White Doves at Morning Read Online Free PDF Page A

home," Willie answered.
    "I think not," Atkins replied.
He looked out at the lake and the moss blowing in the trees, the
four-o'clocks riffling in the shade. "One of the privies needs dipping
out. After you finish that, spread a little lye around and that will be
it until this evening. By the way, are you familiar with the poetry of
William Blake?"
    "Never heard of him," Willie
replied.
    "I see. Better get started,
young Willie. Did you bring a change of clothes?" Atkins said.
    "Excuse me, sir, but I didn't
join the army to ladle out your shit-holes. On that subject, can you
clear up a question that has bedeviled many in the community? Is it
true your mother was stricken with the bloody flux when you were born
and perhaps threw the infant away by mistake and raised the afterbirth
instead?"
    The corporal to the side of
Rufus Atkins pressed his wrist to his mouth to stop from snickering,
then glanced at Atkins' face and sucked in his cheeks.
    "Let me gag and buck him,
Cap'n," he said.
    Before Atkins could answer,
Robert Perry walked up behind Willie.
    "Hello, Captain!" Robert Perry
said.
    "How do you do, Master
Robert?" Atkins said, bowing slightly and touching his hat. "I saw you
signing up earlier. I know your father is proud."
    "My friend Willie isn't
getting off to a bad start in the army, is he?" Robert said.
    "A little garrison duty,
that's all," Atkins said.
    "I'm sure if you put him in my
charge, there will be no trouble," Robert said.
    "Of course, Master Robert. My
best to your father," Atkins said.
    "And to your family as well,
sir," Robert said, slipping his hand under Willie's arm.
    The two of them walked back
toward the lake to join Jim Stubbefield at the cypress tree. Willie
felt Robert's hand tighten on his arm.
    "Atkins is an evil and
dangerous man. You stay away from him," Robert said.
    "Let him stay away from me,"
Willie replied.
    "What was that stuff about
William Blake?"
    "I have a feeling he found a
book I gave to a Negro girl."
    "You did what?" Robert said.
    "Oh, go on with you, Robert.
You don't seem bothered by the abolitionist tendencies of Abigail
Dowling," Willie said.
    "I l ove you dearly, Willie, but you're
absolutely
hopeless, unteachable, beyond the pale, with the thinking processes of
a stump, and I suspect an extra thorn in Our Savior's crown," Robert
said.
    "Thank you," Willie said.
    "By the way, Abigail is not an
abolitionist. She's simply of a kind disposition," Robert said.
    "That's why she circulated a
petition begging commutation for John Brown?" Willie said. He heard his
friend make a grinding noise in his throat.

    THAT evening Willie bathed in
the clawfoot tub inside the bathhouse on the bayou, then dried off and
combed his hair in a yellowed mirror and dressed in fresh clothes and
walked outside into the sunset and the breeze off the Gulf. The oaks
overhead were draped with moss, their limbs ridged with lichen, and the
gardenias and azaleas were blooming in his mother's yard.
    Next door, in a last patch of
yellow sunshine, a neighbor was boiling crabs in an iron pot on a
woodfire. The coolness of the evening and the fecund heaviness of the
bayou and a cheerful wave from his neighbor somehow made Willie
conclude that in spite of the historical events taking place around him
all was right with the world and that it should not be the lot of a
young man to carry its weight upon his shoulders.
    He strolled down East Main,
past the Shadows and the wide-galleried, gabled overseer's house across
the street, past other homes with cupolas and fluted columns that
loomed as big as ships out of the floral gardens that surrounded them.
    He paused in front of a
shotgun cottage with ventilated green shutters set back in live oak and
pine trees, its windows lighted in the gloom, a gazebo in the side yard
threaded with bougainvillea. He heard a wind chime tinkle in the breeze.
    The woman who lived inside the
cottage was named Abigail Dowling. She had come to New Iberia from
Massachusetts as a nurse