Fight for Glory (My Wounded Soldier #1) (21 page)

Tom
Tanner

Chapter
Twenty-Five

We had stopped
three times without trouble. I can’t say the fist in my stomach was going to
open anytime soon, but I was feeling good enough to eat one of Rayetta’s
apples. Jimmy was propped up a bit. Every now and then we’d get him on his feet
and he’d piss out the door. Said he ain’t taken a shit the whole time yet, so
he only wanted water and some of the cold grits. “I beg to differ,” I said. “
They been
cleaning shit off you since Monroe land.”

That brightened
him some for he feared he’d shut down.

There was blood
in his piss, and Sonny made the mistake of finding that funny, so after I
laid
Jimmy down I backhanded him and if a man could die from
another’s foul looks, I guess I’d be dead all right.

So we were coming
up on our fourth town, some of these not nearly towns just thinking about it. But
this one had some
size,
and a double track where the
on-coming train could rest while we passed. So I jumped out to stretch my legs
and get us fresh water. I thought I imagined it when I heard Johnny screaming
my name, just like that first day in the field. I couldn’t afford to lose
sanity with all I had going on, so I was looking hard for something real, and
there he was, plowing into me and hanging on.

“What in tarnal?”
I said folding over him and lifting him by
his shoulders and throwing him against me. “Boy,” I said. “Boy…where’s your
ma?”

She was hurrying
across the platform to me. My God, her in a black dress, that face sitting on
top of it, a little hat on top of hair pinned up, her eyes, her lips and arms
outstretched, and my one arm that didn’t hold Johnny reaching. She came in to
me then, and up against my side so hard, “Lord God,” I said on this sob, and
she kissed me on the lips, and I kissed her back and said, “I love you girl.”

That train’s whistle.
I heard Cousin calling her, saw him standing
on the step, waving at her, face red, and I kissed her again, him looking on. She
felt so good in my arms, her and Johnny. They were mine. They were mine.

“I can’t believe
it,” she said, looking into my eyes, “Oh Tom,” she said, seeing my sins.

“Don’t you marry
him,” I said so much feeling in it, I couldn’t breathe.

She shook her
head.

He was calling
her stern for that train was shaking to life.

Now they were
calling me, too, cause mine was moving.

She took Johnny
and we set him down together. He was crying already. “Did you kill some Tom?”
he was shouting, and I kept looking at her.

“Don’t you marry
him,” I said.

She shook her
head, like she couldn’t speak, and he was there pulling on them. I wouldn’t
take her with me, not where I was headed, but Lord, Lord, Lord this was a gift
like I couldn’t express, but to watch him pull them away.

“You take care of
them,” I called to him. “Anything goes wrong with them….” I swallowed it then,
cause I was about to say some things, I tell you, but it welled in me, I was
not willing to let them go. I would not. If he failed to watch over them…there
is no describing how I would dismember him with my small knife. I’d take a week
or so to do it starting with his big toes. That’s how it was and he had no idea
but I must
of
conveyed something, cause he looked at
me like I’d forgot to cover my nether regions.

“Tom,” she cried
out, like she was just starting to believe it, gripping that railing. “Live!”
she yelled, and she kept yelling it for I heard it echoing in the sky, I’m
telling you.

My feet were bent
on following her. Changing directions and chasing after that other train was
like turning the flow of a river. I had to run to catch the boys, but once I
got going, it wasn’t hard to do seeing as I was het up to beat the band. Well
William was standing up top, staring at me, waiting to make sure I got on, I
reckon.

But once I did,
and still I held to that door and looked back long as I could. When I felt a
hand, it was Gaylin, just a hand on my shoulder, just a quick touch. It
comforted me to know he was with me. “Glad you’re along,” I said. “Sorry…but I
am.”

He nodded, too. “She
looked real nice,” he said.

That’s all we
said, but it was enough.
Okay God
, I
thought,
I reckon you gave me a gift. I
want to say…I been hard on you. I’m taking it all back mayhap. Least I’m
considering it.

