Woe to Live On: A Novel

by Daniel Woodrell

  “The only way there is. Holt, toss me a tater.”

  When he tossed it, I caught it. I began to chew on the small dry thing, mashing my jaw over and over ’til I spit out a kind of white pap into my hand.

  “Hold his head up,” I said.

  Sue Lee and Holt squatted at Jack Bull’s side and raised his head. His lips were cracked and big black half moons were beneath his eyes. With two fingers I scooped the pap and stuck it in his mouth. He sputtered but swallowed, so I did it again. Little slobbers lit on his chin. I kept up the scoop-and-swallow work as long as he would take it. It was not for long. Hunger was not his main sensation.

  We left him to rest as much as he would. Weird words were mumbled by him and nowhere in the dugout could you hide from them. They found you.

  I went outside. There was no special thing to see. The wind smelled clean. The whole world was off from there, beyond the trees and sight.

  The dugout plank creaked and out came Holt. He joined me on the dirt. He patted my back. He took slow breaths.

  “I wonder,” he said, “did you ever watch the rabbit? That is a pretty thing up close. Big eyes and a face that has changes in it, feelings like. It’s got big fancy ears and is just a pretty thing but I still eat it. And it comes to me that I eat the pretty thing ’cause I am hungry.”

  “You tell interesting tales, Holt.”

  “Well, that’s all of it.” He touched my shoulder. “Jake, that arm is done for.”

  “Oh, I know it,” I said. It was true. “I hoped it wouldn’t be.”

  “It is done for.”

  “Maybe George will bring the doctor. He may see something we don’t.”

  “Naw,” Holt said. “I reckon he’ll see what we see.”

  Possibilities ganged up on me. I felt clabbered by guilt, for only my dainty hopes had kept that arm from being took away sooner. Now Jack Bull was even weaker.

  “Not now,” I said. “We’ll give George a chance first.”

  “The longer you wait,” Holt said softly, “the harder it gets on the man.”

  “Oh, hellfire, will you just shut up on that? God damn it all, Holt, just give me peace for a while.”

  He laughed a rough one.

  “Why not the moon?” he asked.

  More pap was scooped as the day passed. I hoped to raise his strength. Sue Lee timed it out and we fed him regular as a babe.

  Me and Holt switched off on keeping Federal watch. I thought of Texas and wished we were there and not any of us shot. If only wishing made it so, cripples would dance wild reels on tabletops and lots of good times would be had.

  With no preamble at all Jack Bull began to speak.

  “Jake,” he said. “You look sad.”

  I went bug-eyed at him. He was awake and aware.

  “We’re taking care of you,” I said, and scrambled to his side. “You can be mended.”

  “Don’t lie, Jake. Don’t lie to me. I can see. I can see to my own arm.”

  His fine American face was leeched dry of all emotion and interests save the drive to survive. The breaths he took were short and slow, as though fast deep ones would be beyond his control.

  “George Clyde has gone for a doctor,” I said.

  Jack Bull nodded wearily, then said, “I always knew we would be killed. One or both of us.”

  “Well, that chance has always been there.”

  “Do you recall the pies on Mother’s sill?”

  “Of course. Those were good eating times.”

  “That they were.” His big brown sick eyes went steady on me. “I always thought it’d be you, Jake. You dying. I was certain I would have to bury you.”

  This revelation tantalized me.

  “I wish you were burying me,” I said, but I knew I lied. It was strange how that hit me, too. I lied to my near brother, but I knew I lied and that freed me loose of some old notions I had fancied.

  I didn’t want to die in anyone else’s place at all.

  “Me, too,” he said. His good hand clutched toward me and patted my knee. This was to tell me he joked, I think.

  “You ain’t dead, Jack Bull.”

  A slack spell came over him and his lips hung limp and he closed his eyes.

  Our chat had roused Sue Lee and she came over and said, “I’m right here.” His eyes opened and he said, “Oh, good. Oh, good.”

  An instant later he went back to the gone state he had generally been in. His recess from delirium had been brief.

  His veins became black. The black blood inched up the inside of his arm. Holt pointed it out first, then we all crouched over the arm and watched it somberly.

