Soul of a Crow

by Abbie Williams

  Tilson had treated Sawyer to the best of his ability, of this I had no doubt, and now we were forced to wait. To watch for signs of infection and to wait—and I despised this with a rabid ferocity. Long ago I had waited for Daddy to return home, and for Dalton and Jesse with him; I had waited for Mama to recover, to find the strength to resume her role as my mother, my only remaining security. I had waited for eventual death at Ginny’s—and at the cruel hands of Sam Rainey. And now I was forced again to wait, and my fury had burned itself into an ember-field of bitter exhaustion, no less powerful.

  After a long spell of silence, Malcolm whispered, “I wish my shot woulda killed Yancy. I tried, Boyd, I done tried to kill him.”

  Boyd said firmly, “Malcolm, you done good, an’ I couldn’t be no prouder than Daddy would be this night. You saved Lorie by coming from behind, an’ thinking to stay hidden. Zeb wanted us in the open, so’s we would be easy targets.”

  “But Yancy’s still alive out there,” Malcolm said, and I reached a hand to him; he understood without words and collected it within the warmth of his. “He was watching everything from the pines, makin’ sure we was all killed. When we wasn’t, he run like the coward he is.”

  “Charley lit out to find him,” Boyd said. “Yancy ain’t gonna get away for long.”

  Charley Rawley had departed an hour before, southbound and determined to find Thomas Yancy; Clemens had arrived with Quade, and the two of them were still quietly conversing near the woodstove in the other room; Rebecca, allowing herself not a moment’s respite, had made coffee and now sat with her brother and Quade. Billings had come from town, and had since likewise left, riding north rather than south, leading a second horse, with Zeb’s body dangling over its back.

  “But he will get away,” Malcolm insisted, using his thumbs and forefingers to feel each part of my hand, almost unconsciously, as if intending to assemble it into an entirely new configuration. He explained, “Yancy’s the law. Ain’t no lawman gonna believe us over him. Yancy’ll say that Mr. Crawford did this on his own. An’ Quade, who mighta believed us, wasn’t here to see what really happened. You heard Mr. Crawford call us ‘Rebs.’ That’s all we is to the Yankees—Southern Rebs who ain’t fit to live.”

  “Once I thought I’d never utter these words, but not all Yankees hold that opinion, boy,” Boyd murmured, though I could sense from his tone that he was rather taken aback at Malcolm’s adult perusal of the situation.

  “But they do,” Malcolm said, with keen insistence. His pupils reflected the glimmer of the single candle in the space, burnt low and guttering. “They’s all got kin that was kilt by Reb bullets. Even Mrs. Rebecca, who been sweeter’n honey to us, lost her husband to a Southerner. We ain’t but the enemy.”

  “Rebecca doesn’t see us that way,” I whispered. “She truly does not. And she loves Tilson, who saved Confederate lives for the duration of the War.”

  “But Tilson is her kin,” Malcolm protested.

  “She has helped us more’n we could ever repay,” Boyd whispered, and I wanted to look at him, to gauge from his expression what he was feeling, but I could not call forth the strength required to lift my head. His tone was reflective, and subtly tinged with wistfulness. Boyd had helped Rebecca administer a dose of laudanum to Sawyer an hour earlier, but she had not spoken to him other than to direct his movements in keeping Sawyer’s head steady so that she could manipulate the spoonful down his throat.

  When Quade arrived, he had taken Rebecca into his arms and held her.

  “Thank God for her, and Tilson, both,” I whispered, and bent nearer the bed so that I could press my lips to Sawyer; so little of his face was exposed, bound and wrapped as it was, but I kissed his jaw, gently. He was alive, and every breath I took begged him to continue living—I had not yet allowed myself to contemplate that his left eye was gone. At present, I refused to concentrate on anything other than ensuring his continued survival.

  Boyd placed one hand on Sawyer, lightly and with great reverence. He whispered, “Old friend, we’s been through too much together for you to leave us now.”

  “Dawn’s coming,” Malcolm murmured.

  Dawn offered a false sense of fair weather, the land outside the front door appearing lovely and benevolent beneath a placid sky; within a quarter hour, however, the sun would lift into the massing clouds, all of its tranquility subsequently eradicated, and would display for us instead a day devoid of color, a sky flat-white, humid air heavy as stale breath. I had not slept, could not think of sleeping, but I had countless reasons to be thankful.

