ELEVEN

Jeff Scott opened his eyes.

For a moment there was disorientation. Where am I? Instantly he knew the answer. I'm back. There had been the long, cold darkness, sleep without sleep, slumber without rest or real dreams. Where did he go at those times? He didn't know. Did he go nowhere? Was that what being dead was—not going anywhere? He remembered dying well enough: the vain fight for breath, his eyes so full of pressure he thought they would burst out of his head, the sickening wetness in his crotch and then the explosion in his mind, his eyes, his lungs. And the hate—he remembered the hate well enough too. But what had happened after that? He recalled only snatches of it, bits of vision, but mostly nothing. He had gone . . . somewhere else. The next thing he remembered for sure was a damp, dark place, with the smell of rotting wood filling his nostrils. He had reached out and felt wet, decaying wood and wet soil. He had brought his hand over his body to feel his other hand, and it had felt the same as the wood and the earth: damp and soft. Then there was a great weight lifted from him, and he was in his clothes on a footpath under real moonlight, next to an open, unmarked grave above Montvale. Ash appeared soon after that, and no matter where he went, Ash seemed always to be there sooner or later. And he had known he would return to Montvale sooner or later. And later had come.

But where had he been before he had been lifted from the ground? He didn't know.

So now he was awake, or what passed for wakeful-ness. He wondered why he had to pass through these periods of rest. It wasn't like being a vampire; he laughed at the thought of vampires now. At least they could drink, even if it was blood. The truth was that he felt the urge to rest at the same times he always had; at night, and sometimes during the day. The only consolation now was that he never got insomnia. It was easy to sleep; he just lay down and one moment he was there, the next moment he wasn't.

Frankenstein. That was how, when he got into wry moods, he thought of himself. The unliving made alive. The word "zombie" made him uncomfortable—and anyway, he told himself, he wasn't a true zombie because zombies were merely the reanimated dead. They had no will of their own; they were corpses that walked and moved as if under radio control. Zombies made him laugh now, too. Everything made him laugh without laughing, even Frankenstein—but at least Frankenstein, the way he had seen him on television once, was more to his liking. The unliving made alive and whole. Frankenstein had feelings; he thought about things. The only trouble he had was that in the movie some fool had put a deviate's brain in his skull, and you could hardly blame that on him. You had the feeling that if he had had the brain he was supposed to have had, he would not have been a monster at all—would, in fact, have been more intelligent than the cretin who created him.

But that—a suave monster in a smoking jacket, talking about physics and Mozart—wouldn't have been half dramatic enough for the movies. Nobody ever seemed to notice that it wasn't the process itself that made the movie horrifying, only that some jackass human had fucked up and switched brains.

He tried not to think about it too much. There were a lot of things he tried not to think about too much.

He rose and cracked his bones. That couldn't be helped. In the Union Army he had bunked with a fellow for a time who had jumped out of bed each morning and cracked, it seemed, each bone in his body, relishing the task. He started with the knuckles in his hands and toes and then worked his way through every joint in his arms and legs, finishing with his neck. Jeff had begged him not to do it, but he had just laughed. It got so bad that Jeff thought he would have to kill him to make him stop, but a rebel soldier had done the job for him in Fredericksburg. What his own body did to him now was something like that; no matter how gently he rose, each bone in his body cried out at the same time, begging not to be stood up. It sometimes took ten minutes for all his bones to settle into place. The first time it had happened, it had scared the hell out of him, but now he looked on it as his old army bunkmate's revenge.

With a groan he pushed himself over to the small mirror on the wall of his trailer. He did this each time he got up, and the shock was always the same. In the glass he saw his face but not his face. The features were all there, the weak jaw, the strong, straight nose, the high cheekbones that almost made his face gaunt, the curly mass of boyish red-brown hair thicker on top than on the sides. But the eyes he could not see. However hard he stared at himself, he could not look into his own eyes. They were there, and they were the right shade of light blue, but he just couldn't look into himself. He'd always faced himself this way in the morning, taking stock and getting the day's duties straight in his mind; it had always been his way of waking up. And now he was awake, or something like it, and it was impossible to do this thing. He had once asked Ash about it, and Ash had only laughed, and he hadn't asked again.

The bones in his neck creaking painfully, he surveyed the rest of the room. It was little better than the army tent he had lived in for three years during the war. But that was fine with him. A small wooden table next to his bunk, a couple of books—mostly picked up secondhand or at library sales—on a makeshift shelf over the tidy dresser. On top of the dresser, just one thing. In the old days, a couple of pictures would have been there: a sepia print of his mother and a black-and-white photograph that Matthew Brady himself had taken of him and his buddies in the 14th Infantry, looking in the crackly print like old men around a dead campfire. A hairbrush, bone-handled, that his father had given him on his twelfth birthday. The Bible that Lucius had given him on that same day, when the two of them, his father and Lucius, decided for some reason that he was a man.

