Camp was pitched and pickets put out while there was yet light to the day. Letters were written to homefolks by those that could, and rents in clothing were mended. Several of the boys, ever playful and game for fun, began to boot a ball of leather about the campsite, whiskey, as always, the victor’s plunder.
I strolled about the camp whittling on a hickory branch that I had fated to be a water ladle. I watched the boys gambol on the grass but had not the spirit for games. I scooped the wood away, leaving a deep dish, intending this depth to aid in the settling of mud before drinking.
I squatted next to Coleman Younger, who had a bottle of whiskey that he had not won but that he intended to drink. He did not look my way when he handed the bottle to me. I dropped the ladle and sheathed my knife, then accepted the bottle. I appreciated his generosity to the measure of a quarter-pint on the first swallow.
“Do not think you are a good man,” Coleman Younger said. “The thought will spoil you.”
“I am a southern man,” I said. “And that is as good as any man that lived ’til he died.”
Coleman Younger was reddish in skin and hair with the temperament that is wed to that hue, and girth and grit enough to back it up.
“You are a southern man—that is proven,” Coleman Younger said. “But a rare one.”
For Coleman Younger to speak of me so set a glow in me that whiskey could not match, nor doubt extinguish. It was for this that I searched, communion and levelness with people who were not mine by birth, but mine by the taking. We drank into the dark, then slept, our bedrolls but a rifle’s length apart.
In the night Captain Quantrill and his party had hallooed our pickets, then rode in and joined us. In the morning there was much cutting up as old comrades were reunited over salt pork and oat cakes. The James brothers from Clay County, Buck and Dingus as they were then known, frolicked with Coleman Younger, Arch Clements, and Black John. Captain Quantrill stood apart, his eyes flat beneath sleepy hoods, and his tongue wiping his lips like a frog sensing flies.
They had taken ten prisoners from the Union Home Guard at Waverly. General Ewing, the leader of the Union occupation scum for the entire district, had issued an order concerning rebels as a mass, and our sort in special, that said if caught we were to be tried and hanged, or shot, whichever took less trouble. This led to some debate among us as to what we should do with the Yankees now in our possession. There were a few among the prisoners known personally to some of us from before the hostilities. There was a sunken-chested, half-sized one among them I knew as Alf Bowden, who hailed from my town. I had once helped him raise a barn on a summer day and danced with his sister ’til her face flushed and we both sweated, but I was not in his debt, nor he in mine. It was a good war for settling debts—some were settled before they were incurred, no doubt—but thin-skinned fairness rarely crabbed youthful aim. Alf said hello to me and I to him, but the courtesy of that situation required no more than that, so there we left it. It would be sad to see him killed, but sadness was on the flourish in those times.
There was no rain on the wind, only the smell of thawed mud and early blossoms, but the boys were lazied by the previous days, so we made a carnival of the camp and sought no demonstrations with our enemy. The ball of leather was trotted out, with nearly the whole of both parties joining in on the sport, stomping the mud into a glue that sucked down boots and held them there. The whiskey was running low and this raised tempers. Riley Crawford, not yet sixteen but the deadest shot among us, missed the ball with a kick of vigor and shinned Big Bob Flannery. Big Bob knotted him one on the head, and Riley cut him under the armpit by reflex. Captain Quantrill then snatched up the ball and hid it away, saying he would shoot any of us who murdered a comrade.
After the noon meal, Captain Quantrill and Black John announced that there would be haircuts for all, because we were to be disguised as Yankees once more for a ride into the Union district around Lexington, and our rebel locks would be noticed. There was much grumbling about this, for our locks were of the southern style and our pride and banner. “I’d rather robe myself with dog skins,” Big Bob Flannery said. “For if we must look like Yankees to win, we will be defeated in victory.” The bulk of us saw the sense in the notion, however, and went along with it, shaving and cutting our hair as if spiffying up for a church dance, but Big Bob had to be held down while Arch Clements harvested his hair patch. Little Arch being that close to his scalp with a Bowie knife sobered Big Bob, for he, like all of us, had witnessed the fashion in which Arch barbered dead, and practically dead, Yankees.
