by Aaron Gwyn
The wolf came on. She saw now he was not entirely gray. He had golden markings on his ears, a strip of gold down his snout. His cheeks were white and there was white fur on his chest. As he came closer all her fear vanished. She knelt on the ground, waiting for him, and when he walked up and looked her in the eye, she seized hold of him and laid her cheek to his.
His nose was cold and wet, but his coat was very warm and she could feel the mighty boom of his heart. She stroked his head and spoke of all that’d befallen her and how changed she was.
When she’d finished, he yawned and licked his chops, then bent down and rested his chin atop his paws, staring up at her with his shining eyes. And then she was awake.
She lay there for a time, letting the dream wash over her, the glory of it. She expected that as soon as she opened her eyes her life would crash back in and sweep this feeling away—the sight of Sam, the sense of him.
So, she opened them slowly, expecting heartache to crush the breath out of her, bracing herself against it.
Robert was standing there, his feet at the very edge of her bedroll. Not touching it. Not touching her. Just standing there very quiet, staring down.
She lay still as she could with her heart jumping in her chest.
Do not frighten him. Do not so much as blink.
It was too dark to see his face; the stars above his head were like bright flowers, an endless field of them.
After several minutes, he squatted and bent closer. She could just make out the shape of his nose, the gleam of his green eyes. His nostrils flared. He held both hands to his chest as if shielding them from a fire.
Then he reached out and put his tiny palm to her face.
His hand was soft, a little cool, the touch of some woodland creature, his fingers light against her cheek.
Then, just as quietly as he’d come, he stood up and made his way back over to the pallet next to Duncan.
She lay there with the blood singing in her ears, speaking to Sam inside her head, blessing him, thanking him for coming back.
DUNCAN LAMMONS
—LAWRENCE, KANSAS, 1861—
Yesterday, the Commonwealth of Virginia voted to take herself out of the American Union, following Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and South Carolina into madness.
The latter of these states was the first to declare her independence, thinking that by Mr. Lincoln’s election she would lose her slaves and their masters might be required to perform an honest day’s labor. Our new president is a Kentuckian, but it is feared the bluegrass state will secede as well. North Carolina and Tennessee will surely follow. As will Maryland. The capital will be cut off, surrounded by a sea of slavers. And soon, needing its cotton for her mills, Queen Victoria will come in on the side of Jeff Davis’s Confederacy and the entire world will be at war.
What would Pap say had he lived to see all this? As I recall, he auspicated such a disaster would befall our country if we didn’t atone for the crime of human bondage.
Perhaps he’d merely quote Brother Paul’s letter to the Romans, as he often did to me: the wages of sin are death.
Let us hope it does not come to that—the demise of these once United States. Though I myself spent a good many years trying to get clear of America, now, seeing her torn in two, I shudder with terror. Is that not something? If the citizens of these rival republics commence to open fire—as they did in Charleston harbor last month—there will be red rivers running through the land. The confederate batteries that shelled Fort Sumter on April 12th did so as a show of force; the only casualty was a hogbacked mare. LeRoy Walker of Alabama has said there will be no effusion of blood whatsoever, offering to wipe up any that is spilled with his own pocket handkerchief. Others take a similar line, most of them politicians who have never fired a rifle nor seen men ripped apart by bullets.
They are fools, every last one, having no idea what occurs when ranks of men open up on each other with rifled muskets. Ask the Mexicans what that weapon can do in the hands of a determined marksman. Many of our generals still believe you must close with your enemy and give him the bayonet—this in an age where men can easily kill at two hundred yards.
It will be butchery beyond what any of us can conceive.
* * *
I had a letter from Noah Smithwick some months back, just after Texas joined the Southern Confederacy.
His letter read:
Well, old friend, the thing is joined. Texas is too small to be a nation, and too large to be an insane asylum. Did you ever think to see such a day? I have sold my farmland for two thousand dollars, but this mill I built, I cannot unload at any price. I’m giving it outright to my nephew, who says he won’t run from his own country. I hope the decision will not cost him, but he was never one to take on advisers.
Mark my word—the South cannot win this war. Before news came that we’d thrown our hat in with the rebels, I took to the stump and told my neighbors as much, and now I am branded a traitor and might as well bear the mark of Cain. Can you imagine me making speeches? I gave it my best effort, but men I have known for thirty years seem to have changed in the twinkling of an eye.
