by Blake, J
He replaced his shirt with the man’s unbloodied one and then the brothers rinsed the slickers in the creek and put them on against the continuing drizzle. The yellowslickered man had been carrying a Spanish musket forged more than a century before. John examined it and snorted in disdain and flung it in the creek. The other two longarms were well-kept Kentuckys of .45 caliber with patch-and-ball boxes built into the stocks and complemented with nearly full powder flasks. One of the men had in addition carried a .54 pistol that John quickly claimed on the grounds that Edward already had a handgun and never mind that he lacked the .44 ammunition for it. They recharged the weapons and made ready to ride.
The best of the horses was a sorrel mare. The brothers flipped a coin for her and Edward won. He named the animal Janey in memory of a pretty girl he’d once met at a barn dance but never saw again. All the saddles of the party were worn and cracked. John mounted a sound but nervous bay and led the third horse, an aging dun, on a lead rope. Edward trailed the mule.
At midmorning the sun broke through the clouds for the first time in days. The high waters receded steadily and by early afternoon they were riding mostly through mud. John pistolshot a large rabbit and dressed it and they cooked it on a spit and ate half of it and saved the rest for later. John checked Edward’s wound and saw that it was still swelling and oozing blood. At sunset they camped under an enormous oak on high dry ground and ate the rest of the rabbit and watched the western treeline blazing as if afire.
Next morning Edward was in high fever. The engorged wound showed the color of spoiled meat and the skin was drawn tight. He could raise his left arm only with grimacing effort. “It’s nothin to do but burn it,” John said. “Should of done her yesterday.”
He built up the fire and set a rifle ramrod in it until the metal turned bright red. Edward sat close by and positioned a stick between his teeth and gripped the belt over his belly tightly with both hands. Using the old bandage as a glove John picked up the glowing ramrod and said, “Bite down, bubba.” He pressed the tip of the rod into the rear opening of the wound. The flesh hissed and smoked and Edward shrilled through the stick crunching between his teeth and the tendons in his neck stood like wires. John then inserted the rod in the front of the wound and the hiss was not as loud and to compensate for cooling he this time left the iron in a little longer before withdrawing it. Edward exhaled a shuddering breath and slumped forward and the cracked stick fell from his mouth coated with bloody saliva. The sickly smell of roasted flesh was like grease on the air.
John wiped the cleaning rod on his trouser leg and said, “Reckon we ought do it once more just to be sure she’s done right?”
Edward looked up at his brother’s wicked grin and smiled weakly. “You sorry son of a bitch.”
“Takes one to know one, little brother,” John said. “Takes one to know one.”
7
Early that evening they came upon a family camped beside a cottonwood grove within sight of the trace. The western sky was a bright red streak smudged with thin purple clouds. Blackbirds squawked in their high roosts and tree frogs clamored without pause. The brothers asked if the pilgrims might spare a bit of coffee and were invited to take supper with them.
They hailed from South Carolina and were on their way to East Texas. The man was a farmer named Campbell, large and slow of speech. His face was badly misshapen, one cheekbone jutting sharply and the other sunken, one eye set higher and deeper than the other, the nose askew, the lower jaw out of line and the upper lacking both front teeth. The scars belied any notion that he’d been born with that face. The man had sometime been beaten near to death.
Farmer Campbell’s voice welled from deep in his nose. He said he’d had his fill of Carolina and had long thought about going west but had been shy about putting his daughters in danger of the damned Indians. But he’d been keeping up with the news from Texas real close and figured that the Texians were sure to accept annexation to the Union, which Congress had approved back in winter. “Soon’s it becomes a state the U.S. Army’s bound to clear the savages off the land so’s a man can make decent use of it,” he said. “Hell, could be the Texians done annexed already. Course now, the damn Mexicans still got to be reckoned with. But they aint no big worry. Sonsabitches couldn’t hold Texas against Sam Houston and two hundred Texians ten year ago and now they threatenin to go to war with the whole U. S. of A. over where the border rightly sets. Well, they keep runnin they goddamned mouth like they doing and they just might find they aint got to worry about no border no more cause they won’t have no damned country to have a border for, by Jesus!”