After that Coleman Younger, Little Arch, Pitt Mackeson, and me sat under the husky tree that the prisoners were roped to. Captain Quantrill had made a present to Coleman Younger of a new Enfield rifle that had been captured. We admired the weapon and made chat about its supposed power, the prisoners joining in with a remark here and there.
Pitt Mackeson tried to flare me by mentioning in a bad mouth the incident with the Dutch boy.
“If the boy had freed the rope the hanging would’ve been scotched and required doing over,” I said.
“Judas worked quick, too,” said Pitt Mackeson.
Coleman Younger stroked the Enfield and chambered a round. “You did right,” he said. “Dead from the front is no more dead than from the back. It is a question of opportunity.”
“So is chicken stealing,” Mackeson said.
My arms ached already from the thought of digging his new home, for I was thinking he would soon be in it.
“Jake did right.”
Arch Clements untied the prisoners and told them to stand, then retied them in a file of sorts. “Stay in your line, soldier boys,” he said in his squeaky voice. “For we shall march your meals down.”
Coleman Younger placed his hand on top of my head as he stood. “It was nothing,” he said, “but right.” He ran his hand along the smooth stock of the Enfield, then raised it to his shoulder. He sighted into the belly of the prisoner at the head of the column.
“Leave off with the jokes,” the prisoner said.
The Enfield fired and the first three Yankees tumbled.
Coleman Younger chambered another round. “I would’ve thought more,” he said. “So far this ain’t special.”
The rest of the camp was dropping letters, gun rags, needles, tin cups, and favored corncobs to watch. I thought Captain Quantrill might be peeved by this employment of his prisoners, but he made no move to halt it.
The next shot felled only two, and not cleanly. Their moans sounded like man and wife in a feather bed.
Coleman Younger chambered another round.
“Not exactly a Sharps, is it?” he said.
Little Arch made a straight line of the Yankees again as they had drifted some. Alf Bowden was among the standing, and he called my name, which it must’ve hurt him to do.
“Let us save one,” I said. I pulled Alf Bowden from the line, he being so limp he fell at my touch. “We can send him back to General Ewing, maybe, as a witness that his new law will cut both ways.”
There was blood in the air. It drifted over my bare hands, spotting them like some rare mist. Alf Bowden was yet on his knees, his hands clutching at my legs, pulling himself toward me. The rare mist had freckled one of his cheeks, and his hair had been touched up at the ends by the same breeze, giving him a vaguely pheasant aspect.
The man and wife in the feather bed slept now, and the silence was glass, poised for the shatter.
“We all had friends,” Coleman Younger said. He chambered another round. He was staring at me more thoughtfully than I found comfortable. “That is all off now.”
“There is something to be gained by this sparing,” I said. I did not believe what I had said, but I said it, and hoped only to utter more dream-babble that would justify it.
“I yearn to hear about it,” Coleman Younger said.
I was losing a comrade, this I could see. I had no retort.
A murderer of slyer instincts saved me and made
of me a hero. Captain Quantrill had cozied up to us as we were engaged. He held a palm toward Coleman Younger, Little Arch, and Pitt Mackeson, who was fiddling with something near his holster. He then fixed me with a reverent gaze, an approving light coming to his eyes.
Alf Bowden babbled into my toes, his arms encircling my boots, his face between them.
“I quite see it,” Captain Quantrill said. “Yes. We shall send him over to Sigel’s brigade of Dutchmen near Warrensburg.” Captain Quantrill worked his hands together as if to wash them. His feet were moving in little hops, and he would surely have danced had there been a suitable partner handy. “Oh, yes. They far outnumber us. They will want to make quick time and to do that they will come through Creve Coeur Gap. Oh, my, yes.”
His plan could not be missed. Creve Coeur Gap was a narrow slit between two long bluffs that flanked the Blackwater River. General Franz Sigel, alerted by the winner from my mistake, and our most hated enemy, would seek the shortest route to our destruction—through the tall bluffs, thick timber, and slender passage afforded by Creve Coeur Gap.
