Soul of a Crow

by Abbie Williams

  As a little girl I spent countless hours hanging on the corral fence, as attracted to the horses as a divining rod is to groundwater; Daddy indulged me, his only daughter, and from him and my brothers I learned the ways of horses, and to ride, despite the mild shock to my mother’s delicate sensibilities. Mama had deigned to allow these less refined elements of my education, but took it upon herself to ensure a thorough tutelage in more sophisticated subject matters.

  I often wondered, with considerable writhing of spirit, what my dear, faultlessly proper mother would say if she knew that at times I kept myself sane by reciting Shakespeare in my mind as yet another man rammed his whiskey-tainted tongue into my mouth and squeezed my breasts with hands both rough and unconcerned. How I would study the water-stained ceiling above my loathsome narrow bed at Ginny’s place, dim in the lamplight, and upon which the shadows of man after man’s frantic rutting atop my body was cast like flickering demons come to mock me as I lay beneath each in turn, clenching my jaws to keep from uttering what would surely become an unending scream.

  Even now, though years had elapsed since I beheld the last of my family still living, the wealth of their love remained in my heart as a token held over from the sweetness of that young and innocent existence. The memories of my parents, my brothers, sufficed to sustain me through the horror of what I faced after the War came crawling and blotted out the sun, casting instead a light with a muddy, blood-tinged tone. William Blake, my father, and my brothers, Dalton and Jesse, left to fight for the Confederacy in 1861, never to return to our home in Cumberland County. The boys died in battle at Sharpsburg in 1862, while Daddy survived until 1864. Upon his death, my mother withdrew even more deeply into herself and expired from illness a year later, in the July of 1865.

  Left utterly alone at age fifteen, in the war-torn Southern land of my birth, I had no possible opportunity to choose my own destiny; I was eventually sent northwest in a canvas-topped wagon with a family named Foster. In my memory, it remains a rather benign journey, though of course I had no notion then as to what would become of me only months later. The Fosters and I traveled placidly beneath the late-summer sunshine, through the heart of a country now at tentative peace; though by the time the wagon rolled into St. Louis, Missouri, Mrs. Foster had died of a lung ailment, leaving Mr. Foster floundering at what to do with a young girl not his kin. Hardly two days passed before his dilemma was solved: he bet me in a card game and lost, and I was summarily deposited on the doorstep of a clapboard building that housed a bustling, ground-floor saloon and a thriving, second-floor whorehouse, only a few blocks from the overpopulated river district.

  My virginity ensured a heavy profit for the owner and operator of the place, a grim-faced and calculating opium addict by the name of Ginny Hossiter, who put me to work the very next night, despite my status as a terrified novice, ignorant to all but the most basic facts concerning physical consummation. Out of the necessity born from the will to survive, I learned quickly the tricks of my new trade, that of disguising my choking fear and subsequent lashing shame, and feigning pleasure for countless male customers, whose sole desire had been to spill their sticky-hot seed between my legs.

  If asked now, I would not willingly estimate how many men had thrust their bodies inside mine, night after horrific night during that period, leaving me drained of all desire to live, all sense of true self, by morning’s tepid light. In the confines of my room at the whorehouse, the sun had appeared indifferent, weak and insubstantial, a sharp contrast to the way I regarded its light as a girl, as something joyous and beautiful, a benediction upon my shoulders. At Ginny’s, where I had been forced to change my name to Lila, I internally retreated to a degree that I believed myself incapable of ever feeling genuine emotion again; I had long speculated that death would come leaping far too early for me, whether through the brutality of a drunken customer or my own desperate hand wielding a knife to lay open a vein on the underside of my wrist.

  Stop, I commanded. Enough for tonight.

  It is done. You will never be Lila again.

  Never, Lorie. It is all right.

  It is all right…

  * * *

  Mid-morning found Sawyer and me together on the wagon seat, Boyd and Malcolm mounted on their horses, Fortune and Aces High, respectively, and yards ahead on the trail. Juniper and Admiral worked as a team to pull us along, while Whistler politely kept pace alongside. We left our tents staked out near the fire pit, intending to return by late afternoon.

