Ophelia's War

by Alison L. McLennan

  “Oh,” he moaned, “take off these boots will you?”

  I pulled off his boots. The smell almost knocked me to the ground. A big, hairy toe exposed itself from a hole in his left sock. What looked like decades of dirt was embedded in his cracked skin and toenails. He saw the look on my face and wiggled his toe obscenely. I tried to ignore that long toe waving its hairy face at me, but the image of it stayed with me. I averted my eyes and studied the hole in his sock. “I’ll darn this for you, sir,” I said and turned to go.

  “Girl, I been wearing these clothes here for fifteen, sixteen days now with no wash. Help me get ’em off and be so kind as to draw me a bath.”

  I had helped Pa undress when he was sick, and I’d seen Zeke wearing nothing but his birthday suit. But I didn’t want to get too close to Uncle Luther. I barely knew him, and so far what I knew of him gave me the willies. His eyes never stopped roaming my body. As I slid off his trousers and shirt, he touched my hair and rested his hand in the crook of my hip.

  I carried bucket after bucket of water from the river up the hill until the washtub was full. After retrieving a fresh cake of soap and the scrub brush, I went back inside to fetch Luther. His right arm hung over the bed, his fingers curled just inches from the neck of the whiskey bottle. The rest of him was splayed out for the whole world to see. He had dark patches of hair and some faded ink drawings on his chest. His ridiculous belly rode high, but failed to conceal his manhood, which spilled over like the intestines of a gutted rabbit, and looked like something I could use to make stew.

  After he’d finished his bath, I gave him some of Pa’s old clothes to wear, while his dried. The pants only reached his shins and were so snug he couldn’t button them. At dinner, Zeke sat across from him on a bench that he and Pa had made from an old oak tree that had been swept downriver. The river sometimes carried timber from the high country. Much of it was rotten, but we managed to salvage some. Uncle Luther finished his fish, pushed away his plate, and pulled out a deck of cards. Zeke was about to stand up and put the plates in the washing bucket when he saw those cards. His eyes lit up like Christmas and he slid back onto the bench and stared at them like a dog begging for a bone.

  “Ain’t you ever seen a deck of cards, boy?” asked Uncle Luther.

  “It’s been awhile,” said Zeke.

  “You know how to play?”

  “A little.”

  “This here’s my practice deck. I made a good living playing on the riverboats till the war broke out and then some fellas decided they wanted to kill me. That’s one of the reasons I came to this Godforsaken place.”

  “Ma didn’t tell us you were a riverboat gambler.” My voice came out high and breathless. “What’s it like? Being on one of them big boats?”

  “Oh, your ma doesn’t know a thing about me. I was surprised her letter even found me. Being on a boat is the same as being on land once you get used to it. Except for the people who can’t swim. They always seem to be in a state of high anxiety. The river and the constant motion relaxed me. That’s probably why I had such luck with the cards.” Uncle Luther sized up Zeke. “How about a game, boy? What do you have that I can win? Is there anything of value in this warren?”

  In my whole life, I’d never seen Zeke play a game of cards. The church forbade it. I was nervous. Uncle Luther had looked around at all our household items and livestock, and you could see him calculating what he might get for all of it. I could tell from his belly that Uncle Luther was no farmer. He was a man who ate, drank, and chased easy money. Zeke went outside and came back with a sack, which he pulled from our cold storage. Uncle Luther looked at the sack perplexed. Zeke set it on the table and said, “Let’s start with this until I learn the game a little better.”

  Uncle Luther peered into the bag. “Walnuts?” He sighed and shook his head. “Well I guess it’s not as bad as playing for peanuts.”

  “Sorry, sir, you asked if we had anything of value, and I neglected to tell you about our secret walnut stash,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes and stared daggers at me. Again, I wondered if he knew about the ruby necklace.

  THREE

  The next day Uncle Luther told Zeke they’d ride over past Rockville to old man Jack’s Trading Post. Even though there was work to be done, Uncle Luther’s main priority was whiskey. He hadn’t realized that Grafton was a dry settlement. They were gone most of the day. I did my chores and most of Zeke’s, and was outside cleaning potatoes for dinner when I heard their horses neighing and clomping up the path. Uncle Luther sat straight in the saddle, but Zeke was slumped over and nearly falling off his horse. I ran over thinking he was hurt.

