Woe to Live On: A Novel

  “Maybe I won’t,” I said.

  “What will you do, then?”

  “Oh, now maybe I’ll trek on over to California and catch me a sailboat to somewhere sunny and full of lambs.”

  “Is that right,” she said and laughed. “What grand spot have you got in mind, Jake?”

  The baby gummed away at the nourishing breast, and I stretched my legs out straight and leaned back on my hands.

  “In Sparta they have olives,” I said. “I got that out of a book. I could eat me some olives, I think.”

  “Olives? What are olives like?”

  “Well, I don’t know firsthand. I never had one yet. But I’ve eat a bushel of walnuts, and nothing can be more trouble to eat than them.”

  A look of deep thought came over Sue Lee’s face. She switched Grace to the spare nipple, her fingers moving fast, then sighed as the babe went to work.

  “I wonder about me,” she said. “I ain’t going sailing nowhere and I know it. I wonder about me and Grace.”

  “Oh, you’ll get by,” I said. That was all the honesty I could summon. I hate it when they put you on the spot. I don’t like lying, but I hate it worse when I don’t tell the truth. “You know, that girl needs her a daddy.”

  “She had a daddy, Jake, and you ain’t it.”

  That comment was uncalled for. I pushed myself to my feet and pointed a finger in her face.

  “You know, girl,” I said all hot and breathy. “You’re going to have to get your water from the nearest well, or else learn to love lugging that heavy bucket of yours.”

  And with that I went outside and stood beneath a sky of gray, trembling in my effort to rein myself in from becoming a mushmouth.

  That girl was starting to bring it out in me.

  Late in the afternoon I noted two things: Wilma dusted off the family Bible and put it on the table; then she baked bread and tommyhawked a chicken though it wasn’t Sunday.

  “What’s with the special favors, Wilma?” I asked.

  Now, this was an older lady and she gave me an older-lady look of shrewdness.

  “Why, nothing,” she said. “Orton will be mighty hungry from the ride, don’t you think? I intend to feed him well.”

  Uh-huh, I thought.

  In an hour or so Orton and Holt rode up with a fat, pale, dark-dressed stranger. I watched them from the window, and when they came in the stranger looked at me and said, “Is this the man?”

  “That’s him,” Orton said. “Dutchy Roedel.”

  Holt stood in the doorway, trying to choke down some sniggers.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “This is Reverend Horace Wright,” Orton said. He held his shotgun by the barrel with the butt on the floor. “You’re getting married today, Dutchy. You’re getting married or you’re getting out.”

  “I’m what?”

  “You heard me. You’re all healed. I wanted to be sure you wouldn’t die slow before I did this. I can’t have it in my house the way it is.”

  Wilma bustled Sue Lee into the room. I guess she was about as rattled by this as me, but she sure didn’t look it.

  “Holt, saddle my horse,” I said. I was all puffed with myself, like the rooster in a one-rooster county. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “No, no,” he said. He shook his head several times, and I wanted to pop him in the middle of his grin. “You should do right, Jake.”

  “What on earth does that mean?” I screamed.

  The reverend chewed his lips and looked on me without too much pity. Orton matched him and the place went silent. Sue Lee poked me in the ribs with a finger and nodded toward the porch.

  “Let’s talk,” she said.

  “I do believe that is a roasting chicken I smell,” the reverend said.

  Me and the widow marched outside. I did stuttery steps and bashful coughs while this girl, who had been here before, stared at me sternly. Hell, I’d never even whispered sweet folderol to a maiden I’d liked, let alone got legally trussed up with a widow.

  “Are you going to or not?” she asked. “Be forthright.”

  “It’s being shoved down my throat,” I said. “If a thing has got to be shoved, I like to do the shoving.”

  She smirked at me, and for an instant there I had a good idea of how she came by that busted tooth.

  “Well, get on in there and shove, then, Jake.”

  I sat on the lip of the porch and rested my leg. It was more than chilly and the sun was sinking.

