Jarrettsville

by Cornelia Nixon

  That’s what I mean about rumors of knowledge.

  But it changed you just to hear that you were closer to animals, closer to bears and wolves and eagles than to angels in the sky, though what had happened in our country the last few years should have convinced anyone. Once I rode onto a farm to check the family of a man off fighting under Grant and found his wife and children killed, the wife bayoneted in the belly to make sure the baby there was dead. Apparently some Rebel outfit had required their miserable porridge and their laying hens, but they could have taken them for less than that. Two days later, the chickens would have been consumed, but that man’s family was still all dead. For all I knew, he might have been off killing other people’s wives and babies in the South. It was what some men did.

  “AND YOU, HAVE YOU killed anyone?” Martha had asked me on that sweet night when she let me capture her inside her brother’s barn. We were lying in the hayloft, and it was so black we could not see each other’s faces from an inch away. But every cell in our bodies reached to touch the other through our clothes.

  “Not that I know of,” I said and tried to draw her back into a kiss.

  She felt small and light in my arms, but she went stiff to hold me off. She could be persistent as a terrier when she wanted to know something.

  “But you would know, wouldn’t you?” she said low but urgently. “You haven’t been in any battles, have you, or served on any firing squads? So you should know.”

  I sighed. “I have arrested men and never learned what happened to them. They were sent to prison camps, and you’ve seen what happens in some of them.”

  It was one of the things that made me wake up in a sweat at 4:00 AM, along with that farmer’s murdered family. I tried to imagine the real scale of the war, how many innocents had been slaughtered casually. And me, could I hate any stranger that much? I could.

  “There are some I wish I could have killed, like John Wilkes Booth, when he was still at home in Bel Air. If I had only known what he would do someday!”

  She seemed not to blame me for that and soon nuzzled her face into my neck. I tried to clear my head by exploring her hair with my nose. It did not smell like perfume or flowers, more like fresh-baked bread. That scent was especially intense on either side of her nose, and it made me wonder if there was a sort of musk gland there, something I had heard deer possess, along with all felines, from house cats to tigers. When my nose insisted it should be allowed to root there for a while, she surprised me with a long, passionate kiss.

  This pleasant development was interrupted by the arrival of her brother, the obnoxious pup, settling his holdings for the night, and in no time she had ushered me outside and disappeared down toward the house, leaving me alone and cold, bereft, with nothing to look forward to except a pint at Smithson’s before riding home.

  The moon was dark that night, with clouds over the stars, and I had to find my way out to the road mainly by feel. Before I got there, a horse came galloping behind me and a potshot cracked in my direction. I had to slide down the nearest muddy bank and lie still by a creek while he galloped back and forth across the fields, blindly firing in the dark. Flashes of gunpowder marked his movements, erratic as a giant firefly. Young fool probably thought I wanted his whiskey still. I was lucky his horse didn’t trample me.

  When he finally gave up and rode back to his barn, I scrambled through the woods to get my horse and pint. I was glad to get inside the warm interior of Smithson’s pub, filled with tobacco smoke and candlelight. Gabriel Smithson was a jolly man, portly and fair, and we were old friends, having gone to school to the same minister and engaged in various violent boyhood activities on the way home. He was long since married with a pack of children, and was taking on the look of middle age, which I did not see yet on myself, though it had settled soon after matrimony onto every man I knew. Tonight he whistled at the sight of me.

  “Hope she was worth it, man,” he said, twinkling, and stood me the pint to celebrate the mud all over me, though he was only guessing where I had gotten it.

  I THOUGHT NO MORE about G. Richard Cairnes of Jarrettsville until a few days later, when I got Martha’s letter, saying we could not meet like that again, and it put me into a foul mood. She alone of all the women I knew seemed like a person who could be not just a lover but also a friend. Or maybe she only pretended to be to please me. You never knew with women, never knew their hearts. And what was wrong with a few kisses in the dark? I was more disappointed than I would have thought and did not write back to her.

  So instead of more pleasant activities that Wednesday night, I went with my father to a meeting in Bel Air, both of us taking guns. The place was packed, men of all stripes shouting, spit flying, plenty of them Harford Rifles or Harford Light Dragoons, both insurrectionist militias that included a few full-grown curs, more dangerous than any pup. Rumor was the new legislature would repeal the law that prevented blacks from testifying against whites.

  “They think we’ll make an insurrection, and they want to turn our Negroes into spies,” one man shouted at the podium. “What’s after that, the vote?”

  “That will never happen here!” men yelled back.

  “They’ll get their insurrection if they don’t watch out!”

  None of that deterred my father, who stood up and walked to the podium.

  “I would rather give the vote to Africans than to any known Rebel,” he said in a deep, sonorous voice that probably carried past the walls.

  It was hardly a new thing to say—Lincoln himself had said it, and three days later he was dead. Even some in his own party wanted to shoot him, probably.

  But the howl that ensued that night in the Bel Air hall became a brawl, shots fired into the ceiling and broken chairs, a few broken heads.

