Enemy Women

by Paulette Jiles

  So Adair and Little Mary and Savannah gathered what they could from what was left in the house. They couldn’t do anything about the barn, it was burning despite the rain. As they stood there part of the hayloft floor came down on the barrels of pitch and lard below, and crushed the big barn loom and the hand gin.

  In the house, Adair found that their bonnets were burned up, both the winter ones and the summer straw ones. She threw the washing off the clothes trunk and dragged it back into the house. She found her good embroidered mandarin jacket and put that on, then wrapped herself in her mother’s plaid shawl, and put woolen blankets around the girls. She found in the clothes trunk a pair of her brother’s old ankle jacks that he had worn when he was ten years old, and they looked as if they would fit her. She changed shoes because her own black shoes were not sturdy.

  In that trunk she also found a pair of men’s smallclothes, the old style knee britches, and made Little Mary put them on under her skirts to keep warm. The knee britches came down to Little Mary’s ankles. Adair found a black velvet bonnet that must have been made in 1820, as it had a crown like a top hat and was turned up in front. It still had a jaunty feather. The tag inside said it was made by Elizabeth Nighswonger in Charlotte, North Carolina. She put it on Savannah. Savannah threw it off on the floor and said she would die before she wore it.

  Well, you will die of the cold, then, said Adair. I ain’t got no use for you whining and sick. Just wear the blanket, then.

  Savannah made a sobbing sound, but she picked up the old bonnet and put it on. Adair went again through the clothes trunk, and there in the very bottom she found a coin purse beaded in black bugle beads, and in it, five silver shillings dated 1779. She was very surprised and closed her hand around them. She took up the satin-and-velvet Log Cabin quilt in its linen wrapping. It had to be used. There was no help for it.

  Adair got down on her hands and knees on the charred floor and started going through all the litter. She found the sapphire-and-diamond earbobs lying beside the overturned dish cabinet. The earbobs appeared to be just more fragments of china. She took a round tin that once had held the crystalline medicine called blue mass and filled it with soft soap from the crock, and jammed the earbobs inside. She took up her beaded bag in which she had kept Friendship’s Offering and small articles of sentimental value and put it in the carpet sack as well.

  Take two dresses apiece, girls, she said. And wad up the others and put them under the mattresses. If we’re going to be talking some Militia commander into letting Pa go then we can’t be looking like white trash.

  Can we talk them into letting him go? Little Mary stood breathing out fog in the corner, watching the rain come in.

  I don’t know.

  They’re going to kill him, said Little Mary. She stared at Adair, as if she had become frozen with the thought.

  Shut up, they are not.

  Then Adair went to where the coats were hanging on pegs in the kitchen. Adair found her father’s short-brimmed felt hat, the one he called his tavern hat. It had a low crown and at some time he had stuck a turkey feather in it. That must have been before he took the temperance pledge. She put it on, feather and all. They looked like circus clowns in their peculiar headwear.

  So at that time Adair and her little sisters had decided to walk north 120 miles to Iron Mountain where the Yankee garrison was, and it was a long cold walk. At least they would be out of the way of the warring. Adair could not take her little sisters south for they were warring all the way down to New Orleans, and all through Arkansas.

  That night Adair and her sisters slept in the half-burnt house in their parents’ bed, listening to the black wolf and his pack singing up on Courtois. By midnight the weather cleared, and the barn was burnt to a glowing structure, still resolutely standing. It stood like a frame of thin wires of light, an architect’s drawing in fire. Like the luminous outline of a barn drawn in phosphorus against the dark hills. Their neighbors did not come to them, for Adair and her sisters could see the smoke of their neighbors’ houses as well, and toward the burned town of Doniphan Courthouse they heard the pop of rifle fire and then the crisp hiss as it echoed from hill to hill. The road was shining with broken fragments of light reflected from puddles and at a long distance they heard it again; a sharp report. A moon came up, detached and bony, journeying through the early winter stars. Then the moon was gone and there was only the Milky Way and its deep river.

