Soul of a Crow

by Abbie Williams

  It began to collapse beneath me, spreading over a greater surface area, and I lunged, getting my arms around his waist and using the combined force of my heft and momentum to deliver us from the fire. Sawyer was weighted as lead, but I rolled with him, finding the strength to maneuver us out of direct flame and to bare ground; the motion kicked up showering bursts of sparks from the pyre. In the midst of this hell I worked feverishly, beating out the last of the flames upon him. Still I could hear nothing; my sight had narrowed to a slim tunnel of frantic need, sharply focused, my fingertips seeking evidence of life.

  There was a pulse pressing back against my fingertips, and sobs of relief splashed through the cavern of agony within me; sounds rushed back to beat at my ears—that of my labored breathing, furious shouting, rapid gunfire—and the taunting crackle of the fire no more than an arm’s length from my left elbow. Wetness poured from my eyes and nose as I grasped Sawyer’s face, bending close, the glow of the fire upon which he had been placed to die now offering light so that I could attempt to assess the damage to him. His clothing was in blackened tatters but had perhaps provided meager protection. My hands shook violently as I parted the ragged material of his shirt, in order to better see his wounded flesh.

  And then Zeb was there.

  He emerged from the darkness of the trees, scant yards away, and into the glow of the fire like a creature from the underworld, toting his Henry rifle. Crouched animal-like on the ground, and lit from beneath as Zeb was by the fire he had kindled into existence, the angle from which I viewed him created holes of his eye sockets. He seemed in that moment to possess no eyes, but instead deep black chasms, without end, mimicking nothing so much as his ancient hatred, an abyss across which there was no hope of rationale, or reason. His beard glinted ruby. His chest was massive as a steamboat’s hull. He appeared to smile as I spread myself over Sawyer.

  No, I begged as he directed a cocked pistol at my right ear, though no sound emerged from between my lips. Before he could discharge a bullet, something caught his attention and he moved surprisingly quickly, as he had on the prairie, stepping to the side and bringing the Henry rifle into play, the smooth stock braced against his stomach.

  “I’ll kill her,” Zeb said, a statement no less true for its stilted delivery; he seemed to be breathing harder than normal.

  “And then I will kill you,” Tilson said in return, almost conversationally. I did not dare to turn my head to see, but Tilson sounded close. Perhaps just on the opposite side of the collapsed pyre.

  “You goddamn Rebs,” Zeb said. He advanced one pace closer and put the pistol to the top of my scalp, pressing hard with the cold and unyielding barrel. He kept the rifle on Tilson, and said slowly, “Goddamn you to hell. You burned my boys. Nothing left of them but black bones when I found them.”

  “I didn’t kill your sons, an’ neither did this man,” Tilson said harshly. “No one here had a goddamn thing to do with that.”

  “Burned them alive,” Zeb continued, as though Tilson had not spoken. “When I sleep, I hear them, screaming for me.”

  “Who is with you?” Tilson demanded. “Where is Yancy?”

  Zeb said, “He washed his hands of it. Said the judge might believe the whore after last night. He gave me the key to the jail and said to finish it, this night.”

  “You take that pistol away from Lorie,” Tilson said, menace edging aside his composure, even if he did not intend for that.

  “She kilt Jack,” Zeb said. “Shot him dead.”

  I didn’t dare to move a thing but my eyes, feeling Sawyer beneath me. His shirt was wet with blood. Twenty running paces away, where the long grass met the dirt of the yard, I saw Boyd stagger upright, stumble two steps, and then fall to his knees.

  “Take that pistol away, an’ I ain’t gonna tell you again,” Tilson said.

  “No,” said Zeb.

  “You’s as good as dead,” Tilson warned.

  “I been dead since the War,” Zeb said, in the tone of one conversing with a dimwit.

  “Holster that piece, you fucking Federal bastard!” Boyd shouted hoarsely, reeling to his feet again, aiming his .44. He stood half-hunched, the barrel weaving in his grip.

  “No,” Zeb said, with an air of finality. A stick snapped in the pyre, sending a plume of red sparks.

  And suddenly Malcolm was there, approaching quietly from behind, a repeater carried gracefully in the crook of his arms. In the fire’s glow, and to my terror-dazed eyes, Malcolm appeared eldritch and otherworldly, his features cast in scarlet. He stopped ten paces away and said with admirable calm, “I got a bead dead center on your back, Mr. Crawford.”