  “We needn’t accompany them, if you’d rather wait in camp,” Sawyer reminded me; he knew I had little desire to visit a town. “I’ll stay with you. If Boyd rustles up a preacher, he’ll ride back here before we can say ‘I do.’”

  I reached to tuck a wayward strand of golden hair behind his ear, as it tended to slip free from its moorings throughout the day. He grinned at the gesture and bent to kiss the side of my forehead, angling so that his hat brim did not bump my head. I said softly, “Imagine if the sun set upon us as husband and wife, this very evening.”

  “I have in mind a gift for you, and I need a town to have a hope of finding it,” Sawyer said, releasing his grip on the reins with his right hand to catch my left. He held it and used his thumb to gently touch each of my fingers in turn. He said, “I would like very much to place a ring just here,” and so saying, pressed his thumb to my third finger.

  Though the sun was already casting us in heated beams, I felt a similar bloom at the idea of wearing a betrothal ring. I admitted, with quiet joy, “I have been letting myself imagine our home. I picture us building it together, and our barn. A large one, for all of our horses.”

  Sawyer enfolded my hand within his, saying, “Our home won’t be grand in scale—not just yet—but we will live together within it, which is the grandest notion I can conjure.”

  “Truly, if we continued to roam the prairie and reside in our tent until the end of time, I would be content,” I said, letting my gaze rove to the northwest, the direction in which we traveled, where the blue edge of the sky blended together with the rippling prairie; from our vantage point on the wagon seat, the horizon appeared as unreachable as stars in the heavens.

  “There is a certain satisfaction in being on the trail,” Sawyer acknowledged. When we lay close at night, before sleep claimed us, we often spoke quietly of such things. There was a simple, sensual pleasure in living day by day so close to nature, a sensory absorption of the outdoors; I had discovered that I enjoyed the sense of freedom that daily travel occasioned, of not being bound to a certain plot of land. Sawyer felt the same and believed it meant that we were beginning to heal from the loss of our old lives, those which we had known when we were deeply rooted in Tennessee.

  “No matter where we settle, even when we are no longer traveling, I want for us to always watch the sun set,” I said. We had determined that evening was the time of day we collectively favored, when a stillness descended over the land and lifted from the earth rich scents that seemed stifled by the sun. When jewel-beads of dew formed, and the air held its breath, when the western rim of the world was decorated by the warmer tints of its spectrum, scarlet and rose and saffron, by turns. I added, “I have found such solace in the outdoors, and I want us to remember what it meant to travel such a great distance, seeing the country in this fashion. Many years from now, I want to remember these days, here with you.”

  “For certain,” Sawyer agreed. “When I soldiered there was such little comfort, but sometimes, on a fair evening, or during a quiet sunrise, I could find a measure of calm. Dreams seem possible again, for the first time in so very long. I admit I fall asleep imagining all of the horses we will breed.”

  As though she understood, Whistler nickered.

  “You’re in agreement, aren’t you, sweet girl?” Sawyer asked her, companionably. He spoke to her always with such affection; even the very first night we met, despite the animosity otherwise bristling from him, I noticed his connection with Whistler, their mutual
trust.

  “Dozens of little paint foals,” I said, delighted by this picture.

  “I recall the afternoon Whistler was born as if it was yesterday,” Sawyer said, sounding just like a proud daddy; he had related this story to me many times already, but it remained one I cherished. “I was late for the picnic at the Carters’ but I couldn’t leave before she was delivered. I went back to the stable before nightfall, as it was, just so I could see her again. She was such a dear little thing, wobbling around.”

  I smiled at his tender description, supplying the final detail, “And then you whistled for her, and knew what her name was to be.”

  He joked, “You have heard this story before?”

  I rested my cheek briefly to his upper arm, whispering, “A time or two,” and then said, “Daddy let me watch whenever our mares foaled, if it was in the daylight hours, even though Mama always disapproved. She considered it far too ‘earthy’ a lesson for a girl.”

