Wildwood Boys

by James Carlos Blake

  She was greatly relieved to know her brother was alive—but for two weeks now has been frantic to think he might be killed any day by Federals or the militia.

  She tells this to Bill in the aftermath of their lovemaking on this first morning together in the cabin. He strokes her hair and says, “Blunt’s sweetie lives on the Blackwater, in Johnson County, and he’s got camps all around there. Shouldn’t be hard to find him. Suppose I send somebody up there to fetch young Ned?”

  She hugs his neck so hard he affects to be strangling.

  NUPTIAL NOTICE

  That afternoon he rode out to the Mineral Creek camp. Most of the men were gathered around high crackling fires, talking and joking, playing cards on blankets spread on the ground. He was greeted with japery and winks and questions of where he’d been keeping himself and what her name might be. He sat his horse and looked around at them, smiling wryly and nodding at their jibes—and he had a moment’s clear realization of how dearly he held these rough comrades. He scanned the camp but did not see Quantrill anywhere. “Muster round, boys,” Bill said, “I have a notice for you.”

  Speaking loudly, wanting to be heard by all the men in camp, not only the closely gathered of his own command, he announced that he and Miss Bush Smith would be getting married in Sherman tomorrow, in the office of the justice of the peace.

  The joking and laughter fell off to murmurs and scattered uncertain chucklings. The men were looking at him with ready grins, as if expecting the rest of a half-told joke. Bill smiled around at them and said if anyone was wondering if the Miss Bush Smith he would wed was the same Bush Smith some of them had been entertained by on the second floor of the Purple Moon, the answer was yes. But Miss Smith was now retired from the profession and his gain was their loss.

  The assembly had hushed but for the low-voiced questions snaking through it. He say marry? The one with that scar on her mouth, that one?

  “I’m serious as a preacher, boys,” Bill said. “I love the woman and will marry her tomorrow. I’m saying it to every man of you so there’s no misunderstanding. So nobody can say he didn’t know. So nobody will ever make an unkind remark about it without intending to. I would hate to kill somebody, especially a friend, for an unkind remark about it that he did not intend.”

  In the sudden silence he saw his brother in the crowd, face ajar, saw Butch Berry looking at him as if he wasn’t quite sure who he was, saw Cole Younger leaning against a barrack wall and smiling, pausing in his whittling to tip his hat to him, and Frank James too, smiling wide.

  And then Sock Johnson hollered, “Well, goddam, Bill, that’s just grand!”

  “Congratulations, Bill!” Ike Berry shouted. At the outer edge of the encircling company, Dick Yeager raised a fist in salute.

  Then somebody was shouting, “Hip, hip, hooray!”—and every man in the company joined in: “Hip, hip HOORAY!”

  Bill raised his hands to quiet them and said the ceremony itself would be a private affair in the JP’s office attended by only his brother and the Berry boys, but they were all invited to be at the celebration in the Purple Moon directly following the nuptials, and the drinks were on him. There was a chorus of happy approval and then somebody began bellowing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and the others quickly took up the song.

  W. J. Gregg pushed his way through the crowd and yelled, “Unass that horse, Anderson!” Bill slid off Edgar Allan and Gregg clasped him in a hearty bearhug as others pressed around them and slapped Bill’s back and shoulders and punched him in the arms and called him a sly sonofabitch and a goddam rascal and a good old boy. Arch Clement, redfaced and beaming, took Bill’s hand in both of his and pumped it hard. It was the only time he would ever see Archie look touched by tender emotion, and he grinned at the boy and patted his shoulder in thanks.

  Then Jim was gripping his hand and saying, “I’m damn glad for you, Billy.”

  “Well, I’m damn glad you’re damn glad, Jimbo,” Bill said.

  Jugs began making the rounds and a fiddler struck up “Pretty Polly.” A jug came to Bill and he hoisted it high and bellowed, “To all you fine sons of bitches!” Big-bearded Dave Pool held his own jug aloft and shouted, “To you, Bloody Bill—and your darling bride!”

