The Chisholms (9 page)

“Those were terrible years,” Hadley said. “I never want to live through anything like that ever again.”

“That’s why my father left Boston,” Lester said. “His blacksmith shop went under; he figured there was nothing to do but try again someplace else.”

“Did he make a go of it?”

“Not in lead. Too
many
people trying to mine the earth there. But he started a furniture store and might have done well with it, his heart hadn’t stopped of a sudden one day.”

“Your mother still alive?” Hadley asked. “Yes, sir. Living in Carthage.”

“Buried mine just before we left Virginia, bless her heart. My pa’s been dead since eighteen aught three — got himself killed by an Indian.”

“I didn’t know there was still Indian trouble late as that,” Lester said.

“There wasn’t. Wars’d ended almost ten years before, in fact. Townspeople had already torn down the pickets around the old fort. My pa was drunk, is all,” Hadley said.

Inside the wagon, Bonnie Sue looked up. She could see Lester in profile in the puckered opening of the cover, the wet gray sky behind him. She had not known that her grandfather William Allyn Chisholm was drunk when the Chickasaw killed him. She had thought till this moment that he’d died a hero in one or another of the skirmishes with local Indians.

“Chickasaw was a no-good redskin used to hang about the livery stable. Him and my father got drunk one night, went down the plantation — that’s the Bailey plantation, owned by the man sold us this wagon.”

“It’s a good wagon,” Lester said.

“Cost ninety dollars.”

“That’s a fair price.”

“He’s got seventy-two slaves, Bailey has. They must be worth close to fifty thousand dollars, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not that much. You know the ones Jackson was carrying to New Orleans?”

“What about em?”

“He said the bucks’d fetch six hundred each, and the wenches somewhere in the neighborhood of three.”

“Then the squire ain’t as rich as I thought he was,” Hadley said. “Though he’s plenty rich enough, I guess. Lord knows how many slaves his father had in the old days. Bailey’s a man about my age, maybe a mite older. Sired hisself a little pickaninny by a nineteen-year-old house nigger he’s got. Likes women, the squire does. Specially colored ones.”

Bonnie Sue hadn’t known
that
either. She put down her blankbook.

“Anyway, my pa and this no-count Chickasaw got drunk together one night, and went down the Bailey plantation thinkin to sneak in the henhouse, you take my meanin. Was a wench from the Barbados there, white as you or me, must’ve had lots of Spanish blood in her. My pa and the Chickasaw got in a fight over who’d mount her first. Chickasaw stabbed him fourteen times in the chest, then raped the slave girl in the bargain. Was her who told who’d killed my pa, not because she liked him all that much, but only cause she wanted to get back at the Indian. Bastard had torn her insides all up.”

“They ever catch him?” Lester asked.

“Found him two weeks later in a Tennessee cave. You know where the Great War Path crosses the Gap?”

“I’m not familiar with it, no.”

“That’s where they caught him. Carried him back to Virginia and hanged him outside where the old fort used to be.” Hadley paused. “Funny thing,” he said. “I wouldn’t believe that story for the longest damn time. I was fifteen when my pa got killed; wasn’t till years later I’d believe what everybody in town was saying about him. Wasn’t till my first son was born, in fact. Will out there. My son Will. Named him after my pa.” Hadley was silent for several moments. The rain drilled the wagon cover. “Ha-yal” he shouted to the mules.

Lester had estimated the distance from Evansville to St. Louis at a hundred and fifty miles. The road was wide and well-traveled; they should have averaged close to twenty miles a day, even without pressing. But the rains slowed them considerably, and though they’d left Evansville on the seventh of May, they had by the fourteenth come only seventy-four miles, with almost half the journey still ahead of them. The clearing skies did nothing to dispel their gloom. To the south was the Ozark Plateau, a wilder place of river bluffs and verdant valleys, wooded hills where they might have felt a trifle more at home. But here there was only flatness.

“How do you spell ‘boring’?” Bonnie Sue asked.

Back home, it was never boring.

