Soul of a Crow

by Abbie Williams

  Boyd, Malcolm, and I went directly to the hotel where Lorie had last been, but as the hanging was still keeping everyone in Iowa City occupied, there was hardly a soul present to inquire. Immediately I’d called out to Lorie in my mind, certain she would respond. But there had been nothing. We flew from business to business, all along the main streets, but no one knew a thing. And now the sun was about to set on the day my wife had disappeared. Night was fast approaching and I had not a notion of where she was—or if she was safe.

  Keep level, I reminded myself. It won’t do any good if you lose all control.

  Clemens asked, “I mean no disrespect, but is there any reason at all that your wife would choose to leave, of her own volition?”

  I tried not to grit my teeth, thinking suddenly and unwelcomely of a man Boyd and I had known during the War, a soldier named Chalmers, from Alabama. The darkness had grown too severe for him to bear, the darkness of spirit, and he put his pistol to his temple by the light of a November dawn, and drew on the trigger.

  Before I could respond, Boyd, having regained his sense of self-possession, said heatedly, “Of course there ain’t no reason. Y’all wouldn’t know, as you ain’t well acquainted with us, but Sawyer an’ Lorie’s in possession of a love the likes of which most of us’ll never have. They’s been happier than I ever seen two folks, an’ Lorie’s missing because of some foul business of which we’s unaware. I aim to find her an’ I aim to do it fast. She’s in danger an’ we set here eatin’ like nothing’s wrong.” He thrust his chin forward, eyes snapping with dark fire, and just as quickly he amended, “I apologize, ma’am, we appreciate your hospitality. But we ain’t accomplishing nothing by settin’ here. An’ I know Sawyer agrees.”

  Boyd could always be counted upon. I said quietly, “I do.”

  Malcolm’s eyes likewise glinted.

  Rebecca drew her gaze from Boyd with seeming difficulty, appearing slightly startled by his impassioned outburst. She lifted her chin and said decisively, “Uncle Edward is able to mind the boys at home a while longer, I am certain. Let us make the rounds and assist Billings. We shall ask everyone we meet if they have word. Young Malcolm, if you’ll accompany me?”

  “Do you believe your wife is still within town limits?” asked Clemens.

  Relying on nothing more than deep-seated instinct, I said quietly, “No.”

  * * *

  Rebecca and Malcolm ranged east, Clemens south, while Boyd and I took ourselves north, which proved to be a district comprised mainly of saloons. The activity on the streets increased as the sun sank; we skirted high-spirited men and trotting horses, buggies and carriages and wagons. The day’s execution had drawn a crowd that seemed now to wish for nothing more than to seek refuge in drink.

  There was a time when I’d been unable to resist the urge to seek solace in a bottle, though I had not let it overpower me since long before we left Tennessee. That wretched summer of 1865, returning home to ashes. To a family dead and buried, every last Davis but for me. Father, mother, grandparents, two brothers younger than I—all snuffed from existence as candle flames pinched between dispassionate fingers. Most days by the time dusk fell that long, cruel summer, I’d lost nearly all sense of who I was, though that suited me. If I allowed myself to dwell on what had been, upon my family that lay in a straight, evenly-spaced row, as seeds planted in a garden, dropped from a warm palm and covered over with earth, then I wanted nothing but death.

  What had grown from their buried bodies, the seeds of them, were equally-placed headstones of rough gray rock, inches high and with slanted tops bearing their names, and the years of their births and deaths. I traced my fingers over each name every night that I could still see clearly enough, as part of a ritual of self-punishment. I’d been unable to save my brothers on the battlefield, I’d failed to return home in time to bid my parents farewell, and now my wife was missing—it seemed that ragged guilt intended to stalk me to my demise. Unwittingly I envisioned the crow—a creature whose presence I had not sensed so strongly in years. And yet now it hovered, wings widespread and talons extended, as though about to land.

  Perhaps you’ve been allowed all the time you deserve with Lorie.

  “Boyd,” I whispered, in effort to slay the terrible thought.