“Just so,” I said.
Coleman Younger and the others began to nod, then smile at me, their lips raising only on one side of their mouths.
“Jake Roedel,” Coleman Younger said. “You are brilliant with mercy.”
I had not foreseen this plan, but I was giving thanks for its arrival on more than one score. It had saved me my comrades and blessed me with an opportunity named Franz Sigel. He was called a general, and to Yankees and Dutchmen he was so. His very name herded furies into my heart. In my father’s household he had been a saint, or near enough to it to have his picture above the mantel. He drummed up Dutchmen from among those foreigners who had come to America wanting to remain so. He oppressed me, and I longed to sight in on him. I had seen him lure them on, making himself a patriarch for those who would not mix, leading them to Fit Mit Sigel. Oh, the battles my father and I had on Sigel’s account. We raged in his language, my face puffing, and his blue stubborn eyes glowing beneath his thick Prussian brows. He will keep you foreign, I said, and make you snobs about it. Is this wrong? was his reply. We never agreed; I chose to side with Americans and lost entry to the house that raised me.
I led Alf Bowden to a stew pot and fed him.
The brilliance of mercy being a thing that requires judicious use, the other Yankees died. Two shots.
When Alf Bowden could once more keep his feet beneath himself, we set him off on foot toward Sigel’s brigade. It was over twenty miles, and he could not arrive there before dawn.
Around the campfires that night we cleaned our pistols, as we carried from four to eight apiece, the many shots the handguns afforded us over rifles being our chief asset, and the ace that allowed our small group to gamble with much larger ones.
There was considerable youth still in us, as by age that is what we were, and this, we felt, would carry the field. Setbacks had come our way, but cheerful, straight-backed desire to trade shots and victories wiped those from our minds.
There was much to look forward to that night as we oiled barrels and checked powder levels.
As I finished my hickory deep-dish water ladle, I listened to the men. Idle chatter about Coleman Younger’s parole procedures dominated. Many speculated about the impulse for his actions, as he was not regularly cruel. What were his motives when he sighted that Enfield on the Union file, voices wondered, then squeezed the trigger? There were answers. Some seemed to suspect the scientific impulse, but I, I thought the priestly. He was gracing me for the Dutch boy. I could not rest with that in mind.
Before dawn we had reached Creve Coeur Gap and rendered the lush greenery and sweet earth bluffs into a slaughterhouse. We perched on the ridges, then spaced ourselves down the far slopes, making a vee that promised clear shooting for all.
The sun was not yet straight in the sky when our scouts alerted us that troops were approaching. Captain Quantrill was devilish with his logic, for the Yankee-Dutchmen galloped headlong into our surprise. I searched the blue ranks for Alf Bowden but did not see him. My position was such that General Sigel was beyond my range.
The Yankees came on. We waited for the signal from Black John or Captain Quantrill, and I knew that I was among comrades now, for they had put their lives at stake over a plan they believed to be of my design.
I had spared one man and profited with a massacre of Dutchmen.
The signal was given.
I became famous for this.
III. Only for Them
I have died more times than one—perhaps three. This is not rare, but it may serve to stump the windiest of preachers, and a wandering eulogy is suited to those whose journey is uncertain in destination. I have no need for preachers, or faith in their selected destinations, but there must be a place, and I will not be misdirected.
I carved my own passport to that place; it will be as good as any.
Through the night I whittled, lessening, lessening, ever taking away from the oak. Reduction is the design I crave. My blade was a voice with a mind all its own, and it spoke to the wood in slashes, nicks, and great gouges. Flame from the kerosene lamp dodged about with the draft from the window, casting shadows where light had been, and light about my work. The pale wood chips gathered at my feet, a tribute to the diligence of my thick-veined hands and famous fingers.
