Woe to Live On

13

THE KNOT ON the rope was not enough of a bind, and loosened to leak Jack Bull Chiles. My world bled to death. I couldn’t get the cut burned closed. It was too moist. The smell was a horrible fact.

I guess I wept. I guess we all wept. Even Holt wept. It’s a useless reaction. No comfort at all.

We sat there all night. The wind made sad, tormenting sounds. Once, Sue Lee put her fingers to her hair, grabbed a hold and beat her head around like she was churning butter. She shrieked and I listened. I had nothing for her.

Words can’t match it.

Past a certain point I could not sit. I picked up the shovel and contemplated a grave. I wanted it to be inside the dugout where he had lived, not off in coyote-prowled timber. I measured a spot in the center of the dugout. There wasn’t much light, but I didn’t need much. I vented some bad feelings on the soft dirt. The shovel slammed down in my hands, gouging out little loads of dirt, which I flung to the corners. The clods pattered down like varmint feet scurrying over leaves. I beat a hole right into the ground, flinging dirt in the dark.

Sweat broke out on me. I relished the evidence of effort. I hung my tongue down and lapped the salty beads as they fell from my nose.

This was all there was to do.

The sun ignored our grief and kept to its routine. The lightened scene was harrowing. Sue Lee appeared awful and used up. Holt was far gone into pious reflection.

I gestured at the grave.

“Bury him,” I said. “Quick.”

For lack of alternatives, leadership fell on me. Holt and the widow began to roll Jack Bull toward the grave, spinning him across the dusty floor.

We dropped him down and threw his arm in after him. For some reason I kicked my satchel of mail into the pit alongside him. I think I was guilty about my luck. Then I eased a shovelful of dirt onto his chest.

“Wait!” Sue Lee said. “Wait a minute, Jake. I want to look at him.”

She knelt next to the grave, leaned over and kissed Jack Bull’s blue lips.

This act of hers moved me. I went into prayer position at her side. Many things hidden in me were being hinted out, and I stared down at Jack Bull Chiles and dredged up all the farewell feelings I had. I bent over. I did something to him dead I had never tried on him alive. I kissed him good-bye, right where she had, just the same.

Holt humphed behind me. I looked up at him, and he watched me oddly.

“Did you see something that bothers you, Holt?”

His face was smooth, and he shook his head briskly.

“No, no,” he said and turned away. “I didn’t see it.”

I finished the funeral. The grave made a mound. No good verses came to mind, so it was a stoic ceremony.

“So long,” I said. “See you over the river.”

Outside it was gray. A late March storm was coming in from the north. The clouds looked soiled and the light was dull.

“Let’s get to Captain Perdee’s,” I said. “We’ll rally with the boys. It’s time to start the war back up.”

I claimed two of Jack Bull’s four pistols and gave the others to Holt. We hung them from our saddles and put the widow on top of Jack Bull’s horse.

I wanted to be moving and never in that dugout again.

“Keep an eye out for George,” I said.

“I am,” Holt answered. “But I bet he at Perdee’s.”

We kept to the timber. The day got colder, then it pitched snow at us. The wind shoved the flakes into our faces but we hunched over and rode on. By midday Sue Lee had surrendered to fatigue. Holt and me took a rope and tied her into the saddle. She uttered neither complaints nor praise. She was past that.

The horses sent plumes of breath from their nostrils and slogged through the snow. Some inches of the white stuff had gathered on the ground. The wind blew our tracks away as quick as we made them. No Federals crossed our path. If you weren’t desperate, you wouldn’t be out in such weather. I steered us toward Captain Perdee’s, where I hoped we would find plenty of comrades. Sue Lee would be sent to some safer southern haven. Me and Holt would fight another season. The deeds of winter demanded it.

I kept us rolling beyond nightfall, and the snow kept blowing and nothing much could be seen. We lumbered along blindly in the woods and did not speak.

Around midnight we came upon a burned house. Some weak citizen had lost all here. Two walls still stood and we took cover, huddling next to them.

I wrapped Sue Lee’s blanket around her and she slept. My body bid me join her. She shivered in sleep, so I spread my blanket over us both and lay against her. This warmed us but, tired as I was, I could not sleep.

So I listened to her breathe. The girl was good as double widowed and only seventeen. She’d seen a mirror of hell, I guess. Her breaths had a ragged rhythm. A bad sleep cadence. But her body was warm.

It was good to know her.

Curling up to her was a saving human exercise, as it reminded me that I lived, and diverted me from recollections of all I had lost, which was all there was.