For her part, she at first seemed content enough with the limits he put on their game. But then came a new winter and she began easing to his bed sometimes even when she was unspooked. He had to make her promise not to do it more than once a week. By the light of the moon at the window they could see their breaths mingling palely. They huddled under his quilt and petted and kissed until they fell asleep in each other’s arms. And then true to her word she always woke well before dawn and slipped away to her own bed as noiseless as a shadow.
One night when they lay together she whispered, “Let’s do it, Billy.”
He raised up on an elbow and gaped at her in the darkness. “What?”
“You heard.”
He put his hand to her face and held it and whispered fiercely, “Never, never, never. Understand me, girl? Never.”
“I saw Ike Berry and Ida Mullen doing it one afternoon on a horseblanket by the creek where I’d gone to get dandelions. I watched from the bushes. It looked fun.”
“Nev-er!” he said through his teeth.
She had him in her hand and gave a quick hard squeeze and he gasped loudly and she giggled and they quickly clapped a hand over each other’s mouth and he felt her grinning under his palm. They lay utterly still and listened and heard Jim toss and snort and mutter unintelligibly in his sleep and again settle into a deep and steady breathing.
She eased his hand away and whispered, “Why not? I love you, Billy. I’ll never love no other man, not ever.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It ain’t done! Can’t you get it in your wood head? It’s the worst thing in the world a body can do is lay with his own blood. And don’t make like you didn’t know that. You know it.”
“Even if they love each other more than they love anybody else or ever will?”
“Yes! Yes, even. Especially.”
“How come?”
“Oh Jesus…It just—look, we’re not going to do any such a thing, you and me, not ever, and that’s an end of it.”
She moved her hand on him and put her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Don’t you want to, though?”
Yes he did—and he felt damned for the desire. And further damned for cavorting with her in even such restrained fashion as they did cavort. And damned worst of all by the perverse circumstance of being free to lay with women he loved not at all but denied by the laws of man and God from lying with the one he adored. He cared not a whit what might happen to his own soul—he was anyway no believer, not like his mother—but, because no one could say for certain what lay beyond the grave, he would not jeopardize the soul of his sister. And more than that: he would not risk implanting her with a child. An unmarried woman with child was a pariah, the child itself a pitiful woods colt. And still more than that: he had heard—as who had not?—so many terrible stories of children begat of incestuous coupling. Idiots condemned to a life of drooling witlessness and wallowing in their own filth and evermore requiring tending as closely as babes. Some born fingerless or clubfooted or blind, some with a roofless mouth or with the sexual organs of both male and female or with some other of a thousand horrifying afflictions. How could any woman who bore such a child—and it a bastard, to boot—not feel entered into hell even long before she was dead? He would not now or ever endanger his sister that way.
“I said that’s an end on it, Josephine.”
And it was. She knew better than to press an argument beyond his evocation of her Christian name.
Still, they had continued with their occasional nocturnal play through the rest of that winter and into the new spring and were so clever and careful about it that no one else in the family did suspect. Except Jim, who had come awake late one winter night and heard their low hissings and smothered giggles from Bill’s bunk in the darkest corner of the room and felt his heart sink with misgiving. But as he strained his ears to catch bits and pieces of their low whisperings, he came to comprehend the limits of their game. He felt sorry for them for reasons he could not have made clear even to himself, but he had not told Bill—and never would—that he knew.
Thus, on the morning they spied Josephine running for the woods after she overheard their banter about the Reedy girls, Jim well understood why Bill sighed as he did and then went to the woods after her.
He found her in the meadow, sitting crosslegged at the creekbank in the shade of an oak. She was pitching pebbles into the water and did not look at him when he sat down beside her. Dragonflies wavered over the grass. The air smelled of creekwater and moss. A family of mockingbirds shrilled at them from their cottonwood nest. Sunlight filtered through the leaves and mottled the water surface and flashed on her hair.
She kept tossing pebbles. For a time he watched the splashes and the ensuing ripples, and then he began to skip stones along the surface with sidearm throws. After a particularly good fling that skipped a stone seven times he grinned and said, “Oh yes indeed!”
