Wildwood Boys

by James Carlos Blake

  One of the women gestured at Bush’s lip and said, “You seen a recent hard time yourself, sister girl.” Then looked closely on the lip and said it looked sufficiently sealed for the thread to come out. “You’ll have a scar to the grave,” the woman said, “but the sooner the stitches come out, the less of a sight it’s like to be.” So Bush let her snip and pluck. When the job was done, the lip felt bulbous. She looked at it in a hand mirror and saw that it was still grossly swollen and the cut still looked raw. “Too bad,” the woman said. “Pretty thing like you.”

  They were sorry to say they had no idea what had become of her daddy, but there were rumors about the boy Ned. One story was that he’d joined a band of bushwhackers in the early spring and was killed shortly after, though no one knew where or even if any part of that story was true. The old man said he’d heard Ned Smith went to Texas, to Fort Worth, but he didn’t remember where he heard it.

  Bush refused to believe he was dead, but there was no way to know if he’d truly joined a guerrilla band, or, if he had, which one it might be. She could think of nothing to do but go to Fort Worth and seek for him, though the women all advised against it. Nothing but ill fortune could come to a woman alone on the trail. She’d been awful lucky so far not to have met with bad trouble, they told her, but if she rode on by herself her luck was sure to run out. She thanked them for their concern but would not be dissuaded. The next day she set out, provisioned with a sack of hoecakes and raw turnips and a few ears of roasted corn.

  Her luck held most of the way through the Indian Territory and then finally ran out two days north of the Red River. She was wakened one morning by the barking of a scruffy yellow dog glaring at her from the shadowy brush in gray dawnlight. The mutt would not be run off by the stones she threw at it, but kept barking and barking and dodging the rocks. Pretty soon here came a pair of riders out of the gloomy scrub. She quickly stuffed her hair in her hat and buttoned up her jacket, then stood with legs apart and hands on hips in the way of a man unafraid. The horsemen reined up at the edge of the clearing where she’d picketed the mare, and even in the weak light she could see their grins. One was big and full-bearded, the other only mustached. The mustache was playing out a length of lariat from the coil in his hand.

  They spared no breath on amenities. “Know why that dog’s barking at you?” the bearded one said.

  She gave a shrug and said in a gruff voice, “Don’t like strangers, I guess.”

  “It’s trained to sniff out quim,” the bearded one said.

  She broke for the brush behind her but the lariat noose looped lazily over her head and shoulders and abruptly snugged taut and yanked her down. She tried to get to her feet as they dismounted, but the mustached one gave the rope a hard snatch and down she went again. As they closed on her she kicked out and caught the bearded one on the shin and he yelped and fetched her a kick to the ribs that blew the breath out of her. The mustached one said, “Don’t, Wallace,” and stepped between them. He knelt beside her and slipped the rope off her. Her vision was blurred by tears of pain and she was still gasping for breath as he eased her over to her bedding, then used her own knife to cut through her bandanna belt and the buttons of her pants, all the while saying, “Easy, easy now,” in the tone she’d heard wranglers use on horses they would break. He tugged off her boots and threw them aside, then pulled off her baggy pants and handed them to the bearded one, who searched them for money and cursed and flung them away.

  They didn’t pluck any flower. She had surrendered her maidenhead to Tommy Colehammer one twilit evening a couple of months earlier in the Jeffers barn, in full agreement with his reasoning that all they were doing was getting a head start on what they’d be doing plenty as man and wife, and they’d done it a bunch more times in the days to follow. But it’s a whole different thing when a couple of hardcases figure to just help themselves. She had thought to fight them, then realized she’d suffer the worse for it and they’d still have their way, so she simply lay there and let it happen. They each had a turn with her, and what she chiefly remembered about it was the dog lying on its belly beside her and looking at her as if it wondered what she might be thinking. After spending himself, the bearded one tried to kiss her but she turned her face away, and the mustached one said, “That’s all right, Wallace. She ain’t got to if she don’t want. That lip don’t look all that kissable noway.”

