by Derek Catron
“Lucky for us, the bear didn’t charge. I think it meant to frighten us away. That gave me time to take aim. I had picked out a spot right between its eyes.” The Colonel extended his arms, as if holding a rifle, one eye closed in pantomime. “I cocked the rifle and held my breath to steady my hands.”
“Then what?”
The Colonel dropped his arms. “Josey knocked down my rifle.”
“What?” The boys didn’t believe it. “Why?”
“That’s what I said,” the Colonel told them. “We backed off, giving the bear a wide berth, and once we were away I asked him. Then Josey, he says to me the meanest thing he’s ever said, at least to my face.” As he told this part, the Colonel laughed. “He said, ‘I wasn’t sure you could kill it before it got us.’ He didn’t think one bullet would be enough, no matter where I hit it.”
“Coward,” Caleb said, though no one paid attention.
“I told him, ‘Well, you could have finished him off.’ But Josey just shook his head. He said killing a bear wasn’t like killing deer or a wild bird. Bears have a soul, he said.”
“But he’s killed men,” Annabelle said, her face pinching into a frown. “I don’t know about bears, but I know men have souls.”
The Colonel nodded. “I think I said nearly the same thing.” He took back his bowl from the boy. “You know what he said to me? ‘Yes, but most men got it coming.’ ”
As he finished his story, another coughing fit overcame the Colonel, this one so bad he couldn’t breathe. Annabelle rushed to him.
“He’s burning up,” she said to her mother.
Others came to help. The old coot could barely stand. Annabelle sent one of the boys running for Josey Angel. Her aunt tried to get the Colonel to lie down while Mrs. Rutledge ordered the men to put him on a bed in their wagon. Having regained his breath, the Colonel wouldn’t have it.
“A good night’s sleep is all I need,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It’s only the ague.”
Backing away along with the Daggett boys, Caleb hoped he was right. More than once the old man had warned them disease was a greater threat than Indians. Caleb didn’t mean to find out.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The old man was sick.
Josey saw it coming but couldn’t stop it. He told the Colonel to rest, to ride in a wagon or hold the emigrants in camp an extra day. They might have blamed it on a need for repairs or rest for the stock. The Colonel’s pride wouldn’t permit it. He didn’t want to let on that he felt poorly.
There was no hiding it now. The first glow of morning bleached the sky and Josey saw his friend wouldn’t be rising with the sun. The Colonel slept fitfully. His clothes and hair were damp from fever, and he looked wan and weak. Josey felt the heat pouring off the old man even before his hand made contact with his papery skin. Lord Byron kneeled beside Josey. His furrowed brow reflected everything Josey thought.
“We should get him into some dry clothes and a clean bedroll when he wakes,” Josey said.
Byron nodded, and Josey noticed the clothes on the ground behind him. He should have known Byron was a step ahead of him. “Best be getting to the wagons,” Byron told him. Josey smiled, realizing he’d been dismissed.
It had been a restless night for both. The old man shivered when they put him to bed. Byron stirred the fire to life and fixed the bedroll. Josey lay beside the Colonel, wrapping him in his arms to still the shakes. When the Colonel slept, Josey rose without disturbing him and sat beside Byron, who handed him a tin cup. Like most Union soldiers, Josey had practically lived on coffee. He gave it up on the march through Georgia, where the blockade made it impossible to find real beans and the bitterness of the roasted rye and sweet potato blends the rebels ground as a substitute put Josey off the stuff for good. Yet he accepted the cup from Byron, knowing neither would be sleeping.
All had suffered the ague that winter, one of the coldest anyone remembered. Ague left a man feeling like he’d been dragged behind a wagon for a day and a night, but he would rise eventually. Byron and Josey recovered quickly, but the illness lingered in the Colonel. He possessed such vigor, Josey forgot that most men his age spent their days rocking on a porch somewhere. Josey figured the Colonel had suffered a relapse, but until they knew for sure, he had to keep the Colonel away from the others, especially the children.
