The Widow's War

by Mary Mackey

  “You’ll what? Come with me?” She nods and stretches out her hand, but he bats it aside. “What kind of fool do you think I am? Get up on your own.”

  Rising to her knees, she slowly struggles to her feet. As she stands, the wind catches the door and rattles it. Looking toward the sound, she sees William standing in the doorway holding his pistol in one hand and an iron skillet in the other.

  Deacon doesn’t turn around. He’s too busy doing his victory dance. You miserable safado, she thinks. She looks at him standing there like a pompous fool, and feels a mixture of relief and anger that makes her glad she didn’t try to grab his gun. They’re going to get Teddy away from him without a shot being fired.

  “Life’s like poker,” Deacon’s saying, “and you just drew losing cards.”

  Carrie nods weakly as if she’s given up and has no more fight left in her. Weaving a little, she grabs at the edge of the stove to steady herself—the perfect picture of a woman about to swoon. If Deacon knew her better—if he had ever really known her at all—he’d realize she wasn’t the fainting type, but the only person he’s ever studied is himself.

  “None of that, now,” he says. “I’ve got no time for female fainting fits. Go get your bonnet. There’s—”

  Suddenly she plunges toward him hitting his arm, knocking the revolver out of his hand, and grabbing Teddy on the way down. Whap! William steps up behind Deacon and poleaxes him with the skillet.

  When Deacon opens his eyes a few minutes later, he finds himself staring down the barrel of William’s gun. To Carrie’s surprise and amusement, his first reaction is to scream like someone is tearing out his fingernails.

  “Don’t shoot me!” he shrieks.

  “This isn’t one of your melodramas,” William says. “Pull yourself together, man, and get to your feet.”

  Deacon stands up. His face is as white as a cotton pillowcase, and he’s shaking so violently Carrie almost pities him. For a few seconds William stares at him without speaking. Then he says: “If you ever come anywhere near Carrie and Teddy again, I’ll blow your damn head off. Do you understand?” Deacon makes a squeaking sound like a rat caught in a trap. He opens his mouth but no words come out.

  “Get the hell out of here,” William says.

  After Deacon leaves, William stays with Carrie and Teddy for the rest of the day. By nightfall the sack of Lawrence is over. The next morning, Atchison marches his men through town one last time and loads them onto a boat that will take them back to Missouri. That day and the next, William and Carrie pitch in to help clean up the mess, and on Friday a band of bushwhackers comes back in the middle of the night and burns down their house.

  Who dips those rags in kerosene, sets them on fire, and throws them onto the thatch? Did Deacon send them? William and Carrie never know for sure, but they wake to the smell of smoke and the sound of riders leaving at a gallop.

  The men who burn their house also steal William’s horse, but even if the bushwhackers had left the mare in the stable, William and Carrie are too busy trying to put out the fire to pursue the arsonists, so their identity remains a mystery.

  Scooping up Teddy, they escape unharmed. They save William’s medical instruments and books; Carrie’s art supplies, drawings, and plant presses; the quilt; two of the buffalo robes, a tin box full of dried plants, and a trunk of clothing; but the rag rug, the hand-carved butter molds, the churn, and the blue calico curtains go up in flames.

  The memory that stays with Carrie longest is the sight of the newspapers she pasted to the walls. One by one, they curl and twist, blacken and fall to the ground as ash. After the ashes cool, she picks up a handful and throws them into the air. As they drift away, she silently lists all the places she’s lived: houses in Rio, huts along the upper Amazon, Mae Seja’s quilombo, Grandfather Hampton’s place in Bloomington, Grandfather Vinton’s in Mitchellville, her cabin on The Frances Scott, that mansion in Washington Bennett Presgrove rented. This house was different. This was the first real home she ever had, the first she expected to live in for the rest of her life. Months ago, the buzios warned fire would take something from her. She thought she’d be able to bear the loss, but now—Picking up another handful of ashes she stares at them and begins to cry.

  William puts his arms around her and draws her close. “We can rebuild.”

  “I know we can, but it won’t ever be the same.”

  “We’ll make it better. I could live in a tent with you and Teddy and think of it as a palace.”

