Wildwood Boys

by James Carlos Blake

  They put down for the night in a hickory grove watered by a narrow serpentine creek. Doves crooned in the creekside brush. The setting sun loomed enormous, the trees afire in its fierce orange flare, the air itself gone gold. A flock of cranes made for its evening roost in a slow working of white wings against the redstreaked purpling sky. The men saw to the horses and mules and got a fire crackling and fashioned a spitframe of sturdy greensticks on which to suspend the cookpot. They would sup yet again on jackrabbit stew. Ike and Jim had earlier shot six of the bony things and Josephine now made quick work of skinning and quartering them. Jenny and Mary seasoned the meat in a medley of root vegetables, then hung the cookpot over the fire and the campsite was soon suffused with a savory redolence.

  When they had finished with supper, the moonless night was fully commenced, the sky a thick encrustation of stars. A comet streaked and vanished, its origin and destination both beyond reckoning. They pointed out to each other the Bear and the Archer and the Bull. They speculated whether any of the winking lights they looked on did hold life. Only Butch Berry thought it possible, but Mary Anderson chided him for a blasphemer.

  “The Bible doesn’t say a thing about God creating anybody else in His own image anywhere but on earth,” Mary said.

  “It don’t come right out and say He didn’t either,” Butch said, who wasn’t at all sure what the Bible said about anything. “See the endtail star of the Dipper yonder? Could be there’s a campfire on it and some fella and his sweetheart are sitting beside it right this minute and they’re looking at some bright star and wondering if there’s any life on it and the star they’re looking at could be the very one we’re sitting on.”

  The others chuckled at this notion—and at the moony gaze he seemed unaware of repeatedly fixing on Josephine across the campfire as she studied the night sky. Now she saw his look too and turned her face to the shadows to hide her angry blush.

  “Could be the fella on that star’s saying to his sweetie that for all they know there’s some rascal sitting here next to his sweetheart and looking at their star and wondering if there’s any life on it,” Jim Anderson said.

  “Like two mirrors facing each other,” Jenny said. “Showing each other back and forth and back and forth and on and on forever.” She was hugely taken with this conceit. The others grinned at Butch Berry’s face reddening more deeply than the firelight could account for.

  Only in the past few days had they become aware of his eye for Josephine. Those of them in the second wagon would smile and nudge each other and jut their chins at him gawking on her as he trotted his horse on the off side of Bill’s wagon and a few feet back of it, the better to look on her without her knowing it. Sometimes she turned and caught him at it, and then he was always quick to tug down his hat to shade his embarrassment and rein back to the rear of the party. After a time he would ease up close to her wagon once again.

  At first Mary had not been sure how to feel about this turn. At one of their stops to water the animals, she took Bill aside and asked what he thought of it. “She’s fourteen,” she said. “Hardly more than a little girl.”

  “Josephine’s never been a little girl,” Bill said, “and Butch ain’t barely four years older than her. Let it go how it goes.” In truth the circumstance unsettled him, but he would not question himself too closely as to why.

  The last to ken to Butch’s smitten condition had been Josephine herself. At the evening camp two nights ago she was puzzled by his offer to skin the rabbits for her. She thanked him but said she could tend to them just fine. He stood there and looked around as if in search of something else he might offer to do for her but Mary shooed him away so they could get on with fixing supper. And then last night when Josie was chopping kindling for the cookfire he offered to relieve her of the chore. This time she took a good look at his face and realized what was happening. She felt her own face go hot and said, “I know how to use a damn hatchet!” The sharpness of her tone drew everybody’s grinning attention and Butch hastily retreated to the far side of the campsite to make a show of checking his horse’s shoes.

  Next morning as they rattled along the trail Bill said to her, “Looks like somebody’s set his cap for you.”

  “Well he best set it for somebody else,” she said. She glanced back to see if he was riding near enough to hear her and almost hoped he was, but he was farther back at the moment and talking with his brother.

  “He’s capable,” Bill said. “That off eye’s never hindered him a bit that I know of.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with his eye,” Josie said. She hugged to his arm and put her head on his shoulder. He thought she might say something more about the matter but she didn’t. He had told himself she would soon enough show interest in other men, yet couldn’t help smiling with the knowledge that so far she did not—and then chided himself for a selfishly confused man.

  Now the party had had enough of astral speculations and of japing at Butch. Bill took the Jew’s harp from his pocket and began to twang upon it. Jim unwrapped his harmonica from its bandanna and blew a few quick trills to clear it and they set into a rendition of “Oh! Suzannah.”

  Ike Berry offered his arm to Mary and she curtsied and took it and they stepped away from the fire and began to swing around and kick their heels, their hair tossing. Butch was hesitant to ask Josephine to dance, unsure if she knew his feeling toward her and certain that if she did she must be displeased by it, to judge from her tight face and recent aloofness. But Josie would not deny herself a dancing turn just because of the cow eyes this silly boy kept making at her. She put out her hand to him and said—loudly, that no one might mistake the gesture—“Well come on, boy—it ain’t but dancing!”

