Bloodroot by Daniel V. Meier Jr

Author:Daniel V. Meier Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BQB Publishing
Published: 2021-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

We talked until well after dark and until Wilcox returned, drunk and staggering about, holding a half-empty bottle of wine in one hand and a flickering candle dripping hot wax in the other. He stopped a few paces inside the door and, holding up the bottle, drank from it until the wine overflowed his mouth and ran like thin blood down his neck. He then sat the candle and the bottle on a ledge he had made above his bed.

“Those goddamn sailors,” he said, spitting his words out. “They’ll stick you in the arse and steal your last shilling. A savage is a better Christian,” he said, flinging off his hat and then pulling out a pistol from his shirt. He aimed it out of the door in the direction of the ships.

Richard leaped up and, with kind words, took the pistol away from him and helped him to his bed, where he instantly fell into a snoring sleep. Richard looked at the pistol for a moment, then placed it on the shelf beside the wine bottle, then blew out the candle.

I had lost the appetite for further conversation, and Richard, sensing I was weary, excused himself, saying that he must visit Tatahcoope while he had the time allotted.

I soon fell asleep and did not stir until I was roused early in the morning, about two o’clock, with a shout, then a pistol report. Ordinarily I would have thought nothing of it, shouts and gunfire being a common thing in our fort at night. But I had a particularly uneasy feeling. I quietly got out of bed, slipped into my britches, and felt my way to the door.

Several men with torches were bent down over the crumpled form of a man lying near the center of the fort. Other men were running, with torches held high, toward the scene. I hobbled over to them and pushed my way through to the center. There, twisted into a small snail-like shape, lay Mr. Greene, his eyes staring now with the gaze of death. His bloody face, turned up, looked like the horrible face of a demon rising from Hell. His hand still gripped the pistol that he had used. It was Wilcox’s pistol, the one that Richard had laid over his bed.

One of the soldiers who had been on guard recognized me and, knowing that Greene had come with me from the falls, sought to explain.

“I thought he was a drunken sailor, but I wasn’t sure. He could have been a savage, disguised as one of our men. How was I to know? I ordered him to identify himself, and when he didn’t, I commanded him to stop. He did, and then he shot himself. There was only the weak light from the church and the storehouse. I couldn’t see him clearly.”

I said that he should not blame himself.

“Greene was a sick man in mind and body,” I said, and promised to explain his action to the Captain myself.

“Poor devil,” someone said.

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