The Widow's War (25 page)

“Fire. That’s what those shells of yours predicted. Do we believe them? I don’t know. But what they foretell worries me. They remind me of those knucklebones my mama used to throw when she had to decide something important. I’d say shells and bones don’t so much speak to a person as help a person concentrate her mind, and at the moment I’m concentrated on one bothersome fact: If those bushwhackers burn the town, Ebenezer, Peet, Sam, and I will be trapped.”

For an instant Carrie imagines Lawrence in flames. Then she casts off the fear, which after all is no worse than half a dozen others she has had to deal with tonight. If Lawrence burns, it burns. She and William can build another house. They can live in a tent for that matter. Or a sod lean-to. You can’t burn sod.

“Fine,” she says. “How do we get you out of here? You can’t ride through an army of drunken bushwhackers, and at least two of you can’t swim.”

Elizabeth points to an object in the center of the room. “Give me that.”

“How did you get so smart?”

“Practice. If I wasn’t smart, I wouldn’t be alive. Can I have it?”

“It’s yours.” Throwing her arms around Elizabeth, Carrie embraces her. Then she goes out to the woodshed to get a hammer.

 

 

 

 

 

T
he next evening, after the polls close, William comes home from patrolling the streets to find Carrie sitting in front of the stove drinking tea and reading
A Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation and Gunshot Wounds
. Her hair is freshly washed, and she is wearing a clean dress and apron. At her feet lie four table legs.

“Where did the tabletop go?” he asks.

“We made it into a raft.”

William sits down across from her, takes off his hat, and hangs it on the back of the chair. “Sweetheart, I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but please don’t tell me you’ve been out rafting on the Kaw in the middle of November.”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. I only went in up to my ankles when I was giving the raft a push. I was more worried about Elizabeth and the slaves. I thought they might make the crossing safely, and then come out of the river wet and freeze to death; but Elizabeth told me she had mules and dry clothing waiting for them on the other side.” Carrie puts her book down on the floor beside the table legs. “So who won the election?”

“J. W. Whitfield, I’m sorry to say.”

“What a surprise. How many votes were cast?”

“Considerably more than there are eligible voters in Lawrence. The pro-slavers showed up with premarked ballots and stuffed them in the boxes.” He leans down and kisses her on the forehead and then kneels beside her and puts his arms around her. “Carrie—”

“You’re going to ask me to take better care of myself, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I promise I will.”

“What?”

“Don’t look so surprised.”

“But you’ve always been—”

“Wild? Reckless? Pigheadedly stubborn?” She laughs. “That’s what Elizabeth called me. Before she left, she sat me down and told me that I’d been a fool to work so hard building this house. She said you could have done it by yourself, and that I should have let you. She said what I was doing was understandable and that she’d seen it before in women who were carrying a child, but that I needed to recognize that the way I’ve been acting is a danger to me and my baby. She got me to confess that I feel that if I coddle myself, I’m admitting I may be in danger of losing this baby like I lost Willa.

“‘You’re not immortal,’ she told me. ‘No one is. But sometimes we feel that we have to act as if we are.’ She said that if I go on pushing myself and not resting, I may regret it for the rest of my life, but if I take good care of myself, I’ll give birth to a healthy baby.”

“You actually listened to her?”

“Elizabeth can be terrifying when she’s a mind to be. She’s helped hundreds of babies come into the world. She told me some stories I don’t want to repeat. Her lecture sobered me up considerably. Before she left, I promised her I’d stop splitting kindling and carrying water up from the river and do more sitting in front of the fire. Then we sat down together and threw the
buzios
to see if I was going to have a boy or a girl.”

“So which will it be?”

“The
buzios
wouldn’t say, so Elizabeth helped me pick out two names. Do you want to hear them?”

“Yes.”

“Alice and Edward.” She takes his hand and puts it against her belly. “Say ‘hello.’”

“Hello, Alice or Edward,” William says.

In the stove, the fire burns with a low hiss. Gradually the hiss of sleet joins in, slapping against roof and windows like loose gravel. That night William and Carrie sleep in each other’s arms. When they wake the next morning, every blade of grass is coated with ice, and the prairie looks as if it has been strewn with diamonds.

T
hree days after the election, the first great winter storm sweeps across the prairie. As the wind howls and the snow piles up, all emigration comes to a halt, and peace descends on the Kansas Territory. In St. Louis, the steamboats are locked in ice until spring. Blizzards block the California Road, and Mr. Trout, seeing no prospect of business for some months, sends his Yankee cook, Mrs. Witherspoon, off to Lawrence for the season. Retreating to a small room, he burrows down under a pile of buffalo robes and sleeps away the short days, only waking to feed the stock, shovel off the roof, and stoke the fire.