She snorted in disdain and searched the ground to both sides of her and found a small flat rock and tried its heft, then crooked her finger around it just right and got up on her knees and the tip of her tongue showed between her lips as she cocked her arm and threw. The stone left a trail of eight dimples on the surface before it sank.
She turned to him with a grin so beautiful his chest filled with fluttering birdwings.
He shrugged and said, “You always been better at it than me.”
She quit the grin and studied him in her unnerving way and he looked off to the creek to elude her eyes.
“I don’t know them Reedy girls you and Jimmy were talking about,” she said, “but I hate them more than I can say. I guess there’s others I could hate just as much for the same reason except I just don’t know about them.”
He turned to her and put his hand to her cheek and she held it there and nuzzled it.
“I hate that you can do with them what you can’t with me,” she said “I hate it, Billy. I know it’s wrong, what I want, but I don’t care and I wish you didn’t either. But I’ll always do like you say.” She kissed his palm. “And I’ll always and always love you.”
He would know a number of grown women in his life who did not possess even a small portion of the grace his middle sister owned at the age of fourteen.
“I’ll always love you too, girl,” he said, and even as he made the declaration he recognized its unalterable and crushing truth.
A BETROTHAL
While Josephine could not reveal to anyone but Bill her desire for him—and therefore suffered her heartsore yearning in secret—her elder sister, just turned seventeen, was also in love that early spring and fairly beaming with the rapture of it. Culminating a whirlwind courtship of barely a month, Mary Anderson was now engaged to one Arthur Baker, a fine-featured and well-spoken man fifteen years her senior, a childless widower whose wife of eight months had been killed two years before in a fall from a horse. He and Mary had been introduced at an Agnes City dance and by evening’s end he was already wooing her. He had since come calling at least two nights a week. When he tendered his proposal in the shadows of the Anderson porch on a soft evening winking with fireflies, she had no doubt about accepting.
Though he could play no instrument of music Baker sometimes joined in the Anderson harmonizings. Only once did he yield to their urgings to take a turn at stepdancing and then proved so comically awkward that none of them, not even reticent Martha, not even Mary herself who revered him, could keep from laughing at the spectacle he presented. The women apologized profusely but the Anderson men laughed and laughed and he was so thoroughly abashed he would never again trip the boards and they would never again ask him to.
Despite his ungainliness as a dancer, Arthur Baker was the sort of husband Will Anderson desired for all his daughters—a man of property. Baker’s father had bequeathed to him a sprawling farm maintained by capable hired hands and he was in addition the sole proprietor of a prosperous supply store at Roan Creek Crossing on the Santa Fe.
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He was not without formal schooling, albeit his learning was chiefly in the principles and tools of commerce. On his first visit to the Anderson farm he was asked by Bill who his favorite poet was and smilingly answered that he wasn’t much of a one for poetry and preferred to leave that dainty subject to the ladies. His grin faltered under Bill Anderson’s suddenly narrow gaze but Mrs. Anderson cleared her throat loudly and gave her son a look. Bill Anderson sighed and said “Never mind” and thereafter paid little heed to him until the time to come when he would kill him.
For her part, Martha Anderson commended Mary for her choice of husband and was unfailingly polite to Arthur Baker. Among themselves the other four Anderson siblings believed their mother secretly saw Baker for the same stiff-collar bore they did.
One evening while Mary sat out on the porch in Baker’s company, the rest of the family was indoors preparing to make music, Will Anderson and his sons and daughters whispering jokes about Baker’s collars and bowler hats and his ridiculous dancing. Finally, Martha made a shushing gesture at them and said, “Stop it, all you. The heart can’t help what it wants.”
The remark brought them up short in their tittering—and prompted a glance between Bill and Josie that did not escape Jim’s notice. They all knew she was right. Mary had not lacked for prospects before meeting Baker but none of the suitors had struck her fancy. Yet neither was it in her nature to marry someone simply for the comfort of his holdings. There was no question she loved this man and no matter she hardly knew him. That none of them could understand why she loved him was no argument against the truth of it. The wedding was set for the second Sunday in June.
