‘How do, Elijah?’ said Sheriff Flynn.
‘How do,’ said Lige Magan.
Sheriff Flynn leaned his elbows on the porch rail and was at his ease and it was a signal for his men to sit back in their saddles and Frank Parkman dismounted and hooked the reins in the crook of his arm and started to stuff tobacco in a little clay pipe he had taken from his coat. I didn’t know what Thomas and John Cole were thinking but they decided to swing their legs around the old chairs that were always set out there and Lige Magan himself took up a kind of sentry position at the dark door into the house. He shut the door fast with his free hand without looking at what he was doing.
‘You putting in tobacco again this year?’ said Sheriff Flynn, not truly a question but a statement of fact. He was nodding at the black soil that marked them.
‘We is,’ said Lige.
‘You grow baccy I smoke it,’ said Frank Parkman, puffing away now.
‘Ain’t no market for beets or nothing,’ said Lige. ‘Thinking about a little corn maybe. I hope to get forty cents a bushel on that. Only God knows if I will. Or anyone.’
The sheriff said nothing for a good long while and Frank Parkman stood there half smiling, sucking on his pipe.
I had such an itch to go for the Spencer rifle where it lay.
‘You the boy that was up in Leavenworth,’ said Sheriff Flynn, looking over with a measure of friendliness at Thomas McNulty, as if that was a question often asked in the country generally, that he knew something about Thomas McNulty as normal as rain and he was just saying it. Thomas McNulty must have adjudged that the silence he offered this question was the wisest answer to it.
‘He got a discharge writ out and everything,’ said John Cole.
‘I ain’t saying he don’t,’ said Sheriff Flynn.
Frank Parkman burst out laughing, making his pipe bubble with spit.
‘You likely surprised to hear I come out to help you all,’ said Sheriff Flynn. ‘You likely surprised to hear the lawyer Briscoe come to see me. You likely surprised to hear Mrs Flynn the elder was at schooling with Rosalee Bouguereau and has fond recollection of her.’
‘That a lot of surprise,’ said John Cole.
‘I guess so,’ said Sheriff Flynn. ‘I like to find out who hurt Tennyson Bouguereau and who hurt Winona Cole. And so I come out here all seven miles in the good sunlight.’
There was another different class of a silence. I was amazed, but frightened too. I wasn’t thinking of firing the Spencer now but how could I give answers when I didn’t know the true story of anything?
‘No one care a curse about an Indian,’ said John Cole. He was like a preacher reading the bible. ‘Why you come out here? We know how to do something about things. The minute Tennyson he tell who beat him so bad we going to put the saddles on the mules and go kill those men whoeverso done it.’
‘I don’t like that plan,’ said Sheriff Flynn. ‘These are troubled times. You need to don the bonnet of Solomon.’
‘We like it fine,’ said John Cole. ‘We ain’t got need of badges and lawmen. We do our own work. And then when if and ever Winona can say who hurt her I say we without interval saddle up again and go killing whoeverso was so evil-bent.’
‘You ain’t out west here,’ said Sheriff Flynn. ‘This the new world of homesteads and pickled pears and peace, and holding off and sheriffs come with all that.’
‘You see,’ said John Cole, ‘we ain’t going along particular with all that. Because no one care a curse about an Indian – or a black man.’
‘You do what you say and you boys finished here in Henry County,’ said Sheriff Flynn.
‘The whole country very troubled is true and I don’t know how we to hold on here if we add to it,’ said Lige Magan, as if he was trying that Solomon bonnet for size.
‘And yet there must be justice in these troubled times and I aim to try and bring that justice to you,’ said Sheriff Flynn.
‘I don’t know why you want to bring …’ began Frank Parkman, in sudden anger.
‘I told you, Parkman, you got to shut up,’ said Sheriff Flynn. But Frank Parkman didn’t want to.
‘That girl ain’t nothing,’ he said, a strange whine infecting his voice. ‘These folks are scum.’
Sheriff Flynn stepped over to him and slapped his face so hard his hat flew off. He was just waiting for Parkman to say another word, one hand on his Colt revolver. But the deputy just rubbed his reddened cheek.
