An hour later, not far from the field hospital, he found the overseer in a neat line of dead Union soldiers. Jubilant, John searched the body. But the sack was not there. As he stood dumbfounded over the corpse, he had an overwhelming sensation that someone was watching him. Fearing it was the mulatto, he looked around wildly. Two hundred yards away sat the same single black cart and horse. A man stood near the cart, some kind of black object in front of him. John could feel the intensity of the man’s stare; it burned two circles of heat into his brow. He thought quickly. If the overseer’s body disappeared, others might believe he had simply left the area. The mulatto, especially, might believe it, he might leave to search. Without a corpse, John realized that he’d be safer. And the man staring at him would just think that he was carrying off a dead comrade for a private burial. Other soldiers were doing just that, either for themselves or for one of the embalming surgeons. And civilians also wandered over the broken field. His actions could not be regarded as suspicious.
He bent again to the overseer’s body but reeled back in shock as his eyes locked on the face. It still wore its living grin. John waited for the taunting to start, but only the drone of flies rose from the bloated lips. He waited longer than was safe. The man by the cart would be growing more suspicious; he might even decide to come closer to investigate.
At last, John took the overseer onto his back and headed for the woods hunched darkly on the horizon.
PART FOUR
I
Standing on the small black wharf just upstream from Dare’s cannery, Anson knew almost immediately which of the three skiffs approaching over the darkening water had his old friend at the oars. It was the lead boat, the one putting so much distance between it and the others, the one that drew the last few crimson shreds of light around it. As the skiff came close enough to the wharf for figures to be distinguished, as the smooth, steady power of the oar strokes replicated the most efficient machine in the cannery behind him, Anson saw that the years had not greatly diminished his friend’s strength. Dare pulled without pause, his shoulders level, his head raised. Anson could hear each quick grunt that accompanied the stroking, a natural sound, as of the day itself winding down with the light. Then the oars stopped.
As the skiff glided the last few feet to the wharf, Dare stood, still as tall and lean as Anson remembered. Sweat glistened on his sunburned forearms. He wore a white cotton shirt, the thick sleeves pushed up, crushed like the petals of great flowers around his biceps. A wiry, grey-flecked tangle of beard hid most of the lower half of his face but focused attention on the eyes. They seemed even larger than Anson remembered, darker and worn, as if two mixed handfuls of river and blood were continually breaking apart and being replaced. Except, Dare’s face also possessed a curious repose. Anson sickened at the contrast; it spoke too clearly of grave-grass pushing through the bars of a cradle.
He had expected the years to alter his friend’s appearance. The deep lines on the brow, the grey flecks in the grizzle; these were predictable enough, almost comforting in the way they bound the man to his kind. But the alarming condition of the eyes! It seemed that at any second they’d break apart and no amount of river or blood could be gathered to return them to sight.
Anson’s relief that the gunshots had not deprived him of their reunion quickly evaporated. At the edge of the wharf, a groan made him look away before speaking, down into the skiff. Thomas Lansdowne lay stretched along the thwart. His shirt was ripped open at the chest, and a chunk of the fabric served as a tourniquet around his upper right arm. He was conscious and moaning, but his eyes flickered constantly and his face was pale. Thin shafts of light cut across his body. Already a cloud of mosquitoes had begun to drip onto his exposed skin.
Anson locked eyes with Dare and all the finer distinctions between past and present dissolved into one long, continuous moment.
“John?”
Dare didn’t smile. This close to him, Anson could see the deep lines etched into his sunburned face and the tightness of the skin pulled over the cheekbones. The eyes, however, possessed some spirit yet.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. I got him here as fast as I could.”
“Leave him there. I’ll come down.”
Anson lowered himself into the skiff and quickly studied the wound. It was a large spatter but clean, and no vital area seemed compromised. Unfortunately there was no obvious spot where the lead had exited the body. Even so, the situation was not hopeless. At Antietam and for years afterwards, the arm would have had to come off below the shoulder, but now, with the proper attention, things might go better, though there was always a risk that the wound might prove fatal. So much depended on the degree of the fracture and, of course, on the patient’s strength. Thomas Lansdowne, Anson reflected grimly, had been in a weakened, worn-down condition of late.
The Englishman moaned. His blue eyes opened for a few seconds, glassy, apparently unseeing. Anson was sorry he did not have anything to give him for the pain.
“I’ll send for some whisky,” Dare said with unnerving prescience, then, without using his fingers, he emitted a high, piercing whistle.
The sound startled the hovering gulls and set off an even wilder chorus of shrieks.
Meanwhile, the plashing of other oars sounded nearby. Soon the tiny, still scene of Antietam, like something captured in a daguerreotype, would be invaded. Anson felt a rush of disappointment that he and Dare would not be given time for a reflective reunion, that they would have no immediate opportunity for a detailed talk. And yet, somehow the fact did not surprise him, was almost a natural extension of the haste and suffering they had known on the battlefield so long ago.
But Dare’s face showed no sign that he, too, was disappointed. It flared, as always, with an attendance on the welfare of others.
“I brought him here because I knew you’d be here,” he said.
Anson nodded as he stood. “Yes. I’ve had some experience with gunshot wounds.”
Dare didn’t appear to notice the irony. He clenched and unclenched his huge hands, which hung fish-scaled and brinish at his sides, and slowly turned his head in all directions. When the elderly Chinese, thin as a heron’s leg, drifted over the wharf, Dare instructed him to bring some whisky. The Chinese drifted away.
“I’ll carry him to the house.” Dare stepped toward the wounded man.
Anson gently touched Dare’s elbow. “I left my bag at Chilukthan. We’ll have to go there.”
Dare’s eyes turned downriver but not his head. His corneas were as blood-streaked as Thomas Lansdowne’s arm.
“I’m not welcome there,” he said.
“That much I know. But I’m not asking you to come to the house, just to the wharf. Besides, the circumstances…”
Dare turned to face the incoming skiffs. When he turned back, his face was blank.
“He’s already killed one of my Indians.”
“Killed? Who?”
“The bullet was meant for me.”
The last daylight trembled on the water. Only a bent sabre of red showed in the west. The seagulls began to fly inland, silently, in a loose formation. Anson shivered. If Thomas Lansdowne died or even lost his arm… Suddenly Anson realized why his old friend would be especially unwelcome at Chilukthan now.