Woe to Live On: A Novel Read online

  “You are some picker,” I said. I about did not read it, for I knew the author of it would insult me from a distance. “Okay, here goes….”

  I belted out the contents of the Yankee thing. It developed that father Pritchard in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, was very proud of young Andrew for having the pluck to come out to our territory and try to force us into being more like them. It is war to the knife and knife to the hilt, he said, which is exactly the same way we saw it. God’s will must be done, he said, and rebels had sacrificed the right to the love of any known God, for he didn’t imagine that the God he prayed to in Massachusetts could possibly stomach Missouri men.

  Well, I thought, this man follows a frail deity.

  “I don’t want to read this,” I said. “It is making me forlorn, the stinginess of it. Draw out another.”

  “I am with you,” Holt said, as he dipped his fingers into the pouch. “I want to hear nice things, and that man don’t say them.”

  “You have got that right.” The new letter was folded into a tiny square. I opened it slowly. “Holt, where is your mother?”

  “Aw, Kansas or Kingdom. I don’t know which.”

  I could tell this was something he thought of often. Anybody would. Sad deeds were done in this land. I never owned a nigger or even bid on one.

  “Well, my father is murdered,” I said, as I undid the tiny square.

  “I know that,” he said. “George’s whole family is murdered. Even his momma, who was not too well anyhow.”

  “Does Clyde own you?”

  His head shook, his lips turned down.

  “Not in greenbacks and coppers,” he said.

  “I see,” I said, and I did.

  The tiny square unfolded to reveal a big sloppy script. It, too, was from Massachusetts and en route to Lawrence. This one was from a brother to a brother. A real hardy tone was in it. The back-east brother had seen a theatrical in Boston where an Englishman played Othello with bootblack so effectively smeared on his face that he fully expected John Brown’s ghost to waft in and double the ticket price. These boys were named Fannin. The letter writer went on to say that so many niggers were now freed and in Boston that Irishmen could hardly get jobs on the docks. He allowed as how this was not a phenomenon that had been predicted by the Black Republicans, but it was one he was having to live with. He then said he loved his brother and he often thought warmly of him and the times when they had missed the shape-up and gone rowing in the harbor, and the sweaty nights after they had humped on the docks all day only to dance too late at Parlan’s Beer Garden. Oh, Jesus, he said, life was not so rough when your favorite brother was with you and there were droves of single gals roaming about and beer was free if they were one of Parlan’s daughters. Here’s to you, he finished, and keep your head low out there.

  “Is this a better one?” I asked Holt.

  “A good deal nicer,” he said with a nod. “It could get to where you might like that man.”

  “Yes,” I said. “In other times he would not be so bad.”

  What we said was true. I had barely disliked anyone before woop and warp had come my way, and never hated. But I had learned all these emotions that some call necessary and noble. I would never apologize for it, yet I might have thrived without it.

  “Holt, do you reckon this war will ever end?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “Not unless we are killed.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, and patted his pistols. “That would do it. I left that out.”

  “You reckon we’ll be killed?”

  “Mmmmm,” he went, and I really liked him, for a nigger. “Old men is not a way I ever figure us to be.”

  11

  FOR SEVERAL DAYS Venus ruled. The dugout became a mere hotel for George and Jack Bull, and a dodderer’s home to Holt and me. The romance men preened themselves into oily specimens, and leaked out a roughhewn, mocking good cheer.

  They had plumbed the savory well and we had not. It seemed to make all the difference.

  Jack Bull now had private tunes that he whistled for his pleasure only, but he still slapped me like a brother and set aside extra time for talking to me. He was kinder in his comments than usual. That is, when he and George were not strutting their stallion facets.

  It all made my cheeks blanch. He treated me like an idiot child and I was neither.

  By the calendar it was well into January and not as cold as it should have been. I pointed this out.

  “Since it is not so cold, we should go out on a scout of some sort. The snow is melted.”