YANKEE CAVEAT
APRIL 21, 1862
IT IS REPRESENTED ON RELIABLE AUTHORITY…THAT BANDS OF…GUERRILLAS, MARAUDERS, MURDERERS, AND EVERY SPECIES OF OUTLAW ARE INFESTING TO AN ALARMING EXTENT ALL THE SOUTHEASTERN PORTION OF JACKSON COUNTY…. MURDERS AND ROBBERIES HAVE BEEN COMMITTED; UNION MEN THREATENED AND DRIVEN FROM THEIR HOMES; THE U.S. MAILS HAVE BEEN STOPPED; FARMERS HAVE BEEN PROHIBITED PLANTING BY THE PROCLAMATION OF A WELL-KNOWN AND DESPERATE LEADER OF THESE OUTLAWS BY THE NAME OF QUANTRILL, AND THE WHOLE COUNTY DESIGNATED REDUCED TO A STATE OF ANARCHY. THIS STATE OF THINGS MUST BE TERMINATED AND THE GUILTY PUNISHED. ALL THOSE FOUND IN ARMS AND OPPOSITION TO THE LAWS AND LEGITIMATE AUTHORITIES, WHO ARE KNOWN FAMILIARLY AS GUERRILLAS…MURDERERS, MARAUDERS, AND HORSE-THIEVES, WILL BE SHOT DOWN BY THE MILITARY UPON THE SPOT WHEN FOUND PERPETRATING THEIR FOUL ACTS.
JAMES TOTTEN
BRIGADIER GENERAL
CENTRAL DISTRICT, COMMANDING
RUMORS OF QUANTRILL
The larger war was now more than a year under way and the bush-fighting along the Missouri border was reported to have grown meaner. The Berrys occasionally rode to the Anderson place of an early evening and joined them on the porch to share in a jug and the latest news before taking supper together. On this occasion they were speaking of the new company of border scouts the Federals had formed, the redlegs, so named for the color of their Moroccan leggings. The outfit’s captains were George Hoyt—a lawyer who had vainly defended John Brown at his trial—and the hated Doc Jennison, who’d recruited many of his old jayhawker comrades to the redlegs with him.
“I never thought I’d hear of a worse pack of bastards than those reivers of Jim Lane’s,” Will Anderson said. “But I’ll kiss all your asses if these goddam redlegs ain’t the ones.”
“It was redlegs hung Ellsworth Mallory in front of his wife and children down in Cass County last month because he wouldn’t tell where Quantrill was hiding,” Jim Anderson said. “In the past two weeks they burned a half-dozen farms in Jackson for the same reason. I can’t help but wonder if those farmers just wouldn’t tell on Quantrill even if they knew where he was, or if they were just more scared of what he’d do to them if they did.”
They had first heard of this man Quantrill two months ago and heard much more of him since. Of the various guerrilla bands harrying the Federals and jayhawkers along the border, his had been the most effective, his name become the most widely revered by Missouri rebels, the most despised by Union loyalists. Bushwhackers they were called, because the bush, the wildwood, was their hideaway, and their preferred tactic the ambush.
“I heard he ain’t even from Missouri,” Ike Berry said. “From Maryland is what I heard.”
“I recent heard how come he hates the damn jayhawkers so much,” Butch Berry said. “You all know why?”
Will Anderson snorted and said, “That’s like asking do we know how come somebody don’t like the smell of shit.”
“Him and his big brother were headed for California when jayhawkers fell on them on the Santa Fe,” Butch said. “Montgomery men. They shot him up bad and killed his brother and robbed them of everything, including their clothes and boots. Left him for dead, they did. But some old Indian come along and found him and saved his life. After he healed up he grew a beard for a disguise and took a false name. Pretended to be a Unionist and searched out Montgomery’s party and joined up with them. He recognized those among them who killed his brother and he found out the rest of them over time. They say it took him months, but he killed every last one of them sonofabitches one by one when there was no witnesses about. More than twenty all told. That’s how I heard it. Then he went on back to Missouri and started his band of raiders and been giving the Feds hell ever since.”
