Ophelia's War

by Alison L. McLennan

  Sam laughed and grabbed my arm. “This little arm saved me from a long walk upriver.” He kissed the inside of my forearm and then the crook of my arm. I smiled and laughed. He pulled me toward him. Even though his body was wet and cool, I could feel his heat. He leaned down and looked into my eyes. I tilted my head toward him and looked into his eyes. Our lips touched and I tasted the river. I wasn’t a virgin, but that was my first kiss.

  TEN

  The deafening crack of gunfire interrupted us. Sam pushed me to the ground. He looked around, reaching instinctively for his six-shooter. He must have forgotten that he had no pants on and no gun to draw. Uncle Luther walked down the hill scowling with a rifle trained on us—as if we were dangerous—half-naked and shivering like lambs.

  “Girl, come to me!” he yelled.

  I looked at Sam. Strangely enough he still smiled, but now his smile was doing a twitchy dance of regret and apology, both toward me and Uncle Luther. He put his hands up and took a step away from me. I crossed my arms over my chest to hide my breasts. I hung my head and walked toward Uncle Luther. As soon as I was within reach, he struck me hard across the face. The force of his blow knocked me onto the sand. Blood dripped from my mouth. Sam took a step toward us, but Uncle Luther raised his gun. Sam took a step back and put his hands up higher.

  “What in damnation is going on here? Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Samuel Cox, sir. I saw a notice at the trading post about a poker game around here this evening.”

  “Looks like you’re playing the wrong kind of poker. You’re going to pay for this.” Uncle Luther spat tobacco juice onto the ground next to me.

  “Uncle Luther,” I shouted, “don’t hurt him. It’s my fault. It was all my doing, I swear.”

  Uncle Luther squinted and studied me hard. Samuel lowered his hands a little. Uncle Luther swung the rifle back in his direction. Samuel raised his hands again. Uncle Luther studied him, sizing him up. A sly smile broke out on his face. “My, my, he is a pretty boy. Turned you into a right river-nymph, now didn’t he?” He turned his head from Sam and looked down at me. “Didn’t know you had it in you. With your nymph ways and red hair, I ought to sell you to a brothel.”

  He spoke to Sam. “You’re not the first to fall under the spell of this little strumpet, and I suspect you won’t be the last. I’ll let you in the poker game, but I’m going to have to fine you for the use of my girl.”

  Sam protested, “Sir, we didn’t . . . It was just a swim and one little kiss . . . There was no . . .”

  Uncle Luther raised his gun again and aimed it at Sam. “I ain’t going to argue the details. You pay a fine or I shoot you. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Okay. I’ll pay the fine, sir.”

  “Good. Now start walking and git your clothes back on before anyone else comes along and you ruin the reputation of my family.”

  Samuel started walking upriver toward his pony and our clothes. Uncle Luther fell in step behind him with the rifle. I started to rise from the ground to follow them. Uncle Luther turned toward me and shot me a sinister look. “Be wise to stay out of my sight for a while till I figure out what I’m going to do with you.”

  I sat back on the sand and watched Uncle Luther follow Samuel down the path and away from me. If I’d had a gun I would have shot Uncle Luther there and then for telling my angel that I was a strumpet.

  Later, I crept back to the house. Uncle Luther would be expecting dinner. He and Samuel were sitting outside. Uncle Luther was in the rocker taking one of his afternoon naps, his feet up and his hat down almost covering his face. Samuel sat on a tree stump strumming Zeke’s old guitar three feet from Uncle Luther. He smiled at me and I smiled back even though my lip hurt from where Uncle Luther had struck me.

  Sam stopped strumming and was about to say something. But as soon as the music stopped, Uncle Luther’s head rolled and he started mumbling. Sam strummed again. Uncle Luther’s head dropped and he snored. We looked from Uncle Luther to each other with perplexed smiles. Samuel stopped playing two more times with the same effect. We nodded to each other, silently agreeing that it was best for him to keep playing so that Uncle Luther would keep sleeping.

