This Old World

by Steve Wiegenstein

  “Aye,” he said. “The new Mrs. Mercadier, when she was Mrs. Flanagan, she was quite the article even then. You should have seen old Flanagan. He lived in fear, he did. We’d be at the barn, and she’d get the notion we were dodging some piece of work, and oh, he’d tremble to see her come out of the house. She’d eat the head off him.” They laughed together at the tale, and he chucked the horse’s reins. Then melancholy swept over him again. “He didn’t run from the bushwhackers, though. He stood up and took his shot.” She squeezed his hand. And then unexpectedly she leaned in and kissed him, the first time she had ever done such a thing, and his surprise and elation was so great he nearly lost his hat into the back of the wagon.

  He fetched the whiskey jar from his coat pocket and took a swallow. “There’s a fine thing for the cold,” he said. He handed the jar to Marie. She took a tiny sip, made a face, and handed it back.

  The dance was another fine thing. There was a fiddler and a banjo player, and a strong-voiced caller for the squares. Marie partnered with him in all the round dances, and when she needed to sit out a dance, Flynn stepped outside with another Irishman, a livery stableman named Cavanaugh, and took a few more pulls from the jar. He was determined not to drink too much for any possible romance on the ride home, but the whiskey was good and warmed him.

  “Big money ahead,” Cavanaugh said.

  “Oh? And where is that big money?”

  “Now that the war’s over, they’re sending the railroad on down into Arkansas. Two, three hundred miles of track before they’re done. Dollar a day plus meals, is what I hear.”

  Flynn didn’t answer. It was something to think about, though. He could clear ground and build fence on Sundays and during the long summer nights, and earn money to pay off the land during the week. It would be hard. But he could do it.

  Some of the local boys came out and stood on the schoolhouse steps above them. Drunkards and rebels, the sons of bitches. There were three of them, lean as coonhounds, laughing and talking in their ignorant-sounding drawl, one of them still in a tattered Confederate uniform coat. Cavanaugh got quiet and headed inside, but Flynn stayed where he was. He wasn’t about to let some traitorous parcel of local boys make him come or go.

  “Hey, Charley,” said one. Flynn, startled at the name, stared at the men in the dim light.

  No, it wasn’t that bastard Pettibone, but he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “What, partner?” said another, loud, trying to be heard.

  “You know what the difference is between a nigger and an Irishman?”

  “No. What’s the difference?”

  There was a curious kind of pace you adopted when you assaulted a fixed position. It was a run, a fast run, but controlled, not so fast that you risked a stumble. You had to cover the ground as quickly as possible, because the bullets and cannon shot were coming at you hard and furious. The less time spent in the open ground, the better. You held your musket in front of your breast, tight gripped, and shouted with whatever wordless cry you needed to get the fear out of your lungs. There was no slowing down and no stopping to think, because a thousand men were a step behind you, dashing at the same hard pace, and it was better to take a Minie ball in the chest than to be trampled underfoot by your own boys. If you were lucky enough to get within thirty feet of the enemy line, you dropped the rifle to horizontal and got off your shot. From there on out it was bayonet to bayonet, strike at whatever moved, and God help the slow or indecisive.

  When Flynn awoke he was in the back of the wagon. Stars were bouncing from side to side above him. His face felt numb, but a throbbing pain was centered between his shoulderblades.

  He blinked a few times to clear his vision. He seemed to still have both eyes. Good. He clenched and unclenched his hands, which were painful and bloody.

  As his vision cleared he could see Marie Mercadier’s back, above him on the wagon seat. Ah. She was driving, so they must be headed home. His hat had been folded into something of a pillow beneath his head.

  Flynn opened his mouth to see if he could talk.

  “I’m awake,” he said.

  She glanced behind her. “That’s good.” The wagon hit a rut, throwing him to the side in a rolling wash of pain; he must have groaned, for she said, “Sorry.”

  After a moment his head cleared. “I must have embarrassed you.” He would have liked to sit up, but didn’t feel capable.