  When I tried to help him down, he practically fell on me. I smelled the sweet, fiery smell of spirits. My brother, always a bastion of strength and composure, collapsed on my shoulder and babbled, “Little O, it’s my Little O.” I couldn’t stand it. After just one day of Uncle Luther, all my parents had believed in—hard work and temperance, humility and obedience to the Heavenly Father, all they had worked so hard to build—had started to crumble.

  I guided Zeke to the lean-to and helped him into bed. He fell back on the cot and shut his eyes. I sat on the edge of the bed and assessed his small arsenal of weapons: the Henry Repeater, which he had inherited from Pa, several spears, bows and arrows, slingshots, and an old shotgun. I removed a six-shooter from under his pillow. I’d never taken care of someone who was all liquored up and I had no idea what to do, but I didn’t want him to wake up and accidentally shoot someone. I removed a clump of loose earth from the wall. From a peephole, I could see the table. Uncle Luther was doing some fancy card tricks. They made a phlltt, phlltt noise. It sounded like the devil whispering.

  In the short time he’d been here, Uncle Luther had not done one dang thing of use. I was exhausted. I felt a foul mood coming over me like a spell. I covered up the peephole, brushed Zeke’s hair back, kissed his widow’s peak, smoothed out my gingham dress, went back round the front, and resumed cleaning the potatoes. I tried to hide my sour disposition because a man’s temper could be a dangerous thing. I didn’t want to experience Uncle Luther’s.

  The two of us ate in silence. I was curious about his life as a card sharp on the riverboat, but I was too mad about him getting Zeke all liquored up to ask even one of the hundred questions I had. I put the dishes in a big metal bucket and carried them down to the river. By the time I walked back up the hill, the sky had turned pink and purple. I wanted to rest my head on the fluffy pink-edged clouds. Uncle Luther was watching the sun set. His figure and the cloud of tobacco smoke swirling around him seemed soft and harmless in the heavenly light.

  He heard the clanging of my metal bucket against the wire brush, looked over his shoulder, and said, “Come here, girl.”

  I put the bucket down and stood next to him.

  “Can’t put a price on that, now can you?” He smiled a sideways smile like he was resigned to it all. “God’s closing the curtain on another day.”

  He put his arm around my waist and pulled me to him. “It’s almost as pretty as you. Can’t put a price on you neither.” His smile dropped and his face turned sour. “But I can put a price on the ruby necklace your ma stole. When were you going to tell me about it?”

  “Sir, I don’t know what necklace you’re referring to, unless it’s the one Ma sold to buy our tickets.”

  His eyes went mean and hard. “Tickets? What tickets?”

  “Our tickets to paradise.”

  “You bought tickets to come out here? My sister traded a priceless ruby necklace so that she could join a wagon train and settle down in a fool’s paradise? I don’t believe it.”

  “This is Zion, sir. A lot of people will do anything to come here.”

  He looked around with skepticism. “I don’t see anything here, unless there’s gold or silver in the hills.” His squinted, inquisitive eyes stared toward the horizon.

  I inched away from him, but he pulled me back with a hard jerk. “You’r
e a good girl. We’ll get along if you do as you’re told, but you disobey me and there’ll be trouble. I want to know where the ruby necklace is.” His hand clamped around the back of my neck. I cinched my shoulders and winced. He let go. I stumbled and rubbed my neck.

  “You don’t have any claim to our possessions or property anyway. Pa made a will and it all goes to me and Zeke.” I realized too late that I’d wagged my tongue without thinking.

