Home Fires Burning Read online

  HOME FIRES

  BURNING

  Robert Inman

  Cardinal Publishing

  COPYRIGHT © 1987 BY ROBERT INMAN

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS, INCLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE AUTHOR, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER, WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW.

  Originally published by Little, Brown and Company, 1987

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Inman, Robert.

  Home fires burning. Fiction.

  ISBN 978-1-62050-960-9

  To Paulette, Larkin, and Lee

  Though leaves are many, the root is one:

  Through all the lying days of my youth

  I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;

  Now I may wither into the truth.

  –Yeats

  The “Hallmark Hall of Fame” movie adaptation of Home

  Fires Burning, starring Neil Patrick Harris, is available

  on DVD from Amazon.com and Netflix.

  PRAISE FOR ROBERT INMAN’S

  HOME FIRES BURNING

  “A wonderfully readable novel…. Inman draws his small-town characters as smoothly and accurately as a Norman Rockwell cover for the Saturday Evening Post. … But this is not Mayberry. Nobody here is a stick figure. All live and breathe and love and care deeply.”

  — Wayne Greenhaw, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Home Fires Burning has scope, variety, humor, zest, and a refreshing ambition…. It is anyone’s good book, and for a first novel it is remarkable.”

  — Fred Chappell, Washington Post

  “Home Fires Burning largely succeeds in causing the reader to care about a town and its people and a way of life long gone…. Many of these characters and much of Mr. Inman’s picture of Southern life during World War II are well done and engaging.”

  — Tom Wicker, New York Times Book Review

  “A truly remarkable fiction about the effect of World War II on a small Southern town.”

  — Dennis Beck, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “Home Fires Burning is a dense, rich, generous-spirited first novel … with a rewarding intensity.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

  “Inman is very much a Southern writer. As in William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, Reynolds Price and Peter Taylor, place is conjured with precision and poetry…. The story is full of local customs and good, sharp talk of family secrets and family curses and of ancestors who are more than just oval portraits on the parlor mantel — they’re ghosts, eternally present, sometimes visible, even vocal…. This is an old-fashioned novel — dramatic, sometimes melodramatic, teeming with incidents and epiphanies. … I’d wager it’s one of the best American novels of the year.”

  — Tom De Haven, Philadelphia Inquirer

  Contents

  BOOK ONE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  BOOK TWO

  One

  Two

  Three

  BOOK THREE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  BOOK FOUR

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  BOOK ONE

  One

  THE BLACK HORSE was first to know. It came to him across the frost of the open field, the smell of unfamiliar men. The horse nudged the air and the sinews of his neck ridged like steel cables. He snorted almost without sound and twin vapors of breath hung for a moment like ghosts in the sharp air. A tremor rippled down the muscles of his flanks. He took a half-step backward before the gray-clad rider dug his knees into the horse’s side and rubbed the long smooth neck with a gloved hand.

  The horseman was a powerfully built stump of a man. Though a superb rider, he seemed to sit precariously on the black horse, riding high in the saddle with its stirrups made short for his runty legs.

  There was nothing of the dandy in Captain Finley Tibbetts. He was simply dressed in light gray britches and tunic, the twin bars of his rank embossed in gold on his shoulders, a brief curl of yellow braid at the cuffs of his sleeves. The plain leather cavalryman’s boots came almost to his knees, and he wore a dark gray campaign hat cocked low over his intense bushy eyebrows. The only adornment to his uniform was the great curving saber at his side. It was encased in a plain, issue scabbard, but the blade itself was a marvel of silver radiance, intricately engraved with scrollwork and the name of its maker, E. Duddingham of London. In the hands of Captain Finley Tibbetts, it was an instrument of judgment.

  He sat cockily in the saddle, reining in the nervous movement of the horse, head turning this way and that as he listened for a wayward noise from the copse of sycamores across the field. The shredding stump of a cigar was clamped in one corner of his mouth, an exclamation point to his sumptuous, curving black moustache.