  “We’ll keep an eye on that,” I said. “It can’t be let go much longer.” I looked at the widow and she was just about destroyed by knowledge. “I might have to take it off as best I can.”

  We sat around then, waiting for blackened veins of wronged blood to force me to surgery. The waiting was a chore. I felt my mushed knee to amuse myself. I squeezed the kneecap and nothing wiggled or stuck up sharply. It was only a terrific bruise.

  “I wonder how Honeybee is,” Sue Lee said. She spoke dreamily. “That is a sweet little girl. Her elbows jiggle still. Maybe she is a little fat, but that Honeybee is sure enough sweet.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I said. “Her voice does pleasantries to any song she tackles.”

  “Oh, my, yes,” the widow said, almost brightly. “That child reads better than I ever will, too.”

  An awesome responsible streak was in Holt. I saw him check on Jack Bull, then he said, “Now. It has got to be done now. The black streaks is pushing up to the armpit.”

  Sue Lee grabbed my hand, her big whipped eyes practically speared into me.

  “Can you do it, Jake? Can you do it for him?”

  I nodded and thought about what must be done. My belly jammed with nettles. My head felt loose from me. I went outside. The sun was gone. It was cold, cold, cold, and I knelt on the frozen ground and it all came up. It just all jumped up out of me and slopped to the dirt. I retched and retched and thought I never would quit—I had to cut him!

  “Don’t think about it, Roedel,” Holt said from behind me. “Just do it. There ain’t no sliding around it. Just you do it or else I will.”

  “Oh no you won’t,” I said. “His family raised me. I reckon it’ll be me who saws his rotten arm off.”

  Back in the dugout I did things, but it was like it wasn’t the true me. My hands were busy and half smart and lashed a rope above the spot where I would cut and readied the blade.

  “If he screams too loud we may all die,” I said. “Put a stick in his mouth. Don’t let him scream too loud.”

  Holt put the bit in.

  “Sue Lee,” I said, “sit on his chest and keep his jaws clamped on that stick. Holt, you shove him down wherever he starts to flop.”

  I ran my fingers across Jack Bull’s face, and the skin had the feel of cabbage. I owed him so much. The whole life I had. I studied the arm and the fouled veins and laid the blade at the spot. Then, nerved up to the highest pitch I could summon, I began to saw.

  The job was miserable.

  I was no good.

  Sue Lee held on tight to his jaw and Holt held him down and I held the blade and everyone made noises.

  Oh, sweet Lord Jesus.

  It was way down there past terrible.

  13

  THE KNOT ON the rope was not enough of a bind, and loosened to leak Jack Bull Chiles. My world bled to death. I couldn’t get the cut burned closed. It was too moist. The smell was a horrible fact.

  I guess I wept. I guess we all wept. Even Holt wept. It’s a useless reaction. No comfort at all.

  We sat there all night. The wind made sad, tormenting sounds. Once, Sue Lee put her fingers to her hair, grabbed a hold and beat her head around like she was churning butter. She shrieked and I listened. I had nothing for her.

  Words can’t match it.

  Past a certain point I could not sit. I picked up the s
hovel and contemplated a grave. I wanted it to be inside the dugout where he had lived, not off in coyote-prowled timber. I measured a spot in the center of the dugout. There wasn’t much light, but I didn’t need much. I vented some bad feelings on the soft dirt. The shovel slammed down in my hands, gouging out little loads of dirt, which I flung to the corners. The clods pattered down like varmint feet scurrying over leaves. I beat a hole right into the ground, flinging dirt in the dark.

  Sweat broke out on me. I relished the evidence of effort. I hung my tongue down and lapped the salty beads as they fell from my nose.

  This was all there was to do.

  The sun ignored our grief and kept to its routine. The lightened scene was harrowing. Sue Lee appeared awful and used up. Holt was far gone into pious reflection.

  I gestured at the grave.

  “Bury him,” I said. “Quick.”

  For lack of alternatives, leadership fell on me. Holt and the widow began to roll Jack Bull toward the grave, spinning him across the dusty floor.

  We dropped him down and threw his arm in after him. For some reason I kicked my satchel of mail into the pit alongside him. I think I was guilty about my luck. Then I eased a shovelful of dirt onto his chest.

