cedar. Inman hated these planed-off, tangled pinebrakes. All this flat land. Red dirt. Mean towns. He had fought over ground like this from the piedmont to the sea, and it seemed like nothing but the place where all that was foul and sorry had flowed downhill and pooled in the low spots. Country of swill and sullage, sump of the continent. A miry slough indeed, and he could take little more of it. Out in the woods, cicadas shrilled all around, near and far, a pulsing screech like the sound of many jagged pieces of dry bone twisting against each other. So dense was the noise that it came to seem a vibration conceived inside Inman's head from the jangle of his own troubled mind. A personal affliction, rather than a sensation of the general world shared by all. The wound at his neck felt freshly raw, and it throbbed with every pulse of cicadas. He ran a finger up under the dressing, half expecting to feel a place as deep and red as a gill slit, but instead what he found was a great crusted welt at his collar line.
He calculated that his days of traveling had put little distance between himself and the hospital. His condition had required him to walk more slowly and to rest more often than he would have liked, and he had been able to cover only a few miles at a time, and even that slow pace had been at considerable cost. He was bone tired and at least partially lost, still trying to find a passway bearing directly west toward home. But the country had been one of small farmsteads, all cut up by a welter file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...
2004-3-6
页码，35/232
of interlaced roads, none marked by any signpost to announce it as more likely westering than another. He kept feeling that he had been led farther south than he wanted. And the weather had been bad, hard rain off and on through the period, sudden downpours with thunder and lightning, both day and night. The small clapboard farmhouses had lain close-spaced, one to the other, with cornfields all but run together and nothing but fence rails to mark one man's place from the next. Each farm had two or three vicious hounds set to go off at the merest sound, rushing barkless and low out of the dark shadows of roadside trees to rip at his legs with jaws like scythes. The first night, he had kicked away several attacks and a spotted bitch pierced the hide of his calf as if with a leather punch. After that he had looked for weaponry and found a stout locust limb in a ditch. With some little effort he had beat off the next dog that bit at him, striking at it with short downward blows like tamping dirt around a new-set post. Through much of that night and the ones thereafter, he had clubbed dogs off with dull percussion to send them scooting back still soundless into the dark. The dogs and the threat of Home Guard out prowling and the gloom of the cloudy nights made for nervous wayfaring.
The night just passed had been the worst. The clouds had broken open and revealed meteors flinging themselves out of an empty point of sky. They had shot in on whizzing trajectories that Inman took to be aimed decidedly himward. Little projectiles flung from on high. Later, a great fireball had come roaring out of the dark, moving slow but aimed to land directly atop Inman. Before it had reached him, though, it simply disappeared like a candle flame pinched out with spittled finger and thumb. The fireball had been close-followed by some stub-winged whooshing nightbird or hog-faced bat, flicking low to Inman's head, causing him to duck and walk stooped for three full strides. Then presently a passing luna moth flashed open its great eye-spotted wings directly in front of Inman's nose, and he had mistaken it for some bizarre green dreamface thrust suddenly at him out of the dark with a message to speak. Inman had yelped and struck out at the air before him with hard blows that hit nothing. Later, he had heard the beat of horses cantering and had climbed a tree
He calculated that his days of traveling had put little distance between himself and the hospital. His condition had required him to walk more slowly and to rest more often than he would have liked, and he had been able to cover only a few miles at a time, and even that slow pace had been at considerable cost. He was bone tired and at least partially lost, still trying to find a passway bearing directly west toward home. But the country had been one of small farmsteads, all cut up by a welter file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...
2004-3-6
页码，35/232
of interlaced roads, none marked by any signpost to announce it as more likely westering than another. He kept feeling that he had been led farther south than he wanted. And the weather had been bad, hard rain off and on through the period, sudden downpours with thunder and lightning, both day and night. The small clapboard farmhouses had lain close-spaced, one to the other, with cornfields all but run together and nothing but fence rails to mark one man's place from the next. Each farm had two or three vicious hounds set to go off at the merest sound, rushing barkless and low out of the dark shadows of roadside trees to rip at his legs with jaws like scythes. The first night, he had kicked away several attacks and a spotted bitch pierced the hide of his calf as if with a leather punch. After that he had looked for weaponry and found a stout locust limb in a ditch. With some little effort he had beat off the next dog that bit at him, striking at it with short downward blows like tamping dirt around a new-set post. Through much of that night and the ones thereafter, he had clubbed dogs off with dull percussion to send them scooting back still soundless into the dark. The dogs and the threat of Home Guard out prowling and the gloom of the cloudy nights made for nervous wayfaring.
The night just passed had been the worst. The clouds had broken open and revealed meteors flinging themselves out of an empty point of sky. They had shot in on whizzing trajectories that Inman took to be aimed decidedly himward. Little projectiles flung from on high. Later, a great fireball had come roaring out of the dark, moving slow but aimed to land directly atop Inman. Before it had reached him, though, it simply disappeared like a candle flame pinched out with spittled finger and thumb. The fireball had been close-followed by some stub-winged whooshing nightbird or hog-faced bat, flicking low to Inman's head, causing him to duck and walk stooped for three full strides. Then presently a passing luna moth flashed open its great eye-spotted wings directly in front of Inman's nose, and he had mistaken it for some bizarre green dreamface thrust suddenly at him out of the dark with a message to speak. Inman had yelped and struck out at the air before him with hard blows that hit nothing. Later, he had heard the beat of horses cantering and had climbed a tree
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