  “I thought you said you wouldn’t want me for a wagonload of gold ’cause I am a nubbin-fingered runt of a Dutchman. I remember you saying that.”

  “Well,” she said, brightly, “I guess I lied.”

  “Are you lying again now?”

  “No. I wouldn’t lie to you, Jake.”

  “You just told me you lied to me before.”

  “That’s different,” she said. “That was romance.”

  “And now is what?”

  She touched my forehead and curled an arm around my neck. “Now is the truth.” She then eased my face to her feeders, and twirled a finger in my hair. “This here now is the truth.”

  The truth made my face flush. I was glad it was hidden from her.

  “Jack Bull would want that girl to have a daddy,” I said. “He was like my brother. I guess I’ll do it.”

  Reverend Wright was hungry, and from the pudgy look of him he wasn’t one to put up with that. He did a lickety-split ceremony and sniffed the chicken-soaked air like some ridiculous hound.

  Bachelorhood vanished in a blink, and Holt slammed my back, and Wilma beamed. There was a load of righteous happy stuff done. I stood up to it and Sue Lee stood up to it and, hell, it didn’t hurt or nothing.

  I thought to ask Orton what sect this reverend headed.

  “Oh, he is Methodist, but he marries all breeds.”

  The reverend was over at the table, his haunches jiggling, ripping off chunks of bread and mashing his mouth.

  “I reckon that man would marry stones to stones if there was a chicken at the end of it,” I said.

  “That’s neither here nor somewhere else,” Orton said. “He done made you legal.”

  Pretty soon we all sat down and tore up the bird and bread, and Orton hauled out a jug in honor of the occasion. Reverend Wright said he was opposed to drinking but for us to please go on. I guess gluttony is not so bad so long as you don’t double up on your vices by washing it down with something tasty.

  The rest of us mumbled a few toasts, and Sue Lee got her share. The girl liked her drink fairly well for a girl. It charged her face with rosy attitudes.

  I liked that.

  After all these gestures things slid back into the normal way. Orton and Wilma retired early, then Sue Lee and Grace did the same. The reverend sacked out on the floor where Holt and me had been sleeping. The man had several pistols on him, as he was aware that the Lord works in mysterious ways and some of them require the blasting of others.

  “You a family man now,” Holt said to me. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel the same, Holt.” I sat beside him on the floor, back to the wall. “Hell, it’s only words.”

  “No. It’s a oath, Jake. That’s words that you got to back up.”

  “Oh, I know that,” I said. Holt pulled his blanket over himself and started to curl up. “I reckon we’ll be hauling her and the kid with us now.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. Out of here. Maybe Utah Territory.”

  Holt lay there watching me, a puzzled look on his face. I pulled my boots off and spread my bedroll and lay down, then Holt sat up.

  “What you doing?” he asked me.

  “I am going to sleep. You gone blind? I am fixing to get me some sleep.”

  His lower jaw dropped, and he shook his head so hard his cheeks flapped.

  “Jake, do I got to tell you this?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “You s’posed sleep with the wife, Jake. For
pity sake, you got to know that much. You s’posed to share her bed, that way some other man ever do that you shoot him, ’cause that be your place by oath.”

  “I know all that,” I said. “You bet I know that. But hell, this ain’t some regular marriage situation.”

  “Don’t you like her?” Holt pulled the blanket up over his knees as if settling in for a long spell of chat. “You ain’t gonna lie to me that you don’t.”

  “I like her,” I said, and felt dazed by the admission. “She’s pretty enough and all that, but this thing marriage has swept over me so sudden.”

  “Well, Jake,” Holt said in his somber tone, “it is over you. I mean, you done did the milkin’, might as well lap the cream.”

  I gazed about the room and watched the swelling and sinking of the preacher’s form as he sawed away, and moonlight leaked in the window with the hue of some weak gold. Holt was all eyes watching me and I was mostly nerves myself.

  I grabbed my boots and slinked away. Sue Lee had a room off the kitchen, and I crept to the door. My heart was kicking up its heels and slamming hell out of my ribs.