Wasn’t Bobbo getting shot at on his way to town with whiskey, it was something else. Always something. That day he ran home, Gideon was hitching one of the mules to the plow, tightening the cinches. Bonnie Sue was sitting in the doorway of the cabin, shelling peas. Saw Bobbo come running over the brow of the hill, up the rock-strewn path that led to their house. The cabin was on the high ground, where William Allyn had built it to be safe from Indians. Only once did he have to take his family down to the old fort, and that was when a thousand or more of them descended on the settlement from God only knew where. Chickasaw, Choctaw, Chickamauga, Cherokee, or Creek, it could have been any or all of them together; seemed every Indian in the world was burning and pillaging that night, leastways the way her pa told it.

Hadley’d been eight at the time. Grandma Chisholm had bundled him up and carried him down to the fort. Half the people in the settlement made it down there safe. The rest, except for a handful caught at milking, ran to the old Bailey plantation, which was big enough to be a forted station. In the morning, most of the settlement was a smoldering ruin, but William Allyn’s cabin on the mountaintop, and that of the Cassadas beside it, stood unharmed. This was nearly half a century before the feud between them started; both families had put out their latchstrings and offered food and drink to those less fortunate than themselves. Now here came Bobbo running up the road and yelling, “Where’s Pa? I just near got killed!”

“What happened?” Gideon said.

“Shot at me from the bushes!”

“
Who
did? Now settle down, you hear me?” Gideon said, and shook his younger brother. Bonnie Sue’d been shaken by Gideon only once in her life, when she was joshing him about Rachel Lowery. Like getting caught in a tornado, she supposed, Gideon picking her up and shaking her that way. He wasn’t shaking Bobbo quite that hard now — only hard enough to addle his brains. “
Who
shot at you?”

“The Cassadas.”

“Where?”

“On the way to town. You know where the old Settlement Road goes by the branch to Abingdon?”

“Yeah?”

“Where the woods are? On the north side of the road?”

“Yeah?”

“Shot at me from there. Pa’s going to throw a fit, Gideon. I dropped and broke two whole gallons of whiskey.”

“Did you see who done the shooting?”

“The Cassadas, I just told you.”

“Which
one
of them, Bobbo? There’s ten of them over there; which one was it shot at you?”

“Was two of them, Gid.”

“Which two?”

Don’t let it be Sean,
Bonnie Sue thought, and split open a pod with her thumbnail, and watched the peas rolling into the colander, and held her breath.

“Phillip and Brian,” he said. “Or anyways Brian for sure, and I
think
Phillip. I only got a good look at Brian.”

“Let’s go on over there right this minute,” Gideon said. “I been wantin to bust Brian’s head for the longest time.”

Damn near
did
bust it, too. Both of them went over to the Cassadas without waiting for Will or Pa, could’ve got themselves killed that afternoon. They found Brian alone in the Cassada cabin, and dragged him outside and beat him to within an inch. Phillip came running up from where he’d been squatting in the woods; way Bobbo later told it, he hadn’t even got his pants pulled all the way up yet. They set upon him, too, knocking him to the ground and kicking him till he was black and blue. Never told Minerva a word about it. She’d been over to the church at a cake sale, came home to find Bobbo and Gideon sitting in front of the fire. Bobbo was whittling, Gideon reading out of the Bible to Annabel. Everybody in the family knew what’d happened that day, except Minerva. When later they were plowing the cornfield, she couldn’t understand why the Cassadas were suddenly so riled. Had to cover that field with rifles, three of them around Hadley behind the plow.

Never boring back home, that was for sure.

She must have dozed.

She heard what sounded like a gun going off, and her eyes popped open. She was alone in the wagon. She sat upright. Her journal was in her lap. Lightning flashed against the blackened sky. She blinked. The deep rumble of thunder again. Where...?

They had nooned in a grove alongside a church, white clapboard and brick. She could remember eating the sausages and bread they’d bought from the farmer ten miles back. Will standing in the rain haggling with the man. Had no eggs to sell, he’d told her brother. She’d helped her mother cook the noonday meal, climbed into the wagon afterward to write in her journal.
The rain has stopped. There’s bloodroots blooming, and crinkleroots, and flowers I don’t know the name of. It’s going to be a nice day after all.
Mighty fine writing, put her straightaway to sleep.

