Savage Country

by Robert Olmstead

  “You can make a nigger work,” Ike said, “but you cannot make him think.”

  Michael stepped forward. These men were not strangers to him. He’d known them in so many places and long since taken their measure.

  “We are every day on borrowed time,” he said. “If we last, there will be enough for everybody.”

  At dinner and into the late hour the Gough brothers continued to harp on the deal struck with the Negroes and how any deal with Negroes was wrong and they should be run off the land. They’ll not work anyway. They’ll soon enough get the Negro sickness, such as headache; pain in their eyes, arms, and legs; their knees hurting; backs, necks, feet, hands, bowels.

  Later that evening Michael went out to make his rounds and to set the night watch. He told the men their talk was making the horses uneasy and maybe it was time they shut their g.d. mouths and go to bed. When he returned Elizabeth was sitting with the reverend doctor in front of her tent, and she called to him.

  “Are they still griping?” she said.

  “They’ll be having the sulks for a while,” Michael said, but he knew it was a grave situation.

  “Guess what he said to me,” the reverend doctor said.

  “I have no idea,” Michael said.

  “Starling said he was Methodist, but unless he dunks them in the river they do not believe it takes.”

  “Have I done wrong?” Elizabeth said.

  “Making a decision does not make something so,” Michael said.

  “It will be a great experiment,” the reverend doctor said.

  Michael went up the path toward the hired men. Within the glow of light given by the small fire the angry discussion was still going forward. Their words were drunk with fatigue and angry with betrayal and they were as if one long unceasing voice.

  “Who will boss them?”

  “We know how lazy those boys can be when there is no one to boss them up.”

  “I never saw such a ill-­looking lot of niggers.”

  “They won’t work so hard.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I think on it; I’d like it if we could just get rid of ’em. They ought to get some country and put them where they could be by their own selves.”

  No one slept much that night.

  Chapter 20

  Michael looked up and held a hand to the sky. Summer was over and the fall was coming. Beneath the blistering sun, he watched them through the glasses, the men and women working in the midst of 135 dead buffalo lying on the ground as if struck down by a single hand. Pastor Starling took off his shirt and his glistening back skin was seamed and ridged with scars from his neck into his waistband. His back was streaked and speckled, dusky white, pink, and pale, as if the color had been whipped out of it. Most of them worked with bare arms and bare feet, half-­clothed and wearing handkerchiefs wrapped on their heads. Some of them smoked, what he did not know, and they kept a little fire going to cook their food and light their pipes.

  Pastor Starling’s people did not work in twos but in gangs of three and four, and the money they earned was money for them all, as they were going to Kansas. To each gang a boy was attached whose business it was to sharpen knives, fetch water, and guide the team as it moved about the field.

  There were women who came with the men and they carried babies slung to their breasts with great triangles of cloth they knotted behind their necks. The babies they lay in a dump cart beneath the shade of a blanket while they worked with the men, and when the babies fussed, a woman would go and nurse them. When her milk was dry, it would be the turn of another woman to nurse the babies. Later in the day they retied the triangles of cloth and carried the babies on their backs as they worked beside the men.

  Ike Gough unholstered his revolver and fired a bullet into the ear hole of a buffalo not yet dead. He pointed his knife at Starling’s back, tipped his head, and drew the blade as if across his throat, and the brothers shared a laugh and went back to work.

  Large black buzzards sailed slowly, high above the plain. Flocks of larks, quails, and robins settled and dispersed, as did doves, swiftly flying in small companies. Wolves and coyotes could be seen waiting for the darkness when they’d be poisoned by the wolfer.

  The women followed the skinners and the butchers from carcass to carcass with long, thin knives. They collected the tripe and the sweetbreads—the pancreas and thymus—and these would go into the iron kettle back at their camp with a flitch of bacon and dried vegetables: corn, squash, and onions. At noon one of the women kindled a small fire and began roasting the hearts and livers for the men to eat. They ate the milk gut raw and drank the chyme until it ran down their chests.

