The Widow's War

by Mary Mackey

  An hour passes. At last a cock crows, and Carrie wakes to the sound. She has had a beautiful dream, which she cannot remember. She yawns and curls closer to William, feeling the warmth of his body. The prairie is so quiet, she can hear every breath he takes.

  They have made love three times since they found each other: once with the hungry passion of long separation; once slowly; and finally, just before moonrise, tenderly, mouth to mouth and breast to breast in the waxing light. Each time she read his body with her fingertips, she found it leaner and more muscular than she remembered. His right arm is creased by a long scar that she suspects comes from a bullet wound. On his leg is the unmistakable V of a snakebite.

  She has swept her hair over his chest and between his thighs and made love to him with the first real, uninhibited passion she’s felt since they lay together in her bed on the Ladeira da Glória behind closed shutters as church bells tolled and people fled in panic from the plague. He has clasped her to him, and together they have traveled to a place where words weren’t necessary. While they were making love, she forgot everything, but now, as she lies beside him listening to him breathe, she wonders if he’s noticed that her waist is thicker, her belly fuller, her breasts rounder than they were in Rio. She has so many things to tell him, things she should have said before they lay down together; but the news she brings is bad, and there’s so much of it. How do you tell the man you love that you’re with child by his stepbrother? How do you bring the news of a lost daughter to someone who never knew he was a father?

  William stirs, reaches toward her, and for a while they lie there quietly, holding each other. “My love,” she says. She knows she needs to start telling him what’s happened since they last met, but she can’t bring herself to. Maybe it would be easier if she started with the present and worked backwards.

  “Where were you going when I stopped you?” she asks.

  William wraps a curl of her hair around his finger and plays with it. “Missouri,” he says.

  She sits up abruptly. The buffalo robe falls off her shoulders. Shivering, she draws it back up around her. “Missouri! Do you know that in Westport the slavers are offering a hundred-and-fifty-dollar reward for you, dead or alive?”

  “I know.”

  “They say you’re wanted for armed robbery. I can only think of one thing you’d steal—”

  He puts his finger over her lips. “Don’t say it, Carrie. Not even here. Prairie grass is a good place to hide if you want to eavesdrop.”

  “I’m afraid for you.”

  “I’m afraid for myself. I wasn’t until a few hours ago. Without you, I couldn’t feel much of anything. But now—” He sits up. “It’s complicated. A lot of people depend on me. I’m not all that important, but I’m one link in a chain that can’t be broken. I can’t stop doing what I’m doing.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to.” She has something else to say, and to say it, she needs to see his eyes. “Come closer.” He comes closer. Leaning forward, she puts her hands on his shoulders and looks into his face. “I need to tell you something. I should have told you last night, but I couldn’t bear to. Things have happened that you need to know about.”

  “Bad things?”

  “Very bad.”

  “Are you ill?”

  “No, I’m married.” He flinches and starts to speak, but she silences him with a gesture. “Please, let me go on before you say anything or I’ll never be able to finish. I’m married to your stepbrother, Deacon Presgrove. I inherited a lot of money from Papa, but I don’t have it any longer. Deacon was—is—a fortune hunter. He wrote my obituary and had it published so you’d have no reason to return to Brazil. He told me you were dead, but even so, I never would have married him except—”

  The words stick in her throat. She swallows and tries again, but she can’t even whisper them. It seems as if no time has passed since she watched the tiny bundle that contained Willa sink into the sea. She remembers the masts creaking in the wind, the waves pounding the hull, the wake spreading out behind The Frances Scott as she watched all trace of her daughter disappear. Tears burn behind her eyes, but she can’t cry. Turning away, she looks off across the empty prairie.

  “Come here,” William says. He pulls her onto his lap and wraps the buffalo robe around her. “Let me hold you while you tell me the rest of it.”

  She nods, struggles to speak, and again fails. At last she puts her lips to his ear. “You and I had a child. A daughter.”

