by Diane Munier
“Are you going with your husband?” Cousin said to Addie, his eyes going to Lavinia’s like a dog wanting a lick. And that’s exactly what I meant to say. I’d seen this some back.
Lavinia gasped. “You’ve married?”
Clean out your ears, was what I thought. “We have,” I said.
“God’s blessing, Tom,” Lavinia said, her eyes darting to Quinton and holding worry. Guess she thought I meant, “We have leprosy,” instead of, “We got married.”
She crossed to Addie and embraced her like she was practicing for the wake.
“You’re my pa?” Johnny yelled. Then he ya-hooed all over that hallway, skipping and throwing his arms around like Johnny Appleseed, nearly knocking a vase over that had its own little podium and all. And he wouldn’t listen when Addie grabbed him to settle him down, but he frantically pushed her hands away.
I saw how it was then. I was the weapon he used on Quinton. His ma was in the way of it. Part of me was in sympathy, but I was Pa now, so I had to demand something better, though truth be told I had no inspiration but this…he might do the same to me in time. I could feature him using his ma on me, and I had no inclination for war in the happy home I’d envisioned. For I knew where her heart strings were and well they should be, but he would not be the master of the tune we lived by.
I could fight rebs. I could subdue outlaws, barring train wrecks. But Johnny Varn…he would be the stone I broke upon.
“Johnny,” said I, “if you can get quiet, I’d like a peek at Janey ‘fore I go.”
He made a show of taking my hand, and leading me up the stairs, a new gumption in his walk, in the hips, his pumping arm, and his general sense of mission, taking two of those shiny stairs at a time, sometimes three.
He took me past some rooms looked like some of the plantation homes we’d rummaged. We’d shot the mirrors out of that one, but I wouldn’t think of that now. He led me into a room, the one she stayed in, I reckoned. I wondered where Cousin slept. “Where does Cou…Quinton repose?” I said.
He was not fooled. The devil in him was an ancient beast and had the knowledge an eight-year-old boy couldn’t have on his own. He smiled sly. “He’s far away, with me between.”
I reminded myself we were not equals. How was it he gave me such a knowing look? He would have his own room pronto, mayhap his own cabin if he did not take to bridle.
As I viewed my Janey, that sweet baby who had grown into a fat pretty cherub since last I’d laid eyes on her, he fell back on the bed, up on his elbows. “You bring the Enfield?”
What? I furrowed my brow just to set a different pace. “I am not without it.”
“That’s what I thought. I told Quinton.”
“Uncle Quinton,” I said.
He smirked. “Cousin,” he whispered, picking on the quilt, a demon in his face.
By damn. “Cousin Quinton then,” I said, trying to take my own rock from his hand in the symbolic sense. He was smart. Like his mother. She’d been a teacher. I had done poorly in school, but I was a man of skill. Yet to match him….
He looked at me and smiled, wiggling his foot to beat the band.
“See you got them boots,” I said.
“See you got yours,” he said. And when I looked, they were the same.
How to get out of taking him all those miles home? I had said I would, feeling the hero. But now…she wasn’t fooling when she said I’d want to bring him back. I already did, and we hadn’t even set out.
“If you are very good…I have something to tell you…but I think your ma and me need to say it together.” I didn’t know the rules. Did I have a right to tell him on my own?
She entered then. “Say what together?” she whispered.
“The…” I nodded toward Johnny.
Addie sat on the bed. I almost groaned she looked so ladylike and beautiful. “Johnny, you must stay very quiet when I tell you this. Do you understand? Lavinia just got Janey down.”
“Tell me what?” he said in a way made my fingers twitch.
“Tom has invited you to go home with him.”
Well, he rolled over and yelled into the bed, I’ll give him that. But it had the feared outcome, and Janey screamed. I went to her quick and scooped her up. She didn’t like it at first, but I rocked her strong, and it gave me something to do.
“Johnny, Johnny, look at me,” Addie was saying, struggling to get him to roll over and listen.