  The old man named Elijah wore a brimless hat. At the hips he was wrapped round with a piece of old blanket tied with a rope. His ears were cut and he wore the brand of an M for Maroon on his cheek. He shuffled from one place to the next, powered by his hips and thighs. His Achilles tendons had been cut because he’d been a runaway. He asked the Millers if they’d take some food.

  “You have a good appetite, old man,” Story Miller said, accepting from him a skewer of meat. Story extended his hand in thank you. The old man looked at it before taking it into his own. His hands were as hard and rough as hickory bark and his skin was as black as tar.

  “You sure can eat your allowance,” Story said.

  “Yes, sir, when I can get it,” Elijah said, wiping at his gray whiskers.

  “There’s a genuine cotton nigger for you,” Ike Gough said to Abel. “Look at his toes.”

  Story Miller thought to stand up to the Gough brothers but knew they were men blood hot. They’d give no quarter. They’d kill you if they perceived a threat and in turn you would have to kill them both or suffer the revenge of the other. Story wanted to say, Mrs. Coughlin told us to behave like gentlemen, but he didn’t.

  Ike Gough rose up and hovered malevolently over Elijah. He then laughed at the old man and went back to his brother.

  “You were a horse rider,” Elijah said to Story. “I was a horse rider too.”

  “Where was that?”

  “First Mississippi Infantry, African Descent. I was bayoneted in the right breast.”

  “I was with the Second Massachusetts. Major David Coughlin.”

  “We were comrades in arms.”

  When Michael rode in they all stopped to watch him and the loping horse and the red dog and, for Pastor Starling’s people, especially the dog.

  Michael made the rounds to collect the spent lead they’d recovered. They dropped them into the sack he’d hung behind the saddle along with the two Sharps, the Winchester, and several canteens for cooling the barrels. He saved Pastor Starling for last. He spoke to him quietly, so only the pastor could hear.

  “Sit with me a while,” he said. “Let them see you smile.”

  He stepped off with the horse in the direction of the red dog and Pastor Starling followed behind. Michael dismounted and coiled down to the ground sitting on a leg tucked beneath him. He fished a cigarette from his pocket and struck a match, shielding the ember as Pastor Starling sat down beside him, propped on his hands and his legs stretched in front.

  “You didn’t kill anybody?” Michael said, looking away to the east. He felt safe, as he could see for miles across the blasted land and whoever might be traveling.

  “Are you looking for murderers?”

  “I am looking for a story I can believe,” Michael said.

  A tense moment passed between them. A pistol discharged and another buffalo was finished.

  “I confidently hope you believe me,” Pastor Starling said. His face was perfectly motionless, but his eyes conveyed the strongest emotions.

  Michael shrugged and gave a slight turn of his head. A muscle twitched in his cheek. He rubbed out his cigarette in a patch of dirt.

  “The things I said, it makes no matter what people say or think, they are what happened,” Pastor Starling said.

  “We all have our secrets,” Michael said, a flicker in
his eye.

  “Other men you see them and it makes you despise the weakness in yourself. The weaker the animal, the more you despise it.”

  “I see a sadness in them,” Michael said, meaning the buffalo.

  “That is your own sadness you see.”

  “There is sometimes too much in human nature to withstand,” Michael said, and then he said, “Thank you for talking to me. I apologize for bringing it up.”

  Michael stood as if he had been shot up from the ground. He mounted Khyber and looked down at Starling. “If they catch you, it will go hard on you.” Khyber shook her head causing the bit ring to jingle. In his pocket he found a square of chewing tobacco and tossed it down.

  “I reckon it will,” Pastor Starling said, tearing off a corner of the tobacco with his teeth. He made to toss it back, but Michael gestured no.

  “Don’t all come out here at once,” Michael said. “Take turns so all of you don’t get caught if it comes down. You will make your money.”

