Woe to Live On: A Novel (24 page)

“Huh,” she said, her breath whistling on my neck as my hands did clumsy things. “Are you virgin?”

“I’ve sinned plenty,” I told her.

“But have you ever bedded a woman before?”

“Girl, I’ve killed fifteen men.”

I dropped my good hand between her legs, then slithered those fingers about. She went “Mmmm,” so I poked her with a finger in that place where a woman can best stand it. I kept the poke steady in there but remained seated.

“You ain’t too shy, are you?” she asked me.

“I want to go about it right.”

“Well, right or wrong, honey, go on and go about it.”

I did not care for her tone, but my savories began to swell. I started to swirl with my finger as though it were a sapling twig in a creek eddy.

She liked this.

Things got wet, and my nature sprang straight up, and this widow, my wife, eased me onto my back and shuffled on top of me and we kissed the longest one I’d ever gone through.

And one thing led to another.

T
HE NEXT TWO
weeks wisped along, with me shambling through them in a fog. Sue Lee gave me nightly lessons in gaiety. I found I took to this form of learning fairly well.

After those two weeks of rigorous instruction, I got antsy to travel. It was funny how quickly I felt healed. I was rowdy with health.

One morning I just came out with it and said, “It’s time to go to Texas. The roads are clear.”

“There’s a lot of bad sorts between here and Texas,” Orton said. “If you ain’t shot
for
a thief, you’ll be shot
by
a thief.”

“Maybe not,” Holt said somewhat ominously. I knew he was ready to go, and had been for a while.

The wife I had got me didn’t say anything, but I knew it wasn’t a strange notion to her. I had babbled about Texas in soft, naked moments, and said how I wanted a place for her and the girl. I made it clear that I was done with fighting, at least I was done with this fight ’til it spread to Texas.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow would be a good day to go.”

That settled it. Several things had to be done, though, and
one of them was for me to give up my rebel locks. With bushwhacker curls hanging past my shoulders, it would be hard for me to lie about some things if trouble rolled up on us. All that hair was part of a dread costume, and I had to get shorn of it.

Orton did the shearing and displayed some gusto about the enterprise. He snipped my locks so near my ears I thought he left me looking moonfaced and childlike.

“Dutchy,” he said, “you look twenty-one again.”

“I’m just now nineteen, Ort.”

“Oh. Is that right? Well, you’ll never look that young.”

All around my boots there were long strands of pale hair, the ornamentation of my rebellion, and seeing them on the floor made me wistful.

“We said we’d never cut our hair ’til we were finished with the war.”

“And you didn’t, Dutchy. You didn’t.”

We passed one more night with the Browns of Henry County, Missouri. At dawn Wilma gave us a starter sack of provisions. She doted on Grace and said several times she would pray for us all. Orton shook my hand about every sixth minute and told me to be careful, like this was my first trip from home.

I did not relish the prospect of saying good-bye. The actual moment of farewell was a damp one. Wilma trickled and Sue Lee bawled. My wife had grown so close to this thinned-out old pair. The whole thing made her sad.

It couldn’t be helped.

“So long,” I said, and we went.

Our journey was to be a long one, and this region was writhing with robbers and rebels and scavengers and Yanks. It was hard circumstances under which to embark on a marriage. Holt and me reverted quick to our old, wary style, and Sue Lee loped along on Jack Bull’s horse, Grace strapped to her back.

Knowing we were leaving Missouri and my hard-fought-for home shuddered me with emotions. Everything I had ever known had been learned here. I knew I was not a quitter, but I was quitting this place. I guess that’s putting too fine a point on things. I did not like being run from my home, but now I wondered if it ever had been that. Boys do the quickest thing that comes to mind, and for me that had been to side with Jack Bull and rebellion, even against my own father and his ilk. From loyalty to a man, I would have murdered a people.

All this brought back an old taste for piety in me.

