Soldier's Promise: excerpted from The Lambs of Men

by Charles Dodd White

North Georgia, 1920

The dogs stayed clear of the horse, but once Hiram dismounted and came up to the house they were at him, snouting at his boots and hands, lapping their big tongues over him. He spoke their names and talked to them in a voice reserved only for children and creatures until they fell in step with him, walking at his side with a toss of their heads and switching tails, as if they were responsible for bringing this great wonder to their sanctuary.

"I see they ain't forgot your smell," Mrs. Buchanan said from the porch. She held in her hands a black skillet as big as an empty belly. Hiram could smell the bacon newly fried.

"I guess I've still got the old stink on me, then."

She smiled. "Take that horse around back. I might be able to find a place at the table for you."

Hiram said that he would be pleased to and led the cob horse into an empty stall, rubbed it down and came back to the front, wiping his boots on the sharp edge of a quartz etched stone before he mounted the stairs and walked on in to the house. Mrs. Buchanan had already set the plates out on the counter—only three. He knew what that meant.

"Mr. Buchanan?"

"Last spring, nearly a year ago."

Hiram held the brim of his hat in his hands. "I'm mighty sorry for not knowing."

She reached out and touched him on the cheek. "Lord, Hiram, we all knew it was coming. It was just a matter of when. I think he hung on those last couple of years for Henry's sake."

"Your husband was a mighty good man."

"He was that." She set a basket of warm biscuits in the center of the table and arranged three silver spoons fanwise for butter and preserves. "Why don't you go get Henry up? He won't even budge for me."

He moved back through the long hall, picking up his canine escort once more, and came to the shut door at the far end. He stood there a minute before he rapped three times hard on the panel and received no answer. The dogs snuffled against the doorknob, rattling it softly in its mounting. He knocked again.

"I'll be up in a bit, Mama."

Hiram repeated the three sharp knocks.

"Damn, I said I was comin."

"This ain't your Mama, soldier. This is reveille."

"Who in the hell?"

Hiram opened the door on his friend sitting up in bed with frazzled sandy hair standing like the bristles of a riled wolf. Henry's red-rimmed eyes glared out of disturbed sleep until Hiram stepped in the room and Henry had a chance to study him. It took only a moment to call his friend's name and great smiles wrecked both their faces.

"You've gotten lazy."

"Sure. That's one of the snares of civilian livin." He studied Hiram's military uniform. "I see you ain't given up the service."

"No, but it's about given up on me," Hiram said. "Hell, enough time for chatter. Your Mama's got some hot breakfast in there for us. Let's get goin."

Hiram knew what he would see next. He had heard what had happened from his mother in one of her last letters to him, had seen similar things to men in his own battalion, but when Henry whipped off his blanket and swung himself from his place on the bed down to the puncheon floor and slammed his callused fists down like a pair of mallets, swinging his torso and what few inches remained of his legs in a seesawing motion, Hiram had to look away.

Henry glanced over his shoulder. "You comin?"

Hiram felt his voice thicken. "Yeah, I'm comin."

By the time Hiram went into the kitchen, Henry had already climbed up into his chair at the head of the table and was drinking a cup of coffee his mother had set before him, the ropey muscles in his forearms alive and serpentine even when at rest. Hiram sat down and Mrs. Buchanan set all of their plates. Then she laid her hands on both their shoulders while she remained standing and said the blessing over both of them. Neither Hiram nor Henry chorused her Amen.

"When'd you get in?"

"Day before yesterday. By way of Sanction."

"That's a good ride," Henry said.

"I stopped at Daddy's yesterday."

"How's your Daddy, Hiram?" Mrs. Buchanan asked. "I'm sorry to say I haven't kept up with him since your Mama's passin."

"He's fine, I guess. About the same as always."

"Tell him I asked."

"I will when I see him."

"You aim to get your own place, then, instead of stayin with your Daddy?" Henry asked. "Yeah, I'm gonna need to. Probably lease me a place out from one of the storekeeps in Dahlonega, maybe, or up in Murphy."

Henry laughed, shaping his mouth carefully around the rim of his coffee cup. "That's a mighty broad sweep between Dahlonega and Murphy. You aim to be a wandering soul?"