He was moving all over the bed like he was having fits. “Hoo-ray,” he was saying, but happy though he pretended to be, it was off-set by his disobedience.
Addie had to stand or have her teeth rattled, not to mention his new boots were flying toward her. I knew if I went for him, and I couldn’t with Janey, but if I went for him, she’d never let me take him, and much as I might be tempted to drop him in the Mississippi, at least for a dunking, I had to inspire trust. I was a pa, dammit.
I can’t imagine what he’d been like on the train. Or would be like for me on the train. He was too much for one small woman that already had a baby.
“I’ll take him tonight,” I said.
That stopped him cold. He studied me. “Take me where?”
Oh, he was getting strong now. I saw it. He’d been jerked too much. I eased back then. “Got us a room.”
He sat up and pursed his lips. “I ain’t goin’ to bed too soon,” he said.
I ignored this. We had bigger battles ahead. “Reckon you could pack him?” I said to Addie.
“You are going to do this?” she said to Johnny, giving him too much choice in the matter. No wonder he was such a baby. Well, he didn’t know what he was. He knew he wasn’t a girl. But he had no idea how to be a big boy. I saw the mess in him.
Womenfolk couldn’t help on this. It came handed down, man to man. If he didn’t get a strong hand on him, from his own kind, he’d set his own rules, he’d live for himself, no chance to be a hero to a wife someday and a family.
I’d seen it in life, and in the army. If you set the rules, you set the line, and met it yourself, and set it again. Mostly you set it too high and proved to yourself you were a failure. Even more you set it too low so you could stay small cause you knew you were afraid, but you didn’t want it to show up to anyone else.
That’s what Iris was trying to say, but she didn’t know all of it. Not the part about men. Women didn’t know that part. And we didn’t tell it. It would worry them fierce, and we didn’t want them meddling for it had to be done. The man, the hero, had to be found and set free…by another man. Best man to do it…your pa.
So this came down to me. By damn it did. And the war was just the proving grounds.
Tom Tanner
Chapter Thirty-Four
I left her by that tree, smaller in my eye, bigger in me.
Then I turned to this boy who had her eyes, and part of her soul mayhap. Well, he had a million questions about this room we would share. And he’d never been to a boarding house before, and when were we eating supper?
I could eat me a bear or two. So we went on to the diner, and I paid that driver and told him to return next morning, soon as the sun came up to take us to the ferry so we could head home. From there we would seek the train to carry us back to Rigsby, and there we would, I hoped, find our horses.
At the diner, we had to wait to get a seat at a table. I stood still, and him against my leg. “Ma said you was in trouble that day we saw you at the train. You had the revolver in your pants,” he said, “like now. I can see it.”
The woman in front of us turned and looked, turned away again quick. I bent over and said low, “Bring that voice down.” Well, if I said the word, “pants,” in mixed company at his age, my ma would have given me a piece of soap to suck on. “Get on the trail you have to learn to use hand signs,” I told him, trying to bring us to a friendly track. “Sometimes if there be outlaws….”
“Like rebs?” he said so loudly it’s as if the entire establishment came to a halt and looked around for the source
of that word.
I stood, my hand on him, looking them down, for they’d been me they’d done the same.
So they got back to it. I bent to Johnny, “Church voice here.” I was proud I’d made it simple.
“Ma don’t let me talk in church at all,” he said.
The girl came to us then, reminding me of that one back home who called me mean. She pulled Johnny’s hat from his head and handed it to him. I should have had him remove such when I did mine. I had to remember this. To think for us both.
She led us toward a table. Then he taught me a sign before I had a turn to teach him one. He looked back at me and held his nose as if to say the woman smelled. And he didn’t care who saw him.
One big stride to him, and I took him by the arm.
“Miss,” I said to the girl though she had her back to us, “we have to step out.”
I pulled him along, but he did not come easy, asking all the way and loud as bells, “Where we goin’ Tom? You said we were going to eat! I want some beans!”
