Woe to Live On: A Novel (21 page)

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 over 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.

T
HREE 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.

“Bushwhackers have to expect that,” she said. She then smiled a wide one and sat next to me. The baby murmured and Sue Lee actually leaned over and kissed my forehead like she had the right. “It is good to see you, Jake. And you, too, Holt.”

“I hear you saying it,” I whimpered. My expectations had not been specific, but warmth and concern had been in them all. “Let me see that baby.”

“Proud to,” she said, and you could tell by her rosy visage that it was true. Man, nature has some changes in store for us all, and it had worked a good one on her. “Her name is Grace Shelley Chiles as far as I’m concerned.”

Babes don’t know anything but nipples and lullabies. They splash out looks of wonder on anybody whether they merit it or not. This one was the same, and when Sue Lee handed the seedling creature to me it did a tiny paw grab at my lips, gurgling like it knew me. Grace had eyes that leaned toward
brown, and several soft wattles on her face that would harden into features.

“She is wonderful,” I said.

“She real pink,” Holt said. He then touched her quickly, and when nothing wrong came of that gesture he did it again, only this time his touch lingered. A big smile was on his face. “Babies is something I never can believe.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,
look
at it,” he said. “Do you believe that thing will shout and holler and haul water someday?”

To realize that this little handful was actually a person is to have faith in a miracle of dimensions. I admit that.

“I know what you mean,” I said. I placed Grace on the floor beside me and grinned at Momma. “She is sweet.”

“I know it,” she said. She then began to poke at my wound, her brow all scrunched up. “Let me see your bad spot, Jake. I want to make sure it’s clean.”

“It’s clean enough,” I said.

She shook her head and said, “No, Jake. Clean enough ain’t good enough. You should have learned that.”

I was real stoked up with feelings. I guess I wanted to be cared for. Anyway, I settled back and let her do it.

Turner, Cave and Sayles rested themselves for a few days. Sayles wanted to go join his wife and children in Texas before heavy winter was full upon us.

“You can stay here with Ort as long as you like,” Sayles said to me. “Him and Wilma have taken a shine to Sue Lee and the tiny critter.”

“My leg is fairly useless for now,” I said. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Aw,” Cave said, “get yourself well, then join us in Texas. There’ll be interesting things to do in Texas.”

“Lahk wha?” Turner asked. It was one of his rare comments. He seemed to hate speaking in his blubbery manner around women.

“Well, now,” Cave said. “There is Mexico nearby Texas. Lots of land down there and no one to claim it.”

“There’s Mexicans down there,” I said. “Quite a few of them, too, from what I hear.”