The only thing there now was a Bible; not the same one, but another that originally had belonged to a fourth grader at St. Catherine's school in a suburb of Chicago. He'd picked it up for fifty cents. When he had put his hand on it at the rummage sale, he had expected something momentous to happen, like lightning whipping out of the sky, or at least that the old leather cover would burn his hand, making him let go (after all, I'm dead!). But nothing of the kind had happened. That was another reason he liked to think of himself as Frankenstein, because the monster would have been a reader had he had the chance. There was a scene in the movie where Frankenstein came across a blind man who recited scripture to him over tea. It was probably the most touching part of the movie. The monster, even with his cursed deviate's brain, was obviously moved. No taint of evil lurked in him, only around him, in that situation.

Each day he read from the Bible, just as he had in the army. He'd started at the beginning, with Genesis, but had soon given that up. There was much more that interested him in the New Testament than in the Old. He found himself going over Revelation again and again, looking for some hint of comfort, and had discovered that whatever comfort he did gain from the book centered on Matthew's gospel. Matthew could write; he was not a blind lunatic like the other three gospel writers. He had a keen eye for detail and seemed to cut to the bone of the matter without embellishing it. And in that there was a stark poetry that made his account all the more believable. Jeff wanted very much now, much more than, well, before, to believe in all of it, the Resurrection and especially what came after it. The Second Coming was something he wanted desperately to believe in because, he thought, might it not hold out hope for himself? He was a changed man, much more cynical than he had been before, but also different in other ways. He thought things through now, and he wanted to understand his situation. He thought he had come to understand revenge, and he wanted no part of it.

But he also felt more powerless than he ever had before.

After all, sixty years ago I was dead.

He gave a harsh, grunting laugh at the thought, flipping the Bible open with one hand to choose a random passage.

The door behind him opened, then closed, slamming shut like a screen door. Jeff felt the peculiar mix of revulsion, fear and renewal that he always did when Ash was nearby.

"Let me pick a verse for you," Ash said. "How about this? `Fear not, for I am with thee.' Genesis. Like it?"

"Go away, Ash."

"But why? I've come to summon you, dear boy. For as the Bard says, to quote from another and much finer work than the one you hold there. We must take the current when it serves, or lose our venture.' "

Jeff could barely move. A cold spot started way down in his stomach and blossomed to till his body. He felt drained, frozen.

"Amusement time," Ash said. "Actually, you won't be needed much for a while, except to calm Lucius. I really do regret having him around. He makes everyone nervous. Continually wringing his hands and moaning, uttering cries to heaven, all that. Do something about him before I do."

Jeff Scott turned, trying to control the roiling within him.

"I want no part of this."

Ash smiled, making his face look like a sack of flour with a deep red gash in it. He produced one of his cigarettes and took his time in lighting it, carelessly dropping the still-lit match on the rough wooden floor of the trailer. "This is all for you. Jeff."

"Tell me exactly who you are, Ash."

Jeff felt as he never had before, both feverish and elated. The chill in him dispersed; he felt lighter, less sluggish, than he had in months.

"You were saying?" Ash replied, ignoring the change that had come over Jeff Scott.

"Tell me all about yourself," Jeff said, laughing. He felt almost powerful. His nostrils flared, as if he were a famished animal smelling meat. "What are you afraid of, Ash? Deep down, I know, I can sense, that there's something, or someone, you're terrified of. Is it me?"

Ash threw down his cigarette. For a moment Jeff thought he would storm out, short coat snapping theatrically behind him. But he only stared at Jeff. In an instant Jeff felt his elation evaporate. "I'm extremely frightened of you, boy," Ash said. Jeff felt as if someone were scooping out his insides with a trowel. He gagged, collapsing to his knees and holding his stomach—he was afraid that if he let go, everything in it would spill out.

“Do you really think this is all only for you?" Ash spat. "Did you really believe me when I said that? Did you believe me whenever I spoke?" A look Jeff had never seen before possessed Ash's non-face.

Now Jeff felt as though he had been doused with gasoline and lit. He looked up and saw nothing but blackness. Ash had disappeared; so had his room, the trailer, everything. There was only the horrible burning of his skin, both outside and inside. He could not even work his mouth to scream. He felt for the floor, thinking that perhaps he would find coolness there, but there was no floor. He was in empty space. Then the fire abated and a curtain was drawn aside, and he had a vision, a remembrance of the kind he had when he "dreamed."

