Don't Hang My Friend

by Raffensperger, John;

  Mr. Farnum stamped on down the stairs and didn’t look back.

  Old Isaiah took Dr. Steele’s glass and murmured so low, I could hardly hear.

  “You is right. De treat darkies mighty mean down there in the South these days.”

  Dr. Steele closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, like he had all the stuffin taken out of him. Mr. Birt took a long pull of laudanum for the pain in the stump of his arm. The Duke Brothers drifted on home.

  “You couldn’t have just thrown down your rifle and quit. No man could desert from the Union Army and walk away without Grant snatching him back and putting him before the firing squad,” Mr. Birt said.

  “No, no, I went to give the rifle to the lieutenant but he was dead and the captain had a bullet in his chest. The colonel, cozy in his tent, drinkin’ whiskey behind the lines said I could be a stretcher bearer. The wounded were on that battlefield under the hot sun. Grant would not agree to a truce because it would look like he lost the battle. It was three days before we went out with a white flag. By then, the boys were covered with flies and the vultures had pecked out their eyes.”

  “All the books say the war was noble and fine. There was nothin’ about vultures pecking out soldiers eyes,” said I.

  “Tom, there is nothing noble about killing people. The war was pure hell,” Mr. Birt said.

  The doctor took another long pull of julep. “ I went to Rush medical school and then Edinburgh.”

  “ Did you kill many Rebs with the pistol?” I asked.

  “I never killed a Reb,” he said.

  “Did you find the boy’s mother?” Mr. Birt asked.

  “When the hospital moved to Richmond, I found the boy’s home. An old darky said the woman told the bluecoats she didn’t have any gold or silver. The soldiers burned the house with the woman and boy inside.”

  We rocked a little and watched the fireflies twinkling over the lawn and down towards the river. The band had been playing old war songs. Now, the only sound was the chairs creaking, frogs chirping and the hoot of an owl, hunting rabbits down near the river. “Ain’t you worried about Murphy and those outlaws?” I asked.

  “Tom, that man acted bad, but if he wouldn’t stand up to a one-armed man like me he is plumb yellow,” Mr. Birt said. “I don’t worry about his kind,” said Dr. Steele.

  “Doc Evans is getting old. Sandy Ford is growing and we could use a new doctor,” Mr. Birt said.

  “I don’t aim to stay. The professor at Rush Medical School offered me a chance to practice in Chicago and teach how Dr. Lister prevents infections. I’ll stay here until that girl’s leg heals. How can I get out to their farm and see her tomorrow?”

  “I kin git a trap out at the livery stable and come here for you in the morning,” I said.

  “Let’s go in the cool of the morning,” he replied.

  Just then, a sound like a dying rabbit came out of the darkness down by the river. “Skee, skee, skee.” It was Billy Malone blowing our danger signal on a blade of grass held between his thumbs.

  I slipped off the porch into the dark toward the river. Billy was with Ike, Old Isaiah’s grandchild. Everyone thought Ike was feeble in the head, but he was tongue-tied and couldn’t talk good. He was on the small side and younger than us. Billy was about the only one who understood him.

  “What you doing here?” I asked.

  “Ike was hid in the weeds down by the ferry landing when he heard riders with sheets over their heads brag about how they were going to get Isaiah and the new doctor. They rode off toward Whitney Lake. Ike came to warn Old Isaiah but the white folks chased him away. He found me.

  Ike held a tow sack tied up with string.

  “What’s in the sack?”

  “He’s got snakes,” Billy said.

  “What’s he doin’ with snakes?”

  “He sells snakes to Professor Cromwell at the academy.”

  “What does Mr. Cromwell do with snakes?”

  “He cuts em up and studies their insides.”

  “How many does he got?”

  “A black snake, a blue racer and two garter snakes. We gotta go to Whitney Lake and see what those men are planning. Then we can warn Isaiah and the doctor,” Billy said.

  “It’s late, I gotta get on home.”

  “You got plenty of time, besides, who’s to know?”

