Listen to the Mockingbird (8 page)

“You are not to go there again,” he said. A little puff of stale, hot breath hit my face with each word.

I leaned away. “Not go where?”

He grabbed both my arms above the elbows and yanked me to my feet. “Anywhere! You are not to leave this house!”

I weakly mouthed the first words that came into my head: “But…Fanny. I must see to Fanny.”

Andrew was at the front door. “If you value living in this world, you will not leave the house.” He left, slamming the door behind him.

And for the first time, the reality of my situation roared through my consciousness like a silent scream.

I think now that Andrew’s truly dangerous side was not the cruel side but the endearing one. He could tease, his pale blue eyes sparkling with laughter. And sometimes my heart would fairly wrench inside me to see him standing, feet slightly apart, one hand on the dining room table, head tilted down so the thick shock of red-blond hair fell across his brow, those same eyes filled with such a lonely sadness. It was those times I would know that if I just tried hard enough, I could repair whatever had gone crooked inside him.

A few months after he stole that hat, Andrew received orders to report to Fort Craig. We packed and began the journey southeast with a couple dozen others. The other officers were single, so Winona and I were the only women.

Andrew had entered one of his silent periods; and interpreting this to mean he had truly changed, I set out quite happy, believing everything might be different at Fort Craig. When we reached the Rio Grande, we turned south on a well-traveled trail. One of the men rode alongside our wagon pointing out landmarks. We were on the Camino Real, he said, the road cut by the Spaniards two hundred years before; and it excited me to be seeing the same rocks, the same soil beneath our wagon wheels as those first explorers.

We camped where a second river joined ours from the north. Wanting to explore a little, I went to find Fanny. She was obviously bored with following the wagons and welcomed the saddle.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Andrew’s voice came from behind me. We were quite alone between the tent and the stream.

“To see what there is to see,” I said. “It’s lovely here. Why don’t you come, too?”

“Go back to the tent. You are not to leave it.”

“I won’t go far.”

He took a step toward me. “Get back in the tent. You’re the only woman here.”

“No, I’m not. There’s Winona. I’ll take her with me if you want.” I was holding the harness, preparing to insert the strap into Fanny’s mouth.

“Get back in the tent.”

I turned to look him straight in the eye and kept my voice calm and low. “Please believe me. I won’t go far. I only want to ride a bit.”

Andrew snatched the reins from my hand, threw them about my neck and twisted. I fell to my knees unable even to gasp as my heart exploded in my ears. He twisted the straps again and I thought my head would burst. My heart near beat its way out of my chest; my lungs didn’t know what to do with the air inside them. Andrew’s face snarled into mine, and the world got black around the edges.

Chapter Nine

In his own good time, Andrew loosed his hold and I crumpled to the ground. After that, something inside me changed. Looking back, I confess I am puzzled by my response. I was frightened of Andrew, but I was also afraid that someone might find out. I suppose it was my pride. No one must discover my sordid circumstances. Above all, I detested the thought of becoming an object of pity.

I no longer deluded myself with the notion that I could “fix” whatever was wrong with Andrew. But instead of going to any of the two dozen men who might help me, I took great pains to hide the bruises and to appear normal. I tied a strip of flannel about my throat and feigned a cough. I was so good at this I was sure even Winona did not know.

Dazed and unresisting, I continued the trek oblivious to the landscape, to Andrew’s fellow officers and, especially, to myself.

The following night, Andrew brought Fanny’s reins into our tent and made me sleep with them around my neck.

Numb, dazed and exhausted, I fell into a troubled sleep until something smashed into my pillow near my ear. My eyes flew open to stare at a hatchet blade buried in the feathers inches from my cheek.

Andrew stood over me, his pale eyes like chunks of evil glass.

“Don’t even think about taking my mother’s cherrywood chest,” he said, his voice low and deadly. “All those pretty gold pieces were not hers, but they are mine! And will always be mine. Never yours. Never. If you so much as look at that chest, I will carve you into small pieces of meat and roast you over the fire. I might even treat the men to a special banquet.”