He was back on his daddy's farm. It was a glaring, bright day; the sky was so full of daylight it hurt his eyes. He looked down and saw that the brightness was reflected off the ground, which was covered deep in virgin snow. The sky was the kind of deep sapphire it was after a good strong snow storm. There was a sheen of thin, icy crust on the snow, as though it had partially melted at the height of day and now was freezing again. It was late afternoon, by the sun.

The oak in the front yard, ponderously tall even when denuded of leaves, held a thin white frosting along the top of its gray branches. For a moment it was like a perfect color snapshot, the kind they printed in the issues of Life magazine that he had picked up a couple of times—and then, as if someone had thrown a switch, things began to move. The top limbs of the tree soughed gently in the near-still breeze; some of the powder drifted off and fell lazily, like the snow in one of those snow globes imported from Europe that you shook upside down. Off behind the barn, a cow mooed sleepily. The door to the house slammed open and then shut. It seemed to spit a hooting figure out onto the porch, bearing something nearly too heavy for it to carry.

"Jeff! Jeff!" the figure whooped, and as it came closer, Jeff saw that its burden was a long wooden toboggan. The figure was his brother Tom. He was dressed in heavy boots and a bright-colored knitted muffler and a buff-colored coat that was too big for him. There was a smile a mile wide on his face. He suddenly threw the sled down and grabbed Jeff.

There were tears in Jeff's eyes. He looked at him- self and discovered he was dressed in heavy mittens and hand-me-down boots, and, his brother, who had not been alive to him since 1861—his brother, who was a hundred and twenty years dead, speared through the heart by a Confederate bayonet—was standing before him, shouting into his face and grinning as if it were yesterday. He knew this day; he knew something momentous had happened on this day, but he did not remember what. And as he remembered these things, he found that he was more six years old than long-dead, and that he was grinning back at twelve-year-old Tom and nodding at everything he said, worshiping him as always.

"I can't believe Pa let us outa the rest of our chores," Tom said. "What are you standing there for? If we don't go now, he'll change his mind!"

Tom picked up the toboggan, grunting, and heaved it onto his back; and then Jeff was trotting along, half beside and half behind him, holding an edge and at least pretending that he was helping. They passed the white-coated carousel, dead for the winter, its horses wearing snow caps, and in a few minutes they had left the farm behind and were making the long, slow climb up the shallow hill, way off at the far edge of their land, that led to the real hill where sledding was done. Before long they were both puffing heavily, and they stopped, dropping the toboggan on the ground, where it made fine cracks in the crusty top layer of snow. They looked back at their father's house and, before them, the town of Montvale. Then they looked at their own breath-and the smoke that it made in the air.

"Pa said I could order those stamps from New York next month," Tom said. Jeff smiled, not really knowing what stamps were except that they were little square things that Tom pasted, using little tongs, in a book. He wanted some himself and knew that he would have them when he started getting an allowance too. Right now he got a penny every now and then from Tom, sometimes two pennies from Pa when they went into town to the general store with its candy jars. He never had such fine days as those. Except maybe for this one.

Tom said, "Can't wait for those stamps," and there was a dreamy look to him, and then they hauled the sled up again and continued on their way.

It wasn't long before they reached the sledding hill, high and curved like a C around the churchyard. There was a rickety fence separating the sledding track from the cemetery. The same fence failed to separate the boys from the cemetery in October around Halloween or sometimes when the older boys drank in the summer and made dares on one another. Now the old chipped fence posts stood up like long teeth, crooked and sharp at the end, and you had to be careful you didn't bash into them because one of the teeth might come down on you, or even give way and send you right into a headstone.

There was a group already making use of the track, taking turns one after another like a neat, segmented snake, and Jeff saw a couple of tar torches already lit at the top and bottom of the hill so that the sledding could go on after dark. Laughter, swirling and then borne away by the strengthening wind, reached them, and suddenly they were at the top.

" 'Lo, Tom, Jeff," said Petey Graham, who was making a bench of his sled off to the side of the starting patch. It looked like he was carving something; as far as Jeff could remember, he had never seen Petey Graham go down the sled track once the whole winter.

"Hi, Pete," Tom answered for both of them. Jeff knew that Petey was someone they were not supposed to spend much time with; he was said to be slow-witted. They passed him, lugging the sled another twenty feet to where a small group of five or six sat huddled around a pile of sticks. In the darkening afternoon Jeff recognized one or two of the faces turned his way: the parson's boy; John Major and his brother Henry; the mayor's daughter Melissa. As they drew closer, the others turned as well. William Gantry, Tom's best friend, was there, as were the Becker sisters and the blacksmith's apprentice, Pod Williamson.

