Woe to Live On: A Novel Page 5

  “I am on to you, Roedel,” he said softly, then walked backward, keeping his gaze fixed on me.

  “Get too much on to me and I’ll throw you off, Holt,” I said. “A nigger is meaningless to me.”

  Even in the night I could see it—he actually smiled.

  This was curious conversation with points that were uncertain, and disturbing. But then, what was not?

  The letter was wrapped in oil paper and given to Alf Bowden. We put him astride a gimpy horse. Now that he was saved, his fright was lessened. He looked on me with less desperation and more anger.

  “Do your best,” I told him. “Show some sand or these men will die because you didn’t.”

  He did not reply, but set off in the deep dark, picking his way toward Lexington. There had been no sign of thanks in him at all.

  Gratitude is such an infant’s expectation, always, but it is one I only slowly outgrew. He might have said something.

  Salt pork and oatcakes fueled the next day. The boys sat in comfortable clusters, oiling pistols and limbering jawbones. George Clyde, who had been born in Dundee, Scotland, acted as a Plato or Socrates might have, staggering us with questions.

  “If a six-teated dog runs ten miles an hour shittin’ splinters, how swift need she be to shit a rockin’ chair?”

  The answers were various, speculative and joyous. A scientific facet was revealed in Gus Vaughn, who said the dog must probably be swimming to shit a rocking chair whole, though she might drop it in pieces while napping after eating a possum belly.

  “Boys,” Clyde said when the first query had been exhausted. “What I most want to know in the world is this: who thought up bagpipes anyhow? It is a grave issue if you’ve ever heard one played.”

  The day went by with these stumpers, and it was as good a way as any to pass the time. There was turmoil in us. If Lloyd and Curtin were murdered, we would have bitter tasks ahead of us, and soon. Silliness provided a sweet and momentary refuge.

  In that one day the Federals made up for all the bedtime prayers they had ever skipped. There was a ceaseless babble of holy hopes and galloping confessions coming from them.

  We could not tolerate Federals, for they oppressed us in our fight for freedom. Many of them were not Missouri men, or even Kansans, but killer dupes from up the country two or more states away. Their presence freed maniac Jayhawkers to ravage about the countryside, taking all of value back to Kansas with them.

  Jayhawkers said they raided to free slaves, but mostly they freed horseflesh from riders, furniture from houses, cattle from pastures, precious jewelry from family troves and wives from husbands. Sometimes they had so much plunder niggers were needed to haul it, so they took a few along. This, they said, made them abolitionists.

  They were dangerous sneak-murderers, the Jayhawkers were. They had killed hundreds of us one or two by the time, but never faced us in open battle. They kept to the woods and followed the Federals, striking hard when the odds were trivial.

  In this they were much like us—but terrible.

  The hours of the night taunted me by passing slowly, ever so slowly, and dull. Sleep outran me and I had little to do but squat beneath green-leaved branches and paw over things in my head. Killing and war were nothing I had expected in life. Before shots became the answers to the grand debate, I was common and fortunate. Asa Chiles, a good American, had been fond of me and Jack Bull, my near brother. Citizens had not darkly speculated against my character.

  Now they did. Woof and warp had hit the border. Blood had been let, a reasonable share of it by me. The Dutch boy was a tragedy of necessity lest I be the actor in a more severe scene. Some would hold this against me. My good reputation had no doubt been splattered lately as certain of my deeds became known. But I was not so paltry a specimen that a bit of sullying would defeat me. If all meals were pecan pie, you’d yearn for a cold potato.

  Jack Bull, my comfort and cause, roused from his blanket beside me. As I looked at his fine American face, I hoped it would always be this way—him and me and little else.

  “You are brooding,” he said. “Dutchmen brood too much. Break yourself of that.”

  “You brood, too, Jack Bull.”

  He sat up with his legs before him, elbows atop his knees. His slouch hat was shoved back on his crown. Long curls of hair nuzzled at his neck.

  “I have some things to brood about, Jake.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “In your way I suppose you do. What I have lost you have sort of lost, as you would have always shared in it. You know that.”

