Sue Mundy

by Richard Taylor

  Later, as they headed back toward Bloomfield, Berry asked Jarom if he was all right. Jarom said he was but spoke not another word as Marion and Berry chattered along the road until the three of them reached their billet for the night. And then all Jarom would say was that he would see them in the morning.

  That night, lying in a stranger’s bed, he couldn’t sleep. Listening to a dog bark in the distance, he realized in a flash of intuition that he was a hunter, that all of them were hunters. Old Nether hunted for bees, Estin Polk for the face of God; Marion was fueled by the desire to reduce the world to lifelessness, Magruder by the greed of the dispossessed, Berry with lust that somehow compensated for his lost arm. Morgan, hunter of another ilk, strove for acclaim or honor or some basic fulfillment of a craving to be about in the world and thought a leader. Patterson he wasn’t so certain about. Patterson’s old wanderlust was a medium of conveyance, not a destination. What he searched for, impeded by blindness now, neither of them might ever know. His own quest? He didn’t know, though he was beginning to believe it might be for survival. He did know that now he was a hunter hunted.

  CALDWELL

  Magruder found a tailor and tavern keeper in Bloomfield named Tinsley who agreed to make gaudy suits for the group. Berry politely but firmly declined the offer, saying he reckoned the clothes he had on suited him well enough. From the same bolt Magruder and Tom Henry selected black velvet. Jarom picked his from a quantity of red wool, giving instructions to trim it out with a tinsel fringe on the sleeves and breeches. Tinsley tailored jackets in the roundabout fashion with gold lace and staff officer buttons or brass buttons stamped with the Kentucky state seal—two men shaking hands, one in a coonskin cap, the other, obviously more citified, in a cutaway coat. United we stand, divided we fall.

  The suits were ready in early November. Tinsley charged them double the regular price because other guerrillas had left him high and dry. Everyone willingly paid, not wishing to jinx themselves with stolen clothes.

  Marion tricked himself out in a gray sack coat with yellow stripes and a low black hat from which protruded the speckled feather of a pheasant, the hat set off with a tassel of yellow and black. Around his neck he wound a red and white comfort, giving him more color than the others. Around his Magruder was wound a victorine, a long ladies’ fur piece that Berry said was properly called a tippet and was named after the queen of England, who wore them in winter and set the style. On the first night wearing the new outfits, they began painting their faces in Indian style and added long horsehair wigs that gave them the look of troglodytes.

  Though Magruder insisted the outfits cowed and intimidated their enemies, Jarom interpreted his as a combination playsuit and declaration of exuberance and devil-may-care. To Marion, their outfits signified that no quarter would be given, no prisoners taken.

  One overcast morning, not long before noon, a band of twelve of Berry’s group were returning on the Bardstown road from a scout near Pitt’s Point, a village situated at the junction of the Rolling Fork and the main Salt River, nine miles from Shepherdsville in Bullitt County. In the village, they took what they wanted from the stores. At one of the two merchandising establishments Magruder picked up an item of gossip: Edward Caldwell, whom both he and Marion had known since childhood, had come home to visit his dying father. The store owner shared this intelligence, Magruder suspected, to get them off his premises and out of Pitt’s Point. Magruder saw this news as an invitation to proceed on a second adventure and serve up some revenge. Since no one knew the way exactly, they pressed into service a guide, a farmer named Pastle, who said he could take them.

  Caldwell had come home on furlough from the Fifteenth Kentucky volunteers, and Magruder especially hated Kentuckians of his acquaintance who had enlisted in the Union cause. Four of them—Marion, Magruder, Tom Henry, and Jarom—along with their guide formed a squad and broke off from the others at the appropriate side road to make their way to the Caldwell farm, arranging beforehand to catch with up the rest of the party at the abandoned iron furnaces near Belmont; whoever arrived first was to set up camp. The five of them rode in a mizzling rain that worked into their new suits, only Tom Henry having thought to bring his poncho. Jarom worried that dampness saturating the material would cause the colors to run and give off a stink of mustiness.

  The party reached the Caldwells’ near suppertime. Located about two and half miles below Shepherdsville, the house stood at the end of a wooded lane on top of a rise that sloped down to the Salt River. The house in sight, they dismissed Pastle with a warning not to tell anyone what he had seen or done. The guide lost little time in getting shed of them. Then they debated whether to tether their horses so as not to announce their coming. Jarom thought it a good idea, but Magruder overrode him, saying those inside the house would never hear them for the rain.

