Darkansas

by Jarret Middleton

  Andridge assessed the grim faces gathered in the lanterns of Shackle Steven’s boarded-up saloon. “We have got to be smart,” Andridge began. “Those boys re-upped on guns, they been sitting around in camp, waiting on marching orders, itching for a fight. We’re outmanned and outgunned a hundred to one, no question in that. If we run up in that camp rifles drawn, as some of you have suggested,” he glared around accusingly, “you can say so long to everyone here in this room and those loved ones left at home soon thereafter. Those left earn the distinct honor of burying those quick to the gun and witnessing this town slide further into the mouth of hell.”

  Though Andridge chaired the meeting, three brothers named Martrue held the most influence over the group of twenty. The oldest Martrue, Andrew J., had a thin face sobered by violence. He squatted on a crate, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and did the talking for his brothers. “These are our families. We’re tasked with protecting our wives and children, shops and businesses, our homes,” he said. “I have lost,” he paused to correct himself, “we have all lost a great deal to these invaders. I am not about to let them do as they like and destroy what’s ours without consequence. We live here, they’re passing through. I say we help them on their way, whether they like it or not.”

  “How do you suggest we do that?” Andridge asked.

  “As you said, our force is small, but we know the land better than they do. We’ll remain hidden, hit them when they are weakest, then scatter,” Andrew said, confident.

  While the assembly grumbled, Andridge meditated on actualizing such a plan. Then his hair stood on end and the muscles in his back straightened with the energy of a promising idea. “There is a train that hauls sulfur and salt from the mines, same train that brings in the ore we order at the shop. A federal car makes the trip from St. Louis twice a month. I saw them out there a few weeks ago, loading their wagons with supplies. The peter yield was low this year and demand is high, which means they have no gunpowder. Haven’t seen them out there since, bet they’re about due for another shipment.”

  Excited, the group grew to a roar. They had the place, now all they needed was a plan. “There’s a depot thirty miles east, by the waypost at mile one twenty-two,” Andridge continued. “It’s secluded. There’s a holler nearby, heavy cover that leads right up to the road.” The precision of the plan burned cool in Andridge’s mind as he saw it unfold. “I’ll find out when that next haul of theirs comes in while you Martrues get a lead on guns and more men. Lord knows we’ll need ’em.”

  Andrew Martrue conversed closely with his brothers and each looked back up with a fervent nod. “Thar’s a militia over the border led by the Cader clan,” Andrew told the group. “They run with bushwhackers in the river lands. Mean bastards, but fit to take any chance on hittin’ Yanks, especially a regiment that ain’t fixing to leave so soon. If it’s guns and men we need, they’s got plenty of both.”

  Andridge rose from his chair and convened with Andrew Martrue in the middle of the tavern floor, wrapping their arms around each other in a show of camaraderie that uplifted beleaguered spirits and reassured the members of their new militia. The rest of the group cheered and hugged, but Andridge was quick to scorn their ruckus and remind them to lower their voices to a whisper. They were still under enemy occupation, and a word spoken about what occurred there that night, he told them, would result in death. One by one, they filed out the back door into the alley and returned to their homes under cover of darkness, eager for the coming fight.

  The slick black manes of the Caders shined down the hide-stitched backs of their leather vests, each stiff with seams of shotgun shells, a sheathed hatchet, and an Arkansas Toothpick—a giant, brass-handled Bowie knife each of them had strapped above the hip. They had the look of men tanned by hellfire, hardened from navigating the inhospitable layers of the underworld. Halbert Cader had a chaos of scars cut into the cracked and hardened skin of his forehead. His brother, Dell Cader, bore the lightened patch of a healed bullet hole that had sung straight through the fat in his cheek and out the other side. They greeted Andridge, but said little else past introducing the haggard members of their clan. With allegiances confirmed, they packed their horses, checked their arms, and began the ride out of Carrollton.

  Two sisters rode second command to the brothers, storied bushwhackers whose reputations preceded them. Macy and Lacy Jane Pearl had survived alone when their father and brothers went off to fight, watching over young ones and keeping the sprawling acreage of their Missouri homestead from being ransacked by the Union or overrun by thieves.

  The group rode through morning and by late afternoon had scouted the surrounding area and found a spot to ready the assault. Andridge rode ahead into the holler, crouching low to the back of his horse so as not be seen. Even though the troops would not arrive for another three hours, they spoke with hushed voices, stayed in the trees away from clearings, and took every precaution not to be seen. Three miles from the depot, the heavy tree cover opened upon a massive field overgrown with long grass and wild flowers, hemmed at every side by impenetrable forest. The Union soldiers would come through on their way to the depot and, upon returning, would journey into the wide open grove, slowed by their heavy wagons. Andridge and the militia would be there, lying in wait. They planned to take tree cover at the farthest end of the field. After the brigade passed, they would move into position, spread between the east edge of the field and the road.

  Andridge took the youngest Martrue and rode out to scout the depot. They left their horses hidden in a shallow bank and crept to the crest of the ridgeline. “Keep your eye low,” he instructed the boy. “What do you see?”

  “A sea of blue,” he said. “Not as many guns as we suspected.”

