Before Sully Eagle had much more than got the mules unhitched, Zeke Proctor was back outside and on his way down the road to do battle with T. Spade Beck.
He carried a knife, a rifle, and three pistols.
6
T. SPADE HAD NEVER BEEN A WAKEFUL MAN.
He usually slept soundly through the night, snoring out of one side of his mouth. He and his wife, Polly, slept in the loft of the mill; if T. Spade did wake up, it was only to make water. He would stumble over to the door of the loft, and piss out into the darkness. Often as not, he pissed on the chickens, which the chickens did not appreciate. Sometimes the hens would get so upset that they would squawk for the rest of the night. If it was near dawn when T. Spade got up to make water, he might come back to bed with his bladder empty, thoughts of love on his mind. Polly would have to accept him with the hens clucking and raising Cain right underneath her; then, often as not, it would be time to get up and make a fire. Polly liked her sleep. Having to accept T. Spade that early in the day left her as fretful as the hens.
She mentioned the matter to Zeke, once she started slipping off with him. Zeke listened, and grinned his sly grin.
“But you are a hen,” he said. “You got soft feathers, like a hen should. When are you coming over to my henhouse, Polly?”
“He’ll kill me if I leave, Zeke,” Polly told him.
But Zeke did not want to hear that.
“Soft feathers,” he said, again. “A man could get smothered in feathers this soft.”
A woman could get killed for letting you act like a rooster with her, too, Polly thought. But she could not help herself. She kept slipping out to see Zeke. He had a buffalo skin he brought with him for them to wrap up in on chilly days.
She never did know what alerted T. Spade, but something alerted him.
T. Spade had been in the habit of going into Siloam Springs two or three days a week to drink and play cards, but then he suddenly stopped. He only went into Siloam Springs now if he absolutely had to. He had enjoyed hunting coons at night, and frequently went fishing with one of his cronies from town, but he gave up coon hunting and fishing, too.
One day, Polly spilled coffee on him, and he slapped her so hard she was dizzy for an hour.
The worst part of it was that T. Spade started watching her in the night. She had gotten used to sleeping with the rhythm of his snoring. But then he stopped snoring, too. If she happened to wake up in the night, T. Spade would be propped up on his elbow, watching her. She was afraid to ask him what was the matter. He might turn the question around, and ask her about Zeke. Polly was not a good liar, and she knew it. She did not want T. Spade to start asking questions—she was afraid of what might happen if he got her talking. He had not hit her often, but when he did, he hit her hard.
T. Spade soon made it impossible for her to slip off and see Zeke. He stuck close to the mill, and saw to it that Polly had plenty of chores. Even if all the chores were finished, Polly did not dare take a walk. T. Spade would just sit in his chair and look at her, sometimes for hours at a time. He even built an outhouse behind the mill. They had always just gone in the bushes, like most folks, but T Spade dug a pit and nailed up an outhouse over it. He did not want Polly wandering out in the bushes—not anymore.
Polly knew Zeke must have come several times and waited at their meeting place in the woods. She missed him; she wanted him to touch her soft feathers; but there was no way she could slip off now.
T. Spade had been a freighter before he bought the mill. He had several times driven teams of oxen all the way from Tennessee. He still had his bullwhip, and he knew how to use it. Polly was afraid he would use it on her, if she ever weakened and admitted anything about Zeke.
Soon the tension at night began to be more than she could bear. Much as she liked being with Zeke on the buffalo robe, and feeling his wispy moustache when he kissed her, fear began to drown out memories of Zeke Proctor and their pleasures. Every day, T. Spade seemed to grow more watchful and more demanding. Once, while Polly was spreading washing on the bushes, T. Spade put several big corncobs on a stump behind the mill and started cutting them in two with his bull-whip. He did not miss a single cob—a knife could not have halved the cob any cleaner. He looked at Polly when he finished, and coiled his whip.
That night, Polly had a dream that T. Spade was lashing her. When she woke from the dream, sweating and shaking, T. Spade was on top of her. Half the night, sometimes, he was on top of her—as if to show her that, though he might be old in years, he was not old in all respects.
