Woe to Live On: A Novel

  Over near Boonville we slept in a barn owned by a family named Roberts. Since the massacre an air of gloom and doom had settled over me. A number of the other boys were the same.

  Howard Sayles said to me, “You did right in Lawrence, Dutchy. Me and Cave did the same, it’s just no one knows it on us.”

  “I think I lost some comrades,” I said.

  It was just the three of us in the barn, and the day was sunny, the shafts of light spearing down through cracks and illuminating all the grainy debris in the air.

  “Naw,” said Sayles, “they lost themselves. Some of those boys are animals now.”

  “I’m nervous of them, too,” Cave said. “This thing is only murder now. Why, Johnson Teague shot Big Bob in a argument over a bolt of cloth. They both thought they had stolen it.” He shook his big hairy head. “It has come down to simple murder, murder on whoever is closest.”

  “The Jayhawkers murder, too,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Howard snapped. “But I ain’t in this war to see how much like a Jayhawker I can become. I ain’t fighting just to be the same as them. Now, let me tell you, Dutchy. Lots of the boys are sick about this Lawrence trip, and they’re slipping down to Arkansas to join up with the regulars. What me and Cave want to know is, do you want to come?”

  “When are you going?”

  “Well,” said Sayles, “that’s not set. We might not do it. But if we do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “They make you bow and scrape to officers, I hear. If I wanted to do that sort of thing, I’d just surrender.”

  “You know we can’t surrender and live,” Cave said.

  “Yes, I do know that.”

  Sayles and Cave shook their heads at me. Cave, who I’d known long and well and joked with many a time, actually seemed sad about me. He said, “Pitt Mackeson and some of his crowd are going to kill you, Dutchy. Ain’t you got no damned sense at all? You put a pistol on him and didn’t use it. They’re going to kill you for that.”

  “I been planning on trouble,” I said. “But could be it’ll come out different.”

  My comrades just stared, and by their expressions I knew that their thoughts on me all had the word fool in them.

  Clyde kept us lollygagging around the river for a few weeks. When the big paddle boats tried to pass, we potshotted them so fiercely that they turned around. We stopped the river traffic. I always had liked these boats, and now it seemed strange that I was running them off. But war is for hurting, I guess.

  Counting Holt I had two shadows. He was around me even more than he was around George Clyde. I could tell he had been changed some. The Lawrence raid made him queasy. There are lines you can’t go over and come back the same.

  In early October Black John called us all together. We rallied at Dover, near the river. The first thing I noticed was Pitt Mackeson watching me with a vulture visage. I gave it back to him as best I could, but he was the better at it. Cave Wyatt, Howard Sayles and Holt stayed near me, as Pitt had several constant companions of his own.

  Holt, who had lethal aspects, sidled up to me.

  “Jake, I could have a pistol mishap and top the man’s head. You say the word and I have a streak of the terrible clumsies.”

  “They’d kill you on the spot, Holt. And me, too.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, and he grinned grimly. “But that threat is getting to be a old one.”

  Black John led us on a few outings into the countryside. North of the river we burned some wagons and busted up a Dutch settlement. A couple of niggers got in the way, too. All the hearts weren’t in this sort of thing anymore. It was always the same men who did the murders while the rest of us went mute, but we went along.

  All the gore and glory of the conflict seemed pointless. The Lawrence massacre had only prompted Order Number Eleven from the Federals. This order emptied four counties of every citizen. They just emptied those counties entirely. The newspapers carried accounts of all the rebel whippings in the east, and we could see the damage to our own state. It was only a question of how long we would go on losing before admitting we had lost. In many cases that would be forever, no matter the cost.

  The boys were split now. Some comrades didn’t care for others. Many were merely robbers with the bulk of numbers to back them up. To see this collapse of purpose was worse than being whipped.

  George Clyde had developed into a fair-to-middling thief himself, but I knew the man well, don’t you see? So I was loyal to him still. In the cold weather he took a few of us on a foray to scout places to lay up when the weather really went cold. The ground was hard and I was tired of the whole thing.

