Soul of a Crow

by Abbie Williams

  “I can scarce think that far,” I whispered. “I can’t think beyond Sawyer being free of that miserable jail.”

  “He will be,” Boyd said, low and steady. “We gotta trust in that, Lorie-girl.” When I remained silent, he leaned a hair closer and intentionally lowered his eyebrows, imparting the seriousness of his words. He said, “You’s been stronger than I coulda guessed, through all a-this. I want you to know that.”

  “It doesn’t seem that way, to me,” I said at last, stroking the soft spot beneath Whistler’s forelock. She nickered and nudged with her nose, encouraging me to continue such ministrations upon her face. I admitted, “I feel a right wreck, most days.”

  “No, you’s nothing of the kind,” Boyd said. He tilted back at the waist and studied the sky for a few breaths. Still looking that direction, he said softly, “I was thinking this evening of a girl I knew from back home, named Livy. Had there been no War, had we stayed in Suttonville, I woulda married her.”

  He had spoken of many girls from his past, but never with such a somber demeanor. Though I was fearful he might say she had died, I asked quietly, “Where is she now?”

  “I looked for her when we got home that spring, in ’sixty-five. Her daddy raised corn an’ flax a few miles from the Bledsoe holler, an’ in my foolish pride, I thought she mighta waited for me. She hadn’t, as I shoulda well known. She’d married Charles Main when he come home, near six months before. Already expecting a young’un by the time my sorry self showed up at her door.”

  “Had you been promised?” I asked. I thought of the customs of my old life, the tendency of the older generation to arrange early matches, to cast their speculative gazes to neighboring sons and daughters as potential mates for their own children.

  Boyd met my eyes with a half-rueful grin. He said, “Me an’ Livy shared a few kisses, I’ll not deny, long before I ever dreamed of bein’ a soldier. She was one of the few girls in the holler not sweet on Ethan Davis in them days. He knew the ladies all adored him, an’ he was right shameless.”

  “Sawyer has told me a few stories about Ethan,” I said, smiling a little. It seemed as if there had been trouble to scare up anywhere near, then Ethan Davis sought it out.

  “It seems like a dream of another time,” Boyd said, on a sigh. “I swear, sometimes I think I only just imagined them days in the holler, runnin’ wild with Sawyer an’ the twins, an’ my brothers. We was carefree as the wind.”

  “Sawyer speaks much the same of those times,” I said. “We were all so blessed in our upbringings. I wish I would have fully understood that, at the time, but we never know what we have, not as children, do we?”

  “That’s so,” Boyd agreed. “Though I can’t reckon a time when I weren’t thankful, deep inside. Lord knows we never had much, scarce two coins to rub together at any one time, but Daddy an’ Mama made our house a home. Never wanted for love in them days. Shucks, I aimed to raise me a passel of my own boys in the same holler. Live near my brothers, an’ the Davis boys. Surely that weren’t too much to ask for. But life had other plans for us.”

  “It did,” I whispered.

  “An’ the path we’s on now, however painful, is the right one, I believe this,” Boyd said. “I aim to get us all north, like I promised. I am fixin’ to see the sun rise in Minnesota before next month is out.” But just now his eyes were fixed on Rebecca.

  My heart gave a sudden, hopeful thump, but before I could speak, Boyd said, “Partly for Gus’s sake, too. He longed to begin afresh. I’d like to get there for him,” and tears came to my eyes, even though I knew Boyd had not intended that.

  “Boyd…” my voice faltered, and he looked at me, eyebrows lifted in question. I whispered, “I am sorry…for Gus…”

  Understanding descended over his features and he said adamantly, “I didn’t mean to hurt you by sayin’ that, Lorie. Gus loved you, an’ he woulda done right by you. I knew him my whole life, an’ if giving his life was what it took to save the woman he cared for, he woulda paid that price. It ain’t your fault.”

  I rested my forehead against Whistler.

  “C’mere,” Boyd said gruffly, and enfolded me into a brotherly headlock. He gently knuckled my scalp, as I’d watched him knuckle Malcolm’s a hundred times. Against my hair, he whispered, “It’s all right, Lorie-girl.”

  “Mama, it’s the marshal!” Cort suddenly heralded, and I felt the tense shifting in Boyd’s frame as he drew back; together, we turned in the direction Cort was indicating, to see a rider approaching at an elegant trot through the lovely purple dusk.

