by Aaron Gwyn
A woman’s voice hissed into my ear: “I can use this,” it said. “I have killed two men already. Move and I will kill a third.”
She gave me such a start, I couldn’t speak.
“Do you hear me?” she said.
I nodded that I did.
“You were supposed to be his friend,” she said. “Were you all in league against us?”
She was pushing my head as she spoke, prodding it with the barrel of my gun. She shoved at it until my cheek was against my left shoulder. I cut my eyes over, trying to see her face.
“In league against who?” I said.
She pressed the gun harder into my flesh. “I knew you were false,” she said. “I told him there was something false in you, but he wouldn’t listen. He never listened to anything about you.”
“If you aim to shoot me, I can’t stop it. But there’s no reason to hurt the child. There’s a man whose cabin isn’t more than a mile from here. He’ll take the boy in.”
“Boy?” she said, and I realized she’d not yet noticed Robert lying beside me in his blankets. The fire having burned down, there was little light to see by. And who would’ve expected a child in the company of a brute such as myself?
The woman was silent a moment. Then I heard her breath catch in her throat and the gun dropped away from my temple. When it returned, it was trembling, as was her voice.
“Don’t you move,” she said. “Don’t you move a grain.” She stepped over me and knelt beside Robert, one hand holding the pistol, the other passing over the boy’s face, then fluttering over his body as if trying to touch every part of him at once, brushing along his cheeks and sweeping down his chest, stroking his little legs and the tops of his bare feet, left and right.
I saw her now quite clearly. It was Cecelia, Sam’s helpmeet in a shredded, filthy dress, a rag tied around her head, her face very gaunt, eyes caverned back in their sockets. She would not take them off me long enough to bend down and put her lips to Robert’s face, but she began to kiss the fingers of her free hand and lay it on his forehead, his chest, on one ear and then the next.
The boy didn’t wake, just lay there dozing—he was the soundest sleeper I’d ever seen, and once out, you could sling him over your shoulder and cart him about like a sack of flour, and him with his mouth open, slumbering away.
“I don’t understand,” she mumbled.
“That is my daily prayer,” I told her.
Her eyes flashed at me. She said, “Did you keep him to sell? Is that what this is?”
“I thought they’d killed you,” I said, then nodded at Robert. “It’s a miracle he wasn’t.”
She knelt there with the gun on me, still shaking her head, still brushing her fingers across Bob’s cheeks.
“I never trusted you,” she said.
“I know it,” I said.
“You hated me. I could always tell.”
“Yes,” I said. “Maybe that is so.”
“And for what? What offense did I give?”
“Certainly, none that you intended.”
She just stared at me. You don’t realize how full of nonsense you are until someone’s ready to blow out your lamp.
I said, “He never once looked at me like he did you, Miss Suss. Never once.”
“And for this you took vengeance on us?”
“Vengeance?” I said.
“Yes, vengeance.” Her voice was hot with rage. “Why else would you help those who robbed Sam from me?”
Well, now it was my turn to be angry: “If you think I had aught to do with that, go ahead and pull the trigger. I didn’t know it was McClusky trying to take your title until I was standing over Sam’s body. If I could’ve traded my life for his, I’d have done it. Don’t talk to me about robbery. I took your boy out of that cabin at hazard to my own skin. So, shoot me if you want, but you’re firing into the wrong flock. One of the men who did for Sam’s been burned to death. The others think I’m the culprit. They’re hunting me over it. Vengeance? Somebody took vengeance for the both of us, I reckon.”
She stared at me a moment. I realized she was no longer trembling.
“No, they didn’t,” she said.
“I just had word from a friend of mine. Someone’s burned your cabin and a man who rode with me in my ranging company. A good part of what became of him you can lay at my door. He wasn’t always—”
“I burned him,” she said.
“You burnt him?”
“Yes,” she said. “Though I was expecting you.”
“Expecting to find me?”
