Fight for Glory (My Wounded Soldier #1)

by Diane Munier

  She studied her drink, then downed it in one go. Then she looked the devil in the eye and said, “I ain’t asking for marriage.”

  I nodded. “What…what outfit your husband ride with?”

  She picked up the other drink and downed that too. Then she held the glass over her heart and looking off said, “Hundred and fourth.” She said it hateful.

  “Where did he fall?” I said.

  “Hartsville.” She set the glass on the tray then. “Is she pretty?”

  “Addie?” Confound it I had no intent to say her name and there I’d spilled it like confetti.

  “Addie? My my,” she said, a regretful gleam in her eye. Oh Lord, her hands went for the open v of that gown, like she was gonna rip ‘er down. I felt my chin bobbing.

  “Addie? Oh Addie,” Jimmy sighed.

  What in tarnal? I shook him a little, but he just grunted and smacked his lips. But when I looked up, there they were, two fine breasts poking forth like the prows of a battleship. I hate to say the cannon responded, but it did. I hated myself for it, but Lord, God….

  “Put them away,” I shouted.

  She laughed, as I was unable to stop noticing them. They were staring, it seemed, and I stared back. Jimmy grabbed the front of my shirt and yelled, “Stand tall, stand hard!”

  And that’s what I did, barely scraping past them as I fled like she offered me two fried eggs and I had the dysentery.

  I ran to the bunkhouse, only collecting myself before I went in. “Michael, get up,” I said, authority in my voice, me half pulling him out of his sleep.

  “What?” he said rousing himself and lifting his gun.

  “It’s me!” I said. I should of known better than to wake a soldier that way. That revolver was nearly up my nose. “I need you to stand vigil with Jimmy until the doc gets in there.”

  He eased that gun down and whined like a baby. “Why I got to do it for? I ain’t slept in five days.”

  I slapped him hard on the shoulder. “Trust me on this. Someone’s gotta do it, and…it can’t be me. Now get in there, and stand tall, stand hard and that’s an order.”

  I took over in his roll then, and it was warm as a cow’s belly. I rolled a little to get it to fit me, and then I took to laughing for my life was surely a dime novel. I was quick amassing the kinds of stories that old men told, and no one believed when they looked at those lips like paper and bristle, those teeth gone missing and the muscle melted into loose skin. But these were the glory tales and if I kept living, I’d have my share all right. And Michael…he’d have his.

  Tom Tanner

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  In the morning, long before we ever heard that whistle from the approaching train that would ride us into the light, word came from Springfield through an express rider who had waited in a nearby town for the telegram, that Sonny, Sonny Stone turns out, and his affiliations were wanted for nefarious acts on several charges. We were advised to bring them in.

  “Well hell,” said I. Gaylin was nearby and I saw his eyes grow round. Seems we were not yet released from the hill called Golgotha.

  I looked at William, who had just made a show as he’d slept in the livery and doted on the horses. He stared back at me, his usual revelation of feelings on his poker face.

  “You just don’t expect nothin’ good, do you?” said I, in the mood to fight with somebody, and I knew it wouldn’t be Michael for he was so agreeable a reconstitution of the war would make him smile.

  William never felt it was his job to take anybody’s bait. It was infuriating.

  I slammed my hat against my leg a couple of times. Gaylin was watching me. “Stop looking at me,” I said, so he did, and I didn’t like it, the way he did every little thing I said. I didn’t like it at all.

  The sheriff stood there with the rider, his hands hanging.

  “If we’re to bring these in on the train,” I said, “you need to take the risk same as me if I’m gonna split the kitty.”

  He chewed his moustache. “What kind of trouble you reckon on?”

  “The kind gets you bushwhacked and killed,” I said.

  William said, “We were followed here. A dozen or more.”

  “They got kin and they’re an ugly bunch,” Sheriff said.

  “Do tell,” I said like I hadn’t noticed. “This is your neck of the woods,” I said.

  “And I am glad you cleaned some of them out. But I’m not leaving my neck of the woods unprotected. My people are here,” he said.