  Sawyer was still breathing.

  He had survived the night.

  Rebecca was frying eggs, talking quietly to her boys. I found it difficult to walk—my feet felt as if they had been scrubbed free of all skin. I sat and rested my forearms on the edge of the bed, my cheek upon them, and was drifting in a state of partial stupor when Sawyer’s left arm jerked violently and he groaned. I sprang to immediate attention. Tilson had covered both of Sawyer’s eyes with a single strip of linen in order to hold the poultice in place. Surely by now the laudanum was wearing away, and Sawyer would require another round or the pain would be too intense.

  “I’m here,” I said, my eyes roving frantically over his face, searching for further signs of consciousness. I touched him with great care, leaning as close as I dared without jostling the bed, and said firmly, “Sawyer, you’re safe. I’m here, and you’re safe at Tilson’s.”

  He groaned, low and harsh.

  Rebecca appeared swiftly in the room, bearing a spoon and the small, brown-glass bottle, in addition to a tin cup of water. She asked, “Is he waking?”

  “He’s hurting,” I said, retaining calm with all of my effort. His limbs had begun to shake, despite the quilts atop him. His jaw clenched and he issued forth another grating moan. I began to cry, begging, “Hurry.”

  “Lift his head, just as we did last night,” Rebecca instructed. “There, now.”

  I assisted her as she plied the liquid painkiller, gently fitting the spoon between Sawyer’s teeth; he appeared to swallow, and Rebecca administered a sip of water. As careful and experienced as her touch, most of it dribbled and wet his chin, as it had last night; it took us four attempts for Rebecca to be satisfied with the amount he took.

  She said, “I’ve a beef bone simmering. By noon I shall have a hearty stock.” Studying my face, Rebecca whispered, “Dear Lorie, I would be pleased if you would rest. Lie on his far side and sleep for a few hours.” She implored, “Please.”

  I nodded; Rebecca eased shut the door behind her.

  I climbed gingerly over the foot of the bed, settling near the window and lying upon my side, facing Sawyer, though I left a careful distance between our bodies. Blurring waves of dizziness lapped across my mind, as small waves to a creek bank, and I made a pillow of one arm and there rested my head, as the room brightened, albeit dimly, with day. I told him, “I will be right here.”

  But for the slightest rising and lowering of his chest, Sawyer was so frighteningly still, resting now upon his back; any position was undesirable at present, considering the burns upon his flesh and the small, neat stitches Tilson had sewn into his shoulder, but Tilson deemed it best for Sawyer to lie thusly. His face was angled my direction, the linen covering his eyes dampened by blood on the left side, but not an alarming amount. I studied what I could see of his face, his face that I loved more than all else in this world, and would never cease to love.

  You must go on, the blue-eyed woman seemed to whisper, somewhere at the edges of the room.

  Not without Sawyer, I contradicted, fiercely. Not without him. I will not wait countless additional lifetimes to find his soul again. I will not.

  It is a sin to consider taking your own life, my mother murmured in my ear.

  Half-dreaming, I whispered in response, I am a sinner many times over, Mama, and I have finally reached a point that I acknowledge this with no shame. And what of you? You left me behind. I know that I canno
t seek to blame you for contracting the typhus, for being ill, but you left me long before that. After news of Daddy, you had already retreated into your mind. I was alone from that moment forth. I never understood my anger, the resentment I bore you, until now. It is unfair, this I understand, and I will always love you, but you did wrong by me. So please, never speak to me of sinning, not ever again.

  For a time I drifted along in a languid torpor, allowing one foot to touch the side of Sawyer’s leg beneath the quilts, unable to bear having no physical contact with him. In my mind, I sailed freely a few dozen feet over the land, expeditiously retracing my footsteps many hundreds upon hundreds of miles south and east, spying endless acres of grasses, vast as an ocean, rippling with the wind. Light as a scrap of down, I flew farther, observing the red dirt roads of central Tennessee, the ditches ripe and bursting with flowers in this month of July.

