Agnes Canon's War

by Deborah Lincoln

  “Hoo, but my leg itches.” He surveyed his stump, covered with a blanket. He appeared not to realize there was nothing there. “Nothing like a good smoke.” His head dropped back, and his eyes closed, lips turned up in satisfaction. To Jabez he looked to be twelve years old.

  Jabez settled his knives, which had been drying in the sun, back into their velvet nests and closed the lid of his case. “Nothing more I can do here.” In truth, he knew the chances of Jake lasting the day out were slim. He turned to Reuben and held out his left hand. “Good luck, my friend. When you get him home, let me know. I’ll come out.” To Willard he said “Any of your other boys need doctoring, try Caldwell, down in Liberty.” He started across the clearing.

  “Hey. Robinson.” Willard’s voice followed him. “I ain’t forgetting.”

  Jabez turned, fixed the flat silver eyes with his own black-eyed scowl. “I don’t expect you are, Bigelow.” Jabez moved off through the brush.

  34

  August 1862

  Jabez arrived home near midnight, but the household was astir, lamps lit in the kitchen and the children’s bedroom. Sarah Belle had fussed and fretted all day long, and at first Agnes thought Jabez’s absence disquieted her, but now she tossed in her crib, the sheet damp, her small body hot to the touch. Agnes and Rose hovered, swabbing her with cool damp cloths. Rose brewed a catnip tea, and they slipped it between her lips, but she fought them and more tea ended up on the bedclothes than in the child. Agnes held her, rocked her, but she wailed and writhed, her features contorted, and only when they lay her down did she hush. She’d learned a few words, but nothing that might tell them where it hurt, and by the time Jabez returned, both Agnes and Rose stumbled with exhaustion.

  Charlie huddled against the wall, awakened by the hubbub, the covers clutched under his chin though the room steamed. His frightened eyes took in a scene that must have appeared fantastical to him, the lamp flickering in the late-night darkness, the shadows of his mother and his nurse growing and shrinking on the bedroom walls, his small sister crying in creaky, high-pitched wails. When Jabez strode into the room, disheveled, fatigued, still clutching his medical case, Agnes moaned in relief and dropped onto Charlie’s bed, gathering him in her arms, letting her frustrated tears drop onto his bright, sleep-scented head.

  Without a word, Jabez set down his case and leaned over the crib, laying his hand on his daughter’s forehead. Looking up, he told Rose to bring him hot water and soap and to make a poultice with the echinacea he kept in a sealed canister in the surgery. Agnes leaned against the wall with Charlie in her arms, watching her husband with dumb eyes, feeling the weariness roll off him. He picked up the lamp and held it over the crib, lifting Sarah’s arms and legs one after the other, pulling down her lower eyelids with the utmost tenderness. While he examined he crooned to her, a low and tuneless song he often sang to her at bedtime when she claimed her place in his lap and he rocked her to sleep. She quieted for a moment, her breathing gentled, but when he stroked her neck, bent her head from side to side, she started up again, a distressed cry that squeezed Agnes’s heart like a vise.

  “Take Charlie out of here,” Jabez said, without raising his eyes from Sarah. “Put him to bed in our room and don’t let him back in here.”

  Whatever her illness, it was contagious. Agnes didn’t question him, but scooped their son, now nearly asleep, and hurried out of the room, passing Rose with the water basin. She tucked him into their bed and stroked the damp strands from his forehead as his eyes closed and his breathing steadied. Once he slept, she sat for a moment longer, studying his features, the smooth childish skin, the small sturdy limbs, thinking how vulnerable he was, how defenseless. She kissed him on the forehead and returned to Sarah’s room.

  Jabez met her at the door. “Leave her,” he said. His voice croaked with exhaustion. “Rose will sit with her for now. I’ve put a poultice on her. The tea will ease the fever as much as we can expect.” He looked over his shoulder, where Rose leaned over the crib, stroking, gently, softly, with a damp cloth, and murmuring words I couldn’t make out. “We’ll take turns watching, but first you need to rest, and I need food.”