There were greetings all around, and Jeff found himself seated on the end of the toboggan while they waited for the fire to be brought to life. He could not understand why they were bothering with this now, since there was still a good hour of daylight left. He thought of asking Tom about this, but he saw that Tom was busy with Melissa Poundridge, seating her on the toboggan, showing her how to make some sort of knot. Jeff was nearly crowded off the end of the sled, and almost said something, but he thought better of it; when Tom was in this mood, there was little he wanted to hear about anything. Now Jeff was getting cold. But then Bill Gantry had set a spark going with his flint and the small fire was sputtering to flame.

Jeff wanted to get to the sledding part, but he knew he had to wait for Tom. He had to wait for Tom for everything, but that never bothered him because Tom was his brother and always looked out for him. Tom had fought for him many times when the odds were unfair; one time he had thrashed Henry Major when that boy, three years older than Jeff, had taken one of his licorice whips right on the street in front of the general store just after Jeff had bought it. Henry had begun to strut away when suddenly Torn came out of nowhere, threw him to the ground and pounded the tar out of him—and retrieved the candy, whole and clean. Tom had taken a licking himself for that one when the rest of the Major clan—John and his older brother Jim—had ganged up on him in the schoolyard, but he had never said a word about it. A word never had to be said.

Finally they were going to sled. This happened only after Melissa Poundridge and the other girls decided there was something they had to do off by themselves for a while. The sky was turning blue-black by then, and when Tom said for him to get on the toboggan behind him and hold tight, he did so with a yell and they were off almost before he was seated. The icy snow glared bluish as it rushed past, and they came close to the fence once. But almost before he knew what had happened, they were at the bottom of the hill, flying past the lit torches and coming to an abrupt stop at the raised mound of snow another twenty feet on.

"Wheeee!" Jeff said, and he thought he had never been happier in his life when Tom turned around and said "Wheeee!" too. They turned the sled sideways and then Tom got it up on his back, this time gently pushing Jeff away when he tried to hold on. "Let me do it, pal," he said, and when they got to the top, Jeff saw that Melissa was waiting for them.

There followed another boring time on the sled in front of the modest fire, and Jeff grew impatient.

"Can't we go again, Tom?" he asked, and when he got no definitive answer, he asked, "Can I go by myself, then?"

Tom turned around and stared at him.

"No," he said. There was a look on his face that Jeff didn't like, and Jeff liked it even less when Tom turned his back on him to face Melissa again. He sat still for a few minutes, trying hard to interest himself in John Major's story about how he had pulled Bessy McAllister's pigtail in class that morning, then turned back to his primer before Mr. Glass could react, thereby getting away with it; and then Jeff asked Tom again:

"Why can't I go by myself?"

Tom tried to ignore him, but Melissa said in a petulant voice, "Why don't you let him, Tom? Get him out of here."

Suddenly Tom turned toward him. "All right, little kid," he said. Jeff never liked it when he was called "little kid."

"Go on down, but hold on tight."

Instantly Jeff was up, laying his hands on the toboggan. And instantly he regretted what he had asked for. Torn, he saw, had turned back to the girl, but Bill Gantry was eyeing him in a way that he disliked. He saw Bill nudge Tom, asking him something, but Torn shrugged him off. Because Jeff couldn't lift the sled the way Tom had, he had to pull it by the rope attached to the front. The sled was long, and even then he had trouble in hauling it in his wake. He turned around to see Bill Gantry get up, but at that moment Melissa said, "Aw, let him go on himself," and Bill sat down again. John and Henry Major turned their turtle eyes on him, grinning stupidly in the firelight, and then turned back to their friends. Jeff was suddenly alone.

Resolutely he pulled the toboggan forward. Before he knew it, he was at the top of the course. The sky was black now; he could see the first faint points of the evening stars. There would be a moon later, but now the only light he had to guide him came from the two flickering torches to either side of the starting point and, far below, the two tiny spots of orange that marked the other torches. In the dimness he could make out the blue-white track of snow he was to follow. It seemed much steeper and more treacherous than it had before. He shivered. He turned to look back at the warm fire, to listen to the laughing voices behind him, and knew that it was too late to retreat.

As if to fire his resolve, he heard Henry Major call out, "What's the matter—you scared?" and the rippling, if not unanimous, chorus of laughter that followed tightened him. For all he knew, his brother, along with this girl he seemed so mysteriously interested in, was laughing at him too. And that would be too much to bear.