  She thought it over. “No. I’m not embarrassed. You’re a strange man, but I’m not embarrassed.”

  “How’d I do?”

  She glanced back again. “Well, you didn’t kill anyone, although you certainly seemed to be trying.”

  He closed his eyes and felt the rocking of the wagon. Then they took a sharp dip; he slid forward in the wagon, hitting his head on the front of the bed.

  “Where are we?”

  “Crossing the river.”

  “All right. You hop down, and I’ll drive myself home.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort. I can make you a pallet in the front room.”

  Now that they were in the river, the rattling of the wheels softened to a gurgling whisper. He opened his eyes again to see the moonlight streaming down the back of Marie’s coat; her dark hair glistened.

  “Marry me. Marry me, Miss Marie,” he said.

  Chapter 11

  The Turners left for their speaking tour on the first of February. With Charlotte gone, the Wickmans were appointed to lead the community, but neither of them had the inclination; they were keeping Newton, which was enough of a handful for them. At the funereal Mr. Wilkinson’s request, Wickman was building an oversized coffin, dovetailing the corner joints and sealing the inside with tar; he had built a little tar kiln on the side of the mountain and fed it every few days with slivers of pine and birch. The idea was that they would raise Lysander’s coffin one cold day and set it directly into Wickman’s construction. The coffin was a fine piece of work; Wickman had brought down some walnut lumber he had been drying in the barn rafters for two years, and he would allow no help in the labor. So everyone began following their own desires at work.

  That was all right with Charley. He liked to work on his own anyway. It was too early to plow, the harness mending was all done, and the occasional birth of a colt was all that broke the monotony of late winter. It was a good time of year for picking rocks off the fields. And on Sunday afternoons, no one questioned him when he disappeared to meet with the Law and Order League.

  The trail up Rockpile Mountain was a damn hard climb from the creek, so Charley found a way to come in from the north. He crossed the river, passed Flynn’s place, and climbed the hill to the old Indian camp; from there he could follow a ridge south almost all the way, and then it wasn’t much of a climb to the top of Rockpile. Their bunch had evolved into a regular group of twenty or so, mostly old fighters for the Confederacy, with Green Pratt acting as leader. There was always a jug, and some brave talk, and vague plans.

  As Charley passed by today, Flynn was out splitting rails with a maul and a couple of wedges. He’d started working for the railroad during the week, doing his farm work at nights and on Sundays; in the nights they could see his lantern out in the river bottom and hear the heavy thud of his maul. He had three courses of rails laid out already, enclosing a good twenty acres.

  “Couple more levels of rails and you’ll be able to keep the groundhogs in,” Charley said.

  “Talk all you want,” Flynn said. “Your trip’s in vain anyway. Tavern’s closed on Sunday.”

  “Oh, a man can find a jug if he wants one.”

  “Wouldn’t know.”

  “That’s not what I hear, Irish.”

  “Go to hell.” Flynn resumed his work.

  “What’s the point of fencing in all this ground anyway?”

  “Ah,” Flynn said. “Now there’s a subject for a man.” He straightened up and looked around the valley. “You build the enclosure so you can keep cattle. Not these rangy beasts you see around here,
but a real breed. Beef cattle for market. Once the railroad is finished, you can drive them five miles, load them on the railcars, and sell them anywhere you want. And once you have built the cattle business—” he gave Charley a significant look—“you can marry.”

  Charley turned away. He didn’t care to discuss Michael Flynn’s marriage plans. He knew he’d been bested there and couldn’t figure why, but the hell with it. They could have each other. The world was large.

  He was ready to start up the hill to the Indian camp, but the sound of a descending wagon made him pause. There was always time to check out a visitor.

  They were soon in sight, an old couple on a narrow spring wagon pulled by a single horse. The wagon appeared to be empty, but its boards made a tremendous rattle as they came down the slope. They pulled up beside Charley.

  “Maybe you boys can help us,” said the man.

  “All right,” Flynn said.

  The old woman leaned toward them. “We are looking for the grave of our son,” she said. “We got a letter from a Mrs. Turner.” She produced a tightly folded letter from a coat pocket.

