Soul of a Crow

by Abbie Williams

  Rumors reached our ears after returning home, that Bainbridge Carter had been killed by a bullet to the gut, rather than illness. Tales of the crimes of retreating Federal troops were often grossly exaggerated, but I had seen with my own eyes of what desperate men were capable, on both sides of the fight; in any event, Boyd had not heeded these rumors, but I knew they troubled him still. The vision of his father defending their home to the last—making a stand against enemy soldiers and being cut down for his efforts—was at once valiant and terrible. Bainbridge and Clairee had been buried by the time we returned, near the headstones erected for their lost sons in the family’s plot near their home; my own folks were likewise already beneath the ground, our homes burned out and looted. Our paths forever and indisputably altered.

  And yet, as I had told Lorie that night at the Rawleys’, had we not been to War, had they survived, I would likely never have ventured from Cumberland County, and home, and I would not have found her—and that price was the only one too great to pay. I had survived the loss of everything I once held dear, but I would not survive the loss of this woman, my wife.

  And then I prayed, sending my thoughts upwards into the night.

  Let us live out our natural lives together. Please, let Lorie live to be an old woman, with me at her side. Let us watch one another age, our hair gone gray and our faces lined. Please. It cannot be unfathomable to ask of this.

  I would not consider all of the unheeded prayers of my past, the abject begging in the midst of one filthy, bloody battlefield after another. The whisperings I had made as I lay in the Suttonville cemetery that terrible summer of ’sixty-five, when I had wished for nothing but my own death, if for no other reason than to end the ceaseless torture of a functioning memory.

  Please. Do not let me die in a hangman’s noose. Not now. Not when I have so much to live for. If I must die, I will feign bravery, for Lorie’s sake, but please do not let it come to that, oh sweet Jesus, please.

  It was surely beyond midnight. I was restless with dormant energy, exhausted but unable to sleep, the threat of Zeb and Yancy never far from my mind. I had been rabid with fury at the news of Zeb firing on our wagon, our tent, during the hours of last night, possessed anew with the need to kill both men with my bare hands. What sadistic satisfaction I would find in wrapping my fingers about their throats and crushing away their worthless lives. Zeb, who had taken it upon himself during the ride back into Iowa City to tell me just what vile things he had done and would do to Lorie, when given the slightest opportunity. Zeb’s halting voice and odd manner of speech reminded me of a man I had known in the War, who had been kicked brutally in the head by a horse, but had survived.

  Zeb, who was surely hiding somewhere near, coward-like, awaiting his next chance to strike.

  Yancy, by contrast, remained quiet and aloof on the ride north, and related to me none of what he told Lorie when she was his prisoner. I might have been a complete stranger to him for as little as he spoke, the wound on my temple leaking blood; at least I had been granted the assurance that Lorie was safe with Boyd. And Whistler remained with me. My horse, whose gait was near as familiar to me as my own, who had survived the duration of the War. My horse, who I would not allow to be stolen that dreadful night in April of ’sixty-five. In the saving of my horse, I had taken the life of a Federal—one of too many to count, at that point in my life—but the very act of marching home in the wake of formal surrender, defeated and hollowed-out, should have suggested that the killing was over.

  I am not attempting to manufacture excuses, I am not, I thought, uncertain exactly to whom I directed these words; perhaps nothing more than my own conscience. He fired upon my face, and I would have been dead these past years, killed right there in that clearing if not for a misfire. I would have let him ride free, but he engaged further—he drew the saber first.

  Yancy’s brother chose his own death.

  I did not intend to kill him, not until he attacked and I had no choice.

  Did the hereafter take such things into account? I thought of Reverend Wheeler, the clergyman of my youth, whose sermons I had only ever listened to with half an ear, always on the lookout to catch my brothers’ gazes and exchange some joke. Boyd, Beau, and Grafton were likewise always near, and privy to our irreverent conduct, more than willing to contribute; many a strappings had we earned after misbehavior during Sunday service. The reverend was a fairly tolerant man, at least in my memory, with docile brown eyes that Ethan once commented reminded him of a milking cow.

