This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  “I imagine your farm is pretty rundown, too, Private.” Butler seemed to concentrate on something, and added, “I suppose so. But you’ll feel better when you meet Maw, Sarah, and Billy.” He paused. “Yes, it will have been a long time since we’ve eaten food like she can cook.”

  Doc lowered his head, bracing himself as the wagon slipped and slid over weathered limestone. Rain trickled down the back of his neck.

  How do I explain to Maw that her son is a madman? What do I tell her?

  She would expect him, as a medical man, to know what to do about it. How did he tell her he hadn’t a clue?

  And what was he going to do if—now that the fighting was over—Paw wasn’t dead, but was sitting at home, fat and sassy, with another bag of gold? It would be just like the old reprobate.

  Bear that cross when it’s dropped on your shoulder.

  He would be civil to the man. No matter what. It wouldn’t be worth getting into a bitter, yelling fight. He was a physician and would act like one. Nor could he afford to upset Butler. God alone knew what further damage an acrimonious shouting match with Paw might do to his poor brother’s already teetering mind.

  Doc swallowed hard, so shaken he barely recognized the old lightning-scarred tree. When he was sixteen he’d spent the night under it, having sneaked away to the tavern. It had been the first time he’d drank whiskey. A lot of it. And the lightning tree was as far as he’d made it before vomiting his guts out, and passing out beneath the scarred branches.

  “I hear you,” Butler almost snapped. “You’ll remain in ranks. You’re soldiers not border ruffians.”

  What was that about? It was a tone he rarely heard Butler use with his men. Doc bit his lip, the anxiety rising as they finally dropped down into the White River floodplain. Butler had insisted from the very beginning that it was his responsibility to get his men home. So, was there a chance that as soon as Butler walked into the house, he’d slip back into being himself?

  “Butler?” he asked cautiously.

  At the tone in his voice, Butler gave him that wary look. “Yes, Philip?”

  “When we get to the farm, are you going to let the rest of the men muster out? Let them continue on to their homes on their own?”

  Butler’s expression pinched, his eyes adopted that vacant look that he got when all of his men were talking at once.

  “Butler?” Doc asked after several minutes. The man’s face had gone completely blank. “Did you hear me?”

  Finally Butler’s eyes cleared. “Sergeant Kershaw says we all have to stay together for the time being. No telling what Yankee intentions are. And someone might get lost. Remember Chickamauga?”

  “Damn it! It’s not Chickamauga. The war’s over!”

  “I am an officer,” Butler insisted. “Responsibility is the burden of command. It’s up to me to keep the men alive. My men are safe now, and by God, I’ll keep them that way.”

  “They are safe!” Doc almost shouted. “Just past these trees, we are home! Safe! And I…” He’d strained his throat, breaking into a fit of coughing that doubled him over. For moments he couldn’t breathe, his throat pain-racked, stars of light dancing before his darkening vision. Finally spent, he gasped for air.

  “You worry me, Philip.” Butler shook his head.

  “Yes,” Doc said through a rasping breath. “Sometimes I worry myself, too.”

  And then they broke out of the trees. Doc and Butler turned in unison to see the farm.

  “Dear God,” Doc whispered. “There’s barely anything left. The tobacco barn’s gone, the barn and sheds are missing. The fields are gone back to wild.”

  “Smoke in the chimney,” Butler noted. “They’re home, Philip. They made it.”

  “Thank God!” Philip sagged on the seat, the wash of relief unmanning him. “Odd how a man’s priorities can change. If I never have to set foot off of the place again, I’ll be a happy man. Somehow, after everything I’ve been through, I can spend the rest of my life growing corn, cotton, and tobacco, and be forever grateful.”

  As they turned off onto the lane, Doc glanced down at the river. That big limestone rock was still there. Tonight, after greetings and supper were over, he was going to retreat there. Atop that rock, he was going to stare at the river, and begin the process of healing his tortured soul.

  Butler pulled the mule to a stop and set the brake as they entered the yard. Philip hardly noticed his brother’s pursed lips, the narrowing of his eyes.

  Doc stepped down, dropped to his knees on the rain-damp dirt, bent and kissed it. Then he clawed up some of the soil, squeezing it tight in his fists, savoring the feel of familiar earth. His earth. He felt a tear break loose and streak down his face.

