White Doves at Morning by James Lee Burke Page B

corn, and set it
to boiling on a flat stone in the center of his cook fire. His face
looked composed and thoughtful as he squatted by the fire, his skin
sun-browned, his sideburns shaggy, the road dust on his face streaked
where his sweat had dried.
    Willie went to the field
kitchen and got a pan of corn mush, his unlaced shoes flopping on his
feet, then squatted next to Jim and greased the bottom of a small
frying pan with a piece of salt bacon and poured the mush on top of it
and stuck the pan in the coals.
    "What's the first thing you're
going to do when we get back home?" he asked Jim.
    "Start my own shipwright
business. Build the first clipper ship to come out of New Iberia,
Lou'sana," Jim said.
    "Steam is making museum pieces
of the clippers, Jim."
    "That's good. I won't have
competitors," Jim said.
    Willie lowered his head so his
voice wouldn't travel.
    "Are you scared?" he asked.
    "If you was as scared as I am,
you'd run for home. I'm just too scared to get my legs moving," Jim
said.
    "You put on a good act, you
ole beanpole. But I don't think you're scared of anything," Willie
replied.
    Jim stood up with his tin cup
of boiling coffee and poured half of it into Willie's cup. He rubbed
Willie on the top of the head.
    "No blue-bellies can do in the
likes of us," he said.
    "That's right, by God. Here,
our mush is ready," Willie said.
    "I can't eat. I think I got a
stomach cold. Can't hold anything down," Jim said, walking into the
shadows so Willie could not see his face.
    The sun dipped below the hills
and suddenly the woods were cooler the sky the color of coal dust, without
moon or stars, the tree branches knocking toget her overhead, to the north there were
fires on the
bluffs above the river and Willie thought he could feel the vibrations
of gun carriages and caissons through the ground.
    Five men and a drummer boy
from the 6th Mississippi, in butternut pants and homespun shirts, were
sitting around a fire, six feet away, smoking cob pipes, laughing at a
joke.
    "Who's out there?" Willie
asked them, nodding toward the north.
    " 'Who's out there?' Where the
hell you been, boy?" a tall man with a concave face said.
    "Corinth."
    "Them bluffs and ravines is
crawling with Yankees. They been out there for weeks," the man said.
    "Why not leave them be?"
Willie asked.
    "We done turned that into a
highly skilled craft, son. But the word is we're going at them
tomorrow," the man said.
    Willie felt his stomach
constrict and sweat break on his forehead. He went out of the
firelight, into the trees, and vomited.
    Fifteen minutes later Jim came
back to the fire and sat down on the log beside Willie, his sheathed
bowie knife twisting against the log's bark. Willie sniffed the air.
    "What have you been up to?" he
asked.
    Jim opened his coat to reveal
a half-pint, corked bottle stuck down in his belt. The clear liquid it
contained danced in the firelight.
    "This stuff will blow the
shoes off a mule," he said.
    Three soldiers with a banjo,
fiddle, and Jew's harp were playing a dirge by the edge of the ravine.
The men from the 6th Mississippi were lying on their blankets or in
their tents, and the drummer boy sat by himself, staring into the fire,
his drum with crossed sticks on top resting by his foot. He wore an
oversized kepi, and his scalp was gray where his hair had been bowl-cut
above his ears. His dour face, with downturned mouth and impassive
eyes, was like a miniature painting of the Southern mountain man to
whom sorrow and adversity are mankind's natural lot.
    "You get enough to eat?" Jim
said to him.
    "Pert' near as much as I
want," the boy replied.
    "Then I guess we'd better
throw away this mush and bacon here," Jim said.
    "Hit don't matter to
me,"
the little boy s aid, his face as
smooth and expressionless as clay in
the light from the fire.
    "Come over here and bring your
pan," Jim said.
    The boy dusted off the seat of
his pants and sat on a stump by Willie. He watched while Willie filled
his pan, then he ate the mush with