by Rita Hestand
He watched in silence as they moved about the room, placing the bodies in their own bed and covering them as though they were asleep. Death had been a common thing in the war; Jesse had seen a lot of it. A lot of torture when young men had to have their arms or legs cut off, but the Jenkinses’ deaths seemed to hurt deeper, almost as deep as when his father was killed by a Comanche.
He wished he didn’t have to disturb their sons at a time like this, but his first concern was Abby, and if she was still alive.
“Ben, can I talk with you a minute?”
The eldest Jenkins boy moved about the room methodically as though he might disturb the bodies of his folks. He spoke to his brothers then turned to talk with Jesse. He gestured for the kitchen as he made some tea. “My ma, she was the best tea maker in the county.” Jesse watched him move about stiffly, as though just going through the motions. His face wore a wad of frowns and hurt.
“She was a wonderful lady, Ben. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I never dreamed this would happen.”
“Yah, you seen what was done?”
Jesse looked directly at him now, the biggest of the boys, who were all blond, and built like a steam locomotive. Ben’s blue eyes filled with tears, his temper barely under control.
“I haven’t seen the wagon or where it turned over, but I know about it. I’m so sorry I brought this trouble upon your family. But they took Abby, my baby. I gotta find her. Maggie, she’s at the cabin, and one of them is there with her. I need one or two of you to go over there and bring her back here if you would. I wouldn’t ask it, at a time like this, but I had no choice. She’s scared to death,”
Jesse explained.
“There’s one at the cabin? One of them that killed my folks?” Ben listened and nodded. “Yah, we’ll do it. I’ll go with ya. They killed my folks. I won’t be forgettin’
it. I’ll send Olle and Paul over to fetch Mrs. Coleman. Ya mind if they kill ‘im?”
Ben asked about the prisoner Maggie held.
Jesse smiled a little. “I don’t mind, but try to get some information out of him first, okay? I loved your folks, too, you know?”
Ben eyed him up and down. “Yah, I believe you did, and your missus. They’ll take care of her. Don’t you worry. As my Pa said many times, we are all family. Ya live in this country called Texas, you grow families along the way.”
Jesse nodded. “Things like this have a way of bringin’ people closer. Your dad was someone I’ll never forget as long as I live.”
Then Ben went to tell his brothers. Jesse followed going to his own mount.
Two of the brothers mounted immediately and nodded to Jesse.
“Where did you find the wagon?” Jesse asked.
“Down the road about a mile. We came in first, thinkin’ our folks was just havin’ a good time with the wee one. We looked about, tried to find her, but there was no sign,” Ben explained.
“Got somethin’ we can use as a torch?” Jesse asked as they both went to their horses.
“Ah Yah. I’ll get it, jest a minute.” He hurried off toward their barn. He came back quickly, and they were off.
***
Maggie was shaking as she held the gun so tight her hands turned white. The man didn’t scare her; fear of the unknown did. Fear that Abby wouldn’t be found, fear that Jesse might not return alive, fear that she had caused it all. Guilt and fear turned her stomach upside down.
“Guess we got you pretty tore up, don’t we? Takin’ that little girl of yours. Ol’
John saw how took you both were to that little tyke. We figured if we took her, we could have anything we wanted from you. And you know what we want, don’t ya?”
“If they hurt her—”
“You’ll what?” the man laughed. “Most folks don’t think much about a half-breed Negro child. Even the churches frown of such a thing. I’ve seen men take Indians before, squaws for wives, but never seen a white man and a Negro woman together before. It’s sinful is what it is. Ugly, dirty. Don’t know decent whites have no pity for ‘em, but I reckon she’ll be fine until we make the trade.
After that there’s just no tellin’.” The man laughed. “But then you won’t be around to worry about either, will ya?” His cold brown eyes took her in.
Maggie eyed the man as her hands shook. “If you don’t shut up, I may kill you myself.”
“The pleasure of me dyin’ can only happen once, and if he don’t find her, you are gonna need me to tell you where she is.” The man laughed heartily.
“He’ll find her.” Maggie nodded. “He’s that good!”