  Now George Todd was at Bill’s side with an arm around his shoulders, offering his own toast: “Here’s to a dozen sons brave as their daddy!” Bill asked him where Quantrill was, and Todd shrugged and said, “Off on one of his rides and mooning about the Kate girl, I guess. The only reason he didn’t bring her down here, you know, was he would’ve had to let other fellas bring their sweeties, and then what kind of camp would this be?” He showed an enormous grin. “I’d say he’s gonna be real surprised about this.”

  “I’d like him to be at the celebration,” Bill said. “Tell him when you see him.”

  “Oh, I will,” Todd said.

  They drank several healths all around and then Bill said he had to go, he had a matter to tend to. The remark drew laughter and whistles and joking comments about the matter’s name being Bush Smith. He made an obscene hand gesture at the jokesters and remounted Edgar Allan and called for them to listen up, he had a couple of other things to say. Because he would be living with his wife, he was putting his brother Jim in command of his bunch here in camp and naming Arch Clement as Jim’s lieutenant. The other thing was that two of them wouldn’t be at the celebration tomorrow for sure because he needed them to go up to Missouri and find Andy Blunt’s company and bring back his bride’s brother, a boy named Ned Smith.

  Ike Berry and Valentine Baker were the quickest to volunteer and Bill gave them the mission. They both had personal reason for going and he knew it. Valentine Baker’s wife was living with her family in Johnson County and not far from Warrensburg, where Blunt’s sweetheart lived, and this was a chance for Baker to have a quick visit with her. As for Ike, he had not quit mooning over the blonde girl in the photograph he’d taken off the dead Yank, and Bill had no doubt he intended to go to the Harrisonville studio where it had been made and see if he could find out who she was. As Bill hupped Edgar Allan out of the camp, Ike and Val were already making ready to ride.

  When he got back to the cabin the sky was firestreaked above the fled sun and a chill tide of evening shadow was rising out of the woods. The trees shrilled with roosting crows. He delighted in the sight of the smoking chimney, the front window pale with lamplight. He put Edgar Allan in the stable and came back around to the dooryard gate and saw her waiting for him on the porch, smiling, her hands out to receive him.

  They stood on the little porch with their arms around each other in the dying light of day. After a time he said, “Got something for you,” and took an envelope from his coat and gave it to her.

  It was the deed to the property, paid in full. She stared and stared at it in the twilight and then carefully refolded it and replaced it in the envelope. When she looked at him again her eyes were bright and brimming.

  “You would’ve got it yourself, anyway, sooner or later, “he said. “Turned out sooner. It’s your house now, girl.”

  “Our house,” she said. She took his hand and pulled him to the door. “Now let’s just go in here and seal the bargain, mister.”

  A REMONSTRATION

  They drove to the JP’s office in her buggy and arrived just before noon. There was little traffic on the street this cold gray day, few pedestrians on the sidewalks. Icicles were dripping from the eaves of the gallery where Jim and Butch stood waiting for them. Quantrill too. Bill helped Bush alight from the buggy and introduced her first to Jim and Butch, and they both touched their hatbrims. It was Butch’s first sight of her and he was staring hard with his good eye. When she smiled at him he reddened and cut his gaze away.

  Bill turned her toward Quantrill and said, “Darlin, this is Bill Quantrill—Colonel William Clarke Quantrill. Bill, this is Bush.”

  Quantrill took off his hat and bowed to her in the grand manner of a cavalier, the effect enhanced by the Confede
rate greatcoat he wore. “Dear lady,” he said, replacing his hat, taking her hand and kissing it. “An honor.” His eyes were bright and redstreaked, and Bill suspected he’d been drinking at this early hour, something he’d not known him to do before.

  “The honor is mine, Colonel,” Bush said. She was redcheeked from the cold and wore a lovely yellow dress of her own making under her partly open woolen coat.

  Quantrill showed her his best smile and dipped his head modestly. Then asked if she would mind terribly if he took a quick minute of Captain Anderson’s time for a private word.

  Of course not. She turned to Bill, whose gaze on Quantrill had gone thin, and said she would wait for him in the office, out of the cold breeze. Jim Anderson gave her his arm and they went inside, and Butch followed after.