  As they approached, lighted windows in the house indicated the family was at home. With no preamble, Magruder walked up the porch steps, pistols drawn. He pushed open the front door and found the family seated solemnly in the darkening parlor, a man about twenty, a boy in his middle teens, another still younger—all obviously brothers, differing only in size and small details of physiognomy. The boys’ mother sat at one end of the table.

  The first to realize their peril, Mrs. Caldwell screamed. Then her three sons, George, Edward, and the youngest one, whose name Jarom never heard—none of them with weapons at hand—realized they had been caught helpless.

  “Where’s your husband?” Magruder demanded.

  “He died not an hour ago,” said Mrs. Caldwell, “of his sickness.”

  “Just keep your seats,” Magruder said, “or he’ll have company soon.”

  Jarom knew she was upset, noting the red around her eyes, a quavering in her voice.

  Only Edward and the pinch-faced Mrs. Caldwell had risen from the table on which the dishes held the remains of their supper—plain food, plainly served. The two seated glowered. Mrs. Caldwell, still glaring, took her seat again, but Edward, looking from face to face of his captors, remained standing.

  While Magruder kept everyone at bay with his pistols, Marion and Tom Henry explored the house, ransacking the bureau for money, searching the cupboard for silver, ripping and tearing sheets off the beds in sheer joy of destroying what belonged to their enemies. Tom Henry came into the room sporting a nearly new military overcoat. Jarom, curious but not feeling much acquisitive, went along to see what plunder they might find. He heard Tom Henry open a door off the main hallway. “Hey,” he shouted to no one in particular. “Come lookee here.”

  Jarom went over and peered through the open door. Inside on a makeshift trestle table lay a dead man dressed in a suit of Sunday clothes, a white cravat under a beard that half covered his face. He lay on his back, hands at his sides, his skin pale and waxen. His eyes had been shut as if in repose, his hair slicked and combed over his broad forehead.

  Tom Henry came back through the door and spoke to Mrs. Caldwell. “Ma’am, what was your husband’s name?” he asked.

  “Benjamin Franklin Caldwell,” she said. “He was known to his friends as Frank.”

  “And what was it that took him?” said Tom Henry.

  “He came down with a fever,” she said. “Caught a cold chopping wood in a chill rain a few weeks back. Said he’d chilled himself and got into bed and heaped on the covers. The cold moved to his lungs, and things went from bad to worse. Was the pneumonia that took him, the doctor said. And there was nothing to be done but make him comfortable as we could.”

  Marion then thought to demand any weapons in the house.

  “We’re plain people, farmers,” said Mrs. Caldwell, wiping the tears from her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve, blowing her nose. “We don’t keep guns here except for the squirrel rifle my husband used to bring in game when his chores let up on him, which wasn’t often. And that’s broke.”

  “And how about you?” Marion said, turning his attention to the eldest son. “Where do
you keep your gun?”

  With some reluctance Edward, a boy on the verge of manhood wearing a soldier’s blouse and some military pantaloons, gave up his pistol, the only weapon found in the house. Magruder then ordered the three youths to turn out their pockets, relieving them of some change and a wad of greenbacks that Edward said was to pay for his father’s coffin. In addition, he confiscated Edward’s penknife, his pipe, and some smoking tobacco. Mrs. Caldwell—a slight woman, her body taxed and depleted from birthing—wore boots and a plain frock covered with an apron on which Jarom saw a spate of cooking stains. Though she’d heard no threat or warning, through some inscrutable resource of maternity she somehow divined their purpose.

  “Mr. Magruder,” she pleaded, “please don’t shoot my boy.” She knew him from the times when he and Edward played as children.

  “Shut your trap,” Magruder said curtly, “or I’ll blow him to blazes right here.”

  Edward, obviously fearing for his life, knew to be silent and accommodating. Not so Mrs. Caldwell. She had just lost her husband, and she wasn’t going to lose a son if she could help it.

  “Let him be,” she said, “he’s just come home to bury his father.”

  “Then bring us his horse,” Magruder demanded.

  Those around the table exchanged glances, and none but the mother offered any resistance

  “George,” Mrs. Caldwell said finally, “go fetch them the horse. If that’s all these men want, they can have it.” Though sobbing, she spoke in a tone that left no margin for debate.

  “But she’s not mine,” Edward protested. “I had to borrow her to get here, and there’ll be the devil to pay if I don’t bring her back.”