  Zeb’s attention was momentarily distracted at the sound of this new voice; the pistol shifted slightly from its position of threat against my head, and that was all it took.

  Tilson bellowed, “Lorie, get down!” and then he and Boyd fired repeatedly into Zeb.

  The big man jerked, arms twitching, and dropped his heavy rifle with a thud. I had flattened myself to the ground at Tilson’s order; the cracking report of gunfire seared the air above me.

  “There’s Yancy!” I heard Malcolm shout, his voice high-pitched with alarm.

  Three things happened then, one directly after the other, and though I was in the very midst and witnessed each as it occurred, later I would recall the moment as something viewed through thick smoke, with its opaque haze, its capacity to blind and choke. The moment when the path of my life was forever after altered.

  You must go on, the blue-eyed woman had told me.

  Zeb went heavily to his knees, bleeding from multiple gaping wounds; his eyes were painted a flat, mortal red. Malcolm executed a swift half-turn and raised the rifle with the fluid movements of a dancer, bringing it to his shoulder and taking aim, firing into someone riding away at a full gallop. And Zeb, dying, blood gushing over his bottom lip, hoisted the pistol he still clutched in his fist and committed the final act of his life by firing it into Sawyer’s face.

  - 28 -

  Tilson and Malcolm converged within a heartbeat, Tilson shouting at me to get back, but I would not release my hold on Sawyer. I did not hear Tilson order Malcolm to grab me and fought the boy with all of my strength, out of my mind, thrown far and viciously beyond all reason. Malcolm gasped, struggling to restrain my attempts to break free his hold; Tilson knelt quickly and his free hand went to the juncture of Sawyer’s collarbones. Almost instantly, he was on his feet again.

  “Lorie!” Tilson put his face near mine, clamping hold of my chin so that he could issue his words and know that I heard them. “You listen here! You calm down! I need you, an’ Sawyer needs you!”

  These words penetrated the churning madness, and I found the strength to stop screaming. Malcolm, consequently, relaxed his gripping arms. Weeping, lurching, I flew back to Sawyer’s side and dropped to my knees as a rock into a lake, gone forever as it settled on the bottom, no farther to fall.

  “Please please please…” I wheezed and gasped this single word.

  “Boy! Get over here, help me lift him!” Tilson said, brusque and efficient. “I’ll collect his torso, you two his legs, come along now! Get him inside!”

  Between the three of us, we lifted Sawyer’s inert form and carried him with slow, careful progress. I could not stop gasping, choking on each breath, as I studied his face—his precious face, black with blood and soot; blood pooled in his eye socket. I could not begin to determine the destruction the bullet had wreaked. Behind us, Zeb lay dead near the pyre he had built. Ahead of us, in the long grass roughly halfway back to the house, Boyd was bent forward but still standing.

  “Boyd!” Malcolm bleated his brother’s name.

  Boyd managed a step, immediately stumbled, righted himself, and then came to us at a halting run. His face in the firelight bore a sickly pallor; his voice emerged as a grating whisper as he asked, “Is he dead? Oh, Jesus…”

  “He ain’t dead,” Tilson said. “An’ he won’t be, if I have anything to say abou
t it. Son, you’s been cut up there.”

  “Boyd,” I begged.

  “Knocked me straight down,” Boyd said, dogging us. Blood seeped from his lower right side.

  “You’s hurt,” Malcolm said, and he was weeping, nearly silently, tears washing over his face.

  “Becky!” Tilson bellowed, but Rebecca was already running to us.

  “I dressed the bed and put on a kettle,” Rebecca said breathlessly, her tone steady despite the obvious terror in her eyes. Her shocked gaze held Sawyer and roved urgently over Boyd, taking into account his every last detail, but she submerged everything other than necessity and hurried to hold the door for us.

  “Get him onto the bed,” Tilson said, unable to cease issuing orders, and we did so. “Becky, get the extra lanterns going. Lorie, get him undressed as quick as you’s able. We must see the extent of the damage. I know you been burned, honey, but it’s gotta wait.”

  I nodded understanding; my own wounds were the last thing I was thinking about. I could not have explained how grateful I was for Tilson’s presence, unflappable and knowledgeable; I felt that if anyone could save my husband, it was he.

