Woe to Live On: A Novel

by Daniel Woodrell

  My eyes met Jack Bull’s, then he shrugged and ate on, looking down.

  Soon I had eaten my fill. I tapped Jack Bull on the arm and bid him come with me.

  “Where?”

  “The barn. There is a son hiding out in the barn.”

  The barn had been part burned down, and only one half stood strongly. Some hay was put by there, but little else.

  “Halloo inside,” Jack Bull called as we entered. “We are friends, Clark. Show yourself.”

  From our backs came some sniggering in a thin tone that was eerie. We turned toward it and instinct had our hands on our pistols.

  The sniggering continued while we saw from where it came. A smallish man lay on a hay pile behind the door, a shotgun at his side. The roof half that was gone from flame let in plenty of light. But there was an unwell scent to the room.

  “Bushwhackers,” Clark said between sniggers. “I could’ve killed you both.” His hand tapped the shotgun. “But it ain’t even loaded.”

  “No need of that,” I said. “We are friends.”

  “You s’pose so, do you?” Clark asked. “I don’t.”

  His left leg was absent from near the hip down. A red neckerchief was tied to the stump. He looked a hard ride beyond Grim.

  “You were at Wilson’s Creek,” I said. “Who with?”

  “Why, General Price,” Clark said. He had blue eyes. “The fat glory-hound rebel himself.”

  Jack Bull hunkered down and pointed at the stump. “Didn’t see that one coming, eh?”

  This set Clark to sniggering again with such force that it ended in coughs. Breathing was a tussle. His face reddened.

  “I saw it comin’. I see everything. Don’t think I don’t. I saw it rollin’ past little piles of kindlin’ stuff that I once knew by name. I watched it roll right up to me.”

  Jack Bull laughed and spit, then courteously calmed. “You weren’t too quick with both legs, were you?”

  “I was plenty quick.” Clark stopped with the mirth and looked dour. “Don’t you believe I wasn’t. But nature borned me smart and that changes things.”

  In that war one-eyed, one-eared, two-stumped warriors were not uncommon, so Clark’s pathetic qualities failed to be as touching as he supposed.

  “General Price is a good man,” I said. “Would you have us fetch you something to eat?”

  “I have a mother for that,” Clark said. “I don’t eat anyway. I’m tryin’ somethin’ different.”

  Jack Bull still squatted, staring at the air where the leg once grew, chewing a straw end as he contemplated something. Soon he pointed a finger at the stump and slowly spoke: “Now, tell me this, Clark. If you were plenty quick and saw it coming, how could you not avoid the cannonball?”

  Clark tossed his head back deeper in the hay, and gazed up at the sun through the half roof.

  “It looked like good luck. There was arms in trees and rebels dropped in sections all about.” He breathed whistly, like a sick bird might sing. “We never been well off here. Never. We never even owned so much as a single spavined nigger. Oh, mister—there was neighbors gone to Kingdom all around me.”

  “Wilson’s Creek was a hot one, wasn’t it?” Jack Bull said. He then looked at me. “Arch and Cole were in it. They describe it like that. Hot.”

  “Yes,” I said. Then, “But, Clark—your leg.”

  “Aw,” he said and part pulled himself up. “I wanted my foot broke so I could head home. The damned little cannonball was goin’ slower’n a fevered rabbit. Do you respect me? I was there, and I put my foot out just hopin’ for a bone to snap.”

  “Why, you are a fool,” I said. “A cannonball will rip your leg right—”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” went Clark, then followed it up with more of those eerie sniggers. The sound wafted eloquently about the barn and required no accompaniment of further conversation.

  Experience had prepared me for all manner of ridiculous misfortune befalling a man. Gopher holes killed governors and tick bites emptied neighborhoods. But this man Clark’s misfortune had been to be who he was and think himself smart in the wrong era for delusions.

  “Well, now,” Jack Bull said as he stood, no longer interested. “Perilous times do not make us all stronger. It is sad to see.”

  I stared down at Clark, a cripple by bad choice, and felt certain he would not last long, as death offers so many opportunities to nitwits.

