Woe to Live On: A Novel

  “Don’t pester the man so,” she said. “We’re going to sing, Honeybee. You like to sing, don’t you?”

  “If he won’t gobble, I’ll sing.” The wide-woman seedling smoldered a look at me. “He don’t care for me.”

  This banter with a child was tightening me up. The social whirl was not my form of tumult. All my stabs at it missed the mark.

  “I like you fine,” I said. “It’s just gobbling right now is not for me.”

  Soon the crowd got over my not gobbling and started singing. They beat through “Dixie” and “Barbry Allen,” then worked over “Kiss Me Katie Oh.” Old Evans honked out the low parts and Jack Bull stretched up after notes that he fumbled gamely and the women sang in the soothing center range.

  Brandy was sloshed around.

  I leaned against a wall and smiled constantly, like an addlebrain.

  It pretty well made me jumpy, hooting out songs in a secesh house in a Federal district. I had not the same capacity for convincing myself that I was elsewhere from where I was. I knew exactly where I was and it wasn’t a place for songs.

  Aw, pretty quick I said the devil with it all and went outside. I tried to keep a watch and the moon helped some by throwing that weak light down on the road. I could sort of see a good distance and that relaxed me.

  The night chill had routed any ragtag pockets of heat. My nose burned. Water beaded in my eyes. A granny thing happened to my hands and they could barely clinch. I hopped about inside a blanket and crashed my hat down around my ears.

  Inside the house the sing-along went on. Jack Bull Chiles would have us killed for a widow squeeze and a chance to mangle high notes in company. The voices were muffled by the walls and wind and reached my ears all souped together.

  In every way, and for as many reasons, I wanted to return to the mud dugout and my rock chimney.

  But if Jack Bull Chiles ever was hurt because I left him, there would be no recovery for me. I knew that. I had always known that. It was something that I knew from toenail to cowlick.

  So I watched the road and blew on my hands and stamped my feet and damn near froze, but no bad luck gained on us.

  It was as pleasant a night as I’d had in a while.

  10

  IN THE COMING days the widow found daily missions that required her presence in our dugout. George Clyde was often at Juanita Willard’s and sometimes Holt was at his side. Sometimes he was left in the dugout. Sue Lee got friendlier and more sisterly to Holt and me. Jack Bull would not be mistaken for her relative by any but the most backward sort of person.

  Really, she quit seeming like a widow. She seemed like a seventeen-year-old girl from Carthage, Missouri, which is what she was. When Jack Bull started putting her paw in his, she fell for the ploy. She liked that gambit. It had worked on her before, I think.

  One day when the snow had fallen, she hustled into the dugout and bellowed a howdy, which had become her greeting. Two balls of snow were in her hands. She hurled one at me but missed and splattered Holt. The other she walked over and rubbed in Jack Bull’s face. He never even moved to avoid it, but held his face up and open to her fingers and the cold they mashed all about his features.

  “You splattered poor Holt,” I said to her. “Your aim is wild.”

  “It surely is,” she answered. The snow was melting on my near brother’s face. He looked like the boy who has been scolded only to discover that the right scolding can be a pleasant business. She turned from him and looked on Holt. “Did I whop you good?”

  As was his wont, Holt merely nodded.

  The whole long fence of her teeth went on display. She was frisky and happy and wallowing in her mood, as only someone who does not often feel it will. She went over and shoved Holt.

  “Holt,” she said, giggling. “I’ll make you speak up one of these days.”

  He looked up at her and laid his head off to one side.

  “Don’t hold your breath, missy.”

  This one sentence delighted her. She busted up harder with mirth than you would at several Shakespeares.

  “I have done it!” she cried. “I have made old Holt talk!”

  Love must be what it was. This mood just crashed right out of her and slammed around the dugout. I thought, It must be akin to a terrible fever, only it races happy through you and not heat. Maybe there is some heat, too. It is a sight to watch if you ain’t got it yourself.

  Jack Bull stared at her kind of sheepish, and she kept giddying about ’til he said, “Whoa, mule! Settle down, there.”