  Michael whistled up the red dog and wheeled Khyber. He made a nick nick nick sound and she leaped into a gallop. He let her run a hundred yards and another hundred and until he was small and away from where they were.

  BY THE TIME THEY finished the day’s skinning and butchering, the night was clear and the moon shined brightly. The boys had ferried load after load of green hides and meat back to camp. That first day Pastor Starling’s people were capable of processing only twenty buffalo among them, but as the days went by and they ate the warm hearts and the livers and drank the blood, their strength would improve and in short time they would get the knack of it. Now they were all trudging home to their dinners and blankets and sleep. They’d wake up to tomorrow and it would be the same as today.

  “There’s a wonderful moon this evening,” Elijah said.

  “Yes,” Story said, struck by the moment he was sharing with the old man. It was indeed a wonderful moon. The two of them looked at the sky for a long time and neither man wanted to break the spell of the moment cast. Neither man felt the strangeness of being together.

  Feeling dizzy, Elijah suddenly fell against him and Story tried to catch him, but the old man slipped to the ground.

  “Are you poorly?” he said, going down on his heels beside Elijah.

  “The work tires me a good deal,” Elijah said, and his eyelids drooped. At first he seemed reluctant to stand, but then he wanted to try. “Hold on to me, I want to get up,” he said.

  Elijah supported himself on Story and climbed to his feet. Glassy-­eyed and unsteady, he strained his eyes to make out the land ahead of him, but he could see nothing. Story called out and Elijah’s people came and loaded him in the wagon. Elijah raised a hand and Story waved.

  The two men would never see each other again.

  WHEN PASTOR STARLING BROUGHT the count, Elizabeth asked that he stay for tea.

  “The number is good. It will get better,” she said. “How do you find the work?”

  “Like we are living ten days in the week,” he said.

  “I wish to know more about you,” she said.

  “You are asking me to remember.”

  “I did not mean to pry,” she said.

  “Some of them folks in the turpentine woods didn’t even know there was a war,” Pastor Starling said.

  Once he started telling, he started remembering and he never knew what he would remember. Some people remembered better than others and he was of that kind. When he looked back there were no vanished years. He remembered them completely, acutely, and once again he was living moments of the past.

  “We saw soldiers,” he said, “but that was all and a while later we started receiving three dollars a month and didn’t know why and then we found ourselves in the jailhouse and then the turpentine farm.

  “At the outbreak of the war I was fifteen years old. My master had a brother in Texas and I was refugeed there with my mother and my two sisters for safekeeping. One day I went with my master’s brother to drive a herd of mules to Louisiana. While I was there he traded me for fifty head of cattle. I imagine he told everybody I was dead.”

  “You never saw your mother or sisters again?”

  “No, ma’am. Not ever again,” he said, and he did not look away and his eyes did not wet with tears. He knew Elizabeth Coughlin was a caring woman and yet he hated her in this moment. He knew it was unfair and unreasonable to hate this good woman, but he did. He hated the white material of kindness and sympathy and sentimentality. He hated God and the hypocrisy of his mercy.

  He sighed deeply and dropped his gaze to his hands folded in his lap. He laughed ruefully. He especially hated telling his story for no more than a cup of tea.

  “Is that a history you would want to remember?” he said.

  “I am at a loss for words,” she said. “Yours is such a heavy truth. I hope one day you find the freedom you are looking for.”

  He stood to take his leave. He smiled as he thought of the littlest thing: departing from the presence of a white person on his own initiative. He tipped his hat, gave a wink, and walked away.

  Chapter 21

  It was the Miller brothers, Story and Temple, very reliable men who came to Elizabeth on behalf of the others. They were making better numbers every day. They took off their identical gray felt hats and held them in their hands as a mark of respect. Temple Miller cleared his throat and spoke first.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Coughlin. How are you today?”

  “You find us as we are,” she said with a wave of her hand. The reverend doctor lifted his coffee cup, nodded, and took a sip. Elizabeth motioned to a chair. Temple Miller sat down, fretting with the brim of his hat while his brother stood behind him, his hands crossed in front of himself. Temple sighed and looked to a spot on the ground just beyond the toes of his shoes.

