A Fist Full O' Dead Guys Read online

  Cale, Delps, Snyder and the otherwise nameless teenager they called "Kid" watched as he swung. All but the Kid were smiling.

  Solomon Oakes' world swam with black spots. His hands were tied behind his back, his neck was ready to snap, and his panic-stricken brain screamed for air.

  As he lost consciousness, he vaguely noted that Cale had said something to the Kid. The youth seemed hesitant at first, but with further urging he stepped forward and reached for Oakes' legs.

  Then the darkness dragged Solomon Oakes down into itself.

  Light pained his eyes as they flickered open. He was lying on his back-And then he remembered...

  He sat up, too fast. He was dizzy and weak, his throat painfully dry and tight-something felt broken in there. He caught the edge of the cot on which he lay and looked around.

  The shack couldn't have been more than twenty feet square, built of rough oak planks, with tiny windows on all four walls. Along the wall opposite Oakes was a stone fireplace. A black iron pot hung over the fire, and from it wafted the aroma of some kind of venison stew. There was a small bed in the corner farthest from him, and a table with a single chair near the fireplace.

  A black woman stood next to the table, a kettle in her hand and tin cups on the table in front of her. She looked up with some concern when Oakes jerked upright.

  "Where-" he started, but his voice died with a choking rasp.

  Piercing pain shot through his throat.

  The woman started toward him, holding a cup out to him. She was older than he, maybe in her forties, but attractive. She dragged her left leg when she walked.

  "You take it easy there, son." Her voice was smooth but authoritative. "You best lie back and don't talk for awhile. Drink this here and mebbe that throat o' yours'll loosen up some." She smiled, but limped back to the table and sat down. Oakes saw a pistol lying on the table.

  "What's...in this?" He croaked, eyeing the hot brown stuff in his cup. It smelled like tea, but there was alcohol in it too, he thought.

  "My own brew, son. And I ask you not to talk. It's got some leaves and cinnamon it, 'mong other things. And a splash or two a' whiskey." She sipped hers with both hands, and he wondered if hers had the tea and the leaves, or just the whiskey.

  He took a sip, and it felt good as it wormed and warmed its way down him. Feeling slightly better now, Oakes took a good long look at his benefactor.

  She was pretty, strongly built, and proud-looking. He had no doubt in his mind that she had been nobody's slave. Those eyes had never known servitude, nor could he imagine anyone trying to force such upon her. She was dressed in a tan cotton shirt and brown pants, but shoeless. The last made him smile, as it made her seem girlish, just as her smile and the light in her eyes had.

  "You...maybe...coulda saved the...tea an' leaves."

  Ma'am," he grunted. "Plain whiskey'd do the trick."

  She smiled again. "You shush. You drink just the whiskey an' your head'd end up hurting as much as your neck must. And you call me Willa."

  His throat did hurt like Hell, and when he reached to touch it he felt the abraded flesh left by the hanging. He wondered...

  "You're wonderin' how you got outta that necktie they fit you for, aren't ya?" Willa's smile turned wry, then vanished altogether.

  "You?"

  "Nope."

  He sat up and leaned against the wall.

  "You died out there, son." Willa looked hard at him, and he wondered what the Hell she was talking about.

  He tried to remember what had happened. He remembered stopping at the ramshackle cantina for a drink and something to eat. The rough but friendly Cale and his companions had invited Oakes to sit in on their card game, and he had even won a couple dollars. Then someone had smashed him over the head and the next thing he knew he was trussed up and put on the horse, and Cale and Delp and the others had stood below him laughing. The horse had bolted out from under him, leaving him dangling by the neck, then blackness, pain...

  No. No, he must have survived it somehow. Maybe the rope had broken after the bushwhackers had left him. Maybe the woman had found him then and just thought he was dead. That must be it.

  "I can see you rollin' it over, tryin' ta remember. Them boys strung you up and jerked your neck for ya. They killed you and stole your horse, your guns, your boots, ever'thing.

  "Nobody saved you, son. You DIED out there" Willa said again flatly.

  "How-I mean—are you..." his constricted throat pained him worse now, and he felt faint again.