As we traveled south, we avoided everybody we could. All the elusive bushwhacker skills Holt and me knew were employed to dodge Gray patrols and Blue patrols and clumps of barefoot refugees. I had a family to convoy and they didn’t need to learn how trouble feels close up and sudden.

South of El Dorado Springs Holt engaged me in talk.

“Jake, I do a lot for you, you know that?”

“You know I do. It’s equal.”

“Oh, don’t say it, Jake. I got to say a thing.” His face was composed and firm with decision. I saw him in this good posture and thought, Mister, we have done some things
together, this man and me. “Jake, I’ll travel with you and yours ’til we past them Pin Indians and riffraff in the Nation, then I got to go off somewhere.”

“Where? Where will you go?”

“I ain’t decided that to a definite aim. But I’m going.”

“Why?”

Holt swiveled his stare to my wife and the child, then looked at me like I was once more a fool, and said, “Now, come on! What you mean,
why?
”

Oh, I was weary of vanishing comrades, but I understood it.

“Good luck, Holt. I wish you well and more.”

“It ain’t yet,” he said. “I ain’t leaving you ’til your little Dutch ass past them Pin Indians. I told you that, didn’t I?”

Sue Lee was an uncomplaining traveler. She shouldered every hardship and asked no special favors. Near Newport we awoke at sunrise and built a fire to boil chicory. I let her take charge of the task, and before long the pot gave out a good smell.

Naturally I had heard that my old comrades were stamping through this neighborhood, but when I heard a rattle and turned to see Arch Clay pointing a pistol at me, it was still a shocking reunion.

“Why, Dutchy,” he said. He holstered his pistol and stepped closer. “I didn’t expect to see you no more.”

Me and Holt looked tight at each other. I think it occurred to both of us that killing Arch right off might be the wisest course. But we hesitated.

“Chicory is boiling, Arch,” I said. “Have some.”

“I think I will,” he said. He dragged his horse in and I saw evidence of new habits, for there were three scalps dangling from the bridle reins. “I think I’d like some chicory, Dutchy. How you, Holt?”

“Fairly well,” Holt said.

“Are you alone, Arch?” I asked.

“Naw,” he said. This man had never looked angelic, but now he appeared totally won over to the devil’s side. “Two of the boys are back a ways. We been on the run sort of constant.”

“How is Black John?”

Arch shrugged.

“That’s a big question, Dutchy, ’cause the man is dead. Black John is dead. Who ain’t? They got him at Dover and stuck his head on a pole and paraded it down the streets. They put a picture of it in their paper.” He looked me in the eye. “It’s been rough times for us who stuck it out.”

“Aw, the war is lost,” I said.

“No shit, Dutchy. Who does this gal and kid belong to?”

“That’s my wife.”

“Huh. If that don’t beat all.
You
got a wife and I
don
‘t.”

A thin trail of mud ran a few feet east of us. I hoped there would be no trouble, and tended to the chicory as I waited.

“Where you headed?” I asked.

“Newport.”

“Hell, man, the militia is in Newport. You can’t go in there.”

“Wrong,” Arch said. “I am goin’ in there.” He seemed
way gone in spirit, forlorn and fearless. “I’m for certain sure goin’ in there. I want a drink. They have drinks in Newport. Whiskey. Lager. I want some of both.”

“Arch, they’ll kill you. There’s a couple hundred of them. You need to clear out of this country.”

“I don’t think so, Dutchy. I don’t reckon I’ll clear out of where I was born. I believe I just won’t do it. That there is my hometown. I was raised in there, and I reckon I’ll go on in and have me a drink there, too. Maybe more than one. Maybe a thousand.”

“They’ll kill you sure.”

“Oh, oh,” he said and his lips turned up sickly. “What a horrible fate. Haw, haw, haw. Yes, a horrible fate.”

His whole attitude made me nervous. Sue Lee gave me several shaky glances, and Holt looked down the trail.

“Riders,” Holt said.

“That’ll be the boys,” Arch said. “We all three decided today was the sort of day when we just had to have a drink in Newport.”