  “True,” I said. “And your father was nearly mine.”

  “No,” Jack Bull said with a layer of scrape in his tone. “No. He was a kind and good man to you, but, no. He was my blood. Anything less than that is less than that.”

  His despair diverted me from my own and I wanted to put some happy back into his smart face. I wanted to say something about good coming from bad and so on, but it is a form of Sunday School lunacy to suggest that such could be the case in the murder of your father, and the destruction of your home.

  “We’ll stick together,” I said. “And get all of it back.”

  “Hah! You are a black magician who can raise the dead, are you? No you are not! No one is. Daddy is under the dirt to stay.” Jack Bull’s head was flung about on his neck and he growled. It was an exercise to shake off foul memories. “And that,” he said, pointing at my nubbined left hand, “is gone to stay gone, too.”

  “So it is,” I replied. “And it makes me notable by the loss.”

  “You sound pleased, as if that finger had been pestering you for rings.”

  “Well, no. It was a fine finger—I’ll not deny it.” I held the nubbin up and wiggled the stump. “See that? Can you see that? I’m the only man you know who can do that.”

  Jack Bull was a rock for some seconds, his eyes stony on me. Then his dandy head nodded.

  “That is true,” he said, his head gyrations slowly changing from nods to shakes. “And I don’t know any noseless men who spit tobacco juice so it squirts from between their eyes either, Jake. A no-nose tobacco squirter could name his price on the stage, I would reckon.”

  “Oh, there is mud everywhere you look anymore, Jack Bull.” I wiggled my nubbin some more and said, “I’d rather have my finger, but it was took from me. It has been et by chickens for sure. So, I say to myself, ‘What is the good side to this amputation?’ And there is one.”

  “Name it. I’ll just have to ask you to name it, Jake.”

  “I intend to. Say, now just say, if I was on the move with you and Riley and Cave. Say that. And two hundred Federals came onto us and my horse was shot. Dead.”

  “I’d pull you up behind me, Jake.”

  “I know it,” I said. “But, now, say your horse was shot and floundered down, and Cave was gone and Riley pulled you up behind him. And I was left. Say that.”

  “Hey,” Jack Bull whispered. “I might unload Riley and save you. Those things happen.”

  “Oh, God damn it, Jack Bull! That ain’t where I’m going. Will you listen to me? I’m trying to explain the good that comes from bad for you.” I stirred the dirt beneath me, collecting my thoughts, then rejoined my previous tale. “And you escaped, okay? Well, I would take to the bush, wouldn’t I? And I would punch leaks in ten Federals before they killed me in such a thicket. But eventually they would riddle me and hang me from a way tall limb like they do. No southern man would find me for weeks or months, and when they did I’d be bad meat. Pretty well rotted to a glob.”

  “That is scientifically accurate,” Jack Bull said. “I’m afraid I’ve seen it.”

  “I would be a glob of mysterious rot hanging in a way tall tree, and people would ask, ‘Who was that?’ Surely, sometime somebody would look up there at my bones and see the telltale stump and reply, ‘It is nubbin-fingered Jake Roedel!’ Then you could go and tell my mother I was clearly murdered and she wouldn’t be tortured by uncertain wonders. Now do you see
the tenderness of it all? It’s there if you look.”

  The night air was chilled for pleasant breathing, and trees rustled just enough to soothe. Pickets were out in the moonlight and the faint snores of comrades droned nearby. I felt I was where I should be; I had bushwhacked my way into these slumbering hearts.

  “I care for you,” Jack Bull said to me. He then lay down and rolled up in his blanket. His hat covered his face but he spoke through it. “I do care for you, but, Jake, it is sometimes a very nervous thing.”

  5

  BLACK JOHN AMBROSE had a tough-thunk vision and there were no quibbles left in it. When the word arrived he went straight toward Stengel, the Federal who’d once had two minutes of good luck.

  The centerpiece of Stengel’s face was colored ocean blue and lumpy from when I’d chastised him. He looked bad enough but quickly got worse.

  “Dead, dead,” declared Black John. “Hanged like dogs would be if dogs were less respected. Yes, oh my, yes. They have went and done it to us.”