  She followed him down the stairs, loathe to leave her daughter with anyone else, even Rose. In the kitchen, he splashed water over his face at the wash basin, shed his coat and waistcoat, and dropped wearily into a chair at the table, face in his hands. She opened the door of the cook stove, stirred up the coals, threw in more wood, and set the coffee pot to the front to reheat. Then she turned to Jabez.

  “What is it?”

  “Maybe influenza, maybe a kidney infection.” He rubbed his hand over his eyes, down over his beard. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair askew. “But I think it’s more likely meningitis.”

  She dropped the frying pan she’d picked up with a clatter on the sink board. There was a buzz in her head, a tingle to her breath that clutched at her throat. “No,” she said. “No, don’t tell me that.” She leaned over the table, over him. “Jabez, tell me what it is. What’s wrong with Sarah?”

  He stood, reached for her across the table, hands on her arms. “I think it’s meningitis,” he said again. “We have to face it, Agnes.” His grip tightened. “I need you to help me.” He was silent a moment, eyes fastened on hers. “I just need you,” he whispered.

  They stood there for what seemed to be a lifetime. “It’s not always fatal,” he said finally, dropping his hands and sinking into his chair. “But we must be very careful not to pass it on to Charlie.”

  She turned back to the stove, broke eggs into a bowl, added milk, and shaved off cheese from the slab tucked under a glass cover. A glob of preserves smeared the cover, it needed cleaning before it attracted ants. She found a whisk in the cutlery drawer and mixed together her ingredients. Counted the strokes as her mother had taught her—one-two-three-four—not too many, keep the omelet light and fluffy. One-two-three-four. She dropped butter into the frying pan. Poured in the egg mixture. Stared at the setting mash and wondered what it was, what she should do with it next. Then Jabez was next to her, spatula in hand. He flipped and stirred, and she found herself sitting in a chair, staring at the floor, her mind empty, while Jabez slid his eggs onto a plate, poured himself coffee. She thought, as if from a distance, that he probably hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours and had faced who knew what during that time, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t raise her head, or lift a hand to help him.

  Later, she remembered being carried up to bed, tucked in next to Charlie, Jabez slipping in on the other side. She woke to find her son curled against her, Jabez gone, light drifting in past the heavy curtains carrying with it the street sounds of the village beyond. She lay there for a moment, wondering why Charlie slept with them. And then memory flooded in, and she curled in on herself, the hurt clawing red hot through her as if her blood were on fire.

  They took turns watching beside the baby’s bed, fighting the disease with unavailing baths, futile poultices, useless teas. Dick attended to the chores, including the cooking, while his wife nursed someone else’s child with the devotion of a mother. Nancy and Rachel and Elizabeth slipped in and out, providing food, whisking away laundry, entertaining Charlie. The days merged into nights and back again to day. Rash invaded Sarah’s small body, light from the dawn tormented her eyes, she refused all food. Agnes and Jabez watched their daughter die by inches. On the sixth day, at eight in the evening, as the sun set behind a bank of bruised clouds, Sarah Belle slipped away.

  The house sank into a bottomless hush, her wails silenced. Agnes held her and felt her tiny heart still, Jabez and Rose and Elizabeth clustered with her in the small bedroom. She stroked the smooth forehead, pushed back the dark curls, touched the soft lips, straightened the damp shift. The door squeaked open, and Charlie pushed his way in. A shaft of light pierced the room and caught him in its glare as the sun sent a last beam across the prairies and into the room. Charlie stopped abruptly, rubbed
his eyes and whimpered. “Mama. My eyes hurt.”

  Jabez looked at him dully, rose and knelt before his son, put his hands on the boy’s shoulders, then carefully unfastened the tiny buttons on his shirt. Red spots speckled his small chest, the rash ugly and cruel. Jabez turned and looked at Agnes and, at that moment, they knew they would lose both their children.

  

  They buried them next to Eliza, on the hill above town. The elegant monument Jabez had erected to his first wife cast a gentle shadow over the two tiny graves, and Agnes comforted herself with the fantasy that Eliza watched over them. The night before the funerals, Jabez sat up with the children, the two miniature coffins in the front sitting room where he’d so often played with them, told stories to them, loved them. Agnes’s heart and mind craved unconsciousness, and she slipped into sleep just after sunset that last evening. In the morning she found him dozing in his reading chair, the lid of Charlie’s coffin propped open, his wooden alphabet scattered across the blue satin coverlet.

