Woe to Live On: A Novel

by Daniel Woodrell

  “ ‘I wonder, do you still favor Tennyson? John Greenleaf Whittier seems more rare to me. Do you remember when we studied Wordsworth at Miss Fielding’s and you said his was God’s voice strained through a man? Whittier is the same to me.

  “ ‘Your last letter thrilled me. I hope you do marry Mr. Anthony but I believe that even in Kansas he must first ask you.

  “ ‘There is no one here for me to marry. The men all talk too fondly of this war for me. I believe they find it much more interesting than me with my pince-nez and poetry.’ ”

  I cut the letter off. The war was yet on, a continuous enterprise. At any time I might be forced to put my life at auction and barter the price as high as good shooting makes possible. I didn’t want any flickers of goodwill toward my targets to tremble my aim.

  “That’s enough reading,” I said. “Has it been an hour?”

  “No. The hour ain’t gone yet.”

  The bread sat on the log between us, so we ripped it up and spread butter on it with our fingers. The taste was all to the good, and the sun was skulking off behind the hills and gloom spreading before us. Holt smacked away at a bread chunk and I mimicked him.

  “Do you know my name?” he asked after a noisy swallow.

  “It is Holt.”

  “No, my whole name.” His tone was low and direct. “My whole name is Daniel Holt. Daniel, like the lion’s-den man. Do you know his story?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. “That man was in a pinch but got hisself out of it by standing tall.”

  “That’s right. You have heard it. That’s why I am named after him.”

  Gloom took over. The sun fled the neighborhood. Full dark swept away my vision. Coldness came up on me quick and I shivered.

  “Is it an hour now?” I asked.

  “Nigh on to it.”

  That is when we heard the first shot. The faint crack ambled to us from a distance, then several more came in a bunch.

  “The Evanses’ place,” I said.

  “Got to be.”

  We scrambled down the dark slope, using our hands as shields, bouncing from tree to tree to dirt and up again, sliding toward the dugout.

  I jerked the rough plank door open and jumped into the room. Instantly I wished I had knocked. They lay by the fire, Jack Bull’s britches around his ankles and Sue Lee’s skirt covering her face.

  “Gunshots at the Evanses’ place,” I said. Holt started in and I shouted, “Stay out, Holt!”

  I faced away from the fallen. They made rustling noises and murmured.

  “I heard them,” Jack Bull said. “I heard them. You can turn around now.”

  He went to buckling his pistols on and she smiled painfully, for there was no joke prompting the expression. Her skirt covered what it ought to. She walked over to me, her cheeks all scarlet, and placed a hand on my shoulder.

  “Oh, Jake,” she said.

  She looked on me sad—sad for me, I realized, like she believed she had just boiled down the last mess of my baby-fat illusions.

  I shook her hand off.

  “You stay here,” I told her. “Out of the way. There’s going to be a fight.”

  We dragged our mounts out and rode without saddles. The beasts had not been much exercised and moved sluggishly for such fine animals. We picked down the hill to a dry creek that led toward the house.

  “Can you put a number to them?” Jack Bull asked.

  “No,” I answered. “Not too many.”

  The fine hand of villainy soon had light rising up where we knew the house stood. I hoped the wide cart of mother was not hurt, or little Honeybee. Jackson Evans would be in pain or past it all. I was sure of that.

  When we drew closer we could hear shouts and laughter and a high keening wail. Despite these dismal sounds we scouted toward the house slowly.

  On my left was Holt, a dark, capable comrade, and to my right my near brother, as reliable a fighter as ever was spawned by a terrible era, and the sensation of being with them on the prod was one of pride and remorseless energy. It felt like an old habit come back, and it was welcome.

  Here I fit in—nay, I was necessary.

  Before we quite reached the house we heard the hooves of the villains beating off. Thus encouraged, we sped up.

  The burning house lit the scene too well. The bottom rooms billowed with flames and choking smoke rolled out. Evans lay in the yard, peaceful of pose but ripped of body. The mother stood over him, her face to the house, gleams in her spectacles. Honeybee clung to her skirts, a hysterical waif.