  Bill’s grip is now so tight on her hand she winces and says softly, “Bill.” He eases his hold and lets a long breath. Wallace, he tells himself. With a beard.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you,” she says. “I want you to know everything.”

  “I’m grateful,” Bill says. “You know who they are? Where they went?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I’d find them, you know. Settle it proper.”

  She smiles tiredly and pats his hand. “I know you would. That’s not why I’m telling you.”

  “I guess I know that,” he says. Wallace. With a beard.

  Then they were gone, men and dog, and the mare gone with them. The risen sun was hot on her legs when she finally got to her feet, grunting with the pain of her kicked ribs and grimacing at the soreness in her sex. She put on her pants and gathered her boots and the ring was still in the one. She rolled up her bedding and tucked it under her arm and hiked out to the main road and headed on south.

  She remembers little of what passed through her mind over the next couple of days except for the awful thought that if she found herself pregnant she wouldn’t know whether it was by Tommy or one of those sonsofbitches—a fear that would be relieved a week later with the onset of her menses. She kept a sharp watch for the dust of riders coming from either direction and each time she spied it she took to the trees or shrubs to hide until the horsemen were past. There were streams where she could drink all along this route, but by the afternoon of her second day of walking she was ravenous. At dusk she could smell the river not far ahead, and then suddenly caught a savory smell of cooking that made her moan in hunger.

  What she smelled was a rabbit stew simmering on the hearth of the ferrymen’s cabin. There were two of them, partners who took turns operating the ferry. When she presented herself on the shadowed porch and asked if she might have something to eat, they stood in the door and gawked at her as if uncertain of what they were looking at. Then one said, “You got money?”

  She wasn’t about to trade a diamond for a plate of stew. The alternatives were that she could go without eating or she could pay them some other way. In that moment, she knew what she was about to become, but she was too tired and too hungry to argue with herself about it. She stepped forward into the better light and took off her hat and shook her head and her hair tumbled down. The ferrymen’s faces came alight. They grinned at each other and then at her. “Well now, darlin,” one said, “we might could strike a bargain.”

  “I thought maybe we could,” she said.

  There were several lighted oil lamps in the room and she picked one up and asked if they had a candle. The men looked at each other and then one of them went into the other room and came out with a thick short candle fixed to a tin holder. She said it would do just fine and asked him to light it, then took it from him and said she’d be back directly and went into the small sideroom and closed the door. She dropped her pants and squatted, scooped some of the fresh wax drippings off the tin plate with her finger and fashioned a small shallow cup on the end of her thumb, then inserted the cup as far up inside herself as she could. She didn’t recall where she’d heard of this method to protect against conception, was not even sure it worked, but she was glad it came to mind. For all she knew she was already pregnant, but if she wasn’t she didn’t intend to get that way if she could help it. She then opened the door and said she was ready.

  After the business was done with, they fed her well and gave her a blanket and permitted her to sleep on the floor in the sideroom. Twice in the night she was awakened by travelers hallooing the ferry
house for a crossing. She heard men’s voices and laughter, horse snortings, hooves clomping on ferry planks, splashings. She was surprised the ferrymen left her undisturbed through the night, but not at their smirking announcement in the morning that for the same price she paid last night they’d give her breakfast and see to it she got a safe ride to Fort Worth in the bargain. On impulse she informed them that the price of the same treat they’d enjoyed last night was a full plate of breakfast, a ride to Fort Worth, and a dollar apiece. She’d said it with a confident smile, though in truth she was afraid they’d get angry and simply take what they wanted.

  But all they did was haggle. Seeing as she was getting breakfast and a ride too, they said, one dollar ought to cover for both of them. They bargained back and forth and finally settled on a dollar and a half, breakfast and a ride. As she pocketed the money and headed into the sideroom with the first of them, she thought to herself, Well girl, there’s no question about it now.