  There wasn’t no arguing with Billy. He was just about the smartest and toughest boy in town. Besides, he was my best friend.

  Whitney Lake was surrounded by dense thickets of willow trees and briars a half mile down the river. The walking was hard and the woods and swamps were filled with snapping turtles big enough to take off a leg. It was a good place for people running away from the law. Us kids liked it on account of we could shoot guns and smoke without our folks knowin’. Ike and I followed Billy through the brush with our feet sucking in the mud until we saw hooded men on horses around a big bonfire. They were singing.

  “Klansman, Klansman of the Ku Klux Klan

  Native born white man

  Hooded, Knighted, Robed and True

  Royal Sons of the Red White and Blue”

  I wanted to run, but Billy pulled me behind a cottonwood tree. The skeeters were so awful, it was hard to stay quiet and every so often something would slither against my bare ankle. We scrunched down low and peeked through the brush. I got the shivers when I seen those men on horses with white sheets on their heads. There was nothing but big black holes where their eyes should be. The air smelled of coal oil from their torches and a pot of tar bubbled over the fire. One of the men had a feed sack filled with chicken feathers. When they finished singing, a big man on a black horse gave a speech. “We gonna make this land safe and get rid of the foreigners and ex-slaves that are squatin’ on good land. We gonna start with that old darky and that doctor what shot my dog,” Murphy said.

  “I got a plan,” Billy whispered.

  “Let’s skedaddle home,” I said.

  “No way, I’ll go round and fire musket balls with my slingshot. You make a lot of noise.”

  Billy slipped away and pretty soon musket balls came flying out of the woods. Horses jumped like they’d been shot. When a ball hit one of the men on the head, he fell off his horse into the fire and his sheet burst into flames. The horses reared and men fired guns into the shadows. Ike ran into the mess of horses shrieking like a banshee and threw a six- foot black snake that wrapped itself around one of the spook’s neck. The snakes’ mouth was wide open, like he was going to chaw on that man. When the rest of those snakes got out of the bag, those horses went wild. By then, I was up and hollering, but one of those men seen me and came runnin’ so fast, I almost got brained by the horses’ hooves. I dove through a mess of brambles and got out from under the horse. A gun went off right next to my head. I swear the bullet almost nicked my ear. I figured we were as good as dead.

  Without even thinking about water moccasins or man eating gar fish, I dove into the lake and didn’t come up until I was near the middle. The leader, on a big black horse with a sword in one hand took after Ike. The rest of the men cussed the worst oaths I ever heard. Billy dog-paddled out in the lake until we met up. Both our faces were covered with mud; we ducked into a mess of cattails. They gave up looking for us and ran off after Ike. Billy and I ran until we got to the horse trough to wash off the mud and soothe the skeeter bites with the cold water.

  “Them fellows mean business. We gotta wait for Ike,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about Ike. They can’t see him in the dark. I figure he swum the river and went to his folks,” Billy said.

  “Who were those men?” I asked.

  “The Ku Klux Klan. Pa said a southern general organized the Klan to scare ex slaves. Murphy’s gang rustles cattle too. Pas is organizing vigilantes to stop the Kluxer’s from stealin’ and scaring people off their land.”

  “I gotta get on home,” I. said.

  I went to bed on the back porch and dreamed about Rachel, her new curves and
her broken leg then the dream got all mixed up with those men in white robes.

  Chapter Three

  A rooster crowed and broke into the dream, but I drifted back to sleep until all of a sudden the sun was shining and Aunt Alice was rattling dishes and firing up the stove. Everything that happened yesterday, the mad dog, the blonde haired girl and those men in white hoods popped into my head like when you wake up and can’t be sure if something really happened or if it was a dream. I got a panicky feeling and remembered I had to take Doctor Steele to the Bontrager place. I sneaked down the path to the outhouse and when I come back, Aunt Alice had pumped a basin of water. She watched while I splashed water on my face, then she went to work with soap and a rag until my neck and ears were rubbed raw. Aunty had her hair done up in a tight bun and was dressed in her long black bombazine skirt, white shirtwaist and an apron. Her plumpish cheeks were red and a little sweaty from the stove. “Put on your Sunday clothes and see if your pa is awake,” said she.