  He gripped my upper arm in an old gesture of comfort, responding instantly, “We’ll find her.”

  “She’s not here,” I said. The helplessness brought me to a halt. A band cinched my chest and it was greater effort than I possessed to continue walking. The darkening town closed around me, seeming to revolve on a wobbly axis, like a child’s toy. I sank to a crouch, the sights and sounds just as quickly receding. I felt stranded at the edge of a gaping chasm.

  Boyd crouched at my side, preventing me from plunging into the nothingness as he had after many a battle, the two of us left reeling at what we’d been forced by circumstance to do—the guilty misery descending over our bodies, two green boys from the holler who had never killed more than wild game before becoming soldiers. Two boys who watched our beloved brothers, all four of them, slaughtered like animals before our eyes.

  What I recalled most about that chaotic gray battlefield was the blank surprise upon Ethan’s features as a round pierced him from behind, taking out the entire front of his throat in a burst of dark-red chunks. Not fear or pain on the face I had known my entire life, only absolute stun. His mouth opened and closed like that of a hooked fish before he plunged forward; I tried to stop his fall from where I knelt nearby, but I was already clutching my youngest brother, Jeremiah, whose blood flowed over my lap, obscenely warm. Jere stared with fading sight at the distant, weeping sky above the rocky field at Murfreesboro on that icy January morning. Sleet fell into Jere’s cedar-green eyes and he did not blink.

  “Jesus, oh Jesus.” I heard words being uttered, not quite realizing I spoke them. The horror of losing Lorie beat at me, allowing forth memories I did my damnedest to keep from ever surfacing.

  “It’s all right,” Boyd said quietly, hovering over me and thereby shutting out the curious murmurs of attention we were attracting. “Sawyer, it’s all right.”

  “She’s not here,” I repeated. “I don’t know where she is.”

  “We’ll find her,” he said authoritatively. “Come, we’s work to do. Come, Sawyer.”

  I allowed him to haul me to my feet, vulnerable as a goddamn kitten. To those looking on, Boyd commanded in the tone not a soul dared contradict, reminiscent of his father, “Scat, all of yous, before I make you wish you had!”

  I resettled my hat and drew a deep breath, and together we continued on our way. Past saloon after saloon, where we parted batwing doors and inquired of those within, men mostly, though a woman or two graced the floor. No one knew a thing. I did not believe that anyone was intentionally misleading us—they truly had no idea. Most went straight back to their drinking, dredging forth no more than a momentary sympathy.

  “It pains me fierce,” Boyd said, as we walked to the final establishment, one at the very end of the street. “What coulda happened? I been wracking my brains. It don’t make no sense.”

  “I know,” I said roughly. I had regained a measure of calm. I would not think about the night hours passing without Lorie safe in my arms.

  “Here, of all places, where we don’t know a goddamn soul,” Boyd continued, in his habit of thinking aloud. For all that he blustered and put forth a show of being brash, I knew Boyd to be a keen observer, a deep thinker. Little missed his attention. He mused, “If we ain’t heard a word by morning’s light, I aim to wire Charley Rawley. He’s a fair-minded man, who knows these here parts. I believe he could help us.”

  I was so very grateful for Boyd’s presence. He could never fully appreciate how much I depended on his levelheaded nature. I nodded agreement at his words. It was something, at least, a vague shadow of a plan. My gaze roved away from the bustling saloon and to the place where the street expired; beyond, the prairie stretched endlessly to the northern horiz
on, where we should have been just now, miles from Iowa City, encamped along the trail. It seemed such a simple desire—I well knew what a true gift had been bestowed upon me in my wife. Clasping Lorie’s hand and making her my own, in all ways, was more than the most deeply moving moment of my life; it was a consecration. I felt born anew, allowed to experience contentment in ways I had not since my childhood, and joy as I had never known.

  Boyd paused at this last set of doors, prepared to enter the bright, noisy space beyond. I told him, “I’ll be just yonder,” and nodded in the direction of the empty land to the north.

  Boyd hesitated. At last he said, “I’ll find you directly.”