  “You will be killed,” I said to him. “Jayhawkers or militia, someone or the other will stop here and kill you.”

  “Aw, they been here already and burned the barn. I wouldn’t even move to put it out. Ma done it.” He lay down again, his memories no doubt on the attack back behind his blank face. “As likely you boys will kill me. I don’t much care.”

  This comment exhausted Jack Bull’s forbearance, as he had seen too many good men pass over the river who did not care for the trip.

  “You want to die, do you?” Jack Bull’s voice was taut and his expression was unlovely. He could be mean. I knew this. “Perhaps you would choose to die now.” He pulled a pistol and held it aimed down. “I have considerable experience in the killing line, Clark. I could do you a fair job of it, this minute.”

  Clark pondered this with wretched concentration showing in his face, then said, “No. No. Ma has her heart set on me livin’.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Jack Bull asked. “I am here and now and loaded.”

  After a few more of those sick songbird breaths, Clark said, “I don’t believe so. I think I’ll wait on it.”

  Jack Bull slowly holstered his pistol and we walked to the door. There he paused and turned to Clark.

  “Your mother is a fine enough woman. You might help her some, don’t you think? You get yourself a stick to lean on and you could limp around a good bit.”

  “Uh-huh,” Clark said. “That could be next.” He was still flat on his back and staring up at the vastness. “That could be the very next thing.”

  2

  WHEN EVENING HAD been thrown over us, we were camped at a woods on a farm owned by a man named Sorrells. A brook sang near us, and our pickets had a good view from the mound we occupied. Fires were lit, as we knew the militia feared to travel in this country by night. We ruled the dark roads.

  Arch Clay had produced his deck of cards and was trying to teach gambling games to the Hudspeth brothers. Neither of them had turned seventeen and they came of good family, so they possessed no skills in idolatrous pastimes. I did not join them, as I had no spirit for games.

  “Now what have you?” Arch asked. Arch was a runtish, dandified man who killed more jollily than I found well mannered. He was Black John’s closest friend and sole confidant.

  “Two of these here,” Babe Hudspeth said, holding his cards aloft toward the light. “The black-hearted ones—is that good?”

  “We call them ‘spades,’ ” Arch instructed. “And you?” he asked of Ray Hudspeth.

  “Three,” Ray said. He was beaming from the ease with which he had become a successful gambler. “All puppies’ feet—do I win the money?”

  “Puppies’ feet!” Arch exclaimed. He looked at me sourly, though I was no more than one year senior to the brothers. “Can you fathom that? Puppies’ feet!” He threw his cards onto the blanket. “Them’s clubs, you damned children. No more gamblin’ for me. I can’t enjoy it like this.”

  The Hudspeths shared glances, then Babe said, “Just who do you think you’re damning, Clay?”

  Arch was half-sized on either of the boys but older and more certain.

  “Did I hurt your feelings, son?”

  “Well,” Babe answered, not quite convinced of how he should feel. “It was rude of you.”

  “Ha,” Arch snorted, and lay back on the blanket, tipping his hat forward across his eyes. “That’s the least bad I’ve been for years. It was good of you children to note it for me. Makes me feel all warm and Christian.”

  I left the Hudspeths to their own thoughts and wandered to join anot
her group of comrades. I generally whittled something useless and strolled of an evening. It relaxed me and made me feel at home.

  I joined Jack Bull Chiles, Coleman Younger and Pitt Mackeson on the dark ground beneath a tall oak tree. Cole regarded me intensely, watching as I sat and scraped at a branch. His eyes did not leave me when he thrust a whiskey bottle forward.

  I sheathed my knife, then accepted the bottle. I appreciated his generosity to the measure of a quarter pint on the first swallow.

  “Do not think you are a good man,” Coleman Younger said. “The thought will spoil you.”

  “I am a southern man,” I said. “And that is as good as any man that lived ’til he died.”

  Coleman Younger was reddish in skin and hair, with the temperament that is wed to that hue, and girth and grit enough to back it up.

  “You are a southern man—that is proven,” he said. “But a rare one.”