A wagon train left little time to care for the sick. Cattle needed fresh grass. Provisions were limited. If the Colonel didn’t recover quickly, they couldn’t ask the others to wait. Byron knew this as well as Josey. He said simply, “He won’t be well enough by morning.”
“We can rest a day. Tomorrow is Saturday. We would have stopped on Sunday, anyway.” Byron didn’t speak. A tilt of his head was question enough. They stopped on Sundays, in part, so the faithful among them could honor the Sabbath. “We won’t give them a choice,” Josey said.
That would buy them a day. A sick man might ride in the back of the wagon, but they would have to bind the Colonel with every rope they had to keep him still. It would be a painful ride. The Colonel might regain his strength faster by staying put.
“If it comes to it, I’ll stay with him,” Josey said. “Give him another couple of days to get strong. On horseback, we’ll catch the wagons by the time you reach Kearny. It’s at least another month before we reach Bozeman’s cutoff.” Josey didn’t want to think about what it would mean if he didn’t catch the wagons by then.
“You’ll have to go ahead with the train,” Josey told Byron. “Just in case.”
Byron rose without speaking and stepped away from the fire’s light. The sound of his heavy footfalls carried from where Josey had hobbled the horses. They snorted and stamped at Byron’s approach. He couldn’t have shown his displeasure with Josey more clearly by shouting it in his face. Josey followed and found him rummaging through their gear, collecting extra canteens. The Colonel would need water in the morning, and it was just like Byron to anticipate the old man’s needs. Josey put a hand on his thick shoulder. “I’m sorry, Byron. I—”
“He means as much to me as you.” Byron loomed over him, a good half a head taller and broader through the shoulders by a third. In the darkness, the whites of his eyes glowed like lamps, and they were moist with emotion. “I can care for him as well as you.”
“Better, I would say.”
Byron was missing a tooth and the black gap showed in the flash of his smile. He handed one of the canteens to Josey as they walked toward the fire. “It’s not easy being the only black man in this company,” he said, a smile allaying some of the sting of his words. “You feel like a roach in another man’s rice.”
“Any of those boot-lickers mistreating you?”
Byron shook his head. “It ain’t like that.”
“They been tellin’ you how nice they treated their negroes?” It was a joke between them. Every Southerner they met, at least the ones who weren’t outright hostile to a black man, felt compelled to share how kindly they’d been to their slaves. After a while, Josey and Byron figured every Simon Legree must have thrown himself in front of the Union rifles on principle because only the big-hearted graybacks who’d read Uncle Tom’s Cabin seemed to have survived the war.
“They nice enough,” Byron said, “but you know those white folks won’t follow a black man.”
In the morning, when they found the Colonel still wracked with fever, Byron stayed with him. Josey went to the wagons where the men were hitching the teams. He spoke of the Colonel’s condition and his plans to rest that day.
“But tomorrow is the Sabbath,” said Alexander Brewster, a New York farmer who had attended a seminary for a spell and assumed the duties of camp minister. On Sundays he stood at the center of the corral and read aloud from the Bible while the women saw to washing clothes and baking bread, the men to mending harnesses and yokes and shoeing the animals that needed it.
“If the Sabbath is that important to you, then I expect you will welcome the opportunity to display Christian charity,”
Josey said, looking the larger man directly in the eye. “And I thank you for it.”
Ben Miller, the oldest of the bachelor miners, protested a delay of any kind. “At the pace we’re going, the gold will be gone by the time we get there,” he said, scratching at the sunburn on his neck.
Rutledge spoke up. “We’re making a good pace, a pace that will get us there without breaking down. That’s the thing you should concern yourself with.” Turning to Brewster, he said, “We will make today our Sabbath, and the Lord will reward us for it.”
Luke Swift, Rutledge’s brother-in-law, and the others agreed. Josey left them to work out the details of unhitching the teams and moving them to a fresh grazing area.
