nothing to say. He coughed and turned to watch the retreat of the pair he’d driven off.

When they were out of sight, Forrest waded back out to the buggy. “All right now, Neddy,” he said. “Ye look to be about wore out. Take the horse’s head and leave me put a shoulder to the wheel.”

Lightened, the buggy came out easily enough. Ned led it up the bank and Forrest followed. He handed Mary Ann Montgomery up into her seat. Ned helped her mother and climbed to the box.

“I’ll just cross over and git my horse,” Forrest said to the general company. “I’ll not be far behind, in case ye should run acrost any more trouble.”

“Your courtesy will not be forgotten,” Mrs. Montgomery said.

“I’m right glad to hear that.” Forrest took off his hat. “My name is Nathan Bedford Forrest, ma’am. I ask your permission to call on Miss Montgomery.”

“Why—” Mrs. Montgomery let out an audible titter this time. She put her hand to her mouth and then took it away. “I certainly see no way to refuse you.” Her gloved finger pointed. “Mind, Mister Forrest, in my house no one takes the name of the Lord in vain.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Forrest said. “I’ll do my best to fix that in my mind.”

Mrs. Montgomery was no longer looking at him and he didn’t mean to turn his eyes to Mary Ann again until tomorrow. Ned saluted him from the box, then lifted the reins. Forrest touched the black driver lightly on the forearm, then crossed the river one more time to retrieve his horse.

H
ORN
L
AKE WAS
a little more than halfway to Memphis from Hernando where Forrest lived, and had mostly been settled by gentlefolk in quest of a pastoral retreat from the big town over the Tennessee border. It wasn’t very big yet though, so it didn’t take him long to find the Montgomery house. Out front was a cast iron nigger holding out a brass ring, but a couple of good-looking saddle horses were already hitched there, so Forrest tied up to a corner fence post. As a matter of fact he recognized both horses. He was just reminding himself that he didn’t give a green goddamn that his boots were scuffed and his coat a mite short for him when a voice hailed him from the porch.

“Well, Mister Forrest,” Rodham said, with the hind of a smirk. “If you’ve come to call on Ned, you’ll most likely find him around back in the stable.”

Forrest’s courting nerves evaporated. He took one quick look at Mary Ann to see how well she was amused by her caller’s wit and was pleased to see she had not even smiled.

“Why no,” he said. “I come to put yore head on a stick.” Burke
was there too, seated on the joggling board on the other side of her, fondling a mandolin in his lap. The two of them wore short light-colored jackets and shirts with ruffles over the bosom where young blades of their stripe liked to conceal their dirks and derringers. Forrest grinned at them as he came up the steps.

“I thought I got ye tolt yestiddy, the G—” He stopped.

“At a loss for words?” Rodham smiled.

Forrest looked up at the porch ceiling, where a big daddy-longlegs walked. Mrs. Montgomery was nowhere in view, but still.

“Tolt ye the very d—jest the ugly sight of ye makes me want to puke. And ye ain’t got no better sense than to turn up here today.”

Rodham got up, reaching into his breast ruffle. Forrest caught him with one hand below the elbow, the other above, wheeled around and threw him out into the yard. He moved toward Burke, who thought it better to bypass the steps and vault over the porch rail. Rodham had rolled to a stop at the yard fence. He got up cradling his right arm in his left, the whites of his eyes showing, and dust in his brown hair.

“Tolt ye once, tolt ye twicet,” Forrest said. “Now put yore tails between yore legs and
run.”

“We’ll see you later,” Burke muttered, with as much menace as he could muster with ten yards and a waist-high fence between them.

“I shore will look forward to it.” Forrest picked up the mandolin from the porch floor and walked out in the yard. Burke was helping Rodham, who still nursed his right arm, clamber on to his horse. When he was done Forrest handed him the instrument.

“If ye ain’t left no other propitty here, I reckon ye won’t have no call to come back.”

Burke took the mandolin without a word and mounted. Forrest turned his back on them. Mary Ann had picked up a book and hidden most of her face behind it. The front door was open now and her uncle, the Reverend Cowan, stood in the frame.

“You make yourself free in a house not your own,” he said.

“Well sir,” said Forrest. “If ye was to see varmints usen round my porch I spect ye’d run’m off or shoot’m.”

“I don’t know if I can satisfy your expectation.”

“Sir,” Forrest said. “I mean Reverend. I ain’t no flower pot I
know. My speech is rough and my manners is plain. I don’t own no frock coat nor yet a silk hat. But if I was to need them things I would git’m somehow. I come up hard and I come a long way. But I ain’t halfway yet to whar I’m a-goen.”

“I congratulate your fortitude,” Reverend Cowan said.

Forrest took a breath. “I don’t lie nor cheat nor steal. I do what I intend and I keep to my word. I don’t chaw nor smoke and I don’t use whiskey.” He paused and looked down the length of the porch. Mary Ann had laid down her book and was stroking a cat that had climbed into her lap.

“I tried whiskey oncet to know what hit was,” Forrest said. “I ain’t tetched it since, and I won’t never agin.”