He straightened the sled in the track and sat down on it. He realized how empty it was without a second rider. He had never even ridden in the front before. Without the extra weight of his brother, he feared he might take off like some huge bird, to crash somewhere in the unknown distance below. His boots fit snugly under the front curve of the toboggan. As he sat waiting for a push that would never come, tears filled his eyes and he began to shiver.

He wanted to cry out for Tom to come and help him like he always had, but he knew it would not happen this time. An invisible space had opened up between them, between him and his childhood. He felt trapped. He heard another snort of rude laughter, muffled, behind him. He imagined the Major boys snickering at him again. Why didn't Tom stand up to them this time? He felt that space widen even more. He had feared the time might come when Tom was not there to fight his big battles for him, and this was it. Though he understood, he could not help hating Tom for it. Why did this have to happen? Why did Tom have to abandon him now?

"Jeff?" someone called, and for a moment his heart leaped at the thought that his brother had come out of the dark to save him once more. Sitting on the sled, he turned, half-smiling. It was not Tom, but Petey Graham, the half-wit. He loomed out of the twilight like a giant, his huge gawking frame forming a shadow in front of the flickering firelight behind him.

"Need help, Jeff?" he asked sincerely. He still held his carving tools and a formless piece of wood he was trying to turn into something that had a shape.

"No thanks, Petey."

"You sure? I heard them Major boys laughing, thought they might have dared you into something you didn't want to do."

Jeff choked back tears, suddenly hating his brother more than he ever thought he could.

"No, Petey, that's okay."

And then the sled seemed to move by itself, though it was his own hands that propelled it away from the lurking specter of Petey Graham and down the hill. He felt a momentary exhilaration as the first steep drop came. His stomach bottomed out as the sled picked up speed. The voices above faded, leaving him now with only darkness, and cold wind whip-ping his face. The sled moved swiftly and expertly along the well-worn path, and the target torches at the bottom already seemed bigger. For a supreme moment Jeff felt in control of all that was happening. He felt grown up.

But that moment passed. The toboggan was moving with purpose now. Jeff realized with a flash of panic that he didn't know how to steer it. Torn had always handled that part, had never really explained it to him, and here, about halfway down, when the second steep drop occurred, there came a point when the rider had to assume control of the sled. That point came, and Jeff didn't know what to do. He was moving too fast. Finally he threw out his feet to try to slow himself, but he only upset the movement of the sled and tore off one of his boots. Though the sled steadied, he knew that he was at the mercy of the toboggan and the snow and the night.

He had never moved so fast. He could not see the torches at the bottom—and then he did see them, somewhere off to the right where they shouldn't be. He shouted, and something solid and black came up very fast, a chain of mountains it seemed, until he realized it was the half-broken fence around the churchyard. There was a momentary slackening in his speed and a thump as something ran under the sled. There was no time to think of this because he was accelerating again.

He thought he heard sounds above him, calls and shouts, but he couldn't be sure. He heard no laughter. Large blocks of night were moving past him—gravestones. He threw out his booted foot wildly, trying to stop his progress, and his knee abruptly buckled under him, throwing his chin into the front of the toboggan. He nearly lost consciousness. Still he did not slow down. Then before him he saw the twin lights at the bottom of the path, and a wild hope sprang up in him that all was miraculously well, that he had somehow come through the cemetery and regained the path. But this was not so. Once again he saw the fence—long, tapered fangs of wood—rushing at him until something intervened: a huge mountain of formed stone, large and curved, with a looming cross on top of it. The toboggan hit it, and his last agonized, hate-filled word before he flew off the sled to slam into this object was "Tom!"

 

He awoke in mud. There was mud in his mouth; he seemed awash in wet blackness.

He turned over. The sky was slate-colored and low, so overcast that it looked as though it touched the earth. There was rain, too, a solid, unending fall of water that made him want to turn over again and bury his face in the mud.

His mind cleared a little. There was shouting all around him, and screaming. "Tom?" he called, and in answer someone to his left gave a groan. He turned his face in that direction and saw a human form, certainly not his brother Tom, trying to turn toward him. The prone figure seemed made of mud, with a heavy, mud-colored overcoat and something in one hand, a long stick it looked like, also mud-colored. It was a rifle. The man holding it groaned once more.

There came excited shouting near him, and Jeff managed to raise his eyes out of the mud to see a dim line of men running his way. He saw that they were wearing gray overcoats and had bayonets lowered. Behind him, he heard more cries, though they were farther away and less enthusiastic. The running men were nearly upon him when the groaning man to his left gave a loud shout and suddenly rose to his feet. He was delirious. His rifle was still in the mud. He held his hands out and shouted "Captain! Captain!" Jeff saw now that the man had a beard, cropped close to his face, despite that, he could not have been more than nineteen or twenty. Though he was a soldier of his own army, Jeff did not know him. He must have wandered in from another regiment.