  “Guess now that you have to work for that reward money you are having regrets,” I said.

  “Let the railroad handle it. You poke a hornet’s nest, they’ll come for you.”

  “Who says I’m poking? We left a line of bodies yonder. It wasn’t no poke, it was a full on ramrod stuffed right up the quim.”

  “Listen,” he said, “I just got home from war and my wife and me got two babies and a farm to run. She done told me when I took this job if I got myself killed she’d dig me up and kill me again. Plus, I ain’t allowed to leave home. That’s why I didn’t marshal. I admit I get tired of whipping thieves and settling disputes over whose cow trampled the corn, and generally convincing the boys the war is behind us. But I promised her I’d give up my wanderin’ ways, and I fear no outlaw more’n her.”

  “That is sorry,” I said, Addie heavy in my mind for some reason. That part about fearing the woman, well I understood it, even as I didn’t respect it. “Didn’t notice that badge pinned to your petticoat,” I said.

  “You a married fellow?”

  I didn’t want to say. In my mind I felt married, but that was the lie I lived with. “Why? If I was…married…I’d still have my willy.”

  “And that’s all you’d have. For a married man…it’s a lonely road. Anyway, won’t do you no good when you’re in a box like Monroe,” he said.

  “Then let’s just let these outlaws go,” I sneered all dramatically. “Let’s just whip them or make them ride some cows into someone’s corn and see if the scarecrow will come to life and chase ‘em down.” I was yelling, I admit, and waving my hands. I had become Jimmy for sure.

  Well, I was done arguing. I wasn’t going to hire these local varmints either for I didn’t know where their loyalty lay. Better take the ones I knew to be tested.

  “C’mon boys, we got a body needs boxed,” I said, cause it always came down to us.

  The undertaker was proud of his box. I didn’t wish for him to see the loot, so I asked him to step in his backroom so I could discuss some pressing business. I divvied up on our bill. He’d proved a friendly but conniving man so far, yet he was the only one in these parts to see to our needs. So I told him I wanted him to see to it that Iris the healer, fifty miles from these parts near the high road, did receive a new roof, and a whole butchered hog smoked and packed in a barrel. I gave him some of Monroe’s money, for that is what we’d been living on. I said that I would be checking with Iris once I got home, and if I found he had not delivered, I would come back myself and tie him naked to a tree and beat the living shit from his body. Then I’d make him take a bath with that lye soap he’d sold us, starting with shoving some up his butt hole and making him dance to Gay and Happy Still, a real popular song from the war.

  Well I had no hard feelings and told him so. Then I put out my hand and he took it and we shook, and I noticed a tremor in his fingers. “And thanks for your hospitality, even though we paid for everything we got,” I said. I was full up of Rigsby.

  By that time the boys had the box packed, and Gaylin was off washing his hands, and William was probably doing the same and cleansing himself with burning herbs, Michael was sitting on top of that stinking box staring off while he cradled his rifle.

  “If it can be fired from gun or rifle, buy it,” I said, shoving money in his hands. He stood, staring at the money. “Are you listening?” I yelled.

  He nodded, looking at me then. “I…I had me that woman last night,” he whispered.

  “
Lord, God,” I muttered, “did I ever ask you who you’ve poked?”

  He shook his head, but I did want to ask, and that’s the black truth. I wanted to know. And I wanted to ask if he’d ever heard of putting his mouth on a woman for I had done that to Addie and I didn’t know if but that’s what scared her maybe, when she thought about it, if that’s not one of the things, along with the other things mayhap that just made it all too much, me too much. But here’s what I did say, “Will you get yourself some discipline for once in your sorry excuse of a life and do what you’re told so I don’t have to look at that puke inducing mooning round as a pie mug you got stuck with?”

  He stumbled off and I yelled, “Didn’t have no trouble doing what you were told last night now did you? Did you?”

