Coal Black Horse (3 page)

“I know that's where my father will be,” he said.

“I ain't heard about Thomas Jackson dead,” old Morphew said, pulling on his chin. “Thomas Jackson being dead is hard to imagine. I don't know if I can feature that.”

“Ma says he's dead.”

“Your mother would know such a thing. She has the gift,” Morphew said. “Though I will say one thing to that.”

“What's that?”

“Prophesying the death of a man at war seems a safe-enough adventure.”

Morphew nodded toward the cracker barrel that he should fill his fist again, then told him what he had heard of the fighting but warned the news was a week old and even if it wasn't it was unreliable at best. He hooked his finger into the spigot and licked them clean.

“Where would I go to find the army?”

“Which army?”

“How many are there?” he asked. He felt his growing tiredness in the warm sweet room. He'd not slept the entire night and understood the ache in his belly to be as much of weariness as hunger. He settled more deeply into the soft-back chair, feeling as if heavy weights had been hung from his limbs.

“There's a lot of them,” Morphew was saying. “Last I heard they were in the valley and then they were on the Rappahannock. There's a pile of newspapers there by your feet. You could read up on it, but I wouldn't trust ‘em. It's news what's all thirdhand and second best, if you ask me.”

“My mother told me to travel south and east to the valley and then down the valley.”

“Far be it for me to contradict your mother, but that won't put you on the Rappahannock.”

“Where's the Rappahannock at?” He could hear himself speaking the words. The river made sense to him. His father told him to always defend a river on the far bank rather than the near bank and if the near bank was to be defended then do it behind it rather than at the water's edge.

“You go east,” Morphew said, and pointed in the direction of east with his pipe stem with such precision that Robey thought east must be a place just outside the wall of the mercantile. That's not so far, he thought.

“Ma told him she'd whip him and hate him forever if he went to war, but he went anyways.”

“You can't pound out of the bone what's in the blood,” Morphew said.

“He said it was in in my blood too.”

“Yessir, he's the travelinist man I ever knew.”

“You know you orta whittle a new bung for that molasses cask,” Robey said after a lull in the conversation, but already his brain felt thick with tiredness and collapse.

He did not know how long he slept in the soft-back chair. It was a short dreamless sleep that concluded as quickly as it had begun. He could hear the ticktack of the hammer and smell the sweetness. The boy was staring at him upside down, his legs bent at the knees and thrown behind him.

Old Morphew was still at his ledger book holding himself erect on his stiff arms. Again he said Morphew's name as if he had just arrived.

“You ain't running away to fight, are you?” Morphew said sternly.

“No sir,” he said, and he was beset with an urgency to get on his way. It was clear to him he never should have stopped. So early in his journey and already he'd conspired to delay himself at the mercantile. It was not his prerogative to doubt his mother's advice, was not his to question or confirm the recondite principles of her clairvoyance.

“You wouldn't lie to me?” Morphew demanded.

“I don't lie.”

“No, I don't suppose you do.” He pushed a pouch of smoking tobacco across his ledger. “Take this here for your father. He'll want it sure enough, and this too,” he said, and pushed
forward another pouch full of coffee beans. “He can settle up when he gets back.”

“I will be leaving now,” Robey said, and stood. “I have a long ways to go and I am anxious to get back soon.”

“Good luck,” Morphew told him and, stump-legged, followed him onto the porch, with the upside down boy tagging along. The sun had lifted from the horizon and held at a quarter in the sky — he'd slept that long. The cobby horse was lathered and woebegone, her head hanging on her neck. Parked beside the road was a work-sprained ox cart and the teamster carrying a bucket of water to the team. Roped inside the bed of the cart was a nailed coffin made of undressed white-bleached poplar.

“Who you got there?” Morphew yelled out from under the porch roof.

“Mister Skagg's boy,” the teamster said, after he located the voice calling him.

“He used to live around here,” Robey said.

“Wal', he don't no more,” Morphew said.