  “Evening, folks,” Quade acknowledged all of us with poised politeness. He walked his mount into the dooryard with the ease of someone familiar with the space, tipping his hat brim. Tilson rose from his chair to greet him, and Quade said, “Evening, Edward.”

  I looked at once to Rebecca, who had let Nathaniel carefully back to the ground. She stood silently, her son gripping her skirt, watching as Quade spoke briefly with her uncle.

  “Lookit, Marshal, I caught a firefly!” Cort said, running near with his hands clasped. Quade took a moment to exclaim over the boy’s find, while Rebecca drew closer her shawl and slowly followed in her eldest son’s footsteps.

  “Good evening, Becky,” Quade said, removing his hat as she drew near. His voice held clear fondness for her; he seemed unable to get enough of the sight of her face and reached immediately to appropriate her hand, kissing the back of it, however politely. I regarded Quade anew; he was not as old as I had first taken him to be, dressed this evening a hair finer than he had yet been, and appearing far more approachable—a noticeably handsome man come to pay a call, rather than a strictly law-minded marshal. He said, “I apologize I haven’t been yet to visit. Perhaps you would accompany me for a walk, as the evening is so fair?”

  Beside me, Boyd stood still as a salt pillar.

  Rebecca nodded assent, and Tilson said, “We’ll just have to enjoy ourselves without your company for a spell, honey.”

  Boyd muttered, barely audibly, “I believe I’ll retire.”

  And without another word, he disappeared within his and Malcolm’s tent.

  - 24 -

  It rained in the deep of night, a soft cadence which at first incorporated into my dream. I lay within a pile of quilts, half untucked in the chill of the darkened air, and the gentle pattering of droplets upon the wagon cover transformed into the beat of drums in the distance, advancing ever closer. I shifted restlessly, half-asleep, and saw against the canvas of my mind a dim gray battlefield, upon which a ragged line of soldiers appeared. Before I could retreat, I was inundated by them. Hunched and broken they were, some marching without boots, their faces robbed of all purpose but one.

  Sawyer! I screamed, the ground cold and hard-packed beneath my bare feet, riddled with ruts and loose rocks. I scrambled, stumbling to gain a solid foothold, searching the faces of those passing near me with mounting desperation. Where are you? Answer me!

  Do you know Sawyer Davis? I begged the soldiers, one after the other, but they did not answer, scarcely heeded my presence, as though, here in this place, I did not truly exist. Horses brushed near my skirts as they followed in the same direction, some with blood dried stiff on their hides, others with injured limbs, hobbling as painfully as their masters.

  Please, I sobbed, trying unsuccessfully to grasp at tattered coat sleeves. Please, where is he? You are his Company, this I know!

  A boy sat on a split stone, a few yards away, a heavy battle drum poised on his lap. He watched with solemn eyes as I crawled towards him, on all fours now, as Letty had been upon the birthing bed. Blood, cold and wet, seeped around my hands and then my wrists, but I believed the boy possessed answers. I had nearly reached him when a crow the size of which I had never beheld, blacker than the absence of all light, landed atop his slender shoulder. The boy sagged under its weight.

  Oh, Jesus…I gasped, falling utterly still.

  We are dead, ma’am, the boy said, politely and slowly, a
s though speaking to someone who required exaggerated explanation of a simple fact. His flesh was mushroom-colored, slick with the misting rain. He did not acknowledge the crow, though it sank its talons to gain a firmer hold in order to adjust its enormous wings. Its beak was poised near the boy’s ear.

  Where is Sawyer? I whispered, dragging forth my resolve. I demanded, Answer me.

  They’s bound for heaven, Lorie-Lorie, the boy murmured in a different voice, my sweet Malcolm’s voice, and my heart shriveled. He concluded, But it’s a right tough march to get there.

  Teeth bared and grinding together in my horror, I gasped, This is not real. I do not believe you are real.

  Witness, the crow whispered.

  Blue-white lightning bit into the sky; I felt its electric pulse deep within. Rain increased its frantic tempo, and thunder sounded loudly enough to crack apart the atmosphere. I turned away from boy and crow to spy the landscape choked now with soldiers, lurching and stumbling, some trampled in the crush of bodies and falling over one another, until their ranks resembled stacked wood. Heads thrown back, chests gashed open and ribs displayed, like gutted animals in a butcher’s window, fingers limp and dangling; there a boot yet connected to a torn pant leg, though the soldier within the uniform had rotted away.