  

  By the end of that summer, the war waxed frantic in Missouri, threatening Holt County itself. The Confederate colonel Joe Porter ranged across the northern counties gathering bushwhackers and southern sympathizers to his command. They heard that Wil Bigelow’s gang, minus Jake who, Reuben confided to Jabez, had not lasted through the day, joined up with Porter and raided as far west as Cravensville, three counties east of Holt. The rebels took Independence and its arsenal, and killings, lootings and battles buried the countryside around Kansas City in ash and corpses. Skirmishes were reported south of St. Joseph, and federals from Fort Leavenworth invaded and killed civilians and guerillas alike. Swarms of southern sympathizers left Price’s losing army and clogged the roads, exacerbating the tensions between neighbors, driving levels of distrust to dizzying heights. And killing, so much killing.

  Agnes and Jabez ignored the news from outside their home. They lived as if sealed in a bell jar. Death meant nothing to them; they knew death. They owned it. The autumn crept in with its riot of colors, its rich smells of ripeness and rot, and they spent hours on the porch or lying by the stream beneath their willow tree, talking about nothing and everything. They kicked through fallen leaves, hand in hand, when they visited the cemetery or walked to the Jacksons or the Kreeks. Jabez’s medical practice languished, and instead of paying house calls, he and Dick built a smokehouse out back, and they smoked a hog and venison against the uncertainties of the coming winter. Rose and Agnes preserved and dried fruit, baked, cleaned and sewed and immersed themselves in mindless toil.

  But something happened to Jabez in December, and with the approach of Christmas, he began receiving patients again. One day he slung his medical bag onto his saddle horn and made his rounds. He appeared to have passed through the pain and emerged on the other side, to a place Agnes couldn’t even imagine existed. It wasn’t callousness on his part, but a detachment that encouraged calm and peace of mind. And though the pain still had power to twist her soul at unguarded moments, Agnes was soothed. Her husband’s sense of quiet acceptance eased the days for her and made the nights bearable.

  35

  April 1863

  “Waa-wooo-yeeaaaay-yee!” Willard Bigelow threw back his head and howled the Rebel yell. Flames, feeble to the eye in the bright spring sunshine, licked out of the windows of Turner’s Mercantile. He sawed hard on the reins, and the mare settled on her haunches, snorting and wild-eyed.

  “Look there!” He waved his pistol at the burning building, and Ora Juwitt, clutching a bulging gunny sack, swung into his saddle and wheeled his horse around.

  Ned Turner bolted from the side door, head shrouded in a towel and a cloud of smoke. Wil aimed his Colt but the roan skipped, and his shot went wild.

  “Missed him,” Ora said and yanked his own revolver from its holster.

  “Damn,” Wil said. “I got a mind to put a bullet in this mare. Sure do miss the black,” and he shot again.

  Ora let off a streak of shots, and Turner dodged, blinded, in a tangled dance that dumped him ass first in a pile of horse shit.

  Wil roared. “I got him! Got him! He’s mine!” He squeezed the trigger again and yet again, and the man, untouched, threw himself flat on the ground.

  Ora’s horse held fast, and his next shot raised blood. Turner had shed the towel, and he shrieked, scuttling on hands and knees toward his burning store. Another shot from Ora, then a fusillade from both riders, and the man leaped in the air and dropped, one foot twitching.

  “Weeee-hoooo-eee!” Juwitt hollered. “Did you see that? Lifted him right off the ground!”

  “I’d a got him first shot if this damn horse’d hold still,” Wil muttered. “Fucking black had to go get himself shot.”

  “Joe Porter’s fault,” Ora said. Excitement over, he swiveled in his saddle to jam the gunny sack into a saddle bag. “He should never a charged that artillery. Maybe Dick Little’d be alive if he hadn’t.”

  “The black’s a bigger loss than Little,” Wil said. “Dick was always puking whenever he saw blood. The black kind of liked blood.”

  Juwitt snorted. “Tell that to Harlan. He’s right pissed about his brother.”

  “Well, Harlan’ll just have to get used to it. My brother died, too. I’m thinking of taking a little revenge anyway.”