  “There be the devil to pay,” Magruder growled, “if you don’t give it over.” He patted the blue barrel of his Colt.

  “I’ll get her,” said George, the second son, pulling his chair back from the table with a screech as it grated across the uncarpeted floor.

  “You know where the key is kept,” said his mother, sinking low in her seat, a study in dread.

  “You must come too,” Magruder said, turning to fix his eyes on Edward, whose shoulders were shuddering, the perplexed expression still imprinted on his face, the eyes still flitting from one to the other as if he knew this might be the last he’d see any of them.

  When this demand registered, Mrs. Caldwell began screaming. Her knuckles whitened as she sat up again and gripped the edge of the table for support. Jarom himself felt uneasy and wanted to leave the room, leave the house, maybe leave the country. But curiosity to see how things played out held him. Remembering Patterson, he felt a slow surge of wrath, premeditated and undeniable. Though he knew what was about to happen, he had no energy or will to resist it, no reason if Patterson entered the consideration. He looked on as if fascinated, following Marion and the son named George out to the locked stable, Edward stopping to look back at her when he reached the front door.

  “Don’t go,” Mrs. Caldwell ordered, finding some new source of determination. “Don’t go outside with these men. They’ll kill you.”

  Edward tried to reassure her, reassure himself, putting on a brave front.

  “They won’t kill anybody, mother. They just want to be sure they get the right horse.”

  “Mr. Marion . . . Billy,” she said, rising up to grasp Marion by the arm. She knew him also as one of Edward’s playmates and hoped she could prevail on him to prevent whatever was about to happen.

  “Do something to stop this,” she pleaded. “Please, please, do something.”

  Marion stared at her indulgently but said nothing.

  “Are you just going to stand by and see him shot? He’s never done wrong by you. He’s never done a spiteful thing to anybody.”

  Marion shook loose from her and grunted something unintelligible and strode out of the house to join the others at the stable.

  Jarom made his way across the muddy yard to the barn where he found Magruder, Marion, and the boy-man Edward leading a large bay mare out of one of the stables. When Tom Henry stepped out on the porch, off which a curtain of water was dropping, Magruder shouted for him to go unhitch and bring up the horses. Jarom ordered Edward to make the horse ready to ride. Edward, just cinching the saddle, offered the reins to Marion when he’d finished.

  “No, no, it’s for you,” Magruder said. “Git on and go for a ride with us.”

  His drawn pistol left little room for negotiation.

  Jarom was surprised that Edward went along with them so complacently. He tried to put himself in Edward’s place. He guessed Edward could not imagine they would actually shoot him. He had cooperated. Though he fought on the other side, he had no quarrel with Marion, with any of them. He’d known both Marion and Magruder since they were children skinny-dipping in the creek. So why would they want to take his life?

  As he entered the barn, Jarom saw George leading a bay mare from one of the stalls. Saddled, the snaffle bit and head strap fit over her ears, she stood outside, wagging her head and snorting at the humans who had taken her from the manger and warm stall. Tom Henry shut his played-out stallion, an iron gray, into the emptied stall as a replacement. Outside, George held the reins just under the reddish brown of the bony nose, waiting for his brother to mount. Jarom rose to the back of his own horse, as did the others, including Marion, who’d come out of the house. Mrs. Caldwell stood on the porch wailing, framed in the light of the open door of the house in which her husband lay on the cooling board, her arm around her youngest son.

  Though he had come this far obediently, Edward chose this moment to balk. Jarom guessed that finally it dawned on him that the intruders wanted something more than an exchange of horses.

  “Git up on that horse,” Magruder repeated, his patience thinning.

  Again Edward refused, his brother holding the stirrup for him now.

  Without uttering another word, Magruder raised his pistol and fired a single shot. Edward went down with a bullet wound just above his left eye, dead or dying. Then, in some unrehearsed ritual, each of the others, all on horseback, shot down on Edward where he lay, as though to ratify the deed. Jarom fired first, riding over to where Edward lay in the mud and putting a load into his chest. As the bullet struck, Jarom thought he saw the torso twitch, whether reflex of the dead or coup de grace he didn’t know. Henry went next, followed by Marion, the shots dying out in the steady fall of rain.

  George stood helplessly by, afraid he was next. Instead, Magruder threatened and warned him not to cross his path again. George stood wordless, his face clenching up, his chest heaving. Jarom saw the boy’s hands knot into fists and recognized his anguish but would not have undone what had been done even if he were able to. He had no doubt that Edward would have been shot if he had gone off with them. What surprised him was how long Edward chose to believe that death could not touch him, that all he had to do to preserve his life was what he was told to do. Good faith would not shield him from the world. Denial had been his mode when he exited this life, refusing until the last to believe that those whom he’d known not so many years ago could do him harm.