“You, Douglas Campbell!” his wife snapped at him. “You quit that awful language and all that blaspheming in front of your daughters!” The little girls were about nine and ten years old and seemed amused by their father’s profanity. The farmer shrugged and winked at the girls and they hid their smiles behind their hands. The mother sighed in exasperation and busied herself filling the supper plates.
When Campbell asked where they might be headed Edward kept his attention on his plate of cornbread and beans and possum stew although he lacked his proper appetite and was still feverish. John told the man they were on their way to New Orleans. He said they had an uncle there who made furniture and was going to teach them the trade. Edward looked sidelong at his brother and marveled at his easy way with falsehood. They had agreed not to tell anyone their true destination in case someone should come along behind them making inquiries after two boys who’d but recently killed three citizens of Mobile.
At the end of the meal Edward tried to brace himself on his left arm to push up to his feet and a spasm of pain bolted from his shoulder up through his neck. The woman caught his grimace. “Why, son, you’re hurt!”
Edward tried to make naught of it but Campbell too was solicitous and said if Edward was suffering an injury he ought to let his old woman have a look. “She’s a natural-born healer if ever there was one,” he said. Edward demurred but John said, “Let her see it, bubba. I aint real sure how good I done on it.”
The woman helped Edward off with his shirt and made close examination of the wound and then turned to her husband and he stepped up and took a look at it and then looked at the brothers as if seeing them for the first time. Then he sat down and busied himself packing and lighting his pipe.
The woman commended John’s handiwork with a cauterizing iron but neither she nor Campbell asked how Edward had come to receive such a wound. She ordered the elder daughter to form strips of bandage from a sheet of clean linen stored in a trunk and told the younger to boil a kettle of water and to use a bit of it to make a cup of red root tea. She fetched a handful of wild potato leaves from the wagon and ground them in a small amount of water to form a salve. When the hot water was ready she soaked a clean strip of linen in it and gently washed the wound and patted it dry and applied the leaf salve to it and rewrapped it in a fresh bandage. The younger girl presented Edward with a steaming cup of red root tea and the woman instructed him to drink it every drop. “It’s willow bark,” she said. “It’ll rid what fever you still got.”
Campbell and the brothers kept by the dying fire and drank coffee after the woman and the girls bedded down in the wagon. None of the three spoke for a time and then Campbell asked in a low voice if the boys might appreciate a taste of something a little stronger than just coffee. Edward and John exchanged grins and John said he believed a drink of something stronger would set real well. Campbell looked toward the wagon as if to ascertain that the woman was indeed asleep. He put a finger to his lips and stood up and went to a corner of the wagon and quietly detached a rucksack hanging there and brought it back to the fire and from it he withdrew a corked jug.
“My old woman thinks a sip of spirits is a swallow of the devil’s own spit,” he said. “She probly right. But hell, ever now and then a feller’s got to have him a taste of good shine, else he’s like to lose his sap altogether. Aint that right, you boys?” The brothers assure
d him that he was absolutely right. They were all speaking in whispers.
“Specially if it’s a wounded man among them,” Campbell said, pouring a generous dollop of moonshine into each cup. “Wounded man got to have all the medicinal help he can get.” The brothers said he was as right as can be about that too.
“So happens I been carry in a real bad wound myself for moren a year now,” John said with solemn mien. “Happened last year at a dance. Sarah Jean Charles refused to take a turn with me. Wounded my poor heart worse than a Indian arrow and I aint recovered yet.” Edward grinned and the farmer lightly slapped his thigh and covered his mouth with his hand to stifle his chortle. The three gently touched cups and took a drink and there followed a succession of soft appreciative sighs.
