right onto it. She went silent on the instant and gummed away at that nubbin. My stump was exactly acceptable to a cantankerous babe after suck.
I staggered on one wound and soothed with another.
It was the sudden silence I reckon that brung Sue Lee into the room, her eyes all suspicious. She watched my soothing exercise for a moment, not too thrilled with it, and said, “I suppose I’ll feed her.”
“Hell, no, you won’t,” I said. “I’ve just now got this thing under control.”
“She needs to be suckled, Jake.”
I gimped back toward the front room with old spoilsport giving chase. I turned away from her, and as she turned after me my leg gave out and I about fell. I wouldn’t want to hurt the babe for anything, so I had to give her up to Momma.
“Here now,” Sue Lee said. She sat in a chair by the window and cradled Grace to her chest. I was standing right there, but she unbuttoned her blouse and let a big pink-nippled breast flop out. Seeing one gave me a good notion of how the pair would look. She just stared right at me, a saucy, sassy gleam to her eyes, as Grace slurped after suck.
I collapsed to the floor. This business had always been kept private before. The scene this process made sort of jolted me. I had to watch it. That woman had a holy expression on her face that most any god would covet.
I slid across the floor to get closer. I sat at her feet and intently studied the effect of a nipple on a suckling child. Sue Lee studied me about as intently, but she didn’t turn away and she didn’t say scat.
My nature really rose seeing her that way. Probably it shouldn’t have, but, mister, it did.
At night Holt and me stretched out on the floor. I could tell by the way he breathed that he was awake. It had gotten to where sleep didn’t lead to rest. I suppose that after some weeks of safety, grief and shudders had caught up to us.
When I reckoned myself to be in slumber, a number of rude deeds were embellished in dreams. I had a glimpse of the black tongues on the hanged. Whole sequences of pistols and bloodied heads played out. Jack Bull Chiles tried to peel an apple with only one arm and a dripping stump. This one thing hit me over and over: a smart sprout of a Dutch boy being back-shot. And on one night of fevered fictions, Pitt Mackeson slinked up to finish the job on me.
This startled me awake. I sat up.
“Can’t sleep?” Holt asked.
“Naw. These quilts are too heavy. They make me sweat.”
“Mine, too.”
There were also the live nightmares to occupy my thoughts. Orton had gotten in the habit of relaying rumors about the boys and Black John. He said they were being hurt by the Federals but still did some fighting, a lot of robbing and too much scalping. He had claimed that Black John was dead, but I didn’t think it was so. I could well believe that the Cause had been set loose in the lust for loot. Anyone could have seen it coming.
I wondered if all the war I had slopped through had gone for naught, so I said to Holt, “Holt, was all that fighting for naught?”
I lit a candle while I waited on his answer.
“How would I know?” he said. The little flame flickered and did shadowy things on our faces. “What it is I do know is all them dead niggers in Lawrence. I can’t toss them dead niggers out of my mind.”
“It was a lot of dead types in Lawrence,” I said.
“They didn’t spare a single nigger.”
“They didn’t want to spare anybody, Holt.”
“Jake, what I think of the boys is this: niggers and Dutchies is their special targets. Why was we with them?”
“Why, to stop the Yankee aggressors.”
“But we didn’t stop them.”
“No.”
“And the boys shot you and the boys shot me.”
“That was personal,” I said. “Personal ain’t war.”
Holt chewed on that for a moment. He had a proud look on his face, and I knew he was lost for what to do next.
“George is dead, Jack Bull is dead, Riley is dead and Pitt Mackeson is alive. Now, where does that leave you and me, Jake? Where does that leave me?”
This was one of those times I was supposed to have an answer. But there was no revelations on my side of the