White Doves at Morning by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page A

gift of
elocution that Miss Dowling has, since I wasn't educated in a Northern
state where Africans are taught to disrespect white people," he said.
"But that man yonder, Willie Burke, attacked an officer of the law. You
have my word on that."
    The judge removed his glasses
and pulled on his nose.
    "You're a member of the
militia?" he said to Willie.
    "Yes, sir, I am!"
    "Will you stop shouting? It's
the sentence of this court that you return to your unit at Camp Pratt
and be a good soldier. You might stay out of saloons for a while, too,"
the judge said, and smacked down his gavel.
    After the judge had left the
room, Willie walked with his mother and Abigail and Jim toward the door
that gave onto the outside stairway.
    "Where's Robert today?" Willie
asked, hoping his disappointment didn't show.
    "Mustered into the 8th
Lou'sana Vols and sent to Camp Moore. The word is they're going to
Virginia," Jim said.
    "What about us?" Willie asked.
    "We're stuck here, Willie."
    "With Atkins?"
    Jim laid his arm across Willie's shoulders and didn't answer.
Outside, Rufus Atkins and the paddy rollers were gathered under a live
oak. The corporal named Clay Hatcher turned and looked at Willie, his
smile like a slit in a baked apple.
 
    IT rained late that afternoon,
drumming on Bayou Teche and the live oaks around Abigail Dowling's cottage.
Then the
rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and a strange green light
filled the trees. Out in the mist rising off the bayou Abigail could
hear the whistle on a paddle-wheeler and the sound of the boat's wake
slapping in the cypress trunks at the foot of her property.
    She lighted the lamp on her
desk and dipped her pen in a bottle of ink and began the letter she had
been formulating in her mind all day.
    She wrote Dearest Robert on
a piece of stationery, then crumpled up the page and began again.
    Dear Robert,
    Even though I know you believe deeply
in your
cause, candor and conscience compel me to confess my great concern for
your safety and my fear that this war will bring great sorrow and
injury into your life. Please forgive me for expressing my feelings so
strongly, but it is brave young men such as yourself who ennoble the
human race and I do not feel it is God's will that you sacrifice your
life or take life in turn to further an enterprise as base and
meretricious as that of slavery.
    She heard the clopping of a
horse in the street and glanced up through the window and saw Rufus
Atkins dismount from a huge buckskin mare and open her gate. He wore
polished boots and a new gray uniform with a gold collar and a double
row of brass buttons on the coat and scrolled gold braid on the sleeves.
    She put down her pen, blotted
her letter, and met him at the front door. He removed his hat and bowed
slightly.
    "Excuse my intrusion, Miss
Abigail. I wanted to apologize for any offense I may have given you in
the court," he said.
    "I'm hardly cognizant of
anything you might say, Mr. Atkins, hence, I can take no offense at
it," she replied.
    "May I come in?"
    "No, you may not," she replied.
    He let the insult slide off
his face. He watched a child kicking a stuffed football down the street.
    "I have a twenty-dollar gold
piece here," he said. He flipped it off his thumb and caught it in his
palm. "Years ago a card sharp fired a derringer at me from under a card
table.  The ball would have gone through my vest pocket into my vitals, except
this coin
was in its way. See, it's bent right in the center."
    She held his stare, her face
expressionless, but her palms felt cold and stiff, her throat filled
with needles.
    "I lost this coin at the
laundry and had pretty much marked off ever finding it," he said. "Then
two days ago the sheriff found a drowned nigger in Vermilion Bay. She
had this coin inside a juju bag. She was one of the escaped slaves we'd
been looking for. I wonder how she came by my gold piece."
    "I'm sure with time you'll
find out, Mr. Atkins. In the meanwhile, there's no need for you to
share the