by Bill Dugan
“You know for sure who did it?”
“Sure as I can be. I was there.”
“Go on.”
“We thought we was free and clear. We sneaked the herd away from Meshaw, this little town just across the Arkansas River. And …”
“Sneaked? Why?”
“Because the farmers didn’t want us there neither, Teddy. They got no use for Texas cattle nohow, say they got some kind of fever kills their own stock. I dunno nothing about that, but that’s what they told us. They was the ones stopped us in the first place. We was waiting for the sheriff, to see can he get them to let us through. But Conlee showed up first. I think, really, once that happened, it was already too late. You have to see this man to believe him. Like a creature from hell, he was, smelled so bad I liked to throw up. They was all that way. Like maybe water would kill them or something. Anyhow, once Conlee latched on, you could see it might happen. Come to shootin’, anyways.”
“But …?”
“But we was goin’ to try and snooker ‘em.”
“What about this sheriff?”
“What about him?”
“What’d he do?”
“Not a damn thing, Ted. They got him buffaloed. He don’t say it, but I think he’s scared of Conlee. Acted like it, anyhow. They all are. Them farmers didn’t think nothing of staring us down over them Winchesters and hayforks they was carryin’, but they got no stomach for Conlee. That’s what made me think we were in for a bad time. I tried to talk your brother into leavin’ right away, but he wanted to wait for the sheriff. Then, when Sheriff Mitchell showed up, he said he couldn’t do nothing about Conlee, anyhow. So we waited for nothing.”
Ted stared off at the deepening purple. A mass of clouds, pink at the edges, swirled across half the sky. He kept running one hand through his hair, sometimes tugging at it, sometimes raking his fingers across his scalp so hard Rafe could hear the nails digging into the skin. But he didn’t say anything for nearly a quarter hour.
Ellie poked her head out to ask if they wanted coffee, but Rafe waved her off. Ted wasn’t half done yet, and Rafe knew it. Ellie nodded and backed away from the door. Ted never looked around, not even at Rafe.
“That’s a fine young woman, there, Teddy.”
Ted said nothing.
Not knowing what else to do, Rafe continued, “That night, we thought maybe we fooled them, threw them off the scent, so to speak. Johnny wanted us to stay up all night in shifts, not just the night pickets, but half the hands. Half would sleep a few hours, then spell the others. We done that, too, but nothing happened. Not that night. And not the next night, either. During the day, we sent two man teams back to see if we were bein’ followed. Nobody ever saw a sign, but they must have been there all along. It was their country. They could almost guess which way we’d have to go, and we walked right into it.”
“Into what?”
“The plain truth?”
Ted nodded. “The plain truth.”
“It were a Sharps buffalo gun got Johnny. He never had a chance. Sonofabitch kilt him from near half a mile away. He didn’t suffer none, thank the Lord. We buried him right there that afternoon. A pretty little spot, really. In a stand of pines.”
“Where?”
“About eighteen, maybe twenty miles outside of Triple Steeple, another little town. Got three churches, though. That’s how it’s called that.”
Ted got up and stepped off the porch.
“Where you goin’, son?”
“Home, Rafe. I got some work to do.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, you stay and have some supper. You had a long ride.”
“I can wait, Teddy.”
“I’d rather be alone a bit, Rafe. Sort some things out.”
Rafe nodded. “I’ll be along in a while.”
Ted mounted his horse and wheeled away from the house. Rafe watched him disappear into the dark, then got up and went inside. He explained what had happened to Jacob and Ellie. Ellie wanted to run after Ted, but the men wouldn’t let her go. She screamed at them and carried on, even slapping her father for the first time in her life, but Jacob just held on for dear life until the tantrum passed.
The two old men were quiet, Rafe preferring not to think about what had happened, Jacob preferring not to think about what was almost bound to happen next.
Ted looked back once. The house seemed quiet, lamps throwing a warm orange glow through the trees. But the blackness of the night slowly swallowed the house and its light, leaving him alone. He rode slowly, not really in a hurry, and dead certain he would get where he was going.
As he rode up a ridge, he caught one more glimpse of the house, just above the treetops, then he passed the crest, and it disappeared altogether as he started down the far side. Out on the plains, coyotes howled at one another and at the feeble moon. He was tempted to ride out into the vastness, thinking maybe they weren’t coyotes at all, but Comanches come to taunt him in his grief. But that was too unrealistic, and he realized it.
Soon, the coyotes fell silent, and he heard nothing but the sound of his pony’s hooves on the hard-baked earth and raspy saw grass. When the house came into view, he slowed even further. At first he wasn’t aware of it. Then when he realized it, he understood why immediately. It was the first time he’d enter the house knowing he was alone in the world. As remote as the possibility had seemed, he had still believed there was a chance that Johnny would come home. Now there was no way he could believe that.
It was over. His life was over. His future was over. He was a man with a past and nothing else.
He didn’t go in right away, preferring to linger outside on the dark porch, as if waiting long enough might give whatever passed for God in this new and lonely world time to change his mind. History might be like a stream, and if God were as powerful as men like Jacob believed, He could direct its waters anywhere He chose, even make them double back on themselves, send them off in some new direction. That was what God was for, wasn’t it?