  “Sergeant Kershaw says we’re not home.”

  Doc turned, staring up at Butler, who sat stone upright. Then he stood, looking at the house, its sides weathered and gray and in need of paint. Glass was missing in the windows, oilcloth having been hung over what panes remained. Three saddles were front-laid on the porch, a dented bucket by the door. Paw’s old rocker, missing a couple of slats in the back, sat to one side.

  “Maw! Sarah! Billy!” Doc cried. “We’re home!”

  No one appeared at the door. “Maw! It’s Philip and Butler!”

  He started for the porch.

  “Hold it right there, mister!” a sharp voice called from off to the right.

  Doc turned. A man had risen from behind the rosebushes, a double-barrel shotgun at the ready. He approached carefully, dark eyes gleaming from beneath his wet hat. His jaws were working, making his black beard twitch.

  “Got ’em covered from this side, Dube!” another voice called, and Doc turned, seeing two young men with carbines as they emerged from around the far side of the house.

  “Whoa!” Doc said easily. “I’m Philip Hancock. This is my brother Butler. James Hancock was our father. Is Maw around? Or Billy or Sarah? This is the Hancock farm. Our home.”

  “Might have been.” The man with the shotgun smiled. “Once. We been here nigh on two years now. Heard it was a Rebel farm. Reckon if’n yer Rebels, you’ll be the last ones we drive out of Benton County.”

  “Two years?” Doc whispered.

  “Federals cleared this country of Rebels after Prairie Grove. Ain’t none o’ yer kind here no more. Now, why don’t you be smart, Johnny Rebs, and turn that wagon around. If’n ye don’t, you’ll end up good Rebels. You can tell yer a good Rebel ’cause you’ll be buried next t’ them two graves out back.”

  Doc swallowed hard. “There’s two graves out back?”

  “Ain’t no names on ’em.”

  “You don’t understand! This is our home! Where is our mother? My brother Billy and sister Sarah? Have you at least heard of them? Do you know where they are?”

  As he spoke a young woman stepped out on the porch, her belly distended in pregnancy. She cocked her head, studying Doc and Butler. “Who’s this, Dube?”

  “Says they used to live here.”

  She stared distastefully at Doc. “I heard tell that the girl was carried off by jayhawkers. That boy, Billy? Word is Crawfords, from down to Van Buren County, was hunting him. Heard he killed one of old Amos’s boys. Either they got him, or he done left the country a couple of years back.”

  “What happened here?” Doc asked, throwing his arms wide.

  “Reckon y’all went to war with the Union and ye lost. Now, spoils of war, mister. This hyar land is ours. We found it. Took it. And ain’t no two broke-down Johnny Rebs coming to take it away from us. So, this hyar’s my last words. You git your arse back up on that wagon seat, and if’n I ever sees your stinkin’ face around here again, I’ll kill ye!”

  “Dube?” one of the younger men asked as he raised his carbine. “We shoot ’em, we could sure use that spring wagon. Looks a mite used, but it’s better’n what we got.”

  “War’s over, Grady. We cain’t jist shoot ’em down.” Dube grinned evilly behind his beard. “Unless, of course, these two
Rebs want to open the ball again.”

  “Sergeant,” Butler called out, “form up the men!”

  Dube’s eyes widened as he brought the shotgun to his cheek, taking a sight on Butler.

  “Whoa!” Doc shouted, throwing his arms up. “We’re leaving! Don’t shoot! For God’s sake, he’s crazy. Sees things that aren’t there. Just … please let me get him out of here!”

  “Well, go on. And don’t ye never come back, neither.”

  Doc was shaking as he climbed up on the seat, reaching for the reins where they lay in Butler’s hands. Even as Doc clawed them away, Butler shouted, “Advance by the right oblique. At the quick step. Forward!”

  Doc slapped the reins across the mule’s back, wheeling the animal around the yard, and started him down the lane toward the river road. He only looked back once to see the invaders, lined up, weapons at the ready. Three dark men and a pregnant woman. Standing between him and the last of his memories and hopes.

