This Old World

by Steve Wiegenstein

  The lecture tour had proved that. Nobody wanted to hear about Daybreak or their ideals. Charlotte was the attraction, and it wasn’t her opinions that had mattered most of the time; it was the novelty of them, the man-and-wife team, lecturing on suffrage to the scoffing crowds, more a performing act than a true lyceum talk. But the goal had been accomplished. They had brought home money, plenty of it, enough to finance the colony until the fall harvest. After that—well, they would worry about after that when after that came.

  The farther east they had gone, the less they had to deal with ridicule and egg-throwers; in Boston the crowds argued more about tactics than about the rightness of the cause. Turner could tell that Charlotte liked the debate; she stayed late taking on all comers, as he had once done, talking to anyone who would talk, while he took Adam back to the hotel room, returning for her once the boy was safely in a maid’s care. He knew the role made him a figure of fun. He’d seen his caricature in the New York Herald, with an apron over his officer’s uniform, trailing the figure of his strutting wife with a basket of flowers to cast in her path. But he didn’t mind. The limelight no longer gave him pleasure. The longer the tour went on, the more he dreaded those nights, standing before a hall filled with strangers, men with hostile faces and angry questions. One night in Baltimore, a man had rushed toward the stage waving his fist, incensed by something he had said, and Turner had felt as if he were back in battle, summoning every fiber of his nerve to stay in place, not run from the scene. He had found himself five feet behind the lectern, unconsciously thrown back, and had to force himself to step forward again. Charlotte could have the limelight, as far as he was concerned. And now someone was writing her, wanting her to come to Kansas, where there was a big fight shaping up over suffrage.

  The first thing Turner noticed as they approached the village was the smell of camphor drifting from the graveyard. More of Wilkinson’s flimflam. It was a wonder Mrs. Smith had put up with it as long as she had, wintering in Daybreak on the wagonloads of tinned food and Parker’s Tonic she had shipped in from Philadelphia.

  They stopped the wagon at the Wickmans’ house to greet John Wesley and Mary; Adam and the other children had already disappeared. As always, Wickman greeted him warmly but formally, in his mild way. They walked to look over the fields. Evening was falling; the ride from the train depot at Pilot Knob had taken them the better part of the day.

  “You are well?” Turner asked. “And the children?”

  “Oh, yes. Newton was a fine help. He’s a boy to make you proud.”

  “Perhaps before too long he’ll stop by and say hello,” Turner said dryly.

  “Oh, he will,” Wickman said. “Whatever fancies the boy may have, when he acts, he acts responsible. He does near the work of a man.”

  They stood at the edge of the cornfield. The ground was plowed and dragged, ready to be planted. Turner squatted and crushed a clod between his fingers. It was damp, too damp for this time of year. “Late planting this spring,” he said.

  Wickman grunted in agreement. They remained there, sniffing the air, unwilling to go inside.

  “Dathan’s taken a wife,” Wickman finally said. “Indian gal from somewhere.”

  This news smelled like trouble. “Are they living in Daybreak?” Turner asked.

  “Not that I can tell. He’s in and out of that house, but I never see her. I think they’re up at Creek Nation most of the time.”

  “How do you know he’s married, then? Maybe they just jumped the broom.”

  “He came around and introduced her! Just like Commodore Vanderbilt on a social call. The missus didn’t know what to do.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Gave ’em some shortcake. What else would you do?”

  They smiled together at the absurdity of doing anything else, knowing that for most, Mary’s response would have been the absurd one. “Not going over well around the county, I would guess.”

  “I’m not for sure anybody else knows or cares.”

  “If they knew, they’d care. Freedom is one thing, mixing of the races is another.”

  “Minding my own business has kept me out of a great deal of trouble,” Wickman said. “I recommend it to the general.”

  They said nothing for a while. Finally Turner said, “The trip went well. Good hard cash for the colony. It’s in the wagon.”

  It felt comfortable to stand there with Wickman, communicating the way men do, talking about objects and processes. Turner realized that he had lost his need to retreat to the far ends of the valley; maybe his sojourn in the cities had done him some good after all.

  “Glad to hear that,” Wickman said. “We read a few articles about your tour. Cash is low around here right now. Grindstaff is happy to carry us, of course.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Turner said with a grimace. “He’ll carry us all the way to the poor house and even help us with the auction.”

  “He’s a businessman, all right.”

  “Everyone’s a businessman these days, except us.”

  “What, you’ve regained your faith in capital?”

  Turner shook his head. “Just feeling a bit outmoded at the moment.” He brushed off his hands. “Let’s walk up and see Mr. Mercadier’s grave.”

  As Turner and Wickman walked up the valley toward the graveyard, they saw Wilkinson emerge from his tent and walk toward them in the dim light. He met them halfway down the slope.

  “Gentlemen.” Wilkinson nodded gravely. “Mr. Turner, it’s a pleasure. News from the world?”

  “None to speak of,” Turner said. “The work of reconstruction has hardly begun in some places. Mr. Johnson is no Abe Lincoln, I’m afraid.”