By the time he returned, he found Rutledge’s wife, Mary, and Annabelle with Byron and the Colonel. Seeing mother and daughter working together, Josey realized how much they favored each other, Mrs. Rutledge’s touch of gray doing nothing to diminish the strength of her features. They would need strength, given their patient’s mulish disposition. Now awake, the Colonel looked more grumpy than frail.
“I brought tea,” Mrs. Rutledge announced, leaving no doubt who was now in charge of the Colonel’s care. “I gave him a honey and vinegar mix for the cough. We need to get liquids in him—and I don’t mean spirits,” she added, glancing to the Colonel.
“He won’t drink any more water,” Byron said.
“I would rather die from fever than from you drowning me.” The Colonel cursed in a hoarse whisper until Mrs. Rutledge silenced him with a cup of tea. Josey took the old man’s fractiousness as a good sign. Had he been suffering cholera, the Colonel would have been a more docile patient.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When Annabelle returned that afternoon with more tea, she found the Colonel and Byron dozing beneath their makeshift tents while Josey Angel and her mother sat together beneath a canvas tarp he had rigged for shade and a windscreen.
The sight of Josey Angel speaking to her mother like they were kin stopped her. The windscreen blocked their view of Annabelle’s approach, yet she heard every word.
“He’s like a father to you,” her mother said. She watched Josey eat as if he were one of her boys. They would have been close in age. As loud and lively as her brothers had been, Annabelle didn’t see much of them in Josey Angel. They did have the war in common, and Annabelle would never know how it affected her brothers. She wondered if Josey had always been as he was now. Would his mother recognize him?
Josey Angel said something between bites of biscuit. Feeling guilty for listening, Annabelle thought to call out, but then her mother asked about his parents.
Annabelle crouched to her knees.
“They’re good people.” Josey bit into another biscuit.
“When did you last see them?”
“When I left for war.”
“Did you part on bad terms?”
“No.”
Her mother had a way of using silence to make a person say more than they intended. The trick had always worked better on the boys than it had on Annabelle. After a pause when it seemed Josey Angel would say no more, he added, “It’s been so long, I almost forget what she looks like.”
I should bring the tea before it gets cold. Josey and her mother sat without speaking, and Annabelle lingered another moment, listening to the music created by the rush of the wind across the tarp and the flute-like call of an unseen meadowlark.
As they returned to the wagons, Annabelle confessed her eavesdropping to her mother. They hadn’t stayed long, wanting to give Josey Angel opportunity for a nap while the Colonel slept. He spoke of his plans to lead the train the following day, and not even her mother could object to leaving the Colonel and Byron once he explained his reasoning.
If she hadn’t heard it, Annabelle wouldn’t have believed how freely Josey Angel spoke with her mother. She remembered a stray cat that used to come around their house. Just children then, Annabelle and her brothers tried to feed the cat, but they were too boisterous to lure it close enough to be petted. The cat sensed danger even in their good intentions and maintained its distance.
On a day when the boys were away, Annabelle spied her mother feeding scraps to the cat. Through a window, she watched her mother squat on the porch, a morsel of chicken pinched between her fingers. The cat took a step toward her and stopped. Then another silent padded footfall. The cat crept closer, its body tensed for flight, but her mother held her place, long past the point her knees must have ached, until the cat came to her, took the food from her fingers and, as it chewed, allowed her mother to scratch the fur between its ears. A few more bites and the cat rubbed its bristled face against her mother’s hand.
She never reached to it. Her mother accepted only what intimacy the cat permitted. Her mother laughed when Annabelle told her Josey Angel reminded her of the cat.
“It’s not the first time I’ve had a secret rendezvous with our young guide,” she said, enjoying Annabelle’s reaction. “I was as surprised as you look now,” her mother said, explaining their first meeting had come before daybreak one morning when her mother had been unable to sleep. Just as Annabelle had once found the Colonel, her mother found Josey Angel stirring up their cook fire.
“Would you have guessed he prefers warm milk to coffee? The Smiths permitted it to him, so long as he milked their cow.”