We were like a traveling show for all the attention he brought on us. He kept saying it all around that building until we were behind it. I whipped him around so we were nose to nose. “Listen here, Johnny, we don’t make signs behind people’s backs, particularly grown folks, particularly women folks. Not no time.”
“You ain’t my pa,” he shouted, really yelling on the ‘pa’ part.
The back door of that diner opened then. Had them a Cookie, black-skinned arms big from slinging hash. “What this?”
I pulled Johnny further into the sparse yard and ignored Cookie. “Let me go,” he yelled, then squinted his eyes closed and yelled top of his lungs, “You ain’t my pa,” then a big breath and even louder, “I’m…hungry!” Only he said it more like, ‘hun-graaay.’
Cookie was chewing on a cold cheroot. I put my hand up to let him know not to interfere. I was still bent over trying to reason with this demon who had swallowed my sanguine Tom-worshipping Johnny. I wished I could just pull my revolver and stick it against his nose, just to get his attention for a minute, but I knew that wasn’t the way. Not with Cookie looking on.
So I gave him the littlest shake. “Shut that yapper,” I said cold.
He shut it for a minute. This was new for us. We’d been pards. Now we were something else. I didn’t know what, but it felt like we’d hit the shores of a hostile land.
He stuck out his bottom lip and folded his arms, glaring at me.
Now I was getting mad. “I’m gonna take you home to Quinton and tell him to send you to boarding school with all those little rich farts. That what you want?”
I felt those new boots then, right where he kicked me in the shin.
“You little…,” said I, looking quick to Cookie, then back at him. “You ever do that again, you’ll be walking barefoot all the way to Greenup.”
“I…hate you!” he yelled.
Well that did it, we took to wrestling then, me trying to get him over my leg without any of the dirty tricks I would usually use to get a man, even a small one, where I wanted him to go.
I felt a hard knock on my shoulder, and it was Cookie. I moved back quick and got on my feet, hand on my gun.
He looked at my hand, and I looked at his, and saw the biscuit there.
Johnny stood, his nice clothes dirty, and his shirt untucked. He was looking from me to Cookie, waiting to see what I was going to do. I took the biscuit. “Thank you.”
Cookie nodded at me. Then he looked at Johnny, a fierce look. “I be makin’ sausage tonight with the moon full. You let me know this boy don’t come around,” he said.
“I will,” I said wishing I had me some time to get more advice from the likes of Cookie.
That sausage idea was purely inspired.
Johnny stared at me, his eyes big just like Addie’s when I’d let the beast out at her. I handed him that biscuit and he took it in his dirty little hand. But he kept his eyes on Cookie. He moved closer to me as he nibbled, watching Cookie cross the yard. But before he went in, Cookie turned and winked at both of us.
“Liar!” Johnny screamed at Cookie throwing the rest of the biscuit at him. Then he took off running down the gangway back toward the street. And I took off after. The little smarty-britches ran right in front of a team of four. That front horse reared and pawed and that driver had his hands full I tell you.
I followed those boots pumping dust, my eyes nailed on that pint-sized backside I hoped to light into once I got my hands on him. He got across the street, his heels clicking on the sidewalk, then between a saloon and an apothecary he flew. I followed him down, and I was gaining before he turned behind that saloon. My boots hit just a few beats behind him, and I rounded the corner and skidded to a stop. A woman was in the yard there, standing next to a pile of wooden kegs and flats. She was older on closer look, dressed in a loosely tied robe, no corset for those things were hanging to her waist. Her long blonde hair looked like she had a curly yellow dog on her head, and her face was painted like a fancy doll’s face. She was smoking a pipe filled with the stinkingest mix of tobacco in all of Shiloh.
Rode hard for sure. She was sizing me.
“Where’d he go,” I said.
She wasn’t in a hurry, chewing the stem. “Who’s askin’?” She had teeth like old piano keys.
“You see that boy?” I was looking for where he’d be. This yard was closed in by a fence kept poorly. He might have gone over for there was trash all around to help him out.