  The Venus-struck pair showed no interest.

  “You are a fount of bad ideas,” George Clyde said. My, how a little regular sin had changed his interests. “It could snap cold at any time.”

  Later, Jack Bull Chiles and me sat alone, sharing tales of adventures we had taken together. We talked purple improbable patches of half-right details about the sultry summer day when we had swum in the Big Muddy, then rattled the fragile citizens by loping bare-assed to home, and of the gray, crisp September day when our first deer fell before us, and similarly unimportant days that loomed large in recollection. Everybody has them. A few things we did in the wrong came up, but we refashioned those deeds with our speech and came out of them now looking fine. We turned blunders inside out and wore them as victories.

  “This thing with Sue Lee,” I said. “Will it go on?”

  By his face and eyes I saw clear that he would not make a joke of my query.

  “I would reckon,” he said.

  Our hair had gotten so long that I was always aware of it. We had sworn not to cut it ’til the war was won. My hands went to my long pale locks and fingered them about.

  “Well, now,” I said. “That is good for you.”

  “Yes. I believe I’ll marry her.”

  “But she is a widow.”

  “What of it?” He shrugged and looked happy. “She suits me as good as I can be suited, Jake.”

  There was no room for churlishness on my part. I was learning to accept that I was not crucial to the turning of the world, or the turning of his world, and often not even to my own.

  “Congratulations, Jack Bull,” I said, dredging up all the mastery of voice I owned. “You will make the finest pair in Missouri, I can see that right now.”

  “She’s a wonderful gal.”

  “She is fine in every way,” I said.

  “And you know,” he said, a big rare smile on him, and his hand flying to pat my shoulder, “she feels the same about me! Ain’t that something?”

  “Oh, it really is,” I said. “A big ox like you—well, I would not have predicted it.”

  “I know.” He was so pleased that I felt overwhelmingly alone. “But she does.”

  “That is wonderful. You would have to eat a peach and bring it back clean to top that.”

  “Oh, at least. At least that.”

  Well, the winter wore on. Riley Crawford visited us. He had some news—evil things were winging over our country. Several comrades had gotten bold from boredom and went riding into the next world. I knew them, and it was bad to hear. Riley stayed two nights, then moved on, safely I hoped.

  In what must have been late February, Turner Rawls and the Hudspeth brothers came over just to hear some different lies, they said. Turner’s banged-up mouth had healed, but not right. A coin size of black torn skin had grown over the bullet hole in his cheek. His teeth did not mesh. He spoke slobber-tongued like a dog would if a dog could. It was sad, and it was plain that he thought so, too. Sometimes he would start out on a sentence, then kind of drool off the track and his eyes would water and his fingers tremble. I had come to like him so much. His affliction made me way wistful, and I would wag my nubbin in his face, trying to cheer us both.

  These boys relayed the word that Black John wanted us all to rally at Captain Perdee’s farm as soon as the weather broke. They were anxious to be on the prod again, and the sorrowful deaths of winter had me wil
ling to share their mood.

  A day later they left.

  In very early March, a month special to me, for I was born in it, Clyde left the dugout to go to Juanita Willard’s and add some details to his ruin of her reputation. Nothing was ever said of this.

  Holt was left behind by Clyde. It had become the way, for Holt was merely an intrusive specter at the Willard house.

  On this day I saw a three-legged buck, with battered antlers and worn fur, drag off through the woods. The proud stag lived on but, crippled up and worn, he would soon feed other beasts.

  The sun was all over the sky, no clouds trifled with it. Holt, Jack Bull and me sat in front of the dugout, smelling the clean wind and staring out over all the land eyesight can survey.

  In even the foulest of weather there are still several fine points of beauty to a day. But on a day as wonderful as this the marvels of our existence were everywhere to be noted, and any fault hard to find.

  “Sue Lee will be by today,” Jack Bull said.

  “Good,” I said. “It’s been near a week since I’ve seen her.”