  He starts and draws her closer. “Dear God,” he says.

  “She was born too early, and she died. Her name was Willa. She was beautiful. Small and perfect. She looked like both of us. I wrapped her“—her voice breaks—”in that shawl you were going to give me as a wedding present and buried her at sea. I know you’re going to blame yourself for not being with me, but it’s not your fault. Deacon told you I was dead.”

  William makes a strange sound. She looks up and sees he’s crying. “I’m going back East and shoot the son of a bitch,” he says.

  “No, you aren’t. If you go to Washington, Bennett Presgrove will see you’re arrested before you can get anywhere near Deacon. Shooting him isn’t worth getting hung for. It won’t bring back our child. If all this was anyone’s fault, it was mine. I was a fool to marry him, but I did it of my own free will, and I have no one to blame but myself. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “You weren’t a fool. You were a woman with child left alone to fend for herself. As for forgiving you—hell and damnation, Carrie Vinton! There’s nothing to forgive! Here, hold up your face and let me kiss you. I won’t shoot Deacon, but only because you’re asking me not to, and if you ever change your mind, let me know.”

  He kisses her, and they sit in silence as the sun rises, the tall grass takes on color, and the first shadows of morning appear, long, cool, and thin as straws. Somewhere in the direction of Mr. Trout’s hotel another cock crows.

  “They’ll be hitching up the teams soon,” Carrie says. Rising to their feet, they put on their clothes. William helps her with her laces, bends down and slips on her shoes, stands and kisses her again.

  “I have to stay at Trout’s for a few days. Stay with me. I’m meeting some men here, and I’m not sure when they’ll arrive. When they show up, I’m going to ride into Missouri with them. I’ll only be gone a day and a half at most, and then I’ll come back and get you, and we can travel to Lawrence together. Don’t worry about your things. You can send them on ahead, and they’ll be there waiting for us when we arrive.”

  Carrie turns away from him and stares at the row of trees that borders the creek. She has more bad news to deliver. It’s not as bad as the rest, in some ways you might even call it good, but why can’t things ever be simple? Why can’t she and William just pick up where they left off?

  “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to stay with me?”

  “More than anything, but before we make any plans, there’s something else I have to tell you.” She pauses, tries to find the right words, and decides there aren’t any. “I’m carrying Deacon’s child.”

  “I know.”

  She stares at him in astonishment. “You know? How?”

  “I’d have to be a fool to hold you in my arms and not know.”

  “Deacon certainly managed to.” An expression of pain crosses his face, and she realizes he doesn’t like the image she just conjured up.

  “Did you tell him?”

  “No, but if he finds out, he may come after me and try to take the child away. I’m not going to let him do that. He’s not fit to be my child’s father.”

  “Then let me be.” William pulls her to him, and stands for a moment looking at her. Then he smiles. “Damn it, I’ve never been good at this and I’m not improving with practice. I’m trying to find the right words to ask you to marry me. Like I said that first time when I proposed in Rio, I’ve loved you since I was eleven, and I’ll never love anyone else. Kansas is a hard place for women and children. I can protect you
and the baby. If Deacon comes to the Territory, maybe I’ll get a chance to shoot him with a clear conscience. Meanwhile, I’ll start practicing medicine again. A doctor can always make a decent living, even one who insists on scrubbing his patients with soap and water. There’ll always be food on our table and love in our home, and we’ll be happy, I promise.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Can’t marry me? I know that. I don’t mean legally. I mean in the sight of God. What do we care about some piece of paper stuffed in a musty Brazilian archive? We’ve been married for three years in the only way that counts, so kneel down right here with me and tell me again you’ll be my wife. Say ‘yes’ just like you did in Rio. Promise me we’ll stay together until death parts us. Will you do that?”

  “What if I say no?”

  “Well then, I guess I could take to drink, but I discovered a while ago that I don’t have the head for it. But you aren’t going to say no are you?”