Polly Beck had always been one to look on the bright side. A pretty day was all it took to send her spirits floating high. But under the constant pressure of T. Spade’s watchfulness, she ceased to be able to take pleasure even in the sunlight. She went to bed weary, and woke up weary; sun or cloud ceased to matter to her. T. Spade was at her so much that she could barely remember Zeke’s soft moustache, or the shine in his eyes when he looked at her.
It did not take T. Spade long to make his point, and his point was that he still wanted Polly for his wife. For a time, T. Spade had shown so little interest in her that Polly convinced herself he might not mind if she went off to be Zeke’s new wife. Zeke could give him a cow or two, or whatever the two men decided was a fair exchange for a woman who was no longer really young, and the parting would be amicable and in accordance with custom. Lots of men in the Going Snake District had more than one wife, even though one of them might only be common-law. The legalities of it did not matter to Polly; she just did not want the men fighting. If they fought, either Zeke or T Spade would likely end up dead, and Polly would rather stay put and be a little less happy than to have either man killed.
But T Spade Beck was her husband, and he reminded her of that forcefully and frequently now. His lack of interest had been just a temporary lull. He was still determined to have her as a wife, which was a thing Polly had to yield to. It might be in her to slip off and meet Zeke Proctor, to let him kiss her and touch her soft feathers, to let him lay with her on his buffalo robe; but it was not in her to deny her husband what was his. She had accepted T. Spade in marriage—he could release her if he chose to, but Polly could not release herself. Once T. Spade made it clear he had no intention of yielding any husbandly rights, Polly ceased to struggle. She accepted, again, her place as his wife. It horrified her to think she had been so silly about Zeke Proctor that she had tried to get the old witch woman, Spider, to witch T. Spade and make him drown.
One day, old Spider hobbled to the mill to beg a little cornmeal for her mush. Polly told her, right out, to forget about the witching. She no longer wanted her husband to drown in a creek. Zeke Proctor would have to find another woman to beguile with his soft moustache and shining grey eyes.
Once Polly let T. Spade know by her chastened demeanor that she was not going to wander from him, he finally became convinced of her fidelity, and ceased to watch her all night. He began to sleep soundly again, snoring out of the side of his mouth. He came to her often still, but no longer with a vengeance.
Polly thought the danger had passed. She felt a little wistful when she thought of Zeke, but being wistful was a lot better than fearing for her life.
Then one day, while Sully Eagle was waiting with Zeke’s wagon and team, Polly saw T. Spade shoveling weevils into the freshly ground corn. He put a shovelful of weevilly maize into every one of Zeke’s sacks. Sully Eagle did not say a word, and neither did Polly.
T. Spade was red in the face. He always got red in the face when he was really angry. That night, for no reason at all, he hit her so hard she nearly fell out of the loft.
Polly knew, then, that it was not over.
7
ZEKE SET OFF IN A FURY TO GO KILL T. SPADE BECK.
The man had shoveled weevils into his corn sacks, an insult that could only be wiped out by gunplay. Once T Spade was dead or at least shot up, he meant to lope home with Polly Beck. Then, he would send Polly, Becca, Liza, and the triplets o
ff for a visit with Jewel, while he armed himself for a siege. T. Spade had five brothers and a small army of cousins, some of whom would undoubtedly try to avenge him. Zeke thought he might try to persuade Ned Christie to join him until the first hostilities subsided. With a marksman of the stature of Ned Christie in his camp, Zeke felt sure he could hold off any number of Becks. Davie Beck, a wild renegade, was the one most to be feared. Davie Beck had been known to steal wives right out of their husbands’ beds; the husbands unfortunate enough to wake up while the thievery was in progress were promptly dispatched. He was known to be shortsighted, however, and could only shoot effectively at close range. Zeke had no intention of letting him get in close range, a thing easy to prevent with Ned around. Ned could spot game in the woods quicker than a red-tailed hawk, and he could spot a target as large as Davie Beck two miles away.