  I saw Lake Royal, glimmering blue-green under the summer sunshine. I saw my brothers playing beneath that same sun, their curly auburn hair glinting like a promise that would remain forever unfulfilled. I realized I had become almost completely without substance, somehow understanding I was nothing more than a piece of my mother’s fair hair, a strand unintentionally set free from the lock she had given to Daddy before he left home. He had bound it with a length of green satin ribbon and Mama and I had each kissed it, before he tucked it for safekeeping into the breast of his uniform. I had sometimes wondered, in the depths of my darkness when I still lived at Ginny’s, what had become of that lock. In the most macabre of my thoughts, I envisioned it impervious to the rot that overtook flesh; perhaps it fluttered free of Daddy’s uniform before his body was buried, and was even now blowing along in the wind somewhere in Virginia.

  For luck, Mama had told him.

  A crow soared with effortless elegance, wingtips so near I could feel the rush of air created by its soundless passage. For a time we flew together, our eyes directed to the ground below, where the land had taken on the unmistakable appearance of flesh, ragged and wounded, the waterways its arteries, bright red with flowing blood.

  A long time in healing, the crow whispered. Long after your death, the land will still be recovering from such a conflict.

  I saw people then, thousands of them, perhaps even millions, busy as ants as they moved over the damaged landscape.

  And in their souls, longer still, the crow told me, with no menace. Its words were simple, unavoidable truth. They will live. Some will even prosper. In time, they will forget what has been done here. But their souls will still bear the injury.

  Go, I raged. My voice was hollow and fragile, as though the words had passed across a wide plain in order to be heard. Go from me. Never return to me again. I despise you.

  It does not matter. Oblivion is where I exist, it whispered.

  I grew weighted then, abruptly cut free from my airy freedom. I screamed after the huge, black-feathered bird as I plunged to earth, but on it flew without looking back, flapping once its sleek ebony wings before disappearing into the distance of the wide blue sky that arched over Tennessee.

  * * *

  Rebecca spoke heatedly, just out in the yard.

  My eyelids were stuck shut, as though my tears had solidified and become sticky, tangling together my eyelashes. The house smelled of beef broth. I rose to one elbow, rubbing furiously at my eye sockets, looking at once to Sawyer. The quality of the light had changed in the small bedroom, the sun having advanced over the roof of the house, creating pockets of shadow. Sawyer appeared unchanged. An unsettling sense of disorientation, of plummeting endlessly, hovered near, and though I was uncomfortably warm beneath the quilt, I shivered.

  I heard the second voice then, which seemed vaguely familiar, and I strained to listen.

  “Shall not…if I have…” I could only discern every few words.

  “Only require…few moments…”

  The journalist, I realized. The man named Parmley was in the dooryard with Rebecca.

  I eased from under the covers, sweat slick on my skin, but I intended to help Rebecca shoo the objectionable man away. It was then that I realized heat was emanating from Sawyer; just as swiftly, my stomach grew cold. I rested my palm against his cheek, and knew.

  Fever.

  I stumbled outside, heedless of both my aching feet and my ragged appearance. Cort and Nathaniel were hanging on the fence, watching silently as Rebecca stood with fists planted on hips, facing Parmley as he sat horseback. I observed that Fortune and Aces were absent from the corral, as was Kingfisher, Tilson’s solid chestnut gelding. Without preamble, my voice scratching over the words, I told Rebecca, “He’s fevered.”

  Rebecca nodded at once. To Parmley, she snapped, “Ride for town, fetch my uncle, and be quick about it!”

  Parmley’s insincerely sycophantic interest was immediately directed at me. He gushed, “Mrs. Davis, you have been delivered from your ordeal. Sheriff Billings has informed me of your misfortune. If you’d allow me to ask a few questions…”

  He dismounted and seemed about to follow on our heels, and Rebecca rounded on him, ordering, “Go, now! I shall not ask you again. I require my uncle, forthwith!”

  Parmley lifted both hands, clutching his mare’s halter in the right. He said cajolingly, “Rebecca, you know I mean no harm. I only wish to…”

  “I swear on my life, Horace, I shall wring your neck,” Rebecca interrupted, speaking through her teeth, and Parmley instinctively retreated a step.

  Cort muffled a giggle.