“How the hell do you know?” The man laughed as he twisted against the ropes holding him. The black hair on his arms seemed to rub off against the ropes, leaving a white ring where the rope had burned him.
“I know Jesse, that’s how I know. He loves our baby.” She choked aloud.
“Well, even if you kill me, I done seen how bad you are hurtin’ for that baby, and it’s pure pleasure to see you squirm, I gotta admit. Yes, sir, John was right about that. He said we should get hold of that baby, and he shore was right.” His voice was hard and unrelenting.
“Shut up! Shut your dirty mouth. You keep that talk up I’ll blow your head off!”
she yelled, tears rolling down her cheeks. She held the gun at his head.
Her own guilt had Maggie hanging her head. Her words sounded so hollow and full of her soul. “Jesse is the one that made me see what I was doin’ was wrong during the war. Even though it was self-survival, it was wrong. I know that now. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d have never realized the horrors of the war. I deserve to pay even more than I did for doin’ what I did. Tellin’ you I’m sorry don’t help. Tellin’ you’d I’d change things if I could, don’t help, either. It’s done. I went to prison for it. They nearly hanged me for it. I lost the only man I ever loved because of it. Isn’t it enough?”
He shook his head. “You are just one person. You never looked upon a
graveyard of bodies that stretched for miles it seemed. You never had your family wiped out at once. You never looked into the faces of the people you killed. You never seen ‘em starin’ up at you and yet not seein’ you. Whole families you wiped out. Without one care or tear. You wanna cry because it’s over and you know what you did. You gotta live with yourself over what you did. For the rest of your life, you gotta live with it.”
His voice had turned so emotional, she had to stare into his face and see the misery there. The man was not just angry, but anguished. She looked him square in the eyes and came closer, “I’m gonna say this once, and it’s not enough, I realize, but I gotta say it to your face. I am sorry. And I pray God forgives me for it.”
“Well, lady, God might, but I won’t. No, sir, I won’t. If I had a gun right this minute you’d be dead!”
“I know that. I know that is true.”
“You better not go to sleep tonight or it might be the last time you do,” he warned.
She sat down and held the gun at her lap. Her mind was on Abby, her heart was with Jesse, and her fears faced her. The men she helped kill, the Jenkinses, maybe even her own child, it was too much. She’d never stared at hate but it was staring at her. The guilt inside her boiled. What could she ever do to make these people understand? What would it take?
She got up after a long while and made some coffee. She sipped it slowly. It roiled in her stomach.
The man still wrestled with the ropes that tied him.
She had grown sleepy. She didn’t know how it happened but one minute she was dozing and the next a gunshot fired, and the prisoner fell dead at her feet.
She stared at the body for a second, and then her head lifted to Olle as tears ran down her cheeks again.
Olle stood in the doorway. “You okay, Mrs. Coleman?” Not even looking at the man he just killed, he went to her side.
“Y-yes, I’m fine, thanks, Olle.” But she wasn’t. She shook so bad, and she glanced at the cup that she’d been holding, n
ow leaking onto the floor.
He took her hand. “It’s gonna be all right, Mrs. Coleman. Jesse sent us to fetch you.”
Olle put his arms around her.
He stared into her tear stained face and nodded. “Mr. Jesse came by and asked for us to take you home with us. I told him we’d take care of you. Gather you some things, and let’s get out of here.”
“Oh yes, yes, of course.” Maggie moved toward the bedroom. After getting just a few things, she returned to the front room. Already they had moved the dead man outside by the side of the house, but Maggie carried what the man had said in her heart and it weighed heavily upon her.
“Guess the buzzards might get him before we get back,” Paul said,
unapologetic.
Maggie nodded. “We’ll worry about him later.”
“Yah!”
As they rode back in the wagon, Maggie looked at Olle and Paul. “I am so sorry about your folks…so very sorry. I loved them, too.”
Olle smiled sadly at her. “Yah, now God will take care of them. At least they are together. They would have wanted to die that way. There’s a certain amount of satisfaction, knowing that.”
