I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang

by Leonce Gaiter

  The day the war ended was the day you looked at me, and I could tell that you saw me and knew me, and I could have shouted for joy. I ran toward you and kissed your face and inside I sang praise to merciful God. And then you grabbed me. With gritted teeth you tore my dress. You ripped the buttons free and with violence pulled the seams apart. Like a merciless animal you tore everything from me, threw me to the floor and took me by violence until I bled. When you were spent, I lay sobbing. You rose and said, “Get up. We got work to do.”

  You dragged me to the fields and hoed some rows and threw some seeds like they would come up overnight. When they did not, you spat and cursed me, as if it had been my fault. When old Remmie, the only nigger left on the place, tried to tell you how to make crops grow, you took a shovel and beat him half to death screaming that you were a white man and no nigger had anything to tell a white man. You sold everything for a carpetbagger’s pittance. I asked you where we would go and how we would live. You never answered.

  I could have forgiven you your cowardice. I could have forgiven your violence if you had been willing to build another man from the ashes that you had become. But I realized that this animal before me was what you truly were. Money and ease had veiled it, that’s all. They were your masks. I think you knew it too, and that is why you walked about in constant rage, like a large, willful child, breaking things, breaking me, as if to make all about you as broken as you were. I should have seen. It was my own doing. I was blinded. I could not have imagined a war and all the blood. I could not have imagined a nigger striking me and living to tell. I did not imagine a savage behind the mask of a man. Our world was gone, and you did not have the strength to build another. That is why I die with hatred for you in my heart. Had you shown an ounce of resolution, I could have followed you. I could have matched you stride for stride. But you left me with nothing. Seven years after the war, you had spent it all. You sent me to beg from those who still had something or were building something new. You made me face the pity. “Poor Constance,” you could see in their eyes. “It would have been better if Bill Swain had died in the war.” But I got us food to eat. If you had stayed, if your pride and your ignorance had not prevented it, we could have hired niggers and had everything back again. You could have become yourself again. You could have donned the mask and I would have pretended it had never slipped. I would have convinced myself that nothing lay beneath. But admitting what you could not do and learning new ways was too much for you. You preferred to burn it all to ashes. So we wandered. From place to place when even neighbors’ pity would not put bread on our table, down to shacks and huts and finally here, my deathbed, where I hear the hammers clang on the railroad tracks. You wield one. But I suppose at least you do not have to ask how that is done. Even in death I will never forgive you for marrying me.

  If this child lives, I pity it. If it is a boy, name him Blaine. If it is a girl, call her Theodosia. When the child is old enough to read—if, by then, there is any bit of a man left in you—let them read this letter. Have the courage to show them what you did to me. Let them look on you and despise you for it as I do. Show them how you became nothing and dragged their mother, a helpless woman, into shacks and gutters that stole the life from her.

  I cannot bear this agony. What is yours is tearing me apart inside. I welcome death but God won’t even take me now. It would serve you well if when I die, the child be stillborn. Let the midwife hand you the corpses you have made.

  ~

  You lived according to your station—that’s all Bill Swain had known when the war began—and his station had been good, pre-ordained like his sex or his skin. The world was his and there was no need to question any part of it.

  He felt palpable pride as he rode with his regiment to certain victory. The sight of men united in noble purpose, himself a young officer among them—it was a culmination of his vision of himself. When the blood began to flow, it was the price to be paid and he took it in stride… a limb, a life… it was worth it. He knew that he would proudly shed blood for the cause, which was just; and he felt in his soul that the right and justice of it would see him triumphantly through.

