by Elmer Kelton
“That's what they used to say about those Rebels sentries in the pigeon roosts at Andersonville.”
Connors squirmed a bit on his heels, but stayed put.
“You remember that one guard, the red-headed one with that Mississippi drawl?”
Connors remained unmoving.
“Remember how he shot William Evers just because William reached inside the dead-line to grab a grasshopper. Shot him dead over a grasshopper. Shot a man that was only trying to fetch a bit of food. That guard was a family man, too. You know how I know that, Mal? He told me so, in fact he begged me with that Mississippi drawl of his on the day I killed him. It was one year to the day after I was released from the swamp.”
After the telling, Connors thought he saw Legend's expression slacken. Maybe all John needed was to share with someone his remembering of that guard. About that guard and William Evers, and that damned grasshopper. Mal had a wife to burden with his nightmares, but maybe John didn't. Maybe John had been walking around for the better part of ten years all buttoned up with the yellow bile. Maybe talking was all John needed to purge himself of his choler. “John, come back with me, forget about those boys. What they did to you was wrong and just plain stupid, but killing won't ever rid the world of stupid. If it could, wars would have ended a long time ago. And to be honest with you, John, I'm tired of killing. I've seen enough and you have too. Let's get shut of it, at least for today. Come home with me and let's just sit.”
“You think I'm crazy, Mal?”
And then a strange thing occurred. Mal Connors burst out laughing. It was one of those things that just happens. One of those things that a man has no control over whatsoever.
Legend stiffened, angered at the outburst and dug his fingernails into the palms of his hand. “What's so damned funny?”
Connors gained his composure and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked at Legend and before he knew it, he was laughing again. In-between laughs, he did manage to gush, “Hell, John, I don't even know if I'm crazy.”
Legend unclenched his fists and seemed to think about Connors' statement.
Connors rubbed tears away from his eyes. “Whooo,” he exhaled.
“What'd you say your wife had cooking?”
“I don't know what was stewing, Mal. And to be honest, she's really not that good a cook.”
Legend nodded and allowed a soft chuckle of his own.
Connors lifted his chin and gestured toward town. “How about we go find out?”
Legend took a step forward. Small clods of pebble-packed earth from the roadway poked into his cuts. He relaxed at the pain. “One thing you outta know though, Mal.”
“Yeah, what's that?”
“That big fella, that calls himself, Pete?”
“Yeah, what about him?”
“When you and me are done with our palavering, I still figure to give him a beating within an inch of his life for cutting up my feet.”
Connors chewed on his lip and nodded his understanding. “Okay, John,” he said.
Legend took another step. “Just so you know.”
Steven Law’s historical novel Yuma Gold (Berkley, 2011) was a number one best-seller on Amazon.com, and his fans have referred to him as the twenty-first century’s best new Western writer. The story in this collection goes back to the childhood of the main character from Yuma Gold, Ben Ruby, and his post Civil War upbringing in Missouri. Besides two running series with Berkley, Law has also written two contemporary Western novels, The True Father (Goldminds, 2008), and The Bitter Road, due out by Goldminds in the fall of 2012. www.stevenlaw.com.
FORSAKE THE WICKED
Sixteen-year-old Benjamin Barkley fell hard onto the stall floor from the powerful shove of his stepfather. His hands dug into the straw and muck as he slid on his belly to a jarring stop. The pungent, ammonias dust that quickly scented the air forced him to close his eyes and hold his breath. He flipped over and rose to his elbows and looked fearfully at the silhouette of Rutherford Barkley standing at the stall door. The only light in the barn came in from behind the bull of a man—six-foot, five-inches, barrel chest, and arms that hung outward with biceps as big as stove pipes. The dust that stirred hovered in the light creating an even more frightening image.
God Almighty he hated that man.