  Black John used his pistol as a club and batted Stengel in the face, cracking him open above the brow. An animal-panic chorus of grunts came from the prisoners, even those yet to be damaged, as they sized up the future to be one of pain.

  We all stood silent in the morning light, encircling the Federals. Many faces were sad, even squeamish, about the necessaries of the day. But several faces were poised with a hunger for the hot plate of revenge they’d been served. Lloyd and Curtin had been hung, then quartered and tossed onto the River Road to nourish varmints. The quartering was meant to disturb us, and in at least one case, it worked.

  “They hung our comrades,” Black John said. “And ripped them to fragments.” He slapped iron on Stengel’s face and Stengel hunched over so as to take the raps on the head. Black John looked down on the Federal, then opened both hands and began to squeeze Stengel’s head. His feely search had him all about the Federal noggin for some seconds, caressing and patting, then he stepped back. His face exhibited the pleasure of discovery. “Your skull,” he said somberly, “will make a European palace for our worms, eh?”

  “Uh, uh, uh,” went Stengel.

  One of the other Federals began to puff in the jowls and burp. He did it rapid-fire and Black John turned to him.

  “Don’t you agree, Yank?” Black John inquired. He then did the melon test on Stengel’s head again. “A palace for worms, eh?”

  Burping frights racked the Federal but finally he mastered them enough to speak.

  “Yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir…”

  Black John reared back and kissed Stengel hard in the face with his pistol. The nose went different ways, and Dutchy spluttered for breath through a tide of blood.

  The other Federal saw this and changed his litany.

  “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no…”

  The scene was not good. A pink spray of misery spittled on the wind. The prisoners were doomed but trifled with. All common sense dictated that they must die, but better deaths could be arranged in my mind. It was all too near to what I expected for myself.

  “Here is what your people said,” George Clyde called out. He unfolded a wad of newspaper and held it flat to read from. “ ‘War is loss, but capitulation is devastation. Good men will die until all bad ones have. William Lloyd and James Curtin were proven to be worse than bad can cover. They have perished. Their deaths illustrate our resolve. I have no doubt that the disloyal terrorists have already murdered our soldiers. I have much experience of these vermin. To negotiate would have been foolish. Therefore it was not done. Thomas B. Hovland, Commanding First Iowa.’ ” Clyde rattled the paper ceremoniously, then folded it back into a pocket square. “You should have better chosen your comrades, boys. To save our own, we would do anything.”

  Black John raised himself to a stern posture and spit twice. He then said, “Have at them, boys, and make it memorable. We want them to be mementos of our resolve.”

  Pitt Mackeson and Turner Rawls, whose jaw was still several colors and swollen, joined Arch Clay in administering slow disaster to the prisoners. I did not want to watch, but I did not want to be seen turning away. Howard Sayles, Josiah Perry and several other men did leave the festivities, but they made no comment as they lumbered away.

  I was saved by Black John calling to me.

  “Roedel, come here to me.”

  He stood on a small rise of earth overseeing the action, pacing this way and that, a white froth scabbing at the corners of his mouth. “Take down this note!”

  “Certainly, Black John. Let me fetch my implements.” I very quickly did so, then squatted on the dirt near his feet. “I am ready.”

  “Good, good,” he said. His eyes were of a pale gray hue and had no bottom to them. “I have three sisters, Roedel. Have you any? They are as good as you could expect them to be. I kill for them. They are women and can’t fight. I can. The world knows I can. And I do. I do fight. Hard. I am awful but right. Never doubt it.” He nudged my knee with the pointed toe of a boot. “Do you doubt it?”

  “No. No, I never doubt it. I believe.”

  “Do you believe in me, or our cause?”

  “I believe in me and you and our cause.”

