White Doves at Morning

"How's that?"

"You lose a war, then spend every day of your life losing it again in your head. Never seen a bunch so keen on beating theirself up all the time."

"I think you're a man of great wisdom, young Tige," Willie said. Robert Perry walked through the rows of crypts and slung a canvas choke sack on the bed of Willie's wagon. It made a hard, knocking sound when it struck the wood. His skin was deeply tanned, freckled with sunlight under the mimosa, his uncut hair bleached on the tips. The wind gusted behind him, ruffling the leaves in the tree, and the countryside suddenly fell into shadow. "It's going to rain again," Robert said.

"Looks like it," Willie replied.

"Why don't you tell people where you're going once in a while?" he asked.

"Out of sorts today?" Willie said.

"That worthless fellow Rufus Atkins was drunk down in the bottoms this morning. The word is he and this McCain character, the one who runs the hardware store, put on their sheets last night and paid Flower Jamison a call," Robert said.

"Say that again?" Willie said, rising to his feet.

"Ah, I figured right," Robert said.

"Figured what?"

"You couldn't wait to put your hand in it as soon as you heard," Robert said.

"What's in that bag?" Willie asked.

"My law books."

"What else?"

"My sidearm," Robert said.

Chapter Twenty-eight

ABIGAIL Dowling whipped her buggy horse down the road and into the entrance of Rufus Atkins' property. She felt a sickness in her chest and a dryness in her throat that she could compare only to a recurrent dream in which she was peering over the rim of a canyon into the upended points of rocks far below. She waited for the voices to begin, the ones that had called her a traitor and poseur who fed off the sorrow and the inadequacies of others, the voices that had always drained her energies and robbed her of self-worth and denied her a place in the world that she could claim as her own. But this time she would fight to keep them in abeyance; she would rid herself of self-excoriation and for once in her life surrender herself to a defining, irrevocable act that would not only set her free but save an innocent like Flower Jamison from bearing a cross that an unjust world had placed on her shoulders.

What would her father say to her now? God, she missed him. He was the only human being whose word and wisdom she never doubted. Would he puff on his pipe silently, his eyes smiling with admiration and approval? But she already knew the answer to her question. That jolly, loving, Quaker physician who could walk with beggars and princes would have only one form of advice for her in this situation, and it would not be what she wanted to hear.

She cracked the whip on her horse's back and tried to empty her mind of thoughts about her father. She would think about the pistol that rested on the seat beside her, substituting one worry for another, and concentrate on questions about the residue of dried mud she had seen wedged between the cylinder and the frame and inside the trigger guard, about the possibility the caps were damp or that mud was impacted inside the barrel.

The rain was as hard and cold as hail on her skin. The convicts were climbing down from the house frame, raking water out of their hair and beards, grinning at the prospect of getting off work early. She reined up her horse and stepped down into the mud.

"Hold up there, missy," the foreman said.

His stomach was the size of a washtub and he wore an enormous vest buttoned across it and a silver watch on a chain. A black trusty guard in prison stripe pants and a red shirt and a palmetto hat stood behind him, the stock of a shotgun propped casually against his hip, his ebony skin slick with rain, his eyes fastened on the outdoor kitchen under the live oak where the cooks were preparing the midday meal.

"My business is with Mr. Atkins," she said.

"Hit ain't none of mine, then. But, tell me, missy, what's that you got hid behind your leg?" the foreman said.

"Are you a Christian man?"

"I try to be."

"If you'd like to see Jesus today, just get in my way and see what happens," she said.

The foreman snapped open the cover on his watch and looked at the time, then snapped the cover closed again and replaced the watch in his vest pocket. "I reckon I've had enough folks fussing at me in one day. How about we eat us some of them beans?" he said to the trusty guard.

Abigail stepped up on the plank walkway that led to Rufus Atkins' tent. The rain was slackening now, the sun breaking from behind a cloud, and the sky seemed filled with slivers of glass. She paused in front of the tent flap and cocked back the hammer on the revolver with both thumbs.

Then her hands began to shake and she lowered the pistol, her resolve draining from her like water through the bottom of a cloth sack. Why was she so weak? Why could she not do this one violent act in defense of a totally innocent creature whom the world had abused for a lifetime? In this moment, caught between the brilliance of the rain slanting across the sun and the grayness of the cane fields behind her, she finally knew who she was, not only a poseur but an empty vessel for whom stridence had always been a surrogate for courage.