Now there was a queer speaking silence. Even our winter guest the whippoorwill who had been inclined to start his curious song now the first taint of evening was seeping in held off. I knew all my life with them that Thomas McNulty and John Cole were thinking men but their thoughts were always how to go on living. The other thing was Thomas McNulty and John Cole lived and thought as one. If one were to die there would be no more living then. But also their true thoughts were contained in all that they taught me as a daughter. They found folk to esteem me and when there was no esteem they cut out that element like cankers. Sheriff Flynn was a man of forty in a morass of violent hatreds and counted mutilations and all the history of the war and all the history of what war will do even to private souls and then what comes after war. Make them murderous and violent and mutilating just as quick unless there is a heart to temper and a will to love. That was Thomas McNulty, that was so, and John Cole too. Now here was a half-rough half-shaven sheriff saying and doing new startling things.
I was thinking if I’d have had more courage earlier I would have shot him with the Spencer. So that would have been an end to that and we would have never heard that strange talk. The river of things goes on or sometimes takes a swirling turn. Of course, all turns, all shallows and rapids lead eventually to the sea. The story of a life goes only to the same shore. I could have shot Sheriff Flynn and then I would have had a story struck by a sudden turn.
But, just like the river, later, it all came to the same thing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It scared me to travel the road but I thought I owed the lawyer Briscoe such a debt that it was fitting rightly to box my fear and violation deep inside me. It was the first time I took the grave precaution to wear the ‘better’ pair of trews that Thomas McNulty lent me. I didn’t need to shorten the legs because he wasn’t much taller than me. I took in a little jacket of his that was some sort of fatigues from long ago and flattened my bodice with a scrap of sheeting and I had a good cotton blouse that did service for a shirt. I cared not a whit for my long black hair though I did remember it was sorrow alone that made a Lakota person shear their locks so didn’t that stand right? John Cole took my hair and wrapped it in paper and laid it in a drawer. I put my lady’s pistol in my belt behind and wore my knife in my left boot. I wasn’t the only girl in those times to try to cool men’s eyes with the appearance of a boy and I had already learned the folly of not doing so. Not that I had much in the way of bosoms. Not like Rosalee, part of whose charm was that soft immensity. I knew of that immensity because we were obliged to share a bed. It was only four foot wide so at night in the great cold that was a blanket over Tennessee we curled up together. Rosalee Bouguereau didn’t own much except her warming character but that was a great possession. Otherwise, she had two dresses. She had a box of letter paper that was made in the paper mill along the Tennessee river that Lige had got for her for writing lists. She took great pride in that. Even if she had no one to send a letter to.
And I took no cart but just our fleetest mule. Ready to spur myself to safety if needs be, as I told myself. But shaking in my new apparel, moving between the roadside trees just themselves shaking off winter I felt very alone even with my gun and my knife. That little wind that prefers the woods seemed like the whispers of murderers of many hues.
‘Mercy me,’ said Lana Jane Sugrue, ‘what have you done to your beautiful coiffure?’ She laughed and gaped and jumped around me eager to see all angles.
I guess I was a fright for the Sugrue boys who didn’t even understand me
in a dress but the lawyer Briscoe grunted his assent to this appearance and anyhow his first emergency was the numbers piling up and the wilful sheaf of documents needing to be given regimen. Land deeds in disarray and no one to work great lengths of that ruined country with the slaves amazed by freedom and ‘farms destroyed by fire and war’ still not brought back to good health according to the lawyer Briscoe with anger in his face as much as tears and old soldiers with their lives in tatters just as much by living on as dying and one day rebels down and next day rebels up. What was a loyal man to do? And loyal to what? And no one Tennessee person just as good as he thought he was and no one maybe also just as bad. Tennessee going to be one thing, the best goddamn Union state in the Union and then going to be another thing, with this change of governor. First it was Governor Brownlow all ready to quash bad feeling against the slaves, and then it was a new jackass trying to drag Tennessee back to hatred and hurt. The onetime rebels with the vote again and there’d never be a Republican governor in Tennessee again, reckoned the lawyer Briscoe. Not that he could see, and his eyes were purty good enough.