It was eighteen miles from Zeke’s house to the Beck mill. Despite his urgent fury, Zeke met with a few distractions on the way. He heard the thunk of an axe as he was riding along; when he went to investigate, he found Daniel Redbird and his son Charley trying to chop into a bee tree. Zeke had a terrible sweet tooth. There was no such thing as too much sweetening, in his book. He took a hand at the chopping in return for a bucket of honey. Daniel had a jug of whiskey in his wagon, and they resorted to the jug from time to time to relieve the monotony of chopping. The tree was a bois d’arc, and hard as a crowbar. It was so late when they finally chopped through to the honey that the three of them rolled up in the wagon for the night, and slept.
When Zeke woke the next morning, it was foggy, causing him to slow his start. Zeke had told the story of T Spade and the weevils, and the Redbirds were sympathetic—but Daniel, a nervous man, cautioned Zeke to wait until the fog lifted before hurrying on to kill T Spade.
“You could mistake your man, in fog this thick,” Daniel said.
“I won’t mistake my man,” Zeke assured him. “Don’t forget to leave my honey with Becca.”
He was barely out of earshot of the Redbirds, when he jumped the same fat bear that Sully Eagle had jumped. The bear loomed up in the fog, scaring Zeke’s horse, Joe, so badly that he ran away, with Zeke sawing at the reins. Zeke managed to put two bullets into the bear before Joe bolted, but the horse ran for half a mile before Zeke could get him quieted down. He dismounted and backtracked to where he had jumped the bear, but the bear had already departed.
“That bear’s probably over the hill by now,” Zeke said to Joe, reproachfully. “Sully didn’t get him, and neither did I.”
A little before noon, the fog burned off. Zeke was half a mind to track the bear, but then he thought of Polly Beck and let the notion go. She had not been at the meeting place the last few times he had come to visit. T. Spade might have got suspicious and penned her up. T. Spade was cranky—but he was not a pure fool.
When Zeke came in sight of the mill, he was relieved to see that no wagons were waiting with grain to grind. Then he saw Polly going into the mill with an apron full of kindling. He did not try to attract her attention; if T Spade was suspicious, he might be laying a trap. He could be in the loft with a rifle, waiting.
Zeke circled the mill, keeping well into the underbrush. He wanted to be sure none of T Spade’s lazy cousins were lounging by the cistern, or getting drunk in the smokehouse. He tied Joe to a little post oak tree, not far from the small clearing where he had often met Polly.
There were no cousins in sight, but while he was studying the situation, Polly came out the back door and stood on the porch, looking his way. Zeke was well hidden in a chinaberry thicket. Polly could not see him, but maybe she could sense him—he was not sure. While he was watching, Polly walked the length of the porch and bent over to scrape something out of a bucket—lye soap, it looked like. She was a pretty woman, light of step; he had always fancied women who were light of step. The sight of her made him all the more anxious to get the gunplay over with, so he could take her on home.
A glimpse of Polly in her beauty, after missing her so long, put Zeke in the honeymoon mood right away. Before he could even enjoy thinking about it thoroughly, T Spade Beck stepped out on the porch, in his long johns. When he saw Polly bending over the lye bucket, he went right over and started pulling up her clothes. T Spade had a white, pointy beard hanging off his chin, which made him look goatish, Zeke thought. There he was, trying to rut with Polly in plain sight, like an ugly old billy!
Zeke pulled two pistols, shoved his way out of the thicket, and started shooting. T Spade looked startled. He had not gotten very far with his rutting, and when he saw Zeke Proctor coming at him with two guns blazing, he experienced an abrupt change of mood. He usually kept a rifle on the back porch for just such emergencies, but he had taken the rifle into the mill and was caught now, in his underwear, without a weapon—a damn nuisance to be sure.
Polly had been in a dreamy mood when T. Spade crowded up against her by the lye bucket. She was not in a state to discourage him. Then, to her shock, while still bent over, she saw Zeke spring out of the thicket with his guns in his hands.
I should have got word to him, she thought—I should have let him know.
She felt a horrible mistake was about to happen. Zeke might be upset about the weevils, but mainly he was coming at T. Spade because he wanted her. He did not realize she had changed, had decided to stay a wife to T. Spade.
