The Widow's War

by Mary Mackey

  Pulling Teddy close, she curls up against William, and lies there listening for the sound of approaching horses, but all she hears is the rustling of the grass and the sentries coughing and talking in low whispers.

  Late the next morning, before they reach Osawatomie, William and Carrie say good-bye to their escorts and turn onto the dirt track that leads to Two Rivers. Elizabeth said Mrs. Hulett and the fugitives who lived with her grew rope hemp on the plantation. Carrie has always imagined hemp would look like rope—brown and uninteresting—but instead she finds herself rolling past tall, green plants with delicately feathered leaves. The hemp is planted densely, forming a wall that sways in the wind. Carrie decides it’s the closest thing to a jungle she’s seen since she left Brazil.

  The main house is less impressive than the hemp that surrounds it. Constructed of unpainted boards and sporting a thatched roof, it has nothing in common with the great, white-pillared mansions of the old South. Although much larger than the cabin Carrie and William built in Lawrence it looks similar except that instead of a small porch suitable for knocking the mud off your boots before you enter, the main house at Two Rivers has a wraparound veranda that curves in a protective circle so no matter which door you go out of, you always find yourself with a shaded place to sit.

  Behind the house, lined up along the river, are a series of slave cabins. The cabins, which are also constructed of unpainted boards, are in remarkably good repair but still . . .

  Carrie wonders if Mrs. Hulett’s guests live in them. Surely that would bring back very unpleasant memories if you had once been a slave.

  No,” Mrs. Hulett tells Carrie and William after they have washed up, put Teddy down for a nap, and are taking tea with her on the veranda. “All of us live here in the big house, except for Ni’s wife, Jane, and their two daughters. Jane asked to move her family into one of the cabins. The rest of us have a dormitory arrangement. I’m somewhat abashed to admit that my guests have insisted I have an entire room to myself. I thought we should all share the inconvenience equally, but they laid down the law. They said I was too old and that besides, I snored. ‘If you had to take out your teeth every night, you’d snore, too,’” I told them.

  She leans forward, picks up the teapot, and refills Carrie’s and William’s cups. “They won’t let me work in the fields either, but I’m not alone in that. The old men don’t work in the fields and neither do the children. That’s the glory of rope hemp. In April you have a few days hard work planting it, but then you can turn your back on it until August. We’re using China seed instead of Old Kentucky, and it’s so vigorous, you can lie in your bed at night and hear it growing.”

  She shrugs. “Actually, if we could get away with it, we’d grow nothing, but we have to keep up appearances. We’ve had visitors. Pro-slavers, of course, since they think I’m one of them. For a while most people in Osawatomie didn’t know the truth, but the day after Pottawatomie Creek Elizabeth told them who ‘my slaves’ really are. As long as they keep their mouths shut, we should be safe here and so should you and your child.”

  “That’s the main reason we came,” Carrie says. “For Teddy’s sake. Also, like your guests, we need to disappear for a while.”

  Mrs. Hulett takes a sip of tea and looks at William with renewed interest. “There is still a price on your head, Doctor Saylor, is there not?”

  “Yes. Recently, I was pleased to hear the slavers had raised the reward for my carcass to two hundred dollars. A man doesn’t like to be undervalued.”

  “Someone is also likely to be hunting for me,” Carrie says. “He may even be offering a reward. We aren’t sure if he is, but I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “A pro-slaver, I take it?”

  “Famously a pro-slaver.”

  “Can you tell me his name?”

  “Deacon Presgrove.”

  “Deacon Presgrove!” Mrs. Hulett almost drops her tea cup. “Not the son of that wicked man who savagely beat Senator Sumner!”

  “The very one, I’m sorry to say.”

  Mrs. Hulett puts down her cup, and stares at Carrie and William with a mixture of admiration and astonishment. “I’ll ask no more questions. You can have a cabin for your clinic, and another for yourselves if you’d like privacy. They’re clean and the roofs are watertight, and since it’s summer, you’ll be warm enough.