He shook his head, realizing he was twisting a notion he didn’t even accept. There was no God. There couldn’t be. He had no brother, how could there be a God?
Taking a deep breath he reached down inside himself for the courage to face the unalterable. Once the door opened, it was written in stone. Johnny was dead and he wasn’t coming home. Not ever. He stopped with his palms pressed flat against the splintery wood then; knowing delay was pointless, he shoved the door back. It creaked on its hinges, and one board scraped against the floor as it had for months, wearing a smooth, bone-white arc in the floorboards.
He groped in the dark until his fingers closed over the chimney of a coal oil lamp. The box of matches was right next to it on the old table he and Johnny had made for their father fifteen years before. The table had never been useful, but his father had refused to let it go. When John Cotton died, Johnny claimed it for his own, and was, if anything, even more protective of it than his father had been.
And now it was all that was left. He removed the chimney and struck the match. The flame surged, almost died out, then came back a bit. He touched it to the blackened wick and waited for the oil to catch fire. When the flame was steady, he replaced the chimney and walked to the fireplace. An oval needlepoint hung over the mantel. His mother had made it just before taking sick.
Ted read the motto, stitched with the rough, bold hand of a woman who had met a hard life on its own terms. “Bless this house.” That was the motto, in blue letters surrounded by a garland of red and yellow flowers. The colors of the threads had begun to fade, and the white linen had turned ivory. Soon it, too, would be gone.
Like the woman who made it. Like the man who loved her. Like the first son she’d borne him. All gone, and for what?
Ted sighed, then collapsed in the rickety wooden rocker Johnny kept by the fireplace. He cried for the first time, and it all came out of him at once. The loss of his brother, the terror of Shiloh, the fear on the rim of Breakneck Canyon. Ev
erything that had ever terrified him poured out in a soundless flood. He wanted to shout, to scream defiance at someone or something, but he couldn’t.
There was no one to scream at.
He sat there all night, rocking back and forth, listening to the squeak of the floorboards under the chair. The rhythm was somehow comforting.
Rafe stuck his head in at one point. Ted sensed him, but didn’t acknowledge him. The old cowboy withdrew and went to the bunkhouse.
And when morning came, Ted watched the sun come up. It spilled through the windows, leaking in around the curtains and crossing the floor toward the chair like a transparent flood. He could feel its warmth on his shins as the cotton turned the light to heat. When it had climbed across his lap and down the other side, he stood and walked to the window.
He listened to the birds for a few moments, then went to the bedroom where he and his brother had slept. He was almost packed when he heard footsteps on the porch. He heard a knock and saw Rafe at the door.
“I got to go back, Teddy. We still got most of the herd. Somebody’s got to see to it. I been gone near a month already.”
“No, Rafe.”
“But…”
“I said no! You stay here, watch the place.”
“Where are you going?”
“Where do you think?”
“But you can’t, Teddy.”
“But I can’t not, Rafe.”
The old man nodded. “You be careful, son.”
“No, Rafe, I won’t.” Ted’s voice was cold and hard. “But I’ll be back, all the same.”
13
TED RODE LIKE a man with the devil on his ass. Covering fifty and sixty miles in a day, he stopped at nightfall, ate a meal, and slept like a dead man. At sunup, he grabbed breakfast, climbed back into the saddle, and didn’t stop unless he had to. He had one spare horse and switched them daily. Riding right up the belly of the heartland, he blew through Arkansas, threading his way through the Ozarks, and climbed into the plains.
Three weeks later, he reached the Kansas border. For the first time since he’d left, he camped before sundown. When the fire was built, he sat on a hilltop and watched the waters of the Arkansas roll by. Flecks of foam in the dying light danced like fire. High overhead, a hawk, almost too high to see, drifted on the wind, flapping its wings every few minutes to change direction or loft to another current. It was a windy evening, and there was a chill in the air, but he ignored the fire halfway down the slope. He sat there until the sun went all the way out.
He was close now and the worst was just ahead of him. The hot rage that fueled him all the way from Texas was gone. In its place, an icy calm settled in his gut. The tremors were gone, the sudden tic of an eyelid or twitch of a cheek, frozen by that calm, no longer troubled him. It seemed almost as if getting here were more than half the battle. He knew that wasn’t true, but he had been driven by the fear that he would never even get to Kansas. That would have been a failure worse than anything he could imagine.
Now there it was, sitting across the river. Its rolling hills had faded with the sun. In the twilight, it had looked like a landscape of gray ice. Now, in the darkness, he couldn’t see it at all.
But it was there.
And somewhere in its belly was the man who had killed his brother. But the calm had its insidious side. With it came time for reflection. He knew Johnny would commend him. He also knew that Ellie would never forgive him. And he was right back staring at that same blank wall again. What should he do? Should he avenge his brother, or listen to the woman who loved him?
And did it make any difference?