  For Coleman Younger to speak of me so set a glow in me that whiskey could not match, nor doubt extinguish. It was for this that I searched, communion and levelness with people who were not mine by birth, but mine for the taking.

  “Oh, yes, Roedel,” Mackeson said. “You are proven to be a southern man who eats kraut and kills boys from the back.”

  “If the boy had freed the rope, the hanging would’ve been scotched and required doing over,” I said.

  “Judas worked quick, too,” said Pitt Mackeson.

  Cole slowly savored a swallow of inspirational popskull, then said, “You did right. Dead from the front is no more dead than from the back. It is a question of opportunity.”

  “So is chicken stealin’,” Mackeson said. His lopsided face viewed me from my topknot to my toes in a steady glance.

  “Do you wish you had more often spoken to your great-grandfather, Mackeson?” I asked. “Tell me.”

  My arms ached already from the thought of digging his eternal home, for I was thinking he would soon be in it.

  “How could I wish that, Dutchy? I never even knew him.” Mackeson was confused. “He was gone years before I was borned.”

  I slid my hand toward my belly gun, and hunched over to shade the move.

  “Well, your introduction to him may be close at hand if you so wish.”

  “Now, none of that,” Coleman Younger said. His person and voice had authority. “Jake did right. And that is that. We are comrades.”

  “I hear you sayin’ it,” Mackeson replied. He stood and looked down on me, then began to walk off. “I’ve heard many a thing said that wasn’t so, too.” He left us then.

  “I’m telling you, Jake,” Jack Bull said, “you want to watch that man.”

  The whiskey bottle was once more in my hand, so I took a share of it.

  “Perhaps I should put him where he’ll not need so much watching,” I suggested.

  “Naw, naw,” Cole said. “In a hot place Pitt is a good man to have with you.”

  “I hear you saying it,” I answered.

  We drank then, on into full dark and hooty-owl time, after which the three of us slept, our bedrolls not a rifle’s length apart. Coleman Younger was not a regular part of our band, and soon he left us, but for that one brief period he was my comrade.

  In the morning we shed our blue sheep’s clothing. Our border shirts came out of satchels and onto our backs. We preferred this means of dress, for it was more flat-out and honest. The shirts were large, with pistol pockets, and usually colored red or dun. Many had been embroidered with ornate stitching by loving women some were blessed enough to have.

  Mine was plain, but well broken in. I can think of no more chilling a sight than that of myself, all astride my big bay horse, with six or eight pistols dangling from my saddle, my rebel locks aloft on the breeze and a whoopish yell on my lips.

  When my awful costumery was multiplied by that of my comrades, we stopped faint hearts just by our mode of dread stylishness.

  That morning we dawdled about camp more than usual. Black John squatted up to an oak trunk and consulted long with Press Welch, a rider from George Clyde’s group. We often linked up with Clyde, or Quantrill, or Poole, Jarrett and Thrailkill. By having many captains we kept our bands small for easy hiding, but we could call all together in a few days’ time.

  After Press Welch departed, Black John pinched his cheeks together and looked down, lost in some manner of stern thought. He was older than most of us and had lived in Kansas. When being formal he called us the First Kansas Irregulars, which I never heard anyone echo except in his presence. His head was a riot of black tangling hair on the skull and cheeks both. Long-faced, he had a hollowed look brought on by a steady ration of hard days.

  “Men…” he finally spoke, raising himself from the ground. “Men, there is work to be done.” His voice was low and thick and Baptist-certain that what it spoke was right. “Hampton Eads and seven other of our comrades were took by the militia out of Warrensburg. You had friends among them.”

  This was not a rare sort of news, but we began to pay attention. Something would be done.

  Black John spread his arms wide as if to calm us, although we were yet subdued. “They are all murdered.”

  Oaths were uttered at this, and Black John commanded us to mount. This we quickly did, and soon we were afield, feeling wolfish, searching for victims.

  They were in good supply.

  We made trash of men and places. At Sweet Springs we found the houses of two Unionists who had tried to waylay Cave Wyatt when he had visited his mother there. Both men were unaware of us and smug—but not for long. Cave put amens to their miserable existences after delivering unto them a knotty sermon. Their homes became beacons.