  Only at Vicksburg did he falter. Loss did it, the one thing that he had not imagined and could never have envisioned. The prospect of loss changed everything. Death had enveloped him since the beginning of the war, but being forced to consider the possibility of loss, seeing defeat written in the dirt of Confederate soldier’s faces, that’s when everything he needed vanished: the promise of the resurrection of the dead; the undoubted execution of God’s almighty will; the certainty of his place in this world… They all disappeared. Starving and waiting for the Union troops to overrun them, justice sat on the other side of General Pemberton’s line. It sat deep in the Mississippi’s waters where union gunboats spat flesh-shattering fire. All of his rights and privileges lay across the river on the enemy’s side. He couldn’t reach them. It was as if they had ripped out his soul, the God-given part that makes one human… the privilege. After that happens, the spilled blood looks different. No longer imbued with nobility, it’s just red and ghastly. The severed arm is a ragged sheath of pulpish flesh with a shattered bone protruding and not a noble sacrifice; the side of a body ripped away exposing bleached ribs and loose entrails like lifeless worms is the devil’s doing, not God’s. Low and ignominious. With victors at the gates, the blood and bones of the losers, whether intact or torn apart, might have been those of niggers. So he ran. He ran to hide in the root cellar of the place he had called his home.

  He carefully refolded the letter and returned it to a small pocket he had sown inside his saddlebag almost ten years ago. He had kept the child to spite her. There had been two: a boy and a girl. The boy died about one hour after it was born. He watched it die. It was blue and it wouldn’t stop crying, and then it just died. He buried them both with his own hands. He didn’t mark the graves because he knew he would never see that place again.

  Keeping the girl proved that he was not the low creature that she had said he was. It proved her a liar. Lying was a sin. He hoped she burned in hell for it. He carted the infant in a buckboard from place to place, taking work as hired help. At first he fed it goat’s milk from a spoon. Then a woman told him about soluble food and all he had to do was mix it with milk and feed the baby using an India Rubber Nipple on a bottle. He ordered it all special. He was good to her.

  As he had been asked, he named her Theodosia, but he never called her that. He called her “girl.” Once she got old enough to coo and smile, he grew almost fond of her. He looked forward to coming home to find her in the crib where he’d left her. He liked picking her up to stop her crying. He learned to camp near enough to people so that women heard the baby’s bawling. They invariably offered to look after her when he worked bucking hay, or plowing or hammering rails. All said she looked like an angel; and after countless such testaments, he saw her anew. Her downy blonde hair became a sign of blessedness, her white skin as clean as rain and rich as heavy cream, eyes so big and blue they seemed destined to see not just the sky, but the heavens beyond. The dead child was the price to pay for this one. In the Bible, God’s gifts carried a price. His dead wife had cursed him, but God had other plans. He was not cursed. His wife’s deathbed rants did not have to be his fate. He had, for the first time in years, some hope. So he devised a plan, and he had to bring it to fruition before the girl could read. As a lone man with a baby, he got all kinds of sympathy. Folks were always ready to give him work. All he had to do, he figured, was to find the right spot and settle in. He would make something of himself. Then, when he showed the girl the letter, she would not recognize the man so bitterly described as the righteous, caring father before her. Those vicious words would mean nothing to her because the man they cursed was dead.

  4

  “It may be well here to remark that with all beings there must be much fortuitous destruction... For instance a vast number of eggs or seeds are annually devoured, and these could
be modified through natural selection only if they varied in some manner which protected them from their enemies. Yet many of these eggs or seeds would perhaps, if not destroyed, have yielded individuals better adapted to their conditions of life than any of [those] which happened to survive.

  - Charles Darwin

  “The Origin of Species”

  Theodosia’s dirty, still-bare feet swung freely as the afternoon train rattled toward Fort Smith. The plump, matronly woman sitting next to her had run a damp cloth across her face, erasing some of the blood, but the bruises grew more impressive by the mile. The matron regularly placed a gentle hand on her legs to remind her not to swing them in that unladylike manner, a habit doubtless acquired while growing up practically wild in the Indian Territories without a woman’s guiding hand.

  There was little to see out the windows, so Theodosia inspected the heads of the two Marshals sitting in front of her. One of them was bald. She imagined hand-drawn faces on the pale, white skin perfectly framed by an iris of sandy-colored hair… Eyes, nose, great big, bushy eyebrows. She giggled at the comic image, so lifelike before her.