  THE NEXT DAY Adair and her sisters began walking. they began to walk in the streams of refugees afoot as if they were white trash. It was in that stream of walkers lone and frozen every one that someone denounced her to the Yankees.

  4

  Diary of Private Timothy Phillips, Nineteenth Iowa Infantry Regiment, Ozark Mountains, February 25th; “Refugees continue flocking to us and dare not return to their homes.” February 28; “Plenty of women in camp begging for rations.” March 19; “We have now here some two dozen women and not less than a hundred children—more or less—varying in age from two weeks to fifteen years.” March 5; “Refugees are coming in daily. An order has been given to build a stockade around the court house . . . every two or three days we find a body floating in the river.”

  In April, receiving orders to join the Vicksburg campaign, the Nineteenth pulled out of [the Ozark town of] Forsyth, burning the town, stockade, courthouse and all. Phillips made no more mention of the refugees.

  —FROM Inside War

  October 1, 1864—Some fifteen or twenty women and children were brought in this afternoon, and are now quartered in a building opposite Gratiot [military prison, St. Louis]. I do not know whether they are prisoners or refugees, but one thing I am certain of—they are the raggedest and dirtiest set I ever saw; some of them have not sufficient clothing to hide their nakedness. They were picked up in the southwest (part of the state). Some of the women would be really goodlooking if they were properly dressed, but they are a pitiful looking crowd in their present condition.

  —GRIFFIN FROST, Camp and Prison Journal

  UNION CORRESPONDENCE

  Special Orders, No. 270 Saint Louis, Mo., October 3, 1863

  VIII. Hereafter all issues of subsistence stores to suffering and destitute refugees &c., will be confined strictly to loyal persons and such only as can prove, by reliable witnesses, that they are, and have been, loyal to the government of the United States since the breaking out of the present rebellion, and that they are, at the time the issue is made, in actual want and danger of starvation if not temporarily relieved. In all cases when “after careful examination,” it shall be deemed advisable to issue subsistence to indigent loyal refugees, the issue will never exceed half rations of meat, bread, beans and hominy. . . . The commanding officers of districts, posts, and where these issues are authorized, will be held responsible that this charity of the Government is not abused. The Chaplain will be held accountable that none but really indigent persons in danger of starvation shall receive the allowances.

  By command of Major-General Schofield:

  J. A. Campbell, Assistant Adjutant-General

  —OFFICIAL RECORDS OF THE WAR OF THE REBELLION (OR), CH. XXXIV, P. 601

  THEY WALKED UP the military road northeastward, into the high Ozarks. They walked one foot in front of the other. They left behind them their grave-places and their dancing places and their animals.

  They went past the ruins of the Parmalee place. A spotted mastiff sat at the ash hopper and watched them going past. Wrecked things from the Parmalee house were scattered around the yard. The light wind made the snow in the road lay out in lines like windrows. Adair promised her sisters she would find their father and then go and find Whiskey and Dolly. She would steal Whiskey back. That the Militia would be made to account for everything.

  Little Mary doubted this and said so. The copper-colored leaves on the oaks beside the road made a metallic sound in the wind. Adair carried a large carpetbag containing her other dress, and a side of bacon and a book of poetry, the Log Cabi
n over her shoulder in its linen wrapping like a soldier’s bedroll. Little Mary carried a smaller roll of bedding. Savannah trudged along in the snow lugging a pair of saddlebags containing the frying pan and cornmeal.

  What about Highlander and Gimcrack? asked Little Mary. You have to keep them in mind.

  I got to get Whiskey first, said Adair. So then I won’t be afoot and I can locate them.

  That Log Cabin was to be my wedding quilt, said Savannah. Mama said.

  All right, said Adair.

  If we could get up ahead of them and we had the smoothbore we could kill them, said Little Mary. But we’re on foot.

  Savannah started crying in long, wavering tones. They’re going to kill him, she said. They’re going to kill him.

  Where’d the clock go? said Little Mary.

  Adair said, They didn’t get it. It had a different kind of time, it was on past time and it wasn’t there, it shot itself back into the past, to the year 1859 when it was bought. Savannah, hush up, baby.