Here is my suggestion: sell what you can, buy yourselves a wagon, and join our procession for the Golden State. Do not stay here among these bedlamites. California will be a fresh start, and a war will never touch us there.
Your Most Obedient Servant,
Noah Smithwick
I wrote back and told him I am too old for travel, but that is hardly the case. At fifty-three, I feel much as I did at forty. Some days, a good deal better.
The truth is I do not think the coming conflict can be escaped—not in California, not in the Yukon. It will place its bloody handprint on every heart and hearthstone.
* * *
We came to Lawrence in October of ’56—Suss, Robert, and myself—just after Sheriff Samuel Jones and his pro-slavery ruffians had sacked the city and destroyed the offices of the Kansas Free State and the Herald of Freedom, smashing their presses and throwing their type into the river. Jones’s men carried banners proclaiming SOUTHERN RIGHTS and SUPREMACY OF THE WHITE RACE. They went on to burn the Free State Hotel, Pomeroy’s venerable establishment, and then set Mr. Robinson’s home afire, the gentleman who would become our first governor.
Suss and I hadn’t the least notion of any of this until the day of our arrival. Lawrence had been founded by Free Soilers from Massachusetts and what I knew of the town came from its papers, copies of which drifted down to me in the Territories where we’d been hiding for the past nine years, fearing McClusky might mount another search.
It had been frontier living all over again, the only difference being that the Indians I had once hunted in Texas now provided sanctuary for our strange, little family; without their kindness, we might well have starved.
The more I heard about Lawrence, the more convinced I was it had been founded especially for us: an abolitionist stronghold on the plains. And so, in the fall of ’56, we packed our things and rode north.
The town still bore signs of the devastation that had been visited upon it four months prior, but the citizens received us with great cordiality. I took a job at the livery—an establishment I purchased two years later—and built us a rough cabin on Massachusetts Street. Robert was thirteen at the time and soon he was working alongside me at the stable, trimming hooves and salving set fasts. He’s always had considerable affection for animals, and they for him, but I’ve never seen anyone so gifted with horses. That boy can calm a fractious colt or fork some highbinder who’s never felt a saddle’s touch. I saw him get aboard this one mockey bitch who’d thrown every man who’d tried to mount her, sitting her bareback like she was a lady-broke mare. He’ll take some poor plug you wouldn’t give a nickel for and in two weeks’ time have her looking like an absolute topper. Where he learned all this, I’ve no idea.
&
nbsp; The Herald sent their reporter round to do a story on him, knowing my special regard for their periodical and newspapers generally. There was a time when Mama couldn’t get me to read newsprint with a hickory switch, but I’ve become a great supporter of the press in these latter days—or at least of Republican-operated papers. My allegiance to the Democrats faded with the Fugitive Slave Act and expired altogether with Justice Taney’s Dred Scott decision—the party of Jackson has become the party of fire-eating slavers. From here on, it is Mr. Lincoln and the Republicans for me.
City life never sorted with my temperament, but here in Lawrence I am able to get my hands on both Greeley’s Tribune and Garrison’s Liberator, as well as half a dozen other journals. Suss has wearied of all this politics and newspaper reading. She prefers her novels and books of poetry. When I go to read her an article about various goings on in the nation, she will clap palms to her ears and close her eyes.
“Tell me what good comes of fretting all of this,” she says. “Can you do aught about it?”
Her eyes flicker behind her spectacles. She is grown softer in middle age. Her hair has silvered. She looks like the matron of some venerated institution that’s not yet been conceived.
* * *
Since December, when word of secession started limping through the land, I sat down at the table and began to write everything I could recall of my life in and out of this country, wanting to put down a thorough record lest the world that used to be is burned to cinders. No doubt, there are more capable hands than mine, but I ask myself: just how many have seen the things I’ve seen? Most of the original Texan settlers have shuffled off this mortal coil. As have the men who rode in the first ranging companies. Captain Walker met his end down in Mexico. Uncle Ike died last year from bilious fever. Noah tells me that Levi English still survives—he was commissioner of Atascosa County for a time—but like most of the old rangers, Levi can neither read nor write.
If a history of the Rangers is ever written, it will likely be by men looking to smooth over our many defects and present us as unvarnished champions. Or perhaps by someone wishing to paint us with the brush of knavery, erasing any act of kindness we ever performed. This nation has no use for frail and fickle humans—it desires only tales of heroes and villains.