  He’s right. Nothing important has been lost. They still have each other and Teddy. She rests in his arms for a while. Then she steps back and gives him a kiss. Walking over to the remains of their house, she bends down and retrieves a scrap of paper that survived the flames.

  January, it says. No year, no date, but a good beginning.

  That afternoon, as they are sifting through the ruins looking for their frying pans and Carrie’s sewing scissors, Mrs. Crane comes running up with a special edition of The Beacon of Freedom, an abolitionist paper that has just arrived from Westport by special courier. She stops in front of Carrie, gasping for breath.

  “Have you heard?” she pants. “Oh, my dear Miss Vinton and Doctor Saylor, what a horror!”

  Carrie takes the newspaper from her, William reads over her shoulder, and together they learn that two days ago, after making a speech entitled “The Crime Against Kansas,” Senator Sumner of Massachusetts was savagely attacked on the floor of the United States Senate. According to the article, his attackers beat him to the ground, hitting him so hard they ripped his desk off its bolts. When Sumner staggered up the main aisle of the Senate Chamber blinded by his own blood, his assailants pursued him and continued to batter him until they broke their canes over his body. Throwing the pieces at him, they walked out, leaving bloody footprints on the marble floor.

  Infamy! the article cries. In the opinion of this publication, the canning of Senator Sumner is the most shameful event ever to take place in the United States Senate. Congressman Brook’s and Senator Presgrove’s cowardly attack on an unarmed United States senator is an act worthy of a dictatorship, not a democracy, and the fact that it is going unpunished makes it all the more reprehensible—

  There is more, but Carrie has stopped on two words and cannot read on. Senator Presgrove.

  “They’re sending the damnable devils new canes,” Mrs. Crane says. Ordinarily Carrie would be shocked to hear the matronly Mrs. Crane use such language, but she is still stuck on those two words.

  “The canes are inscribed with the motto ‘Hit Him Again.’ They’re being sent by University of Virginia students, young ladies, respectable matrons, doctors, lawyers, planters. Why canes are coming in so fast, they have to be stacked like cordwood. Brooks and Presgrove have become heroes in the South. It’s an evil day, Miss Vinton and Doctor Saylor. An evil day for America.”

  “Yes,” Carrie mutters. “Yes it is.” She puts her finger on the word “Presgrove,” and as she does so, she sees Bennett as she saw him the first time they met: crooked nose, yellowed eyes, long gray hair, spotted skin; and in his hand a heavy, gold-headed walking stick.

  Perhaps what comes next is the only real vision she will ever have, or perhaps it’s merely a logical extension of the troubles she’s witnessed, but as she stands there holding Bennett Presgrove in her mind’s eye, his face fades and is replaced by another face, weathered and weary with fierce gray eyes.

  “When John Brown hears about this, he’s going to do something terrible,” she says.

  “Begging your pardon,” Mrs. Crane says, “but who is John Brown?”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Cicadas humming in a steady drone, trembling poplars, the sheen of moonlight on white gravel and water, a large, dead tree arched like a bridge. John Brown reaches out, puts his hand on the trunk, feels the soft, decaying bark. Using the tree to steady himself, he crosses Pottawatomie Creek. Behind him, he can hear his sons and the volunteers splashing through the water. He
turns and puts his fingers to his lips. Silently, he says with gestures. Revenge must begin silently.

  He thinks of Sumner bleeding on the floor of the Senate, of the Free State Hotel burned, of Lawrence looted, of the unspeakable evils of slavery and the cowardice of men who refuse to act on what they believe. Suddenly, he comes to an abrupt halt, overtaken by an anger so great he can taste it.

  Up ahead is a clump of maples and beyond them a cabin sitting cold and quiet in the darkness. In that cabin, the pro-slavers are asleep. He and his men must do nothing to alarm or wake them. This is war. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  One by one, his sons cross the creek and come to stand beside him. Each carries one of the broadswords he brought to Kansas. Freshly sharpened, he thinks, edges ground so fine a man could shave with them. He looks at his sons, strong around him, brave warriors all, righteous in their lives, righteous in their dedication to ending slavery. God granted him such sons because of this night and the nights to follow. They are soldiers in the Army of the North, a small army perhaps, but one that will grow until the Lord’s work is done.