  Aunt Alice was really Mother’s aunt. When her husband blew himself up taking out a stump, she came and lived with us while Mother was sick with childbed fever. After Mother and my baby sister died she moved with Pa and me from Ohio. I guess she didn’t have no place else to go, seeing as how she never had any children of her own. Aunty made me go to Sunday school and then come home and walk her to church. I generally didn’t lie to her unless I really had to but this time there wasn’t no chance to fib. I had to tell her about driving the new doctor to a farm way out in the country.

  Pa was stretched out on the bed with the covers flung aside. He must have taken an extra dose of laudanum because he wouldn’t come awake when I shook him. By the time I dressed in my Sunday clothes. Aunt Alice had put a bowl of raspberries with sugar and cream and a plate of pancakes on the table. She said grace and read some Scripture about temptation and then I ate up the raspberries and a stack of pancakes slathered with butter and honey. According to the kitchen clock, it was goin’ on eight. I couldn’t put off telling her any longer.

  “Aunt Alice, I got somethin’ to tell you.”

  She fixed me with her pale, blue eyes and her hand fluttered at her throat. “Are you in a scrape again?”

  “It ain’t trouble. It’s about everything that happened yesterday.”

  “I heard all about the new doctor and that girl. But what does that have to do with you?”

  “I promised to drive him out to the Bontrager place so he can look at the girl’s broken leg.”

  “ But what about Sunday school and church?”

  “That’s just it, I can’t go. I promised to help the doctor.”

  Her old face fell, she pursed her lips and her hands, which were red and knobby from hard work, fluttered at her throat. She shook her head. “Not go to church? Why, I never heard of such a thing.”

  “I’ll go to the evening service.”

  That seemed to mollify her because she knew that I would do most anything to get out of church on Sunday evening. That was when Pa read stories and told about what it was like when he lived in Maine next to the Atlantic Ocean. It was the only time of the week when he talked or did anything except work in the store and worry about the mortgage money. “I suppose you won’t even be home in time for dinner?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. It would take at least an hour to get the buggy and the horse and the doctor, and more than an hour to drive out in the country, and longer to get back home, because the horse would be tired. It would take more time for the doctor to look at the girl’s broken leg.

  “No, ma’am, I guess not.”

  She rested her chin on her hand and turned her watery blue eyes on me, then ruffled my hair.

  “Oh, Tom, you will be the death of me yet, with all your traipsing around. You are getting too big for me to handle, but if you promised the doctor, you have to go. Does it have anything to do with that Bontrager girl? I hear she is getting to be right pretty.”

  I looked down at my plate, like there was another scrap of pancake that needed to be eaten and musta turned all red in the face. “Aunt Alice, I better get along to the livery stable.”

  She cut a big piece of ham and two slices of bread and wrapped the food in a dish cloth and then poured milk into a pint mason jar. “Take this, at least you won’t go hungry.”

  I looked in the hall mirror and tried to slick down my cowlick with some spit but my hair is just naturally unruly. I squinched my eyes and pushed my jaw forward, but my face looked pretty much the same. All the Indian fighters in the books had square jaws, even white teeth and coal black hair. My hair was sort of light brown and my front teeth were uneven. It didn’t seem fair, especially since I was going to see Rachel.

  I took off my Sunday shoes, so’s to run faster because the livery stable was next to the depot, nearly a mile from our house. When I got there, Pete Stickle was pitching hay to the horses because old man Armbruster, the regular stableman, always got drunk on Saturday night and hardly ever sobered up until Monday morning. Aunt Alice told me to stay away from Pete because his family was worthless trash. I never paid her no attention because Pete knew everything about horses and could find rabbits and knew the best spots to catch bass. He quit school to support his family because his father hadn’t been right in the head after he come home from the war.

  “Hiya Pete! I’m taking the new doctor to the Bontrager place. Could I use the surrey and that high stepping chestnut mare?

