Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  One of the children whimpered, no one else ventured a sound. Bigelow scowled at Mr. Banks.

  “Henry, why in hell you let him come in here and drink?”

  “Yeesey, let with, man, let with. I’ll not be minding your boy for ye.”

  “Nothing but trouble, that one,” Bigelow said. He stared at the floor and then drew in a long breath. “Well now!” and slapped his hand on the table. “You’ve food for a traveler, eh?” He helped himself to the stewpot.

  While the new arrivals settled down to dinner, Jabez stood, pitched the butt of his cigar into the fireplace, settled a hat on his head and headed for the barn. He felt Agnes watching him as he left. He chose an empty stall with particularly clean straw and rolled up in his blanket. Willard, stretched out just inside the door, already snored; Juwitt followed not long after. Jabez settled in and slept.

  

  A woman screamed and Jabez was on his feet before he was fully awake. Around him men were scrambling out of bedrolls. The red-haired boy, the one married to the Beauty, was out the door first, in his stocking feet, blundering through the deep darkness towards sounds of scuffling in the barnyard.

  One of the Canon men lit a lantern. Willard was over by the privy, grappling with a woman, the redhead’s wife. The husband grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around, swung a fist. Willard ducked. Then the boy, Billy, was on Willard, yanking him to his feet, pinning his arms behind him.

  The woman trembled, her bodice torn and her eyes glazed in the lamplight. A man Jabez figured to be her father went to her and wrapped her in his arms. “Go ahead, Tom,” he said. “Fetch him a lesson.”

  The men formed a circle around the three boys, their silhouettes dancing in the glare of the lantern. Billy grasped Willard while Tom swung and connected with Willard’s chin. Jabez heard a distinct crack. Tom nursed his knuckles and breathed hard, then sunk his fist into the boy’s belly. Willard doubled over, and Billy hauled him upright again.

  Reuben stood at the edge of the light, left arm across his chest, hand gripping his empty sleeve, breathing hard, face unreadable behind his beard. Juwitt stood next to him, swaying, the vacant look of a far-gone drunk on his face. The watchers kept silent while Tom got off a blow to the ear and another that must have blacked an eye. Billy let Willard sink into the mud. Then the girl’s father stepped into the light and clasped Tom’s shoulder.

  “That’s enough now,” he said. “I guess he’s been taught.”

  Tom reached with bloody hands for his wife and pulled her against his chest. Jabez turned to see Agnes, wide-eyed, standing right next to him.

  “Boy’s drunk as a boiled owl,” he said to her. “Help get her inside, but keep her next to a window. She needs fresh air.” His medical bag was in the barn, but he didn’t think he’d need it.

  “What did he do to her?” Agnes asked. She turned toward him and her eyes widened still further; she’d recognized him.

  “He didn’t hurt her, too drunk to do much. He’s a trouble maker and can’t hold his liquor, but he’s harmless.”

  In the strange light, dull red blotches hollowed the Beauty’s cheeks against a pasty complexion. Tom lifted her, carried her into the inn, Jabez following with Agnes trailing after. Tom lowered himself to the bench, settling his wife on his lap. Jabez knelt next to them and took her hand. He held her wrist, touched her forehead with the tips of his fingers.

  “I’m a doctor, ma’am,” he said. “Are you dizzy?”

  She nodded.

  “Elizabeth,” Agnes said. “Her name’s Elizabeth.”

  “Have you been bleeding, Elizabeth?”

  She stared at him blankly, then shook her head.

  “Cramps? Nausea?”

  She sighed, closed her eyes and shrugged.

  “You need rest and fresh air, but you’ll be all right. You’ve had a scare.” He stood. “How far along is she?” he asked Agnes.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “She’s with child. Do you know how far along she is?”

  Tom spoke up. “At least three months. Maybe closer to four.” He rocked Elizabeth, nestling her head against his shoulder. “It wears on her mind. It’s changed her something fierce.”

  “Not unusual. Childbirth on the frontier can affect a woman like that.” Jabez looked back at Agnes. “Her first one?” She nodded. “She’s strong. She’ll do all right if she gets some rest.”