  “Of course, if any pro-slavers come down the road, I’ll introduce you as my cousin and her husband, and you’ll have to pretend to be living in the main house, but I don’t think that’s likely. Right now, my neighbors are occupied with plotting the destruction of Osawatomie, burning free-state homesteads, and hunting for John Brown. As far as they know, I’m just an old lady in bad health with a bunch of nearly-useless slaves.

  “In short, you’re welcome. The clinic will be a blessing to all of us here at Two Rivers, not to mention the people in Osawatomie and the men who are living at—” She stops abruptly.

  William reaches out and takes her hands in his. “My dear Mrs. Hulett, I don’t know how we’ll ever repay you for taking us in.”

  “Fiddlesticks, Doctor Saylor! You have a reputation for keeping your patients alive. It’s going to be a comfort to have you and Miss Vinton here, and if you find you have too much free time on your hands, you can always help us with the hemp harvest. I don’t know what we’re going to do with it, but come late August we’re going to have to cut it down.”

  “Maybe you could burn it and blame the fire on free-state guerillas,” Carrie suggests.

  Mrs. Hulett smiles and shakes her head. “You don’t know much about hemp, do you Miss Vinton?”

  One month later to the day, a lone rider comes down the road that leads to Two Rivers. Stopping at the main house, he dismounts, knocks on the door, and asks one of the “slaves” if he can have a drink of water. Ni’s wife, Jane, brings him the dipper, watches him drink, and takes the dipper back when he is finished.

  “Is your mistress at home,” the man asks.

  “Yes, Massa,” she says. It’s a carefully rehearsed reply, one they have all discussed and agreed on. Distasteful, but necessary.

  “Go get her.”

  “She’s upstairs takin’ a nap, Massa. She’s real old and sickly.” At that moment, Carrie walks out of the clinic carrying a washbasin full of water. Throwing the water on the ground, she turns and goes back inside. She does not notice Jane standing on the porch or the stranger standing next to her.

  The stranger stares at the clinic. Jane doesn’t like the expression on his face. “You want me to go wake the old mistress up, Massa?”

  The stranger turns and looks at her with cold, blue eyes. His hair is the color of flax, his lips so red, they almost look painted. “No,” he says. “No need. Let her sleep. I already have the answer to the question I was going to ask her.”

  PART 6

  Henry Clark

  Carrie

  September 1856

  William, my darling, in token of our love, I offer you this memory of our last night together written in a small sketchbook that I will give you when I rescue you from Henry Clark and his bloody band of murderers. In defiance of Henry Clark, I offer you us together in our bed. I offer you that single, perfect night when we made love and did not see into the future.

  Do you remember it? August 29, 1856. We lay together in our cabin at Two Rivers, new curtains at the windows, candle lit, our boy asleep on his pallet. Do you remember Teddy’s face in the candlelight, the innocence and sweetness of him? You took such good care of him and loved him so well, and he loved you so much in return. Do you remember how soundly he slept that night? I don’t think he will ever sleep as soundly again.

  It was hot. We lay on top of the quilt I had made from scraps of old dresses Nettie Wiggins gave me. I ripped those dresses to pieces when I found out she was having an affair with Deacon, but I kept some of the scraps. They were silk and beautiful and hard to part with. Perhaps I suspected someday I would need to make a quilt for our bed.


  It was a light quilt, soft as a cloud. I was glad I had saved it from the fire that burned our home in Lawrence, and I can still remember the caress of it on my flesh mixed with the caress of your hands as you made love to me. When you touched me, I always came alive in a special way. Even before I lost the baby fat from giving birth to Teddy, you always made me feel like a beautiful, sleek wild animal.

  That night, as we began, I closed my eyes and imagined the two of us together lying in a double hammock by the banks of the Rio Branco under trees laced with purple orchids. I felt the heat of the tropical sun on my skin and heard the jungle singing. Jungles sing, you know. They hum day and night, alive with frogs, and insects, and birds. That’s what I heard when we began to make love: that soft song beating against my ears. When I opened my eyes I realized it was the beating of your heart.