  To his left, and half a horse-length to the rear, sat his adjutant, the huge red-faced Irishman Muldoon, whose saber stroke could decapitate a man in the flick of a wrist. Muldoon was utterly dedicated, awesomely fearless. Once, in an attack on a Federal position atop a small rise, when Captain Finley had been de-horsed by a ball in his side, Muldoon had leaped from his own mount, grabbed up the fallen captain, and carried him pickaback the rest of the way up the hill with Captain Finley cursing and waving his saber. At the summit, when Muldoon had dumped him atop a pile of bluecoated bodies in the midst of the conquered Federal position, Captain Finley had doffed the battered gray campaign hat and said, “Lieutenant Muldoon, you make an admirable steed!” and fainted.

  To Captain Finley’s right was the boy they called Young Scout, mounted on his own chestnut, thin shoulders hunched against the cold of dawn.

  And to their rear, deep in the pine thicket, hidden in the half-light and mist, were the hundred men of Captain Finley’s Lighthorse Cavaliers — handpicked for horsemanship, keen eye, steady hand, and fearless spirit; dispatched upon only the most critical of missions. They and their captain reported only to General Lee.

  This morning, they were the vanguard of Lee’s grand assault on McClellan’s right flank. For days, the two great armies had been poised like beasts, eyeing each other warily, each waiting for a precious moment of vulnerability to spring and kill. Captain Finley’s mission: to lure the Federals into a false step; to create, with the chaos and confusion of a lightning feint, the illusion of a thrust against the flank of McClellan’s forces near Gaines Mill. When McClellan responded with a counter-thrust, Lee would strike, snipping off the Federal advance as if pruning a tree limb, pouring through the breach in the bluecoat lines to divide the right flank and roll McClellan back along a wide front. Lee might, with speed and daring, drive the Federals clear back across the Rappahannock, perhaps even put them to such rout that they would leave the city of Washington, the Great Jewel, open to capture.

  The Lighthorse Cavaliers were the linchpin of the entire enterprise. Now they must discern the enemy, mark him, draw him out. And thus they waited in their saddles under the pines, anonymous in the gray cocoon of beginning day. At first light there was no wind, only the dry marrow-chilling cold that seemed to grow more bitter with dawn. The day would be clear and blood would freeze on the ground. They waited, disciplined and patient, for sou
nd to confirm what the black horse had already told them.

  It came, finally. A clink of metal — perhaps the tap of saber against belt buckle or bayonet against rifle barrel. A careless sound, made by undisciplined troops. (The trappings of Captain Finley’s own men and mounts were wrapped with cloth to muffle noise.) The sound would have gone unnoticed among the men in the copse of sycamores three hundred yards across the white field, but it carried like a shot on the brittle air to the pines where the Lighthorse Cavaliers waited. The black horse between Captain Finley’s legs was quiet. There were no more of his kind among the sycamores across the way; the smells were all man-smells.

  Captain Finley heard the sound. He studied the horse, and then he leaned far to his left and whispered to Muldoon, “Infantry.” He smiled, the great slash of his moustache lifting as he showed large, even teeth yellowed by cigar juice. Muldoon turned to stare at the captain, and Young Scout could see the thought pass between them.

  Infantry: saber against bayonet. Spread the troop and strike in a rush along the broad blue front of the enemy. Ride howling like demons to be among them quickly in a frenzy of steel and pounding horse, slashing their ranks and opening their bodies. Then wheel and roll up their flanks. Strike until they are panicked and fleeing and then give chase to put them to rout with the terror of whistling steel at their backs and the conviction that an entire corps of madmen is at their heels. That done, withdraw at a canter, stepping around the bodies.

  Thus, the trap is set. Smarting from the wound, McClellan will strike back in force. And Lee will be waiting.

