Free White Doves at Morning: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke

thoughts brought her little solace.
     
    WHEN she was a child, Abigail Dowling's father, who was a physician and a Quaker, taught her that a lie was an act of theft as well as one of deceit. A lie stole people's faith in their fellow man, he said, and the loss was often irreparable, whereas a monetary one was not.
    In early August of 1861 the first casualty lists from Manassas Junction made their way back to New Iberia. The postmaster sat down behind the counter where he daily sorted the mail into pigeonholes, an eyeshade fastened on his forehead, and went down the alphabetized row of names from the 8th Louisiana Volunteers with his finger. Then he removed his glasses and placed them on his desk and with some very tiny nails he tacked all the lists to the post office wall.
    He put on his coat and went out the front door and walked toward the end of Main, where he lived in a tree-shaded house behind the Episcopalian church. Without apparent cause he began to sway from side to side, as though he were drunk or possessed of epilepsy. When he collapsed against a hitching rail, a black deliveryman picked him up and sat him down in a chair against the front wall of the grocery. Then two white men took him inside and peeled off his coat and fanned his face and tried to get him to drink a glass of water.
    Abigail stared through the grocery window at the scene taking place inside.
    "What happened?" she asked the black man.
    "Mr. LeBlanc's son got kilt in Virginia," the black man said.
    "How did he learn?" she asked.
    "I reckon it come t'rew the wire or the mail, Miss Abigail. That po' man."
    Abigail hurried inside the post office. The wind through the open door and windows was lightly rattling the casualty lists against the wall. Her heart beating, she read the names of the soldiers under the captions "Wounded" and "Killed" and saw none there she could put a face with. She let out her breath and pressed her hand against her heart and then felt shame that her joy was at the expense of families that would never see their soldier boys again.
    When she turned to leave the post office she glanced at the floor and saw a sheet of paper the wind had blown loose from the nails. She picked it up, her hand beginning to tremble. At the top of the page was the caption "Missing in Action." The third name in the column was that of Lieutenant Robert S. Perry.
    She walked stone-faced down the street to her house, her ears ringing, unaware of the words spoken to her by others on the street or the peculiar looks they gave her when she didn't respond to their greetings.
    Later, she did not remember drawing the curtains inside her house, filling it with summer heat that was almost unbearable, nor did she remember pacing from one room to the other, her mind drumming with her father's words about his experience as a surgeon with Zachary Taylor's troops in Mexico.
    "I saw a lad, not more than a tyke really, struck by an exploding cannonball. It blew him into small pieces. We buried parts of his fingers and feet. I had to pick them up with forceps and put them in a sack," her father had said.
    Why had she lectured Robert on slavery, trying to inculcate guilt in him for deeds that were his family's and not his? Were her piety, the sense of righteousness with which she bore her cause like a personal flag, even her sexual modesty, were all these virtues in which she prided herself simply a vanity, a self-deception that concealed the secret pleasure she took in the superiority of her education and New England background?
    Could she deny she was not guilty of pride, the most pernicious of the seven deadly sins? Or of carnal thoughts that took hold of her sleep and caused her to wake hot and wet in the middle of the night?
    She saw Robert's face before her, the shine like polished mahogany in the thickness of his hair, his eyes that were the bluest and most beautiful she had ever seen in a man. She saw him on a meandering, pebble-bottomed creek, surrounded by green