  Calling a lovestruck girl a mule in company is not a winning comment. I learned that quick by the way Sue Lee’s face twitched straight from giddy to grumpy. She turned a look on Jack Bull that showed plain that she saw no great compliment in the comparison.

  “Mule?” she said. “Whoa, mule?”

  There was snowmelt trickling over his face, and he wiped at it. He looked my way as if I might relay him a good lie that would slide him out of this.

  “Just calm down,” he said.

  She leaned over so her face was just above him. She pinched her cheeks and said, “Do I look muley to you?”

  “Well, no.”

  Then she did this thing that I would have plunked down five cents to see if I hadn’t gotten it free. She spun about, put her hands on her knees and sashayed her butt practically into his surprised nose. Despite her many garments the movement showed some charms.

  “That look like a mule to you?” She stood straight while he looked stupid, then she did it again. He took his punishment well. “That look like the rear end of an animal that heehaws in the night?”

  Jack Bull smiled at that and dug himself in deeper.

  “It looks like it might could be.”

  I am afraid Holt and me laughed. We were always loitering in the midst of their carrying-ons. Romance is a sweet enough enterprise but it makes you lonely to watch it. Holt grinned at me and I sent the same back to him.

  “Jack Bull Chiles,” Sue Lee said, “just because I’m a widow it don’t mean you can get that familiar with me.”

  “Pardon me, ma’am, but I believe it was you that shoved your rump into my face.”

  “Oh!” she went. “That was only just to make a point!”

  “You made it,” he said. He could be rough at the oddest moments. “I will always know your rump from a mule’s now. There are several differences. I don’t know how I missed them.”

  Now, Sue Lee Shelley was not the sort of plantation belle that would be contented by a mere exchange of rhyming insults. She came of practical people in a practical land. She smote him a good one on the chin.

  Twice in my life I had also taken swings on Jack Bull, and her blows shook him even less than mine had. She wound up to fling another at him, but he sprang to his feet and grabbed her in close to him. His arms were all around her.

  My Lord, Holt and me wanted out of that dugout. Some things you ought not to ever see your best friend do up close. Love is one of them. Me and Holt went dirt-quiet and faced every way but their way.

  “Don’t be mean,” she said, and this time she sounded about twelve years old and lost. “I can’t tolerate meanness.”

  There was some breathy silence, then wet noises were made and several sighs accompanied them. I have a fragment of the gentleman in me, but I ditched it and looked over my shoulder at all the friendliness. Jack Bull was doing some moist mouth work on her neck and cheeks and lips. He nuzzled her all about. Pretty soon she was doing similar deeds on him.

  He had a slit-lidded look on him. His arms kept her in the hug and all those noises went on.

  In peacetime he might have been shot for this.

  “Is that too mean?” he finally asked.

  “No,” she answered in a tiny tone. “It’s not really too mean at all.”

  I guess a woman wants a man in wartime. While there still are any. People in hell want springwater.

  Holt found all kinds of fascinating aspects to the dirt between his feet.
He knew he better not look anywhere else. A nigger’s path is awful narrow when white women are around.

  This big huggy smooching match changed the dugout. It happened in a blink. There I was squatting on the dirt with Holt, feeling just about as useful as a Christian impulse at an ambush, while Jack Bull kept up at his new sport of mashing on widows. It seemed he found this new game to be less than heroically difficult.

  I about screamed.

  But finally the widow showed some sense. She crawdaddied out of his arms. A couple of satisfied humphs came from her as she patted herself back into place. Then she said, “Oh, goodness.”

  “Yes,” he said, and his tone was exactly that of a faro dealer who knows the game ain’t straight. “Goodness is what it is.”

  “Aw, for crying out loud!” I said. I pointed at hunkered Holt, then myself. “We’re sitting right here! Show us some mercy.”

  My comments had a stunning effect. All the mushy stuff went up the chimney. I didn’t glance to see it, but I could feel Jack Bull staring hard at me. No one knew him better, or even as well.

  “He is quite right,” Sue Lee said. “I must leave. I have to get. I better get to the house.”

