Woe to Live On: A Novel (23 page)

“You want me to come along?” I asked.

“Naw. You go on and finish healing. I’ll take the nigger with me, though. He’s a handy gunman, I hear tell.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Post this letter for me, would you?”

He nodded and took the note when I handed it to him. He put it inside his shirt.

I shoved Holt awake. His eyes were all bloody and he didn’t seem too well rested.

“Mr. Brown wants you to ride with him to Hartwell, Holt.”

“What? All right,” he said. In about a minute he was ready to go.

Orton grabbed his shotgun and he and Holt went to saddle up. I wobbled out to watch them leave. It was a cold morning, and there had been a smearing of snow in the night. My lungs welcomed the clean, chilled air.

The men rode from the barn past the porch where I stood. “You get on in and rest, now,” Orton said. “I want you rested, Dutchy.”

“I guess I’ll do that,” I said, but I stayed right there and watched them amble off over the thin snow and hard earth, out of sight.

During the day I did my normal thing. That is, I cornered gurgly Grace on a blanket on the floor and just reveled in that child. My confusion amongst babes had lessened tremendously when I’d learned that my nubbin could calm them at their stormiest.

Sue Lee seemed worried I might spoil Grace. She was always saying, “It is time for her nap” or “Don’t fling her in
the air thataway, Jake!” Mothers are endless with those comments.

After the noon meal Sue Lee suckled Grace. This was my favorite part of the day. I watched, and it could be I
over-
watched, for Mommy’s cheeks reddened.

“Are you always going to stare like that?” she asked me.

“Long as I can.”

“Well, you’re pretty near well, so it won’t be much longer.” She turned away from me slightly. “I reckon you and Holt’ll be off to get shot by some
different
fellows here pretty soon.”

That was a prediction that could come true. Bodily calamities just seemed to be in the cards. But I thought I was about done with bushwhacking gangs, and the regular Confederates had too many rules. None of that interested me. I was still loyal to the Cause but leery of the people.

“Maybe I won’t,” I said.

“What will you do, then?”

“Oh, now maybe I’ll trek on over to California and catch me a sailboat to somewhere sunny and full of lambs.”

“Is that right,” she said and laughed. “What grand spot have you got in mind, Jake?”

The baby gummed away at the nourishing breast, and I stretched my legs out straight and leaned back on my hands.

“In Sparta they have olives,” I said. “I got that out of a book. I could eat me some olives, I think.”

“Olives? What are olives like?”

“Well, I don’t know firsthand. I never had one yet. But I’ve eat a bushel of walnuts, and nothing can be more trouble to eat than them.”

A look of deep thought came over Sue Lee’s face. She switched Grace to the spare nipple, her fingers moving fast, then sighed as the babe went to work.

“I wonder about me,” she said. “I ain’t going sailing nowhere and I know it. I wonder about me and Grace.”

“Oh, you’ll get by,” I said. That was all the honesty I could summon. I hate it when they put you on the spot. I don’t like lying, but I hate it worse when I don’t tell the truth. “You know, that girl needs her a daddy.”

“She had a daddy, Jake, and you ain’t it.”

That comment was uncalled for. I pushed myself to my feet and pointed a finger in her face.

“You know, girl,” I said all hot and breathy. “You’re going to have to get your water from the nearest well, or else learn to love lugging that
heavy bucket
of yours.”

And with that I went outside and stood beneath a sky of gray, trembling in my effort to rein myself in from becoming a mushmouth.

That girl was starting to bring it out in me.

Late in the afternoon I noted two things: Wilma dusted off the family Bible and put it on the table; then she baked bread and tommyhawked a chicken though it wasn’t Sunday.

“What’s with the special favors, Wilma?” I asked.

Now, this was an older lady and she gave me an older-lady look of shrewdness.

“Why, nothing,” she said. “Orton will be mighty hungry from the ride, don’t you think? I intend to feed him well.”

Uh-huh, I thought.

In an hour or so Orton and Holt rode up with a fat, pale, dark-dressed stranger. I watched them from the window, and when they came in the stranger looked at me and said, “Is this the man?”

“That’s him,” Orton said. “Dutchy Roedel.”

Holt stood in the doorway, trying to choke down some sniggers.

“What is this?” I asked.

“This is Reverend Horace Wright,” Orton said. He held his shotgun by the barrel with the butt on the floor. “You’re getting married today, Dutchy. You’re getting married or you’re getting out.”

“I’m what?”

“You heard me. You’re all healed. I wanted to be sure you wouldn’t die slow before I did this. I can’t have it in my house the way it is.”

Wilma bustled Sue Lee into the room. I guess she was about as rattled by this as me, but she sure didn’t look it.

“Holt, saddle my horse,” I said. I was all puffed with myself, like the rooster in a one-rooster county. “We’re getting out of here.”

“No, no,” he said. He shook his head several times, and I wanted to pop him in the middle of his grin. “You should do right, Jake.”

“What on earth does that mean?” I screamed.

The reverend chewed his lips and looked on me without too much pity. Orton matched him and the place went silent. Sue Lee poked me in the ribs with a finger and nodded toward the porch.

“Let’s talk,” she said.

“I do believe that is a roasting chicken I smell,” the reverend said.

Me and the widow marched outside. I did stuttery steps and bashful coughs while this girl, who had been here before, stared at me sternly. Hell, I’d never even whispered sweet folderol to a maiden I’d liked, let alone got legally trussed up with a widow.

“Are you going to or not?” she asked. “Be forthright.”

“It’s being shoved down my throat,” I said. “If a thing has got to be shoved, I like to do the shoving.”

She smirked at me, and for an instant there I had a good idea of how she came by that busted tooth.

“Well, get on in there and shove, then, Jake.”