  Would you have told me I could be forgiven? I wondered of the reverend, who, were he still living, would undoubtedly find it difficult to envision the boy he once knew should I appear before him now, changed as I was, both inwardly and outwardly. Young Sawyer Davis, eldest son of a kind-natured liveryman, would never have dreamed of the ferocity that would one day be enacted in battle, and endured; even in boyish speculation, and visions of imagined heroism, I had never considered there might come a time when I would be forced to kill another man.

  But I am not sorry for killing Yancy’s brother. I am only sorry for the terrible things that have come of it, since.

  My thoughts continued, heedless of my need for at least an hour’s sleep.

  I am not sorry, nor do I believe it is wrong to kill a man who intends you harm, who would as soon kill you. I would do so again. I would do so to save the life of those I love, without a moment’s hesitation.

  I would help Lorie come to understand this; I refused to allow her to be plagued by the guilt of taking Jack’s life, of being forced to bear witness to his violent death. That she had been under such circumstances again, defending herself against assault beyond imagining, was unbearable to me—as though life continually mocked my attempts to protect those I loved, and even as I lay there in flat-black darkness, I swore I felt the shadow of the crow.

  You could not save Ethan, or Jeremiah.

  Lorie could have been killed.

  Even now she is unsafe and you are able to do exactly nothing.

  “No,” I whispered, struggling beyond these thoughts, instead picturing Lorie as I had envisioned her earlier in the night. When our thoughts had intertwined in the way I had come to cherish and depend upon, the connection that bound her heart with mine, stronger than all else previously known to me. I closed my eyes and reached for her, and then, in the deeper dimness behind my eyelids, I suddenly beheld the red and unmistakable menace of growing flames.

  I sat up in a rush.

  The window glass was not quite enough to muffle the faint sounds of passage just outside the jailhouse—had I been asleep, had it been raining, I would not have heard it at all. Instinct drove me to crouch into the corner of the cell, seeking refuge, throwing my awareness outward; there was no reason for a soul to be here at this hour, and it was not Boyd, or Tilson, carefully turning a key in the lock.

  Yancy?

  Would he dare to act on his own?

  He would not.

  He would send Zeb to act for him.

  My thoughts raced, as a hog fleeing a butcher.

  You have no defenses.

  You are unarmed, a perfect target.

  The door opened just enough to emit a hulking figure, an enormous, smudged outline darker even than the blackness of the small room. He entered and closed the door, just as quietly. My heart was shredding itself to bits with beating, blood flowing hot and fast, preparing me to fight. I had no weapon. I hadn’t even the chain of the irons, which I might have used to choke him, and it would be a battle for my life. I understood clearly that one of us would die this night, and it would not be me.

  “Come along,” he murmured into the thick stillness, as though his presence had been anticipated. His voice emerged slowly, but he spoke with confidence—he would not be contradicted.

  I did not respond, though there was no hope of remaining hidden for long; he knew I was here.

  Zeb advanced and began working the key upon the lock of the barred door to the cell.
Like a prey animal, I hunkered in the corner with sweat gliding into my eyes, and observed. He would not be carrying his Henry—it was undesirable in this sort of close-quarters situation. Instead he would have a pistol, and sure enough, there was the shape of the shorter barrel, trained in my direction. The door swung inward and he took one step closer.

  “Step to, Johnny,” he said.

  Leap.

  The thought had not fully formed before I followed it, lunging at him with a roar, seeking to grip the nose of the piece and disable his ability to place a bullet. He sidestepped faster than someone of his girth should have been able, striking with his free hand, and the downward blow of his fist caught the edge of my jaw. The shock of it sang through my entire frame, but I was focused with deadly purpose and my aim proved true, closing around the barrel and redirecting its threat. He grunted and thrust all of his weight forward upon me, taking us to the dirt floor of the cell.