  “Very well,” Parmley conceded, remounting his mare. As he rode from the yard, he called, “Good day. Perhaps when Mr. Davis is well, you’ll allow me a moment of your time!”

  “Come, Lorie, do not be troubled by that fool,” Rebecca said. She called to her boys, “Finish sweeping out the stalls, and you may have another tart each.”

  “I woke just now,” I said. “And Sawyer is feverish. Oh, Rebecca…”

  She rested the backs of her fingertips lightly against his temple, her features taking on an expression that echoed Tilson’s. She whispered, “Indeed.” Then her eyes flashed to mine and she said, “A fever is not always a sign of trouble. It means he is healing, and his body is fighting an infection. At times, it is best to let it run its course.”

  I tried to draw a full breath past my trembling lips. I whispered, “But he is so very hot…”

  “Let us see what Uncle Edward says,” Rebecca said, and gathered me into a hug. Against my hair she whispered, “I wish I could do more to put you at ease. You have been very brave, Lorie.”

  Tilson arrived within the next half hour, along with Malcolm and Boyd. Boyd, despite Tilson’s exasperated orders to stay put, had ridden into town to speak with Billings, to see what had been done regarding Zeb’s role in last night’s events; I could only imagine the resultant firecrackers. I listened with one ear as the three of them cantered into the yard.

  “Boyd Carter!” Rebecca said, and her tone was nearly the same with which she had addressed Parmley; she was in an obvious temper. The conversation between the men came abruptly to a halt, and Rebecca snapped, “You are bleeding, sir, and should not be horseback!”

  There was a beat of silence, and then Tilson whistled, low, as though to indicate danger. He asked his niece, “How is Sawyer?”

  “He’s fevered, as I told that imbecile Horace to relate to you,” Rebecca steamed, and I envisioned the storm blazing in her eyes.

  Tilson said, “Parmley received the sharp side of your tongue this day, as well, it seems.”

  “It ain’t but a little blood. I ain’t hurting,” Boyd said, coming indoors; he called, “How is he, Lorie?”

  Malcolm had walked around the house to use the pump; I could hear him just out the bedroom window, wise enough to avoid Rebecca in her current state. I reflected that she had slept as little as any of us, but I had not heard so much as an utterance of complaint from her.

  “Sit here, and let me see for myself,” she ordered Boyd, before I manag
ed to respond to him.

  Tilson appeared around the partly-open bedroom door. He set aside his hat and came near, laying a hand upon my shoulder.

  “You was dozing when I left,” he said. “I’m glad of it. You needed the rest.”

  Tilson moved closer to the bed, inspecting Sawyer with practiced and tender thoroughness, asking of me questions concerning his intake of water, and beef broth. He said, “He is warm, but I ain’t ready to panic. Let us change out these bindings, and reapply the poultices. I wish I could tell you there was a way other than waiting, but there ain’t.” Tilson sighed, recognizing my despair. He said quietly, “I mean to restore your good man to you. Do you trust me?”

  My throat was dry, but I whispered, “I do.”

  - 29 -

  Rain fell in the night hours, spattering the canvas over the window. When thunder issued forth a crescendo of spine-jolting bursts, I cowered instinctively, imagining I heard in it the crack of multiple firearms. Beside me, Sawyer jerked and groaned.

  “He’s shaking again,” I moaned, horrified by how swiftly these tremors overtook his body. “Malcolm…”

  But he had already disappeared to fetch Boyd.

  Hastily I gathered up the layer of quilts near the foot of the bed; these, I alternately removed from his scalding body or, as now, attempted to tuck closer about his shuddering limbs. Boyd came, toting a lantern, and helped me prevent Sawyer from thrashing too violently, as he and Tilson had been intermittently for the past three hours. Boyd kept a steady flow of reassurance, speaking in low, measured tones, the way a man would to a spooked horse. I prayed that Sawyer was able to understand that we were here, and near him, that we were caring for him. He had not yet demonstrated any signs of lucidity, and when his voice suddenly emerged, harsh and hoarse, nearly a growl, my heart convulsed.

  “Get…back…”

  “Sawyer!” I said, with unintentional sharpness, consumed by the need to hear him speak again. “We’re here. It’s me, it’s Lorie.”