  She pauses in her story to stare hard at Bill across the table. “Do you understand?” she says. “I chose it, Bill. Nobody was forcing me. Oh, I was still hungry, but I wasn’t starving. And I always did have a diamond ring right there in my boot.”

  “I’m not judging you on it,” Bill says. “Not now nor ever.”

  “I just want you to know the truth of it,” she says.

  “I’m knowing it,” he said.

  “Well then, I’ll finish telling it and be done,” she said.

  After breakfast she went down to the landing with the ferrymen and waited for a wagon which might carry her to Fort Worth. But only horsemen, solo or in bunches, presented themselves for crossing all that morning and into the afternoon. The sun was midway down the sky when there came a wagon driven by a graybeard acquaintance of the ferrymen. He was taking a load of hardware supplies to Sherman and was armed as heavily as a bushwhacker. Sherman was as far as he was going, but he knew some dependable transport men in that town who delivered to Fort Worth and would be glad to take her there. She said all right and climbed aboard.

  The old man was glad of her company and didn’t mind sharing his food with her if she’d do the cooking that night. She had thought she’d have to strike a special deal with him too, but his only interests in her were as cook and auditor. He chattered happily about his days in Sam Houston’s army and the great fight at San Jacinto and didn’t seem to mind that she only half-listened and didn’t say much herself. At one point he jutted his chin at her, his eyes on her lip, and said, “Met with a mean fella, did you?” She wasn’t up to explanations and only shrugged. She studied the Red River country they passed through and she thought she would like to live in it.

  At sundown they were still about eight miles from Sherman, and so they put down for the night in a pasture hard by a wide swift creek. She helped the teamster unharness the mules and tether them in the creekside grass, then borrowed a shirt and pants from him and went upstream into the thicker brush and washed her clothes and bathed herself by the light of the early moon. While they ate supper, her clothes dried on a fireside log.

  Her sleep that night was restless, troubled by one bad dream after another, all of them of Ned, though she couldn’t recall any details each time she’d wake up except that he rode a white horse and his face was unearthly pale. As they set out the next morning, she quite suddenly knew she would not find him in Fort Worth, knew it without knowing how, but knew it in her bones.

  They were still a few miles from town when she glimpsed a portion of chimney through the trees on a rise about a quarter-mile into the woods. A short way farther on, nailed to a tree at the head of a narrow lane branching off the road, a hand-painted sign read CABIN FOR SALE—GARP REALTY and had an arrow pointing down the lane. The thought of owning a little house all of her own tightened her chest with longing—and all in a moment she knew what she wanted to do and thought she might know how to do it.

  Then they were rolling down the main street of Sherman and she liked what she saw. The old man knew the town and drove directly to the back street warehouse receiving his delivery. He drew up the team and said he’d see about getting her a ride to Fort Worth, but she said never mind, she’d decided to stay in Sherman. The teamster gave her a puzzled look, then shrugged and wished her well.

  Her first stop was at the Hastings & Son jewelry store, where she presented the diamond for appraisal. The elder Hastings arched a brow at her outsized getup, but he was impeccably polite. He studied the ring carefully for a minute and then tendered an offer. She didn’t know if he was being fair or had sensed her desperation and was playing on it, but it was more money than she’d ever had of her own, and she didn’t know what else to do, so she accepted it.

  She next went into Regina’s Dress Shoppe, and when she emerged she was a vision in a blue dress with hat and parasol to match. She had no trouble finding the office of Garp’s Realty. She described the location of the cabin whose chimney she’d spotted from the road, and Mr. Garp said, “Oh yes, that property.” The man who’d built it had suddenly taken a notion to go to California, and Garp had bought the place at a bargain price, but freely admitted he was sorry he had. The place had stood unoccupied for the last eight months. It was too small for a family, too far from town for anyone whose trade was in Sherman, too close to Sherman for anyone wanting nothing to do with a town. “Which is why,” he said, “you can get it for a real bargain yourself, little lady.”