Holt and me stood, and I stepped into the timber to see which boys it was. When I saw them clear, I drew a pistol. One was good old Turner Rawls, but the other was Pitt Mackeson.

Both of their bridles flew scalps.

“It’s Mackeson,” I said to Holt.

Holt unlimbered his arms and Arch continued to just sit there, blowing on his chicory.

“Mackeson!” I shouted. I stepped to where he could see me, and when he did he drew.

I shot first and not well. He spurred his horse into the timber on the other side of the trail, and I snuggled behind a stout log on my side. I kept looking for Arch to come up behind me, but he never moved.

Mackeson shot into my general neighborhood and I paid him back in kind. Turner seemed to take no notice of the gunfire and rode on up to me.

“Yake,” he said.

“Get out of the way, Turner.” I prayed that this mangle-mouthed comrade wouldn’t make me kill him. My entire life, such as it had been, narrowed down to this instant.

“Yake, he kill oo.”

“Get out of the way, Turner!”

Off to the side of my vision I saw Arch stand. Holt covered him with a pistol.

“Arch, don’t get in it.”

Arch shook his head, all stolid and mysterious, then walked right past Holt and onto the trail. He mounted his horse.

“Come on, Rawls,” he said. Then he looked to where I lurked. “Dutchy, we’re goin’ on to Newport. Don’t be a fool and keep up at this shootin’ business.”

My wife had been hurled into a mood. She staggered about, with Grace in her hands, crying, and shouting a chorus of premature bereavement, “Oh, no, oh, no, I’m bad, I’m bad, but not this, not this!”

“Go, then,” I said to Arch. “Get.”

“Pitt!” he shouted. “Go on down the trail!”

“Hell, no!” came back the answer in that voice of hideous tone. “I’m killin’ that Dutch son of a bitch!”

“Hey you!” I shouted right back at him. “I’ll kill
you
for talking rough to me in front of my wife!”

The encounter was a standoff. I couldn’t get at him, nor he at me.

“Look, Dutchy,” Arch said, as he bit the end off a cigar. “Pitt is comin’ with us. You let him alone or there’ll be bad things happen.”

“Get him and go,” I said.

Arch went on down the trail and called to Pitt, promising I wouldn’t fire. After a minute, damned if Mackeson didn’t come clean onto the trail about fifty feet away. He had holstered his pistol and was snorting like he’d heard a whale of a joke. These boys wore death like a garnish; it had no terror for them, and that scared me.

I walked out beside Turner and watched Mackeson close, but I didn’t want to fight anymore. That is what it was, I just didn’t want to fight Americans or Yanks or rebs or niggers or Dutchmen or nothing no more. Then that skunk hooted me, in full view of my woman. My trigger finger itched, but I still didn’t shoot him and I knew I wasn’t the same way I used to was.

Arch and Pitt loped away, not too fast.

“See oo, Yake,” Turner said.

“Aw, no, Turner. Don’t.”

He wouldn’t look at me. I couldn’t get him to do it. His mind was set, and he shook his head and rode slowly away.

“Turner, Turner,” I said. I walked fast beside him. “Damn it, man, come down our way with us.”

All the response I got was him slamming in the spurs and galloping off.

I went to my wife and the baby Grace, and pulled them close to me. I cried with relief from not having been plucked from them. I had things to lose now, and that makes fearlessness a vice.

“Oh, Sue Lee,” I said, and squeezed and squeezed.

Holt packed us up while I lingered in the hug, and when we were calmed it was on down the trail for us, and quick. I didn’t want to hear the shots from Newport.

All that day, and for many days to come, we trotted muddy miles, through a war-sad state and a beautiful country. I knew it to my bones that my world had shifted, as it always shifts, and that a better orbit had taken hold of me.

I had us steered toward a new place to live, and we went for it, this brood of mine and my dark comrade, Holt. This new spot for life might be but a short journey as a winged creature covers it, that is often said, but, oh, Lord, as you know, I had not the wings, and it is a hot, hard ride by road.