  I creaked the door open slow, and there she was, stretched out with her eyes closed and a candle burning nearby.

  As I stepped into the room she opened her eyes and said, “Jake.”

  Grace was asleep in a tiny rocking contraption Orton had built. She was drawing pure, sleepy breaths.

  I dropped my boots and tossed my hat on top of them. I put my pistols down.

  The candle burned on a side table, and she sat up in bed, wearing some garment that left her shoulders bare. There was a vastness of skin showing.

  For a second I fumbled with the button on my britches, then thought better of it and started into bed.

  “Hey,” she said with a long soft drawl, “take your clothes off.” There was a glow to her and some smiley expectations played out on her face. “You don’t come to bed in dirty duds, Jake. Now, that’s a rule.”

  Well, I just stood there, which is one of my favorite poses, as whenever I hear the mention of a rule my first urge is to find it and give it a shake. This trait had never made my life easier, and it didn’t do it now.

  “Just how many rules is it you’ve got lined up for me, girl?”

  “Oh, don’t get mad.” She swung out of bed and barefooted over to me, and, damn, there wasn’t a gnat’s width of cotton between her and nakedness. “I’ll help you.” She jerked my shirt over my head, then reached to my button and undid it. My britches dropped. That left me bare-assed in front of this creature, and this was a new feature to my life. It brought some tingles with it.

  “There,” she said. She stood right before me, hands on her hips, mocking my Christian rearing, her lips splayed in a bold smile, then whisked that veil of cotton from her form.

  “Oh!” I went.

  She sat on the bed next to me and did a spitty kiss on my ear. There was a thicket of hair on her south forty, and I’ll tell you I’d never plowed through any of that so I edged my hand down there and felt of it.

  “Huh,” she said, her breath whistling on my neck as my hands did clumsy things. “Are you virgin?”

  “I’ve sinned plenty,” I told her.

  “But have you ever bedded a woman before?”

  “Girl, I’ve killed fifteen men.”

  I dropped my good hand between her legs, then slithered those fingers about. She went “Mmmm,” so I poked her with a finger in that place where a woman can best stand it. I kept the poke steady in there but remained seated.

  “You ain’t too shy, are you?” she asked me.

  “I want to go about it right.”

  “Well, right or wrong, honey, go on and go about it.”

  I did not care for her tone, but my savories began to swell. I started to swirl with my finger as though it were a sapling twig in a creek eddy.

  She liked this.

  Things got wet, and my nature sprang straight up, and this widow, my wife, eased me onto my back and shuffled on top of me and we kissed the longest one I’d ever gone through.

  And one thing led to another.

  20

  THE NEXT TWO weeks wisped along, with me shambling through them in a fog. Sue Lee gave me nightly lessons in gaiety. I found I took to this form of learning fairly well.

  After those two weeks of rigorous instruction, I got antsy to travel. It was funny how quickly I felt healed. I was rowdy with health.

  One morning I just came out with it and said, “It’s time to go to Texas. The roads are clear.”

  “There’s a lot of bad sorts between here and Texas,” Orton said. “If you ain’t shot for a thief, you’ll be shot by a thief.”

  “Maybe not,” Holt said somewhat ominously. I knew he was ready to go, and had been for a while.

  The wife I had got me didn’t say anything, but I knew it wasn’t a strange notion to her. I had babbled about Texas in soft, naked moments, and said how I wanted a place for her and the girl. I made it clear that I was done with fighting, at least I was done with this fight ’til it spread to Texas.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow would be a good day to go.”

  That settled it. Several things had to be done, though, and one of them was for me to give up my rebel locks. With bushwhacker curls hanging past my shoulders, it would be hard for me to lie about some things if trouble rolled up on us. All that hair was part of a dread costume, and I had to get shorn of it.

  Orton did the shearing and displayed some gusto about the enterprise. He snipped my locks so near my ears I thought he left me looking moonfaced and childlike.

  “Dutchy,” he said, “you look twenty-one again.”