  “Wait!” Sue Lee said. “Wait a minute, Jake. I want to look at him.”

  She knelt next to the grave, leaned over and kissed Jack Bull’s blue lips.

  This act of hers moved me. I went into prayer position at her side. Many things hidden in me were being hinted out, and I stared down at Jack Bull Chiles and dredged up all the farewell feelings I had. I bent over. I did something to him dead I had never tried on him alive. I kissed him good-bye, right where she had, just the same.

  Holt humphed behind me. I looked up at him, and he watched me oddly.

  “Did you see something that bothers you, Holt?”

  His face was smooth, and he shook his head briskly.

  “No, no,” he said and turned away. “I didn’t see it.”

  I finished the funeral. The grave made a mound. No good verses came to mind, so it was a stoic ceremony.

  “So long,” I said. “See you over the river.”

  Outside it was gray. A late March storm was coming in from the north. The clouds looked soiled and the light was dull.

  “Let’s get to Captain Perdee’s,” I said. “We’ll rally with the boys. It’s time to start the war back up.”

  I claimed two of Jack Bull’s four pistols and gave the others to Holt. We hung them from our saddles and put the widow on top of Jack Bull’s horse.

  I wanted to be moving and never in that dugout again.

  “Keep an eye out for George,” I said.

  “I am,” Holt answered. “But I bet he at Perdee’s.”

  We kept to the timber. The day got colder, then it pitched snow at us. The wind shoved the flakes into our faces but we hunched over and rode on. By midday Sue Lee had surrendered to fatigue. Holt and me took a rope and tied her into the saddle. She uttered neither complaints nor praise. She was past that.

  The horses sent plumes of breath from their nostrils and slogged through the snow. Some inches of the white stuff had gathered on the ground. The wind blew our tracks away as quick as we made them. No Federals crossed our path. If you weren’t desperate, you wouldn’t be out in such weather. I steered us toward Captain Perdee’s, where I hoped we would find plenty of comrades. Sue Lee would be sent to some safer southern haven. Me and Holt would fight another season. The deeds of winter demanded it.

  I kept us rolling beyond nightfall, and the snow kept blowing and nothing much could be seen. We lumbered along blindly in the woods and did not speak.

  Around midnight we came upon a burned house. Some weak citizen had lost all here. Two walls still stood and we took cover, huddling next to them.

  I wrapped Sue Lee’s blanket around her and she slept. My body bid me join her. She shivered in sleep, so I spread my blanket over us both and lay against her. This warmed us but, tired as I was, I could not sleep.

  So I listened to her breathe. The girl was good as double widowed and only seventeen. She’d seen a mirror of hell, I guess. Her breaths had a ragged rhythm. A bad sleep cadence. But her body was warm.

  It was good to know her.

  Curling up to her was a saving human exercise, as it reminded me that I lived, and diverted me from recollections of all I had lost, which was all there was.

  BOOK THREE

  Many cry in trouble and are not heard, but to their salvation.

  —ST. AUGUSTINE

  14

  ALL THAT YEAR we were dying. The hairbreadth instinct some call luck had slowed on us. They killed us in groups and pairs and alone. We fell in timber, haylofts, fighting on the field and lying wounded helpless in borrowed beds.

  Oh, we hit back.

  Within sight of Kansas City twenty-eight Federals hauling grain made our acquaintance. They knew we rode under the Black Flag, so they fought to the end. Our reputation for thoroughness gave the Federals a kind of forlorn ferocity. “They know prisoners are not our style,” George Clyde said. This was true wherever we fought, and it was true of us when the upper hand was theirs.

  When we all rallied at Captain Perdee’s in late March it was clear by the jumpy look in previously calm faces, the despondent gaze in unblinking eyes, that our struggle had carried us into a new territory of the soul, where we found new versions of our selves.

  Cave Wyatt, Riley Crawford, the Hudspeths, Turner Rawls and Black John welcomed us all. There was much backslapping and sharing of tales, which led to sadness or guffaws. Several southern men would ride with us no more, but we didn’t dwell on that.