  "I know dead when I see it, boy. I've seen dead men and even killed a couple live ones myself." Willa set her cup aside and looked squarely at him. "You were dead alright."

  Dead? Oakes' head was swimming in waves of pain and whiskey. He had heard of such. He had even seen it-or something like it-in that damned field hospital at Wolf Creek. He tried not to think of Wolf Creek anymore. To think that now...

  "How?" he whispered, shrugging off the memory. Willa now clasped her hands on the table, near the pistol there.

  "I saw what they did to you—ain't the first time, mind. Wasn't nothin' I could do, there bein' four of them. But I did what I could for you, believe you me." When he said nothing, she continued.

  "See, I know some things. Some right strange things, actually. My momma was from Haiti, direct. They know a lot about spirits down there, what they can do for those that need it and know how to ask. My momma taught me all that stuff. And since there's all manner'a spirits a-walkin' the Earth now, it's easier for a body to call 'em and make 'em work for you."

  "What the Hell are you?"

  Willa scowled at him, her eyes darkening for the first time. "You watch your tongue in my house now, son. You come up a hard row, but that ain't no reason for disrespect." Oakes shrank from her sharp tone.

  "Now I watched them varmints hang you, and while you was a-chokin' to death I called out to them spirits, and one'a them jumped into you and sorta held you in there and kept you from movin' on ta whatever reward it is you've earned yourself. It's still in there, even though you're back alive now. Spirits ain't as easy to get out as they used ta be. Downright uncooperative even."

  Oakes felt weak and dizzy again. This was too much to take in. Dying—had he really died? All this talk of being dead and coming back to life and spirits. The spectre of Wolf Creek and the possibility that he had become like what he had seen there.

  Willa had crossed the room and stood above him. She reached out a brown hand and took Oakes' shoulder, pressing him to lay back down on the cot.

  "You better rest some more, son. You still ain't strong, and hearin' all this musta been hard for you." She smiled as his eyelids flickered shut.

  He was too tired and weak to act, but he could have sworn the last thing he saw as he drifted off was Willa walking back to the table with the pistol in her hand.

  ***

  Oakes awoke once again to the smell of cooked venison. His head felt heavy and his stomach rumbled, but the dizziness had passed. Oakes had no idea how long he had slept. Let alone how long he had been here. Or how long he had supposedly been dead.

  The shack was lit by the fire in the hearth and a lantern on the table, as darkness had fallen outside. Willa sat at the table, sawing at a tin plate with a knife and fork. As she lifted a chunk of meat to her mouth, she saw that Oakes was awake again. She put down her fork, rose on an unsteady left leg, and limped across the floor toward him with another plate.

  "Bet you're hungry, son."

  "You got that right, ma-Willa." His voice had lost some of the croak and most of the pain associated with speaking. He took the knife, fork, and plate, and attacked the contents ravenously. Thin slabs of deersteak rolled in flour and pepper and fried, potatoes sliced and also fried, and fresh peas. It was simple fare, but Oakes reckoned it the finest meal he'd ever eaten.

  She gave him a cup of water and returned to her seat and her supper. Willa absently finished her own meal as she watched Oakes devour his. For a long time the room
was silent save for the scrape of knife and fork and the crackling of the fire. Outside the singing of the crickets was the only thing to interrupt the peace of this cool night.

  Oakes finished first, and without thinking stood up to take his plate to the table. To his own surprise, he felt no weakness or dizziness, if anything only a dull tiredness and a slight chill. He put his plate on the table and went to stand near the fire.

  He caught sight of his reflection in a small mirror on the rough mantelpiece there.

  His long black hair parted at the center and hung down to his shoulders, and a scraggly black beard covered his cheeks and chin. His eyes were a dark coffee brown, and now those cold eyes stared out from deep shadowy hollows. He had never been a handsome man, and death—if indeed he really was dead- had given him an even more dire appearance. He smiled wryly at the spectre in the mirror.

  "I look like Hell. Surprised you wanted to cut me down." He glanced back to the table. "That why you keep the pistol handy?"