“Mother, get on with the story,” Annabelle said, resisting an urge to shake her. “What did you talk about?”
The joy fell from her mother’s face. “We talked about the war, of course.” Annabelle had to coax the rest of the story from her mother, who confessed she couldn’t look at Josey Angel without seeing her boys.
Annabelle thought to change the subject. Her mother almost hadn’t recovered from their deaths. The oldest, named Langdon after her father, had died from fever on a hospital sickbed nearly four years earlier in a little town in Maryland. Her brother Johnny wrote the letter home. For four days, her mother’s only comfort on receiving the news of one son’s death was the belief that the other still drew breath and would return to her. Then they read in the newspapers about the battle at Sharpsburg. They found Johnny’s name in the published list of dead. A soldier’s letter followed, assuring them Johnny had “a good death,” but it proved no comfort to her mother.
Their walk brought them near the campsite. Annabelle led her mother to the edge of a creek that fed into the river. They found a round boulder by the water’s edge big enough to serve as a seat for both.
It struck her that she and her mother never talked about their grief. They didn’t talk about so many things. Each carried so much pain, sharing with the other felt like you were adding to that person’s load. It was easier to hold it in. Yet hearing her mother talk now didn’t add to Annabelle’s grief. If anything, it lessened the burden, like two oxen yoked to the same cart.
“I knew everything about those boys, at least until the end. I nursed their first wounds. I taught them their letters. I brought them to peace when they fought.”
Annabelle remained silent as her mother explained her frustration. Letters from the boys were filled with queries about the most trivial news from home and empty reassurances about their well-being.
Their last time home, on leave the year before they were killed, they went with their father to his study to discuss the war, as if their mother were an Eve in the Garden to be shielded from knowledge. “I nearly burst in on them, calling them out as imposters, those gentlemen who not so very long before had come bawling to me when they lost a game to their sister.”
Her mother drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Until the end, there wasn’t a day I didn’t feel a part of the boys’ lives. I knew that wouldn’t last, but I looked forward to seeing my boys grow into men. Husbands. Fathers.”
Her mother never knew what manner of men war made her boys. Nothing in her imagination helped her understand a war where so many died or came home mangled. The casualty figures reported in newspapers seemed unfathomable—twent
y-three thousand killed or wounded or missing at Sharpsburg, a figure equal to at least half the population of Charleston. Annabelle tried to picture the city with half its people gone, but it was beyond her imagining.
That failure to understand prompted her mother’s question to Josey Angel the morning they talked by the fire. “Why do men feel they must protect women from a knowledge of war?” She expected him to evade the question. Instead, perhaps because he wasn’t her son, he spoke to her with a candor her sons couldn’t.
“Are you certain it’s you they protect?” he said, staring into the fire as if an answer lay amid the ash.
“I don’t understand.”
Josey Angel raised his head, looked at her mother as he spoke. “I went to war expecting excitement, memories that would sate my pride in my old age. Now I can’t escape them. I’ll never be rid of them.”
The camp stirred. He made to rise but stopped even before her mother bid him to stay. “There’s this, too,” he said, seeming to stare past her. “So long as you don’t know the things I’ve done, in your eyes, at least, I’m still the boy you knew.”
As Annabelle listened to the story, she thought at first her mother misspoke. Did Mother hear the words as her Johnny might have said them? Or did the Union soldier speak them as he would to his mother?
“He’s a good man, Anna. I can see that in him.”
Her mother rose to leave, her long legs quickly covering the ground to camp. Annabelle followed, turning over the conversation in her head. Her mother’s grief had always been greater than her own, and Annabelle feared her mother saw a son where another man stood. That man was a killer, their well-being in his hands. Annabelle hoped her mother was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Caleb halted his team with a sharp call and a crack of the whip. The oxen were more than accommodating. Big brutes never moved faster than a man could walk—but they did it while pulling a six-ton wagon across almost any terrain.