  Why did he get to fornicate? What about me? Maybe I’d like to fornicate once in a while! Or maybe I was fixing to get on a train and get my breads blown into the sky. Maybe it would be but that one time with Addie, and I was supposed to say goodie garter snakes I got to do it that one time! I will surely be happy now. Isn’t that the crap pie she told me? ‘I’ll just remember it forever,’ or some nonsense. So while Cousin was slipping her his willy she’d be thinking of me and really going to it? Was that supposed to make me joyous? It did not! Hellfire it made me want to kill folks!

  Doc had Jimmy bandaged and dressed. He still lay on that table, but I knew soon as I went in he was in his right mind. He was looking at me. “Welcome back,” I said.

  “You are a cold and uninspiring man,” he drawled.

  I laughed. Lord, I hated to say this, I did, but I had missed him.

  Now the whistle blew like reveille. We had our own village waiting to board. We had us minus Michael, and I wasn’t gonna hold this train for him cause I’d bet he was having another go. The horses. The stinking coffin with the loot. Four outlaws who I planned to have sit on that coffin. Our rifles. The ammo. Saddles and tack. Jimmy on his new stretcher. A picnic basket of vittles made by Rayetta for Michael which we all planned on eating as the undertaker had not made us breakfast after my speech about the possible beating and soap poking.

  First off there was only room for one horse. “My black,” said Jimmy. Well, he was conscious, but that novelty was quickly losing its luster. Where before we’d had one Cap, me, now we had two, me and him.

  So while he was saying, “My black,” I was saying, “Tusaint’s gray.”

  So I said, “Give him his black then,” waved my hand like I was pitching a ball. We were all spoiling him now for living, I guessed.

  Here they came then, Michael, the sheriff, and a couple of those he called deputies, wheeling what looked like a cannon, but the barrel was covered so I couldn’t see the make.

  They took to loading it in the car they’d cleaned out just for us as they didn’t want the prisoners sitting with the paying folk, and then I had William’s refusal to be regular and grab a seat, though I knew he’d ride up top and smell the trouble before any of us could. Then I needed room for Jimmy’s resting position, and though he was no bigger than me, he seemed to fill more space than a regular man. Not to mention that boat of a casket I wanted to keep in my sites. God never made it easy he just never did. Called his own son, “man of sorrow,” so what chance were any of us gonna have, I ask you.

  “What?” I said to Michael who was grinning like something about this shivaree was amusing.

  He whipped that cover off that cannon. “Got us a Gatlin gun.”

  Well, I went through several levels of disagreement in my mind. I wanted to point it at him, first off, and see how it worked, or at least at the town of Rigsby. But then I kept moving to the sense of it, cause there’s no fence in me, just ask Iris. Apparently without the womenfolk I can just keep on going. So I got to this idea right quick.

  “How many rounds?” I said.

  “Hundred per minute,” he said proudly.

  “No. How many rounds we got to go with it? I can’t hardly pick it up and hit somebody with it, now can I?”

  Sheriff spoke then. “You got least six hundred.”

  “This the original or the improved?”

  “It’s the original. It’s got that bore problem now and then but you won’t hardly notice. Just hope to God you don’t have to use it…for if you do…you’re in so much trouble already this here gun will be the least of your worries.”

  “Thanks for the rousing speech,” I said. “How did you come up with it?”

  He kept nodding.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “Well let’s get it in there.”

  And that’s what we did, rolled it up the ramp and kept the doors wide open on both sides of the car and filled the box with all of our traveling show. I put Michael and Gaylin on the gun. He was explaining the loading process to my brother. It would keep his mind occupied at least, for he had been too quiet. I had sincerely considered sending him into Rayetta, but I had corrupted him enough, to the point where he would never again be the boy Ma delighted in. And also a bit of jealousy overtook me at the last, so I gave the call of duty to Michael.

  Sheriff promised to ship our animals as soon as space was at the ready. “Protect that willy,” he said.

  “Looks like we’ll be takin’ yours with us,” I replied. But we parted with at least a teaspoon of camaraderie for he had held the prisoners and allowed us one night’s sleep, and this here gun…it had merit.

  The train was headed to Greenup and ultimately Springfield.

  I walked down the line, passengers peering at me here and there, like I was someone special or something. Well, I could be the one brought them trouble. I could be Satan all they knew, bringing the whole retribution of the south on us.