  “Cover your tracks in the snow, too,” I said. “You’ll be leading curious Federals right onto us.”

  “Now, don’t be rude,” Jack Bull said. “You have no reason to be rude.”

  I faced him after that.

  “Is that so?” I asked. I could display some pesky qualities myself when forced to it. “There is a war going on everywhere but between your ears, you dumb ox.”

  I guess I was more than pesky.

  He kicked me square in the chest. I felt my innards bobble. The next few breaths I drew rattled and wheezed.

  “Dumb ox, am I?”

  Oh, he had that look for a moment there. It was not the look I most liked to see. But it passed as fast as it came.

  “I’m sorry, Jake,” he said. I think he meant it. “My leg just did that on its own. There was no thought behind it.”

  I rubbed and rubbed at the place where his boot had visited all on its own. It was a dull throbbing spot.

  “I hear you,” I said. “I hear you. These things happen. But Holt and me ain’t dying just so you can be kissed.”

  “Leave me out of this,” Holt bleated. “I ain’t even here, or nowhere near here.”

  Jack Bull laughed. His eyes had a lantern glow.

  “I don’t believe anyone is about to die from my kiss. In fact, she seems to be doing tolerably well.”

  The widow excused herself swiftly. She got right out of there. I reckon widows feel okay about acts that some maidens might drown themselves over. Anyhow that’s the way I figured it.

  When she was gone Jack Bull said, “Hey, looky here, boys.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Right here.”

  There was a big lump in his britches square between where his pistols hung.

  “My God,” I said. “Where’s your shame, Chiles?”

  “Gone to Texas,” he said, and just uproared with lewd joy.

  I couldn’t chime in.

  Nothing was the same.

  The chimney fire broke light across the dugout. It was a jagged illumination. The flames writhed and bounced and a deathly howl of wind blew down the chimney. It felt homey to me.

  George Clyde was back. He was ruining Juanita Willard’s reputation. Often he stayed with her all night. Her family seemed to think nothing of it. If ever we won the war, it would take years to renovate our honor. Honor had come to be a frivolous virtue in practice, but it was also the one that urged us to battle.

  Confusing.

  “So, now,” Clyde said to Jack Bull. “You have become quite the young swain, I hear.”

  “I can’t deny it.”

  “You have been loose with your kisses, I hear.”

  “Not as loose as I hope to be.”

  “Hah, hah! I know that feeling.” Clyde, by dint of his regular berth at the Willards, seemed practically married. “What is she like?”

  “Oh, she is fine. Just fine and dandy. A robust widow.”

  “Those are by far the best kind,” Clyde said. “And there are getting to be plenty of them.”

  This conversation seemed two-sided, so I threw in my own oar.

  “She is coltish of attitude,” I said. “With an ungainly gallop of spirit.”

  “Ho, ho,” went Clyde. “You are making me jealous!”

  Jack Bull beamed. He chewed at a twig, his strong cheeks bulging around a smile. His skin seemed flushed to about the same degree as six chugs of popskull whiskey would do.

  “Yes,” he said. “This gal is some proposition.”

  “She is lowly born,” I said.

  “Oh, she is. She is lowly born,” Jack Bull said happily, “but highly fascinating.”

  Clyde went to giggling and said, “Leave off with it—you boys are making me so jealous.”

  “I say again,” Jack Bull mused. “She is lowly born but highly fascinating.”

  I felt wounded and left by the roadside.

  Change was required of me.

  I didn’t know if I was up to it.

  Things got worse. George Clyde had Juanita Willard beg Sue Lee to come stay with her, and Clyde drug Jack Bull over there the next night. That left Holt and me in the dugout. The two of them set out like it was a lark. All kinds of backslapping and winking went on.

  I hoped they were shot at, but not hit.

  Maybe they could be hit just slightly.

  It was kind of glum for me in the dugout. It was awful cold out. Winter is mostly melancholic. It is especially so underground.

  Holt was barely more company than a rock. He had to be coaxed and goaded to say “Pass the taters.” I was not exactly windy of nature myself, but I wanted some conversation.

