Woe to Live On: A Novel (20 page)

Me and Rufus Stone looked glum at each other. After a coughing second or two he stood and said, “I think not. We’ll see to them once we’ve had our vittles.”

“No, no you won’t! I want them in the yard now, damn it!”

This springy thing happened to my legs and I found myself standing next to Stone.

“How’s it feel to want?” I asked.

Pitt Mackeson seemed rattled by my cheek. A squinty gaze was on him.

“Why, you little Dutch son of a bitch,” he said. “You do what I tell you.” His comrades had come up behind him and were glowering at Stone and me. “Or I’ll kill you.”

I put my pistol in his face as a response.

“When you figure to do this mean thing to me, Mackeson?” He backed up a step, and it was the first time I’d felt like a fighter all day. “Is this very moment convenient for you? It is for me.”

Someone behind Mackeson said to just shove in there and take the men out.

“No, that won’t work,” Rufus Stone said. Two of the other men in the house stood to back him on that. “They’re stayin’ in here.”

Some angry expressions got tried out on opposite audiences. I still held a tight bead on Mackeson.

“Aw, the hell with it,” he said. “There’s plenty other houses to burn.” He turned and took a step, then whirled around on me, his long arm and a big finger aiming at my face. “I’ll see you back in Missouri, you tiny sack of shit, you.”

“You know where I can be found,” I said.

After an unnecessary extra added look of evil, Mackeson and his crew moved on to dose out some flame.

I sat back on the stick chair and did a great, jaw-stretching false yawn.

“That man is an oaf,” I said.

“That’s Pitt Mackeson, ain’t it?” Stone asked. “I hear he’d as soon kill a man as mash a tick.”

“My, what a scary fellow he is,” I said.

“Haw haw! I like you,” Stone said. He clapped my shoulder. “But that bastard will have your scalp if you ain’t careful, son.”

“So be it,” I said.

The older citizen we protected, a long-nosed skinny creature, said, “Mister, mister, there ain’t enough thanks in the world.”

“Aw, you go to hell!” I shouted. “Just keep your damned stinking mouth closed—you hear me?”

Well, by noon Lawrence was a charred tombstone of a place, and the scouts could see a cloud of cavalry dust buzzing toward us from the north. This made it time to go, so we did. Behind us we left a ruined settlement and a hundred fifty corpses.

Almost everybody was drunk on whiskey and bloody elation. A merchant trait had come out in the boys. There were trunks lashed ambitiously to horses, and dresses, coats, hams, rifles, whiskey, chairs, rugs and extra saddles drug along, too. We made quite a business spectacle, lugging so many oddities of supposed worth.

Not long after the sun went straight in the sky, more signs of cavalry appeared in the east. We were awful tired. The horses were jaded and the heat had risen. Now that it seemed a fight was coming our way fast, all talk of fighting was over. Flight was now the thing.

I had to always watch out for Pitt Mackeson, and I reckon I worried him some in the same regard.

The cavalry behind us gained ground. I could see them. They must’ve come thundering down from Leavenworth. There was enough of them, too.

The leaders said we must pick up the pace, so many of the brand-new rich had to agonize over which riches to dump when lightening their load. Greed prompts comical expressions, I noted.

Close to the Missouri border the Federals drew so near us that we halted and formed a battle line. The bluebellies did the same, and both parties just stood there staring across the field like bashful twits at a barn dance.

I think they had caught up to us only to realize that maybe that wasn’t their truest desire. Both sides hooted and bleated rough appraisals of the other.

Nothing happened.

It was right after we gave up on insults and got moving again that Black John Ambrose rode alongside of me. Cave Wyatt had said that Black John killed eighteen men in Lawrence, and he looked it to me. My leader was berserk. This was troubling knowledge.

“Roedel,” he said, hoarsely. “I hear disappointing words on you.”

“Is that so?”

“Some of the boys tell me you spared two men you could’ve killed back there. Is it so?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a traitor, Roedel?”

“You know I ain’t.”

“Well, you spared, boy. I told you not to.”

I looked right at him. He might have killed me and I wanted to watch him do it.

“I know that,” I said. “But I did.”

He bored into me with those bottomless insane eyes. I was made nervous by his intensity, but then he said, “Don’t ever disobey me again, boy. I command and you obey. That’s the path to victory.”

Victory, I thought. What world did he inhabit anyhow?

“I understand you,” I said.

W
ITH BUSTHEAD, POPSKULL
and rotgut as our scouts, we straggled home. A handful of slowpokes were caught by Federals, but for the rest of us it had been a painless foray. Not the suicide we had anticipated at all. Once we got into Cass County we dissolved into small bands. It was understood that all the armies would be after us, and we needed to hide.

I went with George Clyde, Holt, Turner Rawls, the Hudspeths, Cave Wyatt and Howard Sayles. Clyde slowly swung us to the center of the state, then up to the Big Muddy. There were still citizens there who would take us in and feed us corn cakes and rumors.

Over near Boonville we slept in a barn owned by a family named Roberts. Since the massacre an air of gloom and doom had settled over me. A number of the other boys were the same.

Howard Sayles said to me, “You did right in Lawrence, Dutchy. Me and Cave did the same, it’s just no one knows it on us.”

“I think I lost some comrades,” I said.

It was just the three of us in the barn, and the day was sunny, the shafts of light spearing down through cracks and illuminating all the grainy debris in the air.

“Naw,” said Sayles, “they lost themselves. Some of those boys are animals now.”

“I’m nervous of them, too,” Cave said. “This thing is only murder now. Why, Johnson Teague shot Big Bob in a argument over a bolt of cloth. They both thought
they
had stolen it.” He shook his big hairy head. “It has come down to simple murder, murder on whoever is closest.”