  They left the Snider boy’s corpse lying in the field for three days, said Savannah.

  Now hush and listen to me, said Adair. She walked on with a fast, driving stride. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day. All things are foreordained. Adair did not know whether she believed this or not, or if she did, whether the foreordainment would be to their advantage at all, but for her sisters she attempted to appear confident of the Lord’s good intentions toward them.

  The girls were silent. They were thinking this over. The wind came down the hills and they could see it as it moved over the matte surface of the pine forests. They could see it as they stood on top of Anvil Mountain, bent against it. The wind seemed made of iron. It struck Adair full in the face so that she could not get her breath and she felt as if it had bruised her. Then they walked on, anxious to get off the ridge. Line after line of scudding clouds now came down from the northwest in shades of gray. It began to snow.

  As they climbed yet another mountain, and came out on top of Beauford Barrens, they could see a good ways north over the rolling ocean of blue ridges. Adair looked at the distant pine dark hills in the snow and saw that they were very beautiful.

  Then up the stony red-dirt road came a man riding a pale cream-colored horse. Adair recognized Greasy John. He came riding up out of the forest onto the Barrens looking around him uneasily and then he spied them.

  Greasy John wore a round-topped hat with a short brim. Everyone knew him. He lived in a cave under the bluffs above the Current River. He was entirely greasy, in worn homespun. His feet stuck out sideways in strapped gaiters. He wore an ancient buckskin shirt and a gray blanket over that. He had at one time, they said, been a lawyer in Portageville, had read law somewhere in North Carolina. But he had become enslaved to a depraved appetite for forty-rod whiskey and was content to live his life out in a mess of blankets and furs, tobacco pipes and blackware coated with mutton grease in his limestone cave.

  Dear me, said Greasy John. He pulled up and regarded them in the thin winter atmosphere. Their skirt yardages rolled in waves as the breeze took the hems up. He took off his battered hat and tossed his greasy curls as if he were a darling boy, fetching as a pup. You girls are afoot and wandering the roads like orphans.

  We’re heading north, said Adair. They come by and burnt the barn and took about everything. They took Daddy. We’re just going on north.

  On north. Where to?

  Iron Mountain, nearby to the Yankee garrison. She put up her hand to Greasy John’s reins. Ain’t you run into the Militia? Tom Poth’s men? Where are you wandering to?

  Me a-wandering! Girls, the roads are alive with invaders from the distant prairie states. Snow built a sparkling white rind on the edge of his hat brim. We have been invaded by Buckeyes, Hoosiers, and the ice people of Illinois. He lifted a forefinger. We are at war with Indiana, of all things. Very shabby state of affairs. He leaned over and spit on the frozen ground and the spit smoked. They is nothing in Doniphan since they burnt it up. I’m going on to Poplar Bluff to see if they don’t have some supplies there at the store. I heard they didn’t get the Stricklands’ stillhouse.

  Adair said, Well, I wouldn’t know about stillhouses.

  No, no, of course not, you all are the Judge’s girls.

  Adair said, And the Militia took him. Have you seen him?

  Your father? You can’t hardly recognize anybody these days. He distributed his thin and scholarly hands about in the air, making gestures of amazement. They’re either in a uniform or they been beat up.

  Well tell me if you have seen him or not! said Adair. She gave the reins a shake as if to knock sense into either him or his horse. The cream-colored horse tipped his head to one side and swung his rear end around to evade her.

  I wouldn’t have recognized him if I did, he said. They are harrying their prisoners northwards in lines of them. Covered with snow. Up to Iron Mountain to send them here, there, or yonder. He patted himself on the chest. I didn’t even know Doniphan had been burnt. Scared the blue Jesus out of me. I had only come into town to locate some saleratus for my biscuits. I absconded on my only horse. Let go them reins.

  Adair held on. Trade me this horse for some sapphire earbobs, she said.

  Sapphire earbobs. Now wouldn’t I be fetching in sapphire earbobs? He laughed with delight. Let go them reins.