999

For some wholly irrational reason, I looked upon our arrival at Fort Craig as an end to my ordeal. Exhausted but relieved, I unpacked. Now things would return to normal. All of this would become what it really was: a horrible dream.

The first week, I spent all my waking hours making our little mud house tidy and homey. Because Andrew still was under court-martial for the stolen hat incident, he was not assigned to active duty. He had not yet begun to chafe at that, regarding himself as quite clever to be paid for doing nothing. He was cheerful and even helped me polish my grandmother’s silver.

I told Winona that Andrew had harbored some odd ailment that made him understandably ill-tempered, but he was now recovered and himself again.

Her face went deadly serious, her eyes hard at the corners. “No, Miss Matty. Do not fool yourself.” And then she disappeared, leaving me with a puddle of something cold in my innards.

A few days later, I rose, dressed and prepared to do some visiting. Several of the other officer’s wives had sent servants with invitations to come for tea as soon as we were settled.

Andrew had left early on some business of his own, Winona was preparing some sort of stew that had to simmer many hours and I spent the day laughing and chitchatting, and sipping tea. By late afternoon, I was feeling quite my old self and almost eager to go back to my little mud house to have dinner and exchange the day’s stories with my husband.

At home, I freshened up, washed my face, braided my hair again and changed my shirtwaist. At full dark, Andrew still had not appeared. I lit two oil lamps and the fire Winona had laid. Trying to sound cheerful and unruffled, I suggested she take a big portion of stew back to her own cabin. Something unavoidable must have detained my husband. I would serve him myself when he got home.

Having dined on nothing but tea and sweets all day, I was hungry; and after another hour, I ladled some stew onto a plate and was just sitting down, carefully not thinking about what might be keeping Andrew, when the door burst open.

“I see you have disobeyed me.” His words were slurred. He slammed the door behind him.

I had jumped when the door was flung open, but now the familiar false calm descended upon me like an armored cloak and I looked up at him. “Winona has made an excellent stew, Andrew. I’ll get a plate for you.” I started to rise but he slammed me back into the chair.

“You’ve told them, haven’t you! That’s why they won’t put me on active duty.”

My telling someone something was a frequent theme, and I no longer tried to understand what I was supposed to have told to whom. “No, Andrew. I’ve only been getting to know the ladies. Captain Blair’s wife is delightful and funny and—”

I got no further because Andrew yanked me up from the chair by my hair and dragged me toward the hearth, where he pushed me to the floor.

Cold metal pressed my cheek. It took me some time to realize it was the muzzle of a pistol.

“You’ve told them about old man Peters and they’re going to cashier me. Probably send me to prison. I didn’t mean to kill him, you know; but he wouldn’t get out of my way.”

Numb with fright, I sat rock still. Well I knew the danger of trying to reason with him. He moved the gun to my temple and pulled back the hammer. Then he pulled the trigger.

The click-click seemed to echo endlessly. I had stopped breathing and was certain I would never breathe again.

He pulled my head back, shoved the revolver close to my face and opened the cylinder. All the chambers were empty but one. He snapped the cylinder back into the gun and pushed the muzzle into my ear. At the click of the hammer being cocked, I closed my eyes, absolutely certain I was going to die.

“If you scream,” he said quietly, “you assuredly will be dead before anyone comes. And as it happens, I have several other bullets I can load in time to greet anyone who fancies himself a hero.”

The click of the trigger nearly stopped my heart.

He spun the cylinder again and cocked the hammer. “Now open your mouth.”

999

That night, something hot and seething rose up inside me like a pillar of liquid iron. When it had settled and cooled, I had but one purpose: to get away.

But with Andrew still not on active duty due to the court-martial, I could never count on his being gone for a definite period of time. Day and night, I wracked my head to conceive of a way. There seemed none. My friends were back in St. Louis. I didn’t know anyone there at Fort Craig; and I figured if I told anyone, they wouldn’t believe me—they’d be sure to tell my husband, and then he really would kill me.