The lawyer Briscoe’s nib scratching on, regardless, catching in the rags of that bad paper that was the only paper to be had those times. The war had killed the paper mill along the river. So bad paper became ‘good enough’ paper. The work had to be done.
*
There was no getting a word, fancy or otherwise, out of Tennyson Bouguereau. He was just as friendly and easy as always but there was something in the engine of himself not working. He hadn’t stayed in his bed a moment longer than he had to and he was moving about the barns and the yards as he always did, and could do his work just as Lige instructed. He had been a man that knew a hundred songs but they had fallen silent in him. I could see him strain to make a sound but there wasn’t a sound at his command. The raw wound in his hair healed but something deeper stayed awry.
*
It was good to be at the lawyer Briscoe’s in the sense that that was where you would get the news. Sheriff Flynn had gone to the officer in command of the soldiers in Paris and he had told Sheriff Flynn to speak to the colonel of the militia. This was in respect of the battery of Tennyson, not my poor self.
The lawyer Briscoe was very interested in the militia because they had been set in by the former governor of Tennessee himself to do something about the rabblement of rebels and nightriders causing mayhem everywhere. Now it wasn’t certain who the militia was supposed to protect or what it was supposed to do. Colonel Purton was the commander and he was fierce against nightriders and all lawbreakers certainly. Henry County was all old rebel country so there was no shortage of them. The thought of a black man rising up to freedom heated their brains the worst of all. So the lawyer Briscoe reckoned that was what had happened to Tennyson. A Negro was supposed to carry a certificate of work and if he didn’t he could be considered to be a vagrant. And Tennyson was driving a nice wagon with a lovely mare. So that could be called stealing. Why not? You could say any damn thing about a Negro. So the lawyer Briscoe reckoned that was what had happened. He didn’t rightly know. And he didn’t rightly know whether the men who did that had any connection to Jas Jonski, but he devised a good method to find out – he thought he would just go and ask Jas.
That’s when Jas Jonski as it happened spoke freely enough. He said he was sorry to hear about Tennyson Bouguereau but at the same time he hadn’t been shy to say what happened out at that damn farm of Lige Magan’s. He was offended and he said Tennyson Bouguereau had treated him insultingly. A man that was a slave only ten harvests back. I said to the lawyer Briscoe that I didn’t imagine Tennyson could have done anything but keep his bonds tight and not let him wiggle free, since that was what Lige Magan had told him to do. Well, Jas Jonski said he hadn’t been shy about telling his story to anyone would listen. So people heard of this insult to him and how put out he had been and he was only trying to visit his fiancée. So the lawyer Briscoe concluded that the message had got out to those dark folk called nightriders that the militia were meant to chastise. It was considered that the nightriders would soon be coming in now the climate had warmed towards them. Maybe some of those renegade types liked it out in the woods. Better than being married to their dull wives, opined the lawyer Briscoe. He asked if Jas Jonski had pointed Tennyson out to anyone when Tennyson was in the town and Jas Jonski laughed. That laughter was better evidence than words.
So the lawyer Briscoe felt he was making progress and the thing for him was he knew the country was in hardship and disarray but he thought maybe his beloved country of Tennessee might come good out of the war and the consequences of war otherwise known as peace if it only kept an eye on justice.
‘The time is so dangerous that the law is barely possible.’
That’s what he said. Now he could be said to be glowing a bit when he did, and his red face seemed to swell up a bit in the shadows of the office. That part of the lawyer Briscoe that was of Tennessee was subject to sudden tears. I wasn’t feeling weepy when he spoke, I was feeling wretched. Every time he said the name Jas Jonski my heart shrank and my legs were weak. I thought of the hurt between my legs and I wanted to ask the lawyer Briscoe where my justice was going to come from. My difficulty was I didn’t know how much Rosalee had said to the men and I found I hadn’t the words to speak of it for myself. I might have said it the very first day I staggered back but all this time between had hardened the words into a stony clump and I was as short for words on that as Tennyson was on everything. I didn’t know if Jas Jonski was on the lawyer Briscoe’s mind just because of the clash with Tennyson or whether the lawyer Briscoe’s thoughts also extended back to Jas Jonski coming out in the first place and my confusion, my confusion over the matter. Goddamn it, as Thomas would say. Goddamn confusion and I even wanted to go back to the moments of my suffering just to see, just to see, who was there causing it. Dark, dark, dark, dark.