  On the edge of Fire Prairie we stopped at an old gray house. We had stopped there before, and Clyde rode right up to the door in his carefree way. I was behind him with Holt and Cave. We had Yankee jackets on, and the sky was all clouds.

  “Halloo in there,” Clyde called out. “Mr. Mills, you in there?”

  He was still smiling when the shot came. He’d been waiting for this moment, I think, and didn’t even seem that surprised when it tore into his throat. He fell off his horse, gagging, and bounced on the ground.

  Me and Holt jumped down to drag George back. More shots came from the house and tufted the ground around us. The other boys shot back, and me and Holt dragged our friend on out of the yard and into the trees.

  One look and I knew Clyde’s wound was mortal. It was the ticket to Heaven. His eyes whirled and his throat was a hole. He died quick, moist growls his last sounds.

  “Oh, I can’t believe this,” Holt said. I don’t want to tell all the emotions he showed. “I always knew him, Jake.”

  “It’s a shame,” I said. What else is there?

  The boys fell back from the house. Cave Wyatt was all red in the face and puffing.

  “Is George dead?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, hell!” Cave exclaimed. Then he looked back to the house. “Babe is wounded. There’s too many in there.”

  “We’ll go back to Black John,” I said. “All this gunfire might bring more of them around here. We ain’t set up to fight them.”

  I strapped George across his saddle and we carried him away from that place. When we reached the main camp, a lot of the boys were saddened by the news and the proof. Clyde had been about as good and loved a fighter as there ever was.

  “Where shall we bury him?” I asked Holt. No one was closer to Clyde than he was.

  “We won’t,” he said. His expression was leveled. “I will.”

  With all the white fighters looking on and offering no objections, Holt mounted up and took the reins of George’s horse. He loped off into the timber, no doubt searching for some flower-fat meadow or some hilltop with a precious view.

  For two days Holt did not return, and when he did he failed to say a single word about where he’d been.

  Two weeks later it was too cold. Groups of men split away for the winter. Several of us talked of going to Texas ’til spring. Pitt Mackeson and his crowd hooted and said they’d stick it out where the fighting was.

  “That’s where the plunder is, too, ain’t it?” I said to Pitt.

  God, he was an ugly creation.

  “What of it?” he said. “You got something to make of it, Dutchy?”

  I was so weary of this and him and all of it. Arch Clay was at Mackeson’s side and two border buggers by the names of Dinny Riordan and Jasper Moody stood behind him.

  “No,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  Mackeson did a coyote sort of laugh and his bugger ilk joined in with him. Arch Clay stood silent as he and I were not enemies, though we had never quite been friends.

  I slunk off and sat with Holt and Cave and Sayles. They were embarrassed for me.

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s head south tomorrow.”

  The boys didn’t respond directly, and I looked up to see Black John coming my way. As always with him, his countenance mirrored his stiff insanity. He leaned ove
r me and said, “You have got problems in this camp, Roedel.”

  “So I gather.”

  “Well, George is dead and black in the ground by now, Roedel. He shielded you and that mute nigger, but he ain’t here no more. You had best leave. Some of the boys are turned on you.”

  I felt myself getting weepy, though I would not weep. It had come down to this: I was being run out of a bushwhacker camp for being unsuitable.

  “I’ll be leaving in the morning,” I said.

  “Why, that’ll do fine,” Black John said. “Tomorrow is always a finer day, excepting in the case of my sisters. No, their tomorrow is the same as their yesterday, playing harps at the feet of Our Lord, pegging Him with peeled grapes. Yes, the sky is red tonight, Roedel, a good sign for you to go.” He stood erect and clasped his hands behind his back in a schoolmarm way. “Dutchy, I don’t crave seeing you dead at all. I just don’t want to see you no more. I just don’t want to. And when you go, you take Clyde’s infernal nigger with you. I’m tired of seeing his woolly head, too.”

  He walked away, not expecting any retort.

  Holt stared up at the sky, then lay back flat so as to view it better.