I reckon he sensed the change in me because each day his rage grew. One night he swept all the china off the table, then shouted, “What are you waiting for, you slut? Pick them up.” It didn’t even occur to me to resist. I bent silently to do as he demanded. He kicked my legs from under me. “That’s better. On your hands and knees, like the dog you are.”

He watched as I picked up every tiny chip, booting me in the ribs when I overlooked one. When I finished, he raised his pistol. I closed my eyes and waited for the end. A shot exploded, then another, and another. I felt nothing. When they ceased, I squinted beneath my lashes. A neat cluster of craters peppered the wall.

I wondered whether anyone would hear and question the shots.

“I am going to walk barefoot around the table,” Andrew announced. “If I cut my foot on even one sliver of china, your head is going to look like that wall.”

999

About a week later, Andrew arrived home from an officers’ meeting in a fury more towering than any before. He stalked to where I sat knitting some mindless article—a scarf, I think—in front of the fire. His eyes were enormous. They knew but one color: black.

He bade me sit on the floor and bound my wrists behind me, then spun me about by my hair until I was lying face down. Then he tied my ankles, then looped the rope about my neck. This he attached to my wrists and ankles. If I made even the slightest movement, I would choke myself.

I don’t know how many hours I lay there while he prowled about the room, shouting threats then laughing and draining a bottle of whiskey in short, quick gulps. When it was empty, he flung it into a corner and took hold of my hair. Yanking my head back, he shoved the muzzle of the pistol against my cheek and drew back the hammer. This time, I prayed that he would kill me.

When the hammer fell, I jerked and the rope bit into my throat. But no bullet put me out of my misery.

Andrew disappeared and returned with a broad kitchen knife, which he waved in front of my face; and I could see my own blood spurting from my throat. Instead, he laughed and cut the ropes and lurched off into the bedroom.

A pure, distilled hatred filled every atom of my being until it seemed it would spill out and rot away the floor. I thought about finding his pistol and killing him as he slept. But the Army would waste no time seeing me hanged. Perhaps I could just steal away in the night…but I knew full well I would be quickly hunted down like a wild hare and brought back. Might I beg aid from Andrew’s commanding officer? Andrew would certainly give some frightful account of what I had done to deserve it. Beating one’s wife, while not encouraged, was the prerogative of any husband who found it necessary to correct unseemly behavior and preserve her virtue.

In the end, I only lay there, my cheek chafed by the braided rug, listening to his drunken snores until the sun rose.

The next few days, Andrew’s demeanor seemed almost normal, and I began to hope if there had been some sort of poison in his system it had finally worked its way out. One morning I awoke to the short yips of a small dog. When I opened the kitchen door, a puppy bounded toward me nearly bending himself double with tail-wagging; and I laughed for the first time in many weeks. He was all white but for one black paw and one floppy ear. I scooped him up, fed him, made a bed of rags for him near the stove and named him Patch. Andrew grunted once about taking in a “fool dog,” then ignored him.

A few nights later, Andrew came home, sank into the stuffed chair in the parlor and stared at me with tortured eyes. “They are going to arrest me for killing old man Peters.”

I stiffened, and my breath went so shallow that I got dizzy waiting for his next move. But he only laid his head back against the chair. “They are watching me every minute.” He was silent a long moment and I stopped breathing altogether. “I’ve got orders to report back to Fort Union. We’re to take the stagecoach Thursday a week.”

Silent relief rushed over me; I would be traveling in public.

“I requested a change in orders, but the lickspittle bastards denied it. I asked for a pass to go to Santa Fe immediately to see General Wilkinson. No. The cursed sons of Satan said no.”

Still I said nothing.

Finally, he went on. “You must go to Wilkinson for me.”

At first, I didn’t think I heard him right. I didn’t know anything about anyone named Peters. I had no idea whether Andrew had actually killed someone by that name, though he was clearly capable of such a thing. I wondered why the Army wouldn’t just arrest him here if they thought him guilty. Most of all, I was absolutely certain Andrew would not allow me to leave here alone.

But the next night and the next, he talked of the same thing. “You will talk with General Wilkinson. Tell him what they have been doing to me here. You can persuade him to redress my situation and protect me. I know you can.”