She went into the kitchen and fired the woodstove, then uncovered the water barrel by the pantry and dipped an iron pot with a long handle into the water and set it on top of the stove lid.

She locked the door in the living room and sat down in a chair by the front window. She wished she had a pistol or a rifle or a shotgun, it didn't matter what kind. She had never held one in her hands, but for a lifetime she had watched white men handle them, take them apart, clean and oil them, load and cock and fire them, and she never doubted the degree of affection the owner of a gun had for his weapon nor the sense of control it gave him.

But Abigail Dowling owned no firearms and would allow none in her home. So Flower sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her heart beating, and wondered when Abigail would return home.

She heard a plank bend under someone's weight on the gallery. She waited for a knock, but there was only silence. The doorknob twisted and the door began to ease forward in the jamb before it caught against the deadbolt. Her heart hammered in her ears.

She rose from her chair. She could see no one in the yard and the angle of her vision prevented her from seeing who was on the gallery. She walked to the door and stood only inches from it, looking at the threadlike, cracked lines in the paint on the cypress boards, the exposed, square nailheads that were darkened with rust, a thimbleful of cobweb stuck behind a hinge. "Who is it?" she asked.

"Got a message from the aid station for Miss Abigail Dowling."

"She cain't come to the door right now."

"The surgeon don't have a nurse. He says for her to get down there."

"I'll tell her."

"She in the privy?"

"Who are you?"

But this time he didn't answer and she heard feet moving past the side window. She screwed down the wick in the living room oil lamp until the flame died, then hurried to the kitchen and took a butcher knife from a drawer. The fire glowed under the stove lids and the air was hot and close with the steam that curled off the pot she had set to boil. She stood motionless in the darkness, her clenched palm sweating on the wood handle of the knife.

The first man through the back door splintered it loose from the bolt with one full-bodied kick. Then he plunged into the kitchen with two other men behind him, all three of them wearing white cotton cloths with eye holes tied tightly across their faces. They went from room to room in the cottage as though she were not there, as though the knife in her hand were of no more significance than the fact she was a witness to a home invasion.

Then all three of them returned to the kitchen and stared at her through the holes in their masks. She could hear them breathing and smell the raw odor of corn liquor on their breaths.

"Where's she at?" one man said. He wheezed deep down in his chest.

"Not here."

"That's helpful," he said, and looked at the broken door. He pushed it back in place with his foot. He grabbed her wrist and swung her hand against the stove and knocked the butcher knife to the floor. "When will she be back?"

"When she feel like it."

The man looked at the steam rising off the pot on the stove. He coughed into his hand, then breathed hard, as though fighting for air, the cloth of his mask sucking into his mouth. "You making tea?" he asked.

She looked at the wall, her arms folded across her chest, her pulse jumping in her throat.

"Let's get out of here," a second man said.

"We got paid for a night's work. We ought to earn at least part of it," the first man said.

The three men looked at one another silently, as though considering a profound thought.

"Sounds good to me," the third man said.

They walked Flower into the bedroom, releasing her arms when they reached the bed, waiting, the night air outside filled with the singing of tree frogs.

"You want to undress or should we do it for you?" the first man said. He turned his head, lifted his mask briefly, and spit out the window. "Enjoy it, gal. We ain't bad men. Just doin' a piece of work."

For the next half hour she tried to find a place in her mind that was totally black, without light or sound or sensation of any kind, safe from the incessant coughing of a consumptive man an inch from her ear and the smell of chewing tobacco and testosterone that now seemed ironed on her skin. When the last man lifted his weight from her, the cloth across his face swung out from his mouth and his teeth made her think of kernels of yellow corn.

ABIGAIL and Willie rode in her buggy to his mother's small farm by Spanish Lake, five miles outside of town. The house was dark inside the overhang of the oak trees, and the animals were gone from the pens and the barn. The front door of the house gaped open, the broken latch hanging by a solitary nail. A dead chicken lay humped on the gallery, its feathers fluttering in the wind. Willie stepped inside the doorway and lit a candle on the kitchen table. The rows of dishes and cups and jars of preserves on the shelves were undisturbed, but the hearthstones had been prized out of the fireplace and several blackened bricks chipped loose with a sharp tool from inside the chimney.

"I've heard tell about jayhawkers in the area," Abigail said.

"This bunch wore blue uniforms. Jayhawkers would have taken the food," he replied.

His words lingered in the air, the syllables touched with an angry stain she couldn't associate with the boy she used to know.

The entire rural landscape seemed empty of people as well as livestock. The ground was powdered with white ash, the pecan orchards sculpted in the moonlight, the sky full of birds that never seemed to touch the earth. They passed Camp Pratt and looked at the deserted barracks and the wind wrinkling the surface of the lake. Across the water there was a red glow in the bottom of the sky. Briefly they heard the popping of small-arms fire, then it was quiet again and there was no sound except the wind and the creaking of the trees. "I'm sure your mother's all right," Abigail said. He didn't speak for a long time. She looked at the profile of his face, the darkness in his eyes, the way his civilian clothes seemed inappropriate on his body.

"Do you regret this evening?" he asked.

"Pardon?" she said, looking straight ahead.

"You hear right well when you choose to."

"I don't do anything I don't wish to," she said. She could feel the intensity of his eyes on the side of her face.

"You're a damn poor liar, Abby."

"I know of no greater arrogance than for a man to tell a woman what she feels."

"Perhaps my experience is inadequate," he replied. The buggy rumbled across a wood bridge that spanned a coulee. A large, emaciated dog with a bad hind leg climbed out from under the bridge and ran crookedly into a cane field, a red bone in its mouth. "Hold up," Willie said.

He got down in the road and walked to the crest of the coulee. At the bottom of the slope, among the palmettos, were the bodies of three Union soldiers. Two lay facedown in the water, an entry wound in the back of each of their heads, the hair blown back against the scalp by the closeness of the muzzle blast. The third man lay on his side on the far bank, one eye staring back at Willie, the other covered by a black leather patch. The wrists of all three men had been tied behind them. Their weapons were gone and their pockets had been pulled inside out.

Abigail stood next to Willie. "It's the officer from the burial detail," she said.

"Yes, it is. Poor fellow," Willie said. He looked off into the pecan orchards by the lake and up and down the road and out into the field.

"Who did this?" she asked.

"They call themselves guerrillas or irregulars. Most of them are criminals," he said.