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
“And then I found Honey down in our stable—what used to be our stable—and that Irishman came riding up. Did you know he has his own cabin on our property now?”
“No.”
“He does. And maybe other men besides him. He saw the fire and rode up and took the Spaniard’s body and then other riders came and set out north. I followed them. They rode to another man’s cabin; I thought they’d kill him, but they didn’t. I had to decide whether to follow them or—”
“Smithwick,” I said.
She nodded. “And when they cleared out, I followed this Smithwish and he came straight to you. So, let me ask you a question, Mister Lammons.”
“Duncan,” I said.
She laid her palm on Robert’s forehead. “Why’d you take him?”
I lay there a moment.
Then I said: “I don’t care a fig for my life anymore; it’s brought me nothing but misery. So, if you put a ball through my brain, it’s a smart chance you’re doing me a favor. Taking Bob from that cabin was the only good thing I’ve ever done.” I stopped and stared at her. “Do you think I’m lying to you?”
She watched me for a time.
“No,” she said. “You’re not lying.”
“Well, then I will tell you another thing. We cannot stay here. The men hunting me won’t stop. They are tracking me right now, McClusky and the yacks he rides with. You could take your son and ride north. If you’re able to keep out of sight and avoid Indians, you might could cross into the Territory.”
“I knew this man one time who told me there was a colony of runaways in Mexico,” she said. “And he—”
Bob interrupted her with a loud sneeze. He opened his eyes and stared up at his mother. For a breathless moment, Cecelia and I waited to see what he would do.
Then he began to scream as only a young child can, a terrible sound that corkscrewed up your spine. He scrambled away from his mother like she was some goblin come to claim his bones and latched onto me, shrieking.
I sat up and took him in my arms, trying to shush him, kissing his little temple and saying, “There now; it’s only your mama. It’s all right. Hush now. It’s only Suss.”
I glanced over his shoulder and saw the expression of horror on her face, horror and hurt. She came up on her knees and reached to touch the boy, but Robert gave another squeal and commenced to clamber up me, trying to get away.
Cecelia was trembling all over. And though I could only guess at the terrors she’d endured, I could see this was the worst of them. It had never occurred to her she’d make it back to her child only to have him reject her and I watched something in her break.
“It’s all right,” I said, trying to console the boy and his mother too. “It’s all right, now.”
I said it over and over, but which of us believed it? We were three souls who feared nothing would ever be right again.
I closed my eyes and held onto Robert, hugging him to me, his heart hammering against my chest. I whispered things to him that might’ve only been sounds—I don’t remember. I rocked him back and forth and stroked his head. My throat was thick; my entire life had coiled around it to squeeze the breath out of me. I clutched onto that boy until you would
n’t have known who was comforting who and the whole world was tight as a snare.
Then his heart began to slow; it tapped against me softer and softer. Softer and softer. His groans got calmer and his body went still and I felt the panic start to bleed out of him. His grip on me loosened. I rocked and shushed and whispered. He got very quiet. All three of us got quiet. I rocked him back and forth. I heard the coals crackle in the fire. Outside, the crickets began to chirp. The cicadas buzzed up. I felt Bob go slack in my arms and his breath started to sigh, his thin chest swelling and sinking.
CECELIA
—TEXAS, 1847—
And so she told him about coming to herself in the bed of the wagon, of the boy Davy and how she’d won his trust. How she’d knelt over him and drawn the blade across his throat—this blade right here. Of how, afterwards, she began moving west, going from plantation to plantation, running onto them for food and shelter—so different from how she’d once run away—using the plantations against the masters whose greed knew only one direction and so never suspected there could be another.
She told him of the cotton gin, how she’d watched slaves clean cotton and realized these machines would themselves become masters. How she’d reached Bastrop County expecting to find Duncan in her cabin and had found the Spaniard instead. Of the fire it had taken her weeks to build, and then her reunion with Honey—the horse’s breath like a blessing.
