“Hit’s the real thing this time. They give us a last warning or they’ll treat us like traitors. They’re sending in airplanes with bombs. Some of the boys is already leaving. The leadership’s in the field, pulling them out personal.”

“No. We’re going over tonight.”

“Rondal, we cant beat the U.S. Army. I been in it and I know. They say the newspapers is full of this here. They say hit’s a revolution and they wont stand for it.”

I flung the bottle down the hill and it busted on a rock. A burst of machine gun fire answered me up the ridge.

“They got poison gas!” Talcott whispered fiercely. “They’re a fixing to use it. I seen that, brother. Hit burns. Hit rots out the inside of a man’s head.”

“So what are you going to do? Turn tail?” I pushed him away and he toppled over backward. “You’re supposed to be so damn tough,” I mocked. “But you got your limit, dont you?”

“I seen the gas,” he pleaded. “Jesus, I was in that Army.”

“You turned tail!”

“Hit’s them that’s turned, not me. They aint no Americans.”

I snatched up my gun and ran from him, up the mountain. I dodged a stand of mountain laurel. Bullets picked chunks of bark from the oak beside me. Then a weight hit me in the belly and I fell. The mountain laurel caught at my arms, held them up.

Legs came toward me like giant scissors. Bits of dead leaves stuck to the blood on my shirt. I was strung out tight, like a hog to be gutted, like a squirrel to be skinned.

Twenty-four

CARRIE BISHOP

I WENT TO THE PUMP TO REST FIVE MINUTES AND SAVOR A DIPPER of water. I sat on the ground with my back against the rough wood of the housing. When I shut my eyes the ground beneath me became unmoored and carried me off into space. A loud crash up on the mountain brought me back to earth with a jolt. I looked around, frightened, but saw nothing.

I heard the motor as I walked back to the schoolhouse. Then the airplane crawled across the blue sky above the ridge, following its own sound like a dog tracks a coon. A graceful tilt of its wings brought it directly above us. I thought what a pleasant thing it was, then realized it must be spying out the movements of our men. The magic disappeared and I went inside.

Doctor Booker looked up from stitching a bullet wound in a man’s arm.

“Almost out of bandages,” he observed. “They better send more from Charleston.”