They watched the teamster deliver another bucket to the thirsty oxen. He wore a black felt hat, a bright red shirt, and trousers ragged at his ankles. His unlined skin was the color of coffee.

“Where you bound from?” Morphew yelled.

“We come up from Lynchburg. Mister Skagg's boy died in hospital there and I am to bring him home.”

“How'd he die?”

The teamster dragged his felt hat from his head and held it to his breast. He rubbed at his head trying to figure an answer.

“I just don't know, sir. He was asleep when it happened and didn't tell.”

“Damned old fool,” Morphew muttered, and then turned his attention to Robey. “It looks to me like you got to the bottom of that horse. How you gonna get where you're going on that ride?”

“I'll just have to walk when the time comes,” he said, experiencing an awful sinking of the heart. One look at the cobby horse and he knew that time had come indeed.

“It's a long ways from here and it looks to me like the time is closer than you think. Maybe I can fix you up.”

He looked to the teamster and then to the smith down the road at his forge and gestured that Robey should follow him. Behind the mercantile in the lean-to stable, a horse could be heard thrumming through its nose and stamping the wall. Morphew entered the shadowed light of the lean-to and when he returned he was leading the horse forward. It was coal black, stood sixteen hands, and it was clear to see the animal suffered no lack of self-possession.

“That is an oncommon horse,” Robey said, unable to help himself in his admiration.

“He's a warm blood,” Morphew said, “and I will tell you one thing. When he goes, he goes some bold.”

“Who does he belong to?”

“The man who rode him in here died in that cane-bottom soft-back chair not a week ago and I buried him in the cemetery. That's to say the horse's ownership is in limbo but in my possession, so you can say he's mine right now.”

“I have never seen a horse like that.”

“The German says he's a Hanovarian. He's a fine horse,
with an equable disposition, but I'll warn you, he don't much like other horses.”

“Which side were he on?”

“The man or the horse?”

“It don't much matter, does it?”

“Not if you're dead now, does it?”

From the darkness of the stable's interior, Morphew fetched a bridle, blanket, and saddle with holsters draping the pommel. He then fished into the black space where the rafters crossed the beam.

“You know what these are?”

“Yes sir.”

“What are they?”

“Army Colts.”

“Of course you do. They are .44 Army Colts. Do you know how to use them?”

“Yes sir.”

“Show me how.”

Robey cradled one of the the revolvers in his hands, hefting its weight and sighting along the length of its barrel. He deftly knocked out the pin and removed the cylinder and then looked to Morphew who produced a box of cartridges, percussion caps, and grease. Robey tore the covering from one of the cartridges and poured the powder into the chamber and then seated the bullet. After he loaded the cylinders he greased the head of each bullet. He then set a brass cap at the rear of each chamber. Then he repeated the process with the second revolver.

“Take them,” Morphew said. “The horse and the pistols.”

“I can't do that,” he said. “Ma said I warn't to ask for no help.”

Morphew thrust out his lower lip and scrutinized him before he spoke and when he finally did he began in anger and with impatience.

“Talking like that tells me you ain't got half sense to be out here doing what you're doing.”

Morphew's breathing caught in his throat and he had to draw down into his lungs to find it again. His face reddened and his words became dull mutterings as water slid from his right eye. A pain passed through him taking the color from his cheeks. When he spoke again his throat was constricted and his words were as if winnowed in his throat channel.

“I respect your mother. She is an uncommon woman among women, but you just can't go boggling around the countryside. Things out there ain't like they used to be.”

“How's that?”

“You used to be able to trust people.”

In old Morphew's urgent composition were unspoken words: But I still trust you.

“You saddle and bridle this horse and you meet me out front. I will write you a paper saying this horse is mine, which by rights it is, and that currently it is in your custody.”

Morphew turned his back and stumped over the worn ground, making the short distance between the stable and the mercantile.