  Adair let go. Greasy John gazed around him into the rattling dry leaves of the roadside brush, then the other way, leaned down out of the saddle and said,

  They are taking some women prisoners. Just go to the Yankee commander if you can tell where he is at this particular moment in time, and tell him you are a Rebel spy, and you won’t have to walk all the way to Iron Mountain. You’ll be taken there in a wagon, in chains.

  Adair hit at his cream-colored horse with her fist. Go on, she said.

  Greasy John laughed and rode on. He rode through the short grass of the high Barrens and then downhill into the dim snowy columns of the pines. He turned, and called out,

  They’s a mule running loose near Ten-Mile Creek if you can catch him!

  THEY DESCENDED THE hillsides and walked on into the Valley of Ten-Mile Creek. The pines gave way to oak and sycamore in the bottoms. In the heavy cold shade of the oaks that lined the road, their rusty leaves still clinging, Adair strode on. She told her little sisters that their father would be held in the Yankee camp right now out of the cold. If you thought about it, he would likely be warmer than they were.

  So they camped that night in the wind shadow of an upturned maple tree root before a raveling fire. They piled up heaps of leaves and curled up in the piles like canines, covered with their shawls and blankets and the Log Cabin. They lay their heads on the old carpetbag and the saddlebag. All Adair could think of was to get the girls and herself somewhere safe until the war was over, and then come home and see if her father would not be released and come home too. It snowed intermittently in the night and then cleared.

  Adair and her sisters saw refugee wagons going past even late into the dark, and the lanterns tied to the backs of the vehicles cast long, revolving shadows on the stony road. The bodies of the immense old water oaks and sycamores of the creek bottom threw their shadows forward into the pouring snow, and then as the wagons passed, the shadows swung around behind the trees and then drained off back down the road and then fainted away into the dark again. Adair lay wrapped in all they owned with her little sisters and watched. It made the old trees seem animate, as if the shadows were their thoughts, and these great woody thoughts came out and took place in the world only when human beings passed by in the night with lanterns. The wolves did not sing that night but to Adair it seemed they conversed among themselves in low voices just outside the blaze of their fire.

  The following morning they walked on. They walked wrapped in their heavy plaid shawls, beneath the great iron trees whining in the wind, and they fell in with the other people of the Ozarks in their long retreat. Women
also afoot, and old men. They were in the midst of a refugee army carrying quilts and books and burlap-wrapped sides of bacon. The children walked sturdily and did not cry for the war had been going on for three years and they had endured many things.

  At Ten-Mile Creek the girls saw wagons lined up to cross, and that someone else had laid hands on the loose mule. He was tied to the ringbolt of a buckboard.

  At noon on the road ahead of them, Adair saw a group of refugees stop for a moment and stare off to the right-hand side and then go on. Then in their own line of stragglers Adair and the girls came past three dead Union soldiers laid in the snow, and the snow drifting over their open eyes. One man lay on his back with his hands stiffly in the air and his fingers curved downward. Another was a black soldier and he was almost completely covered with snow. They seemed like dismal piles of rags or trash barely recognizable as having once been human. She couldn’t see what had killed them.

  Don’t look, said Adair. She took her sisters each by a hand and gripped their hands hard. She jerked their arms. Don’t look. Look straight ahead and keep walking.

  Who shot them? said Savannah.

  Nobody, said Adair. They just froze.

  They don’t look froze.

  They were caught in a deer snare. They’re not from here, they don’t know where the snares are.

  The Colley girls bent their heads and walked on, on that stretch of the road between Ten-Mile Creek and Cane Creek, a deeply cut path hardly wide enough for a wagon, which turned and sliced through the red earth of the hills. They walked through drifting tissues of snow.

  Savannah, hold hands with me, she said. My hands are cold.

  By and by Adair and her sisters came upon Jessie Hyssop, the Witch of Slayton Ford.

  Ma’am! Ma’am! said Adair. She ran forward down the road. They were just coming to where a trail turned off the Nachitoches Trace toward Cane Creek Fields.