They drank like that for a while, sipping steadily and smacking their lips. The farmer poured another round and passed tobacco to Edward who packed his pipe and lit it and passed it to John. They smoked and drank in contented silence and then had another round and again toasted each other without words. The moon was high when the farmer poured out a last drink for everybody and they touched cups and drank and then put down for the night.
In the morning the pain of Edward’s wound was much abated and he had no fever at all. The Campbell woman examined it and pronounced that it was crusting nicely and then she bound it anew with a fresh bandage. The brothers took breakfast with the family and the woman packed a chunk of cornbread and a few hocks for them to take with them. They presented Campbell with the old dun in gratitude for his hospitality and his wife’s treatment of Edward’s wound and they thanked the daughters for their kindness too and then they rode off with the rising sun at their backs.
8
West into Mississippi. Days of fierce sunshine and thick wet heat. Ripe lowcountry smells. They meandered over low hills and through dense pinewoods, through forests full of moss-hung oaks and magnolia trees bursting with white blossoms. Some afternoons the clouds banked huge and dark over the Gulf and thunder rolled and lightning branched brightly and wind shook the trees and rain swept in and churned fresh orange mud. Sometimes it rained in the night and the brothers cursed and slept fitfully in sopping blankets. But in the mornings the clouds came asunder and the sun broke red through the trees and the rivers did not top their banks again in the rest of that sultry summer.
They knew no haste and rarely hupped their mounts to a trot. They sometimes stayed put at a campsite for days. They shot deer and gorged themselves on the roasted haunches and smoked the backmeat in thick strips. They climbed trees to achieve a vista and have a closer look at the clouds and holler their names across the treetops. They swam in lakes and netted catfish from the creeks with their shirts. They napped in the high summer grass. They slept in pastures lit pale as bone by moonlight, under skies black as mystery and blasting with stars. They claimed various blazing comets as omens of their own bright futures. They told each other of the beautiful women they were destined to be loved by, the great wealth they were bound to amass.
They were ferried across the Pascagoula by a labor gang working to repair a bridge and with them shared their bounty of smoked venison and from them learned the game of three-card poker which some called monte. The ante was two bits. Edward was incapable of losing. When somebody held an ace he held a pair of treys. When somebody had a pair of queens he held the four-five-six. John thought he’d won a hand when he laid down three sixes but Edward gleefully showed three eights and took the pot. He won one hand after another and laughed as he pulled in the money. The workmen’s eyes went narrow and their mouths drew tight.
When Edward beat three aces with the seven-eight-nine of hearts to win for the eighth time in a row and increase his winnings to nearly twenty dollars, the aces holder threw down his cards and said, “You cheatin sumbitch!”
Edward sprang to his feet and kicked him in the throat before the man’s knife cleared its sheath. John quickly mounted up and held the others at pistolpoint, his heart kicking wildly, while Edward scooped up the money and then stepped up onto the sorrell mare and cantered off with the mule in tow. John sat his horse and kept the cocked pistol on the workmen until he was sure Edward was well away and then he reined about and lit out at a gallop to catch up to his brother. They laughed and whooped and rode hard till the sun was below the treeline and then they swung off the trace and into the deeper woods and there made a fireless camp and took turns keeping watch through the night but no one came after them.
9
They came upon a house-raising early one morning as the sun was just beginning to show through the trees. Several families had come together to help a neighbor put up his new cabin in a wildflowered clearing within sight of the trace and flanked by a wide shallow creek. John halloed the folk and asked if they might spare some coffee and the brothers were invited to step down to breakfast. They sat at one of two long puncheon tables and ate their fill of fried catfish and grits with red gravy, cornbread with molasses, boiled greens. They drank steaming cups of chicory. The tables were loud with talk and laughter and the children were enthralled by the two strangers, peering at them shyly and then covering their giggles with their hands when John or Edward winked or waggled their brows at them. They were generous workhardened folk, several of the families having settled in the region shortly after Jackson put down the Creeks, others of more recent arrival. The newest family, they whose house was today being erected, had come from the Alabama highlands to farm Mississippi’s rich bottom country.