  Captain Finley leaned and spoke again, his voice soft. “The dam-fools will sound us out first. McClellan’s boys are in the mold of their master. He’s like a goddamned old woman who tests the water with her big toe before she steps in. He wastes his artillery, probing and poking and letting every damned soul in the country know where he is. So we’ll get a little shot and shell, Muldoon, because whoever is across the field yonder will want to know if there’s anything lurking here in the pine thicket before they tiptoe out. But we must hold fast and not give ourselves away. No matter what.”

  Muldoon nodded. “If a man bolts, I’ll shoot the bastard.”

  “If a man bolts, I’ll shoot you, you Irish jackal.”

  Muldoon grinned. “They’ll hold, Captain.” And he turned and signaled with a broad wave of his arm for the troop to disperse among the pines. They moved away from each other, and it was their most disciplined act, for men abhor dying alone. They were all upright in their saddles now, sensing danger, testing the stiffness in their limbs, shifting their sore rumps, watching Captain Finley, broad-shouldered and erect on the black horse.

  Presently, it came. The first shell passed over their heads with a high moan and burst a hundred yards to their rear, shredding pine trees, and the men of the Lighthorse Cavaliers reined in hard on their mounts and felt the cold knot of fear in their own guts. The single round was followed by another, then another, walking like a man with a cracking whip — first left, then right, then slowly forward toward Captain Finley’s troop. The shells came faster now, one every four or five seconds, one explosion spawning the next. The horses began to dance and shy in terror, and their riders dug in their knees, still watching Captain Finley. He gave them his back and stared out at the open field.

  Muldoon and the boy held fast at Captain Finley’s side. Young Scout glanced at the adjutant and saw the faint glint of perspiration on his broad forehead. The noise of the shells mushroomed and the boy could feel the concussions pushing at his back and the bile rising in his throat. He had the sudden urge to dismount and shield himself with the chestnut, but he fought it. He heard a piercing scream to his rear, swallowed immediately by the roar of an explosion as a round erupted in the midst of the troopers. Smoke and dust were swirling about them now, so thick he could barely see the two other riders to his front. And then Captain Finley turned to him and shouted over the din, “Tighten your bowels, Young Scout! The Federals are sending us a purgative!” He laughed, throwing his head back and baring his teeth. He spoke again, but the words were lost in the terrible noise. The shells were upon them.

  In the clear cold morning air above, Billy Benefield listened to the roar of the finely tuned Pratt and Whitney engine throbbing at the nose of his bi-winged Curtiss Stearman and thought of the smooth freckled thighs of Alsatia Renfroe.

  Billy admitted to himself again, unashamedly, that he would renounce all — family honor, birthright, pilot’s wings, the chance to glory himself in battle — for one more deliciously sinful moment between Alsatia’s thighs, as he had had under the banana tree by the courthouse with summer midnight breathing on his bare bottom. Why else would he have finagled and connived for six months for the opportunity to make his cross-country flight over the sacred spot where Alsatia lay warm and tousled abed? Just beyond the blur of the propeller, Billy could see the smooth freckled thighs of Alsatia Renfroe opening, opening. He moaned. Oh, Alsatia. Oh, rapture.

  Billy flew on past the open field and the woods beyond, then banked to the left and made a broad sweep around the perimeter of the town, pointing his left wing at the slate roof of the courthouse on its neat brown square of frosted lawn. From the open cockpit of the Stearman he could see the pecan tree at the corner of the courthouse lawn where the pinochle players gathered, the storefronts along the courthouse square with their awnings beetle-browed over the sidewalks, a lighted window at the radio station upstairs over the Farmers Mercantile Bank where Ollie Whittle would be giving the early morning market report and the weather forecast, another at Biscuit Brunson’s cafe where the breakfast crowd would be gathering. He could see the streets marching off smartly at right angles, making other squares beyond the business district, the stubby brick steeple of the Methodist Church and the slim spire of the Baptist, squat frame and brick houses huddling under the bare winter branches of elms and oaks and maples.