  “Son,” Tilson said to Malcolm, removing Sawyer’s boots even as he spoke. “Did you hit him? That was Yancy, riding swift away?”

  “It was,” Malcolm said quietly, his tearful eyes transfixed on Sawyer’s face in a combination of shock and grief. He blinked and then said, “I hope I got him, but I couldn’t tell. He was hidin’ in them pines to the south.”

  Rebecca appeared with two additional lanterns, and Tilson shoved aside the crocheted doily and ivory hairbrush set positioned neatly atop the bureau, nodding for the lights to be placed there.

  “Linens,” he told his niece. “And my satchel.”

  Boyd joined me at the bedside and together we worked to remove what was left of Sawyer’s clothing; I could not catch my breath but my hands were steady, focused only upon doing whatever it took to save him. The sight of the damage sent arrow points of throbbing agony through my center. Bearing witness to how wretchedly, and purposely, he had been hurt served to constrict my heart into a self-preserving knot surely no larger than a pebble. Each moment stretched longer than time itself.

  Sprawled limply atop the bed, Sawyer was nearly unrecognizable, as though painted with red and black. He had been severely beaten. His hair had burned away nearly to scalp. The familiar muscled flesh I had touched so many times was streaked with drying blood—a bullet had entered his left shoulder, as the acorn-sized hole there attested. His lips were parted and he breathed, however faintly—and this fact alone kept me from tumbling over the cliff’s edge. Zeb’s final shot had taken him in the left side of the face—there was a ragged trench over his eye—and so much blood.

  “Son,” Tilson said, addressing Malcolm. He had rolled back his sleeves and hooked his spectacles behind his ears. “I must ask of you a task. I must ask you to ride into town to fetch Clint an’ Rawley. They’ll be at the hotel yet. Billings, as well. Quade, if you can find him. Rouse Billings from dead sleep if need be, the bastard. You tell them we’ve been attacked.”

  Malcolm nodded at once, passing Rebecca as she reentered the room bearing a kettle and linens, using one to clutch the heated handle. She set these on the nightstand, dragging it closer to her uncle. I heard the outer door close behind Malcolm, as he left on the errand.

  “Lorie, I must treat him, an’ I’ll need help. Can I count on you to do what I ask, without hysterics? Otherwise you must leave this room,” Tilson said, not unkindly; he simply needed to know the answer. His big, capable hands were already upon Sawyer and moving with deliberate delicacy, just as they had traced over Letty’s flesh only days ago; the lines between Tilson’s brows suddenly deepened, and this outward sign of concern stabbed anew at my heart.

  I nodded in response to his question, quite unable to speak.

  “Good. Boyd, let’s get him over. I fear there’s still lead inside,” Tilson said. “Gentle now.”

  “His eye…” Boyd said, and there was grit in his tone, the hesitance to pose a question for fear of its answer.

  “We’ll clean it out, but there ain’t lead lodged there,” Tilson responded. “I fear the eye is lost, but it ain’t the greatest danger just now.” The two of them carefully maneuvered Sawyer, exposing a bulging lump near the top of his shoulder blade, that which provided clear evidence of a bullet’s presence. Tilson muttered, “Dammit.”

  “I’ve the penknife, witch hazel, and whiskey,” Rebecca said, coming near. She had donned a full-length apron over her nightclothes, her hair twisted back from her delicate face. She placed these items beside the lanterns and proceeded to pour steaming water from the kettle into a shallow basin.

  “Lorie, turn your head,” Tilson said. As he spoke, he uncorked the whiskey, collected a linen and wet a part of it using the whiskey bottle, releasing the strong fumes of grain alcohol. His gaze was sympathetic, but unwavering in its resolve. Boyd watched me, with seeming caution, as though he already knew I would disobey Tilson’s request.

  I lifted my chin only a fraction, and whispered, “Please. Let me help.”

  Tilson’s mouth compressed into a stern line, but he only nodded briefly, acknowledging my words, and then said, “We can’t delay. Boyd, Becky, you two bolster him, keep that shoulder exposed for me. I don’t want him prone, not with that eye. Lorie, take that cloth and see if you can’t cleanse some of that soot from his legs. Use water and vinegar, both, darlin’.” I realized Tilson was attempting to position and busy me away from direct view, but he had allowed me to remain here, and so I did not protest.