  I heard furious breathing, mine and his, as we grappled. He struck my face repeatedly, rendering me nearly stupefied, though I felt little pain. My world had narrowed to a slim corridor of resolve—that of keeping control of his primary weapon. The pistol was pinned uselessly beneath my torso and Zeb wrapped his left hand about my face, his thumb groping obscenely towards my eye, as though seeking entry into the socket. I grunted with the effort of battling him, shifting as best I could to knee his exposed side with all of my strength, and he wheezed, releasing his grip on my skull and turning in attempt to contain my lower half.

  “Son of a…bitch,” he uttered, as I continued my assault, intending to bust apart his ribs as I would have kindling. He lurched to the side in an attempt to trap my legs, not releasing his hold on the pistol. It discharged, whether by his action or mine, I did not know, and I felt the audible whoosh of the bullet as it sailed past my ear, lodging in the far wall with a thud. A red haze descended over my vision, my ears muffled as though with cotton batting, as they had been so often in battle. I was accustomed to this feeling, and let it envelop me, wrestling for control of the upper hand.

  Zeb was formidable, and I could sense he was the stronger of us. He bore down upon me, striking with a hard-knuckled fist, bent on my subjugation. I felt and tasted blood, coppery and slick, and was forced to relinquish one hand from its feverish grip on the barrel, catching at Zeb’s wrist in an upward swing. A growling issued from him, primal and inhuman, and before I could hope to dodge, blood and sweat trickling into my eyes, he butted his forehead viciously against mine. With this blow I reeled inescapably backwards, white-hot stars colliding across my vision.

  I had a vague sense of movement, and then the pistol was discharged again. A poker, fresh from the fire, jabbed into my left arm. No more than half-conscious, I suddenly observed my daddy, his frame cast in a vermilion halo by the blaze of his forge, as I had seen it a thousand times in my youth, his familiar mustached face with no trace of a shadow upon it as he worked the bellows and stoked the fire, heating an iron bar to a yellow-white glow so that it was malleable for shaping into a proper horseshoe. Sparks flew from the cinders therein and Daddy used his tongs to lift forth the metal, an inanimate object brought to life in the flames, which issued a painful, groaning hiss.

  I rolled to my uninjured side but could not escape Zeb. He holstered his piece and then bent, grunting with effort, and hooked his shoulder beneath my armpit, hauling me up as the burning agony bit deeper, and I groaned again. He hefted me, impossible a task as it may seem, and stumbled forward, out into the darkness of the street. No one had been roused by the gunfire. Or perhaps no one was choosing to investigate. Two horses waited, and he let me drop over the unsaddled of the two, face down and draping; before my consciousness fled, Zeb had efficiently cinched together my wrists and ankles beneath the horse’s belly. Breathing hard, he mounted his own and summarily led us from town.

  - 27 -

  I fell from the bed before I was fully awake, inadvertently dragging half the quilt behind me, propelled by the urgency of the nightmare. Blindly, I crawled across the space that separated me from the door. I heard panicked gasps and realized I was the one issuing them. I floundered, hunkering upon all fours on the wooden floorboards, disoriented, cloaked still in unreality—only seconds ago I had been half-naked on the street in St. Louis. I swore I could smell the acrid scent of a blazing fire, one intending to consume all in its ravenous path. Soot seemed to be in my nostrils.

  “Rebecca!” I begged, startling her awake.

  She sat at once, and whispered urgently, “What is it, Lorie? Are you hurt?”

  I stumbled to my feet, heart thrashing with tremendous and powerful fear. Its presence overrode all else in my body but did not yet have a direct object. I only knew that something was terribly wrong.

  What is it, what is it…

  The window, I realized.

  Though it was deep into a moonless night, a sort of glow backlit the oiled canvas covering, tinting it the shade of whiskey in a clear bottle. I blinked, absorbing this sight, and it was then that an unmistakable Rebel yell rolled across the night. At the incongruity of the sound in this time and place, my spine went rigid, each individual hair upon my nape standing straight. There was a brief, tense pause, and then another, simultaneously piercing and mocking. The person issuing the yell was no more than a quarter mile away.

  “What in the goddamn hell?”