  “Well, that tears that,” I said sadly. I was a little sad. “Me and Holt’ll be gone at dawn.”

  After a long, lonely silence, Cave said, “I’m going with you.”

  “I might as well come, too,” Sayles said.

  “Good,” I told them. I looked around the camp and there were plenty of boys who didn’t act like they recognized me anymore. Some of them gave me rough glances. Even the Hudspeth brothers ignored me. Turner Rawls sat with them, and when he saw me staring he got up and came over. He squatted next to me.

  “I go wid oo,” he mumbled. He clasped a hand on the nape of my neck and squeezed. “Yake, oo mah fwen.”

  “I appreciate it, Turner,” I said. This man was mangle-mouthed and vicious, but he didn’t forget the shared trials of past enterprises.

  There was damned few that didn’t.

  When dawn came we were readying to go. The Mackeson crowd stood aloof from us and laughed at whispered jokes they told.

  “Are you ready?” Holt asked. “I want to go.”

  “Well, go on,” I said. “I’ll only be a minute behind.”

  I walked into the timber and tied Old Fog to a branch. I had to get shed of yesterday’s beans. It was a formidable need at the moment. I picked out a maple sapling and hunkered up against it with my britches around my ankles.

  I saw Holt and the boys start off down the trail. I about strained a gut trying to be quick, but even the body sometimes rebels. The job was just a slow one.

  In a minute I heard boots and figured someone else shared my bean problem. Then I saw a limb shake and steel glint. As I reached into the tangle of my britches to pull loose a pistol, I got shot. It hit me in the left calf, flung my legs out from under me, and I landed squish where I didn’t want to.

  It hurt right away. They say it don’t, but it does. It hurt. Right. Away.

  “Who is it?” I screamed.

  Another shot flecked bark just above me. I twisted around the tree trunk, but my leg stuck out. Someone shot at the lame thing again but missed by inches. There were more enemies than one out there.

  My teeth gnashed, and I hung my pistol hand around the tree and blasted away blindly.

  “Jake!” came a shout, and there was old Holt barreling over shrubs, coming in to get me. He made a pretty target while attempting such a brave move, and he paid for it. I heard that unforgettable thump and saw him slump over.

  All the spirit I had sank. I pulled another pistol and emptied it without aiming, then I just lay there, loitering in my own blood and muck, awaiting the finale.

  Well, old mangle-mouthed Rawls and Cave and Sayles rode up, showing more calm sense than Holt had. They winged a couple of shots at shaking shrubs and whoever had bushwhacked me took off. I wasn’t too confused about who it was.

  Cave looked down at me, all weepy and disgusted.

  “God damn!” he said. “God damn them to hell!”

  All my thoughts were simple and focused on pain. This thing, pain, is a commanding sensation.

  A rag was bound about the wound and I was hoisted to my horse. I didn’t want to see my leg. If it resembled Jack Bull’s elbow in any particulars, I preferred not to know it.

  Turner got Holt over to us. He was in the saddle but gasping. The breath had been blown out of him. There was blood seeping out low in his ribs.

  “Are you bad?” Sayles asked him.

  “It rattled the ribs, but they are stout,” Holt said tightly. “The ball didn’t go in. It’s only the skin is torn.”

  Cave was still having a hissy fit and pointed toward the camp.

  “I’d go after them, Jake,” he said. “I truly would, but I’m afraid that might just be exactly what they want.”

  “Oh, no, to hell with that,” Sayles said. “There’ll be time for that another day. Right now we got to get Dutchy and Holt to my father-in-law’s place. Dutchy’s fiancée is there and she’ll tend to them.”

  “His fiancée,” Cave said. “What fiancée?”

  “That Sue Lee Shelley girl. She is Dutchy’s fiancée.”

  “Oh. Oh, her.”

  And we set off.

  18

  THREE DAYS LATER, or so I suppose, we were there. The house was a sturdy wood one far in the hills. My mind had been on a float as we traveled. Some things I had understood. I suspect I yowled too much.