  56

  July 4, 1865

  “I tell ye, it whar them damned high-an’-mighty politicians in Richmond what done the Confeder’cy in. We’da won the war if’n it hadn’t been fer that Jeff’son Davis and that collection o’ skunks he kep’ around hisseff back East.”

  The speaker was a gray-headed old man with a wedge of a face, and deep lines around his oversized hooked nose. The few teeth in his mouth were tobacco-brown incisors that matched the color of his faded brown eyes. White wisps of beard clung to his cheeks. He held a chipped ceramic cup above his head as he pontificated.

  The duffer stood atop a chair in the middle of McMannaman’s Saloon; the place was a dusty and drab clapboard structure along a similarly dusty and drab trail on the bank of the Trinity River just outside of Fort Worth.

  Billy waited in the darkness outside. Through the open door he studied the saloon’s lamplit interior. The Confederate leanings were apparent given the battle flag hung behind the plank bar where McMannaman held sway. The central table was the codger’s domain along with his collection of elderly companions: fiery gray and white-headed elders in faded flannel and canvas coveralls. A huge Texas flag covered the north wall, its bottom stained from the high-water line the last time the Trinity had flooded.

  Two tables of young men, barely more than boys, sat in the back right. They wore the attire of stock herders, what the locals had taken to calling cowboys, as more and more of the border ruffians and “bush soldiers” had taken to rounding up strayed and unclaimed beef, herding them north into the Nations, and selling them to the army.

  The table nearest the door was empty, but a lone man sat at the back table next to the open door that led out to the outhouse. Though he wore his hat pulled low, Billy knew Charlie Deveroux when he saw him. The bulk in the man’s shoulders just couldn’t be disguised. At Charlie’s elbow was a second mug, the chair pulled back as if just vacated.

  Taking one last look around, Billy satisfied himself that the fifteen horses tied around didn’t seem interested in anything but switching their tails and shifting from standing hipshot on the left to hipshot on the right.

  An owl hooted out in the brush along the river, and a bat fluttered past his ear.

  “Hell, did ye ever see Texas invaded? We beat them bastards back time after time!” the old man crowed.

  “You want to know where to cast blame?” a round-bellied elder at the table asked. “It’s them damn Easterners. Shoulda let Texans fight the whole thing. What in tarnal hell does a Virginian know about war? Not like Texas boys what fit the Commanch’ and Mexicans all their lives.”

  “Eastern bastards,” the standing patriarch agreed. “They drained poor ol’ blood-sucked Texas for all we had. Took our boys first, then they took our wagons and stock. Then they took our food, and then that damn Jeff Davis kilt our cotton trade! He’da broke us but for Governor Murrah.”

  “Hoooraw fer Murrah!” the elders bellowed as Billy slipped in the door, kept a sidelong glance on the others, and made his way to Charlie’s table.

  The standing elder added, “Texas shoulda seceded from the Confederacy, too. We stood fine on our own two feet, and by God’s hairy balls, we don’t need nobody else!”

  “It was them generals, I tell ye,” old round face bellowed before slugging down a drink from a tin cup. “I heard tell of how Bragg lost battle after battle, never following up. His whole staff hated him. Warn’t no different no matter whar ye was. Hindman and Holmes in Arkansas. Bragg in Tennessee. They all had their heads stuck so far up their asses they farted when they sneezed.”

  A bottle stood front and center on Charlie’s table as Billy took hold of the empty chair and shifted it so he could sit with his back to the wall.

  “Everything go all right?” Charlie asked.

  “Reckon so.” Billy shot him a measuring glance from under the brim of his hat. “Reckon tomorrow morning someone’s gonna find your Nate Holloway behind some rain barrels in the alley behind Second Street. He never made a peep.”

  Charlie studied him thoughtfully. “How’d you do it?”

  Billy tapped the pommel of his Bowie. “Slipped up behind him and ran nine inches of steel through his kidney, liver, heart, and lungs. Man can’t scream when that flap of muscle in the chest is cut.”

  Charlie glanced down at Billy’s side. “Don’t see no blood.”

  “I spent my whole life gutting hogs, Charlie. Man’s no different, and sometimes a heap easier.”

  “Can’t pay you until I got proof he’s dead.”

  Billy nodded. “Fair enough.”

