Woe to Live On

9

THEY RUN ABOUT all over the country,” Jackson Evans said. His old yellowing eyes swiveled to the window and saw darkness. Part of a white beard hung off his chin, but there were bare spots on his cheeks. “Waverly, Lexington, Warrensburg, all are thick with invaders.” Everything about this man was long: long bony fingers, great stovepipe legs, and arms that matched an eagle span. “Would that we could drive them away, but we can’t.”

Dinner had shown up and been whipped good. Not a corn kernel or chicken wing survived. Thus soothed, we gathered in the parlor and went after a stout portion of apple brandy.

“We may yet,” Jack Bull said. “Many of them are finding that we exact a high price from invaders. They may not want to pay it endlessly.”

“No,” Evans said. He shook his head. “No.” This man had lost and lost to where defeat seemed a logical future. “They are too many, Mr. Chiles. They are too many, and too fanatic to quit.”

The parlor had a few pieces of furniture in it. Evans had not yet been completely robbed. As a man of significance in this neighborhood he had been offered a deal by the occupation troops. He had been roughed up some and threatened a lot, but so far he lived. Until they had proof of his traitorous thoughts, they tolerated him. He walked on a thin rail between his true sentiments and survival.

“We have different thoughts,” Jack Bull said. He was as slicked-up as you could get living in a dugout. All the dirt had been plowed from beneath his fingernails, and we had took turns ranching the ticks from each other’s head. The mud had been carved off our boots and we looked nigh on to dandy. “We still want to fight. I reckon I will always want to fight them.”

All the women were in the other room lest we talk too terrible in front of them. They had seen terrible, and maybe felt it, but Evans clutched at old ways even amidst the awful new.

“Do not misread me, sir,” Evans said. “I have given a son to this fight and would give more if I had them. No, that should not be doubted.”

Jack Bull knocked back some brandy and pursed his lips. His eyes went to the floor, then to Evans.

“You have been trying to walk the neutral line, Mr. Evans, and it won’t bear walking in this war.”

“I know it,” the old beaten gent said. “Your father, good old Asa, he tried it, too. But it don’t bear walking, as you have said.”

The mention of Asa doused us with a slop of gloom. He had been one of Missouri’s finest, but that had not saved him, or his property, or his family.

“My father trusted the Yankees,” Jack Bull said. “It is a mistake he made only once, but that was all she wrote.” Jack Bull jerked himself up and began to pace. “You and him, Evans, why did you trust Yankees?”

Evans turned his hands up at this and glanced at all the night the window showed. This was tender territory with us all.

“You know why. Not because we were fools. It was because we were not fools. They promised us all—they called us ‘prominent landowners’—they promised us we would not be bothered. They would protect us and our slaves from Jayhawkers if we pledged neutral.” A whole ripple of shakes went through his form. “It made all kinds of sense at the time.”

“And none now,” Jack Bull said. “They didn’t even protect my father from their own men. They murdered him for his watch and his boots and his horse. That is murder for cheap. And he had not taken up arms against them.”

“That was the deal,” Evans said. His long fingers went to picking at his beard. There was sorrow in his every gesture. “Who killed Asa, Mr. Chiles? I never knew who killed him.”

“It was Captain Warren and his miserable gang. They were seen. Did you ever see Captain Warren?”

“No.”

“He had a face so like that of a pig that you blinked and rubbed your eyes at the sight of him. The only excuse for a man to look so like a pig was that you were asleep and had eaten a wrong thing at dinner.” The paces picked up and Jack Bull went from wall to wall. “Warren followed my father from town and robbed him on the road. He didn’t need to kill him but he did.”

“We pressed charges,” I said. The recollection of us trying to press murder charges on a Federal filled me with humiliation. “They laughed at us.”

“That is their habit,” Evans said.

“Jake and me”—Jack Bull stopped and looked my way—“there is always Jake with me—went for him on our own hook. Warren had a wife. We put rags in her mouth and met him in his very own house. I never abuse women, but I put a quilt over her and sat on it ’til he came in.”

“Well, all the rules are gone with men of that sort,” Evans said. “Their women aren’t much better.”

“I know it,” Jack Bull said. “I liked it that way. I liked using his wife as a chair. She was soft. It was no hard thing to do. Captain Warren came in for vittles and got served a bitter dish. His world went sour on him. We killed him. We killed him several times, eh, Jake?”

“That’s right,” I said. “There was no chance left in it.”

“It was our first real fight. Everything got changed by it.”

“You took to the bush,” Evans said. “All the good men are in the bush now.”

“Those are words that have went south forever,” Jack Bull said. “ ‘Good’ doesn’t mean anything like what it used to mean. No, sir, we are not good men. But we are men. They’ll have to whip us. We won’t do it for them by quitting.”