"It's what they've got me up here for. The marines, I mean. I'm the new recruiter up in these parts."

Henry roared with laughter and thumped the table with a flattened palm. "Well good luck, is all I can say. Anybody wearing a uniform of the United States government up here ain't exactly the most popular feller right now."

Hiram smiled. "I'm not sure they ever were."

They fell to their meal with no more talk of the service or family and enjoyed the simple agreement of being in one another's company after so long. After they had finished eating Mrs. Buchanan cleared the table and encouraged them to take their conversation onto the porch to enjoy the warming weather.

The two men took her suggestion to sun themselves out front while they watched the dripping thaw and listened to a flock of wild turkey cluck and scratch at the wet leaves just beyond the tree line. Henry's mother brought them out a steel pot of fresh coffee and slipped back inside without a word. They continued talking until midday until they decided to ride down to Lincoln to see what trouble might be found there. Hiram hitched an old buckboard to the grey cob horse who stamped and shivered when married to the wheeled contraption but got used to it readily enough, trotting on. Hiram held the reins while Henry jostled beside him on the narrow seat.

They rode down the old trace through the second growth forest, the tall trees sketching lean shadows on the ground where streaks of vanishing snow still lingered. They stopped at a dogleg when they saw fresh sign of bear and discussed the likely business of that creature in that place and his direction of movement. Then they continued on, riding down the gentle slope until they came into the first proper clearings of the hamlet.

They passed only a few men on the square as they rode up to the store and Hiram sat holding the horse while Henry monkey-climbed his way from the runner and propelled himself through the front doorway with the smash of his shoulder against the swinging board. When he came back a minute later, he gained his place on the seat and had Hiram put the horse in motion. They rode on through the square without stopping again.

"I'm gonna take you up to my wife's place. She'll set us up right," Henry smiled.

Hiram studied his friend for signs of a prank but saw nothing.

They found the peat house at the base of a hillock under several hairy cedars and a few big maples naked for the winter. Its roof was not more than seven feet from main beam to earthen foundation. A single window was shuttered with an age faded strip of bark, allowing sight of the faintest glimmer of lantern light within, a humble yet hospitable abode that appeared not as some structure dragged violently out of conflict with the elements of the natural world but in agreement with it, a benign eccentricity of soil and desire wrought by a skilled hand.

Henry swung down to the ground as soon as Hiram put the horse to rest and beat on the little door but received no answer.

"Atlanta, dammit. Drag your hide outta bed."

He yanked at the door but found it locked. He thumped his fist against the bark once more.

"Maybe she ain't home," Hiram said.

"She's home, alright. Atlanta!"

Even from where he sat, Hiram could hear sounds of movement inside, the shuffle of feet heavy on the packed dirt floor. A latch was thrown and the doorway suddenly filled with an image of hazardously exasperated womanhood. She was big with hair the color of brick and a complexion only one roseate hue removed. Even from a distance her appearance was tinged with a furious and implacable heat, like an electrical storm or a heart about to explode. Her wild hair grazed the lintel post of the little door even though she had stooped in order to look Henry in the eye, making her a good six feet, if not an inch or two taller. She wore only the flannel sheet of her bedding, wrapped around her vast humanity like a toga, a pagan goddess rising up in full regalia to meet the petty annoyances posed by mere men.

Hiram, rooted to his seat in the wagon, watched the pair with undisguised amazement.

"Who in the hell is he?" Atlanta demanded, stabbing Hiram with a dark glare. "I told you, Henry, I don't want you bringin your drunk friends up around here. This is my house, you understand? My house!"

Henry, his rancor crumbling in the face of his sweetheart's rage, drew his hand to her waist and let it rest there against her soft ocean of a belly as he spoke words of supplication and tenderness. Hiram realized then that Atlanta was pregnant.

After a few minutes of Henry's efforts at reconciliation, Hiram was allowed to come down and receive introduction. Atlanta shook his hand like a man and watched him with her fists on her hips.

"You in the army with Henry?" she asked.

"No ma'am. He went up with the Canadians before I was old enough to join. Henry here's the one who taught me to hunt."

"Taught you a few other things than that, too, if I remember," Henry put in with a wry smile.

"Yessir. I imagine that's true."