  “We’ll be there tomorrow. At the farm, I mean,” Agnes said. “The journey will be over.”

  “Well, maybe you’ll call on me when it’s time.” He turned to Tom and stuck out his hand. “Name’s Robinson, Jabez Robinson. I’m going to Ohio to fetch my wife, but I’ll be back before the baby comes.”

  “Tom Kreek.” Tom took his hand briefly.

  Jabez turned to Elizabeth, touching her forehead again. “No fever. She needs to sleep. See if you can’t get some fresh air into this room.” He turned to the door. “Don’t worry about the boy. Reuben will handle him.” He stopped for a moment and looked at Agnes. “Good night.”

  He turned back into the night. The rain had stopped but a heavy mist muffled the night. The barnyard had emptied. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he thought about the tall chestnut-haired woman, remembered the feel of his arm around her waist. So the group is settling in Lick Creek, he thought. Life is full of strange coincidences.

  8

  Lick Creek perched between timber and prairie, rising from the roll of the earth, the roofs of its buildings low to the ground. Heat shimmered over boardwalks as they approached from the west and swung along the north side of the town square, the street deep in dust, past frame and brick buildings, some white-washed, some ramshackle. A large fresh-built courthouse dominated the square. Agnes noticed a forge, two stores, a saloon. The sound of an out-of-tune piano floated from a home at the far edge of town, a lace curtain fluttered from an open window. Then they were through the little settlement and out the other side.

  They moved through a landscape drooping in August heat, underlain by the scent of fertile prairie soils and the muted tints of grasses. The wrinkles in the land smoothed, and a broad plain rolled before them. In the center of an untilled meadow, a homestead nestled in a swale. The house of unplaned logs, with deep overhangs, faced south, the sunlight picked up the honeyed gold of peeled wood. The barn united two substantial structures under a single roof, a courtyard in the center. The lone tree, a weather-beaten maple casting a pool of welcome shade, overspread the yard.

  Agnes, riding in the front wagon behind Sam and Rachel, felt like an intruder as her cousin reined in the team and twisted to face his wife. His profile was impassive, but his left hand twitched against his knee.

  Rachel sighed, surveyed the scene before her. Agnes thought about the clapboard house Rachel had left behind, painted white, with shutters and a second story. But her husband wanted a new start in this rough place, and so she would want it, too. Rachel’s forehead relaxed and her eyes crinkled about the corners. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Sam?” she whispered. “I love the distances. I think we will do fine here.” Sam’s shoulders relaxed. He lifted the reins and clicked to the mules. Agnes let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She wanted Rachel to like it, she wanted them all to like it, because the prairie was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen.

  

  Religion. Agnes always marveled at how inexorably it followed folks wherever they went, and more, how no single religion would do. Wherever half-a-dozen families congregated, at least three different religions sprang up, neighbors and acquaintances classified by denomination. In Lick Creek, the Baptists met in a tent by the cemetery southeast of town and no matter the weather, baptized the congregation in the clear, frosty creek that flowed through the high plateau. Their revival style reached fever pitch somewhere around 1854 when the Reverend Joab Powell came through, saving sou
ls by preaching damnation. For six weeks that summer, the faithful flocked to meeting through the sticky Missouri nights. Then one day they found him dallying with the daughter of Mr. Foster, the lawyer, and he with a wife rumored to be waiting in St. Joe. The spell broke, and the good Baptists of Holt County turned on their preacher and drove him out, an indication of how quick to turn these people are, like a summer storm that comes up in no time at all.

  The Reverend Mr. William Fulton preached the Old School Presbyterian and never gave the townfolk reason to find fault. Mr. Fulton owned the only ice-cream freezer in town, and the Sunday afternoon ice cream socials in the Presbyterian churchyard brought everyone together, Baptists, Calvinists, Methodists, even a few atheists.

  The Methodists were a divided group with the Germans meeting in the old log school building that was condemned for classes but good enough for German Methodists. Their hymns, muffled in frosty air by the improperly chinked logs, rang familiar, though the guttural German words rumbled as if they spoke in tongues.