  “Pick a topic,” I said.

  He just looked at me, his black skin blacker in the poor-lighted corner.

  “Pick a topic,” I chorused. “You are going to talk to me, Holt.”

  His head shook, and his hands flinched and he said, “It’s not my habit.”

  Everything he said he said fine enough, but he didn’t seem to believe it. Actually he said things as good as anybody. A lot of niggers I had known blathered hoodoo nonsense to where you wanted to gag them, but here I was, alone, with a well-spoken nigger who had a terrible case of silence. It is always something.

  “I’ll pick the topic,” I finally said. I had to lure this fellow into conviviality. I tried to think of some topic we could both discuss. I didn’t want it one-sided. “Let’s talk about—dirt. Dirt is our topic.”

  When he still failed to respond, I began to suspect that he was not bashful but ornery.

  “Dirt, damn it, Holt. Tell me all you know about dirt.”

  He looked at me. His eyes were shaded toward the oriental in shape. I don’t think I impressed him at all.

  “Dirt is good,” he said. For no more exercise than it got, his tone was rich. “Everywhere is dirt. Dirt is good.”

  “Well, now, that’s dandy,” I said. “It’s just you and me here, Holt. We need to talk or we’ll be crazed by the wind moans.”

  There was some suspicion in me that Holt found my company comfortable. It was a slow thing with him, friendliness was. Somewhere in him I felt there was a great goo of warmth that he stored slyly.

  “Is that all you know of dirt?” I asked. A long response would not have pained me.

  “It is dark,” he said. You could parade his voice at a songfest and not get hooted. It was that pleasant. “Do you think George will marry?”

  “Not in these times,” I said. “After this war is gone, he will. I reckon we’ll all have to.”

  “Aha,” he hummed. “The trick is us passing through these times.”

  Holt was a sensible creature with opinions that were succinct. I could not fail to note it.

  “Just so,” I said.

  Well, we stared at the shadows on
the walls for a spell to regain our breath after such a spurt of chat. It looked like cities. The shadows peaked and valleyed all across the dugout and for flashes of time they designed out tall buildings and great avenues that resembled precisely no city I’d ever heard of, but they diverted nonetheless.

  “There is something I like,” Holt said. His smart face straightened at me.

  “Oh, what would that be?”

  “You might not care for it, Roedel.”

  “Try me. I can be generous when the cost is low.”

  He studied me closely, then said, “You ain’t the same as some of the boys. I have watched you. It’s a thing I have seen.”

  “How nice of you to like that,” I said.

  “That ain’t it. Not what I like.” An expression very like that of an unfed puppy was on him. It had its endearing aspects. “I like it when you read.”

  “Read what?”

  “The mails. When you read them mails out loud it is something the likes I never heard before.”

  The mail pouch was baggage I toted the same way others rub quartz rocks—it was part of my luck. I knew I’d had some to be yet nearly whole. But I had not read the letters. That might not be something that should be done.

  “Oh, they might not be too amusing,” I said. “It might just be a bunch of boring thoughts one stranger sent to another.”

  This comment made him look down. He brushed dust from his britches and stared away from me.

  “The one you read from the mother was fine,” he said. “I heard that from you in the spring. Do you recall it?”

  “Yes.”

  “She said things I enjoy to hear.”

  There was nothing for it but to read. Jagged flame and the shadows it throws can be amusing for only a while. A letter might almost be as fine as a conversation.

  I pulled out the mail pouch. I opened the flap and held it toward Holt.

  “Draw one, Holt.”

  His fingers inched into the pouch and he felt around a bit, as if the feel of the note could sway him yea or nay. After some seconds of tactile scrutiny he drew one out.

  “This one do,” he said.

  I opened the letter. It was a Massachusetts scrawl of a thing. Half of rabid Kansas had come from there with the Emigrant Aid Society. They shipped abolitionists and Bibles and rifles out to our area to stir up trouble. It was hard to like them. This letter was addressed to Andrew Pritchard in Lawrence, Kansas, the most hated burg on the border, home of the Jayhawkers and their foam-mouthed ilk.