  I can’t hardly figure that many men dead in one fell swoop, I heard Boyd say, somewhere beyond my sight.

  A growling came from between my teeth and I thrashed at the crow, wishing fervently to destroy it, but it remained maddeningly unperturbed, impervious to my gesticulating arms, only cocking its skull and angling a small black eye to peer behind itself. Again on all fours, I scrabbled around the rock and another sizzle of lightning perfectly illuminated for me the scene just beyond.

  Screaming split my skull, thunder tore the skin from my bones.

  Someone shook me, forcefully.

  “Lorie!”

  Even when my eyes opened and I comprehended that it had been a nightmare of hellish proportions, I could not stop screaming. Boyd and Malcolm had nearly climbed over the top of one another to reach me in the wagon, having been sleeping only paces away in their wall tent, both of them now crouching in the cramped space beside me, and damp with rain. Thunder exploded as would a discharged bullet, causing the ground to tremble and tins to rattle, gaining strength as the storm increased in fury.

  “Lorie, what’s wrong?” Boyd demanded in the pause between bursts of ear-walloping sound. Lightning flared, briefly creating the illusion of daylight. “What is it?”

  I could not catch hold of my wits enough to answer, and he shook me, demanding, “Lorie!” Thunder detonated just ahead of another sizzle of lightning, and new wariness jerked Boyd straight. “That was a rifle,” he said, trepidation weighting his voice.

  Malcolm, clutching my other arm, suddenly issued a noise somewhere between a hiss and a strangled cry, his gaze fixed behind me. I turned in time to observe as a flash of brilliance momentarily backlit the hulking figure of a man on horseback and toting a long-barreled firearm, the noise of his sneaking passage muffled by the rain. Just outside the wagon he was, advancing, no more than steps away.

  Boyd shoved both of us to the wooden floorboards, so swiftly and with such force that my lungs emptied of all air. He aligned his body over his brother and me, breathing hard, and thunder shattered just as a round was fired into the side of the wagon. It was such a double blast of reverberation that only buzzing nonsense could be heard in the aftermath. Pinned under Boyd’s weight and effectively deafened, I made little sense of the next events.

  Wood had splintered.

  Boyd’s elbow jabbed into my side.

  Rain grazed us from the hole now opened in the canvas.

  I tried to turn my face to see what was happening—

  Another volley of chaos, thunder or rifle report, I could not discern.

  Boyd jerked sideways and the bones of his forearm dug harder into my face.

  Boyd, I tried to say, hideously worried, hearing shouting from outside. And then suddenly he was up and moving fast.

  Lightning highlighted the huge man and the length of his rifle, but he was angled differently now, away from the wagon.

  Malcolm scrambled after his brother, even as Boyd absolutely leaped to the ground and hollered, “Stay put!”

  A horse galloped away; I could hear its hoofbeats.

  I rolled to my knees and through the oval opening at the back of the wagon could see Tilson with his rifle braced to his shoulder, firing repeatedly. Malcolm disobeyed his brother’s command and followed directly after, into the drenching rain; I was on his heels, and only one thing crossed my mind.

  “Sawyer!” I screamed, cupping my temples and thinking his name, begging for his attention. I was certain that it had been Zeb wielding the rifle—and, having met resistance here at Tilson’s, there was nothing to stop him from riding into Iowa City and shooting his way into the jailhouse.

  Perhaps he already had, and with all my energy, I called silently to Sawyer.

  Fortune raced past, Boyd bent low; the mare cleared the yard at a gallop, and horse and rider were nearly instantly blotted from sight by the storm.

  Lorie, oh God, what is it? What’s wrong? Sawyer’s frantic voice filled my mind, and my knees went weak with relief, momentary though it was.

  Zeb was here, I told him, closing my eyes, sending the thoughts as hard as I was able. Boyd is following him, but he may be coming for you, oh Sawyer…

  Are you harmed? he demanded.

  No, but I am so scared…

  And in a dark corner of my mind, the crow landed smoothly, dragging sideways the slender frame of the dead drummer boy.

  Malcolm caught my arm and cried, “Where’s Boyd going?”