Maggie nodded as tears rolled down her cheeks. Sorrow went so deep she wondered if she would ever be able to live happily again. What weighed on her was bigger than Texas itself. The guilt of so many deaths. When would it end?
When they arrived, the boys showed her a bedroom, and she went inside and lay down. She silently cried herself to sleep. She could not allow her thoughts to haunt her any longer. She couldn’t bear knowing she was the cause of all of all this bloodshed.
The next morning the sheriff showed up. He watched the Jenkinses lay up their folks and then he came into the kitchen where Maggie had made coffee and breakfast for everyone. She sat silently at the table. Her head bowed.
“Mrs. Coleman, I saw Jesse last night.”
Maggie’s head jerked up at the thought of Jesse.
“He found a trail. He and Ben are following it. I’m sure they will find her,”
Tucker tried to reassure her. “We searched the perimeters together and found nothing to indicate the baby had been thrown or lost.”
She looked up at him with tears. “I’ve caused all this death, and I’m not sure I can live with it. Maybe you should lock me up. Maybe I haven’t done enough time yet. Maybe they should hang me. At least it would rid me of this guilt.”
Her voice broke, and Tucker reached across the table. He laid a hand on top of hers. “Mrs. Coleman…” He looked deep into her eyes, and his heart was in his words as he spoke. “I don’t talk much, but sometimes, there is a need of it. I don’t know what to tell you.” He fumbled with his hat, twirling it in one hand. “I do know that life can be hard sometimes. I don’t think any one person is responsible for another’s death unless they outright kill them. Even then, there can be circumstances. As a lawman I try to remember that. I think it’s why men go to war and women don’t. At least most don’t. Women shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of it. They have a hard enough time just bearing children, the way I see it.”
He looked at her again. “It wasn’t a matter of guilt. It was a matter of the bitter taste of war itself. War does things to people. I’ve seen it, and I don’t like what it does. I’d rather uphold the law the best I can than to go to war for something I don’t completely understand anyway.”
He paused, obviously trying to find the words to ease her pain. “Everyone had their reasons for doing what they did. To point guilt is wrong because in a war, everyone is guilty. If the North hadn’t fought the South, or vice versa, then there wouldn’t have been a war. If the white people hadn’t made slaves of the blacks, a lot of things wouldn’t have happened. If the Jenkinses hadn’t been trying to escape the outlaws, then their wagon wouldn’t have overturned. But like the good book says, there is a time to live and a time to die. Can’t change that, can we? The way I see that danged old war, well, those boys chose to fight, knowin’ they might not be comin’ back. They made a decision. A life decision. And if you have a religious streak you know that there is a time to die, and we must remember that it’s God that does the choosin’ there.”
Maggie looked up at the man with surprise and blew her nose on her
handkerchief. “You’re a very deep thinkin’ man, Sheriff. For all you’ve done, I thank you. I’ll try to remember what you said, as I can’t make any justice of it, myself. I did wrong, and I paid for it. Maybe not enough in most’s eyes, but I paid.”
“I just do my job. Ain’t no thanks needed. I don’t know you, Mrs. Coleman.
Only what I see, and what I see is a woman who has put the blame where it don’t belong. On herself. War is bigger than one person. Remember that. But don’t worry, there is a garrison of Union soldiers over at Greenville and if Jesse needs help, he knows he can go there.” Tucker smiled gently at her.
“Union soldiers? Why are they in Greenville?”
“There’s been some skirmishes over that way due to some people that don’t want to let the war end. And that, Mrs. Coleman, is what all this is about. Ending it.”
“It’s gonna take a heap of tears and scars for this war to end, isn’t it?” Maggie asked. “So much was lost, not just in lives.”
“I’m afraid you are very right about that, ma’am. The war is over…but sometimes, what men have in their hearts just don’t die. And that’s the sin of war itself.”
Tucker rose and tipped his hat to Maggie, then talked to the boys a minute. He poked his head back into the kitchen. “You know, I can understand what Jesse sees in you ma’am. It’s a rare quality of humanity. Keep your chin up. Things will work out.”