  We got out of there all right. But the day after, my father received an unsigned letter, reading, “You are a black-hearted, nigger-loving son of a bitch not worthy even to be killed, because your blood would pollute the earth. God Himself will strike you down.” The closing salutation was “GOD DAMN YOU,” underlined three times.

  A few days later, I woke at first light, having dozed off in the raised blind above the sheepfold, where I was supposed to keep watch. I could not see the ram in his pen. Swinging down, I found him behind the back gate, lying on his side in a pool of blood, his throat slit.

  I could hear my father splitting wood behind the house, and quaking inwardly, I went to confess my latest failure. He was a sort of demigod to us, a tower of righteousness, while my brothers and I were mere mortals, not one of us even literally as tall as he.

  I stood up as high as possible and tried to meet his eyes as I told him.

  “It’s my fault. I don’t know what I can do to make it up.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said calmly and wiped his hands on a rag. “And I’m glad that it was not your throat. It’s dangerous to do the Lord’s work. Come on, let’s butcher it.”

  Neither of us had a taste for mutton anymore, now that we tended sheep, watched them frisk around as lambs, grow up to be gentle and curious, come to search my pockets as I lay reading on the meadow grass. It was a secret I knew about myself, that I felt closer to animals than to people, animals I knew especially. My horse, Captain Jack? When I looked at him, it felt as if I was looking in a mirror. I knew how horses thought, why they fled first and asked questions later, and if one horse bolted off, so would all the others within sight or sound. Any two horses are a herd, and a herd acts like a single animal, using its numbers to lower the chances that its members can be singled out and caught.

  Sheep are something like that, too, at least when it comes to moving as a group, though they are not so easy to spook, rather sleepy and dull compared to any horse.

  But the ram had been a character, full of himself. He would strut around the ewes, high-stepping like a fancy horse, and he was uncowed by the dogs. He would lower his curled horns and butt at them, and when they scampered away whimpering, he’d prance around, a spa
rk of triumph in his eyes. He liked to try to knock me over, too, put me in my place, though I did not fall so easily.

  Now we had to shear him, skin him, cut him up. We were in no position to waste anything. We would sell the wool, cure the skin for saddle pads, and give the meat to my brothers. My father’s strategy for dealing with his debts was to borrow even more, shoot for larger wool volume, and hope the market would bounce back, and he had hired a black veteran to help us expand the flock. The veteran’s name was Tim, and he looked familiar, though I could not place him. My father, brothers, and I felled trees for a clearing in our woods, stripped logs, and hoisted them to make thick walls for his cabin, mortar in the chinks.

  Soon the cabin was done and the man installed, with his mother and sister. He was good with horses and quick to learn about the sheep, worth two of most hired men. My mother grumbled that she had no work for his womenfolk, since she had three daughters still at home, and why had we taken them on anyway? But she went herself to neighbors and found jobs for them, close enough to walk to from the cabin.

  When Tim had learned enough to mind the sheep alone for a few days, my father and I rode north across the Susquehanna to the market in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where we borrowed more money to acquire a prize English ram, along with a wagon to haul him home in luxury, since it was bitter cold and it seemed too far to make him walk through ice and snow.

  FOR A WEEK AFTER we brought the new ram home, my father stood watch himself, since he could hardly trust me now with such an important charge. Found wanting as usual, I slept in my own bed and dreamt of losing lambs and never finding them, or feeding them the wrong food so they swelled up and died, or breaking the leg of my father’s horse.

  One night spent in those pursuits, I woke to candlelight, my mother shaking me.

  “I heard something,” she said, looking afraid.

  I was inclined to tell her to go back to bed, that it was nothing. She was a short, round, timid being, who in every way seemed an odd match for my father, or perhaps the relations of one’s parents were always a mystery. I rubbed a hand over my face. “What did it sound like?”

  Her eyes were huge, showing the whites, like a scared horse. “It was a cry like that barn owl. But it sounded like a man, and I heard hoofbeats, too.”

  That got me up. Back in pants, boots, jacket, hat, I tramped out into the snow, carrying a lantern that wavered in gusts of icy wind. I had to hold it high over my head to inspect the sheepfold and count its inhabitants: forty-eight ewes huddled together, most of them in lamb, the ram alone in his own pen. All were accounted for except my father, who was not in the raised blind. I climbed the ladder, held the lantern up, but its feeble light showed nothing odd in the dark fields and woods beyond.

  I went to the barn, rumbled the loft door back, and found my horse in its stall but my father’s gone. He must have had some errand off the farm, and now I should watch the sheep. An army blanket lay in the blind, not folded neatly as he usually left it, but in a heap—but that was all that seemed off. Wrapping it around myself, I hunched in the blind and must have dozed, for when my stiff limbs woke me, it was gray dawn light, snow falling fast.

  But right away I was alarmed. My father’s horse was a big, black warm blood, Dutch, easy to see through falling snow, and he stood snorting in the barnyard, our three cows huddled cautiously away from him. His saddle was still on his back, and his reins were snapped. I climbed down and crossed the barnyard, moving as slow as water so as not to startle him, and patted his neck, but he quivered and withdrew.

  My father called him Honest Abe. “Easy, Abe,” I said. “It’s all right, boy. Easy.”

