Wildwood Boys (11 page)

 

He chuckled. “That’s what Daddy always said. I didn’t know
you ever listened to him.”

 

She glanced back at the body in the wagonbed and said softly, “I
listened sometimes.” Then smiled at Bill again.

 

“I don’t know how come you keep grinning like there’s something to be glad about,” he said. “We got a shotdead daddy here and
we’ve been run out of our home.”

 

“Kansas ain’t
home,
” she said, “and getting run out of it is no
punishment as far as I’m concerned. It’s got too many Kansans in it
is the trouble.”

 

“You’ve spent more of your life in Kansas than you ever have in
Missouri,” he said.

 

“So what? It’s not how long you been someplace that makes it
home. You think the people been in hell a thousand years would feel
like they were leaving home if they got out tomorrow?”

 

He laughed. She hugged his arm and kissed him several quick
times on the side of his face. “Oh Billy, I was
so
scared for you. I
thought maybe they got you.”

 

“Hey girl,” he said, turning to look back at Jim and his sisters in
the other wagon some dozen yards behind and the Berrys riding side
by side a little behind Jim.

 

Josephine glanced back at the others too, then fixed Bill with a
look and said mockingly, “Oh Bill, I’m just
so ashamed
for kissing
my brother.”

 

He had to grin.

 

She kissed him on his ear and his cheek and the corner of his
mouth. Then hugged herself to him with her head on his shoulder
and hummed softly as the wagon jounced on.

By their second day on the winding trace the stink was risen and it
worsened swiftly in the swelter of this prairie summer. Two days
later it was grown so foul they wore bandannas over their noses like
a theatrical troupe playing at bandits but the measure was of little
effect. The wagonbed was enclouded in a blackgreen storm of flies.
The Berry boys daily rode farther behind and to north or south of
the trace, depending on which way the wind was carrying. The
Anderson girls pleaded with their brothers to bury the corpse anywhere along this remote landscape and be done with it.

“I told those Kansans I’d bury him in Missouri and I mean to do
it,” Bill Anderson said.

 

To lessen the chance of encountering jayhawkers—who more
and more were said to be robbing and murdering not only secessionists but even Unionists who could not solidly prove their loyalties—
they were keeping off the Santa Fe Trail and making their way by an
old stock trail a few miles to the north. This route was safer than the
main road but also rougher and thus slower going, and the plodding
pace prolonged their ordeal with Will Anderson’s rotting remains.

 

Came a noonday when they encamped for dinner and none could
eat for the gut-twisting stench.

 

“It’s only a few days more to the border,” Bill said. But his tone
lacked its earlier timbre of sworn purpose.

 

“Oh hell, Bill,” Jim Anderson said, slinging away his untouched
beans and refitting the bandanna on his face, “I guess we made our
point by not burying him back there. That’s what counts.”

 

“They’ll never know if we don’t get him all the way to Missouri,” Ike Berry said.

 

“Jesus, Billy,” Josephine said, “if I have to breathe this stink
another day I believe I’m going to start throwing up forever.”

 

“Billy . . .” Mary began, and Bill Anderson threw up his hands
and said, “All right then, all right! Get the damn spades.”

 

The men shed their shirts and worked in pairs under the hard
sun, taking turns at digging a deep grave a few yards off this isolate
trail. There were no other witnesses to the proceeding in this vast
emptiness but the swirling flies and a dozen watchful crows lured by
the aromatic deliquescence staining through the blanket. When the
grave was ready, they lifted the body out of the wagonbed and lowered it into the hole and hurriedly covered it over. They crafted a
cross of broken scantlings and cord and planted it firmly at the
gravehead, and then Mary read from Ecclesiastes:

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

 

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and
a time to pluck up that which is planted;

 

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down,
and a time to build up;

 

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn,
and a time to dance. . . .”

“Well,” Jim Anderson said when she was done, “I’d say he pretty
much knew most of those times.”

 

“He sure knew the time for dancing,” young Jenny said.
“He was good about the times for laughing too,” Ike Berry said.

 

“It didn’t say anything in there about a time for getting drunk
and a time for cussing, did it, Mary?” Bill said. They all laughed.