  “Be leery of where you place your faith,” Black John said. The oaths and laments, the cracks and smacks, the prayers and punishments went on below the small rise. We both looked there. “This is a time of infinitely shaded cruelty, Roedel. It cannot be otherwise. I have victory in mind.” Suddenly he whirled and leaned over me. His countenance had a wrathful cast, and spit flew from his lips like a nasty rain. “Take this down! ‘Citizens, you have stood by for murder. Another of your mistakes, which you have made plenty of. This ruin is yours to claim. Look at them and recall it. Remember this, townspeople: you will not escape me for long. You may fool me for a minute or an hour or a day. But you will not forestall me long enough that I forget the path to your town. No, I will remember it, and at some good moment pull you from your beds and use an inch rope to put all you oppressors face-to-face with more truth than you can tolerate.

  “ ‘You have placed your bets, now wait for the next turn of cards.’ ”

  The paper trembled in my hand and my hand wobbled my arm to the shoulder. I could not look up and I longed for a brief spell of deafness.

  “What shall I do with this note?” I asked.

  “Pin it to the breast of one of the unfortunates, in clear sight.” Black John was calmed in a coiled sort of way. “We will dump them on the road tonight. It will get read, I am certain of that.”

  Black John stared once more at the killing going on, his face flat with resolute anger. Then he stalked off without a word to me or a shout or a glob of spit coming from him.

  The knot of men, crouched, half bent or standing, who encircled the unfortunates, parted for me. There were many heavy breaths being drawn, and Pitt Mackeson sucked on a sore knuckle.

  “I have a letter,” I said. “A note. Black John wants it pinned on one of them.”

  I looked down at the Federals. A violent rapture had caught up with them. I had seen harsh errands performed before, but not like this. Some dark appetites had been brought forth in this spectacle, and my comrades had revealed themselves to be near wizards at unpleasantries.

  And yet one of the Federals breathed. It was an exercise he was about beyond performing, and he strained in the effort.

  I was all confused up in my sensations. I just stood there.

  Arch was knelt down going through pockets. He had a handful of letters he’d taken from the doomed. He jerked open the shirt of the live one and recovered a letter hidden there, then thumped his fist on the bare chest.

  “Pin it on him,” he said. “We’ll set him up pretty. He lived longest.”

  When I put my knees to ground and leaned over the Federal, he lurched up and I reared back.

  “My wife,” he whispered. “Write my wife.”

  Arch laughed and held in front of me the letter he had ransacked.


  “This must be from her. I can’t read to tell.”

  I pinned Black John’s sermon to the Federal’s tunic. He was flat again but breathing.

  When I stood Arch said, “Read me this letter, Dutchy.”

  “That’s his letter,” I said.

  “Was,” said Arch. “I want to hear you read it.”

  “I don’t think I care to.”

  “Oh, is that so?” drawled Arch. His eyes sank behind his lids and his mouth hung open. “I think if you think a little more, Dutchy, that you’ll think you do want to read me it. Right now, too.”

  “Yes,” said Pitt Mackeson. “Why, there might be secrets in it. Read it at us.”

  I scented trouble with my comrades if I showed a dainty spirit here. The prospect was not delicious.

  The script on the letter had bold girlish leaps and bounds to it, with circles above the I’s. It was addressed to Corporal Miller Eustis.

  I began to read the letter aloud, and acted as if I enjoyed the process. The first many lines were without secrets, and mainly contained a young wife’s version of everyday events in Mount Vernon, Iowa. It seemed the Methodists wanted a school there to prosper, and the Cedar River had flooded, and old Ben Eustis had snapped a big toe kicking at a growling dog.

  A new mood was then hove into the letter, and the wife said she loved this pink thing on the dirt before me with a devotion that would not wane.

  The boys chuckled at this, as though the love of a Yankee woman had no merit. But I was envious in a way. There was a straight-ahead womanness to this author, and I found it admirable.

  Eustis, the Federal, had lost where he was and spoke to people who were not nearby. He said friendly things to them. It was good that his soul had started aloft, for there was a secret in this letter that made me ashamed.

  “ ‘Miller, Miller,’ ” I read, “ ‘I miss you so. I miss your cool brow and warm brown eyes. The way your cheeks crease when you smile. It makes me crazy, but I most miss your tender red-faced turtle head atop that sweet length of neck. I dream of petting him so special that he drools into my palm and I lick my fingers for a taste of you.’ ”