Then the graycoats were upon them, and as the groaning soldier lurched forward, he gave a sudden scream and was driven back and down into the mud by a bayonet held by a Confederate with a half-wild look on his face. The rebel's mouth was open, and to Jeff he looked half-man, half-fish, gulping wildly at the air as if it held water that he needed for sustenance. The downed man's screams seemed to waken him, and he suddenly looked very frightened, trying desperately to remove his bayonet from the struggling figure; his fellows were streaming by him, yelling curses and encouragement. Finally, in a panic, the gray-clad soldier put his foot on the screaming man as if he were a clod of earth and pulled his rifle free. The man sank back into the mud, twitched, and then lay inert as the Confederate moved on.

Jeff kept still as death, with his face toward the bayoneted soldier, his teeth clenched to keep from crying out. He felt a heavy boot on his ankle and wanted to yell at the pain. The boot moved on, grinding into the skin below his heavy trouser, but he managed to keep quiet.

After a time, all the cries and other sounds receded. Jeff screwed up his courage and turned his head toward the battle. There was a fog of rain and smoke back there, with vague forms moving in and out of it. Besides that, there was nothing but mud and gray sky. He looked the other way and saw no reinforcements or laggers, so he rose up on his elbows and knees and crawled over to the bearded soldier.

“You hear me?" he whispered, moving down close to the man's ear. He turned the man's face toward him, away from the mud. The eyes were glassy and half-closed. Remembering what he had seen others do, he reached down to the man's neck and felt for a pulse, but there was none. As his hand moved away, it felt something slick and wet, not like mud, and he had to hold himself from vomiting when he saw that the Confederate soldier's bayonet, in being tom loose, had ripped the front of the man's chest almost to his shoulder blades. Most of what had been in his chest lay out on the ground or covered the front of his uniform.

Jeff must have fainted, for when he awoke, the sounds of battle were gone and it was night. Rain was still falling. He tried to stand but could not; his lower leg, where he had been trod on, was sore and swollen and ached terribly. He heard a sound close by and tried once more to rise but fell back down heavily and lost consciousness again.

He was awakened by the strike of something flat and heavy against his ribs. He grunted and rolled over, blinking at bright sunshine and the even brighter blue of the sky overhead. A shape was partially blocking that light, and he soon focused on it, pulling himself up into a sitting position. The figure was gray-clad, and his heart sank.

"Get on up, Yankee boy," the soldier said, prodding him hard with the butt end of his rifle. When Jeff made a tentative move, his swollen leg collapsed and he fell back down. The soldier butted him harder, in the same spot.

"I said get up, boy."

"I think my leg's broken," he told the soldier, trying to sound reasonable.

"Bull-drop it is. Get up." Again the flat of the rifle rammed into the same sore spot.

Not realizing what he was doing, Jeff rose with a shout and grappled with the rebel. The graycoat gave a bawl of surprise and fell back in the drying mud. They wrestled as if they were in a farmyard pen back home. To his surprise, Jeff easily mastered his adversary, taking his gun and throwing it off to one side. He had planted two solid jabs on the other's jaw and drawn his fist back again when he was hit solidly on the head from behind and went down.

He awoke this time to find two soldiers standing over him: the one he had beaten to the ground and another who had apparently been doing sweep-up with him. He felt soreness not only in his leg and on the back of his head, but in his ribs and farther down his back, around his kidneys. They had obviously worked him over after he blacked out. When he put his arm to his head, another kick landed on his back, and he rolled over with a loud exclamation.

"Seems we got us something real special here," one soldier said to the other.

"Get up," the one who had originally found him said in a harsh tone.

Jeff pulled his legs under him and sat up, waiting for further blows and half covering his head.

"Sure hope you're a reb, boy," the second soldier said.

"He don't look like no reb," the other said. And then he laughed hoarsely. "Get th' hell to your feet."

Jeff got up, an ache at a time, and then he discovered that his uniform was gone. He was clad only in his long johns.

"Put your clothes back on," one of the two rebels said. Jeff got his first good look at him. He was no more than sixteen, without a trace of chin hair. He had mean, hard eyes. The other looked ten years older but had the same grit-filled look about him. The younger, smaller one indicated a pile of civilian clothes on the ground at Jeff's feet.

"Where's my uniform?" Jeff asked.