My clue was the darkness and my best thought was whoever was the author of the deed must have done the deed in a dark place. I wondered again and again was it the stables where Frank Parkman worked, I didn’t know why my mind kept going there. Was it that strange whiny voice he had, maybe? A memory stirred by that? Only, did I remember Jas Jonski bringing me there, or was that just a thought because of the fact that Frank Parkman was a deputy for Sheriff Flynn and so had ridden out to us, all accidentally? I did seem to see in my inner eye myself and Jas Jonski wandering along Court Square together, arm in arm. Was that mocking words I heard from a little woman outside the Negro Sales building, and was that Frank Parkman standing in the jaws of the stable door and laughing? Laughter again better evidence than words? I was seeing these things and then not seeing them. Passing in and out of sight like in a dream.
*
How common it is to have your memory of things all muddied up I don’t know. It sure played the devil with me.
I was of course reluctant to tell the lawyer Briscoe that myself and Jas Jonski had been drinking whiskey at the back of the store on the fateful day. He had borrowed a bottle from Mr Hicks’s stock. He was growing restless under Mr Hicks’s yoke, he said, and it pleased him to sequester things that would go unnoticed. A river of whiskey went through the store. I had never had whiskey before and it burned my mouth and I didn’t like it much. John Cole was against whiskey in general even though Lige Magan kept a jug of some fiery stuff made in the west of Henry County over near Como. Lige Magan’s motto was, two glasses heaven, three glasses hell.
This was no firewater Jas Jonski offered me. It was proper distillery whiskey. I can’t remember how much I swigged but if at first I didn’t like it much a few minutes later I thought I was a long flower and out of my head was rising and widening a wondrous bloom. I thought I was an angel tempered hard by fire. All my story so far was briefly crossed out and in its place was a strange flame of ecstasy. When I walked out into Paris with Jas Jonski I was floating on burning wings.
The next clear memory is Lana Jane Sugrue shouting for her b
rothers to hitch the buggy.
So what was I supposed to say happened between? I couldn’t be making up a story. There was no purpose in that. It did occur to me that I might take my courage in my hands and sneak into town and ask Frank Parkman what he knew. With his lopsided smile and his laughter, and his whine. From how Sheriff Flynn had dealt with him I knew that the good sheriff thought he was a fool. But I wasn’t so sure. There was something there, an echo, a shadow, that was bothering me. And even a fool can harbour a story.
So I went into town that very Friday, after my work with the lawyer Briscoe. I let the mule scuff about the last stretch of the Huntingdon road, walking up and down for an hour, so that the darkness could claim the fringes of the town. A stableboy couldn’t leave his stables. I felt pretty sure I would find Frank Parkman in his place of work.
Of course I was in my boy’s clothes and I was going to have to see if he recognised me or not as Winona. I reckoned it would be best if he didn’t, but then, he might be surprised to find there was yet another damn Indian in Paris. When you haven’t spun out much of a plan of what to say you can begin to feel pretty stupid as you approach your task. Would he accept me as a cousin of Winona, if I said so? Would he just laugh his crazy boy’s laugh at me, and see instantly who it was? Then as a friend of Jas Jonski would he not just clam up? I only wanted to get a clear view of the truth. That was all I was out to gain. After all, he was a deputy of the law now and then, clearly enough, and wasn’t it his clear duty to bolster the truth, especially as his boss Sheriff Flynn had come out to Lige’s saying he was fixed to find out things?
The town in twilight was like one of those kettles of food starting to boil. Invisible people were lighting candles and lamps in the houses just now being rubbed out slowly by nightfall. All the colours of the place not especially gay in the first instance were now darkening brown plank by plank. The only house with a bit of sparkle and fuss was Zollicoffer’s saloon and the sound of the piano there was running out into the streets and private spaces of the town like a hundred rats. My mule was a creature of good grace and despite being a lowly breed enough had a fine step to his gait, there was something of those little Mexican horses about him. He had no need to be ashamed of himself anyhow. With the lift there was in his knees.
A Thousand Moons Page 5