  I heard Boyd utter this, and the thundering of his footsteps. I hesitated not a second, running barefoot through the small living space made dim and red by the banked fire in the woodstove; Boyd leaped the last three rungs of the loft ladder to reach the floor. Tilson was already up, strapping on his gun belt, hurrying into his boots.

  “You Rebel sons-a-bitches!” came a low-pitched howl, Zeb’s voice, profanely joyous at uttering these words. It continued, “Come out, come out…wherever you are!”

  “Stay away from the window!” Tilson commanded sharply, moving to the closed door, rifle in hand and directed at the ceiling beams.

  “Boy! You stay put!” Boyd ordered Malcolm, an arm outstretched to prevent disobedience of this issuance, as it was clear the boy intended to follow his brother and Tilson. Boyd grabbed his repeating rifle from where he had propped it near the door, moving to Tilson’s side.

  “Boyd,” Malcolm protested, his eyes intense, and in the fire’s glow he looked less like a boy than I had yet witnessed, as though his adult self was unexpectedly granted this moment to peer briefly outward.

  “Do not go out there,” Rebecca pleaded, looking desperately between Boyd and her uncle. Cort and Nathaniel cuddled close, peering from the loft like possums in a tree.

  “Where you grayback boys hidin’? Y’all ain’t cowards, are yous?” Zeb yelled from outside, affecting a taunting and rancorous drawl.

  “He is a dead man,” Boyd muttered, with unqualified resolve. “He will not see the sunrise, I swear this.”

  “He wants for you to come out there, do not you see?” Rebecca said, and I saw the tears in her eyes despite the dimness of the room.

  Using her given name for the first time, Boyd ordered adamantly, “Rebecca, take them an’ stay away from the door, an’ the windows, no matter what.” He called up to Cort and Nathaniel, “Boys, I need for you to come down here, an’ stay by your mama,” and they clambered down the ladder as he bade, without question, moving to Rebecca’s open arms.

  “Boyd,” she implored, desperately, when it seemed apparent he could not heed her words, that he would surely be forced to venture outside.

  “Bastard’s around back,” Tilson said, clearly calculating options. “Best I can figure he’s positioned in the stand of oaks, yonder. Damnation. We must figure it’s Zeb and Yancy, both. Goddamn. Do they think we’re about to come running out?”

  “You want me to ride for the marshal?” Malcolm asked. “I can make me a run for the corral.”

  No sooner had he uttered these words when Zeb bellowed, “He’s a right pretty sight! You ain’t gonna come see?”

&
nbsp; And hearing that question, I knew.

  “What the hell?” Boyd growled, advancing to the window, though it faced the front yard and offered no explanation for Zeb’s words. “What’s he about?”

  I evaded Boyd and opened the door, racing into the night before the thought fully formed, even as Boyd roared at me to stop. But I was compelled by a force outside of myself as I flew around the edge of the house.

  And then I saw.

  Never before in my life had time so hideously folded over upon itself. The only way my mind could comprehend what it beheld was to deny all truth, to disbelieve all senses, and therefore continue existing. A scream rang in my skull. I heeded nothing in my path as I ran—far too slowly, as though mired in viscous mud—ran and ran, but I could not get there in time. As if I already knew it was too late.

  Rifle in hand, Boyd pursued and overtook me, and though I did not hear the shot, I saw its impact strike him down. I loved Boyd as deeply as any blood kin, but I could not stop for him, not now, mindless and deranged but for one purpose. I fell, skittering to my knees, gasping and sobbing, raking at the flames as if I had any hope of dousing them with no water source. Burning chunks of wood tumbled to my skirt and I felt nothing. All of the pain, wrenching and destroying me, was internal, centered in my heart.

  A crude, low-lying wooden pyre had been constructed beyond the house, far enough that the man building it could go unnoticed in the dark, but with every intention of letting those in the house see the blaze, once lit. It was very near the spot I had hugged Whistler, just earlier this evening. The pyre was burning now, and Sawyer had been draped atop, on his back; I could see the perfectly-formed arch of his pale throat in the scarlet glow—his hands were blackened. The ends of his hair were afire. In that moment, I was certain he was dead.

  But I climbed that blaze.