“You don’t mean to tell me you don’t cuss.”

“I cain’t tell ye that,” Forrest said. “I’ll say I’m not proud of it. Hit’s a vice I hope to master.”

“With the Lord’s help.”

“I ain’t never asked no help from nobody.”

Reverend Cowan sighed. “But my niece Mary Ann is a good Christian girl.”

“I know it,” Forrest said. “That’s jest why I want her.”

“Dear Lord,” said the Reverend. “How am I to answer that?”

“Ye might give your consent,” Forrest told him.

“You’re in a powerful hurry,” said the Reverend.

“They say life is short. We ain’t promised tomorrow.”

“It’s short for some,” Cowan said, with raised eyebrows. “You have the name of a violent man.”

“I’ll ast ye to jedge fair if I deserve that name,” Forrest said. “I never once started a fight in my life.”

“You don’t have to tell me you’ve finished a few,” Cowan said. “And men’s lives into the bargain.”

“If you mean that business over to Hernando last spring—Reverend, them Matlocks didn’t leave me no choice. They was out to murder my Uncle John and I wouldn’t stand by and not try and stop it. They was four against one and I had not but two balls to my pistol. They’d of kilt me too if a neighbor hadn’t of thrown me a knife.”

“I see,” said the Reverend. “I’m sorry for your uncle’s death. Untimely.” He offered his hand and Forrest took it.

“I thought I heard you were left-handed,” Cowan said.

“I can manage a knife with my left hand. Ginerlly I shake with my right. I’m able with either.”

“I don’t doubt you are,” said the Reverend. He let go Forrest’s hand and pressed his fingertips to his eyelids. “Well. I don’t see how I can stand in the way of your conversing with my niece, so long as she’s willing.” He turned. “Mary Ann, you have a caller, if you care to receive him.”

“Mister Forrest is welcome.” Mary Ann stood up and the cat slipped down to the floor. Reverend Cowan shaded his eyes with his palm.

“I believe I’ll go indoors a spell,” he said. “Behave yourselves, young people.”

Forrest heard his boot heels booming on the boards of the porch as he walked toward her. She fluttered her fingers in his palm, then pointed to the joggling board—a fifteen-foot plank pegged between two square posts that bowed it up like a spring.

“I believe I’ll jest set on this chair,” Forrest said. “I don’t much trust a seat that moves, unless it would be on back of a horse.”

Mary Ann laughed and bounced herself once on the board, as if to show him how it worked. He watched the movement ripple through her body and thought of the merry scene he’d interrupted: the three of them laughing on the wiggling plank. The movement made them all rub up against each other. He had prepared what he meant to say, but no idle pleasantries to precede it.

The window behind Mary Ann was open, and through it he heard Mrs. Montgomery’s thin voice declare that she had a headache. A chair creaked as the preacher settled into it, and presently he commenced to read from some book of moral philosophy, in a low dull voice like the drone of a fly.

The cat floated up onto Mary Ann’s lap—a big ginger cat with rings on its tail.

“You’ve driven off my gentlemen friends,” she said, “and left me with nothing but poor Pussy.”

“I don’t much feel sorry for that cat whar he’s at,” Forrest said, surprised at the ease with which he said it. Mary Ann smiled, but absently.

“You know,” she said, looking somewhere past him, “till yesterday I couldn’t tell which one I liked better. William plays and sings so sweetly. But it’s Teddy who knows how to make me laugh.”

“How about today?”

When she tossed her head her yellow hair shook out. “Today? I don’t know that I like either one of them, so much.”

“Miss Montgomery,” Forrest said, leaning forward in the ladderback chair where he sat. “If ye was to go with either of them, they’ll leave ye mired in some slough like whar ye was at yestiddy. Come go along with me and yore wagon will roll down the center of the high road with all my strength behind it.”

Mary Ann caught his eye for a moment. “I don’t know that I take your meaning.”

“I think that ye do.”

She dropped her eyes. Inside the room behind her, the burr of the Reverend’s reading stopped for a moment and then resumed.

“I’ll tell ye a story,” Forrest said. “I mean it ain’t no story, hit’s the truth.” He hadn’t planned this part, but it came out more easily. “When I was a boy we lived out to Tippah. It was wilderness then, and no neighbor nigh. My mother rode ten miles, one day, for a basket of chicks to start us a flock. It was coming on dark when she got near to home, and a painter came onto her trail.” He paused. “I don’t know if ye’ve heard a painter scream.”

“It chills the blood,” she said. “Go on. I’m listening.”

“The painter is a witchy critter,” Forrest said. “Hit smells the blood inside the feathers. Hit hears a heartbeat from a long ways off. My Aunt Fannie begged my mother to throw that basket down behind her so the painter might stop. She wouldn’t do it. Right when she rode in the yard the painter sprung up onto her back. Hit torn off her dress and left stripes on her back like she had been whupped.”

“That’s a terrible story.”

“I don’t know that it is. My mother was right satisfied with what she done. She brought them chicks safe inside the house.”