“Now you can rethink your highfalutin ideas,” Rutherford said. “We got tobacco to plant tomorrow, and that’s what you’ll be doing. Dawn to dusk.” Rutherford slammed the stall door, closed the iron padlock and turned the long iron key. Ben listened to his shuffling footsteps as he left the barn, then the closing of the main double doors until he sat in complete darkness.
A minute or so passed before his eyes adjusted to the faint light, made from the cracks of daylight throughout the barn. Hints of dust still floated across the thin rays of light. He scooted to where his back rested against the barn wall and he brought his knees up to his chest. The inside of this stall had become all too familiar the past eleven years. Ben was five the first time Rutherford locked him inside, all for the capital crime of spilling a glass of milk at the supper table. He couldn’t remember the next time after that, because there had been so many that the dark memories all started to run together.
Ben never knew how long he would spend in the stall, either. Some times it was just an hour or so, sometimes all night. Those longer times were after he became a bit older and the act more severe. Like the time he raised his voice in protest of how Rutherford was criticizing or scolding his mother. That moment brought an immediate silence to the supper table, and Abigail Barkley’s face revealed her fear of the outcome. His two younger half-brothers anticipated their father’s reaction. Ben’s punishment was their best entertainment. Sometimes Ben encouraged it just to give them their weekly dose. That moment brought out the switch, too, but Rutherford wouldn’t let the boys watch, they just knew it was serious.
Ben rubbed his hand over the rough hewn boards nailed to the stall, which were a later addition, making it darker inside and more like a dungeon. He was about eight when he began to chronicle these episodes by making a hash mark on the board with a sharp rock that he had found and later hid inside the stall. In January the next year, right before he turned nine, he carved “1869” next to the hash mark to indicate the New Year. He now rubbed his finger tips over that date, an aged and duller brown than the fresher marks, and counted fifty-two marks before he got to the latest year, 1875, and the two marks that followed.
Anger and tension boiled as he reflected on the years of ill-treatment, not just to him, but to his mother, which he defended more now than in the earlier years. And the aim was biased. His half-brothers, Rutherford’s own biological sons, never faced the fury of such punishment—never spent a solitary minute inside the stall that, besides Ben, had seen only a few farrowing sows, a milk cow, maybe a foal and its mother, but Ben more than any other. It was designed for him.
Ben reflected back to the day when Rutherford came into their lives. Less than a month before that, a messenger came to their farm in Putnam County Missouri and handed a letter to his mother, signed by General Ulysses S. Grant, that spoke so highly of Samuel Ruby, and how bravely and courageously he led a charge at Chattanooga, and died a hero to the Union. She had to sit down to read it, and later read it aloud to Ben. He could tell that those kind words in the letter did not soften the sense of loss and despair she had felt. Secondly, after reading it the first time, she had walked to the window and looked out at the two hired field hands that she said they’d no longer be able to afford. Once the word got out, bachelors came courting the widow Ruby. Since Rutherford was big and strong they were both impressed with him, but he was also friendly and giving. The second time he visited he not only brought a bouquet of wildflowers, and a stick of peppermint candy for Ben, but a pane of glass to repair a broken window from an earlier hail storm. That was his guise, they later learned. He sank his hooks in quickly.
Six weeks after his mother read that letter, a preacher marrie
d her and Rutherford, and that afternoon she butchered a leghorn rooster and made a wedding evening feast. That was the moment of revelation, when his first hollow-eyed stare raced across the table as if it were fired from a Sharps rifle.
“Why isn’t the boy eating greens?” Rutherford had said.
His mother, glancing at his plate, had chuckled a bit and said, “Oh, he never has liked them much. I think it’s the vinegar.”
“What he likes or don’t like ain’t important.”
“But Samuel never made him—”
Then came that look, and he pointed a finger at Abigail. “Samuel ain’t the man of this house no more. That boy eats what is put on the table.” He had then pointed the finger toward Ben, but kept his eyes on her. “Now put some of them greens on his plate.”