 

“He knew about a time to kill,” Josephine said seriously.
“Remember how he did to that sorry muleskinner who tried to grab
up under Mary’s dress?”

 

“Lord Jesus,” Butch Berry said, “I always did love that story.
That’s something I would of paid to see three or four times.”

 

“You only had to see it once to not forget it,” Jim Anderson said.

 

Where the corpse had lain on the wagonbed it left umber stains
bearing remnant stench. Though the girls would scrub the boards
with brushes and lye they would never fully remove imprint or odor.
For a long time after, people who walked by this wagon would catch
a low scent from they knew not where and would have a sudden intimation of the grave.

They moved on. Fierce flaring sun on limp yellow grass. A fine dusthaze under a sparsely clouded sky of palest blue. They were most of
a day crossing a range overgrown with young sunflowers risen to the
wheel hubs like a bright yellow tide. Then they were once again on
green shortgrass prairie but now the country assumed a gentle roll
and was marked by brushy rises and a scattering of hardwood
groves. The following day an unbroken line of woodland hills rose
into view on the forward horizon like a shadowed landfall surfaced
from a jade sea.

“Missouuuri, Missouuuri, bright

Nightcamp capers
lannnnd
of the west,”
Josephine sang happily.

 

They were yet a half-day from the state line when a low cloud of
dust appeared in the distance on the Santa Fe road. The cloud was
moving west—and then seemed to hold in place, and then began to
swell. Butch Berry chucked his horse up beside Bill’s wagon and said,
“Whoever they are, they’re coming.”

 

The Andersons reined up the wagon teams and watched the riders come. Ike held close to Jim’s wagon. Every man of them had a
pair of charged revolvers hidden under his coat and Josephine had
the Walker ready on the seat beside her and under a fold of her skirt.
The only weapons in evidence were the knives in the men’s boots and
two Sharps carbines, one propped beside Bill against the wagonseat,
one lying across Mary Anderson’s lap. In the covered wagon lay Will
Anderson’s old doublebarreled shotgun.

 

The approaching riders shaped into dark figures against the risen
glaring dust—then into view came a Union banner batting at the fore
of a column of two dozen cavalrymen.

 

The column reined up alongside the trail and their following dust
came billowing over them and hazed the air yellow. A lieutenant
heeled his horse up to Bill’s wagon and said, “Scouts spotted you.”
He said it like an accusation. He sported a bare wisp of blond mustache and could not have been more than twenty years old.

 

He eyed the men thinly. Then took in the girls and smiled and
said, “Ladies,” and tipped his hat. Mary and Jenny showed him their
best smiles. Behind his back the men at the front of the column leered
and pointed and blew kisses at the girls. Josephine started to make a
rude gesture but Bill caught her hand and gave her a look. She made
a face at him, then folded her hands in her lap and stared out at the
prairie.

 

The lieutenant asked who they were.

 

“Loyal Union Kentuckians bound for home,” Bill said. “Three
years was all of this damn Kansas we could stand. If it’s not a windstorm pulling your house apart and carrying off your corn into the
next county, it’s outlaws stealing your stock or Indians sneaking up
from the Nations to steal whatever you ain’t nailed down or locked
up. It’s not a thing to look at out here but sky and grass till you think
you’ll go crazy for the sight of a hill. No sir, you can have all this
empty Kansas and ye welcome to it.”

 

“Give me the Ohio Valley every time,” the lieutenant said,
almost smiling—and then his look again narrowed. “Union Kentucky, you say? How is it you men aren’t in uniform?”

 

“We aim to be,” Bill Anderson said, “just as soon as we get our
sisters to our uncle’s farm. I got to say, Lieutenant, when we spied
your dust we had a bad moment. We thought you might be bushwhackers. It’s why we’re keeping off the main road. We heard there
was bushwhackers raiding all over yonder part of the Santa Fe road
and we sure’s hell didn’t want to run into any. It’s a comfort to know
you fellas are about.”

 

The lieutenant spat. “Bushwhackers! Those cowardly sons of—
Excuse me, ladies. Those curdogs haven’t got the sand to set foot in
Kansas. Not again.” His gaze shifted to the covered bed of the trailing wagon and he nodded at it and said, “I’ll just have a look.”