  He lowers his head, in prayer and feels the power of God fill him with certainty. When he has finished praying, they walk on toward the cabin. The only sign of their presence is the moonlight glinting off the edges of their swords.

  John Brown lifts his hands over his head, drawing down the Holy Ghost and bringing them all to a stop. Straightening his leather tie as if about to pay a social call, he starts toward the cabin alone. He will be the one to knock on the door and sound the trumpet of judgment. If the pro-slavers do not fight him, perhaps he will even give them time to repent. Not that they deserve anything but hellfire.

  He has almost reached the cabin when two bulldogs come hurtling out of the darkness, barking and snarling. The dogs run on either side of him as if they cannot smell him or see him and hurl themselves on his sons, but before they can do any damage, Frederick beheads one with his sword, and Salmon stabs the other and sends it howling into the forest.

  No need for silence now. John Brown approaches the cabin again and knocks. He expects to be greeted with a rifle barrel and has steeled himself to be shot or even to die a martyr, but instead the pro-slaver opens up. As soon as the door swings back, Brown charges in, and his sons follow, guns drawn, swords ready. They knock over a table, and a china pitcher and washbasin hurtle to the floor.

  “Mr. Doyle!” Brown cries. “The Army of the North has arrived and demands your surrender!”

  A man in a nightshirt faces him, dazed and uncomprehending. A woman stands behind him, her face still creased with sleep. A small girl clings to the woman’s nightgown. On the other side of the cabin, three young men rise from their pallets.

  “Army?” Doyle says. “Surrender? What the hell are you talking about, Mr. Brown?”

  “We have declared war on you and on all who support slavery.”

  “Hold on. You can’t just go and declare war all on your own. Congress has to declare . . .”

  “Take the men outside!” Brown orders.

  Mrs. Doyle screams and clutches at her husband. “No!” she cries. “No! Please!”

  “Madam,” John Brown says, “I cannot spare them. They have committed unpardonable crimes against the African people.”

  “My son, John,” Mrs. Doyle begins to sob, “dear God, he’s only fourteen! Please, Mr. Brown, leave me my boy!”

  John Brown looks at John Doyle. He’s slight, thin, short, fresh-faced, and crying. It’s the crying that does it. Only a coward or a child would shed tears.

  “Leave the boy,” he orders. Owen Brown throws John Doyle toward his mother, who catches him. The two fall to their knees dragging the little girl down with them and kneel there weeping, but John Brown has had enough. In time of war, mercy has limits.

  “Out!” he orders.

  The Browns shove Doyle and his two older sons out into the night. The wind has risen and the trees are thrashing. For a moment, John Brown feels as if he is being touched by the breath of God, but it’s only a storm coming in.

  They walk down the road that leads from the cabin, pushing the Doyles ahead of them with the barrels of their guns and the tips of their swords, catching them when they stumble. John Brown thinks of the sheep he has herded to slaughter, how the terror in the eyes of these men is like the terror in the eyes of those sheep. He stops in a patch of moonlight.

  “Here,” he says. “Now!” As his sons raise their swords, he turns away and looks off into the darkness. He hears the sound of screaming and pleading, the sound of metal blades cutting through flesh and bone, the thud of falling bodies.

  When he turns back again to the scene of the execution, he sees Doyle and Doyle’s oldest son lying dead in the road. A little farther on, the other son lies half-hidden in the grass, his arms severed from his body. Salmon and Owen stand near the bodies, splashed with blood that looks black in the moonlight.

  “So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord,” John Brown says. He stares at the bodies and waits for some sign that he has done the right thing, but the taste of anger remains in his mouth, so bitter he feels as if he’s choking on it.

  Pulling his pistol out of his pocket, he walks over to Doyle, bends down, and shoots him in the forehead. When he straightens up, Owen and Salmon are still there, drenched in the blood of the enemies of human freedom. Beside them stand the rest of the soldiers of the Army of the North.