  Magruder showed them a bundle of greenbacks he found in the barn as well as a book with the pictures of three comely young women in it. Jarom noticed a pinewood coffin leaning upright against one of the stalls. It must have been bought in anticipation of the father’s death. Now someone would have to order another. As Magruder spurred his horse to leave, Mrs. Caldwell rushed out to meet her living son and mourn her dead one. Jarom followed the others, feeling little satisfaction as the rush of blood coursing through his body began to ebb. Once on the road again, Magruder commented, not in any way as justification so much as statement of fact, that they’d left as good a horse as the one they took.

  Over the next few weeks Jarom participated in a series of raids that became a killing spree. In Scott County the band raided the home of a farmer named Medley Powell, who, with his twenty-two-year-old son, had successfully resisted an earlier attack and
driven the guerrillas away. After robbing him of his money and all the valuables they could find, Magruder kidnapped the son, Fielding, whose mother, like Mrs. Caldwell, begged them to leave him be. Marion bluntly told Mrs. Powell she was on the wrong side and could not save her son. Fielding’s sister attempted to follow on horseback, but Marion told her that if she did they would shoot her, too. Instead, Magruder and Marion forced Fielding—his flaxen hair stuck in Jarom’s memory—to mount a horse, which carried him about a half mile to some woods near a dip in the road. There Jarom and the others emptied their revolvers into him, riddling the body with shot. The shooting took place close enough that Fielding’s parents could hear the reports of their pistols.

  After they shot a federal soldier captured near Jeffersontown, the military commandant in Louisville ordered Captain Hackett of the Twenty-sixth Kentucky to take four captive Confederates to the spot and shoot them in retaliation. Their names, Jarom later read, were W. Lilly, S. Hattey, M. Briscoe, and Captain L. D. Buckner. He wondered if Buckner was kin to his old commander, General Simon Bolivar Buckner. To be so broad, Kentucky seemed a very small place. Sickened by the reprisal, Jarom began to see the war not as battles but a series of small but vicious exchanges of tit for tat.

  The shootings of Surgeon Shirk and Lieutenant McCormack he remembered for the unusual circumstances and the fact that Magruder joked about the episode. Riding by a farm belonging to a man named Grigsby, Magruder, ahead of Jarom and the others, discovered two finely caparisoned horses tied to a fence paling in front of the house. After surrounding the rather large dwelling, Jarom and seven or eight others bolted in and found the family room filled with young men and women preparing to have a party. Surgeon Shirk, a major, and McCormack, a captain, had rushed out of the room and hidden themselves under a bed in a room off the end of the hall, hoping they would be overlooked. Magruder entered first and began firing at the bed. By the time Jarom entered, he found bedclothes strewn on the floor, the room a mess. Surgeon Shirk lay with a half-eaten apple in his hand. McCormack sprawled close by, his cape thrown over his head. Rifling through his pockets, Magruder found a handsome pocket watch. Outside, Magruder also claimed Shirk’s finely tooled saddle, pulling his own off the back of his big bay, aptly named Grit. And he would remember his part in shooting another soldier at Hustonville after raiding the town on a Sunday morning. They had searched every stable for horses, stopping at the town’s main hostelry, the Weatherford Hotel. He, Magruder, and some untried new men, one or two dressed in federal uniforms, posed as soldiers belonging to the Fourth Missouri Cavalry in need of fresh horses. Using this ruse, they bamboozled eight prime saddle horses from the skeptical keepers of the livery stable adjoining the hotel. One of the mounts, a fine gray mare, belonged to a Lieutenant C. F. Cunningham, just mustered out of the Thirteenth Kentucky Cavalry. Learning his horse had been taken, Cunningham rushed to the stables and demanded its return. He stated his name, said he’d served two years and that the horse in question was his favorite. While Magruder ordered him to disarm himself, Jarom and one of the Missourians shot him in the face, killing him instantly. Others started shooting at the two men who had accompanied him—one of them the Weatherford who owned the hotel—but they escaped through the door and down the street with only a bullet hole in Weatherford’s hat. Someone went through Cunningham’s pockets, finding his pistol and two hundred greenbacks. Magruder slipped a ring off the dead man’s finger.