  Wil finished reloading his pistol, shot once in the air and waved his arm at the rest of the boys. Harlan, down the street firing a stack of hay bales, waved back, launched his torch through the door of a barn and kicked his mount down the road to the south. Alfred Zerbin followed, leading a string of captured horses, and Jensen and Irving tumbled out of the saloon, arms filled with bottles.

  “What kind of revenge?”

  Wil nudged the roan into a walk. No hurry now, the rest of the townfolk would hide behind closed doors and curtains until Wil’s men were long gone.

  “Thinking about going back to Lick Creek. We never finished up there.”

  “Jake always said don’t shit in your own nest.”

  “Well Jake’s dead, ain’t he? And I aim to make sure Lick Creek don’t forget.”

  36

  May 1863

  Captain Billy Canon rode through the spring sunshine at the head of his column of militia, next to Joe Roecker. Joe’s Company C men marched with Billy’s Boys. Death, disease and desertion had taken their toll, and neither command mustered full strength. Their regiment spent the winter in Jefferson City, its companies vying for the honor of bedeviling the bushwhackers who raided up toward the Iowa line. Billy and Joe rode out in early May with fifty-some men, expecting to be gone a month or more. They traveled light and foraged, an art Joe Roecker excelled at. His command pilfered liquor and horses, saddles and household goods throughout the countryside, and nobody believed his men took only from southern supporters. Billy didn’t hold much with thieving from Unionists, but his men required provisions, and who could tell a Unionist from a secesh anyway? So he looked the other way.

  One thing he knew, he’d rather shoot prisoners than steal from civilians. The prisoners he’d captured on the Little Blue swore the oath and promised to go home, and now he and Joe stalked one of them, by name of Ferd Scott, who’d run right back to the bush and raised up a gang of his own. Roecker nagged Billy that he ought to have shot Scott when he had the chance, and he believed it. Sometimes he thought about it, late at night, and wondered about the slow change that worked on a man, day by day, in time of war. Like growing old, he imagined, one day you look in a mirror and your hair’s thin and gray and your face is creased, and you don’t really remember it happening. You’ve become a different person.

  The first couple of weeks in May, they saw no action, though Joe heard Scott’s marauders were holed up around Macon. By the time Billy’s Boys arrived, the gang had disappeared, leaving behind little in the way of forage or food for the militia and lots in the way of burned towns, abandoned farms, boarded up stores and
businesses. Inhabitants of the countryside peered out at them between the cracks of shutters as they passed or looked up from a plow and put a hand on the shotgun strapped to their backs. No one challenged them when Billy and Joe commandeered what little supplies they found.

  One day Billy rode up to a farmhouse to find a detachment of his own men butchering a hog in the parlor. Blood soaked into the thin carpet, mud and filth splattered sofas and walls. He lost his temper, shouting and threatening his men in front of the homeowner, a woman who sat, mute and stricken in her kitchen, clutching a toddler to her sagging chest. The men dragged the meat into the yard muttering to each other and finished the job there. No one offered Billy a cut, and he’d have refused it if they had.

  Another day they encountered a troop of eight men in Union uniforms riding out of a steep defile into the Charlton River bottom where the militia had bivouacked for a full day’s rest. The strange men hallooed the camp, and Joe invited them in for coffee and a share of fresh rabbit pie. The men tied their horses, squatted at the campfire, chatted, passed news, asked for and received a thousand rounds of shot, and rode off. The next day Joe and Billy happened on a group of farm women, grieving dry-eyed and burying their men and discovered their visitors had been William Quantrill and his men, traveling in Union uniforms and taking what they pleased from local farmers. Billy and Joe, in a foul mood at letting the worst bushwhacker in Missouri make fools out of them, vowed someone would pay.

  Payment came two days later. They forded the Locust River and crossed the prairie toward Princeton, trailing Scott who’d been reported harassing Union families in the area. The night before, in the middle of a heavy downpour that soaked the fuel and defeated any hope of a hot evening meal, a Mr. Vandever came to their camp and reported two drunk men claiming to be with Quantrill showed up at his door demanding food and liquor. Billy took his first lieutenant, Walt Lefever, and three privates with him to check out the story.