  Willa looked up only slightly guilty, taking the Colt Navy out from the folds of her dress and laying it on the table. She looked him down hard. "No, son. Reason I got the pistol handy is I had to make sure you was alright in the head. See, sometimes when you call a spirit into a body like I done, that spirit takes control. And a lot of them spirits are ornery devils. Real ornery. If that spirit woulda had control of you, I'd had ta put you down again myself. And I would have too." The look on her face left no question in Oakes' mind that she sure would have. He turned back to the fire, held his hands out to warm them.

  "You a little cold, ain't you?" asked Willa, though it was more statement than question.

  "Matter of fact, yeah."

  "Ain't no fire gonna make you any warmer, son. You been dead, and once you been dead you got that chill permanent."

  Oakes put his hands out near the flame, but sure enough though he could feel the warmth in his palms, the sense of a deep coldness still gnawed within him. He turned toward Willa.

  "Name's Solomon Oakes, Willa. You can call me Sol, or Solomon, or Oakes. Just don't call me Solly. I hate that."

  Willa smiled, her eyes aglow in the firelight. "Solomon Oakes?! My goodness, there's a grand name for a man."

  Oakes shrugged. "A name's a name, I figure. That's mine, and so long as nobody calls me Solly, I'm happy with it."

  Willa stood, gathered the plates and silverware into a pile on the table.

  "Why, Solomon, that's the name of a great and wise king. Told about him in the Bible. A very great king, and a very great magician too. He banished devils and demons and such, and had him a ring that allowed him to command any living thing of God's creation. Oh, yes, a very powerful name."

  "There's powerful magic in Oakes too. The oak tree is a symbol of long life. Did you know the oak tree attracts lightning more than any other type of tree?"

  Oakes smiled thinly at Willa's superstitious rambling. "What's so lucky about gettin' hit by lightning? An' it seems to me a tree that gets hit by lightning all the time ain't gonna be livin' a long life now, is it?"

  Willa snorted a brief laugh. "You make fun, Solomon, but it's the truth no matter what you think. And that ain't all. Folks who know magic have always held the oak tree sacred, worshipping their gods and their spirits and such in groves of oak. They say the big club Hercules carried around was made out of oak."

  "Well, I ain't Hercules, an' I ain't been hit by lightning, and I sure don't know nothin' about magic. I'm just a dumb drifter runnin' away from a war I didn't want any part of and a home I ain't even got no more. And now to top it all off, I been robbed and-according to you-killed by a bunch of assholes in the middle of nowhere."

  Willa scowled. "I told you to watch your language, Sol. Now you may have had it hard, but you got a second chance now. And you may not believe it or understand it yet, but that second chance come 'cuz of magic."

  Oakes stood, sheepishly, and stretched. The tiredness was still there, but he was feeling much better now.

  "I'm sorry for my mouth, Willa. I ain't had reason to be around regular people too much for quite awhile, and I forget myself. I meant no disrespect."

  '"S alright, Sol. I understand."

  "Can I help you clean that stuff?"

  "No thanks, Solomon. There's tea in that kettle there. You help yourself and I'll finish these." She limped outside with the plates in her arms. Oakes watched her through the front window as she squatted in the dirt not far from the cabin, her bad leg splayed out straight in front of her. Oakes wondered what was wrong with her leg. He watched as Willa scooped up sand in the plates and scraped them clean with it. Just like he and his companions had done in the war when water was scarce. The cowhand's dishwasher, they called it.

  Oakes went back to sit on the cot, and before he knew it he felt tired again. He rolled over and fell asleep.

  ***

  In his dreams he was washing dishes in the sand. McCready was there beside him. Noonan as well. Sullivan. Dylan. All of them, rubbing sand into their plates and laughing, smoking. Then Oakes remembered what had happened to them and the dream became a nightmare.

  In the wild brush country of southern Arkansas, the Yankees held onto a perfectly meaningless little hill next to a straggly little stream called Wolf Creek. Oakes' regiment was among those whose job it was to get it back for the Confederacy. One bramble-covered hill on the other side of Wolf Creek, with 2500 Yankees sitting on top and over 4000 Confederates seething across the creek.

  Offensive, counteroffensive. The Rebs charged up, were beaten back. The bluecoats came running down and pushed the Confederates back a half-mile or so, only to have them creep back the next night. Hundreds of men died. On both sides. The Rebs had set up a field hospital a few miles down the creek. Oakes had seen the inside of that hospital firsthand, when he was carried into it on a stretcher.