When the cock had cried, then hushed before the grim, steel light of a rainy day, Jefferson opened my door. He wore high boots of the sort that are meant for polish and not for mud, and a suit of keen correctness, right down to the stiff boiled collar and the four-in-hand knot about his throat. His mustache was pruned so thin that it could be mistaken for a bonus lip.
“There are some things, Jacob,” he said, “that I will not have in this house.”
I felt no obligation to respond. Jefferson waddled across the room a bit, wishing I’d be provocative and force him into courage, but I was mild. He played with his watch chain, looping it through his fingers, waiting. There was some part of him that feared me, that was uncertain that I knew the boundaries of blood. It made us eerie together.
“Do not raise yourself into some sort of hero with my children,” Jefferson said. “Boys tend to admire war and lengthened necks and all. I know better and someday so shall they.”
“I fought,” I said, “for my comrades, and myself, but no more bravely than others.”
“Your bravery,” he said, nearly spitting it, “is a midnight legend.” Jefferson leaned toward me, blowing his chest expansive and crossing his arms, as if I could be frightened. “So bold and brave were you that you managed to kill your father—too bad he failed to see the safety in being your traitorous comrade.”
“I did not kill him.”
“You did not pull the trigger.”
“Exactly.”
“Alf Bowden pulled the trigger,” Jefferson said. “The one man you should have killed, you let go. Did you fail to realize that an American would seek satisfaction from your kin?”
Yes, I thought, gray heads had suffered while young ones went unnoosed. Alf Bowden was yielded to life while nine of his comrades were forfeited, but this did not make a friend of him.
“Shot him in the neck,” Jefferson said. “In front of your mother, he not even having English enough to know why he was killed. Small blessing.” Jefferson kicked about in the wood curls. “What a mess you have made.” I said nothing. “Your scarlet oaf of a comrade, Younger, ruined you for me, Jacob. He should never have visited.”
It was true; I lost something when Coleman Younger happened by. It was the year of the World’s Fair in St. Louis, and he was not long out of prison. I had not seen him since I returned from Old Mex in sixty-eight, but I had read about him often. He came to the door and knocked. When I answered it he said, “Jake Roedel, it is your old comrade, Coleman Younger.” I saw that he told the truth and said so, then welcomed him in. Prison had paled him, and he had become a pinkish man, a color I had never thought him capable o
f. I remembered him red. I offered him wine, but he was prepared with a flask of his own. We gathered at the table. Jefferson, a young man meeting history, sat at Coleman Younger’s elbow. We drank. The freeness of my own remembrances encouraged my guest to candor, and he spoke truly of our shared activities. Jefferson questioned him, and he answered directly, not noticing that my son was of the generation that cared less for America than they did the land that earlier generations had fled. There was now pride about the awkward consonants of foreign names, and narcissism in noodles called spaetzle, and in porkpie hats called homburgs. In Coleman Younger’s answers were accounts of the days of the Dutch boy, Alf Bowden, Creve Coeur Gap, and numberless others, for the war went on unblunted by my famous deed. Jefferson’s eyes fixed on me when the talk shifted to baseball and the World’s Fair, then he quietly left the house, easing the door closed behind himself. I knew then that he was lost to me.
“I could not turn him away,” I said. “You gained from him—a great bitterness to drive you.”
“My boys will not inherit such from me,” Jefferson said. “They will not find that I killed my own people in the service of traitors, or that I scalped possible cousins for sport.”
They littered Creve Coeur Gap. Their uniforms were valuable plunder, and their sourdough bodies began to rise with the sun. Little Arch Clements started it. They all watched me, and I knew it. They came off with a steady pull, a sound like that of a toothless grandma sucking on a cob of corn accompanying them. I saved mine for some time before flinging it to the river.
“I took no pleasure in that,” I said.
“I take no pleasure in you,” my son said.
He left me to myself.
I went back to work. The voice in my blade called out chop! chop! And my hand obeyed. Slash! Stab! The wood flew until only nubbins survived, and these I ground beneath my boots.
My hand had carved I knew not what, I had not restrained it, and what it wrought was bark chips and wood curls, sawdust and splinters.