  You always brought the jungle to me even in Kansas, even in the dead of winter. But on that last summer night before so many terrible things happened, the jungle was already waiting for me before we lay down. I often thought of you as a tiger turning me in great soft paws, rolling me over and over, loving me. But I thought of you as yourself, too, as a man. I loved the hardness of your arms, the hair on your chest, the soft brush of your beard against my face.

  I loved the way you looked at me as we made love. You were sweet and passionate, fierce and gentle. You took me with a pleasure that sometimes seemed half-mad, yet at the same time you never once hurt me or forgot me or left me behind. We were always together, always equals the way we had been ever since we were children. Not many men can carry that off, but you could, and I loved you for it.

  Do you remember our shadows on the walls? How they took on color in the candlelight? Do you remember putting your hand over my mouth so I would not wake our boy? Do you remember how I opened myself to you, threw my legs around you, loved you with all my strength and heart? How I bit you on the shoulder in passion and then apologized, and how you laughed and whispered, “Bite me again, my love; bite all you want.”

  Do you remember how many times I relaxed and rested against you, only to find peace replaced by passion? Do you remember the sounds you made, how you had to bite your own lips to keep from crying out? Were two people ever better matched in desire? Did two people ever love each other more or love each other longer without their love fading or going stale?

  Each time with you was like the first. No, each time was better than the first, better than the one before. Our love constantly grew stronger. That was our secret.

  We were both blind that night. Blind and blessed. Henry Clark had already found us, but we did not know it. We did not know we would never again be able to look at our sleeping boy without feeling an urge to take him in our arms and defend him.

  When we lay back satisfied from our lovemaking, when we curled up in each other’s arms, when we whispered our good-nights and kissed our last kiss, we did not suspect what the next day would bring.

  I remember dreaming the most ordinary dreams. Butter un-churned. Dishes not washed. Teddy eating oatmeal. Long grass swaying. Sunflowers, cicadas, walls of green hemp.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Kansas, August 30, 1856

  The prairie is dry, the wheat fields are stubble, and two hundred and fifty Missourians have attacked Osawatomie, burned it to the ground, defeated John Brown, shot his son Frederick through the heart and left him dead beside the Marais des Cygnes. Now Henry Clark and his men are bringing the news to Two Rivers.

  With them rides Deacon Presgrove. Deacon looks like one of Clark’s Raiders now. The costume he put on to come to Kansas has taken on a reality that terrifies him. He still has his pistols, his rifle, and his oversized knife, but his broad-brimmed hat is battered almost out of recognition, the kerchief around his neck reeks of sweat, and his trousers are so stiff with dirt they could stand up without him. Worst of all are his boots. Deacon can hardly bear to look at them. They are splattered with blood, great dark stains of it.

  Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood . . . Macbeth, Act Two, Scene Two . . . I am going insane, Deacon thinks. I am riding with a madman bent on committing murder. He looks up and sees Clark’s flag snapping above him, rolling and unrolling in the wind like a message from hell. The blood on it is bright red, fresh, not pig’s blood any longer.

  Carrie isn’t worth this. Nothing is. Deacon would run if he could, take off into the brush and hide like John Brown, but if he does, Clark will shoot him. Clark has made that clear.

  I’m not going to bring your wife and son to you, Clark said on the day he told Deacon he had found Carrie for the second time. You’re going to come with me. When a man’s wife runs away, he should go after her. Shoot her lover. Make things right. Honor needs to be satisfied.

  Then he had stepped up to Deacon, put a finger on the bottom button of Deacon’s flannel shirt, and crawled up finger by finger, button by button to the top. It was a crazy gesture, threatening, terrifying.

  You aren’t afraid, are you? Clark asked as he touched the first button. Not a coward? as he touched the second. Because then, he touched the third; then, he touched the fourth; well, then, Deacon . . .