  “Are you absolutely sure? With the baby being—”

  “Being mine,” he says. “Being mine from the moment he’s born as much as if he were my own blood. Girl or boy. Part of you, part of me. Forever. So will you marry me, Carrie Vinton?”

  “Yes,” Carrie says. She sinks to her knees, and William sinks down beside her. Pulling out his pocket knife, he cuts a blade of grass and twists it into a ring, and together, in love and in the sight of the gods, African, Brazilian, and Christian, they marry each other in a ceremony witnessed only by the tall grass and the sky.

  Chapter Twenty

  Missouri, September 1854

  A sod hut dug into a hillside, front and side walls made of bricks laid in double rows. No windows; one door, barred from the outside. To the right of the hut, a comfortable-looking, two-story house, porch empty, windows dark, chimney producing only the thin smoke of a banked fire. To the left, a large field of dry corn that hisses every time the wind sweeps through the stalks.

  This is definitely the Hawkins’ place. Zachariah Amandson described it right down to the last detail as he sat in Trout’s Hotel drinking lemonade, whispering to William, and looking up nervously every once in a while to make sure he wasn’t being overheard.

  Amandson is a free black who is able to pass for white. This allows him to travel through Missouri unchallenged. For over two years, he has had a small business that consists of mending pots and pans and gluing broken china back together. One of the most important links in the local Underground Railroad, he rides from farm to farm, noting which farmers own slaves and where those slaves are kept when their masters are asleep. When the conditions are right, he draws the slaves aside, speaks to them, tells them who he is, and offers to help them escape.

  When people think of the Underground Railroad, they usually assume it’s being run by Quakers, New England abolitionists, free-thinkers, and the like; but free blacks and former slaves are the heart and soul of the railroad. Some five hundred former slaves travel to the South each year to bring out those still in bondage. Without men like Amandson, William and his companions would be going in blind tonight.

  Slinging the bag of drugged meat over his shoulder, William walks into the corn, grateful for the rustling that covers the sound of his footsteps. The wind is blowing away from him, which is fortunate because Amandson warned that Hawkins keeps four of the most vicious dogs in Missouri. They’re part wolf, raised to attack and kill. The last slave who tried to escape from this place had his throat torn out.

  Sure enough, the moment William steps out of the corn, the dogs charge toward him, barking like the hounds of hell. Tearing open the mouth of the bag, he throws them the meat, praying they’ll stop to gobble it down. Then he turns and runs for the creek. Dashing into the water, he keeps on running. Hawkins’s dogs aren’t blood-hounds, they’re probably going to be too busy with the meat to bother coming after him, and if they do, the water should wash away his scent, but there’s always a chance they’ll decide to hunt him down.

  When he figures he’s run far enough, he grabs an overhanging limb, pulls himself up into a tree, and sits there, gasping for breath. His heart is beating so fast he can feel it pounding against his ribs, his stomach is churning, and the inside of his mouth is dry. He’s ridden into Missouri on four previous occasions and never felt so much as a prickle of fear. It’s an odd sensation, like coming back to life, and it’s all due to Carrie.

  When he left Brazil, convinced she was dead, he changed. He’d always been a cautious man, but losing her brought out something wild in him that was both useful and extremely dangerous. For the better part of a year, he didn’t care if he lived or died. He was willing to take risks other men were reluctant to take—risks perhaps no man with a wife and children to go home to would take. As a result, he’s earned a reputation for bravery he doesn’t deserve. It wasn’t brave to be unable to feel fear. It was a kind of insanity brought on by grief. But now he has something to lose.

  Gradually his breathing slows, and his heart begins to beat normally. Looking toward Hawkins’s farm, he sees that someone has lighted a lamp in an upstairs bedroom of the main house. A few moments later, a man and a woman walk out onto the front porch. The woman wears a cotton nightgown and holds a lantern. The man, presumably Hawkins, wears long underwear and holds a shotgun.