  “Good, that means they’re still low on ammunition.”

  The boy realized the purpose of the shipment that the soldiers were busy unloading from the train. Andridge crouched next to him and did his best to estimate their progress. It was unusual for them to send seventy, eighty men for this type of job, Andridge thought. He worried they suspected an attack, but hoped that the sheer number of troops was evidence of how vulnerable they felt being temporarily underarmed. In addition to gunpowder, the soldiers hauled crates of potatoes, onions, and canned beans, clothing, campware, shovels, rakes, picks, and axes. They moved crates of tobacco and booze and boxes marked with white crosses full of medical supplies. Andridge’s mind raced. By the look of it, they were loading in supplies to last out the winter. They could have even been planning to turn their camp into a full-time settlement.

  The wagons sagged through the mud as they clamored back from the depot. After being on the trail that led back to Carrollton for a few hours, the Union corps commander was distracted by a miraculous vision. The Pearl sisters rode out on two mares, white as snow, their ruffled dresses, one tan, the other red, both crimped in white. In truth, these were the only dresses the girls had ever owned and they thought it amusing to put them to such use. Their hair was streaked blonde and curled proper, held in place with pristine silk bows. The march slowed to a crawl, the commander charmed.

  “Where are you fine ladies off to?” he called. “Surely, you’re not riding out here all by your lonesome?”

  “We’re not lonesome, we have each other,” said Macy. They eked out girlish laughs and acted shy, the way they thought weak women were supposed to act.

  “We were out for an afternoon lesson, but seem to have gotten separated from the rest of the group,” Lacy Jane told the commander.

  “It’s not safe out here, misses, especially for women of pedigree such as yourselves,” he cautioned. “Which direction you headed?”

  Macy Pearl pointed her gloved hand up the road. “We came from over there, I think. Though I’m afraid we might have lost our way,” she said, doing her best to sound wayward and wounded.

  “Well say, if that ain’t the direction we’re marching in ourselves. You’ll ride the rest of the way with us, up here with me at the helm.�
�� The commander grinned with bravado and postured his chest, heaving under blue wool, interlocking gold slips, and brass buttons.

  The men in the back stared at the veil of surrounding brush and kicked their feet in the dirt, annoyed by the arduousness of their task and more so that they had come to a stop. They smoked tobacco and took out their knives to whittle branches and pry holes in the cantles of their saddles. The sky was broad and hazy with heat, the farther it stretched the lower it sagged across miles of rolling hills. When the march got moving again, the girls rode up front aside the commander. It was all they could do not to laugh, aware of how ridiculous they looked, a couple of killers dolled up in bows and Sunday dresses. As they got closer to the grove, though, they grew gravely serious, exchanging only looks of kinship and blood. The soldiers had taken the bait.

  A dirt path opened beneath a break in the trees. The Pearl sisters counted with even nods of their heads, mouthing in silence—one, two, three. Wrought whips cracked on hide and they held on as their young mares screamed into the wind, bounding toward dense pine. The commander was muddled with surprise and was left with no time to react before a wall of bullets sprayed from invisible positions in the trees. He opened his mouth to yell, but a bullet trained by Andrew Martrue flew straighter than truth into the commander’s throat and out the back of his skull, exploding a gore of sinew and fat across the faces of the staff and gunnery sergeants who sat abreast their horses behind him.

  Andridge and Andrew darted up, each flanked by ten men. Mounted Union troops realized that their ranking officer was dead and the staff sergeant called for the men to take cover from the gunfire. Andridge closed ground and the bluecoats tasked with accompanying the wagons fled on foot. The Caders rode fast through meadow grass, making a game of getting as close as possible to their targets before striking them down. They slowed within arm’s reach of the soldiers, young and terrified, not sure whether they wanted to flee and live or stay and die, leering in horror at grizzled men cut from stone, purified by loss, clenching their teeth in proud, maniacal smiles as they drove the dull blades of their axes into the necks and backs of the young soldiers, quartering flesh above the shoulder, before circling back around to slit their throats. Huge chunks of meat fell between the feet of the horses. Those who tried to run staggered a few steps and bled out in the flowers.

  Andridge and Andrew Martrue flanked both columns of troops and met at the back end of the march. The hail of fire grew closer, spooking untethered horses that bucked and took off sprinting through clouds of dust. The field was alive with battle, animosity and retribution drudged up and hurled forth with unrelenting brutality. Losing a battle was not as bad a prospect as having the victors remain in their towns and live among their families as occupiers. They called out the names of their raped daughters, sisters, and wives, kin laid by poverty, starvation, and suicide, invoking their dead as they shot and cut their way through the line.

  A person who killed out of vengeance was seldom stopped. They reaped whatever moved, spreading death like gospel. Colts were pressed hard under shelves of ribs and the sharp bones of temples, dropping new bodies on top of old ones. Wagons were staggered across the field on their sides, strewing crates of food and supplies, split barrels of gunpowder tethered to the weight of dead horses. Equine eyes frozen a cloudy white, ribs peppered with buckshot, stomach sacks slid steaming in the dirt. Soldiers still alive lay wounded, their blood seeping into the soil. Downed rebels rolled in the grass clutching holes in their limbs, screaming in agony, while a determined few crawled on their elbows toward any nearby enemy still breathing to choke the life out of them.