  Sawyer’s gaze lifted up and to the left, back into time, as he speculated, “I believe my own mama would have taken a similar position, had Eth and Jere and I been daughters instead of sons. Mama midwifed, after all. She knew firsthand that birthing is an indelicate business all around.”

  “Well, our daughters will be allowed to watch any foaling they choose, with no compunctions from me,” I declared, and Sawyer laughed, shying away when I pinched at his ribs for laughing.

  He used his elbow to defend against my fingers, and hastily explained, “I’m in agreement, darlin’. Don’t be cross. It’s your tone that makes me smile. You sound as though I was about to contradict you. There may be times when I contradict you, but not regarding that.”

  I relinquished my hope of pinching him and instead poked into his side, pleased when he yelped at my tickling. I said primly, “A true gentleman never contradicts his lady.”

  Sawyer winked at me and said wickedly, “Then I ain’t a true gentleman.”

  An inexorable beat of desire pulsed within me and he recognized that I was rendered momentarily speechless. I elbowed him, pretending irritation, and his grin deepened; well he knew the need for him that burned inside of me, even without my speaking it aloud.

  “Might we grow morning glories along the southern wall of our barn?” I asked, attempting nonchalance. I needn’t close my eyes to picture my childhood home, but I did. The sun created shifting golden patterns against the backsides of my eyelids but I saw only the rolling valley in which Daddy’s ranch had been tucked as dearly as a beloved child to a warm bed. Mama loved flowers in all shades of blue, from richest indigo to palest cerulean. The small, joyous trumpets of the morning glories and true-hued gentian salvia had been among my favorite of the blossoms.

  “Of course. Morning glories grew along the livery stable,” Sawyer remembered. His father had run the Suttonville livery all of Sawyer’s life—he, Ethan, and Jeremiah had learned the trade, and that of smithing, from their youths. The business had been looted and subsequently burned to the ground over the course of the War; only Sawyer had been left to claim the meager leavings upon returning home in 1865.

  In the years between then and now, he sold the remaining equipment in order to provision himself for the journey north from Tennessee; I knew he kept the horseshoe his grandfather, the elder Sawyer Davis, had carried with from England and that subsequently always hung over any bellows upon which he conducted his smithing. In addition to this, Sawyer retained his father James’s iron tongs and hammer. He’d told me he could not bear to part with these vestiges of his old life, which he so dearly associated with the menfolk who taught him his craft, who instilled within him a sense of appreciation for their work. Sawyer, like his father and grandsire before him, loved horses especially, and I had yet to see any horse that did not respond to his voice.

  “I know the basics of birthing foals, but I would that you teach me to properly shoe a horse,” I said, as I thought of his family’s trade.

  “I will teach you whatever you wish, though that is heavy work, and you are so slightly built, however brave, mo mhuirnín mhilis,” he said. With quiet vehemence, he added, “I despise the thought of bruises on your body.”

  “I know,” I acknowledged softly; not long ago, my body had borne severe bruising. “Though, occasional injury is inevitable, eventually. I mean to ride Whistler every day, now that I feel up to it. I’ve missed it so.”

  “I mean to ride with you,” he said. “It is such a pleasure. I am thinking of that first afternoon.”

  I recalled the unexpected beauty of that day, when Sawyer allowed me the privilege of riding his horse; he had joined me, on Juniper, and together we’d cantered them over the prairie, talking and racing, by turns. I admitted, “I realized I was finally seeing the Sawyer about whom Gus spoke so fondly.”

  He said, “I was not bold enough to tell you, not that day, that I felt such joy simply having you at my side.”

  “I mean to stay by your side,” I whispered, tears prickling at the edges of my eyes.

  Reading my thoughts, as he was so inclined to do, he said tenderly, “I pray that in time we will have a house overrun with our children, and a corral with our horses.”

  I repeated his words, “For certain.”

  “My childhood would have been a different thing without Eth and Jere,” Sawyer said. “And without the Carters. I mean for our children to know the love of family, of friends and siblings. God willing, our sons will never leave home as soldiers.”

