White Doves at Morning

He walked out into the rain, splattering his white pants with mud. "Get that old man off there!" he yelled at the foreman.

"Off what?" the foreman asked.

"Off the house. Right there. Why is he wearing purple pants?" Ira replied.

"That ain't no old man up there, Kunnel," the foreman said, half grinning. Then he looked at the expression on Ira's face. "I'll get him down, suh. Ain't nothing here to worry about."

"Good," Ira said, and went back inside the tent and closed the flap. The rain was clicking hard on the canvas now. It had been a mistake to come here, one born purely out of pride, he thought. What was to be gained by confronting Rufus Atkins personally? He was going to pull his convict labor off Atkins' property and ruin his credit by running a newspaper notice to the effect he would not co-sign any of Atkins' loan applications or be responsible for his debts. Ira computed it would take about six weeks for Atkins' paltry business operations to collapse.

When you could do that much damage to a man with a three-dollar newspaper advertisement, why waste time dealing with him on a personal basis?

It was time for a fine lunch and a bottle of good wine and the company of people who weren't idiots. Maybe he should think about a trip to Nashville to see his old friend General Forrest.

He smiled at a story that was beginning to circulate about the regard in which Forrest had been held by General Sherman. After Forrest had driven every Yankee soldier from the state of Mississippi, Sherman supposedly assembled his staff and said, "I don't care what it takes. Lose ten thousand men if you have to. But kill that goddamn sonofabitch Bedford Forrest."

Nathan should have that put on his tombstone, Ira thought.

But where was that tune coming from? In his mind's eye he saw hand-carved wooden horses turning on a miniature merry-go-round, the delicately brushed paint worn by time, the windup key rotating as the music played inside the base.

For just a moment he felt a sense of theft about his life that was indescribable. He tore through the other rooms in the tent, searching for the origin of the sound, kicking over a chair with a black Kluxer robe hung on the back. Then, through a crack in the rear flap, he saw it, a wind chime tinkling on a wood post. He ripped it from the nail that held it and stalked back through Atkins' sleeping area, then ducked through the mosquito netting and curtain that separated it from the front room.

He smelled an odor like camphor and per

fume, like flowers pressed between the pages of an old book or blood that had dried inside a balled handkerchief. He straightened his back, the chime clenched in his hand, and thought he saw his mother's silhouette beckoning for him to approach her, the wide folds of her dark blue dress like a portal into memories that he did not want to relive.

WILLIE tethered his team under a huge mimosa tree on the edge of St. Peter's Cemetery, mixed mortar in a wheelbarrow, and bricked together a foundation for Jim's crypt. Then he dragged Jim's box on top of the foundation and began bricking and mortaring four walls around the box. Clouds tumbled across the sky and he could smell wildflowers and salt inside the wind off the Gulf. As he tapped each brick level with the handle of the trowel, the sun warm on his shoulders, he tried to forget the insult that Tige had flung in his face.

If it had come from anyone else, he thought. But Tige was uncanny in his intuition about the truth.

Was it indeed Willie's fate to forever mourn the past, to dwell upon the war and the loss of a love that was probably not meant to be? Had he made his journey to Shiloh less out of devotion to a friend than as a histrionic and grandiose attempt at public penance? Was he simply a self-deluded fool?

There are days when I wish I had fallen at your side, Jim.

You were always my steadfast pal, Willie. Don't talk like that. You have to carry the guidon tor both of us.

I'll never get over the war. I'll never forget Shiloh.

You don't need to, you ole groghead. You were brave. Why should we have to forget? That's for cowards. One day you'll tell your grandchildren you scouted for Bedford Forrest.

And a truly odious experience it was, Willie said. He thought he heard Jim laugh inside the bricks. He saw a shadow break across his own. He turned on his knee, splattering himself with mortar from the trowel.

"Sorry I said them words," Tige said. He took off his kepi and twirled it on the tip of his finger.

"Which words would those be?" Willie said, grinning at the edge of his mouth, one eye squinted against the sunlight.

"Saying Miss Abigail didn't have no interest in you. Saying you didn't care about nobody except dead people."

"I must have been half-asleep, because I have no memory of it," Willie said.

"You sure can tell a mess of fibs, Willie Burke."

"You didn't happen to bring some lunch with you, did you?"

"No, but Robert Perry was looking for you."

"Now, why would noble Robert be looking for the likes of me?"

"Ask him, 'cause there he comes yonder. Y'all are a mysterious kind," Tige said.