  When we arrived it was late in the day. The boys helped me hop into the house. There was an old man, built thinly and bald, inside. This was Orton Brown, Howard Sayles’s father-in-law. His wife was a feminine replica of him except in regards to hair. Her name was Wilma.

  “Who is this?” Orton asked Sayles.

  “This is Dutchy Roedel. He’s been tweaked in the leg.”

  “Oh, so that’s Dutchy Roedel. Well, lay him down.”

  Holt flopped down next to me. He was somewhat grayed by his wound but not in danger of dying. Exhaustion played a big part in how he looked.

  The hole in my calf itched and ached, but the bone was not shattered. That gave me confidence that my future might be a walking one. Cave Wyatt had shown off his nursing qualities and kept the thing clean and bandaged. Holt could reach his own wound and tend it, as it was mainly a bruise and a rip, so he did.

  “I appreciate this of you,” I said to Orton.

  “Well, I have heard of you and I am proud to help a southern man no matter how funny his name.”

  “Oh, he ain’t just a southern man, Ort,” Sayles said. “This boy here is the Shelley girl’s fiancé.”

  Orton raised his brows at this news.

  “Good, good. I am glad to hear she has a fiancé, ’cause she is in need of one.”

  “Hey, now,” I said. “I never told you I was her fiancé.”

  That got me a cruel expression from Sayles.

  “Aw, goin’ back to your old tricks, eh, Dutchy?” he said, then gave a soft kick at my calf. “She’s with child and you want to quibble.”

  “She ain’t with child,” Orton said.

  “That is for certain,” said Wilma in a stern Baptist tone. “That girl has got child now. A brown-eyed butterball of a girl child.”

  When I heard that, I wanted to see that baby. I had a real need to study the face of Jack Bull’s child and dote on any resemblance.

  “Where is she?” I asked. “Where is Sue Lee and the baby?”

  “I’m not for sure,” Wilma said. “I believe she carried the little girl out for air. They’ll be back any time, now. They won’t stay out in the dark.”

  From the house I had a view of a steep hillside, thick with oak and hickory, and a deep, clean streamed valley. It was a soothing landscape and one that made me feel safe. For the first time in a long while, I could relax and leave it to nature to concoct my cure.

  Orton and Wilma and the boys jawed around as the sun went behind
the hill. Howard Sayles’s wife was in Hillsboro, Texas, with his father and mother and two children. The Browns had news from there, so they shared it.

  Me and Holt were off to one side of the conversation. This conflict had forced us to rely on each other, and we had learned to do it. I felt obliged toward this particular nigger. He had demonstrated backbone and superb nerve. I hoped I had done the same.

  “After we get healed back healthy, what shall we do, Holt?”

  “More, I reckon,” he answered. He did not face me when he said it, and it may not have been true.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, harnessing my own thoughts. “More is right, but could be it’ll be more of something else. I ain’t riding with boys that’ll shoot me no more. Them days is gone.”

  He nodded briskly several times.

  “You got yourself a new family now,” he said. “I understand it that you don’t want to bushwhack no more.”

  I’ll tell you, odd events at which I had been a mere witness were now conspiring to manage my fate, and I wasn’t used to having so little say.

  “Now, Holt, that ain’t my kid and you know it.”

  “It ain’t that simple,” he said, all puffed up with mysterious logic. “What you say is the truth, far as that goes, but it is too simple. And this ain’t that simple.”

  I guess I have myself to blame. I listened to him. Then I sat there, throbbing at my wounded calf, somewhat absent of insight, and pondered his riddle.

  When she come in, she reacted like she had seen me at the waterhole yesterday. Zero fluster came over her face. She was calm and beautiful in her scar-faced way, serene with motherhood, I supposed.

  “Are you hurt again?” she asked me.

  Those were her first words to me. They did not flatter me with a gush of feminine concern.

  “Well, yes,” I said, “but I didn’t do it to myself, you know.” I conjured up a forlorn look. “I been shot.”

  She clucked her tongue and swung the cuddly armful of babe that she carted.