  Now Mary let Jenny take a turn with Ike and after a time the Berry boys switched partners. Unlike his younger brother, Ike was not a good dancer but was an immensely enthusiastic one. Mary once said that dancing with him was like holding tight to a real drunk man trying to find his way out of a burning house. Josie couldn’t help laughing the whole time she swung round with him. Butch at times took over from Jim on the harmonica and Ike would spell Bill on the Jew’s harp, and in this way did every man have a turn with each of the sisters. Josie beamed when it came her turn with Bill, and she would not surrender him for the rest of the evening.

  Every night of this journey the Anderson girls had slept in the wagons—Mary and Jenny in the covered one, Josephine in the open bed. The Berry boys would unfurl their bedrolls under the covered wagon and the Anderson brothers would put down under the other and the men took turns of two hours each at keeping watch through the night. At their first nightcamp, Josephine had sidled up to Bill and asked in low voice if she might make her bed next to his under the wagon and he had refused, saying he didn’t want the Berry boys to draw any wrong conclusions. She said the Berry boys were their friends and friends wouldn’t draw any such conclusions, and if they did then they weren’t true friends. He said he wasn’t going to argue with her about it and that the matter was at an end. She had not broached the subject since.

  They had so far been fortunate in the weather, but on this evening, shortly after Jim relieved Bill on the night watch, a wind rose up from the south and carried on it a cool sweet scent of rain. The trees began to toss. The stars dimmed by portions and then faded completely behind a gathering of clouds. The campfire coals flared redly under the gusting wind and sparks leapt and swirled and streaked away crimson into the night. Jim put on his slicker and sat upwind of the fire to avoid the sparks. Now the southern sky came alight in a shimmering white cast of lightning and fell dark again and there followed a low roll of thunder.

  Under the open-bed wagon Bill Anderson had been asleep but a few minutes when he woke to a soft pressure against his back, a warm breath at his neck. He rolled over and raised on his elbow and looked at the shadowed shape huddled to him. “Don’t even try to tell me you’re still afraid of storms.”

  “It’s even worse out in the open like t
his,” she said. She hugged his neck and pulled closer against him with her face to his chest. “There’s not even a roof or a wall to keep it off.” They spoke in whispers.

  “Joey…”

  “Biilll. Just let me stay till it’s done with.”

  “You’re no more scared than I am. It hasn’t fallen the first drop of rain. That storm’s a ways off and might not even touch us.”

  Another show of sheet lightning quivered in the southward sky and a moment later came the resonant rumble. Though the lightning was no brighter and the thunder no louder than before, Josephine’s clutch on his neck tightened and she made a tiny whimper.

  “You little faker,” he hissed.

  “Billy, be nice. Even if I wasn’t scared—and I truly am—but even if I wasn’t, I don’t want to get all rained on. Do you want me to get all rained on?”

  “Rained on? I got a notion to drown you in yonder creek.”

  “Shhh!” She put her fingers to his lips. “You’ll wake everybody.” She gave quick kisses to his ear, his cheek.

  “Jim’ll anyway be off watch before too long.”

  “He can fit on the other side of you. I’ll just scootch way over here”—she squirmed backward with a wriggling of her hips but kept her tight hug on his neck so that he moved over with her before he was even aware he’d done so. “See? He’s got lots of room there.”

  She found his hand and put it on her hip. She stroked his face lightly.

  “Joey…”

  “Shhh.” She slid her hand to his chest.

  “Josie…”

  “Oh Bill, stop. Everybody knows I come and hold to you when it’s bad storming.”

  His hand was insubordinate to his protest and pleasurably roamed the swells and slopes of her. “The Berry boys…they don’t—”

  “Oh hush about them.”

  She kissed his neck and worked his buttons and then had him in hand and he ceased all remonstration. Pulsing in her gentle grasp. Both of them caressing now, stroking with a familiar pleasure, kissing lightly. He finds her shirt already unlaced to admit his hand. Her breath hisses as he fingers the tightened nipple—and then a deeper gasp as his hand seeks under her skirt. Her hips arch upward in a response as ancient as the race itself, her breath swiftening, her excitement fervoring his own. He tenses and puts his face in her hair and moans softly, and she smiles as she kisses him. They put a hand to each other’s mouths and taste their own pungent selves on the other’s fingers. So practiced are they in such frisking that no one hears them at it. They fall asleep embraced.

  The storm but grazed their camp with a brief windblown drizzle as it passed them by. Its lightplay and thunder were fading to the west when Ike Berry sleepily relieved Jim Anderson of the camp watch. Jim went to the open wagon and squatted to arrange his bedroll and saw Bill sleeping spoonfashion with Josephine. In that moment they seemed to him like children, both of them, as unsinful and unmindful. He looked back at Ike and saw him whittling on a stick by the low light of the glowing coals. He carefully eased himself down beside Bill so as not to wake him and for a while lay there feeling content for reasons he had no interest in even trying to name. And then was himself sleeping.

  He woke with Bill still bedded at his side. The sky was darkly gray but cloudless, yet beclung with a few tenacious stars. The campfire stoked now, wet wood smoking and softly popping. The coffeepot on a firestone, lid chittering and issuing steam. Butch Berry sat cross-legged and watched Josephine prepare a pan of cornbread. She neither looked his way nor spoke to him as she worked.