 

He hupped his horse to the rear of the wagon and leaned to peer
within and satisfy himself that it held no munitions or other contraband. He reached inside and took up the old shotgun and assayed it
with an indulgent smirk and then put it back. Mary and Jenny
looked at him through the front flaps of the wagoncover and he
again smiled and nodded. Mary’s smile at him was radiant. Bill
Anderson was impressed by how well she played her part.

 

The officer advised Bill that they’d be safer traveling on the Santa
Fe than out here. “When you make the Leavenworth road you
should take it to the fort and attach to the next army wagon train
bound for Saint Louis. Be a lot safer for you traveling with the army
than trying to get across that damn Missouri on your own.”

 

“I’ll take it as sound advice,” Bill said, “and I thank ye for it.”

 

The lieutenant again smiled at Mary and touched his hatbrim.
“Ladies.”

 

He reined his mount around and circled his hand over his head
and started back for the main road and the column came about to
follow him. As the soldiers made their turn near the wagon, many of
them called endearments to the girls through the rising mist of yellow dust.

 

“You blue-assed monkeys!” Josephine shouted into the rumble
of hooves.

 

“Josephine!” Bill said.

 

She turned to say that’s exactly what those Yankees were and
saw that he was grinning at her. So was Butch Berry.

 

“Josie, I swear your mouth is going to get you hanged one day,”
Mary called from the other wagon.

 

“Get us
all
hanged,” Jim Anderson said.

 

Josephine affected to yank up on a noose around her neck and
crossed her eyes and bulged out her tongue and despite themselves
they all had to laugh.

They moved on, keeping to trails off the main road. They didn’t
know where they crossed into Missouri but by early afternoon they
knew they were there. The country was as lovely as the Anderson
brothers and Berry boys remembered it but it was also different in
that two of the four farms they passed in sight of during the day
seemed clearly to be abandoned—both of them with fences shambled, their cornfields trampled and going to ruin, one house bearing
a blackened roof and wall and the barn half-burned as well. At one
of the two places that showed smoke at their kitchen chimneys a trio
of men with faces deepshadowed under their wide hatbrims and each
with a rifle in hand had stood out in front of the house and watched
them go by and none of the three lifted a hand or in any way made
recognition of the greeting Butch Berry shouted in hope of being
asked to stop and take dinner. At the other inhabited farm, no one
came out to the porch or even showed himself at the door in
response to Jim’s halloo. Only a pair of stave-ribbed horses and a tattered mule in the corral showed curiosity at their passing. The eerie
silence was broken solely by the rattle and creak of the Anderson
wagon and the snortings of the animals.

They put down for the night in a hickory grove watered by a narrow
serpentine creek. Doves crooned in the creekside brush. The setting
sun loomed enormous, the trees afire in its fierce orange flare, the air
itself gone gold. A flock of cranes made for its evening roost in a
slow working of white wings against the redstreaked purpling sky.
The men saw to the horses and mules and got a fire crackling and
fashioned a spitframe of sturdy greensticks on which to suspend the
cookpot. They would sup yet again on jackrabbit stew. Ike and Jim
had earlier shot six of the bony things and Josephine now made
quick work of skinning and quartering them. Jenny and Mary seasoned the meat in a medley of root vegetables, then hung the
cookpot over the fire and the campsite was soon suffused with a
savory redolence.

When they had finished with supper, the moonless night was
fully commenced, the sky a thick encrustation of stars. A comet
streaked and vanished, its origin and destination both beyond reckoning. They pointed out to each other the Bear and the Archer and
the Bull. They speculated whether any of the winking lights they
looked on did hold life. Only Butch Berry thought it possible, but
Mary Anderson chided him for a blasphemer.

“The Bible doesn’t say a thing about God creating anybody else
in His own image anywhere but on earth,” Mary said.

 

“It don’t come right out and say He didn’t either,” Butch said,
who wasn’t at all sure what the Bible said about anything. “See the
endtail star of the Dipper yonder? Could be there’s a campfire on it
and some fella and his sweetheart are sitting beside it right this
minute and they’re looking at some bright star and wondering if
there’s any life on it and the star they’re looking at could be the very
one we’re sitting on.”