“My prayers are with you,” Evans said. “They have become more frequent, and they are always with you men in the bush.” Evans stared off and breathed sadly. He had once been a man best left unmolested, but now he was old. “We will be quitting this country in the spring. As soon as the roads are clear we will be trying for Texas.”

“About half of Missouri has went to Texas,” I said. “Plenty of friends are there.”

Evans nodded my way, and a thin, unhappy smile broke from him.

“Yes,” he said. “It is about the only place left. This land is ruined.”

Jack Bull splashed out some more brandy, and silence dropped down. I held the brandy up and studied it as if it might tell me much. Beaten old men were not the right philosophers for young straight-backed boys, who would trade shots and victories, to hear. I watched the liquor so my glance needn’t pause at the aged, whipped face of our host.

“What of the Federals?” I asked to chase off the sorrowful quiet. “What are they doing?”

“Ah,” said Evans. He crouched forward as if intent on me, and his movements creaked. “The militia has taken up your tactics. Iowans and so forth will guard the towns and the militia will meet you in the bush.”

“They have been trying that,” Jack Bull said. “It hasn’t been their best trick.”

“They say it will be. There are plenty of them.” Evans pointed a finger that aimed somewhere between where Jack Bull stood and I sat. “This Quantrill man, this man who sails under the name of Captain Quantrill, has them hornet-angry. He kills and kills. They want his head on a pole.”

“I shouldn’t wonder at that,” I said. “He has lots of boys and they are rough.”

“Do you know Quantrill?”

“Yes,” Jack Bull said. “We have joined up with him for a couple of things. His ideas work.”

“I believe he is trash,” Evans said. “I believe that even if he is on our side.”

A kind of deadly bored look worked into Jack Bull’s face.

“I would watch that talk, Mr. Evans,” he said. “The boys love him. He leads well. He may truly be trash. Maybe you would not have spoken to him five years ago, but those days are gone, sir. Trash that fights mean now make up the best men on the border.”

Jackson Evans nodded at this, as though changed by hearing it, then set down his brandy and pulled himself upright. It was a long process.

“Enough of this war talk,” he said. “Let’s have the ladies join us and think nobler thoughts.”

“A fine idea,” Jack Bull said with gusto. “Some company would be splendid.”

Old Evans cranked his feet up to the pace of a scared turtle, and creaked off through the house to call in the women. This hobnobbing in the midst of war had the quality of fevered thought. It did not fit at all. It was happy memories acted out in forlorn surroundings. There was sentiment in such gestures, like saving the first spoon that was jammed in your mouth as a babe. The thing didn’t fit anymore, and knowing that it once had was no great joy.

“Jack Bull,” I said. I stood to shake my legs loose. “We should be thinking about getting on back. Federals could pass any time.”

“Oh, put a gown on, Jake.” He laughed at my concerns. “It is too cold. They’ll all be in front of the fire examining their plunder.”

The women and the girl joined us. Mrs. Evans was a wide cart of mother with a florid face and blond hair. She wore spectacles. Her chin had extras hanging below it. I liked her on sight. She pleased the eye and heart almost as well as my own mother, or Missus Chiles, could have.

Sue Lee’s hair had been reined in a bit. She went right at the brandy and poured herself a dollop. Allowances were made for women as well as men in such times.

“I have it in me to sing,” she said. “Shall we have a sing-along?”

This Honeybee creature was a seedling version of her mother, destined to grow wide and strong and pleasing.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I like those the best.”

“My voice is not all it should be these days,” Jack Bull said, “but once it was rumored I could carry a tune.”

This was all too much for me. Sing-alongs were the main attraction at socials my whole life, and I never did like them. It could be that I sang without tone or spirit or joy. My voice had an ability to hit and founder at several odd depths in any one chorus.

“I believe I won’t sing,” I said. “Young ears are present.”

The widow girl sliced a look at me that was meant to drag me along into song.

“I’ll bet you sing lovely,” she said.

“You would lose.”

“He really does sing very poorly,” Jack Bull said. “He imitates the turkey first-rate, though.”

He was peddling his social graces hard at my expense. I didn’t even want the widow.

Honeybee took my hand, as is the forward style of lonely country tykes.

“Would you do a gobble for me, sir?” she asked.

I rubbed Honeybee’s soft little head, then grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her ’til she faced in another direction.

“It is too cold, Honeybee,” I told her. “When I call turkeys—they come. They would come all a-gobble and crash right through those windows and we would freeze.”

“Oh,” she said, pouty, and I shoved her off toward her mother. “I want to hear it. I want you to gobble, sir.”

“Catch me in better weather.”

I guess I amused the widow, as she smiled at me in a tiny lip-curl fashion that I supposed indicated minute mirth.

Mrs. Evans put her arms around Honeybee and held her to her tummy.

“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.