Lastly, she told him of that terrible dawn that had set her on this journey, how that one-eyed reprobate had placed his pistol to Sam’s head and scattered his soul.
Duncan said, “And McClusky. He’s the one who killed Samuel? You’re definite on that?”
“I saw it happen,” she said, but what she didn’t tell him was she could still see it. She could close her eyes and see it play out against the wall of her skull, the hard, little man gliding towards Sam, putting his pistol against that lovely face. Sam’s eyes staring at her one last time.
Run, they seemed to say.
Lammons sat there, looking up at the rough ceiling of branches over their heads.
“And what is it you’re wanting to do?” he said.
“About what?”
“McClusky. He and the men riding with him would enjoy to see both of us in the ground. Nothing would please them better.”
“Then he should’ve done it the same day he murdered my Sam. That was his opportunity. He decided to sell me instead.”
She glanced down at Robert. She looked back at Lammons and lowered her voice.
“Will you help me kill him?”
“McClusky?” Lammons said.
“Whatever he’s called. You’ll either help me or you won’t.”
Lammons said, “I have dreamed of that since the day I buried Sam. Those men riding with him will not just stand aside. I’d hate to see Bob get his mother back only to lose her again.”
She said, “It is not tolerable that he lives and walks this earth while Sam is in the ground. It is not tolerable to me at all.”
“No,” said Lammons. “But wouldn’t you rather see your child raised up to manhood? You’d rather have revenge on Felix?”
“I cannot stand knowing he’s in the world and Sam isn’t,” she said.
“No,” said Lammons. “Nor can I.”
DUNCAN LAMMONS
—TEXAS, 1847—
It was still dark when we left out, Suss on her little chestnut pony and Robert riding in front of me on the saddle, two handfuls of my britches balled up in his fists. He’d yet to warm to his mother. Whenever she’d push up to ride alongside us, I could feel his entire body stiffen.
I wouldn’t have guessed such a thing was possible, a child getting strange to his mama that way, and I thought, Here is another thing we can thank you for, Felix. Wasn’t enough for you to blow out his pap’s lamp and try to sell Suss into bondage—you had to chock a wedge between a mother and her son.
He’d certainly driven a few wedges into me: here we were heading north without a rock in our pocket or so much as a word to Noah. We’d never be able to return to Bastrop County and there was no promise we’d reach our destination, wherever that might be. When Noah came to the dugout and found it deserted he’d likely assume the worst. I know I would’ve. I’d left no note for him as I couldn’t conceive a message that wouldn’t alert McClusky to our intentions if he happened to stumble upon it, and so it was that I took leave of my oldest, dearest friend and went riding into exile, casting my soul into the maelstrom a final time.
* * *
A few days later we forded the Brazos at the falls by old Fort Milam—a frontier garrison which had been built before our Revolution and abandoned during the Runaway Scrape. It was reoccupied by Colonel Burleson’s rangers for a time, then abandoned once again. That was in the summer of ’37 when the enlistments of ranging companies began to expire. Now, a decade later, the fortress was a ruins, the blockhouse rotting and its roof caved in, the perimeter walls—tree trunks shorn of limbs and driven into the earth—leaning like saplings in a storm.
It put me in a dark frame of mind. So much of what I’d built had tumbled into wreckage and forty is rather late for a man to start constructing a future. What evidence was there that I might accomplish such a feat? Every attempt I’d made had ended up like Fort Milam; my entire life had rotted through. And although that was a rather grim thing to countenance, it did not hold a candle to knowing how I’d warped and withered the lives of those who’d loved me. Or whom I had loved.
This child I carried on the saddle, sleeping now against my breast; his mother riding a few paces behind us: there was no doubt they needed protection, and given the library of my failures, you couldn’t have found a poorer choice than yours truly. The boy deserved better; Suss deserved better, and I can tell you right now, if the blue devils ever seize hold of you, do not look at a forsaken fort.
