You're still here? Ada called across the freshly tilled fields, the sprouts raising their crowned heads to a spring sun. Several crows scoffed at the intrusion upon their silence.
Always, Ruby replied, rising with hands black from digging through the earth. She scrubbed them on her white apron, bringing Ada to grimace. It took hours to scrub that clean the last time. The old Ada would have cried out at the passive gesture of wiping dirt on her clean clothes, especially if it had been something formal. Ada cast a glance at the scarecrow. The mauve dress now hung in tatters of blood red fabric, almost melding with the crimson sky behind. Anxiety stabbed at Ada's heart. She sensed a storm, not of sky but of soul. Her hackles rose, one by one, prickling like hemp rope against her skin. Perhaps it had something to do with the traps going off in the woods with nothing caught inside. Usually, that meant someone was setting them off, but there was no one around for miles.
Ada, love?
Ada turned and beamed at Inman, stumbling at last from the front door like the dead from his grave. Only just last fall, he had been good as dead, lost in a war without a tether, as if he were lost in the middle of the ocean.
His old hat, stained and torn and marked with the double rifles of the Confederacy, caught the morning sun on its sole remaining golden button.
Good morning.
She padded toward him, ignoring the squelch of last night's rain as it rose between her toes. She gathered him in her arms, a mother with her long-lost child, and did not let go for several minutes.
I'm craving some grouse, he said, disentangling himself from her embrace. A mockingbird cried somewhere far away, a sound far too similar to a mother weeping.
Come back soon, Ada teased, and she nearly ruffled his hair, so comfortable were they now.
Of course, love.
Ada watched him until his form was little more than a sliver between the silver stalks of the trees far beyond the fence. The crows gathered themselves with a rallying cry before following him over the skeletal hands of the trees.
Wringing her hands, Ada spoke to Ruby across the field, Something's come over me. I feel sick, almost. What do you think it could be?
Ruby simply pursed her lips, a movement nearly invisible in the distance. "Guts don't lie. Watch the clouds. They'll tell you if a storm's coming.
She said nothing else, leaving Ada to retire inside. There, she sipped at the coffee recovered from their stash. It was black, for they had run out of sugar some months ago, and there was little to be found in the market. She shuddered involuntarily at the bitterness of it, as if a demon were possessing her. She set down the clay mug with some force, splashing its contents on the white tablecloth. She watched the stains spread, consume one another, blend into one indistinguishable shape. A wise woman might discern what the stains meant, use them to decipher Ada's past, present, and future.
But Ada was not a wise woman. She simply stared back at her dark reflection in the mug until its contents finally stilled and cooled. The well stirred in her mind with the image of a figure walking lucent upon its murky surface.
Come home, she whispered, her breathing only just stirring the black mirror.
The grouse raised its head and its feathers before preening as if no one were watching. He was dull for a male bird, brown as the earth and the dying leaves all around.
It took two heartbeats for Inman to pull the trigger and end the grouse. It was a simple, almost familiar matter of lifting the grouse to check it for signs of life before tying it to his belt; Cold Mountain was difficult to navigate without both hands free.
It took two hundred and thirty-six heartbeats for Inman to hear the footsteps swiftly approaching behind. He turned in time to stare into the eyes of a stranger. They were gray, and blond, scraggly hair fell before them. His Union jacket was threadbare, hardly covering the plain clothes he had to have worn for years on end while on the frontlines. He had been on the frontlines; that much, Inman could recognize.
Traitor, the man said, hands shaking, quivering his rifle so that the barrel danced around the target of Inman's face. He went on, You killed my son.
Inman raised his hands in surrender. The stranger, taking this as an act of aggression, pulled the trigger.
Inman blinked once and raised a hand to his neck.
This is familiar, he thought before stumbling backwards until his foot slipped. He tumbled down a hill, hitting tree after tree. The grouse's bones crunched with each bump until at last the rope came loose, and the bird rolled on its own journey. At last, Inman landed in a trickling stream.
The tears of Cold Mountain washed the blood from the fresh wound in his neck. He gasped like a fish, each breath sending crimson in unfurling fans down with the current. Minnows returned when he stilled, curious about the intruder. Water striders tickled the exposed hair of his arms, raising goosebumps in spite of the shock of it all.
Inman lay silent, still, pale.
His eyes finally rested on the peak of Cold Mountain, the sun gilding its splendor.
A second gunshot sounded.
There was never a second shot.
Ada rose so quickly, her coffee, now cold, spilled over the white tablecloth, blotting out the prior stains. Her bare feet flew over sharp stones, past Ruby's questions, through bramble bushes. She knew these woods now. Grouse liked the patch on the hill by the stream, just where the peak of Cold Mountain was visible through the trees.
Cold Mountain was visible through the trees, and Inman below.
The stream was red, and Inman's neck with it. He did not move, did not breathe.
Ada sat down, mindless of her dress on the forest floor. She sat and stared at his body, the stream giggling over him. She sat there until the sun sank to the mountain's opposite peak, and Ruby came by her side. Wordlessly, she rested beside Ada, hand on her shoulder.
They did not move until the fireflies lit the way, and the frogs wept, and the owls mourned. Then, they trudged back to a too-silent house. Each creak of the floorboards up to the bedrooms felt like a gunshot in the endless expanse of the country. The door screamed when Ada shut it and screamed herself until she could cry no more. Like a ghost, she drew out the only image she had of Inman. Eyes blurred, he smiled at her emptily, a ghost already.
I was dead the second I went to war, she remembered him writing in one of his more thoughtful letters. Many of the words had been scratched out, as if he were not used to sharing his feelings.
Tears etching away her vision, Ada swaddled the image inside Monroe's favorite shirt and closed the drawer. The finality of the drawer's sigh shut off her tears.
She had already mourned the moment he went off to war.