When the talk came round to the brothers John offered his lie about the uncle they were going to apprentice with in New Orleans and delivered his low opinion of Mobile and told of the floods he and Edward had come through in Alabama and told too of the graverobbers they’d seen at their grisly trade. Some of the men cleared their throats and cast sidewise glances at the women among them and the women concentrated intently on the plates before them and Edward gave his brother a look to warn him off any such further talk. They mopped their plates clean with chunks of cornbread and then looked at each other and John told the men at the table he and his brother would be proud to lend a hand and their offer was gratefully accepted.
Over the preceding days the building party had felled the timber they would need and trimmed it clean and cut the logs to length and hauled them by oxen to the cabin site. Today they would raise the cabin itself.
The house would be a two-room round-log with top-saddle corner notches and no dogrun. Edward and John grinned at the simplicity of it and the work went fast. At Daddyjack’s side they had erected houses of square-hewn logs, using broadaxes with offset handles to keep their hands clear of the logs as they squared them. All that was required here was to notch the logs and raise the walls by rolling the logs one atop the other by means of skids, one pair of men hauling on the logs from above with ropes as another two men pushed them up the skids with sturdy poles from below. As the brothers worked with the party putting up the walls, other men rived shingles with mallets and froes and shaved them down with drawknives. Against one of the end walls, a group of older children under the direction of an elderly man erected a makeshift catted chimney to be later replaced with one of stone. The warm morning air shook with the steady clatter of axes and thumping of mallets. By the time the women rang the dinner iron the walls and most of the chimney were up and the roof frame was in place.
The men converged on the creek to rinse themselves amid much familiar joking and shoving with each other and remarking upon the brothers’ impressive skill with an ax. Then everyone sat to a dinner of venison stew and roast potatoes and blackeyed peas and yams and cobbed corn and biscuits and gravy and strawberry cobbler. The tabletalk was full of news of who in the region had married and who had been born and who had died. Most of the deaths reported had come by way of violent accident. One man’s skull stove by a kick from a mule. Another man mis-stepping as he crossed a plank bridge and he and the young son riding his shoulders plunging into the quickmoving river where both did drown.
Another’s saw slipping wildly from its groove to gash his thigh to the bone and bleed him to death as he limped for home. Among the other news passed at the table was an announcement of a barndance to be held at Nathaniel Hurley’s farm on Saturday evening next. John whispered to Edward that he surely wished they could be here for that, considering all the pretty girls about. When the men had done with eating they took another few minutes’ ease with their pipes and cigars and then went back to work.
While one party of men completed the roof, another, including John and Edward, cut openings in the walls for windows and door, and still another set to chinking the walls with clay. The brothers demonstrated their mastery of a variety of saws and by the end of the day had secured reputations among these men as true craftsmen in timber. The sun was still above the trees when the cabin stood finished. The men clapped each other on the shoulder and each man gathered his tools and set them in his wagon and then everyone sat to a supper of bacon and beans, greens and cornbread.
Then the fiddles and banjos were brought out and everyone gathered on a wide cleared patch of ground and a redbeard called O’Hara sang a song about a girl named Molly in Dublin’s fair city, and then one about sweet County Gal way. When the lead fiddler called a square dance the folk hastened into formations and the fiddles and banjos struck up a lively tune and the lead fiddler called out the progression of actions and Edward and John, who had learned to dance as small boys in Georgia, did join in. There followed reels and waltzes and yet more square dancing, which seemed the most popular sort with these folk. In the light of the lanterns the dust raised by dancing feet cast the entirety of the scene in a softened yellow light and the brothers grinned and grinned every time they caught each other’s eye as they danced with one smiling girl after another.