  His bad expectations had proved correct for Evans. He was gone over the river, bless his soul.

  “Oh, boys!” the mother howled. “They killed him, killed him, killed him!”

  “How many are there?” Jack Bull asked.

  “He is dead! What will I do? What will I do?”

  I heard a rider on the road and thought it might be a straggler, so I went out to meet it. It was George Clyde, all out of breath.

  “I heard the fracas,” he said. “I thought you boys might be in a spot.”

  His coming cheered me. No odds buckled him down.

  “How many?” Jack Bull shouted.

  “Oh! Oh!” the new widow went. “A dozen or less. Vermin all.”

  “Well, shit, let’s get them,” Clyde said, and on down the road we went.

  I checked my pistols as Old Fog’s heart thumped between my legs. I had four loaded and ready. Our several pistols, and the many shots they afforded us over rifles, was the ace that allowed us to gamble with much larger groups. Close in we were mean with them, and many good things had come of that.

  All kinds of fear and pride welled in me. If the mother had said they numbered forty, I believe we would still have given them chase. I was awful and my comrades were worse, but at times like these we made a wonderful company.

  Down the dirt we pounded, hooves rumbling, no secrecy to cloak us at all. It did not matter if they heard us, for a fight was what we sought. This must always be admitted of us—for desperate dash and cruelty we were unbettered men.

  The night had no shimmery glow to it, only darkness. Little could be seen. The ground was hard and the horses labored to keep the pace. Trees loomed over the lane and swaying spectral shadows lurched my heart.

  Even foul villains have some sense. They waited on us and suddenly the night lit up as rifles banged away. We were as invisible to them as they were to us. The rounds whizzed ominously and we fired back at the flashes. After the first volley they rode in to mix, and the fight took place at huggy distances. This was a mistake.

  “Traitors!” shouted a citizen vermin. “Kill the traitors!”

  All the mortal frolic had mounts rearing and screaming, and Old Fog was caught up in the mood. He pranced and bucked. I fired as best I could.

  One fellow was directly in front of me, so near I could smell his dinner, and I know I rid his horse of some hideous weight. He fell and I pegged him where he landed.

  “Aw, hell,” he whined, yellowed by my diligence.

  A swung rifle splatted my knee.

  It hurt.

  Shouts and cries resounded. I shot and shot and willed myself into a smallish target. I believed I could not be hit, so absent had I decided myself to be.

  The lane was now redone, made up with a couple of shot horses and maybe three villains.

  Jack Bull Chiles was the nearest shadow to me. I knew the sound when he was hit. Even had he not cried out, I knew by the sound. His right arm flopped like a wet rag flung on a rail to dry. His pistol fell and his left hand slapped over the wound.

  “You are hurt,” I said.

  He moaned.

  Clyde, Holt and me chased the Federals a little ways, for they had tired of us quick. My knee already felt like a melon gone to mush. Luckily we did not chase far.

  Jack Bull was hunched over. His breaths were fearsome deep things and he shook.

  Clyde was in a state. He had dismounted and was pumping more lead into the dropped. Ho
lt was still on horseback, jerking around, looking for something that he did not see.

  “Jack Bull is hurt,” I said. “I’ve got to get him home.”

  I grabbed the reins of Jack Bull’s horse and turned about, leading my near brother to the dugout.

  His moans and cries accompanied me.

  When I dragged him into the dugout Sue Lee was there and screamed. My mushed leg straggled behind me, and there was windblown blood all over.

  “Not this!” Sue Lee wailed. “Lord, please not this!”

  In the light he looked bad. His arm was burst at the elbow, and cracked bone and torn meat and blood all showed. His eyes had crawled back in his head, leaving only the fluttering whites visible.

  “He’ll make it,” I said. I was borrowing confidence on credit from faith. It wasn’t really an attitude I had much of. But I needed it now, so I got it where I could. “I’ve seen worse-shot men do handsprings in a month.”

  The truth was his armbone was in shambles and a big bite of meat had been took—he was all shot to hell.

