Horrible Harvest

An hour later, I was settled into a warm bath, a washcloth covering my face, my feet hanging over the end of the spoon sized tub. I’d scrubbed dirt out of every nook and cranny on my rail thin frame, and the widow had left a handheld mirror and razor so I could get rid of the wiry hair that I’d left unattended since it begun to sprout out like a weed on my chin some four year prior. I ain’t scrubbed that hard to get clean in a long, long time, and I ain’t ashamed to say it tuckered me out. It weren’t long ‘fore I was fast asleep under that washcloth. The water had turned cold by the time I felt something tugging on my big toe. Startled, I ripped the cover from my face and bolted upright.

“Easy, kid,” Bobby said. He’d taken his own bath since we parted ways, and he was sporting a much fresher face. “Brought your suit from Beckwith’s.” He pointed to the suit now hanging on the back of the door. “He did a shit job tailoring it, but it’ll do for now.”

“For now?”

“One of these ladies in town can do you up better. We’ll order up some fancy fabric, and they’ll get your proper measurements.”

“Not sure where your ‘we’ is coming from in this idea of yours.”

He sat back. “Now, I am sorry for letting that slip out before we’ve had a chance to conversate. I wanna hire you on – You and the other boy – Felix, is it?”

“It is, and I’ve got no interest in mining.”

“Shit on that. I got no interest in it myself. Too much work and scheming. Not enough rest and relaxation.”

“You want to hire Felix and me to help you get your rest and relaxation?”

“In a way, yes.”

“What kind of business we talking?”

“Well,” he said, scratching at his jawline. “I’m a bit light on the particulars, but I call it the ‘work around’ business.”

“Work around? Work around what?”

“Everything. Working around work mostly. A calamitous war has just ended. This country’s going to scramble to put itself back together again. Ain’t nothing but confusing times ahead of us for the foreseeable future. Money is going to flow this way and that without much in the way of oversight, because don’t nobody know what that oversight is to look like at this present time. What I learned most acutely in Bolivia is that such confusion creates an environment ripe for corruption, and you either piss in the wind fighting it, or you make yourself a rich man by being the most corrupt player in the game.”

I raised up out of the cold water and wrapped myself in the towels the widow’d laid out for me. “You don’t even know what game’s to be played or who it is that’s to be playing them.”

“True, but I got a good idea.”

“And that is?”

“All the rich fellas that started this war, they got one thing on their minds. Keeping their money in what amounts to a country that is occupied by a conquering force. The people they dragged into this war are pissed all the hell at them. Conscripts and volunteers alike are gonna want reparations for the hell they’ve been put through, and the coloreds – Well, they’re gonna want their pound of flesh, too.

“These old plantation royals, they’re gonna need friends, even if they gotta buy’em.”

I snickered. “You’re talking to the wrong fella, Mr. Bunning. I’ve been paid to be a ‘friend’ to the plantation swill for the last four years, and I ain’t got nothing to show for it except a haversack. That gold coin you give me is the most money I’ve seen in the last year and a half. I’ve been eating nothing but swoosh and salted beef for I don’t know how long. I ain’t interested in being friends with the lot you wanna take up with. Fact is I’m thinking of ways I can get my ownself a pound of flesh from them.”

“First off, call me Bobby. Second off, that is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re owed compensation. I’m offering you a way to collect your pound of flesh.”

I toweled off – naked as the day I entered this world – in front of Bobby Bunning. He never looked away. Didn’t never consider it. He didn’t give me no lascivious looks nor did he flinch in any way. He simply didn’t care that a stranger stood stripped naked before him.

“Had a look in that haversack of yours.”

I stopped drying off.

Recognizing the rage in my eyes, he said, “Keepsakes and belongings say a lot about a fella. I was about to offer you a job. Wanted to know what you carried around with you. Far as I know, what you got in the bag is all you got in the world.”

“I didn’t ask for no job offer. You didn’t have no right sniffing around my stuff.”

“Your stuff is 90% laudanum.”

“Got pains. Injuries from the war.”

“Oh, I get that. I figured as much, but Felix, his haversack ain’t nothing but letters from his momma and crippled brother.”