  Pete put down his pitch fork and spit. “Mr. Duke always uses the surrey and that mare on Sunday morning.”

  “It didn’t cost nothing to ask,” I said.

  “For a dollar, you can have the buggy and Pepper, the old gray, but you gotta be back before the afternoon train. It’s spoke for then.”

  I helped roll out the buggy while Pete got the sway-backed mare.

  “Pepper will trot pretty good, but let her rest and be sure she drinks plenty of water,” Pete said.

  It felt pretty good, up there on the seat, drivin’ toward the Camp House. I waved to kids going to Sunday school but didn’t say anything, so as not to make jealous.

  Dr. Steele came down from the front steps, swung his black bag up behind the seat and got in. I backed the horse, turned the buggy around and drove up Third Street to Western Avenue. He nodded but didn’t even say good morning. Mebbe he forgot who I was. I flicked the reins and got Pepper up to a pretty good trot. We rolled along and kickin’ up a good cloud of dust by the time we left town and went past the cemetery. The sun wasn’t in our eyes and it had cooled down. The doctor took a thick book from his bag, opened it to a mark and it was like he got lost in reading. He paid no attention to the road, the dried out fields or the puny cattle. It took nearly an hour to get to where the road went along Coffee creek. I stopped and let Pepper drink, from the muddy trickle of water. I was bustin’ to tell about the white robed men who were going to run him out of town. He didn’t seem to be in the mood for conversation until he put the book down.

  “Sure been dry this year. Ain’t much water in the crick,” I said.

  He left the book open on his lap and looked at the dry weeds and cottonwood trees which were already losing their leaves.

  “I could use something to drink, but that water looks too muddy,” he said.

  “Here’s some milk.” I passed him the Mason jar.

  He drank the milk without stopping and wiped his chin.

  “That tasted fine, just fine, thank you.”

  “Did you have breakfast? I asked. “No”. “You can have the ham and bread.” He ate all of it and wiped his face with the back of his sleeve.

  “That tasted good, thank you again. Did your mother make that?

  “No sir, mother died with the birth sickness. Aunt Alice made the sandwich.”

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” he said.

  I’d been craning my neck to see what he was reading on account of I like book reading about as well as anything. Sometimes when reading a book, I felt like I was a long way
from Sandy Ford and that maybe on the next page there would be a whole different world. Aunt Alice had a whole lot of books.

  “Here, take the book. I’ll drive for a while,” he said.

  He took the reins and got the horse back on the road. I couldn’t make head nor tail out of the book. I marked the place with a finger and turned some more pages. It was about doctoring because there were pictures of different operations. I looked at some more pictures and closed the book. “It looks like regular writing, but I can’t read it.”

  “It is written in French.”

  “How come you are reading a book in French?”

  “After I finished Rush Medical College, I went to Paris, learned French and studied at the medical school. This book shows how to treat crossed eyes and babies with harelips better than any book in English.”

  “But you studied in Edinburgh, Scotland.”

  “I spent a year in Paris then went to Edinburgh to learn about Dr. Lister’s antiseptic method of preventing wound infections.”

  “Couldn’t you have learned that stuff at Rush Medical School?”

  “The doctors in this country don’t believe in germs and medical teaching is better in Europe.”

  “I guess all that European stuff is why you didn’t go for your gun against Murphy,” I said.

  “Tom, if you hurt another person in a fight you might feel worse than if he had hurt you. Besides, that man talked big so’s he would feel important. Men like that aren’t worth the bother.”

  “That ain’t so. Last night, Billy Malone and me saw men in white hoods that was going to tar and feather you and Isaiah.”

  “Are you making up a story?”

  “No sir, it was Murphy’s gang. I knew it was him on account of his horse,”

  “Sounds like the Klan, but they ain’t come this far north, far as I know. I ‘spect you exaggerated the whole thing. It’s just like Mr. Birt said, you read too many of those dime novels. Most likely they were just a bunch of fellows out drinking and talking.”