Free Black Noon by Andrew J. Fenady

softly.
    â€œJonathon, last night you tossed and talked in your sleep . . . I couldn’t understand what you were saying. Was it the war again? Shenandoah? Was it what happened there?”
    â€œI . . . I don’t remember.”
    â€œI had hoped those dreams were over. Is there anything I can do to help?”
    â€œYes, there is, Lorna. Sleep. Rest and get well. I’ll sit beside you until you fall asleep.”
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    Inside the candlelit shed, the thumb and forefinger of Deliverance applied pressure to the temples of the wax image of Lorna Keyes. The cat purred as Deliverance smiled.
    Lorna had fallen into the pit of a deep sleep.
    Keyes started to undress but stopped. He took the Bible from the bed and placed it on the dresser.
    With cautious footsteps he started for the door.

CHAPTER 21
    He sat on the stump of a tree and thought . . . and wondered . . . and remembered.
    The journey toward Saguaro—his dream of the burning church with an image that could have been Deliverance. The wagon breakdown. Near death in the desert. The rescue. Caleb, Joseph, and Deliverance. Lorna, “recovering,” wanting to get to Saguaro. The misfortunes of San Melas. Without a church. Deliverance’s affliction. Young Ethan on crutches for the rest of his life. The mine run dry of gold. Moon, evil incarnate . . . his hell sport and promise to return. The Sunday service and Ethan’s miraculous walk to him. Then the young boy trapped in the mine. His vision of the man in the mirror, bruised and burned. The battlefield of his mind . . . and the bloody battles riding with Custer.
    Shenandoah.
    Shenandoah.
    Shenandoah.
    Had it all started with Shenandoah?
    He remembered.
    Shenandoah. It began at Shenandoah.
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    â€œShenandoah?” Sheridan asked rhetorically. “I’ll tell you the answer. The answer is the Carthaginian solution, without salt . . . but with gunpowder, fire, and dynamite. Leave nothing standing. Homes, bridges, barns, crops, rail yards. What it took generations to build . . . blow it all apart, burn it, destroy it . . . structures and soldiers. Leave nothing or no one in enemy uniform standing.”
    The Shenandoah Valley. Geography and fate destined the Shenandoah Valley to be among the bloodiest of battlefields. The valley, more than one hundred fifty miles long and ten to twenty miles wide, nourished by the Shenandoah River, was rich in farmlands, orchards, and pastures. Between the Blue Ridge Mountains on the east and the Alleghenies on the west, the region was one of varied scenery and natural wonders.
    Unfortunately for the valley, it was, also, the ideal avenue of approach between the forces of the North and South. Both sides considered it the passport to victory or defeat.
    Philip A. Sheridan had chosen George Armstrong Custer to lead the North to that victory.
    Ironically, the opposing commander, General J.E.B. Stuart, was a West Point friend of Custer’s. Together, they had led the Yankee forces that defeated John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. But since the war, the two had taken divergent paths to glory except when they crossed each other in the fields of battle.
    â€œJeb” Stuart, the charismatic Rebel general, was the military and spiritual inspiration of the South with victory after victory by his Invincibles, also known as the Black Horse Raiders. Never defeated—except by Custer—first at Brandy Station, where the reckless twenty-two-year-old Captain Custer led the First Michigan on what everybody thought was an impossible charge—and at Gettysburg where General Custer prevented Stuart from hooking up with Pickett, dooming Pickett’s valiant charge.
    And in the Shenandoah carnage Captain Jon Keyes rode with Custer in the midst of slaughter and devastation.
    But with them, someone who Keyes could not help but notice, respect, and admire, Reverend James Mason, who carried no rifle, pistol, or saber—only a Bible, and who even