White Doves at Morning by James Lee Burke Page A

too. You're not a bleeder, are you?" Jim said.
    Hatcher pointed a finger at
Jim without replying, then fitted one hand under Willie's arm and
marched him to the one-room building that Rufus Atkins was now using as
his office.
    "I got Private Burke here,
sir," Hatcher said through the door. Atkins stepped out into the
softness of the late spring afternoon, without a coat or hat, wearing
gray pants and a blue shirt with braces notched into his shoulders. He
had shaved that morning, using a tin basin and mirror nailed to the
back side of the building, flicking the soap off his razor into the
shallows, but his jaws already looked grained, dark, an audible rasping
sound rising from the back of his hand when he rubbed it against his
throat.
    "He says he didn't do it, sir.
I think he's lying," Hatcher said. Atkins cut a piece off a plug of
tobacco and fed it off the back of his pocketknife into his mouth.
    "Tell me, Private, do you see
anyone else around here cleaning fish besides yourself and Corporal
Stubbefield?" he said.
    "Absolutely not, sir," Willie
replied.
    "Did Corporal Stubbefield
throw fish guts under my window?"
     "Not while I was
around," Willie said.
     "Then that leaves only
you, doesn't it?" Atkins said.
     "There could be another
explanation, sir," Willie said.
    "What might that be?" Atkins
asked.
    "Perhaps there are no fish
guts under your window," Willie said.
     "Excuse me?" Atkins said.
    "Could it be you still have a
bit of Carrie LaRose's hot pillow house in your mustache, sir?" Willie
said. Atkins' eyes blazed.
    "Buck and gag him. The rag and stick. Five hours' worth of it," he
said to the corporal. 
    "We're s'pposed to keep it at
three, Cap," Hatcher said.
     "Do you have wax in your
ears?" Atkins said.
    "Five sounds right as rain,"
Hatcher replied.

    WILLIE remained in an upright
ball by the lake's edge for three hours, his wrists tied to his ankles,
a stick inserted between his forearms and the backs of his knees, a rag
stuffed in his mouth. A stick protruded from each side of his mouth,
the ends looped with leather thongs that were tied tightly behind his
head.
    Water ran from his tear ducts
and he choked on his own saliva. The small of his back felt like a hot
iron had been pressed against his spine. He watched the sun descend on
the lake and tried to think of the fish swimming under the water, the
wind blowing through the trees, the way the four-o'clocks rippled like
a spray of purple and gold confetti in the grass.
    Out of the corner of his eye
he saw Rufus Atkins mount his horse and ride out of the camp. The pain
spread through Willie's shoulders and wrapped around his thighs, like
the tentacles of a jellyfish.
    Jim Stubbefield could not
watch it any longer. He pulled aside the flap on the corporal's tent
and went inside, closing the flap behind him. Hanging from Jim's belt
was a bowie knife with a ten-inch blade that could divide a sheet of
paper in half as cleanly as a barber's razor.
    Hatcher was combing his hair
in a mirror attached to the tent pole when Jim locked his arm under
Hatcher's neck and simultaneously stuck the knife between his buttocks
and wedged the blade upward into his genitals.
    "You cut Willie loose and keep
your mouth shut about it. If that's not acceptable, I'll be happy to
slice off your package and hang it on your tent," Jim said.
    Two minutes later Corporal
Hatcher cut the ropes on Willie's wrists and ankles and the thong that
held the stick in his mouth. Willie stumbled back to the tent he and
Jim shared and fell on his cot. Jim sat down next to him and gazed into
his face.
    "What's on your mind, you ole
beanpole?" Willie said.
    "You have to stop sassing them, Willie," Jim said.
    "They cut bait, didn't they?"
Willie said.
    "What do you mean?" Jim asked.
    "I outlasted them. They're
blowhards and yellow-backs, Jim."
    "I put a bowie to Hatcher and
told him I'd make a regimental flag out of his manhood," Jim said.
    "Go on with you?" Willie said,
rising up on his elbows. "Hey,