  I set a pan of water on the fire. I took my big knife out and rested the blade on coals.

  Sue Lee had grabbed her panic by the neck and choked it down to sensible action. She tied his arm above the wound to stifle the flow of blood.

  My knee ached and swoll up so I could not bend the leg. It is a bad thing to have limbs that don’t mind. Try as I might, I could not make the thing do right. Old friend agony was back with me.

  In not too long a time George Clyde and Holt returned. They stamped in, looking grim and anxious. Clyde checked on Jack Bull and his first words were, “That fire has got to go out.”

  “I’m heating water,” I said.

  “Heat it quick. They’ll come back with more men if they got them. We can’t have a fire.”

  “He is bad,” I said, nodding at Jack Bull.

  “I see that. We’ll have to take that arm off.”

  This horrified me.

  “No!” I said. “We can heal it. He’ll need it.”

  Clyde shook his head at me.

  “Dutchy, we got no medical items or doctor sense amongst the whole group of us.” He began to pace. “I can’t go shanghai us a sawbones, neither. Federals are likely to be on us by sunup.”

  “We’ll care for him,” Sue Lee said. There was a sheet of ice over her eyes and her lips flinched as she spoke. I think she was starting to believe she was a jinx to her beau. “I can nurse him with Jake.”

  “As you say,” Clyde said. “But you watch out green rot don’t get started on him. Once it does it’s over.”

  Holt sat near Jack Bull and watched him closely.

  “It looks not too good, Jake,” he said.

  “God damn it! Don’t nobody say that again.” I had about heard all the bad news I could tolerate. You look at a bad thing and say it’s bad so you know it’s bad, then you forget it and go on. That’s the only way.

  12

  WELL, SUE LEE and me together were about as good a doctor as a blind drunk moron from Egypt would be. I felt we came up shy of the mark. We washed his mangled right arm, then I took the red hot knife and burned the ragged wound closed. He screamed and jacked up and Holt shoved him down and the smell don’t bear discussion.

  Rough medicine was all I knew. I hoped it would work. Hope, I was learning, is a hardy comrade but not too trustworthy. It wouldn’t do to count on him.

  The dugout was black. Clyde had snuffed the fire and Holt was posted outside keeping watch. George could actually go to sleep, so he did. Sue Lee and me sat over my near brother, listening to him moan lowly, ready to smother his sounds if Federals came close.

  I felt sick. My leg was a throbbing lame extremity. The idea that I might be crippled came and went. It seemed a selfish concern compared to Jack Bull’s condition. He could die.

  That point came home to me. To die had always been the trump card of fate, but it hadn’t seemed likely to be played. Now, with him on the dirt, curled in pain, shattered of bone and minus some decent meat, it really did.

  Finally Sue Lee fell asleep, one arm across Jack Bull’s body. That left me alone and awake, listening tightly for the next wrong event to come stalking along in squadrons.

  Long before new light hit, the dugout was cold. I covered the widow and the wounded, and shivered in my boots, observing the way my very breath wisped away from me. It seemed my whole life was jammed up and coughing globs, and this choking soul of mine had to be spit out in awful little spittles.

  You can’t rest that way.

  I never did.

  The world broke new again, and day sounds replaced the black quiet. The dugout was horrid with expectations. Only Clyde was rested well, and Federals and death seemed so likely that I just sat where I was, weak and sleepy, so scared I barely moved.

  Jack Bull was washed down in color. His breaths bellowed and his eyes rolled around in his head. In daylight the wound was ugly and the signs of idiot doctoring looked just as bad.

  Holt came in and said, “They is men on the road.”

  “How many?” Clyde asked. George went about his daily habits almost as usual.

  “Several. But they ain’t come into the woods.”

  “Keep a watch. I want to fight away from here if we got to fight.”

  Red had gotten into Sue Lee’s eyes. She was wan and forlorn. The girl had pluck, but she was being sorely tested. How much bad she could take I did not know, but I hoped it was an awful lot, for that seemed to be her portion. The wound kept her busy. She washed at it, then rubbed grease over the rip.