I write nation: it is difficult to remember that there are two Americas now. Perhaps that is the reason for my fascination with the papers; I can scarely believe the reality of what’s happening from one day to the next. I keep waiting for the article which will tell me all of this has been some great misunderstanding. Or an elaborate prank.
Noah says the South cannot win this war, but I am less sanguine about the Union’s chances of success. And if these new Confederate States draw Britain or France into an alliance—as they are sure to do—Mr. Lincoln will be forced to sue for peace.
What if the outcome is worse still? What if Jeff Davis manages to sack Washington as Sheriff Jones did to Lawrence? The North itself could be enslaved; the President hanged as a traitor to the white race; these western territories put under the iron yoke of Southern rule.
Those are the thoughts that startle sleep from my eyes and set me pacing.
* * *
This morning, Jim Colliers brought a stallion to the livery, looking to have it put down. He couldn’t bear to shoot the horse himself nor could he sell the beast, knowing its viciousness.
I looked out to the corral where they’d managed to secure the creature. What a magnificent animal! A palomino with a shining golden tail, about sixteen hands, muscles rippling like waves beneath its golden coat.
“What all’s wrong with him, Jim?”
“He bites,” Jim said. “He bit Sarah in the back of the head, took out a hunk of hair the size of your fist.”
I shook my head. There’s very little you can do with a such a horse, and when Robert came back in that afternoon, I told him we might be forced to shoot it.
“What if I could get him gentled?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “And then maybe you could go to work on some of these mountain lions that’ve been taking down folks’ cattle.”
I watched his brow furrow and his lips go tight. He is eighteen now, tall and thickly muscled, his hair cropped close, skin the color of tea.
“Did you clean the stalls this morning?” I asked.
“Not just yet.”
“Well,” I said, “see if you can gentle those.”
He took a pitchfork and went to work. I walked over to Brigg’s Hotel to pick up our supper.
When I got back, the stables were empty, the pitchfork leaning against the wall. I knew exactly where Robert had got to and I hustled on outside.
He stood there in the corral, staring up at the stallion which was now bridled with a saddle on its back.
“Bob,” I called, “you come out of there!”
I’d no sooner said this than the horse went for him, rearing on its hind legs and then lunging forward, snapping its teeth in a way that recalled an alligator. If Bob wasn’t so quick on his feet, the beast would’ve bitten into his face like an apple.
But Robert sidestepped the horse, reached over and snatched the reins. He slid up close and hoisted himself onto the stallion’s back.
Well, the horse liked that about as much as you’d expect. It commenced to haul hell out of its shuck, bucking and turning at the same time. I was moving toward the corral fast as my legs would carry me. What did I think I’d accomplish once I got there?
The stallion turned and shot out its hind legs, released a loud scream and started kicking up clouds of dust like smoke from a brush fire. And Robert clutching the reins, perched high up on the saddle, the golden horse continuing to buck and spin. I expected Bob to be thrown at any moment and the odds of being trampled in such circumstances are very high indeed.
But he wasn’t thrown or trampled either one. The stallion broke into a lope, circling the corral once, twice, then, on its third circuit, it slowed to a walk and bucked a final time. Then it stopped and stood there, quaking, slaver dripping from its furious mouth.
The sun was blazing down the western sky and the dust the stallion had raised drifted in the evening glare. The horse blew and tossed its head. Robert sat there, his back straight and his hands loose on the reins.
Then he turned and saw me. His green eyes flashed. He nodded and smiled just as Sam had once nodded and smiled. I knew in that moment that this little town could not contain him anymore than Arkansas Territory could’ve held onto his father. Someday he would make his way out across this beautiful, terrible land, pursuing his fortune as I’d set out at a similar age to hunt mine, passing out of the country and finding it in myself, passing out of myself to find love and heartache, mercy and terror.
I stood there watching him.
I had never been so frightened.
I had never had such hope.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to thank my agent Peter Straus and my editor Kent Carroll for their faith, guidance, and hard work on my behalf.
Thanks also to the wonderful folks at Rogers, Coleridge & White and the fine staff at Europa Editions—Raonaid Ryn, especially—for their tireless labor.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aaron Gwyn is the author of three novels. He is also the author of the collection Dog on the Cross, a finalist of the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Esquire, McSweeney’s, Best of the West, and Every True Pleasure: LGBTQ Tales of North Carolina. He teaches English at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
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