  While preparing the evening meal I tiptoed so that I wouldn’t wake the sleeping demon. I tried to imagine that Uncle Luther didn’t exist, and that I cooked dinner only for Samuel. I wanted to hear more of his stories and finish our interrupted kiss. By the time Uncle Luther awakened, the stew was done. I scooped some from the Dutch oven and handed him a bowl. As I handed Samuel his bowl, our fingers grazed and I felt a tingle. I wanted to touch his hands more or at least just sit and watch him eat. But I needed to disappear before Uncle Luther could finish eating and berate me again. I took my dinner bowl and went to sit on a stump around back of the house.

  A man was riding up the hill toward our place. In the twilight, I could just make out the dark shape of a second man. It looked like Uncle Luther would have his card game after all. I figured if I was lucky, one of the fellows would catch him cheating and shoot him dead. It seemed like a distinct possibility. As that fantasy started to take shape in my mind, my spirits rose. If it happened, I could run away with Samuel Cox.

  Each year the house had become smaller and smaller. Once it was filled with happy memories, but the echoes of sickness, of my parents’ grunts and tortured moans, lingered. Even the beautiful patchwork quilt I had once associated with comfort reminded me of sickness. Uncle Luther had destroyed any lingering fond feelings I had for our log home to the point it felt like a suffocating prison. I often hoped he would get the fever and die on my parents’ featherbed with the patchwork quilt twisted around him. He deserved it. But I couldn’t wait to see if sickness would take him. Disease chose its victims with a strange sort of whimsy that I couldn’t understand, and it made me question the nature of the Lord.

  After darkness fell, I went into the lean-to. I’d rather live with spiders and scorpions and the threat of an Indian attack than with Uncle Luther. Pickaxes, shovels, and all manner of other tools hung from the walls and were piled up in the corner. Before Father died everything in the lean-to had been in its place. Zeke had kept things up all right. But now, when Uncle Luther needed something, he’d storm in like a tornado, and I refused to clean up after him.

  I liked the lean-to because it made me feel closer to Zeke. His getaway was so fast that he didn’t have time to go through his belongings, and he’d left behind many of his personal treasures. Besides the cherished Henry, which he inherited when Pa died, he had a collection of minerals, arrowheads, knives, and some wood figures that he’d carved in the scarce moments when his hands were free from toil.

  Through the peephole in the lean-to I could see the men sitting around the table. One man looked like a Spaniard. He had short black hair and a very thin mustache. His mouth never moved, but his eyes studied everything and he watched the others. The other gambler had a beard so long and bushy I could hardly see his face. He kept his slouch hat on. I imagined his head was bald. A lantern hung from a hook above the ceiling casting an eerie light around the room. Uncle Luther faced me. I could only see the back of Samuel’s head. He was by far the youngest of them all.

  The pile of money in the middle of the table kept getting swept away and built back up. What would happen after the poker game? Would Samuel Cox ride away into the night without me? Or would he ask me to go with him? Uncle Luther would never let me go. That much I knew. My heart felt like it was way up in my throat and my stomach fluttered. I had to escape with Samuel. If I stayed, I’d either drown myself in the river like Ophelia, or go absolutely mad lamenting Samuel Cox.

  The Henry was tucked under the cot mattress. I had retrieved it from the high hooks when Uncle Luther was out getting whiskey. As a joke, I put the barrel into the peephole and squatted down. Every time Samuel moved his head and I had a clear line of sight on Uncle Luther, I pretended to pull the trigger. “Bang,” I whispered to myself. I was just fooling, though I couldn�
��t help but wonder what would happen if I really shot him. “Thou shalt not kill” kept going through my head. Would my soul be damned? Pa had always said, “God helps those who help themselves.” And the Prophet Brigham Young also said sometimes it is righteous to shed blood. He even employed Porter Rockwell as his own avenging angel.

  I dug at the peephole until it became bigger and my line of sight into the room was clearer. I squeezed one eye shut and trained the gun at Uncle Luther’s heart. But Samuel kept swinging his head and there was no way I could shoot Uncle Luther without risking Samuel’s life. I sighed, leaned the gun against the wall, and began throwing things into a grain sack. One way or another I was going to leave with Samuel.