  I walked swiftly into the darkness, no more than twenty steps from the street, before dropping to both knees in the tall, scratching grass. I studied the thinning moon and implored, “Lorie, answer me.”

  I strained, closing my eyes, stretching out to her with all the strength I possessed. I waited, but there was nothing, and grief stung the bridge of my nose.

  “Tell me where you are,” I whispered, tears falling chill upon my face, as though my innards had frozen. “Please, darlin’, please answer. I feel like I am dying and I do not know where you are.”

  I ground my teeth, staring sightlessly at the heavens, seeing only my memories of her face, her precious face, the love in her beautiful eyes, which at times shown blue as chicory, at others the green of cedar boughs. I willed her to hear me.

  “Lorie,” I demanded, with quiet desperation.

  Punishment was perhaps all I deserved. I reflected upon this, allowing myself no quarter, as I knelt there under a moon waning to new. I thought of Gus, good, kind Angus Warfield, who I had known from my birth. Rare were men as decent as Gus. And though it nearly killed me when he intended to marry Lorie, and claim his unborn child along with her, I forced myself to acknowledge that he would care for her with tender concern, love her to his final days, and would protect her with his life. And he had, to the very last.

  I knew even without Lorie speaking the words that guilt over his death remained in her soul; I knew, as there was also the stinging backlash of guilt within me, for not being there when Gus was shot and Lorie was taken, and for the brutal harm that had come to her. And yet had Gus lived, Lorie would be his wife at this very moment. I would be a liar of the lowest rank, utterly dishonorable, if I did not recognize in the blackest part of my soul that if Gus had to die so that Lorie and I could be together, I would pay that price every time.

  If I’m bound for hell, at least allow me a life with Lorie first. Dear God, you see into my heart, and know my sins, and what I have done to survive. Twice now I have not been present when she has disappeared from me, and I cannot bear it. If hell is where I shall spend eternity, I accept this. Please, before I die, restore my wife to me. Oh dear God, please…

  And I was heartened beyond all relief to feel a sudden sense of her. Just the faintest flicker, but it was there.

  She was there.

  I rose swiftly and turned in a circle, struggling to retain the connection.

  “Lorie!” I shouted. “Lorie!”

  Though I could not discern a word from her, even an edge of a word, I knew without a doubt that she was no longer in Iowa City, instead miles distant from my current position.

  But which direction?

  “Sawyer!” called Boyd, standing on the edge of the street, where it met the grasses of the prairie. He yelled, “Get over here!” and I got, at a run.

  “I felt her,” I said, short of breath, and Boyd clapped my back, not questioning how I came to this certainty. “I felt her, just now.”

  I noticed for the first time that another person stood beyond Boyd, recognizing the smug weasel of a man with whom we’d discoursed briefly and unpleasantly upon arrival to this town. Parmley, who had been so eager to inform us that a former Confederate soldier was to be hung today, swayed forward just slightly, as though drunk. Lantern light fell in slanted rectangles on the street at his feet.

  Piano music tinkled from the nearby saloon, “Beautiful Dreamer,” a song I disliked, as it was so sorrowful. I tried not to interpret this as an ominous sign. A field doc in Georgia had been fond of bowing this particular tune, sitting outside his medic’s tent after a day’s work. As dusk descended he would play. I spent a week recovering from a musket ball to the leg, and had listened to the fiddle weep over this same melody—the darkening air concealed the pile alongside the doc’s tent, resembling nothing as much as slop intended for pigs, that of severed limbs that no one had yet buried or burned—though nothing could lessen their smell on the sticky Georgia air—

  Stop.

  Boyd wasted no time explaining, “Parmley, here, got a word for you.”

  I was in this man Parmley’s space a second later, perhaps unduly threatening, as he retreated a step and lifted both palms in instinctive preparation to defend against an assault. I restrained the urge to clamp my fists about him and shake forth answers. I demanded, “Tell me.”

  “I saw your wife at the hanging,” he said, his tone less composed than it had been earlier today. Drink discernibly slurred his speech.