  Bill stirred. Yawned and stretched. Raised himself on his elbows and peered past Jim to the campfire scene. He smiled sadly and whispered, “Poor damn Butch.”

  She carefully set the pan of batter to bake on the firerocks and put the coffeepot aside to ease its boil. Then turned and saw her brothers watching her. And smiled widely and said, “Breakfast, you slugabeds.”

  WEST MISSOURI

  They pressed ahead on abandoned tracks and weedy traces toward a red new-risen sun. Low reefs of pink-veined purple clouds showed on all horizons. They intercepted the Santa Fe Trail where it curved up from the south and they kept to it as it made for the Blue River and they encountered no other travelers. A hawk followed them for a time, spiraling overhead. Husky crows taking respite in the trees along the roadside chuckled low in remarking these passing pilgrims. When the river came in sight Bill reined his team off the road and Jim brought the covered wagon behind. The wagons jounced and yawed over the uneven ground and then onto an old stock trail leading into the brushland.

  They were bound for the Parchman farm, which Aunt Sally in her letters said was on Brushy Creek at a point some ten miles north of where the Santa Fe met the Blue. In addition to these spare but sufficient directions, they had also found in their mother’s letters a photograph of Aunt Sally and Uncle Angus. They were posed stiffly and in their Sunday finest before a studio backdrop of a sunny beach fronting a whitecapped ocean. This couple who, like the kin who owned their picture, would never in their lives behold a sea. An inscription on the back of the photo informed that it had been made in Westport in the year of ’58.

  The region they now moved through was a patchwork of thickets and hardwoods and hollows scattered over open country with more rise and fall to it than they had seen in Kansas. They rolled past wooded hills and brushy swales, forded darkwater creeks overhung with sycamores and willows. Josephine had been six years old when the family left Missouri, and the past eight years had made vague her recollections of it. As their wagon jostled over the rugged trail she gaped on the passing country and told Bill she loved this rough old Missouri that made Kansas look boring as a bare table.

  They nooned at a stony creek shaded by cottonwoods and they roasted for dinner a dozen plump quail Butch Berry had earlier taken down with birdshot loads in Will’s old shotgun. Roasted too some sweet potatoes and ears of corn, and their gusto in the meal was in no wise lessened by having to pause in their chewing to spit shot like it was seed.

  That afternoon they drove through sunny meadows of grass as high as the mules’ bellies and around narrow stony ravines and through shadowy stands of trees so close together that they had to perform intricate maneuverings of the wagons and the wheelhubs did often scrape bark. Yet none of them minded the slow going. The afternoon was warmly pleasant and the air sweet with the scent of grass and wildflowers. Josephine hummed and sang softly and now and then licked her finger and wriggled it into Bill’s ear and said, “Here’s another Wet Willie for you!” He every time threatened to break her fingers off if she didn’t quit and she every time tittered happily. At one point she jumped off the wagon and quickly gathered a purple cluster of sweet william from a patch growing alongside the trail. She said it was her favorite flower because it had his name. He affected to protest but did not stop her from braiding them into his hair.

  They were passing through a hackberry grove when they caught a thin stink of decayed flesh mingled with a strong smell of burnt wood. They emerged into a clearing where stood the blackened ruins of what had once been a farm. All that remained upright of the house were one charred wall and the stone chimney. Where the barn had stood was a black carpet of ashes shedding lightly into the breeze. Next to it a skeletal bovine carcass with rotted skull and ribcradle exposed to the placid sky. A fat crow picked at the scraps of hide yet on the bones.

  The men stepped down. Josephine with the Walker in both hands started to follow after Bill but he told her to stay and watch her sisters. She made a face but did as he said.

  They treaded carefully through the ruins but saw nothing resembling human remnant. Then came on three gravemounds in the shade of the trees behind the remaining wall of the house.

  “Whose doing, you think?” Jim said.

  Bill Anderson shrugged. “There’s so many bunches of jayhawks and Union milish and Federals, hell, it could’ve been any of them.”

  “Could be these were Unions and it was Quantrill done it,” I
ke Berry said. “Or maybe some other band of bushwhackers.”

  “I ain’t going to stand here feeling sorry for anybody who might’ve been Union,” Butch Berry said.

  “This place wasn’t Union,” Bill Anderson said. He stooped beside a shrub at the foot of an oak and extricated a blue cap with a black visor and a U.S. Cavalry insignia on its crown. There was a hole in the side of the cap and a dark stain they all knew to be blood. On the band along the inside of the cap was inked the name GALLAGHER.

  “Yankee bastards,” Ike Berry said. “At least one of them got put down.”

  “Wish to hell they’d all been,” Jim Anderson said.

  “Hold that thing out here, Bill,” Butch Berry said. He dug a block of matches from his jacket pocket and broke one off and struck it alight in a burst of sulfur and put the flame to the cap. Bill Anderson held it by the bill until it was fully ablaze and then let it fall. They watched it burn till only the visor was intact and then Ike Berry put his bootheel to it and ground it in the dirt.