  “I see you decided against my advice on being a good girl. Listen Miss Know-it-all, you’re forgetting a couple things. First of all, you think anyone’s going to believe that the half-breed Indian boy is your father’s kin? From what I can gather so far, this here settlement is at war with the Indians, and they don’t look too kindly on savages. You, missy, are just a girl and a minor. Far as I know, you don’t even get to decide which side of the bed you get up on. Even if you did have any legal rights, this place here’s a territory. All there is out here to protect you is Winchester litigation. Second, those jewels are rightfully mine. Did your mother think that I’d forget? That time heals all wounds? I’m not here to do charity for you and your bastard brother. I’m here to claim what’s mine.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, sir. But that necklace was sold long ago.” It was hard to believe Uncle Luther was Ma’s brother. As far as I could tell, Zeke and I would have been better off if the devil himself had walked in the door. I had to swallow all the poisonous thoughts in my head before they spilled off my tongue. Uncle Luther would give me a hiding if I crossed him again.

  “You are welcome to as many walnuts as you like,” I said.

  “Don’t sass me, girl.” He shook his head and clenched his jaw.

  “I find it hard to believe you’re Ma’s brother.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me and said, “Hard to believe that Injun bastard is your brother.” He swooped on me, grabbed my hair, and pulled my head back. In his nostrils, the hair was dark and as thick as a briar patch. Pieces of his dinner clung to his mustache. He looked at my lips, and for a second I was afraid he might kiss me.

  “You got a mouth, girl! If those jewels are here, I’ll get that sassy little mouth of yours to tell me where they are.” He released his hold on my hair. “Go fetch a cake of soap and bring your behind back here, pronto.”

  I could run and hide somewhere till morning. There was whiskey on his breath and he might sleep off his cantankerous mood, but he wouldn’t forget about the necklace. I was afraid. The Indians were known to attack at night. I figured nothing Uncle Luther could do to me could be worse than what they did to the Berry brothers. I fetched the soap, went back, and handed it to him. He stared down at it.

  “This isn’t for me, girl. This is for you. Now eat it.” He handed it back to me.

  I raised the soap to my mouth and hesitated.

  “Go on,” he yelled.

  I put the soap in my mouth and felt the lye sting my lips. I wanted to spit it out so bad I could hardly stand it.

  “You think about the sassy way you talked to me and you think real hard about where that necklace might be hiding.”

  The longer the soap sat in my mouth the more it burned. It mixed with my saliva and made me gag. I threw up and then wiped my mouth with my sleeve. “I told you. It was sold long ago.”

  “Go clean yourself,” he said and walked away.

  I hated him so much. I would never give the necklace to him. In all my life, I’d never felt this way about anyone. Maybe if he’d been nice, it would have been a different story. But he’d been tired and ornery from his journey and had let his true colors show. I had heard that hate was a powerful drink that could slowly poison you. I lay in bed that night trying to read Hamlet. Just as Hamlet wanted to kill his uncle, I wanted to kill mine. Poison was the most realistic of my sinister schemes.

  I woke up that night to his hot breath in my ear. “Let’s make up,” he whispered. Dolly lay on the bed covers with the necklace hidden inside her. He tossed her onto the floor. Crushed beneath his weight, I could hardly breathe. I struggled to push his hands away as they tore at my night clothes.

  A swift motion from behind him stirred the air. A loud clang filled the room. His inert body collapsed on top of me. I cringed and then opened my eyes. Zeke stood shirtless with the cast-iron skillet in his hand. The veins bulged from his muscled arm, which still held the heavy skillet. I saw then, he’d be an even match for Uncle Luther.

  “I should have shot him,” said Zeke. “But I was afraid the bullet would go into you. It’s not too late—best to do it now when he’s passed out.”

  I pushed the unconscious body to the side and freed myself from its smothering heaviness. It rolled onto the floor with a loud thud. “They’d hang you, Zeke. And besides, thou shalt not kill, remember?” I said that, although I had been scheming to poison Luther right before I fell asleep. A deep groan filled the room. I feared Luther’d come to.

  “What should we do then?” Zeke asked and looked around the room.

  “Let’s drag him over near his bed. Maybe he’ll figure he just rolled out of bed. I’ll sleep out in the lean-to with you from now on.”

  “That’s okay for now, but I’m going to set him straight in the morning.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to tell him if he ever lays a hand on you again, I’ll blow him to kingdom come.”