  The matron smiled down at her. ‘A sweet enough girl,’ she thought. ‘So pretty - even with all the blood and bruises.’ It was hard to believe what they said about her. Those ravishers must have corrupted her, or lied. In the old days she had heard about Indians stealing white women and bewitching them so completely that they didn’t want to leave. Those poor women weren’t to blame. Nor was this child. When the woman’s husband died five years ago, she sold most of his land and rented what she could not sell (because though he possessed this land, he, as a white man, could not legally own land in Indian Territory and like everyone else just leased it awaiting the inevitable day when it would cease to be Indian land and become theirs). With the proceeds she opened a boarding house. It specialized in near-wayward women, who, under her supervision, did laundry and sewing to pay their keep. She was known throughout the town for good works. She was the rational choice to accompany this girl to Fort Smith, and comfort her throughout the recitation of her undoubtedly humiliating near-enslavement and probable ravishment at the hands of those colored fiends.

  Sitting next to the earnest, imposing woman who occasionally turned to smile sweetly at her, Theodosia giggled, still amused by the imaginary face on the bald man’s head. The woman and the Marshals turned at the incongruous laughter. The woman pursed her lips in disapproval because the moment warranted solemnity; men were dead; a girl violated; justice to be done. Theodosia shut her lips tight and buried her chin in her neck to muffle the sounds.

  Gaping out the window, she wondered if she had walked this terrain. She usually walked behind her father’s wagon instead of riding in it. She got to see things that way. Walking, she could chase a butterfly, or scurry off the road to see what the buzzards pecked at. The first time she ran at them, one big bird in particular stood its ground, flapping its huge black wings threateningly. She stood hers, too. Fascinated by its ugliness, she moved closer. Its blood-spotted beak protruded from a naked, wrinkled head. Next to it sat a ravaged carcass. Skunk stink sharpened the air. The big bird looked like a devil. She smiled as she circled it, watching its eyes follow her. It did not give an inch. She wanted it. She wanted its wings and its protection. She wanted the look in its eyes. She envied the fear she knew it must evoke in most—the disgust at its repellant face. She saw herself in it. Another wild thing. She screamed and charged like a bull. Startled, it flapped its big wings impossibly slowly, with a strange combination of frenzy and laziness—so slowly you couldn’t imagine them wafting the big, black body off the ground. Then, surprisingly, haltingly, it took to the sky.

  Her father never looked back for her. After wandering, she always ran back to take her place beside the wagon. If she got tired, she’d jump on the back. He rarely knew she’d been gone. They rarely spoke. There was nothing to say. She didn’t care where they were going, and she didn’t care about him. She followed because there was nothing else to do. She liked to watch him, though. He was like another of the animals she spied on. She watched his beard grow after he shaved. She’d seen men with full, lush beards and marveled at the wispy spottiness of his. She observed how the dirt and grime settled in the creases on his face, like fine black chalk lines. She gawked on the rare occasions he’d emerge from a saloon having bathed and shaved, no longer her father; no longer the silent creature of the plains, the foothills, the road and the wagon, no longer the embodiment of the dust they raised and the mud they trod. At those times, he emerged a man. She’d regard him with a mix of pride and fear. That he could present as a man meant that she might be more than just the spawn of the earth, more than a ghostly thing treading this particularly verdant purgatory. It might also mean that he was simply more—better than her and the life they led, underneath it all—and as such, would one day realize it and leave her behind. She felt relief as the sharp smell of sweat crept back on him, as the spotty beard dotted his face, as the dirt besmirched him once again. Only then could she relax and heedlessly skip behind the wagon as he moved from place to place, without fear of his recognizing her worthlessness and discarding her for it—for it was his as well.