  “To Sawyer,” I said, with certainty, leaning close to the boy’s ear so that my words were audible above the rain. Thunder echoed over the land, shuddering the ground, which was cold and soggy beneath my bare feet.

  “You two! Come along!” Tilson yelled, gesturing at us. “C’mon!”

  “Where is Boyd?” Rebecca asked frantically, grasping at my arm as we hurried inside. She was clad in her nightclothes, her long dark hair loose, the worry in her eyes leaping forth and into mine.

  “He’s riding to Sawyer,” I said, as Tilson shut the door and moved at once to flank the window. “We’ve endangered you,” I said, in anguish. “I am so sorry…”

  Rebecca took me into her embrace, and Malcolm wrapped his arms about the both of us, shivering in his wet clothes.

  “That fella Zeb, I do believe, was firing on the wagon, in this very yard,” Tilson said, shaking water from his hair, keeping firm hold of his repeater. “Damnation, I thought it was thunder woke me. By the time I gathered my senses an’ fired on the big son of a bitch, he could have killed the lot of you. Some solider I am, Jesus Christ.”

  “Uncle Edward,” Rebecca admonished. Her face was pale as a dogwood blossom, though she kept purposefully preoccupied, shushing her boys, sending them back up to the loft with murmured reassurances, before stoking the fire in the woodstove.

  “Are you hurt, either of you?” Tilson demanded, his eyes roving over us in search of any injuries. “What of Carter?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, miserable at this lack of knowledge. Boyd had moved so quickly, mounting Fortune and riding out, that I had not noticed one way or the other if he was wounded.

  “I fear Boyd was hit. He jerked so strange-like,” Malcolm whispered painfully, unconsciously echoing my trepidation. Rebecca, a kettle poised in her hand, flinched at these words as though struck; she closed her eyes and I could see the struggle within her to continue the task. I tugged Malcolm to a chair and settled him.

  “I believe he is all right,” I said with as much fortitude as I could muster, sitting next to Malcolm so that I could see his face. Tears decorated his long lashes and his lips trembled. I elaborated, “He would not have been able to rise so quickly, nor ride Fortune, if he was badly injured.”

  �
��That is true,” Rebecca whispered, drawing a deep breath; she crossed the room to a trunk positioned near the loft ladder and withdrew two quilts, draping one over Malcolm.

  “Boyd is all right,” I whispered to her, as she placed the second quilt over my shoulders, and our eyes held fast; Rebecca was in torment, I could plainly see, but she nodded acknowledgment.

  The night dragged itself into early morning. Tilson at last abandoned his position near the window and joined us at the table; Rebecca, better able to manage her concern when moving, prepared coffee and boiled oats. I stayed near Malcolm at the table, all four of us uncharacteristically quiet as the storm rolled westward, its fury gradually decreasing. More than an hour ticked past before hoofbeats approached in the slackening rain, and Malcolm bolted outside into the first faint stirrings of silver daylight, leaving the door gaping.

  Rebecca flew to the open door.

  “Thank God,” Tilson said, as we all saw Boyd ride into view.

  I ran in Malcolm’s footsteps; Boyd dismounted and led Fortune to the corral, and he called to me, “I been at the jailhouse. I couldn’t get inside at first, but Sawyer is all right, I spoke to him through the window. Clemens arrived an’ I told him what happened, then hightailed it back here.”

  “It was Zeb, wasn’t it?” I asked breathlessly.

  Boyd nodded brusquely. He was soaked to the skin, his thick dark hair so wet it fell nearly to his shoulders. He growled, “He’s a goddamn dead man, the moment I see him again.”

  “What did Sawyer say?” I begged.

  Malcolm had been assessing his brother’s appearance, and his voice trembled an octave higher than usual as he observed, “You’s bleeding.”

  “Let me see,” I demanded, catching at Boyd’s arm.

  Boyd craned to look and said, “Shit, I figured as much. Bastard didn’t get a bullet into me, try as he might. But I believe I got a few splinters.”

  Once inside, Boyd remained a frenzy of livid motion, nearly unable to sit still long enough to let Tilson examine the wounds that bits of the wagon, made into weapons by the force of a bullet’s impact, had opened in his skin. Rebecca said not a word, but her relief was palpable; she was nearly unable to tear her gaze from him. Rain and blood streaked Boyd’s shirt, and his eyes blazed with dark fury.