Zeke could not be shooting her husband, Polly thought. Polly immediately jumped in front of T. Spade. She would explain the matter to Zeke when things were calmer.
“No, Zeke . . . no! Leave be!” Polly said.
As she said it, she felt something nudge her chest. To her relief, Zeke stopped shooting; the fact that she was shielding T Spade had brought him to his senses, she thought.
Her relief was so great that it made her weak for a moment, her legs giving way. She sank down, braced against T Spade’s legs. She looked for Zeke, to see if he had put away his guns. She had a big need to speak to Zeke; there were just a few words she needed to say to him. She hoped her husband would not take it wrong.
Then Polly’s eyesight began to fail her. It was as if a cloud came over her eyes, white as the mists had been in the mornings, in her girlhood in the Tennessee hills. One moment she saw Zeke standing by the woods; then she could not see him at all. When she looked up at her husband to see if he was angry, she could not see him, either. A mist had blown in and settled in her eyes.
“T, it’s looking rainy . . . you better go inside and get your overalls on,” Polly said. Zeke drifted out of her mind; then she lay back flat on the porch, a heaviness on her limbs and on her eyelids.
But she was worried about her husband—he was not really dressed for chilly weather, and he was prone to coughs.
“You get on inside now, where you’ll be warm,” Polly said to her husband, in a worried tone.
Then the heaviness became a lightness, and Polly forgot that worry, and all worries. The mist grew thicker and more white; it hid the valley and the hills; it hid T Spade and Zeke; it was whiter than the mists of Tennessee.
The mist surrounded her. The mist was all she knew.
8
ZEKE KEPT WALKING TOWARD T. SPADE’S PORCH. POLLY BECK WAS still—too still. He had to find out what he had done.
T. Spade himself seemed dazed. He went inside the mill and came back out a moment later with a rifle, but then all he did was prop the rifle up against a barrel on the porch.
“Polly, wake up,” T Spade demanded. But Polly did not wake up.
Zeke kept hoping she would sit up, or at least make some movement. If she would do that much, he would be happy to go. He would just go home, and let things be. He had lost all interest in shooting T Spade, and from T Spade’s behaviour, T Spade evidently had no interest in shooting him.
T. Spade bent down next to Polly, and tried to lift her. Though he was a large man, the effort was too much for him. Normally, he could lift his wife easily, since she was lighter than a big sack of cornmeal. But now she
seemed much too heavy to lift. He looked up at Zeke, who stood silently at the foot of the porch steps.
“Help me carry her in, Zeke,” T Spade requested. His voice was flat and dull. Zeke stepped up onto the porch, and bent down on the other side of Polly’s body.
The shock had weakened both men, and it was all they could do to lift Polly and carry her up to the bed in the loft. Why carry her up? You’ll just have to carry her back down to bury her, Zeke thought, as they struggled up the stairs. There was a small spot of blood on the front of her dress. The spot was right over her heart.
After they got Polly settled, T Spade sat down in a rocking chair next to the bed and dipped some snuff. From the rocking chair, he had a good view out the door of the loft, all the way across the valley and to the hills. He did not look at Zeke, nor did he have any more words inside him.
Zeke had no words, either. He stood by the bed for an awkward moment, looking down at Polly. She was as white as if she were made of snow. There were not many women in the Going Snake District so light of skin. Becca would have been jealous of that skin, if he had managed to bring Polly home with him.
Zeke felt he ought to say something to T. Spade, but he could not think what the right words might be. There did not seem to be any words right enough. A lot of things could be changed, but not death. Polly could not come back to life, no matter what words Zeke might say.
Zeke walked on down the stairs and out of the mill, so distracted that he completely forgot he had come to the Beck mill horseback. He had walked almost a mile in the general direction of his home before he remembered his horse Joe.
While he was walking back to get his horse, he jumped the same fat yearling bear that both he and Sully Eagle had tried to kill. The bear was trying to scratch out some varmint, a badger maybe, that he had cornered in its hole. The bear stopped scratching for a moment, and gave Zeke an impudent look.