  Hawkins yells something, but William can’t make out the words. Maybe he’s demanding to know who’s out there, maybe he’s cursing the dogs for waking him. It’s probably a little of both, because suddenly he lifts the shotgun and fires into the corn. Then he calls the dogs to him and gives each a hard kick.

  The dogs grovel at his feet and follow him docilely to the sod hut where Hawkins checks the bar on the door to make sure it’s still firmly in place. Again he yells. No doubt he’s making sure the slaves are inside, but if they reply, their voices don’t carry to where William is sitting.

  After walking around the place and peering into every corner, Hawkins returns to the house, and he and his wife go back inside. The lantern light traces their progress up the stairs and into the bedroom. For a minute or two the light goes on shining before they blow it out.

  After that, there’s nothing to do but wait. Climbing down from the tree, William settles on a pile of dry leaves and tries to make himself comfortable. It’s a chilly night with a hint of rain in the air. He wishes he knew exactly how long it will take for the opium to do its work, but you never can tell with animals. A veterinarian once told him about being called to a circus to extract a decayed tusk from an elephant. The vet said he had calculated how much opium it would take to sedate a man, and then multiplied by the weight of the elephant. The tusk came out successfully, but the elephant slept for three days. The circus owner had been so upset, he’d challenged the vet to a duel.

  William sits for the better part of an hour listening intently. Finally, he rises to his feet and walks back toward the farm. He’s out of meat and if Hawkins’s dogs are still awake, he’s going to be in serious trouble.

  Stepping out of the corn, he freezes in place and waits for the barking to begin, but the only sound he hears is the dry stalks rattling behind him. Keeping to the shadows, he makes his way toward the sod hut. Just before he reaches it, he comes on one of the dogs stretched out full-length, fast asleep. It’s a nasty-looking beast with a large head and powerful shoulders, but its pelt is a beautiful grayish white that looks silver in the starlight.

  Giving the dog a wide berth, William walks up to the door of the hut and draws back the bar. When the door swings open, the slaves are waiting for him. They’re taking nothing with them except some thin blankets and the clothes on their backs, most likely because they have nothing else to take.

  “By the strength of hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt,” William whispers.

  “Out from the house of bondage,” one of the slaves replies.

  Signals successfully exchanged, they shake hands all around, and William leads them away from Hawkins’s farm toward the woods where horses and armed men are waiti
ng to conduct them to Kansas and freedom.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  When William slips in beside her, Carrie rolls toward him. Usually she’s the one who has cold hands and feet, but tonight it’s her turn to warm him. “Done?” she whispers.

  “Yes. Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” The truth is, not a minute has passed since he rode off when she hasn’t wondered if he’ll come back alive. Last night, she dreamed the slavers had caught him and hung him, and she couldn’t get to him in time to cut him down.

  A strange honeymoon, she thinks. Sleeping outside the hotel for privacy, William disappearing and then coming back as if he hasn’t been gone, neither of us asking questions: no “Where have you been?” or “What have you done?”

  She closes her eyes and thinks of the limestone caves they explored when they were children. They’d been forbidden to go anywhere near them, but they’d crawled in anyway with nothing but the stub of a stolen candle to light them back to the entrance. She remembers the bullets they threw into a bonfire, the bear they tracked to its den, the fast current that pulled her under when they were swimming in the river where they had no business swimming, and how William had gone in after her and pulled her to safety and called her a fool; and how afterwards they’d fought for hours over who was the biggest fool: her for nearly drowning herself or him for risking his life to save her. We’re really no different than we’ve ever been, she thinks, and moving closer to him, she falls asleep.

  A little before sunrise, she wakes to find the top of the buffalo robe wet with dew. Giving William a quick kiss, she crawls out and gets dressed. When she looks toward Trout’s Hotel, she sees another wagon train has arrived during the night. It must have come in late, because the oxen are still in the corral, and no one is moving about.