  The Methodist Episcopal service was the one Agnes’s family chose, and, upon arrival, they nearly doubled the size of the congregation. Agnes later discovered that the townspeople eagerly awaited the first Sabbath to see which of the denominations they would choose. She understood bets were placed around Ed Poor’s forge.

  As their wagon crawled into town that first Sunday, Agnes saw a face at a window, a man in a door, the flicker of a curtain. On the boardwalk, a smallish woman who seemed to have been drawn from a collection of circles—round face, round shoulders, full brown skirt, round black hat—leaned on a cane as they passed. Agnes pasted on a smile, but the round woman didn’t smile back, instead watching them with the judging look in her eyes Agnes had come to recognize as particularly Missourian. Missourians were a judging race, she’d decided. Rachel nodded to the woman, Nancy fussed with the baby, Elizabeth had refused to come. Agnes held on to her rigid smile as the wagon plodded down the street.

  The Episcopal Methodists met at that time in William Zook’s store. Zook’s Mercantile was weathered clapboard, dusty and dim after the brilliance of August's sunshine. Inside, figures materialized out of the comfortable gloom, roosting on planks placed between crates and barrels or leaning against the walls among stacks of goods. The folk gathered for the Methodist service were like the little round woman: shades of brown and black, unreadable faces that showed neither curiosity nor interest. Not much warmth here, but no coldness either. Talk was subdued, half-whispered. Men shuffled in the dimness, and additional planks materialized. Women shifted on their seats. Children, cross-legged on the floor, appraised each other as their tribe will, one step removed from a pack of dogs sniffing about a newcomer. The Canon and Jackson women settled onto benches, their men blending into the group against the wall. The bustle quieted. No one spoke.

  “Let us pray. Amen.” The Reverend Marvin’s white face floated in the gloom behind the counter. “Dear Father, grant us thy blessings on this thy day of rest.” His voice trilled thin and high, not the booming voice the preacher at home had used to pin his congregation to their seats of a Sunday. “Bless this harvest that we are gathering.” His Adam’s apple worked above a limp white collar, his black suit merged into the shadows. His hands, long and bony, smoothed the leather cover of his hymnal, stroking up and out in rhythm with his words. “And bless these good townfolk….” Agnes turned her head to the side and slit her eyes open to peer around the room without seeming to raise her head. Several of the women used the same method to survey the newcomers. These were to be their neighbors, maybe friends, maybe not.

  “And bless the newcomers in our midst, for they shall bring us strength and new blood to wrench our homes from the wilderness. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the congregation said.

  “The doxology, please.” The Reverend Marvin shifted his view from the counter to the ceiling, his eyes sliding over the congregation, and lifted his hands before him, fingers resting together, the tips just touching his chin.

  The singing echoed. Someone along the wall had a fine voice, deep and resonant.

  Praise father son and ho-lee ghost.

  James dropped his black arrowhead, and Nancy laid a hand on his head.

  Ahh-

  The bass voice in the back was very low, more a rumble than a note.

  me-e-e-nnn.

  This congregation loved the Amen.

  Agnes settled onto the hard plank. She understood Methodists and knew the sermon to come. There was a saying in Pennsylvania, whenever it blizzarded no one was out but crows and Methodist preachers. The Reverend E.M. Marvin was predictable, comfortable, dependable. Agnes was glad they hadn’t chosen the Baptists.

  9

  That fall, Agnes often turned to the land in her moments of solitude, the feel of it, the smell of it, the excitement and the life in it. She sensed in the fields and meadows of her new frontier home a long-term promise. As autumn moved in, it became a land of brilliance and brightness, the trees jeweled towers of red and gold, lingering on and on under a sky startlingly azure, the stars almost touchable.

  Then the heavy cloud cover moved in, weighed down and pressed them into their cabin. The wind drove out of the west filled with prickles of ice to sting faces and tear at clothes. The creek was rimmed with ice, delicate traceries surrounding half-submerged branches and whiskery reeds, crackling out from the bank so that each morning’s drawing of water required more care, boots braving the frigid mud, foot prints frozen in place for the season. Then one late evening, the snow arrived.