"Well, I guess you'd be wantin to sit down for a spell."

"I wouldn't mind it, no ma'am."

Upon entering the earthen house, Hiram was commanded to remove his shoes. He did so. Though the interior was small, the few chairs and tables were placed to allow an ease of movement throughout and Henry and Hiram were made comfortable in a pair of rocking chairs padded with down filled cushions. They passed a few minutes in one another's solitary company while Atlanta busied herself with some preparation in the back room.

"Your Mama know about this wife business?" Hiram asked.

"Hell, no. She'd have me run off to the crazy house if she did. Either that or have the preacher come and try to save me all over again."

"That's a pretty big secret to keep."

"Well, I've managed to keep it fine, so don't go runnin your mouth."

"I didn't say I was goin to say nothin."

"Well fine, then. Don't."

When Atlanta returned, she held a pair of cob pipes. She handed one to Hiram and the other to Henry and then lit them both. The smoke was strong and sweet in the confines of the small room and after a few puffs Hiram felt like he was plummeting through the peat walls behind him, his skeleton coming loose in the space between where he sat in the chair and where he felt his presence peeling toward the earth. He turned his head and looked at Henry who smiled and nodded, his eyes heavily lidded and subdued.

"My Atlanta takes care of me," he said dreamily.

Hiram continued smoking, fastening his eyes to the oval rug at his feet with its intricate and writhing loops. Atlanta sat drinking a small cup of spice bush tea.

"So you come up here in that suit to drag other boys off, I guess."

It took Hiram a moment to realize he was the object of the speaker's swimming voice and that the voice belonged to Atlanta. He tried to shape his mouth with some words of retort, but the greater his effort the more distant the prospect of language became. He contented himself with a bleary stare.

"Man like you was the one who got my brother sent off to the war. Didn't even get half a dozen letters from him before he was dead. Shot by some German sniper in a place he couldn't pronounce."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Hiram coughed out, wanting to be away from these constrictive surroundings, feeling the fresh air around him diminish, giving way to the foul smoke.

"Yeah, it was sorry all right."

She stood and went back to the kitchen and in a minute returned with a clay mug of the tea.

"Here, drink it. It'll clear your head."

He took it and did as she said and within a few minutes he sensed the ground stiffening beneath his feet and his body returning to itself, the illusion of his soul and body coming apart exchanged for the illusion of his body and soul made whole. He looked at Henry who contentedly snored in a patch of dingy lantern light.

"Do you really love him? Like he is now, I mean." Hiram asked.

Atlanta gutted him with her eyes.

"I'll do you the favor of never repeatin what you just said to me, and I'll thank you to never ask me that again. Maybe that's answer enough for you. Now when he's fit, make sure you take him on home."

***

Late that afternoon, Hiram and Henry began the long ride back to Mrs. Buchanan's house with a cold wind coming off the mountain tops crowned with Canadian firs, the spired trees growing indigo in the winter sunset. At twilight they watched a herd of does moving along a ridgeline paralleling the causeway, the deer's breath visible in the air as a smoky chain loosed on the last faded illumination of the day already gone. They talked about the beauty of such a sight and afterwards rode through the darkness while Hiram silently remembered how many wonders and horrors he and his friend had seen and learned to accept in what were still such young lives. He knew there was something tragic in having been asked so much by life so soon, but he supposed they were not alone in this. Maybe that was the deeper concern of maturity, to protect other boys from the ghosts that stood waiting to lobby for their spirits. But how could any one man ever truly have that much power over fate? From what Hiram had seen, men were doomed to repeat the sins of not only their fathers, but all their ancient forebears on back to Cain. That was the true mark upon man, tattooed down into his very nerves.

When they came into the yard late and put the horse up for the night, they were careful to bed down quietly so that they would not disturb Henry's mother with any sounds that might give her alarm. Hiram stretched out on the hard floor at the foot of Henry's bed and they both sat up listening to a screech owl trilling nearby, whispering about hunting trips they remembered from years past on nights not unlike this one. Then the owl ceased its call. They both caught their breath in a shallow rhythm, as if guarding their souls from whatever dark predator could silence one of its own.

© 2010 Night Train and respective authors/email support AT nighttrainmagazine.com