“What’s your point?”

“That you ain’t got nothing in this world but a taste for opium. I can help you out with scratching that itch.”

I looked at him – fighting like hell to look disgusted by his offer, but he set spark to gunpowder. I cleared my throat and said, “I have a mother.”

He was confused by my claim. “Now, that is surprising. How come you didn’t run home to her as soon as they cut you loose?”

I give his question thought. “Because – We haven’t seen each other in four years – four war years. I’m not – I want to be – more – me the first time she lays eyes on me after all that time.”

“Understood.”

I started to dress in my new suit. “Wha’choo know about opium?”

“I was in Bolivia. The Brits made a killing shipping tons of it in from India. A lot of it made its way to the mines. I dabbled. Not as much as my laborers. They zapped themselves silly with the stuff after a 16-hour day of mining. I didn’t mind as long as they showed up for work the next day.”

“What gives you the notion that you can get your hands on some now? Bolivia’s a long-ass way from Chattanooga.”

“But we ain’t far from Texas. Poppy fields all over the place in that behemoth of a state. Got my Sisterdale from a poppy field farmer. Old war veteran like you – This was a few months back. Met up with him on our way here. He got put out of the war after losing a leg. Gets around on a prosthetic he built himself – Made out of hickory – He joked about having to chase the termites away every morning when he put it on.”

“Texas is still a long way from where I’m standing.”

“I got connections. Rail folks. I can get whatever you want run back and forth from anywhere the tracks reach.”

“That’ll be something – Once they get to rebuilding the tracks and bridges.” I buttoned my shirt. “Why me? Why Felix?”

He sat back and folded his arms over his chest. After a beat, he said. “I ain’t gonna bother lying to you. You’re too smart for that. You’re desperate. I find desperation to be the single greatest quality in employees. They work without complaint to distance themselves from the debts and bad decisions that brought them to such desperate times as to work for the likes of me. I’m not a good boss. Not by a long shot. I work my people ‘til they drop, and then I dock’em pay for the time spent in the drop. I like making money. I don’t like folks on my payroll that cost me money. The more desperate a fella is, the less money he costs me. It’s that simple.”

“What makes you think we’re desperate – Felix and me?”

“Well, for one, you tried to rob me in broad daylight. Didn’t even hurry out of the room. You took the time to undress and strap yourselves into suits that didn’t fit neither of you. You wanted to be out of the army so bad, you shed your uniforms quick as cats, letting my lumbering brother get the drop on you.”

“You was drunker than Cooter Brown, and we didn’t know nothing about your brother being about.”

“Because you were too desperate to take notice. My state of drunkenness was a happenstance. You didn’t know I was full of drink when you walked into my room – You also just lost a war. You got no country to return to. You got no parades waiting for you. You got no prospects for earning day-to-day expenses. You got no gal who’ll go heels up for you. You got a mother you’re running from.”

“I’d prefer it if you lie to me next time I ask you a question.”

“Let me finish. You got a quality about you. You’re a leader. Little ol’ Felix follows you around like a puppy dog, and you handle him like you’ve directed men before.”

I tied my cravat. “So, I’m a desperate leader? That’s why you want me to work for you?”

“That and one other reason.”

“That is?”

“If Bert hadn’t shown up in my doorway, you would’ve killed me – Am I right or wrong about that?”

“You’re wrong.”

He didn’t reply.

“I would’ve had Felix kill you.”

He smiled. “And that’s why I want you working for me. I need fellas who will go that extra mile.”

“You want me because I would have had Felix kill you?”

“And I want Felix because he would’ve done it – Without question, right?”

“That’s about the size of it.” I turned to him. “What’s the pay?”

He studied my face. “What’d you make in the army?”

“Well, when they made effort to pay me – and it has been a long while since such effort has been made – I got $11 a week.”

“Let’s make it a nice even twenty.”

“And Felix?”

“Fifteen.”

I shook my head. “Twenty.”

“You want me to give him management pay? Same as you?”

“I want you to give him fair wages. Twenty is fair.”

Bobby nodded. “It’s not, but I’ll pay it.”

“We get a percentage, too.”