  “Come,” John Brown says. “We need to move on. We have more of the Lord’s work to do tonight.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  WAR! scream the headlines of the Westport Border Times and The Leavenworth Herald. MURDER ON POTTAWATOMIE CREEK! MASSACRE! All over Missouri, pro-slave newspapers cry for the extermination of every abolitionist in Kansas, while in Massachusetts guns and money pour in for the defense of free-state settlements.

  Chaos, looting, burned homesteads, sudden violent death. Lawrence and Topeka blockaded by pro-slavers; forts built around abolitionist towns to cut them off from contact with the outside world: My brother-in-law has triggered a terrible guerilla war, Samuel Adair writes. Brown’s Station lies in ruins, burned to the ground, cattle stolen, wives and children fled in terror to parts unknown.

  John Brown goes into hiding no one knows where as Federal troops and the Missouri Militia scour southeastern Kansas looking for him. Troops from a pro-slavery Kansas militia join them. Instead of finding John Brown, they find John Junior crouching in a wooded ravine by the Adairs’ cabin. Chaining him to a tent pole, they beat him with their fists and the butts of their rifles until he goes insane. As they torture him, he cries that he was not at Pottawatomie Creek, that he had nothing to do with the executions, but the pro-slavers do not care. He is a Brown.

  An eye for an eye! they yell. A tooth for a tooth! Brown’s son is too crazed with pain to tell them that this is also one of his father’s favorite quotations.

  On the second of June, John Brown fights a battle with a pro-slavery militia at a place called Black Jack Springs. To everyone’s astonishment, he wins. Two days later, perhaps in retaliation, a band of bushwhackers burns Trout’s Hotel.

  Trout and his Yankee cook run for it and hide in the creek until the raiders leave, taking every horse, chicken, cow, keg of nails, bag of salt, and bolt of calico with them. When Trout returns to the site of his hotel, all he finds is a pile of smoking boards and a circle of blackened prairie. Throwing down his hat, he kicks it into the ashes.

  “Damnation!” he yells. “I’m ruined! Wiped clean out!” Tears stream down his cheeks leaving sooty streaks. He coughs, takes out his bandanna and blows his nose. “Begging your pardon for the cursin’ and the cryin’, Miz Witherspoon, but I done been pushed to the edge! I came here with the money I inherited from my mama and built my hotel, and now it’s all ashes and cinders. It’s enough to break a man’s heart.

  “To hell with Kansas! Who needs her? Bloody battleground, that’s what she is. Well, the abolitionists and slavers can l
et the blood flow without me! I don’t wanna be no part of their war! I’m leaving, yes, ma’am, I am. If I can get enough money together to buy a horse, maybe I’ll move on further west where there’s only rattlesnakes and hostile Indians to worry a man.”

  Mrs. Witherspoon stands next to him staring at the ashes. After a while, she goes to the root cellar, which the raiders have overlooked in their haste to get away with their loot. Pulling up the hatch, she climbs down the ladder and emerges with a jar of peaches preserved in whiskey.

  “I know you don’t usually drink, Mr. Trout,” she says, offering the jar to him, “but there’s a time for everything.” Trout accepts the jar, takes a pull on it, sits down on the ground, and takes another pull.

  “What was that flag those bushwhackers were carrying?” Mrs. Witherspoon asks as she spreads her skirts and settles down beside him.

  “I got no idea, but the consarned thing looked like it had been dipped in blood.”

  Mrs. Witherspoon shudders.

  “Sorry for the cussin’, ma’am, but I’ve just lost my hotel, and I ain’t drunk a dram of whiskey since Fifty-four when I had that terrible toothache.”

  “I understand perfectly,” Mrs. Witherspoon says, reaching for the jar.

  The day after the burning of Trout’s Hotel, Carrie and William buy a mule, load everything they salvaged from their house into a wagon, make Teddy a pallet in the back, and join a group of six armed men on their way to reinforce the defenses at Osawatomie. Passing through the Missouri Militia blockade, they are taunted by the pro-slavers but not attacked.

  All day they follow the California Road. That night their party pitches camp and posts sentries. Ever since the news of Pottawatomie Creek came to Lawrence, Carrie has known Kansas is in a state of civil war, but not until she wakes just before dawn and sees three grim-faced men staring off into the darkness with their guns drawn does the reality of it hit home.