  I knew this meant the worst, but I stroked him till he was calm, retrieved his broken reins and led him to his stall, took off his tack, dried his wet coat, and threw a blanket over him.

  In dread, I walked to the house, where my mother’s face told me my father had not returned. My feet were frozen, and it was hard to walk, but I took a rifle and set out, past the fold to the back gate. It was already blocked with drifts, and I swung over it, into deep, cold snow.

  “Father?” I shouted. “James McComas? Are you there?”

  Nothing but wind answered, and new snow had covered any tracks I might have seen. I searched the woods, the blank, white fields, nothing showing but the boulder in the east meadow, big as a ship’s prow. I went on to the new clearing and enlisted help from Tim. Fanning out, we shuffled through the frigid snow, parallel to each other, calling my father’s name.

  We found him in the woods, his body nearly hidden under drifted snow. Already half-frozen, he lay on a large, flat rock, the back of his head crushed, as if he had fallen by himself. But he was too good a rider for that, and Abe was gentle and well trained. His hat lay a few yards away, but his rifle was gone, and he always had it at night.

  It took both of us to lift him and carry him back to the house, my mother standing at the back door, watching as we came, seeming to grow thinner, crags in her face, as her fearful view of life came true.

  We laid him on a bed, opened his shirt, and found a deep purple bruise in the center of his pale chest in the shape of a horse’s hoof. Honest Abe would not have stepped on him, even in the dark, or at least not in the center of his chest. I knew someone had made a horse do that deliberately, to let us know it was no accident.

  THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL was cold and bright, buggies and wagons gathered outside Bethel Church, where the cemetery yard was large enough to serve all local Protestants, and a few spare graves had been dug in the fall before the ground was hard. I did my father honor in my militia uniform, my brother Alex in Union blue, the rest of my militia turned out in uniform as well to stand along the aisles and ensure that order would prevail. The crowd was small, but our family alone filled the first three pews, the women all in stiff black taffeta and veils.

  Two Methodist circuit preachers had come to praise his Abolition work, and other eulogies extolled his compassion and unwavering rectitude. When they were done, my brothers and I stepped up to the coffin and took the handles in the order of our births, Jackson and Alex in the front and me alone in back with no one to balance me, so I took the handle on the end.

  As we shuffled toward the door, I noticed Tim alone at the rear wall. I held his gaze and used my head to beckon him to join us. He lifted his long, pale palms, trying to refuse. But my brothers must have reassured him with their looks, because he stepped to us quickly and took a handle on the near side, while I shifted to the one across from him. Better balanced now, we carried the box outside and set it on the ropes held by militiamen across an open grave.

  Taking the ropes from them, we held up the coffin while the small crowd in black assembled around us and sang a hymn. The benediction read, my mother laid her wedding ring on top of the box, and we gently lowered it till it came to rest on hard clay.

  My mother returned to the cold church nave before they shoveled in the dirt, and I went with her, held her arm, and listened to murmurs of condolence from the line of women rustling toward her. One of them was Martha Jane, in mourning dress and black bonnet, her eyes downcast, not looking at me. She offered her gloved hand to my mother.

  “I am so sorry for your loss,” she said. “He was truly a good man.”

  My mother took her hand and nodded but said nothing from behind her veil.

  Martha had nearly walked away, when I was overwhelmed with a need to keep her there. My hand shot out and grabbed her arm. “Stand here with me.”

  She did, and I pulled her against my side and held on like a man about to faint, blinking rapidly. Was I going to cry? I curled my arm, and when she turned into me, I buried my face in her neck and felt tears I did not know I had rise to my eyes. My father had held up the sky for me. He was the man who had known everything, who was always in charge. How could he be killed so easily? He had fed and clothed the family and kept the sheep alive. How could all of that be up to me? How would I ever manage it?

  Martha clung to me.


  “I’m so sorry your father died. I’m so sorry I wrote that to you.”

  “What? No.”

  I felt a sob quiver through her chest, and I rocked her, both of us oblivious to anyone who might have watched. It felt natural and right that I should hold her in a church, and it struck me with lucidity that I could marry her. I would not have to do it all alone. Martha would be there. She would hold up the sky. It should happen now, today, tomorrow, as soon as possible. The farm would be mine, the sheep, the land—the debts—but wasn’t there a way to make it work?

  “You have to marry me,” I said into her ear.

  It only made her cry harder, but I could see it all. My father’s house was small and occupied already by my mother, three sisters, one aunt. But it had an attic, where my brothers had slept when they were old enough to need the privacy, and it might work for us. We would float high above the five women downstairs, alone in peace and rest.

  STRANGELY SERENE, I went the next day to speak to her uncle Will, who was now father-in-law to my brother Alex, and he agreed to let another McComas into his family. I wrote to Martha Jane that we would come to speak to her mother and brother next Sunday afternoon.

  When the day arrived, it could not have looked less promising, snow flurries blowing horizontal across barren fields, ground frozen hard under our hooves. But my brothers and I rode to Will’s farm, and he came out with a beautiful wild turkey, so freshly killed that it was still warm and perfectly intact, as if he had wrung its long neck. He handed it up to me as I sat in the saddle.