  Charley and Flynn exchanged glances. “Cemetery’s on the hillside across the river,” Charley said.

  “No,” said the woman. “The letter says he’s over on this side, under a big cedar tree.” She looked at them expectantly. “His name is Cunningham, Matthew Cunningham.”

  “We had a stone cut,” the man said, gesturing to the back of the wagon. Charley peered over the side; it was a long slab of limestone with “A True Son of the South” carved in an arch above the man’s name and dates.

  “That must have set you back,” Charley said.

  “I suppose it did,” said the man.

  Flynn wiped his face with the palm of his hand. “I think I know where you mean. I had that spot all picked out for a hog lot, too.”

  “We could fence it off for you,” the man said.

  “Let’s not worry about that right now,” Flynn said. He opened up a row of rails. “Drive on in here, I’ll show you the place.” As the wagon lurched past, he looked over the side at the grave marker. “You won’t be able to get that thing to stand up. You can’t just stick ’em in the ground, you know.”

  “I figured we’d lay it flat,” said the man.

  “It’ll weather.”

  The old couple’s faces looked so unhappy that Charley wanted to assure them that everything would be fine, that he would personally dig a base for their son’s tombstone and set it into a ring of stones so that nothing could harm it, not weather nor time, but knowing how false that would sound, he did not speak.

  “Just show us the place,” the man said. He drove past, Flynn following, and Charley resumed his walk up the hill. Enough of parents and their children’s graves. But when he reached the Indian camp, another surprise awaited him: a gray curl coming out of the smokehole of one of the huts, and Dathan of all people standing in the doorway, a pipe in his mouth. They regarded each other for a moment.

  “You want something to eat?” Dathan said. “Got cornbread.”

  Charley shook his head, still trying to figure out what Dathan was doing in what he had always thought was an abandoned village. There was movement inside the hut. A woman’s face, brown and leathery, peeked out from behind Dathan. Some kind of Indian, obviously, although she was dressed in white people’s clothes.

  “This is Persimmon,” he said.

  Charley waved awkwardly. He had never liked Dathan, and not just because of his color; his long silences made Charley feel uncomfortable working around him. Charley liked to chat while he worked to make the day go faster, and Dathan’s insistent quiet seemed gloomy and vaguely ominous to him. Put him together with Turner, and it was like working with Death and Misery themselves.

  “You living here now?” Charley ventured.

  Dathan shook his head. “Not all the time.”

  “Well.” Charley didn’t know what else to say. “Got yourself a squaw, eh?”

  Dathan regarded him with a steady gaze. “The word is ‘wife,’ young man. Persimmon and I are married proper. Her real name is Cedeh, but that means ‘persimmon,’ so that’s what I call her.” At the sound of her name, the woman bobbed her head and smiled.

  “Well,” Charley said again. What Dathan had said sounded a lot like a rebuke, and he had never been rebuked by a colored man. He didn’t know what to make of it. “You know their language, then.”

  “Indian languages ain’t hard to learn if you listen close. Some of the sounds are kind of funny.”

  “All right. Well, better keep going.” Charley felt as if he was sounding like an idiot. But he didn’t want to be introduced to Sadie, or whoever that was. He thought the Indians had all cleared out years ago, but leave it to this wandering ex-slave to turn one up. Next thing he knew, they’d be setting up house down in Daybreak—and everybody would think it was just fine. So this was what living in Mr. Lincoln’s world was like.

  By the time he reached the gathering place, it was past midafternoon. There were fifteen men, lounging on the rocks on the southeastern slope of the hill like lizards. By their relaxed postures, Charley guessed that most of them had been there for a couple of hours.

  “Well, Pettibone,” said Green Pratt as he approached. “You gotta quit coming in from the backside. Somebody’s liable to shoot you one of these days.”

  “From the looks of this bunch, I’d say more likely that somebody’d miss me. Or shoot his foot off,” Charley said.