  “I’m just now nineteen, Ort.”

  “Oh. Is that right? Well, you’ll never look that young.”

  All around my boots there were long strands of pale hair, the ornamentation of my rebellion, and seeing them on the floor made me wistful.

  “We said we’d never cut our hair ’til we were finished with the war.”

  “And you didn’t, Dutchy. You didn’t.”

  We passed one more night with the Browns of Henry County, Missouri. At dawn Wilma gave us a starter sack of provisions. She doted on Grace and said several times she would pray for us all. Orton shook my hand about every sixth minute and told me to be careful, like this was my first trip from home.

  I did not relish the prospect of saying good-bye. The actual moment of farewell was a damp one. Wilma trickled and Sue Lee bawled. My wife had grown so close to this thinned-out old pair. The whole thing made her sad.

  It couldn’t be helped.

  “So long,” I said, and we went.

  Our journey was to be a long one, and this region was writhing with robbers and rebels and scavengers and Yanks. It was hard circumstances under which to embark on a marriage. Holt and me reverted quick to our old, wary style, and Sue Lee loped along on Jack Bull’s horse, Grace strapped to her back.

  Knowing we were leaving Missouri and my hard-fought-for home shuddered me with emotions. Everything I had ever known had been learned here. I knew I was not a quitter, but I was quitting this place. I guess that’s putting too fine a point on things. I did not like being run from my home, but now I wondered if it ever had been that. Boys do the quickest thing that comes to mind, and for me that had been to side with Jack Bull and rebellion, even against my own father and his ilk. From loyalty to a man, I would have murdered a people.

  All this brought back an old taste for piety in me.

  As we traveled south, we avoided everybody we could. All the elusive bushwhacker skills Holt and me knew were employed to dodge Gray patrols and Blue patrols and clumps of barefoot refugees. I had a family to convoy and they didn’t need to learn how trouble feels close up and sudden.

  South of El Dorado Springs Holt engaged me in talk.

  “Jake, I do a lot for you, you know that?”

  “You know I do. It’s equal.”

  “Oh, don’t say it, Jake. I got to say
a thing.” His face was composed and firm with decision. I saw him in this good posture and thought, Mister, we have done some things together, this man and me. “Jake, I’ll travel with you and yours ’til we past them Pin Indians and riffraff in the Nation, then I got to go off somewhere.”

  “Where? Where will you go?”

  “I ain’t decided that to a definite aim. But I’m going.”

  “Why?”

  Holt swiveled his stare to my wife and the child, then looked at me like I was once more a fool, and said, “Now, come on! What you mean, why?”

  Oh, I was weary of vanishing comrades, but I understood it.

  “Good luck, Holt. I wish you well and more.”

  “It ain’t yet,” he said. “I ain’t leaving you ’til your little Dutch ass past them Pin Indians. I told you that, didn’t I?”

  Sue Lee was an uncomplaining traveler. She shouldered every hardship and asked no special favors. Near Newport we awoke at sunrise and built a fire to boil chicory. I let her take charge of the task, and before long the pot gave out a good smell.

  Naturally I had heard that my old comrades were stamping through this neighborhood, but when I heard a rattle and turned to see Arch Clay pointing a pistol at me, it was still a shocking reunion.

  “Why, Dutchy,” he said. He holstered his pistol and stepped closer. “I didn’t expect to see you no more.”

  Me and Holt looked tight at each other. I think it occurred to both of us that killing Arch right off might be the wisest course. But we hesitated.

  “Chicory is boiling, Arch,” I said. “Have some.”

  “I think I will,” he said. He dragged his horse in and I saw evidence of new habits, for there were three scalps dangling from the bridle reins. “I think I’d like some chicory, Dutchy. How you, Holt?”

  “Fairly well,” Holt said.

  “Are you alone, Arch?” I asked.

  “Naw,” he said. This man had never looked angelic, but now he appeared totally won over to the devil’s side. “Two of the boys are back a ways. We been on the run sort of constant.”