Ted knew that he could be dead in a week. If that happened, it might be a blessing. No matter which way he chose, he would never have to choose again, never have to face himself in a shaving mirror with that question mark between his eyebrows, never have to wonder if he had made the right choice. The need to choose would end with his life. That knowledge gave him some sort of perverse pleasure.
He would rest now. Tomorrow he would begin the search. Closing his eyes, he leaned back against the chilly ground and waited for sleep. He could feel the frozen knot beginning to chill every nerve in his body. Each limb felt as if it were sculpted from ice. Ted wondered if he had ever felt this calm. It brought him back to the night of April 4, 1862. He had lain on another hillside then. And like now, there had been no fire. The Yankees were out there then. Snipers swarmed all over the woods, tying themselves in trees and just waiting for some fool to pass between a roaring fire and a gunsight. It hadn’t taken long to realize it was better to be cold than to be dead.
At least that’s what he had thought then. But he was young, and life had seemed like it would never end unless he made a mistake. And he had been too young to make mistakes. He was no longer that young. And he was no longer that naive. The next day had stripped him of whatever innocence he had.
It came back as plain as day, the way it always did. There had been rain. Everyplace he looked, there was mud. Sometimes the troops had to sleep in fields so full of standing water, they were no better than swamps. The roads, tramped on by hundreds of horses and thousands of men, turned to rivers of thick, clinging clay. The wagons bogged down time after time and often had to be manhandled to get them free of the morass.
For days, there were skirmishes. Cavalry patrols would run afoul of pickets. Musket fire would crack for twenty minutes, then one side or the other would withdraw, dragging a couple of wounded men, hurling curses over their shoulders. No one had any idea of the horror that was to come.
It seemed then almost like a picnic with fireworks. Now and then somebody got hurt, but that happened at picnics, too. The guns were toys. After all, the troops were children, most of them. It was the officers who were the old men. Old men leading boys into a cauldron full of molten lead that would scald the flesh from their bones and leave them gasping like dying fish on the muddy ground.
It started by accident, and Ted wasn’t even there. Most of the officers were surprised by it, and almost all of the men. But it didn’t take long to turn from a schoolboy’s outing to a hellish nightmare. The cannons fired canisters full of grape shot, balls the size of small plums, then exploded and scattered the deadly shot in every direction. Limbs were torn off, leaving stumps spouting blood in thick gouts. Eyes were lost, hands and arms and legs blown away.
One of Ted’s friends, a kid who couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen, got shot through the belly. Ted knelt beside him where the blood on his uniform almost obscured the foot of intestines ripped through the wound by the minié ball. The kid kept screaming, and Ted could do nothing but slit the wound a little and stuff the intestine back. Then he sat there and held the kid’s head in his lap until he died.
All day and into the next, it continued. Men fell on both sides by tens and hundreds. He never did learn how many died. But the smell of the gunsmoke, so thick it hung like a lowering fog over the fields, was still with him.
And it was to get worse before it was over. A charge with fixed bayonets into a Federal camp, almost on the banks of the Tennessee River, was the last straw. Sweeping through the tents, firing at things that moved and things that didn’t, they burst open the camp, stabbing at wounded men who were too close to death to do anything but lie there and feel the cold steel again and again slice through their bodies.
And the men wielding the bayonets were men he slept and ate with, men he sang with at nights. They were his friends. They were just like him.
And it made him sick.
It was then he started to wonder. He didn’t sleep much for the next three years. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the kid holding his gut, then the eyes closing, as the kid died. One officer, his arm blown off by a Federal battery, stared at the bloody stump every night in his dreams, the uninjured hand waving in the air where the other arm had been, as if he couldn’t believe his arm was no longer there.
So damn long ago, he thought, so damn long ago that it must have been
someone else asleep on that earlier hill. That was where it had all started. And this is where it had led.
And the pictures flashed through his mind one after another. Things he could not forget, and things he did not want to remember. Whenever it happened he tried to force himself to look somewhere else. There were so many things he remembered barely at all. Memories flitting just below the surface, like trout darting under sunny water, hiding in the glare, slipping into the shadows, teasing him with a curve here, a faint flick of a tail there. And as soon as he would cast for them, they were gone.
It would be better to remember nothing at all, than to remember only those things he could remember. Once in a while something would tease him. Some smell would carry him back to Alabama for a moment. His mother would be in the kitchen, flour up to her elbows, a checkered apron knotted around her waist. But as soon as he tried to focus on it, it would be gone. It was like he were a criminal, teased by the things he couldn’t have. Pounding on the bars got him nowhere. He could look, but not touch.
And tomorrow would begin one more of those strings of memories he was condemned not to forget. Where it would lead was anybody’s guess. That it would end violently was certain. That someone would die was probable. That it might be Ted Cotton seemed like a blessing.
As he finally drifted to sleep, he felt like he were flying. His body seemed to lift off the ground. He felt the wind carry him along like the hawk he had been watching at sundown. He could see all the way to Mexico, and the tips of mountains he’d only heard about flashed in the sun.
Then everything went black, and he was falling. He fell forever, but he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t tense up, waiting for the impact of his body on the ground. He knew, without having to think about it, that it might never happen, and if it did, he knew it wouldn’t hurt.
