Soul of a Crow

by Abbie Williams

  Jack stood in my immediate line of sight, watching raptly from beneath the brim of his hat. My fingernails scraped over my palms, grinding into the flesh there, fists clenched with the desperate desire to strike out at the both of them, knowing I could not; so swiftly I had been rendered helpless.

  “Tell me,” Yancy said once more.

  “Let me go,” I said, gritting my teeth without realizing.

  Yancy’s fingers tightened. Absurdly, his mustache tickled my ear as he leaned an inch closer and murmured, “You will come with me. You will not make a scene. I would take great pleasure in shooting your husband like a bitch hound, do you hear me? Come with me, now.”

  As we walked, edging around those assembled, in the opposite direction from the gallows, an image of a wooden puppet overtook my mind—I felt as though I resembled one of these, my knees jerking my feet unwittingly forward, clumsy with Yancy’s unyielding grip upon my arm. Voices trailed over my head like unwelcome fingers, snarling into my hair and obscuring my vision, but these receded as we left the crowd behind. I did not understand where we were bound until we cleared the masses of people and Yancy angled towards the local sheriff’s office, which Malcolm and I had passed earlier, on our walk; my eyes swept the street, searching for any sign of the boy, any sign of Sawyer, or Boyd…

  But there was no one.

  Once at the small wooden building, Yancy released my arm to produce a key, which he used to unlock the door. Jack stepped close to my left side, clearly intending to impede any attempt I might have made to escape. Yancy ushered the three of us within the space, occupied by nothing more than the dust motes that drifted lazily in the single sunbeam slicing into the room through the south-facing window, its view impeded by iron slats. There was a desk, its surface containing a kerosene lamp and a leather-bound ledger, two ladder-backed chairs and two prisoner cells, both currently empty.

  Keen-edged fear sharpened my senses—my blood trickled like heated metal as it moved along the paths in my body; Yancy’s voice in the quiet room caused me to startle. He said, “Billings and Clemens are at the hanging. They’ve their plates full with local business, and won’t have received word of Davis, nor seen us.”

  “That bastard Davis ain’t far, I’m certain, not if this one’s here,” Jack said, indicating me with a tilt of his chin before dropping his sorry bones atop the nearest chair. He was dirty, his trousers stained by food and travel, and simple hard living, small eyes red-rimmed beneath his hat. Like Yancy, he wore a pistol strapped into a worn leather cross-halter on his scrawny hips, and sat nervously, eyes leaping about the space, from Yancy to me, to the window and back again, in an endless loop.

  Yancy remained coolly standing, by contrast, and went to peer out the single pane at the dusty, unoccupied street—all of the residents were gathered for the hanging. I eyed the thick wooden door which had thumped closed behind us and wondered how far I could manage to run if I bolted outside, before they overtook me.

  As though sensing the intention, Yancy turned to study me from a distance of perhaps a dozen feet, nearly the length of the room.

  “Your husband is a wanted man in Missouri, Mrs. Davis,” he said, with a deceptively conversational tone; the emphasis on the title confirming my married status suggested insult. “He is a fugitive from the law.”

  “No,” I contradicted at once.

  “I assure you I am speaking the truth,” Yancy said, offering a smile. Though it was a false smile, as none of it reached his eyes—despite carrying himself like a gentleman, a man of the law, he exuded pure, calculated intimidation. He elaborated, “Sawyer James Davis, formerly of the Army of Tennessee, is wanted for the murder of one Samuel Rainey, of Missouri, and one Gerald Dixon, also of Missouri.” The formal words were tinged with unmistakable notes of triumph.

  I found the wherewithal to keep my gaze upon Yancy’s. Fear stalked my face—this could not be helped; Yancy only continued smiling, just slightly. I had not an inkling of a notion how to respond—Sawyer had indeed killed both of those men, to save my life. Sam and Dixon had been criminals a hundred times over, Sam a known murderer of women, and yet in the eyes of the law, bound to blindness, I realized that Sawyer could be found guilty for dispatching them, however deservedly, from life.

  A world in which this possibility existed—only this morning, this very morning, I had been secure in his arms—became sharply altered, growing murky and unreal all about my body; I felt a shift in my gut, a flicker of the old, familiar feeling that had encased me in its sticky skeins, without relief, at the whorehouse, the taste of despair rippling over my tongue.