Will Anderson spat over the porch rail. “I’ve heard that story. Sounds sham to me.” He turned to Bill Anderson who sat puffing his pipe. “You reckon?”
Bill shrugged and stared out into the gathering gloom and at the first visible winks of starlight. His favorite dog Raven lay at his feet.
“Well, it’s for sure no sham that neither the Federal regulars nor the jayhawkers have been able to run him to ground for all their trying,” Jim said.
“He rode into Independence with not more than a dozen men and that town just full of Yankee soldiers,” Ike said. “He took a ball in the leg and they shot his horse from under him and still he got away. Now that’s a fact. A month later he had near sixty men in his company.”
“For a fact he’s raided into Kansas,” Jim said. “Rode into Aubrey and shot up the place and stripped it clean and then took breakfast before he rode out again.”
“I bet he didn’t ask for hardboiled eggs,” Butch said. “He already got him two goodsize ones.”
“I’ve heard tell the Feds three or four times got him surrounded and were sure they had him and he gave them the slip every time,” Ike said. “He and his boys have made off into the wildwood afoot as often as ahorse but they got away just the same.”
“They ain’t about to catch him,” Butch said, “not out in the bush, and not with all them farmers helping to hide him and his boys. Feeding them, keeping them posted on where the Feds are.”
“They’re paying for it, though, them folks helping him,” Will Anderson said. “The goddam Feds are coming down harder on them all the time.”
“Momma believes Aunt Sally and Uncle Angus are maybe helping him,” Jim said. “Aunt Sally doesn’t come right out and say it, but I guess she’s got to be careful what she puts in a letter. Can’t know for sure who might read it sometime.”
“Those Parchmans be damn fools to mix with bushwhackers,” Will Anderson said.
“The harder the Feds come down on them who help Quantrill, the more run off to join him,” Butch said. “Hell, they’re singing songs about him.”
“You all know he was a teacher?” Ike said. “They say he can speak in Latin. He can give a big long speech of Shakespeare as easy as you can sing ‘Sweet Betsy From Pike.’”
“I know it,” Jim said. “But I never knew a teacher who can shoot like they say he can. They say he can throw up four bottles at once and pull his pistols and bust all four before they hit the ground. I’d say that’s some shooting.”
“I’d say it’s no damn wonder he’s captain of that bunch of long riders,” Butch said. “I mean, hell, th
e smartest, the best shot. Can ride like a damn Comanche they say.”
“He’s been a regular soldier too,” Ike Berry said. “Before he become a bushwhacker. He was at Wilson’s Creek with Pap Price. At Lexington too. They say he handled himself real admirable in both of them bad fights.”
“Bad is the least thing those battles were,” Jim said. “Wilson’s Creek always did sound like windblown hell the way I’ve heard it.”
Bill Anderson stood up and stretched hugely and gave a great yawn. He looked down at Raven who sat up and fixed his eyes on him. “I believe you are correct,” he said to the black dog. He smiled around at the others and said, “Raven says all you boys sound like you found religion.”
For a moment they simply stared at Bill looming over them tall and lean in the thin yellow light from the porch window and then they all looked to the Raven dog that sat openmouthed with a dog grin. And then Will Anderson let out a great guffaw—and then they were all of them laughing and making jokes about a religion called the Sacred Church of Quantrill.
A few evenings later when the Berrys made their next visit and while the sky was yet daylit Bill Anderson left the porch and went around behind the house and then returned with two empty bottles in one hand and two in the other. He was wearing his Navies on his belt.
He stood well away from the porch so they all might have clear witness. He flung up his arms and all four bottles sailed high in the air and he drew the revolvers and there was a quick sequence of pistol cracks echoed by bursts of glass and no bottle did hit the ground whole.
The men cheered and whistled, stomped their boots on the planks. Behind them the Anderson girls had come out to watch and they applauded wildly while their mother stood in the shadowed doorway behind them unsmiling and with her arms crossed tightly over her breast.
Bill Anderson swept off his hat and bowed like a cavalier, then grinned around at them all and intoned, “The Holy Order of William T. Anderson welcomes ye one and all.”
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