  “Yes. All this warmth has the Federals out for jaunts. That has kept her home.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “It won’t be long before we join them—out there.”

  “No, it won’t,” Jack Bull said. He was acting a bit more casually sincere than I knew him to be. “That is why I want to ask something of you and Holt.”

  “Name it.”

  “Well, there, future best man,” he said, “I would ask you to give us some privacy.”

  “Oh, you would, would you?”

  “It’s not much to ask.”

  “What are Holt and me to do?”

  He turned his hands up in that way that is the common response to pointless questions.

  “Anything you’d like. Fling walnuts at squirrels, play mumblety-peg, study leaves. Whatever you want.”

  I said, “I reckon we can come up with a better use of our time than that, eh, Holt?”

  “It is a possible,” he said, and nodded.

  It was nowhere near dark when Sue Lee arrived. She came winding along up through the woods. A few snowbanks were still there in the shadowy parts of the landscape. Over the winter she had gotten sly and never took exactly the same path to the dugout twice in a row. Her discretion in this regard was much appreciated.

  When she drew near us, she said howdy in that sassy tone of hers. That tooth was still chipped in the center of her smile, and that pale scar still cleaved her brow and her hair continued to go its own way, but she had gotten much prettier to me. The hue of the rose was on her cheeks. A dose of serenity had been put to her, and the effect it had was fine and pleasing.

  “I brung you two something,” she said to Holt and me. One of her hands slinked under her cloak and she raised out a half loaf of fresh bread and a spoon of butter in a rag. “Try this bread, boys.”

  She handed the loaf to me. The scent of it was welcome. Fresh bread—you wouldn’t think it could be as special as it can be when you ain’t gnawed any for a spell.

  “Why, thank you,” I said. “Did you make it?”

  “No, no,” she said, and smiled. “Mrs. Evans’s sister lives in the town. She is a Federal but a sister still. She gave us two loaves.”

  “That is kind of her. Thank her for us, won’t you?”

  She laughed.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll tell her where it went. That might not do.”

  Jack Bull was standing at the dugout door, holding it open, impatient for his privacy. Holt ducked in and came back out with the mail pouch and a solemn expression.

  “Hmmm,” I said. “This good weather has me and Holt wanting to go off and fling walnuts at mumblety-peg players, or something along those lines.”

  “Have fun,” Jack Bull said.

  Sue Lee went down into the dugout. It was as much her place as anyone’s now.

  “Jake,” Mister Romance said. He held his trigger finger up and whispered, “One hour. One hour.”

  I nodded to him. This all seemed like more secrecy than an obvious smoochy tryst required. But it saved us from openly mentioning things. That might lead to too many interesting opinions being flaunted.

  So, as it was as splendid a day as it was, my bachelor partner and me clambered up the slope above the dugout. We threaded through the trees, walking on the stiff soil, Holt lugging our pouch of recreation.

  To have this dark man around me so regular was no hardship. He grew on me. Bravery enough was in his sturdy frame to match any requirement. I had come to think that even his silences were not mute taunts but moments of reflection. And they had gotten more rare. Alone with me he gabbed plenty.

  Our feet slapped on up to a log fallen sideways that had a view of the valley. We sat on it. The Evans house was off in the distance, and the chimney could be just barely seen. This was a pleasant spot to lose an hour in.

  “Jake,” Holt said as we sat. “I been going over this in my thoughts. In the mails the Yankee man say the rebel is a blight but not on what. To what is a rebel a blight?”

  This had gotten to be our Socratic style. Holt pestered me with questions and more questions, many of which I could barely handle. He had taken hold of the notion that I was a blue-eyed, pale-haired, short-legged immigrant oracle. He was curious in several directions but was especially so about Europe and supposed that somehow I knew a great deal about it. At the least-expected time he would ask such things as, “Jake, in the other world do they do this, or that?”