  “The men won’t go out,” Temple said.

  “My good man. You lose the morning, you lose the day,” the reverend doctor said.

  “They say they won’t go.”

  “We had an agreement,” Elizabeth said. She sat back to see him more clearly and beyond to the trickle of smoke ascending from the breakfast fire, flattening and drifting away, the other men gathered where they could watch. She found herself already growing angry.

  “It’s the Negroes,” Temple said.

  “The men say, ‘Niggers are going too high,’ ” Story said and then looked down at his hands, his wrists, his hat stained red with blood.

  “What does that mean?” she said.

  “They are all panting for riches,” the reverend doctor said to her. “They want more money.”

  “We came a long ways to get here,” Temple Miller said. “To make our money.”

  “I know that as well as anyone,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve worked hard.”

  “It isn’t right,” Story said. “I do not begrudge them, but I say, let them get their own. We fought and died for their freedom and we are entitled to something more.”

  “We all want to make the most of it while it lasts,” Temple said.

  “You are good hands. You will do well if you work hard,” Elizabeth said.

  “We worked our guts out to get us here, and for them it is easy sailing and they are profit for that,” Temple said.

  “What does it matter how far someone comes to work?” Elizabeth said, drumming her fingers on the tabletop.

  But she knew what it meant. They’d traveled together over the broad prairie of Kansas, crossed the dead line, and plunged deep into the country. They’d weathered the miles, the fire, the rivers, the heat, the snakes, the lightning. The knives and gunpowder, the tents, tools and provisions, all that they’d hauled here, when they could have stayed home.

  Temple’s voice was thin and yet unconflicted. He believed the things he was saying.

  Still, Elizabeth could not help herself. She wondered why men were so ignorant. Like David, she would rather trust a man and be deceived and not live with suspicion and cynicism and it was perhaps these
two brothers she trusted the most. But every one of them was now to her a liar, disloyal, and a storyteller.

  The reverend doctor was addressing her. “It’s the desire to get rich without working,” he was saying.

  “Mrs. Coughlin, the men will not work for the same pay as the coloreds,” Temple said. “They say a white man is worth more.”

  “You are all agreed in this?”

  “Time is money, ma’am, and we only have so long,” Story said. “This ain’t going to last forever.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed in the late morning air. She felt inside the fist of anger. Beyond the bluff to the west the big guns fired methodically, the cracking air a muffled thump by the time it crossed the valley, minute after minute.

  “Well, it’s work or starve,” she said. “Starling’s people sure enough know the truth of that.”

  “We ain’t coloreds, ma’am,” Story said. There was hurt in his voice. “And I do not hate them, but it ain’t right. Every hide they take is one less for us.”

  “Is that your answer, ma’am?” Temple said.

  “My answer? My answer is no.”

  The gun boomed again, a puff of a sound coming from the west. In her mind she could see the animal shudder, see its head lolling back and forth, see the flush of blood, see it collapse to its knees and onto its side. Tell her the sex, age, and weight of the animal and she could tell its worth in hide, meat, and bone.

  “Ma’am,” Story said.

  “What?”

  “They say they’ll kill the niggers if they go out.”

  Her mouth moved, she was too shocked to speak. Were there no rules or laws? Wasn’t money enough?

  “Who says that?”

  “It only takes one to say it,” Temple said.

  “It is a raw deal, ma’am,” Story said, and then he bit his bottom lip.

  She thought to invoke David’s name, to appeal to their years of service, but would not allow herself to do so. In a month’s time she could have a new crew, but what of the threatened bloodshed and what of these good-­souled men before her forced to do the devil’s bidding?

  “I will make it right with you,” she said. In her mind she made calculations as she spoke. Her right hand, her fingers all the while were tapping the table and her left hand in her lap, her fingers were doing the arithmetic.