I was stuck
looking out then, my head,
my
heart so full. Next
thing I knew I was flying through the air. Funny thing is
,
I saw William flying, too.

Came on so quick.
One minute we were ten miles out of that
town. Next I was waking up, sprawled on the ground. The front of the train was
hanging over the river where a bridge had been blown into the sky. The rest of
the cars, save ours and the caboose, were on their sides. One car had gone some
into the car before it.

“William,” I
yelled. He was rousing, like me, sitting upright holding his arm. The gun had
rolled out the door of our car, and sat there in the field like it was ready to
fire. Gaylin was climbing out the car, landing on his feet shaky. Folks down
the line were yelling for help. Two of my prisoners were running away still
tied to each other. They were met by riders coming out of the treeline. I felt
myself wanting to pass out again, but I heard Addie then, screaming in my head,
“Live!”

Tom
Tanner

Chapter
Twenty-Six

There sat that
damn useless Gatlin gun. William was already up and gone, but as he’d run by he
said, “Move.” Leastways he had a revolver. Wait a
minute,
I had one of Jimmy’s stuck in my pants.

I pulled that out
now. Yonder was enough ammo to blow up the world one bullet at a time. I had
wanted to get my hands on some dynamite.
Looked like these
others beat me to it.
Well a man’s got to have more than good ideas, I’d
grant them that.

Someone on a
horse was riding toward me digging a rifle butt in his side to take a shot at
me. I was calm because I was still addled, but he got close enough I whipped
out the gun and blew him from the saddle. “What I ever do to you?” I said. That
brought me back some. I looked around again. Some folks climbing from the
train, and there was wailing and screaming from over that ridge where the front
part had disappeared. I staggered to my feet, that gun still in my hand. I tried
to run toward that car we’d been in, but kept veering to the left and having to
correct myself.

There were
bodies, just a few, most in the cars I reckoned. Two of the cars were
passengers.
One of them gone over the side.
One of the
bodies here in the field was wearing a dress and God, my
God,
Addie had crossed this very bridge not long ago.
Couldn’t
think about that.
Wouldn’t.

When I reached
the car I looked in there. The car before us had pushed in some, and the coffin
was open and crushed pretty much, like it had hit that gun and froze. That’s
the thing that got that Gatlin rolling I guess. Thing of it was somebody’s head
was off. Couldn’t be helped, it just came in that way. Yeah that was Sonny, and
the one next to him was mangled. Those must have been his sons running to the
Promised Land I reckoned. “Jimmy,” I yelled, but he was gone.
His stretcher, too.
So the boys must be alive or thrown
yonder like me.

I looked around. Maybe
they headed for the trees. A bullet whizzed past me and hit the car. I looked
around again, back in the train, a wild thought that Jimmy was in there I just
wouldn’t see it, but no, other than those three outlaws…..

William liked to
got
his face shot off lighting in the doorway across from me
holding my Enfield.

“You gonna stand
there?” he said.

I crawled through
then and jumped out other side after him. He tossed me my rifle. We ran the
length and we saw it then, me following him, climbing on top the wreck, looking
in. I left my rifle and so did he, and we dropped in that car on its side,
civilians…Lord this was the worst. And there was Gaylin, already helping folks,
holding a child, handing him to Michael who sat in the busted out window and
took the little limp form, the arm dangling that way, the leg, that shoe black
and tied with pink bows.

Someone moaning
nearby and I looked. There was nowhere to stand to get purchase enough to lift
on some of these. I was sick myself, sick over this for sure.

I don’t know
where they came from, but two braves, dressed in pants and loose shirts, moving
easy and light, right into it, red brown hands reaching toward me, the kind
always took William away when a group came through and he’d go off with them
and I used to hate it when I was younger cause he didn’t want me, just them.