  If the truth were real important to me, I would need to ’fess up to the left-out detail, which was, I sort of enjoyed playing the role of a man who knew a few of the answers.

  In the brightness of this day on the hillside I said, “The rebel is a blight on the Yankee man’s will, Holt.”

  “His will?”

  “Yes, his will.” I was gesticulating out onto all the hills and timber, and it seemed that plenty of fox squirrels and field mice were listening and watching with astute attention. “The Yankee is this cut of man, Holt. He is the cut of man who if you say the sun is high, he will say, no, you are low. That is nothing in itself to war over. But then he will say, I believe my way and my life and person have more loft to them than yours do, so be like me.” My hands were waving all about, chopping and weaving to drive home my points. If by chance a crowd had been there, I reckon they would have elected me. “The rebel is not the man you want to say that to. He don’t care for it.”

  “I know that.”

  “Sure you do,” I said. “And you know this, too—the rebel will fight you if you try to force him to your way. And it don’t matter too much what your way is, neither.”

  Holt fingered his chin in a thoughtful manner. His lips bunched up.

  “Is that good?” he asked.

  “Holt, to me it is the best that can be said of any man—he had his convictions and he backed them up. I revel in that quality. It is so sweet an outlook that it is almost only for youngsters.”

  “I don’t know my age,” he said. “It is not too high in the numbers, I do know that.”

  “Mine neither. We are the perfect age for not cottoning to being invaded and shoved around.”

  For bachelors we were having a pleasant enough time. The sun had crept behind us, but many minutes of light were left. We had not been quite so easygoing at times over the winter. The Venus boys made us feel left back. Our flagrant bachelorhood had had us in an irritable state. We had seemed so dull that we were angered at ourselves and testy with all lovers.

  But now that boat had sailed. Really, I was glad for Jack Bull Chiles and Sue Lee Shelley, as a good woman and a good man is a grand match. Only the depraved and imbeciles can deny it.

  “Dark will fall,” Holt said. I knew what was coming. He had that look. “I brung the mails.”

  “Aw, drag one out.” I knocked his hat off but he caught it and put it back. “Don’t act so bashful. I knew you would do this.”

  Reading other people
’s mail had taught us plenty. I did not mind doing it, for we both learned much. In Cairo, Illinois, there is a mound that gives a view of mingling rivers and that view has inspired several kisses. Ohio has a place called Chagrin Falls, where a gristmill grinds the day long and an old man just wishes his sons would come home whole and watch the flour sift out. New York is jammed with folks who are not New Yorkers and don’t especially care to die in Tennessee, so they riot in the streets and blame it on niggers. Mothers are mothers all over the map. They want to send shortbread and new gloves and warm thoughts. Girl friends know all the same tricks there as here. Locks of hair are often in their letters, along with faded flower petals and, sometimes, bad news.

  Holt handed me his selection. It was a letter sent from St. Louis to Topeka. The paper it was written on was of high quality. I had been to St. Louis twice with Asa Chiles. There were many stores there that peddled goods of such high quality that they made no sense to me. A two-dollar hat sits on the head just as well as one that cost twelve, but you saw the twelve-dollar kind all over the street.

  “Read it,” Holt said. “I am in the mood to hear a good one.”

  “I just read them,” I said. “This thing is addressed to Miss Ruth Ann Jones and it’s from a Miss Patricia Foote. ‘Dearest Ruth Ann, I trust this letter will reach you before winter. Here it is always a sort of winter, as folks are so cold now. The rebels are out of the city as far as armies go but crafty Copperheads slink around performing misdeeds. So much cruelty goes on. Gratiot Prison is full of rebels and they are left to waste away so pitifully. They are traitors but also human. If you looked in on them you would not believe that they were, for they resemble scarecrows now.

  “ ‘So much death and no coffee to be had. I have made myself forget that sugar exists, for it may as well not unless you know Generals. Men are killed over poultry here. There, too, I suppose.