  Day after day, the Great Snow of ’52 blew in. It began the sixth day of December, trapping everyone indoors like beavers in a frozen dam. John, whose family lived in the front half of the barn, strung a rope from house to barn and from house to privy. The children, particularly James, who hatched scheme after scheme of escape, were forbidden to go out alone for any reason. The snow refused to relent, forming hills where there were none, wind-sculpted swirls that climbed to the window sills. They rationed hay for the animals and wood for the stove and persevered as best they could.

  By Christmas week Rachel was drawn and thin, Nancy snappish with the children, Sam even more silent than his wont. On those rare days when the storm abated for an hour or two, Billy disappeared, rifle against his shoulder, on snowshoes crafted from hickory and buckskin. But game was scarce. John buried himself in books, and by Christmas had read through all they owned only to begin again. Elizabeth’s waist thickened, her clothes tented about her, the light in her dark eyes gone, her hands resting heavily in her lap. They tired of the snow, tired of the perpetual dusk, tired of each other. The days sidled by, maddeningly similar, agonizingly dull. Agnes read, plied her needle, and waited.

  Then the storms ceased and the nights began to retreat, and there were days when the temperature soared with false spring, and sap began to rise in both maples and humans. On one of those days in early February the school board rode to the farm in search of a new schoolmaster. William Zook led them, head uncovered in the balmy air, wispy hair lifting in the breeze, a small brown mare struggling with his weight. Levi Zook, brother to William, rode next alongside Peter McIntosh, proprietor of the town’s rival store, who spoke to the Zooks only on school business. Another man whom Agnes did not know rounded out the delegation. She sat on the porch, peeling last year’s potatoes, reveling in the sunshine, and watched them trot down the hillside, a welcome sight. John, splitting wood by the big maple, stopped to greet them.

  “John, morning,” said William Zook. He nodded to Agnes and began the descent from horseback. He reminded her of an old mama bear backing out of her honey tree.

  The others waited and watched. The business would commence only when William was safely aground.

  “Morning, William.” John put out his hand, tipped his hat to the others. “Levi. Peter.”

  “Rufus Byrd, Mr. Jackson. Pleased.” The stranger stretched out his ha
nd.

  “Womenfolk survive the storms all right?” William pulled a stumpy cigar from an inside pocket.

  “Yes they did, thank you kindly. Won’t you step in? Have some coffee?”

  “No, no, we’ve come on a bit of business.” William bit off the end of the cigar, turned his head, spit. He searched for a light.

  “William, you’d leave a man to freeze before you’d think to bring a match.” Levi produced a match from an inside pocket and struck it against his boot sole.

  Cigar lit, William took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Everyone waited.

  “We’re thinking you would be the best man for the school,” William said, through a curtain of smoke. “Young ones are appearing in Lick Creek faster than flies on carrion.”

  “Mr. Collins is yet the schoolmaster, I thought,” John said.

  “Aye, that’s so, but we’ve too many for him now. He’ll stay at the Mad Dog Creek schoolhouse over west of town while we start up another for the families here in east county.”

  Mr. Byrd chimed in. “The authorities in Jeff City’s taxing us for education, so by God we’re going to spend our money here!” He seemed to be an excitable little man, who, despite the warm day, kept his round head wrapped in a furry cap, leaving his long narrow neck exposed.

  “Well, I’d be pleased to look into the situation,” John said slowly. “Do you foresee a full term?”

  “Soon as the roads are passable we can get you twenty scholars,” said Levi. “That’s a dollar a scholar a month. Twenty dollars.” He beamed. That was a substantial wage.

  “’Course they’ll be needed for spring plowing in April,” said William. He coughed, inhaled again, let out the smoke with a soft aahhh.

  “And you can do your lawyering at the same time,” said Mr. Byrd. “There’s a right nice house up close against the school that I can let you have for a nominal sum.”