  Sue Lee Shelley was not the only female refugee in camp. The Federals had gotten in the habit of arresting our women, so we had a gaggle of wives and sisters and sweethearts in our midst. We convoyed them to the Perche Hills and left them there among the hidden patriots of that district.

  By summer the most common comments were those that roughly compared Lawrence, Kansas, to Hades. The Jayhawkers operated from that place and operated meanly. Few lives in western Missouri went untouched by their depradations.

  “Lawrence must be reduced to rubble,” Black John said. Various echoes of this sentiment were heard, and we began to ponder a visit there.

  In July, a hot terrible month, me, Holt, Riley Crawford and Turner Rawls were riding near Bone Hill, scouting for a Unionist who called himself Major Grubbs. The citizens thereabouts had complained of him and his boastful treacheries, so we set off to counsel him toward a more humble attitude.

  “I want to kill him,” Riley said. Riley’s boyish face held eyes as hard as any demon’s. The boy had been weaned from hope, and only bloodshed raised his morale. “I want to kill them all. Anymore that’s all I think about.”

  We followed a slight creek, our mounts splashing in the shallows. Whiskey was in it with us. Lately it was always in us. It made the world seem slower, more possible to defeat. This was a necessary delusion.

  Within sight of Bone Hill, a clapboard village, we accosted a farmer driving hogs down a lane with a stick and two dogs. He was nervous in our presence and got more so when Turner put a pistol at his head and demanded, “Whar dis Mador Groobs?”

  “What?” the farmer said. The hogs grunted off and about with the dogs yapping after them. “What did you say?”

  “Where does Major Grubbs stay?” I asked.

  “Oh,” the farmer said. I could see the tendency toward slyness in the skittering of his eyes. “You boys don’t want him. He’s a dangerous fellow. You just leave him be.”

  Turner, who knew his own mind, shot the farmer in the foot.

  “Sown bits!” he shouted. “Whar dis Groobs?”

  “Over east!” the farmer howled. He landed on his butt and held his boot full of rearranged toes. “He stays at the Dorris place! It’s on a hill with apple trees, God damn you.” There was true fright in him now. “You boys didn’t need to shoot me.”

  “S
hut your damned mouth,” I told him. “And don’t you go raise the alarm or we’ll find you and roast your mother in front of you.”

  On down the lane we went, sharing the rotgut, woozily certain of victory. The lane led us up a small rise and past a rock wall that ran in front of a charred house. We were noisy. Turner had fired a shot. We were two steps into drunk.

  At the rock wall they opened up on us. Even drunk I understood that we had blundered, and wheeled Old Fog about, swinging loosely in the saddle. There were twenty or more of them, all mounted and miserable, and it seemed to me they gloated.

  “Oh, shit!” I said. “It’s Jayhawkers!”

  No debate was required over our course of action—we fled.

  They chased. Bullets zinged by or chimed off rock or plumed blood from a horse’s ass. We shot back while fleeing, an exercise we had gotten pretty good at.

  The retreat took us back to the farmer and the hogs and the dogs. He was doing a hobbled variant of the sprint, and I guessed he had known Jayhawkers were in the area. Holt sized things the same and called the farmer a son of a bitch, then shot him down right in the midst of the squealing hogs and yapping dogs.

  “Kill the secesh!” the Jayhawkers shouted. Their attitude was one of mean confidence, and they had a right to it. They loved murdering us in small, safe clusters.

  We hadn’t got far when Riley caught one in the soft area below the ribs. It went from back to front. The ball split that loose flesh wide. It made an instant mess of him, but he clung to the saddle horn.

  Holt and me spun around and took aim. This caused them to pull up a bit, and we blasted away at them, hoping only to stall them long enough for Riley to clear out. But they were too many, so we rejoined the flight.

  They thundered after us, saying terrible things and winging shots at us. Old Fog was creased in the haunches and bolted ahead in a horsey panic. Down to the south, beyond a long meadow, the timber was thick.

  “Get to timber,” Holt said, saucer-eyed. “Get to timber.”

  Hell, we took off that way, but the Jayhawkers hung tough and little Riley had his hands full. We couldn’t pull ahead of them. At the timberline Turner and Holt and me faced them and displayed enough good aim to send them down the meadow, where they could enter the timber and hunt us.