  I looked at Dolly on the cot. Knowing what was inside her gave me courage, but scared me too. What if the curse was real? Not yet sure of my plan, I stuffed her into a saddlebag. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do it, but I was determined that when Samuel Cox left our homestead, I would leave with him. I pulled my dress over my head and stuffed it into the sack. Zeke’s old clothes were worn and dusty, shredded and patched, but at least they were sturdier than my gingham dress. I’d need outdoor clothes and a good blanket because I’d be sleeping on the ground.

  The gamblers’ voices startled me as curses exploded from inside the house. I looked through the peephole. Uncle Luther was sweeping all the money and gold from the middle of the table. Samuel rose from his chair. I couldn’t see his face, but from the heaviness of his shoulders I could tell he was burdened. “You’re going to give me another chance to win something back, aren’t you?” he asked Uncle Luther.

  “What do you have left to lose? Your pony? I hope you got good boots. This is no country for walking.”

  “I got to go to the privy. I might have something you don’t know of, so don’t think you’ve cleaned me out yet,” said Samuel.

  My heart thumped and my body throbbed with urgency. Would Samuel lose even his pony to Uncle Luther? Then what would we do? Uncle Luther would shoot us both before he let us leave. I grabbed the rifle and stuck the barrel through the peephole. With Samuel gone, I had a good enough line of sight. I trained the rifle on Uncle Luther. As he threw down a shot of whiskey, I squeezed the trigger. A roar filled my ears. Uncle Luther fell back in his chair. Gun smoke filled the house. The sound of the shot echoed in my ears and the smoke burned my eyes and nose. Inside the cabin, two more shots were fired in quick succession. The room filled with more smoke. I peered through the hole. The other two men had fired on each other and all three lay on the ground writhing and moaning. I hadn’t even thought about them. That’s how detailed my plan was.

  I ran out of the lean-to and stepped cautiously into the house through the front door. Blood flooded around the men’s bodies and dripped through gaps in the floorboards. Three men lay dead because of me. I didn’t check to see if they were dead. I just assumed it because blood seeped from their still bodies and pooled like a community well. Samuel Cox ran into the cabin with his six-shooter drawn. He looked from me to the bloody bodies on the floor. “What in the name—”

  “Samuel, grab all that money and let’s get out of here. If anyone from the settlement heard those gunshots, they’ll come up to investigate and we’ll be hanged.”

  At the mention of hanging, he sprang into action and followed my orders. I had saddlebags packed and ready. I just had to strap them onto one of the horses. “Samuel, which horse should I take? Which one do you reckon is strong but even-tempered?”

  He grabbed my saddlebags, and started strapping them onto a pinto. The horse was nervous under my unfamiliar touch, but I fed him some hay, patted his nose, and sweet-talked him while Samuel fastened the bags. He hoisted me up onto the horse’s back. “What happened in there?”

  “I’ll tell you about it as soon as we put some miles between us and Grafton.”

  Over the years, I had come to love my home in Grafton. I was even fond of the cantankerous Virgin, which periodically threatened to wipe us all out. I believed in the Heavenly Father. I believed in the Prophet Joseph Smith. But most of all, I believed in my family. Unlike most other Mormon men, my father had only taken one wife. You can get away with a lot when you’re willing to live so far from the luxuries of civilization. My mother and father had been the lords of my world. Ezekiel was the mysterious half-breed angel. I didn’t know how he came to be born from my mother and not of my father’s seed, but it didn’t matter. I loved him all the same.

  I felt guilty about the men I’d left bleeding to death in Pa’s house. I could have been an obedient girl. I could have given the ruby necklace to my uncle. He probably would have absconded and then I would have become the third or fourth sister-wife of some toothless man twice my age, most likely Brother Thompson. But Pa’s words kept coming back to me, “God helps those who help themselves.” Even as his hands were busy helping others, Pa had always tried to teach people to do things for themselves. Yet he had never taught me to shoot. It was up to Zeke to do that. And I couldn’t stop wondering why Ma had called on Uncle Luther for help when he was such a devil.