  “Wouldn’t it be lovely if Boyd found a wife within the year? His children would be raised with ours,” I mused. I speculated, teasingly, “She would need to be possessed of a very good-natured spirit, to put up with his.”

  “Boyd spoke often of a wife when we were soldiers, though in our youth he was fickle,” Sawyer remembered. “Back home, before the War, he favored a new girl every other week or so. But he’s much changed now, and I know he longs for a family to call his own.” He grinned as he added another detail to my description, “A patient wife for him.”

  “Patient, yes,” I agreed, and then, unable to deny the ages-old habit, I added dutifully, “Synonyms include: tolerant, serene, unflappable.”

  “Forbearing,” he finished with a scholarly intonation, teasingly nudging my shoulder; I had told him of the way Mama favored the thesaurus for my daily lessons.

  “Oh, that’s a particularly good one. I hadn’t thought of that,” I said.

  “I find myself imagining our little ones at your knee, darlin’, learning from you,” he said softly.

  “A journal,” I said, on sudden inspiration. “I should very much like a journal, if there is one to be had. And someday I will read it aloud to them.”

  “I will do my best to find you one,” Sawyer promised.

  The scattering of buildings on the central street came into view on the horizon, dust swirling beneath the passage of feet, booted and shod alike, rising lazily into the hot air and creating a thin haze. The river glinted like polished cobalt along the eastern edge of the town; I knew that two rivers converged here, the Des Moines and the Mississippi. We would shortly discontinue our course along the Mississippi and for a time leave behind the giant, swiftly-flowing river we had traveled alongside since Missouri, to follow the Iowa River instead. We would cross the northern border of Iowa and travel well into Minnesota before rejoining the Mississippi again, when it hooked back in a westerly direction to lead us to our eventual destination, the homestead of Boyd and Malcolm’s uncle, Jacob Miller.

  I spied Malcolm racing Aces our way, dust lifting in clouds behind them as Malcolm let his horse run, bowed low over the animal’s sleek brown neck. Whistler nickered and snorted as they drew near, dancing on her tether—I knew she longed to gallop as badly as I longed to be atop her back, clinging to her mane and feeling the wind scrape my hair into a tangled mess, the ground a blur alongside her flying hooves.

  “Preacher’s on circuit! He ain’t in town!” the boy informed in a shout as Aces flashed past the wago
n; yards behind us, Malcolm slowed him to a walk and then trotted back to us, flushed and breathless with the exertion of riding so fast. He brought Aces to my side of the wagon and kept pace as disappointment at this news flooded my heart.

  “Next town,” Sawyer murmured into my ear.

  Malcolm was wide-eyed with excitement, all but bouncing on the saddle. Aces was tall and high-strung; like most of the horses I had ever known, he responded to his rider’s moods instinctively, and snorted at Malcolm’s antics.

  “They’s got berry pie an’ bags of marbles, an’ a tobacconist sells outta the dry-goods store,” the boy prattled, and I smiled at him with love. Sawyer regarded him with a similar expression.

  “For having recently arrived, you surely seem to know a great deal about the place,” he remarked to Malcolm, teasing him, though Malcolm did possess an uncanny ability at unearthing both gossip and secrets. Presumably this was because he was equal parts observant and earnest; people grew loose-jawed around him.

  “I done rode its length three times aw’ready,” Malcolm explained cheerfully. He withdrew a slim wooden stick topped with crystalized sugar from the pocket of his trousers, blew dust from it, frowned when this did not prove enough, and then rubbed it briskly on his thigh before popping it into his mouth. His left cheek bulged like a pocket gopher’s. His eyes went wide and he informed me, “I got you one, too, Lorie-Lorie!”

  So saying, he dug into the leather haversack looped over his torso, its pouch dangling near his waist, extracting a bundled handkerchief. He unrolled this and produced another stick, which he leaned to place into my hands. It looked a little worse for the wear, but I could hardly refuse this offering. To Sawyer he explained, “I only had me the one penny, or I woulda got you one. You wanna lick of mine?” and he held it out with utter sincerity.