  Wilkinson sighed. “Gentlemen, speaking of reconstruction, I have failed here. I have tried everything in my powers, and Mr. Smith cannot be restored to a viewable state.” He glanced at Mrs. Smith’s cabin in the village. “I must tell madame.”

  Turner shook his hand. “Good luck with that.”

  Wilkinson shook Wickman’s hand as well. “I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. That coffin you built for me is as fine a piece of work as I’ve seen. You should come back to Philadelphia and work for me.”

  “Thank you, no,” Wickman said. “I came from back East and I like it fine here.”

  “There’s good money in this line of work. Real good money.”

  “I’m not interested in the money. That’s the joy of this place. I don’t have to be interested in the money.”

  Wilkinson gave the two of them a humoring smile. “You people are a mystery,” he said. “If I hadn’t lived among you, I’d say you were a dangerous lot of radicals.”

  “Maybe you should write a book,” Turner said. “I hear that travels among the exotics are big sellers these days.”

  “Just an ’umble undertaker,” Wilkinson said. “You’re the great author.” He walked off down the hill toward Mrs. Smith’s cabin.

  “She’ll eat him alive,” Wickman said as they continued toward the graveyard.

  Wilkinson’s tent had blocked their view of most of the cemetery, but as they drew closer they could see around it. Someone was standing beside a new grave near the edge of the woods—it could only be Emile’s. Another step, and he recognized her: Marie.

  His heart sank. He had not wanted to see her, or at least wanted the first time he saw her to be at a time when he could prepare himself and control his feelings. He stopped and turned around. This was wrong, all wrong.

  Too late. She had seen him. He could see her stiffen and turn away. And now Wickman had caught on, and he didn’t know what to do either, and everyone was embarrassed. But here they were, with nothing to do but press forward.

  Marie kept her head turned away from him as she came down the path, seeming as she was going to walk right past them. But the path was nothing more than a wagon track. They could not simply pass.

  “I’m so sorry—” he began as they drew near. But there were congratulations to offer, too.
“But I understand there is happiness to balance the—” Nothing seemed right. He stopped.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, her face still averted. “My father was always one of your great admirers.”

  “Those cattle of your mister’s are a fine-looking breed,” Wickman observed placidly, as if there were no tension in the air.

  “Yes,” Marie said, moving to go around them. “He will be home soon.”

  And it was in her turning sidewise to pass them that Turner saw her face at last, not quite full on, but three-quarters profile in the fading light. But even that glimpse was enough to see what she was hiding: a bruise on her cheek and jaw, yellow in the center, purple around the yellow, streaks of red toward the neck, the side of her face swollen and rounded. “I must go,” she said, hurrying down the hill.

  Turner held himself in until they reached Mercadier’s grave. It was still a fresh, raw heap of red earth, mounded over, rocks and clods spilling down the hillside.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Wickman said apologetically. “I’ve seen little of the girl since she married and moved across the river. They’re having a tough time of it, so it seems.” He patted Turner’s shoulder and gestured toward the grave. “I’m sorry you missed your chance to say goodbye to old Emile. Grand old gentleman, he was. I’m working on a marker,” he said. “There was a nice piece of gray limestone I found downriver, and it shaped up real good. Need to decide what to carve on it, though.”

  Turner tried to reply, thankful for Wickman’s effort to redirect his thoughts away from the ugly thing they had just seen and for his tact in not mentioning the past that lay between them, and he managed to get out a word or two. But then something happened. His legs refused to hold him up, and his vision went away. And before he knew what was going on, he was on the ground, wallowing and writhing like a wounded snake, and he could taste dirt on his lips and in his throat even while he could hear Wickman, his voice seeming to come from a great distance although Turner knew he was kneeling right there beside him, telling him easy son, easy, you don’t really know anything, but Turner was crying out although he knew it was none of his business what went on in someone else’s family, especially this family and especially him, but he was crying out and moaning anyway, saying that he was going to kill him, the dirty Mick. He was going to kill him, break his neck, chop off his head like a goddam chicken.

  Chapter 16

  They brought Sam Hildebrand’s body by wagon from southern Illinois to Missouri for viewing with several different stories about how he had come to die. It wasn’t even clear how he had ended up in Illinois. The last Charley had heard, Hildebrand was in Texas. But the story was he had moved to Illinois, he had come out of a tavern, been recognized by the town marshal, and shot dead on the spot before he could draw a weapon. Or he had been killed in a fight inside the tavern and claimed by the marshal for the reward.

  Or he hadn’t been killed at all.

  The mood on Rockpile was glum. It had been raining steadily for a week; the creeks were swollen, forcing everyone to walk in from the high ground—Charley’s route—instead of coming up from the south. The river could no longer be forded. At Daybreak, they had tied skiffs to trees for those who had to make the crossing. Even in a skiff, crossing the river was nerve-racking; the swift current brought limbs downstream at a frightening speed, and a large scour hole had opened up where the road once sloped gently into the stream. Wouldn’t you know, Charley had thought as he fought his way across, right where that Irish son of a bitch could put in a ferry and charge everyone a dollar to cross. Despite the high water, though, the Law and Order League had a good turnout for its Sunday afternoon meeting.