  Quantrill gestured for Bill to come away from the JP’s door, then stood with his hands behind his back. “Tell me, William T.,” he said, “what are you doing?”

  “Getting married, Bill,” Bill Anderson said, making no effort to hide his irritation, “as if you didn’t know. Now you tell me: what’s so important we have to talk about it this minute?”

  “I was told you were getting married,” Quantrill said. “But I refused to believe it unless I heard it from you.”

  “Well, now you have,” Bill Anderson said, vexed the more by Quantrill’s tone of condescension. “What do you want, Bill? I’ve got a bride waiting.”

  “All right, then, to the point,” Quantrill said. “A married man wants to be with his wife. He wants to have children, he wants to settle. It’s why he gets married. There aren’t many bushwhackers with wives, as you well know, and those few are the most miserable among us. There’s not a minute they don’t miss home, not a day they don’t fret about their women. If they have children, their torment is all the greater. You know the ones I speak of, you’ve seen them. Mopers to a man. Every bushwhacker I’ve known to quit the war was a married man. So, what I’m wondering is, are you thinking to quit the war, William T.?”

  He was surprised by the question—and by his realization that it had come to him yesterday but he had not recognized it. It had come as a vague and shadowy distraction at the edge of his mind the moment he’d asked Bush to marry him and she’d said yes. It had held itself just beyond the shaping reach of thought, but now he realized it had felt like a question, and the feeling had lingered with him since. And here Quantrill had set it in front of him as obvious as a wall.

  “If you’re thinking to quit,” Quantrill said, “I hope you’ll think about it real well. The whole Yank army this side of the Mississippi knows you and it’s not about to forget you just because you leave off fighting and get married and take up raising kids and hogs. They’ll hunt you down and kill you whether you’re holding a Colt or a plow handle, and they won’t give a damn if you got ten children and a wife expecting another. A graveyard parole’s the only kind you and me are ever going to get from the Federals, William T. The only way around it is to fight them till we win or lose. That’s why no man of us should marry till this war’s done with. ‘He who hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.’ Sir Bacon said it well.”

  “Whether I marry or not, whether I quit the war or don’t,” Bill Anderson said, “it’s none of your goddam business or Sir Bacon’s either.”

  His anger was with himself as much as with Quantrill’s effrontery, and he knew it. It angered him that he had avoided the question until now, that he had kept from it because he was unsure how he might answer it—or worse, be unable to answer it—and the mere possibility of a lack of resolution enraged him.

  “Every bunch at the camp has its captain with them but yours,” Quantrill said. “You belong with your men, William T. I can’t see you behind a plow.”

  “Go tell it to somebody who cares a damn what you can see,” Bill said.

  He turned and stalked back to the JP’s office, paused at the door to compose himself, then smiled and went inside, saying, “Here comes the groom!”

  Following the ceremony, the newlyweds went across the street to a photographist’s studio and posed for a marriage picture, Bush seated and smiling prettily, holding a bouquet of paper flowers, Bill standing behind her with his hands proprietary on her shoulders, his aspect seriously matrimonial. Then each sat for an individual portrait for the other to carry. Hers shows a beautiful bright-eyed woman with shining hair and a smile indented by the scar on her mouth. His would be the likeness of him most widely reproduced in all the years to come. By all accounts, he was the handsomest of the Missouri guerrillas, and this picture stands in clear evidence of the claim. He has a hand to his coat lapel in the popular and affected pose of the day, his high-cheekboned face unmarked by blemish or concern, eyes cool with self-possession, beard trimmed close but black mane rampant, dark longcoat buttoned but leaving visible the laced lapels of his guerrilla shirt, hatbrim rakishly upturned and with a pale star stitched to it, a gleaming buckle on a wide belt holding a cartridge case and a holstered revolver on either hip. The only photographs of him that will ever be as widely seen as this one are the pictures that show him dead.