Seemingly in shock, she had taken a deep breath and glanced at Ben. Apparently her response wasn’t quick enough, because Rutherford had slammed his fist hard on the thick oak table which made all the dishes bounce and rattle, and his voice startled them like a canon blast. “Now woman!”
His mother had stood quickly and grabbed the stone bowl of greens and put a small portion on his plate.
Before she could set the bowl back down Rutherford nodded toward the plate. “That ain’t enough.”
She had put a double helping on the plate then looked at him for approval, but he never said anything, just shoveled food into his mouth then held a piece of chicken with both hands and tore at it with his tobacco stained teeth.
The only other words that were said at the table that night were the few times when he looked at Ben and told him to take a bite of greens, and he never took his eyes off Ben until he had. Every day after that Abigail had tried to make things that she knew Ben would eat, but Rutherford had too many requests, things that she had never made or Ben had even tried before. Sauerkraut, hominy, minced meat pie, fish soup. Such things were good to eat, but not when they’re young and forced. His mother knew she couldn’t challenge it.
They rarely had a moment when Rutherford wasn’t around. He made them go to town with him, out in the fields, and to do the daily chores. The only time, that Ben could think of, when they didn’t see Rutherford, was when he went to the outhouse. A year had passed since he’d came into their lives, and when he walked out the back door without them, Ben knew that was where he was going. Ben had walked up to a window and watched him all the way, and when he’d shut the outhouse door behind him, that’s when Ben spoke up. His mother was rolling out biscuit dough on the table, and Ben never took his eyes off the outhouse.
“I’m going to kill him some day,” the young Ben had said.
Abigail stopped rolling the dough, her eyes wide and fearful, then walked to Ben, squatted and grabbed him gently by the shoulders and turned him to face her.
“Don’t ever talk like that again,” she said. “That kind of bitterness will eat you alive.”
Though he was only six years-old, Ben had never forgotten the look on his mother’s face at that moment. She wasn’t angry, but very afraid.
“Why can’t we just leave?” Ben asked.
His mother took a deep breath, then reached down and put his hand on her belly. “Because you’re going to be a big brother.”
Ben didn’t know how to feel. His mother pretended to be happy about it, but it was several years later before Ben fully understood that she was trapped. Not only would it have been difficult for a widowed woman to raise and care for one young boy, but two more eventually came, and a third pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage. That should have been a sadder moment than it was, but Ben truly believed his mother was relieved.
Nevertheless, Ben had two half brothers, William and Wayne, just shy of a year apart. Rutherford coddled them, gave them everything, but now at nine and eight years-old, neither of them combined had seen more chores or field work than Ben had seen by the time he was six. Quite often in the spring and early summer Ben would work the hemp or tobacco fields, and later corn, and Rutherford would lay a blanket next to the field and invite William and Wayne to join him. Abigail brought them fried chicken and biscuits, fresh lemonade, apple or peach pie, and when they were finished eating Rutherford would have her read stories to the boys. Ben, often behind the noise of a mule team pulling a plow, or the chopping of his hoe, couldn’t hear what she was reading, nor could he even look their way, because if he was caught by Rutherford it was sure to bring quite a scolding.
William and Wayne soon developed the same kind of hateful manner toward Ben, and he knew it was only natural that they would do so. He enjoyed them immensely when they were babies, if Rutherford let him have the moments, but all it took was for Rutherford to see him happy for him to put a stop to it. He would develop an instant scowl, a look of contempt and distaste, then tell Ben to go do a chore, whether it needed done or not.
By the time they reached five or so years, they were Rutherford’s puppets—miniatures of him. One time Ben was working in the field, and they had ran up to him, each carrying sticks about a yard long, and threatened to hit him with them if he didn’t move faster. Ben caught a glance from Rutherford, standing near the barn mending a harness, smirking.