  Sometimes she raised his good hand and kissed the fingers. Her hair fell across her face and she whipped it back, then lifted his palm and licked it.

  Her deeds often clashed with her face, for they seemed too sweet to be matched with her wild pretty look.

  “What came of Mrs. Evans and Honeybee?” I asked. It had not occurred to me before. That made me blink with shame at the narrow field of my concern.

  “The Willards took them up,” Clyde said. “I reckon they will all be heading out of here by now.”

  “The Willards, too?”

  “Oh, yes. They are ready to go south, clear roads or not. The idea that they could be next was hanging heavy on them.”

  We could not have a fire. It was clammy in the ground. I stared at Jack Bull’s arm every little bit, studying it from all the angles as if I might understand what I saw. What could I do? I was ignorant but I knew it, so I would not play the fool by applying medicines of my own invention just to appear smart.

  I reckon I looked wounded, too, dragging my sluggish leg about. Sue Lee sat next to me and whispered, “He is bad, but how are you feeling?”

  Her concern startled me. I did not reply.

  “Your leg,” she said. “It must hurt.”

  “Oh, it does,” I answered. “I’ve been here before, though.”

  “Can I help it?” she asked. There were dirt streaks on her cheeks, and her skin had bleached to a noble shade of pale.

  “No.” I patted her arm. “Try to rest yourself.”

  Her head shook and she grinned tightly.

  “I doubt that,” she said.

  As time passed I thought of many things. Old Evans had went to Heaven instead of Texas, and a childish notion came to me: I wondered if we could bury him. It was out of the question, but I thought of it still. Such a Christian act might have soothed me, but they are so hard to perform when you are surrounded by circumstances.

  The Federals did not come. This surprised me. They had to know we were somewhere in the neighborhood. Perhaps they figured we had fled. A pleasant thought would have been to think they found us so fierce they would rather avoid us, but I knew it was not true. About the same amount of courage was in them as in us, and there is no use in tall-talking to the contrary.

  But this day was not to be our last, for whatever reason. As is the way with days, this one passed. Night fell. We lit a small candle. The dugout went from twilight ch
ill to midnight cold. Jack Bull was buffeted about by agony, and fever gripped his person and made him do rambling talk. Most of his utterances were predictable—moans and so forth—but a few whole sentences splattered out of him.

  “Do you hear the fish?” he asked of no one this side of Eternity.

  I could hardly stomach it. He was bad off, and any improvement was days away.

  George Clyde said, “Maybe I should try to get us a doctor.”

  “Where from?” I asked.

  “There is one in Kingsville.”

  “That is fifteen miles. You can’t cover it in one night.”

  “I know that, Dutchy.” Clyde just wanted to be doing something. His energy was immense. “But I could lay up near there, then try to drag him back the next night.”

  “He may not want to come.”

  “Oh, I reckon he’ll come. I have a special way of asking that works real good.”

  “Ah,” I said, and nodded. “That might do.”

  We sat in the gloom and pondered this proposed venture. I didn’t believe it could work. There were guns in Kingsville, and Missouri doctors were not new to this sort of situation.

  “Will you take Holt?”

  “No,” Clyde answered. “Less men, less noise. Besides, if I can’t get the doc, I’m heading on to Captain Perdee’s. Holt’ll help you and the widow.”

  “I wish you luck,” I said.

  In not much longer than it takes to tell it, he was gone. He rode off through the timber toward Kingsville, maybe to shanghai some mercy.

  As he left, hope was with me, but I was getting suspicious of it, and did not toss a big embrace around it.

  None of us were finicky eaters but dirt did not set with us, so we ate potatoes. There was no fire to bake them in or boil them over, so we ate them raw like apples and dreamed they were peaches.

  Jack Bull Chiles could not chew. By the morning light I assessed his weakness. It was all he was was weak. The wound needed to be dressed and flushed by hot water, but there was none.

  He had to eat.

  “Sue Lee,” I said. “We have got to feed him.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. She was a run-down female. “But how?”