I sat on the lip of the porch and rested my leg. It was more than chilly and the sun was sinking.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t want me for a wagonload of gold ’cause I am a nubbin-fingered runt of a Dutchman. I remember you saying that.”

“Well,” she said, brightly, “I guess I lied.”

“Are you lying again now?”

“No. I wouldn’t lie to you, Jake.”

“You just told me you lied to me before.”

“That’s different,” she said. “That was romance.”

“And now is what?”

She touched my forehead and curled an arm around my neck. “Now is the truth.” She then eased my face to her feeders, and twirled a finger in my hair. “This here now is the truth.”

The truth made my face flush. I was glad it was hidden from her.

“Jack Bull would want that girl to have a daddy,” I said. “He was like my brother. I guess I’ll do it.”

Reverend Wright was hungry, and from the pudgy look of him he wasn’t one to put up with that. He did a lickety-split ceremony and sniffed the chicken-soaked air like some ridiculous hound.

Bachelorhood vanished in a blink, and Holt slammed my back, and Wilma beamed. There was a load of righteous happy stuff done. I stood up to it and Sue Lee stood up to it and, hell, it didn’t hurt or nothing.

I thought to ask Orton what sect this reverend headed.

“Oh, he is Methodist, but he marries all breeds.”

The reverend was over at the table, his haunches jiggling, ripping off chunks of bread and mashing his mouth.

“I reckon that man would marry stones to stones if there was a chicken at the end of it,” I said.

“That’s neither here nor somewhere else,” Orton said. “He done made you legal.”

Pretty soon we all sat down and tore up the bird and bread, and Orton hauled out a jug in honor of the occasion. Reverend Wright said he was opposed to drinking but for us to please go on. I guess gluttony is not so bad so long as you don’t double up on your vices by washing it down with something tasty.

The rest of us mumbled a few toasts, and Sue Lee got her share. The girl liked her drink fairly well for a girl. It charged her face with rosy attitudes.

I liked that.

After all these gestures things slid back into the normal way. Orton and Wilma retired early, then Sue Lee and Grace did the same. The reverend sacked out on the floor where Holt and me had been sleeping. The man had several pistols on him, as he was aware that the Lord works in mysterious ways and some of them require the blasting of others.

“You a family man now,” Holt said to me. “How do you feel?”

“I feel the same, Holt.” I sat beside him on the floor, back to the wall. “Hell, it’s only words.”

“No. It’s a oath, Jake. That’s words that you got to back up.”

“Oh, I know that,” I said. Holt pulled his blanket over himself and started to curl up. “I reckon we’ll be hauling her and the kid with us now.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know. Out of here. Maybe Utah Territory.”

Holt lay there watching me, a puzzled look on his face. I pulled my boots off and spread my bedroll and lay down, then Holt sat up.

“What you doing?” he asked me.

“I am going to sleep. You gone blind? I am fixing to get me some sleep.”

His lower jaw dropped, and he shook his head so hard his cheeks flapped.

“Jake, do I got to tell you this?”

“Tell me what?”

“You
s’posed
sleep with the wife, Jake. For pity sake, you got to know that much. You
s’posed
to share her bed, that
way some other man ever do that you shoot him, ’cause that be
your
place by
oath
.”

“I know all that,” I said. “You bet I know that. But hell, this ain’t some regular marriage situation.”

“Don’t you like her?” Holt pulled the blanket up over his knees as if settling in for a long spell of chat. “You ain’t gonna lie to me that you don’t.”

“I like her,” I said, and felt dazed by the admission. “She’s pretty enough and all that, but this thing marriage has swept over me so sudden.”

“Well, Jake,” Holt said in his somber tone, “it
is
over you. I mean, you done did the milkin’, might as well lap the cream.”

I gazed about the room and watched the swelling and sinking of the preacher’s form as he sawed away, and moonlight leaked in the window with the hue of some weak gold. Holt was all eyes watching me and I was mostly nerves myself.

I grabbed my boots and slinked away. Sue Lee had a room off the kitchen, and I crept to the door. My heart was kicking up its heels and slamming hell out of my ribs.

I creaked the door open slow, and there she was, stretched out with her eyes closed and a candle burning nearby.

As I stepped into the room she opened her eyes and said, “Jake.”

Grace was asleep in a tiny rocking contraption Orton had built. She was drawing pure, sleepy breaths.

I dropped my boots and tossed my hat on top of them. I put my pistols down.

The candle burned on a side table, and she sat up in bed, wearing some garment that left her shoulders bare. There was a vastness of skin showing.

For a second I fumbled with the button on my britches, then thought better of it and started into bed.

“Hey,” she said with a long soft drawl, “take your clothes off.” There was a glow to her and some smiley expectations played out on her face. “You don’t come to bed in dirty duds, Jake. Now, that’s a rule.”

Well, I just stood there, which is one of my favorite poses, as whenever I hear the mention of a rule my first urge is to find it and give it a shake. This trait had never made my life easier, and it didn’t do it now.

“Just how many rules is it you’ve got lined up for me, girl?”

“Oh, don’t get mad.” She swung out of bed and barefooted over to me, and, damn, there wasn’t a gnat’s width of cotton between her and nakedness. “I’ll help you.” She jerked my shirt over my head, then reached to my button and undid it. My britches dropped. That left me bare-assed in front of this creature, and this was a new feature to my life. It brought some tingles with it.

“There,” she said. She stood right before me, hands on her hips, mocking my Christian rearing, her lips splayed in a bold smile, then whisked that veil of cotton from her form.

“Oh!” I went.

She sat on the bed next to me and did a spitty kiss on my ear. There was a thicket of hair on her south forty, and I’ll tell you I’d never plowed through any of that so I edged my hand down there and felt of it.