Since Ben used the field tools more than anyone else, he kept them clean and put them away. He’d use the stone grinder to sharpen the hoes, scythes, and corn knives, then hang them on a wall inside the barn. One day working in the field he hit something hard with a hoe. Thinking it was a rock he lowered to his knee to pull it out with his fingers, but noticed the soil around it was more copper in color and realized it was rusty metal. He looked around to see if Rutherford or the boys were looking, but they were occupied—the boys mock sword fighting with sticks, and metal buckets tilted over their heads imitating the armor of medieval knights. Rutherford sat close, legs crossed, in one of the kitchen chairs that he often set outside, where he’d smoke his pipe and watch Ben work. This time he paid more attention to William and Wayne, laughing at them as they put on a show. Ben dug up what ended up being the blade of an old corn knife. He figured it had been there from when his own father had worked the fields. The wooden handle had completely rotted off, with the old rust-coated rivets hanging loose. Ben glanced around him again to make sure he wasn’t being watched, and once assured he was clear, he put the blade inside his seed bag.
That evening, before he put the tools away, he peeked outside the barn, then sharpened his hoe and did the same with the old corn knife blade. By the time he was finished dusk was settling in and he took another peek outside the barn and noticed that Rutherford and the boys had gone inside. He ran quickly to the stall and brushed away the straw in one of the back corners, then dug with the end of the blade—pulled away enough of the mucky, crusty soil to bury it. He spread the straw back over it and once he was satisfied he left the stall and went in for supper.
Two months had passed since that night, and now Ben sat in the stall, his punishment for sharing with his mother and Rutherford his latest dream of going to Kansas City to work in the stockyards, where he could hook up with one of the cattle outfits that rode in and hopefully join up with a drive. He’d read about that the last time they were in town. It was on a poster that hung on the wall of a feed store. He couldn’t quit thinking about it. Anything to get away from Rutherford, but he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his mother unprotected. He also had the idea of earning enough money to come back and get her, and give her a living, far and away from Rutherford Barkley. Of course he expected his immediate rejection, and condescending comments, but Ben wanted it so badly, and his patience was too thin, so he couldn’t hold his tongue.
“You can’t keep me here forever,” Ben had said.
Rutherford had the perfect response for everything—perfect for his plan. He set his fork on his plate, wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingertips, then wiped his hands on his trouser legs. “Aw-right. I’ll go stand in that there doorway, and if you’s man enough to get by me, then you’ns can go.”
Abigai
l just sat there in the silence, looking at them both with more grave fear than she’d ever shown. Ben knew that she’d never seen him challenge Rutherford like this. When Ben stood from the table, Rutherford cocked a grin and stood too, then walked to the doorway.
Abigail jumped from her chair. “Ben, don’t!”
Rutherford pointed at her but never took his eyes off Ben. “Sit down, woman.”
Ben felt the muscles in his jaw tighten—a feeling that had become all too common over the years, but more so when he realized that he was bigger, and stronger, and could eat anything put on his plate and ask for seconds. He even got to the point of eating so much that there wasn’t enough left for Rutherford to have a second helping. It annoyed him, and that’s exactly what Ben had wanted.
Now he had put himself to the real test. He knew that tonight was the night, when it all would end. There was just no confidence in the outcome. All he had was the desire to not let it last another day, and he would give it all he had.
Rutherford stood a good foot in front of the doorway, picking at his teeth with his pinky finger, and smirking at Ben, letting him know how much he enjoyed the challenge. Ben glared at his stepfather and breathed heavily in and out through his nose.
Rutherford shrugged his shoulders. “Well, make yur play.”
Ben clenched his fists and continued to breathe deeply.
Rutherford let out a loud laugh. “I’m sure this was a similar scene to those gray coats down in Chattanooga …before that weasel of a father—”
Rutherford was cut short by Ben’s yelling charge, which went squarely into the man, and not around him.
Abigail also let out a tearful plea. “Ben, stop it!”
Rutherford pivoted then reached around and grabbed Ben by the back of the neck and pinned him against the wall. He laughed and growled simultaneously, and bent one of Ben’s arms around his back. He dragged him neck and arm to the barn and threw him into the stall.
