Long Remember by MacKinlay Kantor

Author:MacKinlay Kantor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

7.

By six o’clock, Bale estimated that at least three thousand men had passed along the Chambersburg Pike and through adjacent fields—more men than he had ever seen at one time before. They were squatting on the seminary campus, in the upper end of Fannings’ pasture, and all along the Fairfield road. Dust had risen, a solid blanket to lie from valley wall to valley wall, and every tree baked in its powdered coating; beyond Oak Ridge the stirring of the soldiers and their horses could be heard—a constant, muddled resonance as of untold tribes gossiping and herding together.

Dan bathed and put on clean clothes, but he had no great appetite for food. Nor had he eaten well since he returned from the west; when he looked at his naked trunk there were bones which he had not seen for years.

In the yard, his pump kept up its patient gouging. A hundred buckets had been filled, men gathered in the fresh and grassy mud to thrust their heads beneath the wooden spout, and still they came. A noticeable path had been trodden deeply through the new-cut weeds, marking across the rear lot to the rail fence, and another path marred the front yard. Men came booted, in neat jackets, in stocking feet; men in putrid undershirts, hard-faced youths who chewed tobacco. The windlass at the Fannings’ creaked endlessly, but Mrs. Knouse made it plain that bread and butter were the extent of her offering to the National army. She scampered back and forth from her larkspur bed to the front gate, warning gangs of water-seekers away. At first she tried to make apologetic explanations, but in the last hour her voice had grown raw, angrily peremptory. Now—now, she was hooting as fast as the soldiers appeared: now,—now, you men stay out of my lilies. It ain’t no need for you to be here; you get a drink some place else.

Dan had not seen Irene Fanning since Sunday afternoon. He spent the better part of an hour standing inside his kitchen window and staring across the open field: she is caged over there, I am caged here, by the hateful circumstance which has come to us both … He knew that he would need an authentic excuse, to cross to the other house, but every impulse demanded that he go to his woman at once, and share the menacing passage of time with her. Cybo had been jailed somewhere, out of sight; Demon went limping on foot to the village, and returned almost immediately … The sun moved into the top fringe of Oak Ridge trees. Excuse or not, with no palpable necessity—Dan could wait no longer.

He shut and locked front and rear doors; the side door had not been used for years, it was painted shut and probably nailed as well. Holding himself to a lounging stroll, he crossed the field. A gray mule with a U.S. brand and a ghastly sore on its flank, was poking about, strayed or wilfully abandoned.

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