  Several of the boys were from this neighborhood and had scores to settle. A man called Schmidt thought a fox was in his henhouse but encountered a larger thief than he was prepared for. His end was merciful, as he was a good runner and nearly made the woods.

  Following Davis Creek we traveled north by west, swooping on known Union properties and persons. Word of our presence traveled fast, and by midday all we found were empty houses to destroy. Here and there we confiscated silverware or jewelry that had fallen into the wrong hands. But there was not much of it.

  Our devotion to revenge began to dull after that, and we yearned to ambush some food and plenty of it.

  Turner Rawls had family on the creek, so we stopped in there for dinner. All horses but two were secreted in a ravine behind the house. Turner’s father had been shot in Warrensburg for buying more lead than one man could need, and his two brothers were somewhere in Arkansas with Price. This made him the only protector of his mother and two sisters. He was tender in attitude when about them, a level of temperament he had never before displayed. It made me fonder of him.

  The women set us a fine table: chicken fried the way mothers do it, and ham with sweet potatoes, biscuits and coffee. I was zealous about the ham and sweet potatoes, and soon had my fill. Having my fill made me sleepy, so I went onto the porch. It was a fine, sunny day and I decided to count the nailheads in the porch ceiling. To do this I lay on my back, but quickly I lost the count.

  Sneezing horses awakened me. I sat up, but they were there: Four militiamen stared at me from behind carbines. A good distance off there was a larger gaggle of bluebellies.

  The house had gone silent.

  “Where’s the other, you devil?” asked one of the militia. He had puppy cheeks and foam at the mouth. He gestured at the two horses we had left out front. “Speak up and maybe you’ll live yet.”

  This brought haw-haws from his brethren, who were a pink-jowled lot of bad citizens.

  My comfort was diminished. The full gullet made me feel slow and perhaps stupid.

  “Get his guns,” the foamy man said. One of the others acted as if he would come forward to disarm me, but hesitated. “Halloo inside! Come out and show your parole or surrender.”

  Southern men who would not fight could post parole bonds to walk about with a little freedom. I had no
parole, and I was armed, as no paroled man could be.

  The main body was now coming forward, and a quick scout told me there was fifty or more of them. The numbers were not favorable.

  “I am alone,” I said. “That’s my daddy’s house. He was shot off it three days back.”

  “He lies,” said a shrewd militia. “Let’s parole him to Jesus, and right now.”

  I was still seated, and that saved me. The house exploded in the militia’s faces, and four saddles were instantly unburdened. I pulled to my knees and grabbed the reins of our two horses and began to run to the rear of the house.

  “Get in here!” voices called to me, but I knew we needed the horses, though neither was mine.

  My course was changed when the troop of militia opened up on me. I heard the enchanting whack of bullet on meat. Both horses screamed and spasmed, one dropping dead while the other spun in a tight agonized whirl, the rear legs useless.

  The bullets were coming in gangs, as I was a lonely target. The little finger on my left hand, a fairly useless digit, was cleaved from me. I saw it land pink and limp in the dust of the chicken pen but made no move to regain it.

  Two more strides put me in the house.

  At every window there were guns pointing out. Black John stood at the front one, a man cool and plausible.

  The women were on the floor and not in the right spirit for the adventure that had befallen them. Turner Rawls crouched nearby his family, pistol pulled, as if the center of the floor was his last stand.

  “Do you kill women?” Black John called out the window. “There are women in here!”

  The militia was on three sides of us now, and from the house to the wooded ravine and horses there was a clear patch of fifty yards.

  Running it would be hot.

  “You know we don’t,” came back a bossy honk of a Yankee voice. You might fight a voice like that for any small reason, let alone for invading your neighborhood. “Send them out now and they’ll be safe passaged!”

  A bone-and-pulp nubbin was all of my finger I had left. My blood spotted the floor and walls. Someone told me I was hit, as if I might have overlooked it myself. I took a rag and wound it firm about the aching nubbin. The pain was shrill enough, but the idea of a finger of mine twitching about, lost in chicken-pecked dust, was more terrible.