“Percentage of what?”

“Of whatever money that you bring in because of our work.”

“That’s what your salary is for.”

“No, the salary is for what it costs to get by. We’re your bad intentions, Mr. Bunning – Bobby. It’s clear as glass the work you’ll have us doing ain’t near honest. I’ll wager it’s dirtier than that bath water. That sort of labor comes with percentages attached to it.”

“What’re we talking? How much?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty what? Percent?”

“That is the subject at hand.”

Bobby laughed. “Ten is what I’m thinking, and that’s about as generous as I plan on getting.”

“Twenty is all the generosity I have to offer.”

“Then I suppose this is where we find a little more in each of our hearts and settle on fifteen.”

“I suppose.”

Bobby shook his head. “Why do I get the idea 15 was your number all along?”

“We’re gonna need guns.”

“What come of your Army weapon?”

“Stacked and stolen the night before we left camp. Infantry rifle wouldn’t be the proper weapon for this work, anyhow. We need six-shooters. Holsters, ammo, all the trimmings.”

“You sure don’t shy away from demands. I got word about a fella in town selling a dozen or so Griswold Gunnison revolvers. Snuck’em out of the factory before Sherman marched through Atlanta.”

“Horses?”

“Goddamn. You want me to hold your pecker while you piss, too – Horses’re hard to come by in these parts. War nearly wiped’em out.”

“So, that’s a no on the horses?”

“That’s a hold your horses on the horses. Give me time to work my magic, and I’ll have you sitting in a saddle ‘fore the months out – I’m guessing I’m paying for the saddle, too?”

“Ain’t gotta be nothing fancy.”

“It won’t be – Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. I want you to know up front this ain’t permanent. I’ve got me plans. I’ll put in a fair amount of time, but there’ll come a day I’ll walk away from this and get done what I need to get done.”

“What plans? Maybe the Bunning brothers could help you out. We can split the profits.”

“There ain’t money to be had.”

“Then my advice, it ain’t worth doing.”

“There’re some things that just gotta get done.”

He shrugged. “If I’m satisfied I’ve gotten my investment out of you when the time comes, you’ll get no argument from me if you want to run off and get done whatever is you need to get done.” He extended his hand.

I looked at it.

“This is where we shake and seal the deal.”

I hesitated before I put a grip to his hand and shook.

He looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. “I believe I was wrong about that suit. It fits you pretty good.”

“It’ll do. What’s next?”

“There’s a gathering on the East side of town. A number of plantation blue bloods are having a celebration. A low-key affair, so as not to raise the ire of the federal troops.”

“What in the hell could they possibly be celebrating?”

“The assassination.”

“Assassination?”

He chuckled. “You think they’d be tore up about it?”

“What assassination? Who?”

“Who? You ain’t heard? Lincoln. He was shot. Almost a week ago, now.”

My heart nearly give out. Can’t tell you what I felt at that moment. Lincoln had been more myth than man to me at that point in my life. I’d known him as an idea. Hated the fire out of the bastard. We was told he was out to slaughter the soul of the South since he put his hand to the Bible and swore an oath to the Constitution. Now we was also told he didn’t have but the brains of a moronic ape, so the two claims didn’t go together, but we was young, stupid and made mad by the panic of the rich folks who run our lives. He was both a puppet of the liberal Republicans and a frothing demon who commanded the forces of the federal government against fine Christian white southerners. He was a smug dullard. It was put to us that he couldn’t command a scratch to an itch, but then this dumber than corn jackass beat the living piss out of the Confederacy entire. He was all and nothing. I can say that I ached over the loss of him. He’d technically been my enemy since he won the presidency, but I felt a gluttonous amount of respect for him. Felt bad for feeling the way I did. He was the most complex, simple man I’d ever thought could have possibly existed. I knew deep inside my heart his loss would cost us all a great deal of pain and heartache. My fellow Southerners would see it as a victory in defense of our heritage. That being there ain’t a government invented meant to regulate white men. That ain’t a thing created by God himself that don’t come under the rule of white men. Lincoln’s killing weren’t nothing but glimmering hope that, though the war lost, the battle for Southern white supremacy would rage on.