  No. No, oh please, no.

  This cannot be.

  I studied Yancy, wordless for the time being, and knew that I would do whatever required of me to prevent him, or Jack, from finding Sawyer here in this town. I would risk my own life a thousand times over before letting them have at him.

  Sawyer would never let you do any such thing to save him, you understand this.

  I did, but my resolve did not waver.

  Yancy returned my gaze with the intensity of a predator, but even when the air around me narrowed to slim, dark tunnels, I kept my eyes steady.

  Jack smirked, “Lucky little whore to find yourself a husband, Lila,” and that particular word was enough to draw my attention to him, unwittingly; agony and nausea buzzed as hornets ensnared within my skull, but I could not let them see that the use of this hateful name so affected me. And it was imperative that I learn their exact objective.

  “My husband is not here,” I said, wishing my voice had emerged with more strength. My thoughts darted this way and that, wildly, as deer from a hunter.

  They will go after Sawyer—and he will be looking for you at any moment—

  He could be found guilty by a judge—they could hang him—

  They have evidence, they believe they have cause –

  Oh God…

  Jack snorted and scoffed, emphasizing the words, “Your husband left me for dead and he’s here now, I’d stake my claim on that, you lying whore.” His face took on a maroon cast, anger bubbling to the surface of his skin as he said, “He shot clean through my side, after I done my best to help you. Smashed Dixon’s skull into goddamn pulp. Stabbed Sam’s eye out.”

  “I stabbed him,” I interrupted, too overcome with fury to hold my tongue. I seethed, “You bastard, you son of a bitch—”

  Yancy appeared mildly stunned at this pronouncement, though he quickly concealed any such crack in the foundation of his composure. He said, instead, “It was good fortune, running across your party at Charley Rawley’s place, getting such a fine glimpse of each of you. Of course, I did not then possess the information that I do at this moment. Just over a week later I received a wire from Marshal Nelson Dobbs, on circuit in Hannibal, having taken the testimony of this man,” and Yancy nodded at Jack, who shifted on his seat and was eager to pick up the tale.

  “Your Reb husband left me for dead,” Jack repeated, and I wished with all of my heart that he was truly dead. He elaborated, “Wasn’t until a day later that I come to, with a goddamn buzzard tugging at my hair, and found Sam and Dixon, poor bastards. Ain’t a sign of horseflesh on the horizon. Goddamn Reb stole ’em.”

  “He did no such thing!” I raged at Jack. “You stole me. Dixon shot and killed Angus Warfield and then the three of you took me forcibly from his company.” I directed my fury at Yancy. “You are the law! This man is the criminal, not my husband!”

  Yancy was gallingly unmoved. Instead of replying, he blinked. A picture of his eldest son, Fallon, entered into my mind, the boy with empty eyes. Yancy’s eyes were also light in color, and likewise conniving. Determining the best course of action to improve his position.

  “That’s real devoted, Lila,” Jack commented, when Yancy did not reply. Jack taunted, “Ginny’ll get you back in the end, just you wait. You was the most prized whore she ever had and she aims to put you back to work. ’Course, she ain’t too pleased that her brothe
r was murdered and left to rot under the sun.”

  “How did you find us?” I whispered, my heart a razor, my ribs its strop. I knew I must accept what was happening; I knew I must focus.

  Yancy said, “Charley Rawley kindly let me know that Iowa City was on your route. Just so happens I routinely visit this town in my marshal’s circuit, along with Marshal Leverett Quade. Jack and I only just arrived here ourselves, and Quade is not far behind, west while I was south. Mark my words, I would have caught you on the trail, had you passed by. It’s another piece of fine fortune that you were kind enough to present yourself to me this day.”

  “What do you want?” I whispered.

  “Does Davis know that you’re a whore?” Yancy asked, his tone a mingling of amusement and true curiosity. Before I could respond, he mused, “Seems a fitting combination, a Reb and a whore.”

  I swallowed away the furious words I longed to speak, my hands balled in fists. I repeated, “What do you want?”

  Yancy shifted position, smoothing the tips of his fingers over the pistol in his cross-holster. Looking straight into my eyes, he said, “To see Davis hang.” Abruptly he ceased all contact with the pistol and swiped a thumb over his mustache. Still eyeing me, he said, with speculation in his tone, “Though you may impede that.” He narrowed his eyes and mused, “I’d not figured as such.”