* * *
For the better part of a week we’d been moving up the Shawnee Trail which, back then, was just a muddy wagon trace, not the tributary it became—at the time, far more folks used it to enter Texas than travelled up it with a drove of cattle. It was long about sundown, a fair breeze blowing at our backs. We wound through a motte of blackjack and cedar, hunting a spot to bed down for the night. Old Roger lifted his head and his nostrils started working. Then the skin on the back of my neck prickled; the hairs on my arms stood up. I didn’t say a word to Cecelia, just reached down and cheeked Old Roger, forcing his head toward his neck and turning him sharply left, then letting go of the cheek-strap and booting him off the trail, ducking to pass under the limbs. I looked back and saw Suss was right behind me and once we were deep enough in the woods that the road passed from view, I swung down from my seat, clutching Robert with one hand and taking my horse’s bridle with the other. I stared at Cecelia and shook my head, begging her not to make a sound.
She read the gesture accurately, drawing rein and stopping her pony; then, sliding from the saddle, she dropped to the earth quietly as a cat. Soon as her feet touched the ground she sank into a squat, crouching there in a drift of oak leaves, motionless and silent, one arm hooked round the left front fetlock of her horse. It’d never occurred to me that you could immobilize a mount in this fashion.
You didn’t waste your time with Sam, I thought. What else did he teach you?
My musings were interrupted by the calls of a whippoorwill. Another answered in the distance. I glanced up at the darkening sky between the branches; the breeze had set them swaying. Robert’s heart was knocking away. The boy felt our alarm quite keenly and I was suddenly overwhelmed with terror at the thought he might start crying.
Then I heard hoofbeats on the road. The sound was hushed by leaf and limb, but growing louder. I stared at Suss and she stared back. If the riders were McClusky and his men; if they paused to study the tracks we’d left them; if they noticed how our sign led into the black oaks; if I was forc
ed into a fight holding a four-year-old in one arm and nothing but trees for cover—
And now I caught voices, men speaking, none clear or loud enough for me to make out the words. I closed my eyes and tried.
There was the smell of bark and horse-flesh, the feel of my foot soles in these busted-out boots, of Robert’s heart hammering against my chest. The birds calling. The muttering sound of men and the clop of the horses they rode.
Just keep going, I thought. Keep on going.
I caught the scent of tobacco on the breeze. I had never let my scouts smoke for just this reason.
Of course, I’d tutored McClusky in such matters, but if it was truly him up on the trail, he’d chosen to ignore this particular lesson. I feared that any moment I’d hear the crunch of leaves as the party entered the woods to flush us.
But the voices got quieter and the hoofbeats fainter and soon I smelled nothing but Bob’s breath in my face. I opened my eyes and went to tell Cecelia to follow me back farther into the oak trees, but Cecelia wasn’t there.
I cast around a moment before I located her, stealing from tree to tree, making her way back to the wagon road, a hunched and haggard figure that stalked soundlessly as a wraith. I watched how her feet found patches of bare ground or sandstone, never falling on a dry leaf or twig. She carried her naked knife in one hand and I knew exactly what she intended.
The panic hit me fresh and I felt sick at the stomach. I wanted to start after her, but I didn’t dare upset Robert; that he hadn’t already cried out was a miracle. I could not have even reached his mother without making a good deal of racket and though I’d always prided myself on how softly I stalked a deer, I had never been that silent.
And so I was forced to stand there sweating with Bob and the horses, watching Cecelia vanish into the gloaming.
There were a thousand things that might have gone wrong and every one of them played out in my mind. I could almost hear the sound of the gunshot that would touch off the fight, and I knew there’d be no way we’d survive it—or no way Robert and I would. I was of two minds about Cecelia and I thought maybe Bob was right to be scared of her. And if it was McClusky who’d just passed us by, he ought to’ve been as well.