“The Jayhawkers murder, too,” I said.

“That’s right,” Howard snapped. “But I ain’t in this war to see how much like a Jayhawker I can become. I ain’t fighting just to be the same as them. Now, let me tell you, Dutchy. Lots of the boys are sick about this Lawrence trip, and they’re slipping down to Arkansas to join up with the regulars. What me and Cave want to know is, do you want to come?”

“When are you going?”

“Well,” said Sayles, “that’s not set. We might not do it. But if we do?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “They make you bow and scrape to officers, I hear. If I wanted to do that sort of thing, I’d just surrender.”

“You know we can’t surrender and live,” Cave said.

“Yes, I do know that.”

Sayles and Cave shook their heads at me. Cave, who I’d known long and well and joked with many a time, actually seemed sad about me. He said, “Pitt Mackeson and some of his crowd are going to kill you, Dutchy. Ain’t you got no
damned sense at all? You put a pistol on him and didn’t use it. They’re going to kill you for that.”

“I been planning on trouble,” I said. “But could be it’ll come out different.”

My comrades just stared, and by their expressions I knew that their thoughts on me all had the word
fool
in them.

Clyde kept us lollygagging around the river for a few weeks. When the big paddle boats tried to pass, we potshotted them so fiercely that they turned around. We stopped the river traffic. I always had liked these boats, and now it seemed strange that I was running them off. But war is for hurting, I guess.

Counting Holt I had two shadows. He was around me even more than he was around George Clyde. I could tell he had been changed some. The Lawrence raid made him queasy. There are lines you can’t go over and come back the same.

In early October Black John called us all together. We rallied at Dover, near the river. The first thing I noticed was Pitt Mackeson watching me with a vulture visage. I gave it back to him as best I could, but he was the better at it. Cave Wyatt, Howard Sayles and Holt stayed near me, as Pitt had several constant companions of his own.

Holt, who had lethal aspects, sidled up to me.

“Jake, I could have a pistol mishap and top the man’s head. You say the word and I have a streak of the terrible clumsies.”

“They’d kill you on the spot, Holt. And me, too.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and he grinned grimly. “But that threat is getting to be a old one.”

Black John led us on a few outings into the countryside. North of the river we burned some wagons and busted up a Dutch settlement. A couple of niggers got in the way, too. All the hearts weren’t in this sort of thing anymore. It was always the same men who did the murders while the rest of us went mute, but we went along.

All the gore and glory of the conflict seemed pointless. The Lawrence massacre had only prompted Order Number Eleven from the Federals. This order emptied four counties of every citizen. They just emptied those counties entirely. The newspapers carried accounts of all the rebel whippings in the east, and we could see the damage to our own state. It was only a question of how long we would go on losing before admitting we had lost. In many cases that would be forever, no matter the cost.

The boys were split now. Some comrades didn’t care for others. Many were merely robbers with the bulk of numbers to back them up. To see this collapse of purpose was worse than being whipped.

George Clyde had developed into a fair-to-middling thief himself, but I knew the man well, don’t you see? So I was loyal to him still. In the cold weather he took a few of us on a foray to scout places to lay up when the weather really went cold. The ground was hard and I was tired of the whole thing.

On the edge of Fire Prairie we stopped at an old gray house. We had stopped there before, and Clyde rode right up to the door in his carefree way. I was behind him with Holt and Cave. We had Yankee jackets on, and the sky was all clouds.

“Halloo in there,” Clyde called out. “Mr. Mills, you in there?”

He was still smiling when the shot came. He’d been waiting for this moment, I think, and didn’t even seem that surprised when it tore into his throat. He fell off his horse, gagging, and bounced on the ground.

Me and Holt jumped down to drag George back. More shots came from the house and tufted the ground around us. The other boys shot back, and me and Holt dragged our friend on out of the yard and into the trees.

One look and I knew Clyde’s wound was mortal. It was the ticket to Heaven. His eyes whirled and his throat was a hole. He died quick, moist growls his last sounds.

“Oh, I can’t believe this,” Holt said. I don’t want to tell all the emotions he showed. “I always knew him, Jake.”

“It’s a shame,” I said. What else is there?

The boys fell back from the house. Cave Wyatt was all red in the face and puffing.

“Is George dead?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Oh, hell!” Cave exclaimed. Then he looked back to the house. “Babe is wounded. There’s too many in there.”

“We’ll go back to Black John,” I said. “All this gunfire might bring more of them around here. We ain’t set up to fight them.”

I strapped George across his saddle and we carried him away from that place. When we reached the main camp, a lot of the boys were saddened by the news and the proof. Clyde had been about as good and loved a fighter as there ever was.

“Where shall we bury him?” I asked Holt. No one was closer to Clyde than he was.

“We won’t,” he said. His expression was leveled. “I will.”

With all the white fighters looking on and offering no objections, Holt mounted up and took the reins of George’s horse. He loped off into the timber, no doubt searching for some flower-fat meadow or some hilltop with a precious view.

For two days Holt did not return, and when he did he failed to say a single word about where he’d been.

Two weeks later it was too cold. Groups of men split away for the winter. Several of us talked of going to Texas ’til spring. Pitt Mackeson and his crowd hooted and said they’d stick it out where the fighting was.

“That’s where the plunder is, too, ain’t it?” I said to Pitt.

God, he was an ugly creation.

“What of it?” he said. “You got something to make of it, Dutchy?”

I was so weary of this and him and all of it. Arch Clay was at Mackeson’s side and two border buggers by the names of Dinny Riordan and Jasper Moody stood behind him.

“No,” I said. “Not anymore.”

Mackeson did a coyote sort of laugh and his bugger ilk joined in with him. Arch Clay stood silent as he and I were not enemies, though we had never quite been friends.