"Them's your clothes; put 'em on," the older one said.

"Give me my uniform," Jeff said, trying to demand but knowing how weak his voice really was.

The older Confederate shook his head and grunted. "Sure hope for his sake he ain't no spy," he laughed, and then the other one stepped forward, and soon Jeff was on the ground again.

When he rose to consciousness, it was nighttime and he was in the back of an open wagon. The moon was up and almost full. There was stationary torchlight off to his right, which meant the wagon was standing still. He sat up, putting his hands on his knees, and discovered that he had been dressed in the civilian clothes: an overlarge jacket and vest, and too-short pants, no shoes and unmatched socks. The pants itched him, but this was the least of his worries. When he tried to lower himself from the wagon, he saw that it was being guarded by two soldiers who, with glaring looks, made sure he stayed where he was.

"Bring him here, Sergeant," he heard a voice say in the darkness. In another moment he was half-carried, half-walked toward what looked to be, in the moon and torchlight, an officer.

The officer addressed him. "Can you stand on your own?" With a leap of hope, Jeff noted that the man's voice was not without kindness.

Jeff nodded; but when the sergeant and his escort released him, he promptly sank to the ground. A camp stool was brought for him, and he was made to sit on it. Someone gave him a tin cup filled with coffee.

The officer let him drink for a moment and then spoke. "I'm sure you're aware of the predicament I'm in—" he began, but Jeff cut him off.

"I am Jeffrey Scott, Third Union Army, Fourteenth Infantry. My uniform was forcibly stripped from me by two of your men. I was put in these clothes against my will." He looked as steadily as he could at the officer. "I am not a spy."

The officer tapped the fingers of one hand against the back of the other and regarded Jeff soberly.

"I probably shouldn't say this," he said. He paused, clasped his hands behind his back. "In fact, I know I shouldn't. If I chose, I could have you tried right now, even in the condition you're in; could have you shot in the morning. But I know those boys of mine who brought you in, and I know they're lying. Your clothes don't fit. You're a Union man, all right, but you're no spy. Why in hell would a spy, dressed in civilian clothes, be out in the middle of that battlefield?" He stopped, turned his back on Jeff. "I don't like the North. I don't like what it's done to this country or the way it's running this war. My job is not to like Union soldiers." His hands gripped one another tightly. But I don't like what's been done to you. It's just not . . . right. I've got people up North, family; always have had." He turned around, and Jeff saw how angry he was. "And dammit. I can't stand not to act like a gentleman!" He moved closer. "This is what I've done. I've sent an envoy to your people, asking for an exchange of prisoners. I want two of my soldiers for their one captured spy. If they respond, I'll send you back. Otherwise—"

"What about the two men who did this to me?"

The officer furrowed his brow. "I've got a whole company to worry about. I think you know what would happen if I dressed them down for bringing in a Union man."

Before Jeff could respond, the officer turned away. "That's the best I can do.”

It was cold that night. No one offered him a blanket, though they did let him edge close to the meager fire that burned near the wagon. An eerie silence had descended over what had been a day before, one of the bloodiest battlefields of the war.

Groups of men huddled outside their tents and in front of their fires and joked or swapped boasts about women or their battle prowess. Jeff could hear the same activity in the Union camp across the field. Occasionally, when the wind was right, the strains of a lonely harmonica reached his ears. Someone gave him another cup of coffee, but no one offered to engage him in conversation.

Just before dawn he managed to stretch out in the back of the wagon and fall asleep. But almost immediately he was awakened by a sergeant with long moustaches and tired eyes. The sergeant looked at him coolly for a few moments and then spat deliberately on the ground.

"Seems them bastards across the way want nothing to do with you." he said.

Jeff was stunned. "I can't believe that."

"Say they know nothing about no spy. They even deny they know anybody by the name of Jeff Scott." Behind the sergeant, Jeff saw the first tint of morning, giving the man a faint orange silhouette in the chill air. The sergeant spat again and wiped a bit of spittle from his untrimmed upper lip.

“Captain seems to think they just can't be bothered since you was found without your uniform on."

Jeff's pulse began to race. "Can they do that?"

The sergeant shrugged. "Union Army, friend."

"Oh, God."

"Yep," the sergeant said in a drawn-out way. "Seems we got to shoot us a spy this morning." He spat yet again and added, "Unless of course he was to get away."

Jeff lifted his head, seeing the slight, ironic smile on the man's face.

"I don't like them two boys brought you in," he said. "Me and the captain had a talk and we decided you ought to escape. Might mean I'll take a day in the stockade. But I think I can see to it that those two boys take the blame for me."

