All True Not a Lie in It by Alix Hawley Page A

many. One man’s trousers are in shreds, he stumbles ahead, his backside ribboned with blood.
    I can still feel the bodies in the water like logs, with the same sodden weight, the way I have to push them from me and stand on them. Israel, I keep thinking of your body, though I did not see it. I will not look at any of these dead in case I see you. I tell myself I have seen many murders at once here, but I have killed nobody and I have saved myself and so
—V is for victory
. But chewing it over is like another piece of army salt beef, likely to give you a sore mouth. I want only to not think of it.
    I face west. I stand still with the sun burning my eyes out. I think of running past all of this, past everything, and finding the place Findley talked of. Paradise. It is not so far, surely.
    My breath struggles in my tight chest. But Ma, I see you with your worried face white as an onion, your hair gone all white too. I see your terrible face after Israel died in the wagon. Ma and Daddy.
    I leave the possibility of Heaven behind and make my way back towards Carolina. But after all I do not escape Death, I do not escape killing. There is no escape.

    I walk on with my heart swollen and sore. I sing to the trees, I count them to occupy my mind. I list the names of horses we have had. Fatsy, Charming, Helen, Houynhym, Swifty, Sausages. Then I turn to hogs, Jub and Plum, good hogs and clever ones, who dug their way out of their pen at slaughter time. I think of Ma in the dusk of the summer pastures calling in the cows:
Here with you, you Ham
. Oh Ma, I think of you now.
    I walk on. But I seem to feel breath at my elbow.
    In the deepest backwoods it is horse’s breath I feel, though the horse is not here. Jezebel. She has been dead for what seems a thousand years. This is the first time I feel it, the gentle hay-smelling breath. I have not wished to think of it. But Israel has done it. I feelhim again as well, his presence behind me. He has called her up from the dead with some wordless sounds. I quicken to a run though the brush is thick and catches at my face and arms. The sun is setting at my back, everything is rusting red.
    I know it now. My dead are following me. I say no but they say yes, yes. Little Molly Black’s teeth chatter lightly. I feel Israel narrow his eyes and grin. I close my own. I say low:
    —What is it? What do you want?
    My voice is rough and hard. No reply. The horse’s breath is cold but it comes and goes and does not stop. Now it seems to say to me,
You cannot forget
.
    I will not think of it. All night I charge on through the brush, branches tearing at my face. I do not stop. The way back is very long. I believe I hear wolves, but my own heart is so loud I cannot tell what I hear.
    When day comes, I am still walking, I drag my feet as if I am asleep, I am scratched with thin bleeding lines everywhere, the tip of my ear is torn open, but I go on until I feel nothing and think nothing. Until I stop at the edge of a river. Someone is there.
    He is an Indian man sitting fishing on a log bridge over the water far below. All he is doing is fishing. His leg swings light, back and forth, one moccasin dangles from his toes and I see his bare round heel.
    The way is very narrow here, my only path straight past him. I see the knobs of his spine curled over his fishing line, his rifle balanced easy beside him.
    If I move he will see me. I am trapped, my ribs squeeze my heart, my heart is so loud that I want to rip it out and step upon it.
    He goes on sitting and fishing and not going away.
    Enough of war, it is not for me. Enough of killing. I say this reasonably to myself. I say to myself, I will frighten him off and go on home. Go on.
    Israel, I know you are with me. I close my eyes a moment. Then I ready my shot, and as my finger squeezes the trigger, the man’s head turns, his eyes catch on mine. I am startled that he can move and that his eyes can move, that they are real eyes.
    The gun shifts and drops as I