  Jack ran his knuckles briskly over the tops of his thighs, as though to scrub at an itch, and complained, “This one’s worth cash money, back in Missouri. I ain’t letting you kill her before I get my share of it from Ginny.”

  Yancy sent a look of scalding disgust at Jack and said, “You haven’t the sense of a polecat. You realize this here whore can testify against you, don’t you?”

  Jack shifted restlessly, regarding me with a new sense of distrust. His voice rasped in the manner of a saw blade over fresh-cut wood as he said, “Ain’t nobody gonna believe the testimony of a goddamn whore. Whores lie as plain as the nose on their faces. I aim to bring her to Missouri. Ginny’s right eager to get Lila back. She’ll line my pocket.”

  You are not Lila. You will never be Lila again.

  There is no way Jack can force you back to Missouri, back to Ginny.

  You will never be Lila again…

  And yet, no matter how I willed it to be untrue, Lila would always be part of me—dark, twisted, vulnerable to the insidious onslaught of three years’ worth of memories. What recourse would I possibly have if Jack was unrelenting?

  You thought before that Sawyer deserves better than a former whore.

  No—he does not believe this—he sees beyond what you were.

  I pictured Sawyer’s eyes, the blending of golden and green in their depths, drawing thusly upon a reserve of strength. I said as calmly as I could manage, “You will not hang Sawyer, and I will never return to Missouri.”

  “You will if I say,” Jack insisted, thrusting his chin my direction.

  “That I will not,” I whispered, nearly choking on the bitterness of rage. I glared at Jack with unrelieved abhorrence.

  “Perhaps, rather, you’d enjoy watching Davis hang this very afternoon. The gallows will accommodate another Reb bastard before the afternoon’s washed away, I’d say,” Yancy said, and my gaze leaped at once to him.

  I sensed he was bluffing and challenged, with no small amount of asperity, “You cannot hang a man without a conviction.”

  Yancy glared blackly, as though encountering a specimen with which he was unfamiliar—and perhaps he truly was unused to a woman who contradicted his words; the sudden, odd glittering in his eyes suggested there was truth to this presumption. Still, he would not allow me to discompose him. He said levelly, “All I need is a wire from the circuit judge, which can be swiftly arranged. Or perhaps you would prefer witnessing what a bullet aimed just so will do to a man. Resisting arrest requires no conviction and achieves the intended result much more quickly, truth be told.”

  I heard the crackling of the fire beneath me, as an animal rotating upon a spit. Metaphorically cornered, I whispered, “Why do you bear us such animosity?”

  Yancy studied me in silence for the space of a heartbeat, finally muttering, “For a whore, you are somewhat perceptive.” He concluded, “You mean something to that Johnny Reb bastard, of this I am certain. Perhaps for even more than what’s between your legs.” He angled Jack another look of scarcely-concealed contempt, and said, “I’ve a new plan, just conjured up. I’m doing you far more of a favor than you’d realize, Barrow.”

  “How you figure?” Jack asked grimly.

  “I know you aimed to bring this whore back to Missouri, but she’s a danger to you. She’ll speak out against you, her and Davis, both.” Yancy studied Jack as though attempting to impart upon the scrawny man a further sense of the situation; it was a monumentally worthless effort. Realizing this as well, Yancy released a frustrated breath through his nose and instead directed his next words at me, “You will accompany us. No words, no struggling, and we leave now. Let Davis wonder what became of his whore wife. Let him think you abandoned him for the next peckerwood that happened along. Marshal Quade’ll be this way before dawn, I’d stake my goddamn claim. He can bring in your Reb husband and I’ll watch him hang, regardless. Wondering all the while what happened to his little wife.” Yancy aimed his words as small darts, explaining with mocking humor in his voice, “It is an agony, not knowing. Questioning what actually became of someone. Davis won’t know if you were killed…or if you left him to fuck another man…”

  Blood flowed from my skull—I could feel its downward progression in my body. But then my heart was dealt a sudden fierce blow, leaving splinters like small pikes in its wake.

  Lorie! Where are you?

  Where are you?!