  With characteristic calm, Tilson dabbed clean the area surrounding the bullet’s bulge. I gathered my wits and moved to the foot of the bed, gently taking Sawyer’s right ankle into my hand and applying the damp cloth.

  I am here, I told my husband, clamping fiercely upon the urge to give way to abject weeping, willing my thoughts into his mind. We will save you, I swear to you. We will save you.

  Boyd and Rebecca held Sawyer in place, angling his torso so that Tilson could work. Tilson sat upon a chair, and with marked, exact effort, opened an incision small and neat, just beneath the lump of lead. A thick line of blood immediately welled. Tilson set aside the penknife, then squeezed precisely with his thumbs; I was reminded of Sawyer working over the abscess on Juniper’s hoof. The bullet popped forth like a bloody pit emerging from an overripe cherry. It fell to the bed and Tilson, sounding cautiously satisfied, muttered, “There,” and stoppered the flow of blood with the whiskey-drenched linen.

  “Helps combat the seepage an’ infection,” he explained. “Learned the trick in the War.”

  “He’s hurt so terrible,” Boyd said roughly.

  “We’ll clean an’ poultice him, patch up this cut, an’ then we’ll see to that eye,” Tilson said. He looked abruptly at me, his blue-gray gaze searching my face, and his voice softened. He said, “Darlin’, you’s the bravest woman I ever knew. This man of yours owes you his life.”

  “Help him,” I begged in a whisper.

  “I aim to, you rest assured of that,” Tilson said, and a ghost of a smile touched his lips.

  * * *

  Hours later, Boyd, Malcolm, and I sat together, three hardback chairs drawn close. Tilson had climbed to the loft and joined his great-nephews, intending to rest as best he could before dawn, no more than an hour away; he had worked tirelessly over Sawyer, with Rebecca’s competent help, Boyd and I assisting as we were able, before turning his attention to Boyd, and to me, assessing and treating each of us, all without a word of complaint.

  I had not felt the pain of my wounds in the extremity of my distress, had hardly determined the extent of them, but now, left in the quiet dimness of one lantern with my husband, and the man and boy I loved as brothers, the multiple burns throbbed with a stinging ache. My feet had borne the worst of it, lacerated with multiple burns, and I sat now with my bare toes curled under against the floor, leaning sideway
s against Boyd’s comforting solidness to my right, exhaustion having sapped all remaining strength.

  “You hurting?” Boyd whispered.

  I admitted, “Yes. Are you?”

  A bullet tore a sizeable chunk of flesh from his lower right side, just above his hip; Tilson called it a goddamn lucky shot, as it could have easily been lodged in the bone. Rebecca had been the one to place the poultice, her head near Boyd’s waist as he stood while she sat, quietly tying the bandage about him, her fingers competent and tender upon his flesh, not lifting her gaze higher than her work. Boyd, holding up his shirt, dared to let his eyes linger upon her; I was the only one to notice, seated as I was at the end of the bed while Tilson carefully smudged a thick salve over the burns on my soles, before binding them.

  Boyd whispered to me, “I’m hurting some, but I’ll heal. Carters is fast healers, always has been.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “Both of you. You saved him. You killed that…that…” Hatred broke the word in two, twisted apart my voice. I managed, “That bastard.”

  “You was the one climbed into the fire,” Malcolm said, low and yet with wonder in his words. “My heart near quit beating, I was so scared.”

  “Tilson was right, you’s brave as a warrior, Lorie-girl,” Boyd said, and kissed my cheek. “Sawyer loves you with all his heart, an’ I know you love him as much. But then, I knew that from the first.”

  “I do, and I love the both of you, too,” I whispered. “I can’t imagine my life without all of you.”

  Malcolm, to my left, rested his cheek on my upper arm.

  “We’s family, no matter that we ain’t blood kin,” Boyd agreed. “An’ I don’t aim to lose one of us, not now.” He whispered, “You hear that, old friend?”

  For a time, we sat wordlessly; Boyd held both of us close, Malcolm snuggled against my side, one of his slender arms resting upon my lap. I let their collective security sink into my soul, so very grateful for them. But no amount of comfort, or wishing, could banish the memory of Sawyer’s blood, so much spilled this night; I was unable to stop thinking of it, and my helplessness in the face of his suffering was torturous, so potent was the pain of the unknown.