  I stepped up to that big engine and introduced myself to the engineer. He was tall and whip skinny. I said, “You boys stop for nothing?”

  He looked me up and down and said, “You mayhap be law,” which was arguable not that I told him, “but no one tells me how to run this train.”

  I stared at him. I didn’t feel the back-up I wanted to, but these skinny guys could fool you sometimes. “You ever run this over a man?”

  He crossed his arms. “Why you asking?”

  “Wonderin’ how likely you are to let some dowager stop us.”

  “Had I been on the line those bandits would not have robbed this train,” he said, his weapon on display.

  “Hear tell they got on in one of these bergs. What do you say we run clear to Greenup and don’t stop ‘til we get there?”

  He spat a wad out the window. “I say I work for the railroad and not you.”

  “Then make sure you don’t stop somewhere you ain’t supposed to. You get some scalawag waving you down, just take him to glory, understand?” I could feel the beast rising in me.

  I walked back down the line, ignoring those faces in the windows this time. I made it to the back. William looked at me from on top. I nodded to him. “See that cannon?” I said, even though it wasn’t no cannon.

  He nodded. Well, it had been hard to miss.

  Tom Tanner

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  We had stopped three times without trouble. I can’t say the fist in my stomach was going to open anytime soon, but I was feeling good enough to eat one of Rayetta’s apples. Jimmy was propped up a bit. Every now and then we’d get him on his feet and he’d piss out the door. Said he ain’t taken a shit the whole time yet, so he only wanted water and some of the cold grits. “I beg to differ,” I said. “They been cleaning shit off you since Monroe land.”

  That brightened him some for he feared he’d shut down.

  There was blood in his piss, and Sonny made the mistake of finding that funny, so after I laid Jimmy down I backhanded him and if a man could die from another’s foul looks, I guess I’d be dead all right.

  So we were coming up on our fourth town, some of these not nearly towns just thinking about it. But this one had some size, and a double track where the on-coming train could rest while we passed. S
o I jumped out to stretch my legs and get us fresh water. I thought I imagined it when I heard Johnny screaming my name, just like that first day in the field. I couldn’t afford to lose sanity with all I had going on, so I was looking hard for something real, and there he was, plowing into me and hanging on.

  “What in tarnal?” I said folding over him and lifting him by his shoulders and throwing him against me. “Boy,” I said. “Boy…where’s your ma?”

  She was hurrying across the platform to me. My God, her in a black dress, that face sitting on top of it, a little hat on top of hair pinned up, her eyes, her lips and arms outstretched, and my one arm that didn’t hold Johnny reaching. She came in to me then, and up against my side so hard, “Lord God,” I said on this sob, and she kissed me on the lips, and I kissed her back and said, “I love you girl.”

  That train’s whistle. I heard Cousin calling her, saw him standing on the step, waving at her, face red, and I kissed her again, him looking on. She felt so good in my arms, her and Johnny. They were mine. They were mine.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said, looking into my eyes, “Oh Tom,” she said, seeing my sins.

  “Don’t you marry him,” I said so much feeling in it, I couldn’t breathe.

  She shook her head.

  He was calling her stern for that train was shaking to life.

  Now they were calling me, too, cause mine was moving.

  She took Johnny and we set him down together. He was crying already. “Did you kill some Tom?” he was shouting, and I kept looking at her.

  “Don’t you marry him,” I said.

  She shook her head, like she couldn’t speak, and he was there pulling on them. I wouldn’t take her with me, not where I was headed, but Lord, Lord, Lord this was a gift like I couldn’t express, but to watch him pull them away.

  “You take care of them,” I called to him. “Anything goes wrong with them….” I swallowed it then, cause I was about to say some things, I tell you, but it welled in me, I was not willing to let them go. I would not. If he failed to watch over them…there is no describing how I would dismember him with my small knife. I’d take a week or so to do it starting with his big toes. That’s how it was and he had no idea but I must of conveyed something, cause he looked at me like I’d forgot to cover my nether regions.