  He and McCready and Noonan and the others constituted an observation post east of the hill. One night, after they had finished their meager supper and were cleaning up, the bluebellies came charging out of the woods alongside theit camp. They had flanked Oakes and his men, and they came running with rifles blazing and bayonets fixed. The rebels were torn to pieces in the rush. A ball took the tall skinny Noonan square in the forehead, punching a fist-sized hole in his skull; he went down with eyes crossed and without making a sound. The hirsute giant McCready snatched up his pistols with a roar and lunged toward the enemy; blood exploded off his shoulders and arms, and a great gout punched gorily from his side, but he kept on, firing his guns before him as he ran. Despite nearly a dozen wounds, McCready went down only when a rifle ball tore away his lower jaw.

  All this Oakes had seen in brutal slow-motion as he scrambled for his own weapon. Too late. He was thrown backward as a pistol ball took him in the lower left shoulder. Spun about, numbed with shock, a second round glanced off his right forearm and passed through his right side. Oakes went down, his pain-wracked mind frighteningly detached from his paralyzed body. He could only watch as the unseen enemy soldiers stalked through the bodies of the fallen Confederates, ending the suffering of the downed men with their bayonets... Soon it would be Oakes' turn, yet still he couldn't move. A step closer. Steel flashed downward into Dylan's chest. Then distant rifle shots. And Oakes finally passed out.

  He awoke engulfed in pain, amid a sea of the dead and dying. The Rebs had set up an infirmary a couple of miles south of Wolf Creek. No man who fought wanted to end up there, alive or even just barely. Better to die on the hill or in the creek than suffer in the hospital tent. The "Screaming House," they called it. Fresh supplies were almost nonexistent. Clean it was not. The stench of blood and human waste hung in the air for hundreds of yards around the tent. The sprawling expanse of several hundred graves behind it did little to encourage the men, wounded or not.

  Oakes was trussed up in bandages around his shoulder, abdomen, and arm. He learned that in addition to his bullet wounds, he had suffered two broken ribs when one of the bluebellies had been shot
and fallen on top of him. Nevertheless, Oakes had fared better than most. He at least would live—if none of his wounds became infected. That news did little to cheer him and sure as Hell didn't stop the pain. For those who suffered the worst—of which Oakes was not one— the hollow-eyed medics administered whiskey. After two days in the Screaming House, Oakes caught a fever that rode him in and out of delirium.

  It was during his delirium that the worst nightmare of Wolf Creek was visited upon him. The tired and grim-faced doctors and orderlies passed in and out of his view day and night. Bodies were carried out of the tent, or further in, to the surgeries. Screams and sobs, day and night. Voices, "...too dangerous to try..." "...be crazy..." "...re-agent formula..." "...our own dead?..." "...INSANE! Unacceptable!..." "...superstitious...just dead flesh..." "...we're losing too many...only way..." "...chemically revive..." "...God help me...try it..."

  He had no idea how long he had lain there, sweating and shivering with fever. He dreamt and hallucinated, and had no idea which was which. That last night in the Screaming House he had staggered painfully out of his bunk. He had to piss, and some hidden reserve had put him on his feet. He felt invigorated, and clearheaded, as if the fever had broken- or so he thought. Oakes staggered through the darkened tent, past delirium-fed shouts, moans and snores. He threw back the flap, but he had gone the wrong way. Instead of moving outside the tent, he had blundered further in. To the surgery.

  Two men in blood-dabbed aprons bent over a table on which lay a third man, this one large, naked, and hairy. The doctors each held long hypodermic needles, and both seemed oblivious to Oakes. Then Oakes recognized the big man on the table.

  "McCready?" he whispered past thirst-cracked lips. The burly jawless figure could be no other.

  The doctors both whirled with surprised, embarrassed faces, like children caught tearing the wings from flies. The shorter, more wild-eyed man tossed his needle on the table and tore at his apron to get to the pistol he wore beneath it. Oakes was so surprised he couldn't move. Snarling, the doctor pulled his gun out of the holster and aimed it at Oakes.