Horrible Harvest

I slowly raised up, stretching out to my full-on height, towering over the smaller captain. I couldn’t move my eyes off Davidson.

“Steal rope from these tents. We shall put him on display. Let the bluebellies know that they will never find rest if they choose to enlist our negroes in their army.”

I pult out my Bowie, walked to the nearest tent, cut off a two-foot piece of rope and approached the captain. Not a word skipped past my lips.

“That isn’t nearly long enough,” the captain said as he give a prideful look at the dead negro at his feet. “Do better, Corporal. Think, lad. We’re to hang this slave’s body from a tree.”

I stepped behind him as if I was gonna retrieve a longer measurement of rope from another tent, but I turnt to him instead. Without warning, I quick coiled the too-short length of rope around his neck, placed my knee in his back and pult with all my might on the ends. He twisted and flailed with his knife in his hand and damn near worked himself free if not for Felix coming to my aid. The conscripted Confed kicked the captain’s feet out from under him and knocked him flat-ass to the ground.

Captain Doc thrashed his knife backwards, causing but minor cuts on my right calf. Even if he could’ve stabbed me through, it wouldn’t have done no good. Not a goddamn thing would cause me to ease my grip until the old plantation shit was all the way dead.

And dead he was, minutes later.

I give loose on one end of the rope and uncoiled it from the captain’s neck as Yates and Evers walked up on us.

“Good Lord on high,” Yates said. “That’s a sight. What in the world goed on here?”

I seen Evers’ eyes lock on the length of rope dangling from my left hand.

“Nigger Kilt the captain. Jeffries and the corporal kilt the nigger. Simple as that.”

Yates shrugged. “Suppose that makes sense. We best be on our get up and go – ”

“No,” I said. “We need to leave a message behind.”

“We need to leave a what now?” Yates asked.

“A message. Cut a length of rope from one of these here tents.”

“A length of rope? How much?”

“Enough to hang a man.”

“Who we hanging?”

“Mr. Jeffries, Mr. Hughes – There was a barrel of camphene in the barn, was there not?”

“There was. I seen it,” Evers said.

“Use it. Set the fucking thing ablaze. Burn the barn to the goddamn ground.”

“I can do that. C’mon, Jeffries. Let’s get to work.”

Yates quick returned with an eight-foot length of rope. “You didn’t answer my question. Who we hanging? The colored’s dead already.”

“We’re not executing anyone. We’re leaving a gift for the bluebellies.”

He smiled. “I get it. Let ‘em know we was in their camp kind of gift – Right?”

“That’s about the gist of it.”

He hurriedly tied one end of the rope into a hangman’s noose and then grabbed up Davidson by his arm.

“Not him,” I said.

“What?”

“He ain’t the gift.”

Yates looked at me, confused all to hell. “That don’t make no sense.”

“The noose is for Captain Doc.”

He become even more confused. “That makes even less sense.”

“What about this war has ever made sense?”

He stared at me for a bit before shrugging and grabbing the captain by the back of his collar and dragging his body toward the nearest tree line.

I rifled through my haversack, held a foil-wrapped hunk of opium for a second, trying like the Devil to speed up time to the second my lips’d lock onto my next sit-down with my pipe, and then quick snapped myself back to the present to finish the hanging.

Finding a pin, paper and pencil, I raced to the tree where Yates had already begun to lay a lynching on the captain’s body. I stopped him before the legs’d gone straight and knelt by the perfectly dead officer and jotted a message on the piece of paper and pinned it to the captain’s lapel. I then give Yates the order to continue the full lynching. We stepped back and watched the sumbitch sway in the breeze.

“What’s that you pinned to his chest? Can’t read it from here.”

“Captain Benjamin Docherty. War criminal. Judgement made. Sentence served.”

Yates hesitated before he said, “If this is to be our practice here on out, we’re gonna need a helluva lot more trees. I s’pose you and me gonna need our own, too.”

“Ain’t no s’posing to it.”

The flames from the barn stretched out from the door and licked the outside walls.

Yates and I turnt toward it and watched Evers and Felix approach.

“That’ll draw the bluebellies’ attention for sure.”

“That’s the idea.”

“We should get going then.”

“Go ahead. You, Evers, and Jeffries – Go. I’ve got another thing needs done.”

“We should stay with you – ”

“Gotta do this alone.”

“You sure about that? It ain’t smart to stick around here too long.”

“No, it ain’t, but I’m sure. Get back to camp. When Lieutenant Duggars returns, let him know he’s ranking officer.”

Yates started to head towards Evers and Felix but stopped to say, “This happened, as Evers said. I ain’t gonna say no different. Runaway kilt the captain. You kilt the runaway.”

I nodded.

“Still, the captain – He weren’t all the way awful. War turnt him that way. Turnt us all that way, I reckon.” He give pause before adding, “The hell of it is, he was done a favor today ‘cause the rest of us gotta shitload more awful days ahead. No telling what we’re left to do.” With that, the three of ‘em walked to the woods.

I fount my way back to Davidson and knelt beside him. “Don’t know why, but I couldn’t leave without saying something. Stupid as shit I know. I seen enough dying to know ain’t nothing after. Can’t be. Else wise wouldn’t none of us fight so hard to stay here. We get nothing but this, and most of us are fools who waste our time here fighting for rich folks and politicians – That ain’t what needs to be said though – Not now. What needs to be said is that I’ll remember you. I was always happy when you come passing through Daddy’s property. I ain’t had much happy in my life, so I just wanna say I’m grateful for the little you give me.”  

The sickly boy stepped out from behind a tent and sat on the other side of Davidson.

“Mercy toward none,” he said.

I looked at him. “You stick with the bluebellies boy. Get far from here. Don’t come back ‘til we’re all nothing but bones. Maybe all this hate will be gone by then.”

“Mercy toward none.”

“Don’t let this awful make you.”

“Mercy toward none.”

“Don’t be like me.”

“Mercy toward none.”

I stood. “You remember this, Stanford. Collecting treasure blinds you – Corrupts you all the way to hell. Binds you to wars and the rape, murder and torture it spawns just so you can hold to it and grow it evermore.”

“Mercy toward none.”

I marched to the woods just as the first rattle of noise from the returning Yankees reached the camp.