  “If you are lying to me, you cannot imagine how sorry I will make you,” I promised, and he gulped, I could see even in the partial darkness.

  “I am not lying,” he insisted. “This fellow,” and he nodded at Boyd, flanking me to the left, “says your wife is missing from town.”

  “What happened? What did you see?”

  Parmley hesitated; anvils weighted my heart. He finally said, “The crowd was thick as beeswax, but I saw your wife across the square. She was…” and he seemed to be searching for an appropriate word, settling upon, “Detained. Two men spoke to her, one quite close to her ear. They led her away.”

  “What men?” I raged, this time unable to stop from grabbing his upper arms, tugging him nearly off his feet.

  “Christ almighty,” Parmley uttered, struggling to free himself. He shoved at me, ineffectually, but Boyd’s grunt forced me to release the smaller man, who at once brushed at the arms of his clothing, as though my touch had soiled him. He said stiffly, “I did not recognize them as locals. I admit I’d not given it another thought…until this moment.”

  Blood beat at my temples.

  Boyd asked for me, “What’d they look like? What do you recall?”

  Parmley released a tense breath and replied, “I’m doubtful I could pick either from a crowd. One was of a decent height, and wore a marshal’s star. The other was a scrawny, disheveled fellow.” He gathered himself and insisted pompously, “I’ll not be manhandled. I’ve told you what I know, and I’ll return to my evening.”

  Though his attitude earlier repulsed me, he had helped me perhaps incalculably now, and I said with all sincerity, “Thank you.”

  Parmley retreated to the saloon without another word, bumping into the hinged doors and nearly falling, but Boyd and I had not a moment to spare for him.

  “Let us find Billings,” Boyd said.

  - 16 -

  It was fully dark and Lorie had been missing for more than eight hours. Desperation lanced its beak into my flesh but I held the worst of my dread at bay, instead concentrating on the two pieces of information I’d received in the last half hour—that Lorie was alive, and that she had been led away by two men. I could not dwell upon why she was unable to respond. If I did, I would lose control. Given the slightest opportunity, I would destroy any barrier in my path to reach her side.

  “I do believe I despise the moon when it is waning,” Boyd muttered, his chin lifted to glare in the direction of the sullen-looking orb, misshapen now as it was pared back to new. When I did not respond, as we skirted men and horses on our return from speaking to Parmley, Boyd wondered aloud for the third time, “A marshal? I know we ain’t got a reason under the sun to trust Parmley, but I believe he told us true. He ain’t got a thing to gain from lyin’ to us. What could a marshal want with Lorie-girl?”

  “Rawley,” I said,
intending to mention that contacting him was an idea with merit. Though our acquaintance had been thus far brief, Charley Rawley seemed a trustworthy man. He may possess knowledge that could help us—I longed to believe this, but my thoughts were at present choked with panicked notions, as deadfall in a logjam…images flowed in succession across my mind, almost without my intending. I recalled sitting at the Rawleys’ fire the night of the full moon...singing in celebration of the Fourth, whiskey jug making the rounds, Lorie in my arms, Malcolm curled near us…

  Think, Sawyer, I commanded. There was something I hadn’t considered, just at the periphery of my thoughts. I felt this as tangibly as a damp towel draped over my forehead.

  Think, goddammit.

  A marshal would cover a greater territory than a local lawman, and would possess a longer-reaching jurisdiction than either Billings or Clemens, who were county-appointed sheriffs; surely Billings and Clemens, and Charley Rawley, would know of any marshals assigned to this area. Lamps were lit upon street corners, creating pockets of light amongst the night, fully gathered by now, its black cloak draped over the town as Boyd and I ventured south and east. We were scarce a block from Tilson’s office; I could see lantern glowing against the canvas-covered window, though the hitching rail before it was empty; Whistler and Fortune, along with all of our horses and the wagon, were stabled just behind Tilson’s.

  Sudden as a spirit, Malcolm ran from across the street. The boy was alone, and out of breath, and my footsteps faltered; I allowed myself to believe that he was approaching so quickly because he bore good news. But I should have known otherwise.