  We barricaded the door of the lean-to so we’d hear if anyone was trying to bust in. I felt safe with Zeke. But I didn’t know how long he could protect me. Uncle Luther seemed like a man who didn’t stop till he got what he wanted. He wanted the necklace, and if he couldn’t have it, he’d have me. Zeke had no idea the ruby necklace existed. I didn’t want him to get killed trying to protect me. But for some reason, I would not give Uncle Luther the ruby necklace. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the same stubbornness that caused my mother to hold onto it for so long. Whatever that stubbornness was, my uncle knew it in my mother and so he had not bought my story about her selling it.

  I started thinking about poison again, how I could kill Uncle Luther and make it look like an accident. I couldn’t believe it had come to this—thinking of ways to kill Ma’s brother. Obviously, there’d been some bad blood between them. Why did she write and tell him to come here? After just one day, he’d sure worn out his welcome. “Thou shall not kill” kept going through my head. I wracked my brain for other ways to get rid of him.

  FOUR

  If Uncle Luther had any memory of climbing into my bed and being knocked out by Zeke, he sure didn’t act like it. For the next two days, he mostly sat at the table playing with his cards. Whenever we’d happen by, he’d try to get me or Zeke to sit down and play. Even though I didn’t know the first thing about cards, he instructed me, “Just watch my hands. Watch them real close and tell me if you notice anything funny.” It could have been raining pigs outside and he wouldn’t have noticed because he was so focused on those cards. As long as he had food and some whiskey, he didn’t seem to care about much else.

  Zeke told me that Uncle Luther had asked him a few times about the ruby necklace. Zeke asked me if I knew anything about it. I told him yes, it was the one Ma had sold to buy our tickets to Zion. He looked at me as if I was crazy and said he’d never heard anything about it. I told him to tell the story to Uncle Luther if he happened to ask again.

  He told me Uncle Luther had posted a notice at old man Jack’s Trading Post about a high-stakes poker game at our place. Apparently, Uncle Luther had seen cattlemen, drovers, and prospectors pass through Rockville and he hoped to attract them to the cabin so he could swindle some money.

  One day I was nooning from work in the garden, because it was getting too hot to be outside. Zeke sat at the table playing a practice game of poker with Uncle Luther. Zeke was getting good. He was learning Uncle Luther’s tricks and could spot how he used sleight of hand to slip a stacked deck. It seemed like Uncle Luther was taking a liking to Zeke and was right impressed with his card skills.
I don’t know what provoked it, but from nowhere Zeke blurted out, “If you ever touch my sister, I will kill you.”

  I turned around. Zeke had his six-shooter pointed square at Uncle Luther’s head. Uncle Luther put his right hand up, but I could see under the table that his left hand was on his gun. “Whoa, there’s no harm in looking, boy. No harm in looking.” He shook his head and focused on his cards. “Let’s get back to the game.”

  That evening a strange thing occurred. Uncle Luther refrained from drinking whiskey. “Ophelia, is the council meeting tonight?” He came to me and asked.

  I looked up from my book. “Yes.”

  “It’s about time I met the Saints who make decisions for this piss-ant settlement. You come and make the introductions, then get right back home. I got some business to discuss, and it don’t concern you.”

  He brushed his coat, greased down his hair, and was busy tying a yellow silk cravat around his neck. I was about to tell him that no one around here could be bothered putting on airs, but I decided to let him go on and make a fool of himself. I started toward the door. When we got outside, he turned to me, put his finger under my nose, and said, “They’ll be no mention of my affinity for cards and whiskey. You hear?”

  We stood in front of a big old army surplus tent set back between two cottonwood trees where the council held meetings. It was dark, but two torches illuminated the tent entrance where the elders stood. When I introduced Uncle Luther to Bishop Marley and Brother Thompson, he said, “Gentlemen, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. Thank you for allowing me to visit your quaint hamlet. I can see why you call this land Zion. It’s like the hand of the Lord himself has blessed you.” His voice was conspiratorial, awe-stricken, as if he were trying to conjure their own religious fervor and enrapture them with it.