He was alone with the horse and as he studied it, he understood the horse to be making decisions about him as well. He'd not known such a horse as this had ever been made and could not help but feel inferior to the animal. He was a young stallion and through his body he was deep and big set. His head was light in build and his eyes were large. His neck was
long and fine and his tail set high, but his shoulders were built massive. His muscles were dense and ran strong and wide in the loin. His legs were short in the cannon bones but his joints supple, strong, and substantial. His hoofs were high in front, behind and below, and the frog carried well off the ground.

He stepped forward and touched his hands to its long face. The coal black horse let his stroke to its cheek, neck, and muzzle. He then stroked its back and shoulders and worked his way down each leg, increasing the strength of his touch on the wide forearms and gaskins. He caught the horse's eyes with his own and the horse seemed inclined to tolerate him, if not be actually fond of him. After working his hands firmly over the animal's body, he bridled the coal black horse and set the blanket. He cinched the rig, and after telling the horse what he was going to do he caught the stirrup, swung up, and settled in the saddle. He then told the horse he was ready and the horse was willing.

When he rode around front, old Morphew was sitting in a rocker he'd dragged onto the porch. The upside-down boy was playing his hands as close to the rockers as he could without pinching his fingers. Morphew had a gunnysack for him with cans of deviled ham, pork and beans, and condensed milk. He pulled himself erect and labored his body from the porch.

“Don't get cocky riding that horse,” he said as he adjusted the stirrup leathers. “A man rides a horse like that he begins to think he's above every other man.”

Old Morphew then stepped back from the horse's side. Youthfulness twinkled inside him. He enjoyed the businessman's satisfaction of a completed transaction well done. It
was in seeing his pleasure that Robey determined the old man must have experienced a recent great terror inside his heart cage or the depths of his mind and only now, frightened and wounded, was returning to himself.

“Rupert,” Morphew yelled over to the German, “how is it you're not drunk today?”

Without pausing in his work, the bent man thrust the middle finger of his right hand over his head. Morphew laughed at this — a mischievous little game they played.

“Hunchbacks are often smarter than we are,” he said, as if it were a truth underappreciated.

“Don't that boy ever stand up?” Robey said.

“No,” Morphew said, casting a glance at the boy walking on his hands. “As a matter of fact he don't. He is an upside-down boy. Bet you've never heard or seen one of them.”

“No sir. I don't believe I have.”

“Well, you are in for an education and I just hope you live long enough to tell about it.”

“I will.”

“That's right. You find your father,” he said, waving him away, “and you bring him home and we'll settle up.”

With that, he rode off on the coal black horse with the heavy revolvers in the holsters at his thighs. As he disappeared from sight, Morphew noticed the German had wandered to his porch and was suddenly standing at his side. The German marveled on the beauty of the horse's flowing movement, its grace in stride, and he commented with small wonder on the horse's affinity for the boy.

“It's a horse that leaves quite an impression,” Morphew said.

“It is the kind of horse that can get you killed.”

“I thought about that.”

“And what did you think when you thought about that?”

“I thought a lot of things. I thought about his mother. I thought about how he's his father's son and he is a-goin' either way he can. I thought how gettin' in trouble ain't hard, but gettin' out of it is.”

“I thought you'd think how where he's going the horse might be smarter than him.”

“I thought that too.”

It was beautiful to ride the back of the coal black horse and in those first days of journey they traveled constantly. The valley when he discovered it was luxuriant with grass and clover. The red-clay roads were wide and hard packed and the road cuts were dry and banked.

As the days drew by they passed silently through fields, swamps, pastures and orchards. They rode through marsh where the water table was only a few spades deep, but the corduroyed lanes of passage were high set and well staked. They crossed acres of fresh turned earth, plowed straight and harrowed and sown with wheat, rye, and oats shooting the surface and knitting it green. They encountered walls of pine so thick it took days to skirt to find a throughway and when they did it was through a land of wind-thrown trees, or dead on the stump, the crooked and angled limbs bleached white with sun.