"You'll do that?"

The sergeant put up a restraining hand. "Hold on now, sonny. It ain't all peaches. You may even get shot on the way back over there. Then again, if you make it, you'll have to spend the rest of this war with them Union bastards." He spat again, wiped a sleeve across his mouth. He snorted. You see, there's a war, and then there's the right thing. Sometimes the two don't mix. But sometimes they do. We don't have no blue-boy uniform to put on you so you'll have to take your chances." He stepped closer, and Jeff could smell tobacco juice. "And I got to tell you that if this battle heats up later today and I meet you out on that slab of mud, there's nothing on God's bastard earth that'll make me hesitate before putting a ball of lead in your heart. You hear me?"

Jeff nodded. Almost before he knew it, the sergeant had him down off the wagon and out on the battlefield. He was given a thirty-yard lead, and then the sergeant sent up an alarm. Soon there were shouts and a few tentative rifle shots over his head. He ducked low and crawled on his belly toward the Union lines, which were farther away than he had thought. He moved quickly, with intermittent shots still ringing over him. Twice he hit an obstruction that proved to be a dead, rigor mortised body. Once he almost moved straight into a bayonet-tipped rifle lodged at an angle in the now-hard mud and just missed losing an eye to it. After a while, the shots behind him faded and he was able to rise.

He found himself eye-to-eye with a blue-clad figure, someone he vaguely knew from his own regiment. Before he could open his mouth, the man had raised his rifle. There was a sudden burning pain in his thigh where the bullet found its mark. Then he was on the ground, looking at the growing blue-red light of day dawning as the soldier whooped, "I shot a reb! I shot him!"

I'm going to die, Jeff thought.

A hatred as he had never known, a hatred mixed with the solid fear of death, especially of this unjust death, filled every pore of his body. He screamed, clutching at the dawning day with his fingers, trying to hold it. He could taste the hate and the fear. The blue sky began to pull away, and there was blackness behind it—stark, rock-solid blackness that was curling down around him—and there was someone very close, just behind or in front of him, sucking voraciously at the fear and hatred, and turning to ask him

But in an instant it was all gone, the blue sky back and the hate and fear diminished. The boy who had shot him was crying, "My God, it's Jeffrey Scott," and someone else, interrupting in a calm, hard voice, said, "He'll be all right, he'll live. . . ."

Yes, he exulted, his mind bursting with joy, and the fear and the hate bled out of him. I'll live!

But then he was on the scaffold in Montvale, and Mayor Poundridge was staring up at him calmly, and the ground gave way, and that horrible bursting pressure came into his chest and head and eyes, and then everything exploded, and the hatred returned, along with the fear, only this time it didn't go away. It got worse instead. I'm dying! he thought, and the hatred filled him as it had on that battlefield, but now it spilled over and exploded along with his head and eyes and lungs. Even as the last molecule of air was wrenched from his chest by his screaming blood, as his red corpuscles cried desperately for more air and found none, his body, his blood, all of him, screamed hate. His eyes, burning like coals in their aching sockets, looked out at them—those he had grown up with, played with, fought with—and wanted to see them dead. All of them. They were responsible; and even more than the continuation of his own life, he wanted their lives ended. The mayor, the sheriff, the Major boys, Melissa Poundridge (who had promised herself to his brother Tom and then, when Tom went off to fight, hooked into and married Tom's best friend, Bill Gantry, whose rich father had bought his son's way out of the war), all of them.

Death! he screamed, using not his lungs because there was nothing in his lungs to make the word with, but his soul. Death! he screamed, and their astonished faces must have thought he was speaking of his own, though he meant theirs. The death of Montvale was what he beseeched—and then the fear and hatred consumed and ate him up, and the sky turned black, the world was pulled away like elastic and the black dropped down around him, and that voice, that voice, was once more beside him, breathing into his mouth, fanning the flames of hate and fear and at the same time sucking them out of him, saying "Yes" to his prayer of death, the mouth of this thing on his mouth

Jeff Scott heard laughter, and he looked up from the floor of his trailer to see Ash's shape looming over him. Ash was in the trailer with him, but he also seemed to be everywhere else, occupying the whole frame of Jeff's mind as well as his vision. For a moment it seemed that Ash's face was pressed to his, that fishlike, slit red mouth on his own, but this was only a memory, and then he looked up and saw Ash's shape, distinct and man-sized now, turn from him and walk to the door of the trailer.

"I'll be back for you soon," Ash said, still chuckling, and the door to the trailer opened, not quite banging shut before Ash continued, "You'll be ready." And Jeff Scott, in despair, knew it was true.