  Andridge Sampson lay among the dying. A shot had ripped into his side and the force of the bullet knocked him clear off his horse. He hit the ground, trapped in a blurry cloud of swift-moving shapes. Andridge spread out on his back and stared straight into the sun.

  Weakened by the bullet, the weight of his body lessened. He felt as though he was being consolidated, reduced to his most basic elements and flattened into one dimension, thin as paper and lighter than air. His perception sifted free from its enclosure in the skull and he was able to see without eyes. Andridge floated above the tops of the trees and saw his own body, gun slung at his hip, hat knocked from his head, clothes soiled with his and other men’s blood. A trail of clear blue light leaked from the site of his wound, a mysterious vapor flowing out of him. His purview kept widening until it included the site of the massacre and the entire grove, dead bodies heaped in their final resting places, burned into the earth like coal.

  While looking over the field, Andridge became aware that he was moving farther away, expanding in size but somehow growing lighter and less dense, like the sun itself. Andridge maneuvered away from the ground and turned to face the sky. The hollow portal of the sun took control of him and blinded him with its absolute power, enveloping him in a trance. Any consciousness that reflected his self was lost. The sun spoke in a language that had always been there, vibrating in ancient trees and animal ancestors, consecrated in feather, bone, and brain, resonating in waves of eternal memory. An understanding of God was born throughout his circuitry and filled Andridge as he lifted up and spread throughout the sky.

  Andridge Sampson’s entire being was stretched and illumined, and the awareness he had of himself transformed from the exterior, which had spread to almost nothing, to the interior, where he was pregnant with a golden egg split at the middle by a pervasive crack. He traveled through the crack into the center, where there were two eggs, the two halves married at the site of fracture. The crack along the surface opened like a seam and the two wholes came back together in a brilliant circle that vanished once unified with the void of the sun. Then he began to fall, hurled into an ever-widening crevice that grew into more elaborate gulfs and chasms. Andridge continued falling through deeper cracks of time and space until he sped through a barrier of cloud and the earth once again became visible, sprouting like a weed from the abyss.

  Andridge awoke beneath the considered gaze of a young girl. Weakness decimated his attempts to move or speak. He was tucked beneath a blanket in a comfortable bed in a clean, well-kept house. Daylight glowed through the blind drawn over the only window. He folded back the covers and basked in the relief of fresh air on his skin. Regaining his senses overwhelmed him at first. Weakness sapped his muscles, stiffness spread to the rigid tips of his toes. A high-pitched ringing pierced the drum of his inner ear, when he flexed his jaw the room went mute. His tongue flopped foreign in his mouth, and he still could barely hear past his own breathing.

  The girl moved around the room then approached the bedside with water. She raised the rim of the glass and wetted the closed seam of Andridge’s lips until they opened enough for her to drip the water into his mouth. His whole body decompressed with relief. Even though she had grown accustomed to a gray, ravaged face cut up and grown over with a dark beard, she leaned close and studied him as if for the first time, amazed he had woken. Softly, Andridge asked who she was.

  “Pria Fairchild. My family owns this cottage. You were wounded in an awful fight.” She held back the opaque curtain and pointed. “Back there, in the grove beyond those woods. Many others were killed, you were lucky to have survived. Robert and I— Robbie’s my little nephew—we heard the fighting and hid in the dirt cellar, figuring it was a raid. We live here just the two of us, most of our family is gone. Our distant uncle checks in on us from time to time, but mostly it’s Robbie and I getting by.”

  She assisted Andridge in taking a few sips of water, then smoothed the front of her dress and repositioned herself on the edge of the bed. “I remember that night we found you, there was a terrible rain. A few hours passed and we hadn’t heard gunfire, so we peeked out to take a look. Night had fallen and the storm was still railing. Robbie thought we couldn’t keep a torch lit in such a coming down, and we didn’t want to be found, so we walked out there in the dark. Our clothes were soaked and the rain fell in big drops from our lashes. I re
ckon it a blessing we ventured all that way, undetected.”

  She shook her head and averted her eyes. “How awful, what we found there. Men and horses, all shot dead. It was like a graveyard had been dug up. The rain kept scavengers away and washed all that blood down in the soil. We stayed in the trees for a long while, until we knew for sure nobody was coming back. When we were confident we were out there alone, we walked among the bodies—shot up, twisted, and hacked—a man had died on his knees with his hands together, praying face down in the mud. Robbie heard you crying, but we couldn’t tell where it was coming from. When we passed back a second time, we found you.”

  The massacre began to come back to Andridge in vague, remote impressions. His heart raced with panic, his legs itched, his sweat was like needles on his skin. He struggled to get up but fell back on the mattress, coughing in his pillow. Pria tended to him and asked Andridge what was wrong.

  “Survivors,” Andridge managed to cough out. “They’re bound to have made it back to camp in Carrollton by now. We’re not safe here, they’re going to come for us.” He sat up again, looking around, saying, “It’s not safe,” over and over.