“Thanks again, Sheriff.” Maggie looked up at him. “I sure hope you’re right.”
Olle strolled into the kitchen as Maggie cleaned up the dishes. “We’ll be layin’
our folks out and there will be people comin’ in.”
“Would it make you more comfortable if I stayed in the back room?” She glanced at Olle sadly.
“No, ma’am. It would surely make us more comfortable if you stayed with us.
It’s a sad day for us, and you give us comfort. You see, our Ma loved you, so we love you. It’s as simple as that,” Olle admitted, as though he didn’t understand why. “Mama used to say that only a woman can comfort.”
“Thank you, Olle. That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.
I’ll be here, with you then,” she announced bravely.
Maggie busied herself with getting the boys’ clothes laid out for them and checked on them to see how they were holding up. Stefan seemed to cry quite often. Being the youngest, he had less control over his feelings, she reckoned.
She kissed their cheeks as they lined up for her and waited her inspection.
“Your folks would be proud of you today. Today, you are the men of the Jenkins family. This farm is yours to go on with, and you have all been raised by the sweetest people I know.”
She’d have to face the townspeople sooner or later, and surely there would be no reason for worry on a day of mourning.
The tremors in her stomach roiled as the people filed in to say their goodbyes to the Jenkinses. Maggie kept her head down and sat by Olle, Paul and Stefan.
She barely glanced up as so many passed. Her eyes were red and raw and she hated people seeing her looking so fragile. Some paused as they came to stand beside her, but she didn’t look up. Olle reached to touch her hand.
“Olle, I’m so sorry about your folks.” Constance’s voice broke through Maggie’s head like a cloudburst. Maggie wrung her hands, nearly tearing the handkerchief Olle had handed her earlier.
“Thank ya, Miss Constance,” Olle said. “Mrs. Coleman is here to help us out, though.”
“Mrs. Coleman,” Constance repeated dully. “Well, I, I’m glad, of course, you have someone.” With a slight hesitation, she reached out a hand to Maggie. “I’m sorry. Someone said your baby was taken. I’m tr
uly sorry for you.”
“Yesterday,” Olle said flatly. “Jesse and Ben are out lookin’.”
Maggie looked up at her, and unmindful of her own tears, and nodded. “Thank you, Miss Constance. Thank you very much.”
Constance grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Things happen sometimes, and we don’t understand it. But we try, we try to understand.”
Maggie felt a strain to answer. “I appreciate you saying that. Thank you.”
“Good day, Olle, Paul, Stefan.” She moved far away while she whispered to another lady in the room.
Maggie didn’t look at them, couldn’t look at them. What must they think of her for marrying Jesse? None of that mattered. Constance had been nice and made an effort, and that’s all she could think about. She hadn’t expected the compassion.
This wake would be peaceful if it killed Maggie. She bit her lip and Olle touched her hand once more.
“Ya did real good, yah. Jesse would be proud.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I guess you didn’t have much of a weddin’ night, did ya?” Ben asked as they kept picking up odd and ends of the trail.
“No, not much. We’ll have time for that yet,” Jesse assured him.
“Why do these men hate your wife, Jesse? She’s such a sweet little lady. I don’t understand.” Ben’s face screwed up into a frown.
“Well, Ben, she was part of the war. Not intentionally, but she did get in the middle of it. She was very young, and trying to survive. She got tangled up in a bad part of it. Because of her own circumstances, she became a spy for the Federals. It seems the rebels want her to pay for all the trouble she caused,” Jesse explained.
“Was what she done that bad?” Ben asked as he turned to look at Jesse.
Jesse thought about the question. “It was bad, Ben, but she didn’t realize the enormity of it. There’s no way a woman can know such a thing. She informed on them, and so a lot of the men died and some blame her for it. But in war, it is often command mistakes that cause the outcome of a battle. I witnessed a few blunders myself. But Maggie paid her due. She went to prison. I took her to my captain and turned her in myself. He put her in prison until they discovered she carried my child,” Jesse admitted. “Then she became the fort washwoman until she came here. I asked her to come. I can’t believe she did, though. Not with me turnin’ her in.”