  After Sam and I crossed the wooden bridge over the Virgin, the dirt road came to a T. I wanted to ride east. But he wanted to ride west. Although the rugged cathedrals of rock to the east beckoned me, they put Sam on edge. They reminded me of happy days with Zeke, exploring the winding canyons, discovering waterfalls and swimming holes. But Samuel saw it as a land of rock mazes, places where we could be cornered by Indians or trapped by a posse of Saints, who would soon enough come looking for us. In some part of my heart slept a glimmer of hope that if we went east we might find Zeke. We had always taken refuge in the east, and I knew Zeke had ridden that way on that horrible night when Uncle Luther condemned him to live as an exile. I also knew Zeke could have hidden in those canyons long enough to outfox the Grafton Saints.

  Being a man, and a cowboy, and now an outlaw, meant that Samuel Cox was not forthright with his fear. Our horses pranced and neighed, their haunches still full of our frantic getaway gallop. “Let’s go this way,” I said leading the pinto toward the east.

  “That’s Indian country,” he said.

  “It’s all Indian country,” I replied. “If we go west, there’s nowhere to hide. People will see us coming from miles away. That might be all right for you alone, cowboy, but with me and this orange hair, we’ll stick out like a sore thumb. And they’ll be looking for me. We can take the winding paths east and north. It’s the road less traveled.”

  “I want to go west,” said Sam, “to California.”

  I convinced him to go east, at least for a little while. They’d only bother looking for us for a few days, a week at most. Then we could double back or find another way around Grafton and go west toward California. I told him I knew of a trail that cut through the rock canyons and led out to the main road, but that was only half-true. I’d heard of one, but I’d never been that far myself. As we got deeper into canyon country, Samuel looked spooked.

  ELEVEN

  When the stars shone brightest and deep night fell, we found a flat spot and spread Samuel’s bedroll on the sand next to some sage and rocks. We lay next to each other. Our bodies were as taut as the strings of a finely tuned guitar. The excitement and the furious pace in which we had ridden out of Grafton kept us both awake, even though it was late and we were tired. I didn’t know what would happen to us, or where we would end up, but because I was with Samuel it didn’t matter.

  He turned toward me and stroked my hair. His strong hands cupped my face. We finished our interrupted kiss. The still night air carried no chill and he unbuttoned his shirt. I slid my hand over his muscled chest, down over his ribs to the cavity of hardened flesh around his naval. The strength and power of his body excited me in a way I had never known. If the devil was responsible for the feelings, then I could see why he was in competition with God. I had asked God for help, for a sign, and he had sent Samuel.

  With difficulty, I coaxed Samuel to remove his holster. H
e placed his six-shooter on the blanket next to us. Even as his hands caressed my body, his focus continually returned to the gun. After all, she was a lover whose power could save us. We began to consummate our relations. I wanted him to focus completely on me and the magic our bodies exchanged. But he couldn’t help looking over his shoulder every once in a while. He seemed to expect a hatchet in his skull, or to find a Mormon posse with their rifles trained on our naked bodies.

  When he entered me, he forgot himself and our danger. Finally he seemed lost in our union. A brief memory of the night with Uncle Luther came to me, but Samuel’s tender kisses and loving embraces brought me back to his arms. From the pleasure I felt and the great expanse of stars overhead, I knew this act was divine and celestial. For the stars seemed born of the same expanding and contracting that connected our loins. I understood then that this deed was only evil when the male forced himself upon the female—then man truly became a beast.

  Samuel Cox shuddered. His moan echoed off the canyon walls so loudly you never would have thought he was a man in hiding. He sighed, rolled over, collapsed on his back, and looked up at the stars. I laughed so hard my belly hurt.

  “What?” he asked. By the starlight, I could see that he still smiled, but concern had crept into his voice. “Makes a man feel a little insecure when a woman he’s just known laughs.”