  “You got that right,” said Pratt with a laugh. “We’re better shots when we’re sober, but we ain’t as bloody-minded.” Then all the levity disappeared from his voice. “How about it, Pettibone? You feeling bloody-minded these days?”

  Charley shrugged. “Maybe. What do you have in mind?”

  Pratt straightened up and addressed the group. “Here’s the thing,” he said loudly. “If we’re going to be a Law and Order League, it’s time to stop talking and start enforcing. Saturday night, we go on a ride. And yes, I am feeling bloody-minded.”

  The men shifted nervously, but there were a few murmurs of agreement.

  “This Goddamned radical constitution has got us shut out from everything a man holds dear,” Pratt went on. “Can’t vote, can’t hold office, can’t teach school. Hell, I couldn’t even legally preach if I had a mind to.”

  “That’d be a sight,” said one of the men with a laugh, but Pratt silenced him with an evil look.

  “I’ve preached in my day, and I may preach again,” he said. “But not until more of this world’s business is taken care of. We meet under the Stout’s Creek bridge east of Ironton, two hours after sundown,” Pratt went on. “I’ve got our first people all picked out. There’s an uppity nigger lives in Pilot Knob, walks around all day with a bowler hat. Needs to be taken down a notch. Then we ride down Marble Creek and visit old McHaffie. You boys know McHaffie, don’t you?”

  “That old bastard,” one man said. “Short-weights you at his mill, short-weights you at his store.”

  “And all the time talking about the Union,” said another. “Makes you sick.”

  Pratt nodded. “From there we’ll ride up to Roselle. There is a known horse thief up there, and I expect you all know who I’m talking about.”

  Glances passed. “There’ll be a fight there,” someone said.

  Pratt folded his arms across his barrel chest and blew through his beard. “If you ride with me on Saturday night, you should be ready to burn, hang, and shoot. If you are not ready for that, don’t come. And yes, you might get shot back at. You boys ain’t afraid of that, are you?”

  “I’ll go,” Charley found himself saying. “But I’ll have to borrow a horse. I ain’t got one of my own.”

  Horace Landsome, one of the men he had met while drinking with Sam Hildebrand, spoke up. “I’ll loan you one.”

  “That’s the spirit, boys!” Pratt cried. “Tell you what, I’ve got a rope and a railroad bridge all picked out for that sassy boy up i
n Pilot Knob. Bring a kerchief to wear over your faces. Gotta keep the mystery.”

  “I tell you who we ought to go visit,” another man said. “There’s an old boy up Musco Creek, I traded hogs with him before the war, and I know half them hogs was stolen.”

  “Good thought, but old grievance,” said Pratt. “Let’s let bygones be bygones. But watch him, and if you hear anything new—” He waved his hand in the air. “How about you, Pettibone? Got any names to add to the list?”

  Charley felt a flush of excitement. Maybe the first would be last, and the last first, after all. That bastard Flynn and his airs, Dathan and his race mixing, who else could he think of? But something held him back.

  “No,” he said. “Nobody.”

  Chapter 12

  The window in their hotel room would not close all the way, and a sift of snow whistled in through the crack. Charlotte tried stuffing her handkerchief into the gap but it was too light; sometime in the night she rolled up a pair of Turner’s trousers and wedged them against the sill, which worked as well as she could hope for. But by then she was wakeful, lying under the greasy covers with Turner fluttering his lips on one side and Adam hot and sweaty on the other.

  Where were they again? Toledo. There had been a train from Chicago, and an argument with a man at the lyceum, and a walk through snowy streets to this hotel. The night’s crowd had been sparse and unreceptive; there were two more nights here, then another train to Cleveland. Perhaps Cleveland would be better.

  Or perhaps not. They had covered their expenses in Chicago, but nothing more. Toledo was shaping up to be a loss. Turner had tried switching his lecture, but apparently no more people wanted to hear about communal living than wanted his opinion on the woman question. Still, he had carried on admirably despite the rows of empty chairs. In fact he had seemed to relax and speak better in a half-empty hall. Despite that, he still seemed fragile and uncertain. The verve had gone out of his speaking voice, and even a simple question threw him off.