  He drove her out to the place in his buggy. She admired its excellent construction, its well-chinked walls and solid plank floor, its stone fireplace with an ample hearth, its few but sufficient pieces of rude furniture. She strolled a portion of the grounds—the entire property covered nearly fifty densely wooded acres and included a portion of creek—and she knew it was the home she’d longed for. He said he was tired of holding on to it and was ready to let it go for hardly more than he’d paid himself. He quoted a price. She countered with an offer of half that amount. He grimaced. He said he would come down fifteen percent. She repeated her offer of half the original price and asked who else would buy the house, considering all the drawbacks he himself had pointed out. He said he’d go down twenty percent, even though he wouldn’t make enough on the deal to cover the cost of the ink on the deed. She held to the half. He sighed in huge exasperation and said he would come down by twenty-five percent and that was it, take it or damn well leave it.

  They settled on a price thirty percent below his original quote. The money she’d made from the sale of the diamond—excluding what she’d spent on clothes and the portion she’d set aside to buy a horse and buggy—was short by about a third, so when they got back to Garp’s office they worked out a one-year mortgage plan to pay off the balance. Then went together to the bank and secured the loan, the property itself serving as collateral, and the deal was done.

  “I’d hoped to have enough to buy the place outright,” she tells Bill, “but I guess I already knew what I’d have to do if I came up short.”

  At the livery where she purchased a fair horse and an adequate buggy, she made a discreet inquiry of the liveryboy, who looked a year or two younger than herself but old enough to know the information she sought. After a moment’s stunned gawk, he gave her the street directions she wanted—and with a grin said he’d be sure to pay her a visit. She winked at him and felt a blush that was probably as bright as his.

  On the next block, a street lined with saloons and gaming halls, she found the Purple Moon, where she asked a thin-eyed bartender if she might have a word with Mrs. Preston. A half-hour later they’d made an arrangement whereby she could use an upstairs room every evening for the cost of two dollars plus thirty percent of her night’s take. In addition to the room, she would have the protection of both Mr. Preston and the Purple Moon’s rulesman, a burly fellow whose specific duty was to deal with troublesome customers.

  “Not much chance of some fella doing you here like that one did,” Mrs. Preston said, gesturing at Bush’s lip. She suggested that Bush rent
living quarters in the place, but Bush told her she had a home, thank you—and the truth of it filled her with pride. She had anyhow told herself she’d live in a packing crate in an alleyway before she’d live in a whorehouse. To her mind, it was one thing to earn your way as a whore, another to actually live like one, and however narrow that distinction, she was determined not to lose sight of it.

  Her four months at the Purple Moon have been more profitable than she’d hoped. She has made double payments on the mortgage from the start, and only a third of the bank loan remains outstanding.

  She rises from the table, retrieves the coffeepot and refills their cups. If she’s concerned about how she will finish paying the loan, now she has renounced her trade, she makes no mention of it. Bill cannot get enough of looking at her, of breathing her scent. She returns the pot to the hearth, then laughs as he catches her arm and pulls her onto his lap. They cannot keep from grinning even as they kiss and run hands over each other. Bill carries her to the bed and their clothes sail through the room.

  She’s never stopped fretting about her brother, of course, has not passed a day without wondering where he might be. When she heard that Quantrill’s company had made its winter camp at Mineral Creek, her first thought was that maybe Ned was with them. She questioned every bushwhacker she serviced at the Purple Moon. The first few said they’d never heard of Ned Smith, but there were a lot more guerrilla bands other than Quantrill’s, they told her, with winter camps all over Arkansas and Texas, and maybe he was with one of them.

  Then about two weeks ago a young bushwhacker with a ruined thumb he said had been made that way by Quantrill’s horse said sure he knew Ned Smith, a real good fighter for a boy naught but sixteen years old. They’d ridden together with Andy Blunt, one of Quantrill’s captains. Blunt had stayed in Missouri this winter to be near his sweetheart and protect her family and neighbors from Unionist raiders, and about half of his boys, including Ned Smith, had chosen to stay with him.