  Charlie shook his head, reached into his pocket, and slipped a small cloth sack across the table. Billy retrieved it, felt the familiar outline of coins beneath the fabric, and dropped it into his vest pocket. “Thought you needed proof.”

  “You read like a book. When you come off a kill you got a glow. It’s in your eyes, the set of your mouth. You got an inner light like you was about to explode. You ain’t never as full of yourself as you are right now.”

  “So you got something else for me?”

  “Reckon he does,” a voice called from the back door.

  Billy’s hand dropped instinctively to his Remington. Then he smiled as Danny Goodman stepped in from the darkness. “Ain’t seen you since who flung the chunk.”

  “Heard you been keeping to the thick brush, Billy.” Danny offered his hand, a silly grin on his wet lips.

  “I don’t spend much time around Lampasas these days. Not that anybody down there would know me, but they’d sure as hell know Locomotive.”

  “Locomotive?” Danny asked as he slipped into the empty chair and poured from the bottle into the mug. “Wasn’t that Dewley’s horse?”

  “Was. Turns out I kilt that animal with a neck shot, so I figure I own it. ’Sides, I sort of liked the name. Fits a big black horse, don’t you think? I got tired of riding these broke-down old nags and took me a solid mount from a man what suddenly had no use for a big black gelding.” Billy grinned. “Besides, I set the damn barn on fire on the way out so the damn horse might just as well go with me as burn to cinders.”

  “Still a stone-cold killer?” Danny asked.

  “That bother you?”

  “Nope.” Danny pursed his lips, staring down into the whiskey. “Given where we been and what we seen, reckon that’s about all we know anymore.”

  “I’ll tell ye why we lost,” the scarecrow at the elders’ table finally cried in his reedy voice. “It was the damn deserters. Bush soldiers. Cowards that ran an’ hid. Weak-livered bastards what couldn’t stand the gaff. Piss fer blood. That’s what they had.”

  Danny turned, snapping, “And you got shit between your ears that’s leaking outta your damn mouth, you dried-up old cunt!”

  The room was instantly silent.

  “Danny?” Charlie warned.

  Billy’s grin began to widen, his heart ticking up as he tightened his grip on his revolver.

  The elders were staring in disbelief, the tall one, his drink still elev
ated, had a startled look, as if he’d been slapped.

  “You talking to me?” the reedy scarecrow asked, clambering uncertainly to his feet. “I fought Mexicans and Comanche for the Republic, you little wet-eared pup! In my day I coulda whipped a dozen of you and your kind. An’ dun it with one hand tied ahin’t my back. I otta—”

  Danny swiveled in his chair, his revolver casually in his hand. “Don’t got to get physical, old man. Somebody give this old goat a pistol. We’ll do it like a duel. Count to three and shoot. Age won’t make no difference, just plain old guts and steady nerves.”

  “Enough!” McMannaman roared from behind the bar. “Ain’t gonna be no shooting in my place.”

  The double-barreled shotgun that had magically appeared on the bar planks clicked as McMannaman eared back the hammers. “Now, this being Texas, and you both being Southern gentlemen who shot off yer mouths, you’ll each say yer sorry to the other, fergit it, and go on with yer drinking. If you can’t, you’ll both haul yer sorry damn carcasses out of my place and never set foot in here again. Right, laddies?”

  Danny stared woodenly at the old man.

  “Do it,” Charlie murmured.

  Danny stood, reholstering his Remington, and offered his hand. “Mister, I killed my share of Yankees in Missouri and Kansas. Seven of ’em. And a couple men that needed killing in Arkansas. Maybe some was cowards. Not me.”

  The old man worked his receded jaws, white bristles standing out from his shrunken cheeks and chin. “Reckon ye did, boy. Reckon ye got grit.” And the old man offered his hand.

  Billy felt the building thrill begin to ebb. He let his hand shift from the butt of his pistol. In the other corner, the cowboys were looking uneasily at each other, talking low as they discussed the near fight.

  “Need a cup here,” Charlie called to McMannaman.

  The latter tossed it, Charlie grabbing it out of the air with one hand. He reached for the bottle and poured Billy a full cup of whiskey. Billy, continuing to grin, took a swallow and recognized alcohol seasoned with tobacco juice and hot peppers for color and taste.