  Clark’s finger had rested on the fifth button, then the sixth. He had not completed the sentence.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The sky above Two Rivers is the color of fire. For the rest of her life Carrie remembers the intensity of that sunset, how it tinted the hemp, turned the unpainted boards of the main house and the cabins rose-colored, and spread crimson ripples along the banks of the Marais des Cygnes.

  She is in the clinic with Jane, removing a thorn from Jane’s knuckle. William, who is rolling pills, has his back to them. Carrie and Jane have become close in the time Carrie has lived on the plantation. Their children play together, and they both like to read the books Mrs. Hulett has arranged on the mantel in the parlor. It’s a small library, but well-chosen. So far Jane and Carrie have discussed David Copperfield, Paradise Lost, and The Stones of Venice. This week they are taking turns reading Mrs. Gaskell’s latest novel out loud to each other.

  Jane is a tall, quiet woman with blue-black skin and long, graceful fingers calloused by years of sewing. She’s not one to complain, so as Carrie probes around with the needle trying to get under the tip of the thorn, she knows it must hurt when Jane winces.

  “Sorry,” Carrie says.

  “Y’all going to soap this up afterwards?”

  “We soap up everything,” William says without looking up.

  “Indeed we do,” Carrie agrees.

  “Remind me not to get a speck in my eye then. I don’t fancy having my eyes washed out with Mrs. Hulett’s soap. She always puts in enough lye to take the skin off a mule.”

  In front of the main house, Jane’s daughters and Teddy are playing together. On the veranda, the old men are sitting in their rocking chairs watching the sun set. Mrs. Hulett is sitting beside them in a straight-backed chair, plucking a chicken. The rest of the women are in the shed milking the cows, in the garden picking beans and digging up potatoes, or in the springhouse skimming cream so they can churn butter. One woman is in the woodshed splitting kindling. Another is down at the river getting water.

  “There,” Carrie says, as she extracts the thorn from Jane’s knuckle. She is about to say more when she is interrupted by a high-pitched scream. Jumping to their feet, she and Jane hurry to the window. William comes up behind them. They look, but can’t see anything out of the ordinary. The children are still playing in the front yard; the old men are still sitting in their rocking chairs.

  Suddenly they hear the sound of approaching horses.

  “Teddy!” Carrie cries.

  “Lara! Franny!” Jane yells. “Run! run!”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Clark’s Raiders gallop out of the hemp fields howling like demons, ride up to the main house, and throw lighted torches onto the roof. When Mrs. Hulett tries to escape the flames, they shoot her and leave her dead on the veranda. Th
ey capture the old men—not worth much, but worth taking alive. They ride down Jane’s daughters, throw them to the ground, and tie their hands behind their backs.

  As Teddy stands in the middle of the yard screaming in terror, they break into two groups and ride around him. He’s too little to go anywhere, and they have their orders. You’re not to harm a hair on the little brat’s head, Clark has told them. He comes up with one scratch, and—Clark rarely needs to finish his sentences these days.

  Clark rides past the main house, stops, pulls back on the reins, and forces his horse to rear up on its hind legs. The red light of the sunset turns his hair to bronze and for an instant he looks like a monument to the violence that is tearing Kansas apart. “There’s the clinic,” he tells Deacon, pointing to the last unpainted cabin in the row. “There’s where you’ll find your wife.”

  Deacon opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

  “Are you deaf? I just said that’s the clinic.” Clark grabs a lighted torch from one of his men and thrusts it into Deacon’s hand. “Burn it down. Smoke them out.” Deacon takes the torch, holds it for a few seconds, then drops it.

  “You’re a pitiable excuse for a man.” Clark grabs another torch. With a high, yipping yell, he gallops up to the clinic and tosses it onto the thatched roof. “Come out, you abolitionist bastards!” he yells. He rides back to Deacon. “Take aim, man. This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  Reassured, Deacon recovers his senses, pulls out his pistols, and points them at the door of the clinic. Smoke is billowing from the windows and flames are consuming the thatch. Deacon inhales burning grass and wood and coughs on the ashes.