  The sun was beginning to nudge over the horizon now and it sent pinpricks of orange and pink through the limbs of the trees and inflamed the wings of the Stearman. Billy breathed deeply and felt the icy air sear his lungs, even through the wool scarf he had wrapped around his face and over his leather flight helmet. He reached deep into his clothing — under the fur-lined flight jacket and the wool shirt and three undershirts and union suit — and felt again, for reassurance, the silk handkerchief next to his breast. Again, the hot vision of Alsatia made him flush.

  He looked down and saw far below him his own home, three blocks from the courthouse, the forbidding brown brick with green canvas awnings over the windows and a towering magnolia in the front yard — the house where his father, Mayor Rosh Benefield, would still be sleeping the sleep of a fat man this Saturday morning in the canopied bed next to his wife, Ideal.

  The Stearman came full circle over the town and Billy banked to the right and set the nose toward the horizon, following Partridge Road to where the houses began to thin out and the pavement ended. The road snaked on past the copse of sycamores, the frost-covered field, the pine thicket, and then past Jake Tibbetts’s house with the huge spreading oak tree in the front yard. It ended finally just beyond Tunstall Renfroe’s house, where Alsatia slept now in the upstairs back left-corner bedroom. It was time.

  Billy reached again deep into his clothing and plucked the silk handkerchief from its warm spot. He removed the leather flight glove from his right hand and placed the glove on the floor of the cockpit. Then, holding the Stearman on course with the control stick between his knees, the handkerchief open in the gloved palm of his left hand, Billy unbuttoned the fly of his trousers and opened himself to the morning. With the throb of the Pratt and Whitney loud in his ears and the vision of Alsatia Renfroe swimming before him, he stroked and gave birth with a bellow. Oh, Alsatia! Oh, Rapture!

  He was now several miles past Alsatia’s house. He composed himself, then turned the plane sharply on its wing and throttled forward, bearing down on the house like a glide bomber. The white frame
siding, the galvanized tin roof, the wisp of smoke curling out of the chimney from Tunstall Renfroe’s early morning coal fire, the Packard parked in the side yard, grew large over the fat nose of the Stearman. He leveled off at five hundred feet, and as he roared over the house he dropped the handkerchief far out over the side and pulled the nose of the plane up sharply. He banked and saw the handkerchief fluttering toward the Renfroes’ side yard. He waggled the wings of the Stearman, then headed east, into the sun.

  In the pines, the morning was in pieces. Young Scout gasped for breath, the air sucked from his lungs, his head dizzied by the awful roar of the shellbursts and the choking smell of the acrid smoke. To his right a riderless horse bolted toward the open field at the edge of the pines, and Captain Finley whipped out his pistol and shot the animal dead with a single bullet to the brain. The horse dropped soundlessly. Captain Finley holstered the pistol and grabbed the reins of Young Scout’s chestnut, pulling boy and horse to him. “Take a message to our battery,” he shouted in Young Scout’s ear. “They are yonder in enfilade.” The captain pointed back through the blasted pines where their own artillery, five small field pieces, had been dug in beyond a low rise. “Tell the gunners we have not revealed ourselves to the enemy. The Federals will advance when the barrage is lifted, thinking the woods are undefended. They are to wait until the Federals are fifty yards from our front and then give their britches the grapeshot. We’ll strike on the heels of their thunder!” He pushed the horse away and Young Scout wheeled and dug his heels into the chestnut. “Ride hard, Young Scout. Godspeed!” he heard Captain Finley shout at his back.

  Horse and boy pounded through the scattering ranks of the Lighthorse Cavaliers with shrapnel whistling through the tops of the trees near their heads, lopping off pine branches with a wicked snapping sound. The ground trembled with the impact of the shells. The noise was deafening. Young Scout gagged on the bitter stench of burning powder. He leaned forward in the saddle and wrapped his arms around the chestnut’s neck, trusting the horse to keep a steady course. On either side he could see the blur of horseflesh, hear the curses of men and the agonized whine of their mounts — tatters of sound shredded by the roar of cannon shot.