  When he went off to work, she wandered various towns and watched the passersby. A filthy waif in shabby clothes and tattered shoes, she imagined herself invisible. Many stared and she never knew why, so she ignored them. She watched them with the same fascination with which she watched the vultures; walking in and out of shops, climbing in and out of buggies, pouring out of smoke-drenched railcars, their habits were no less strange to her. How this one wore his vest too tight… the woman’s mincing steps as she eyed the ground and scurried as if pursued… any rich man’s swagger… She studied them all. To what end she never even considered.

  ~ ~ ~

  In Muskogee, the hordes had thundered and raged. At the Fort Smith station, the much smaller crowd gaped at the steaming train in silence. They knew that living, breathing ghosts would step off that train. Judge Parker would sentence them to hang. There might be delays; there might be reversals, but they would hang, and die. They were more than outlaws now. They were every man and woman’s fate. They were dead men.

  The guards surrounding Rufus looked out the windows as the train slowed. When they saw armed Marshals push their way through the crowd, they herded their shackled prisoners out of their seats. The silence held as the Bucks emerged, a silence amplified by the wordless rustle and shuffle of bodies shifting, shoes creaking as they raised their owners to maximum height. The Marshals took positions before and behind the Bucks, and marched them forward three blocks to the government barracks that held the Ft. Smith jail. The crowd followed respectfully behind, and stopped en masse as the massive wooden doors opened to receive the notorious outlaws. The crowd stood still as the gates shut before them, blotting the dead men from view.

  This was the second time Rufus Buck had walked through those gates.

  ~

  “Rufus Buck. Introducing whiskey into Indian Territory,” called the bailiff of Judge Parker’s court.

  “His plea?” Parker asked the defense counsel as he rifled his notes to ratify the name of the accused. Yes. He recognized that name.

  “Not guilty, your honor,” replied the lawyer.

  Parker read his notes in silence for what seemed a very long time. “There is a witness? One of my Deputy Marshals. John Garrett?”

  The Negro Garrett stood in the gallery and then sat down again.

  “He still owes me money for that liquor,” Rufus yelled to the gallery’s titters.

  Parker stared at the boy. The painful interview with John Buck and the Chief of the Euchee Creeks still stung—an interview that had made manifest his growing impotence and coming obsolescence.

  Parker scanned the crowd. “Is your father in this courtroom?” he asked.

  Rufus shrugged, but did not turn to look. He hoped that his father was not there. He hoped that he was. All heads swept the room, bu
t no one came forward. Among a few men standing at the back, Parker saw one turn toward the door. Parker watched him leave. It was John Buck.

  Parker shook his white, whiskered head in sadness. At moments like these he cherished the good his office could do. He sat even more erect on his imposing throne, filled with pride at the work he would do here today.

  He glared at the defense. “You are asking the jury to take the word of this…” Parker rifled his notes, “…this 17 year-old boy against that of a duly recognized Marshal?”

  Marshal Garrett smiled at that. It meant the Judge had made up his mind. There would be no discussion of the crime, no evidence, no testimony—and if forced Garrett would have had to admit—very little justice. But that suited Garrett fine. It meant no one would learn the truth of it.

  The defense attorney, acknowledging his case lost, hung his head, not even attempting to answer Parker’s wholly rhetorical question. However, in doing so, in failing to answer, the defense attorney gained Parker’s respect. Some new arrivals with their eastern ways and Supreme Court ideas defended any idiocy, coddled any lie without the slightest nod to justice. At least this one had the benefit of shame, Parker thought. His case made, his dispensation of justice unchallenged, Parker sat erect in his grand chair, behind his ornate desk and spoke directly to the jury with every ounce of command he could muster.

  “It is inconceivable,” he said, “that a jury of honest men would take the word of this boy over that of a Marshal who daily risks his life for meager reward to maintain law and order in these Territories. Therefore, I will not even attempt to instruct you on how to reach your verdict. That is foregone. I will tell you why your act could be the salvation of this young man, so young, but already on a road to petty criminality or outright perdition. He is proof of the fact that the toleration of lawlessness breeds more of the same.”