More lightning. Thunder again.

The mules brayed and bolted.

She fell back, and bounced hard on the wooden bed, and yelled, “Ow!” and went rolling toward the rear of the wagon. Great huge plops of rain more like melons hit the wagon cover and came in through the front end. The butter churn rolled toward where she lay on her back near the tailgate, and she tried to get up but was knocked flat again, slamming her shoulder against the bottom of the box. The mantel clock ripped loose from where it was tied to one of the hickory bows, smashing its glass front. One of Annabel’s rag dolls from when she was a toddler came sailing through the air for all the world like an aerial performer Bonnie Sue had seen one time in Bristol. Jars of preserves bounced all over the wagon like hoppy toads jumping across a road when it starts to raining hard, which it was doing now for sure. There was a sudden high wind, too, almost drowning out the panicky braying of the mules. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear her brothers yelling. She tried to grab hold of a wooden chest that came loose and fell on her ankle. A spider skillet came clanging down on the wagon bed, jumping up and down like it was alive. A keg crashed from one side of the wagon to the other, and finally burst wide open and sprayed cornmeal in the air like flying snow.

She rolled over on her side, and crawled to the rear of the wagon on her hands and knees. Rain was coming in over the tailgate, turning the cornmeal to mush. Through the flapping open end where cover met tailgate, she could see a man riding after the wagon. She recognized the horse; it was Will’s raindrop gelding, an Appaloosa standing sixteen hands high, black leopard spots on a roan background, an altogether handsome animal with white-rimmed eyes and hoofs marked with black and white stripes.

The rider was Lester Hackett.

He scarcely glanced into the wagon as he came past the tailgate and then around the left-hand side. She turned to look through the front end, but all she could see was the sky ahead, as blue as a robin’s egg, while behind her it was still scowly and black, the rain pouring down to drown a person. Lester yelled, “Whoa, you ornery bastards!” and the wagon came to a jolting, bone-rattling stop. She was thrown again toward the tailgate, hitting her elbow hard against it. A chamber pot came flying down from where it had been tucked in among the patchwork quilts and pillows, smashing into a thousand pieces on the wagon bed, a good porcelain pot had come from England and was decorated with daisies and blue flowers. She lay against the rough wooden flooring, breathing harshly. The rain drummed steadily on the twill cover.

“Bonnie Sue? Are you all right?”

He climbed into the wagon. He was drenched through to the skin, his hair stringy and wet, his cheeks red with wind and water. He moved to her swiftly, and said again, “Are you all right?” and then he took her in his arms and rocked her as though she were an infant.

Her brothers were riding up.

“She’s unharmed,” Lester said, and in rising placed his hand upon her knee. He did not look back at her as he climbed out of the wagon.

Bonnie Sue’s heart was pounding.

The rain was behind them at last, the wagon moved again on a road negotiable and firm. Dutchman’s-breeches and dogtooth violets bloomed along the wayside. Above, the sky was bloated with clouds as white as her sunbonnet. She sat beside Lester on the wagon seat, her face in shade beneath the peak of the hat. Inside the wagon, her mother and father were sleeping. Annabel was riding with Will on his gelding, sitting sidesaddle just in front of him. She pointed to something on the horizon and Bonnie Sue turned to look, too. A flock of sheep, some goats, she couldn’t tell from this distance. There were flies on the backs of the mules, biting. Lester snapped the reins, and they buzzed angrily into the air.

“What’s that book I see you writing in all the time?” he asked.

“Just a journal,” she said, and shrugged.

“What’s it for?”

“So when we get to California, I can look back in the pages and remember it all clear.”

“Can’t you remember it without a diary?”

“It ain’t a diary, it’s a journal.”

“That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“A diary’s more personal,” she said.

“Oh, then your journal
isn’t
personal, is that it?” he asked, and smiled.

“Not as personal as a diary,” she said.

“Do you write about Virginia?” he asked.

“Not so much.”

“Don’t you miss home?”

“We’re going to a new home,” she said.

“Don’t you have friends in Virginia?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Don’t you miss
them
?”