  “I tell you one thing,” Horace Landsome said. “If somebody did kill him, it wasn’t a fair fight. The man ain’t been born that could best Sam Hildebrand in a fair fight.”

  Charley knew this wasn’t true. Once a fight started, luck was what killed or saved a man, mostly. He’d seen it plenty of times, a seasoned man carried away by a load of grapeshot while the raw idiot standing next to him didn’t even get his hat knocked off. But this was no time to start an argument.

  Green Pratt took the news with his usual roars of rage. Their first raid had been a success. They had hung three men, two well-known criminals who had used the war to enrich themselves and the uppity black man Pratt had picked out, given two men severe beatings, and carried a loose woman to Marble Creek and ducked her a couple dozen times. Even better, they had made the St. Louis papers, and now the Law and Order League was the talk of the state. Pratt had been eager to make a new list and spent their meetings shouting for more names, more names, despite the Federal military patrols that now rode the countryside. Charley was ready to quit the group if he could figure out how to do it without getting his own name on the list as a traitor to the cause.

  “The bastard!” Pratt cried. “The man should have been given a hero’s welcome, not run out of the state to die among strangers. What’s the name of that town? Pinckneyville? Let’s ride to Pinckneyville and give the marshal a taste of Missouri medicine.”

  “I don’t even know where Pinckneyville is,” someone said.

  “I think it’s on the Ohio River somewhere,” someone else said helpfully.

  “God damn it!” Pratt hollered out. “Shut your traps. All right, we won’t ride to Illinois. Too many damn troops between here and there anyway. Besides, plenty to do here.”

  “They’d spot us and hang us before we got halfway there,” the Ohio River man said.

  “I said shut up!” Pratt repeated. He made as if to strike the man, but changed course and hit the side of his own head instead. “We gotta go up and see Sam, that’s what we gotta do. Comfort the widow and console the orphan.”

  “His wife died last year, is what I heard,” the man said.

  This time Pratt didn’t hesitate. He cuffed the man above the ear, and in an instant the two of them were rolling on the rain-slick rocks, locked and punching. Men rushed to separate them. It was a brief flurry that ended with muttered apologies and a handshake, blood wiped from scraped skin.

  “All right,” Pratt said, huffy with embarrassment. “We’ll go see Sam. He’s up at the courthouse in Farmington. But here’s the thing. If nobody identifies him, the marshal don’t get the reward money. So even if it is Sam, we don’t say a thing.”

  Hildebrand’s body was propped against the courthouse wall in a narrow wagon bed, which Charley suspected was destined to serve as his coffin unless somebody came through with a better one. It was Sam, all right, although his head was gaping on one side from a pistol wound, and his body had begun to putrefy and swell. The group filed past a few at a time, hoping to avoid attention from the Federal troops that lounged about staring rudely at all who came.

  Hildebrand’s mother and brothers-in-law, the Hampton boys, stood on the lawn a few feet away, speaking with those who stopped. Charley shook the woman’s hand.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

  She said nothing, eyeing him suspiciously, until one of the Hampton boys leaned in. “He’s all right,” he said. “He was in the war.”

  “You ride with Sam?” she said.

  “No, ma’am,” Charley said. “Regular army.”

  “Better choice anyway,” said the mother. “For you, it’s over. Sam’s boys, they chase them like barn rats.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Charley didn’t know what else to say, so he moved on.

  Harley Willingham, the Madison County sheriff, had been squatting

  under a tree at a corner of the courthouse lot. He fell into step beside Charley.

  “You all ain’t been doing much lately,” he said.

  “Too wet to plant,” Charley said. “Half the field’s underwater.”

  “That ain’t what I mean. You know what I mean.”

  Charley stopped and looked the man square in the face. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Provost-Marshal.”

  Willingham’s face was imp
assive. “War’s over, son. The quicker we all forget what we did in the war, the better off we’ll be.”

  Charley walked on, Willingham keeping pace. He knew Willingham had a point. Green Pratt and his boys could rave and holler all they wanted, and hang a man here and there, but that didn’t change the fact that the war was over and they had lost. One of these days they would be the ones being hung, a prospect Charley didn’t care to contemplate.

  Willingham seemed to read his thoughts. “I ain’t looking to arrest you. I ain’t looking to enlist you, either. Just let me know if anything too crazy is getting ready to happen, and I’ll work from there. Come November, I’ll be up for election again, and I’ll need some new deputies. I can see you as a deputy sheriff a lot quicker than some of these damn Germans that’re overrunning the county.”

  “OK,” Charley said. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that.”

  Charley waited for Willingham to get out of sight. He had ridden to town in Pratt’s wagon and didn’t want Willingham to see him join them again. For that matter, he didn’t want Pratt to have seen him talking to Willingham,

  either. Trouble both ways.

  There was a dense cloud on the southwest horizon. Sure enough, they hadn’t gone a mile before the rain started again, this time with lightning.

  “Well, God damn it,” Pratt muttered, pulling his slicker over his head and looking back in the wagon. There was Charley, who had to get to Daybreak, and another horseless man from Fredericktown. “Pettibone, I’m dropping you at the Oak Grove turnoff, and you’re on your own from there. It’ll be hard night before I get home anyway.”