But now, I lifted
this fella, about Gaylin’s age not nearly so thick, and the brave took his
shoulders and I kept the legs and we lifted him and handed him to his pard, and
we just kept doing that, anyone whole enough who didn’t scream too much, we
worked together to lift them out. But when you got one off there were more underneath.
For they had piled on one another, and I was doing that
talking sometimes, like with Addie that day, that soft talking.

When I’d done all
I could I climbed out of that car and went to view the part of the train that
was over the cliff. More braves had come upon the disaster and gone into the
cold water in which the engine was half
submerged,
it
and the twisted passenger car behind it like a giant snake with its head gone
under. People had been thrown into the river, and these boys went in after, dragging
them out. They had just been coming through, from down south.

And there it was
one time no God, no sign of God something happened so bad, next time something
so unlikely for timing and chance you got to wondering again.

So two lines
started to be formed, the injured, and the dead.
Twenty-five
regular folks dead including the engineer.
Then there was the one
already dead, Monroe, and the two outlaws also dead, also the six we had shot. I
got one, William got others,
the
railroad officer got
one. Thirty-six injured.
Twelve in good health, or walking
anyways.
And two escaped low-down curs.

It was some time
before I came upon Jimmy who had been carried clear of the train by Gaylin and
Michael. I gave him his revolver and he was raving I should drag him where he
could use it as they’d abandoned him, he felt, under a tree.

“Gimme that gun,”
I grabbed it away for the bandits were long gone having killed two to spring
two which was dumb over dumb asked me. And all this sorrow they’d caused. Well,
you could say I had a hand, but this was never my intention. I could only carry
so much guilt. What I did know, the army would come now, and Monroe or Stone
would not have an Adam to carry on the line once they were done.

Jimmy pulled me
down to whisper, “Now would be the time to dig that loot out of that coffin.”

I pulled back. I’d
clean forgotten about it with all the suffering around.

So I signaled
Michael and Gaylin, for William was already signing up with his new tribe.

I hated to think
we had to claw through more bodies, but there was nothing for it. Leastways
these were stinking outlaws and not decent folk. “The loot,” I said out the
side of my mouth.

Gaylin groaned,
but they followed. We went back to that car and hopped in. Well I tried to hop,
but I fell back out and tried it again more slowly. So I reached in my pocket
and got Addie’s bandana and tied it over my nose and mouth like a thief.
“Got to warn you about Sonny.
His head is missing, so step
lightly.”

I hated coming
upon severed anything. It was the shock of it I hated most, I think—hands taken
off like gloves, feet removed like shoes, legs cast about like pants, but heads
taken off like a hat? Lord.

I don’t know how
many there were, but in time help came, then it kept coming, my own boys the
best sight, the Twenty-Seventh clear from Greenup to ride along us, to help us
out. Too late, just like in the war a couple of times, but a real sincere bunch
that I was never so glad to see.

Course they were
stuck on the other side of the river and the bridge was out, but it was only a
matter of time before they crossed. They’d gotten wind of our dilemma when that
rider sent ahead wanting to know if there were warrants on Sonny and his boys. They
figured they would honor us with an escort home as we brought in the outlaws,
not realizing the state of our duress. Reckon they realized it now though. Funny
they should come upon us here.

How things can
turn and keep turning. Keeps me in mind of what we knew then. Peace is always
around the bend. And sometimes you can catch it for a spell.
If
you reach hard.

Jimmy insisted I
get him on his feet then. He’d given up his stretcher to those more in need. That
thing had saved his life, for we had hung him from the ceiling in it so he’d
not have to ride the bumps, and being high like that had kept him from getting
crushed.

He wanted to meet
the boys standing. So we got him up and he walked a little. “Oh hell, when I
put weight on this side….” It was the side with the wound.

“Healing hurts,”
I said, for we had learned to say this in the war, putting a better light on it
for one another. Better still, I put his arm over my shoulders and gave him
some strength there for I needed him as well to keep me straight.