  Then to the Purple Moon, where they were greeted by cheers and applause, and the celebration that ensued was a raucous affair. Despite the short notice for the occasion, the girls of the Moon were all present and in their finery, and the guerrillas took turns dancing with them to the lively strains of a string band and the Moon’s pianist. There were barrels of whiskey and beer. Sides of beef roasted on spits behind the building. Bill and Bush had the first dance and then his comrades began taking turns with her on the floor. He was congratulated again and again, until his arms ached from comradely punches and his back was sore from glad poundings.

  He was aware of Quantrill’s absence—and of Butch Berry’s. Immediately following the ceremony in the JP’s office, as Jim and Arch in turn hugged and kissed the bride, Butch had shaken Bill’s hand listlessly and said, “I see why she’s so special.” His face bespoke a welter of emotions, and Bill knew he was referring to Bush’s resemblance to Josephine. “She’s special all in her own way, Butch,” he said.

  “I’m sure,” Butch said, and left. And was not here now.

  Now Buster Parr was cutting in on George Todd for his turn with Bush. Todd kissed her hand and gave her over to Buster, then came to stand beside Bill. “That’s a darlin wife you got yourself, old hoss,” he said. “You’re a lucky fella.”

  Bill smiled. “I cannot dispute you, George.”

  Todd relieved a passing bushwhacker of his jug, raised it high and said, “To love and long life,” and took a deep drink. He passed the jug to Bill, who nodded and drank to the toast.

  “I don’t see the colonel anywhere,” Todd said, affecting to search the crowd. “I guess a man with his responsibilities ain’t got the time.” He looked at Bill and shrugged. “Course now, I can’t say he was too awful pleased by the news.”

  “I can’t say so either,” Bill said.

  “When he told me he thought it was a mistake for a bushwhacker to marry,” Todd said, “I said to him, ‘You know, there’s talk you and Kate got married not so long ago.’ And he says, ‘Hell, that was only a lie I started myself so nobody would think she was a damn whore—or ever had been.’ It was all I could do to keep from saying, ‘Well, she’s maybe never been a whore, but she’s certain sure always been a cunt.’”

  He went off to dance with a laughing blonde, his words still sounding in Bill’s head.

  TEXAS WINTER

  On an early afternoon two weeks into the new year, they heard horses blowing out by the dooryard gate and they swiftly slipped out of bed and into their clothes. They had rarely left the house since the day of their wedding, and they made love whenever the inclination moved them, no matter the hour. As Bill stamped his boots into their proper fit, he heard hallooing. He went out on the porch in shirtsleeves, pistol in hand. A light snow was falling. Some winters here didn’t see enough snow to whiten the ground, but the locals wer
e saying this year there’d be plenty of it.

  His brother and Butch Berry sat their horses just beyond the dooryard fence. They’d ridden the animals hard most of the way to exercise them, and then walked them the last half-mile, and steam rose off the horses’ hides. A few isolate crows trilled in the stark branches against a sky the color of tin.

  “We don’t want to interrupt nothing important,” Jim called to him.

  Bill laughed and beckoned them to come on. They dismounted and Jim looped the reins around a fence post and came through the gate and clumped up the porch steps. “Lord amighty, I’m freezing my ass,” he said. “I thought it was supposed to be warm down south.” His cheeks were raw and his thick mustache lightly frosted. He sniffed the air. “Is that cinnamon cider?”

  “Best get you some before Bush drinks it all,” Bill said.

  Jim went inside and Bill started to follow, but Butch still stood outside the dooryard and holding his horse’s reins. Bill turned at the door and gave him a questioning look. Bush called for them to get in or stay out, but shut the door. Bill stepped back out and pulled the door closed.

  “I only came to say I’m sorry I didn’t show at the celebration,” Butch said softly. His good eye held steady on Bill while the off one seemed intent on the crows calling to his left. “And I’m sorry too I run off without congratulating your bride. I don’t know why I acted so. It’s just, well…she reminds me…” He made a vague gesture.

  “I know,” Bill said, and cleared his throat. Apology was not a common exercise among these men. It was Bill Anderson’s belief that most apologies were simply fear masquerading as honest regret. But he knew Butch Berry for a true friend and a man afraid of nothing in this world, and his apology had heft.