  A rush of breath escaped before I could prevent any such weakness from emerging. I dug both fists into my stomach, working hard not to bend forward, as though to center and therefore contain the anguish.

  Sawyer’s voice, riddled with desperate concern, called to me in my mind. It took everything I had, hurt my very bones, to refrain from responding to him. Instantly I hardened my thoughts against any such wayward contact. If I called back he would know where to find me, and then Yancy would apprehend him.

  And I would give my life to prevent that.

  My lips were nearly too numb to form words as I whispered my inescapable assent, “I will come with you.”

  - 14 -

  The wide bridge, which I had crossed into Iowa City only this morning, then choked with wagons and foot traffic, bore not a soul upon its wooden length now, complacent by contrast in the mellow afternoon light. I thought, absurdly, of Malcolm’s lost penny, which had disappeared with scarcely a splash beneath the river’s surface. I rode south this time, away from the town, looking desperately back as it receded into the distance. My thoughts were so tightly corralled that my temples ached with sharp pain, images striking me rapidly now. Sawyer was frantic—Malcolm had returned to them, as I could plainly sense; their combined agony served to stab through flesh and bone, plunging directly into my heart.

  I could not ease this pain, for them or myself, I could not offer reassurance, because Sawyer would know where to follow. Lumps of stone settled behind my breastbone, heavy as death, as I imagined Whistler’s galloping hooves striking the earth as Sawyer rode her in pursuit, closing the hateful distance between us. The intensity of my yearning for this burned away all else, momentarily overpowering me, so my vision hazed and my palms grew slick, imperiling my hold on the reins of the dark pony with white blaze markings adorning his nose which they had procured for me to ride. I was placed strategically between the two men, Yancy in the lead, Jack a dozen paces to the rear.

  “Keep up!” Yancy ordered, shifting his hips and taking his gelding into a canter as we cleared the bridge and came upon the open prairie south of town, which I so naïvely believed, only hours ago, I would never traverse again; at this moment I should have been northbound upon the wagon seat beside Sa
wyer, or Malcolm, while Boyd rode near, the four of us commenting on the beauty of the approaching evening, discussing the day’s events in Iowa City. Sawyer’s arm would be around me…holding me close to him…and all would be right in the world.

  A high-pitched keening, the sound of a teakettle at full steam, of a person past all limits of endurance, rose from my soul. I saw Sawyer in the strange, wavering eye of my mind; despite the illogic of it, I knew this vision was real, a sensing within my abilities but beyond my control. He had Malcolm by the upper arms, yelling at the boy, demanding to know what had happened; Sawyer was wild with fear, his voice strained and frantic.

  I could not bear this anguish, and yet I would. I must.

  Malcolm’s freckled face was miserable with tears as he choked out his fervent response, I don’t know where Lorie-Lorie is…Sawyer, I swear I don’t know…

  The tiny gray kitten remained draped over his shoulder.

  Sawyer released his hold upon Malcolm and turned away in a panic, blind and desperate. All of this was my fault; there was no denying, as much as I wished otherwise. Jack had come for me, and none other, back in Missouri, at Ginny’s wishes, creating a series of events that led to Gus’s death—Gus had been doomed to ill luck from the moment he took me from Ginny’s place. And now I had endangered them again, these men who wanted only to complete the journey to Minnesota, where we would have homesteaded—where Sawyer and I would have begun our family. I bent forward over the pony’s sleek, shiny-dark head, resting my face against the scent of horseflesh, my sobs lost in the wind of our passage away from Iowa City, away from the life that I had been foolish enough to believe would be mine.

  * * *

  I sat in stiff silence at their fire, with no inkling what Yancy’s plan for me entailed; I refused to ask. I would not have remained near them, I would have chosen to lie apart, to avoid all sight of their faces, but I was tethered like an animal, bound by a length of rope secured painfully about my ankles. To my right, Yancy unknotted a handkerchief and ate the sausage in a roll contained therein, with apparent relish, ignoring me completely. Jack intermittently sipped from a flask and gnawed a piece of jerky, gazing into the fire as though it contained a message he must decipher. Yancy allowed me water and a piece of hardtack, tossing it on my lap, into the hammock of my wilted skirt; it crumbled in my fingers. I ate it with all of the joy of someone consuming hot ashes, the crumbs bitter on my dry tongue.