“Mebbe I did, mebbe not. Why don’t you buy me a drink and we’ll talk about it?” She sucked that smoke and blew it out in rings. Well she had that lip rouge on thick, and some bled into the lines round her mouth. I had a powerful hee-be and I cleared my throat.
“Johnny,” I called out. He had to be hiding in this mess. I went to the pile of kegs and threw one off.
“Calm down soldier,” she said.
I didn’t know how she figured me for a soldier. I dug in my pocket and fisted some coin, offering it to her. She looked at my hand and laughed, offering me her palm, which I filled pretty much. She put this money in a little pouch round her waist.
“You that kid’s pa?” she said.
“Where’s he at?”
She nodded at the back door. I yanked it, and it was a storeroom of some kind, then I went in the big room near the bar. Bar-keep looked at me, and there was Johnny, sitting on the bar, a big mug of sarsaparilla in his fist, four, five drunks gathered round him laughing at the way he was downing that drink.
I strode to him, pushed through those fellows, and stood there. Johnny peered over the top of the glass as he drained it. He was backdropped by a big painting of a naked woman reclining on her side. If Addie could see him…see us now…Lord.
“You through?” I asked him as he burped about in my face.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded, setting his empty glass on the bar.
“Get down,” I said, and he jumped lightly to his feet.
“Thanks Mr. Clyde,” he said to one of the drunks. I dug in my pocket again and slapped a nickel on the counter. I took Johnny’s hand and held it tight in mine as I marched him out the door.
We walked back to the diner, not a word spoke, except him burping now and again. When we got in I whipped that hat off his head and held it with my own, but his hand I did not release. The girl came to lead us to our table, for the crowd had thinned considerably. We sat and she said they had stew left, and I said we’d take it, but Johnny said, “I wanted beans….”
But he let it die when I gave him the hand sign for, “Shut it,” which was a banging fist upon that table made the forks fly up and clatter down.
“You want me to get him?” I meant Cookie, and he knew it, too. He made those lips a thin line of contemplation then. And we had no talk until the plates of brown stew and orange carrots and yellow potatoes were set before us.
“What say you?” I said.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” he said
to our serving girl, picking up his spoon and sighing to be put upon.
I figured we needed the prayer at least and I had to do it to set him right. So I bowed and him, and I said, “Thank ya.”
We fell on it then, both of us attacking our plates, me eating the white bread I loved, and him eating all the butter, then lifting his plate to lick it clean.
When we were finally in the room, I lined our boots up, the small beside the big. He was already face down on the bed, still in his clothes, sound asleep. His face was scrunched on the pillow, his mouth open and drooling. I was bent over him, my hand moving toward that hair the color of his ma’s. I ran my hand against it, looking at his face, hoping to see inside that head of his, noticing those freckles, like constellations of stars in the sky, there were patterns. Then I let my hand settle on his back and felt his pump, his breathing. “Oh God,” I said, “this is Johnny. Help me to keep him alive is the thing. Amen.”
I pulled my hand back, and continued to study him while I took off my shirt. Then I got in next to him. Sun was setting, and come first light we’d be cutting it for the ferry.
Well, I had my one hand on my stomach, and the other stretched where pillows met the headboard. Johnny rolled then, his arm flopping over me. “Tom,” he said, and I thought he was awake. But no, he was out. His head came right up on me, and his arm tightened some over me. He threw his leg on me, too. And I stroked his hair. He was mine, I knew, and I’d figure a way other than the sausage mill. Little by little I would.
Next day we made it to the ferry. I had my pack, and I’d outfitted him with the same. Least I knew he couldn’t take off running so easy with his own gear to carry.
Once we boarded, we rested our gear against the ferry’s railing. He had climbed on it enough he could bend over and look down on the water. “How deep is it?” he asked, for he had a hundred sincere questions about everything.
“Way over your head,” I said, grabbing his suspenders and yanking him back.
But he pulled against me and ended up going right over plunging quick into the water. “Johnny,” I yelled, my hand on the rail and over I went right after. Someone shouted, “Man overboard.”