White Doves at Morning

"I'm going to fix you something to eat," she said.

He watched her go out the door and cross the lawn in the shadows and mount the back steps to her cottage. The wind blew through the oaks and he could smell rain and the moldy odor of blackened leaves and pecan husks in the yard. When he rose from the tub the building tilted under his feet, as though something were torn loose inside his head and would not right itself with the rest of the world.

He sat on the wood bench and dressed in the cotton shirt and brown pants Abigail had given him. Civilian clothes felt strange on his body, somehow less than what a man should wear, effete in some way he couldn't describe. He picked up his uniform from the floor and rolled it into a cylinder and went inside the cottage. "I have to find the 18th," he said.

"You'll go a half block before you pass out again," she said.

"Colonel Mouton was shot in the face at Shiloh. But he was back at it the next day. You don't get to resign, Abby."

"Who needs you more, Willie, your mother or the damn army?" He smiled at her and began walking toward the front door, knocking into the furniture, as rudderless as a sleepwalker. She caught him by the arm and walked him into her bedroom and pushed him into a sitting position on the mattress. The room was dark,

the curtains puffing in the wind.

"Lie down and sleep, Willie. Don't fight with it anymore. It's like fighting against an electrical storm. No matter what we do or don't do, eventually calamity passes out of our lives," she said.

"Do you see Jim Stubbefield's father?"

"Sometimes."

"He carried the guidon straight uphill into their cannons. They blew his brains all over my shirt. I'll never get over Jim. I hate the sons of bitches who caused all this."

He felt her fingers stroking his hair, then he put his arms around her hips and pulled her body against his face and held her more tightly than was reasonable or dignified, burying his face in her stomach, touching the backs of her thighs now, raising his head to her breasts, gathering her dress in both his hands.

She lay down with him, and he kissed her mouth and eyes and neck and felt the roundness of her breasts and put his hand between her thighs, without shame or even embarrassment at the nakedness of his own need and dependence.

It was raining in the trees and the bayou, and he could smell grass burning inside the rain and hear the cough of the mortar round called Whistling Dick. He climbed between Abigail Dowling's thighs and kissed the tops of her breasts and put her nipples in his mouth, then kissed the flat taper of her stomach and raised himself up on his arms while she cupped his sex with her palm and placed it inside her.

He came a moment later, early on beyond any attempt at self-control, his eyes tightly shut. Inside his mind he saw an endless field of dead soldiers under a night sky rimmed by hills that looked like women's breasts. But even as his heart twisted inside him and his seed filled her womb, he knew the safe harbor and succor she had given him were an act of mercy, and the tenderness in her eyes and the caress of her thighs and the kiss he now felt on his cheek were the gifts granted to a needy supplicant and not to a lover.

He lay next to her and looked at the shadows on her face.

"I'm sorry my performance is not the kind Sir Walter Scott would have probably been interested in writing about," he said.

"Oh, no, you were fine," she said, and touched the top of his hand.

He stared at the ceiling, wondering why ineptitude seemed to follow him like a curse.

He heard a plank creak on the front gallery and a knock on the door.

"Miss Abigail, the Yankees set fire to the laundry. They attacked some girls in the quarters. You in there, Miss Abby?" the voice of Flower Jamison said.

Chapter Sixteen

FLOWER had to wait outside almost five minutes before Abigail Dowling finally came to the door. Then she saw Willie Burke step out of the bedroom into the glow of the living room lamp and her face tightened with embarrassment.

"I'm sorry. I reckon I caught y'all at supper," she said.

"Come in, Flower," Abigail said, holding back the door.

"How you do, Mr. Willie?" Flower said.

"Hello, Flower. It's good to see you again. Miss Abby says you've been doing splendidly with your lessons." His voice was thick, his cheeks pooled with color, as though he had a fever. His eyes did not quite meet hers.

"Thank you, suh," she said.

"What was that about the laundry?" Abigail asked.

"Some Yankees came across the fields and started pushing people out of the cabins. They drug a corn-shuck mattress behind the laundry and chased down some girls and drug them back there, too. When they were finished they lit a cannonball and threw it through the kitchen".