Despite the weather, Lawrence prospers. The Emigrant Aid Company Sawmill continues to spit out boards, and with them the New Englanders build schools, houses, and churches. The empty lots on Massachusetts Street fill up, and the town spreads well beyond the edges of the map Bennett Presgrove showed to the slave owners of Savannah.

Cold weather builds character
, the citizens of Lawrence tell their children; and when the unseasoned wood of their new homes warps and the wind blows almost as strongly inside as out, they stuff rags in the chinks and stumble off to church through the snow, stopping occasionally to marvel at sunsets laced with mother-of-pearl and vast skies filled with churning clouds.

In February as the grip of winter slackens, three men who have been wintering in Illinois round up their livestock and head west, crossing the Missouri River and staking out a claim on North Middle Creek about ten miles northwest of Osawatomie. Their names are Owen, Salmon, and Frederick Brown. They call their settlement Brown’s Station.

Back in North Elba, New York, their father, John, receives letters describing the “curses” of slavery his sons have seen en route to Kansas. They ask him to send them Colt revolvers, rifles, and Bowie knives; and John Brown—who believes he holds a commission directly from God to end slavery—not only agrees, he promises to join them sometime in late summer or early fall to win Kansas for God and abolition by any means necessary.

On the same morning John Brown goes out to buy the hat he will still be wearing four years later when he is hanged for treason, William carries a straight-backed chair into the front yard so Carrie can sit in the sunshine and sketch. The snow has melted, and the long grasses have turned twenty different shades of red and brown. Bent and flattened by winter storms, they form beautiful shapes that she hopes to capture on her sketch pad and send to Professor Gray at Harvard.

Clutching William’s arm, Carrie lets him help her to the chair. They walk slowly past the rain barrel, the big iron kettle they use for boiling laundry, the woodshed, and the sod hut that serves as a stable. The baby is two weeks overdue, and Carrie feels large and awkward, like an egg that might crack unexpectedly. Settling her on the chair, William wraps her legs in a buffalo robe and drapes a shawl around her shoulders. Then he goes to the woodshed and gets an empty nail keg. Placing the keg beside her to serve as a table, he brings out her sketching materials and a pot of hot tea wrapped in the muffler she gave him for Christmas. It’s a rather strange muffler since knitting is not her strong point: about twice as long as necessary, made of bright red wool and uneven as a buffalo track.

“If you keep spoiling me like this, I may become insufferable,” she says.

“Don’t worry.” William grins wickedly. “Immediately after you give birth, I expect you to rise from bed, go outside, split logs, lug them into the house, stoke up the fire, and cook me dinner. Fried ham and beaten biscuits will be acceptable. A pie would not be out of place. After I’ve eaten my fill, and you’ve done the dishes, you’ll be free to take a bucket down to the river. The water barrel needs topping off, and the floor needs scrubbing—” She interrupts him with a kiss, and they both laugh.

“Seriously,” he says, “are you sure you’ll be all right here by yourself? I hate to leave you alone even for an hour.”

“Don’t worry about me. Go tend to Mr. Crane’s lumbago. I’ll be fine and I need the fresh air. If I feel so much as a twinge, I’ll go inside.”

“Second babies can come very fast.”

“Good. Then it will hurt less.” She gives him another kiss and slaps him on the rump. “Now go.”

After he leaves, she pours herself a cup of tea and sits for a while, sipping it and enjoying the sunshine. The sky is a clear, deep blue, and there’s not a cloud in sight. After she finishes off the tea, she opens her pad, picks up her chalk, and begins to sketch a patch of grass that has not been bent by snow. The blades are soft pink, speckled with brown. Plumed and ethereal-looking, they resemble the tail feathers of some tropical bird.

For half an hour she thinks about nothing but color, form, and composition. When she finally looks up, she notices the sun is about to disappear behind a cloud. Deciding the best of the day is over, she prepares to put away her sketch pad, but before she can close it, a strong wind rises up and rips it out of her hand.

She watches as the pad is thrown into the air and the individual sheets torn off and tossed in all directions. Within seconds the wind triples in force. With it comes snow—not the first few flakes of impending snowstorms that she remembers from her childhood, but a curtain of the stuff mixed with sleet. For a few minutes, she sits there watching the world turn white around her. The effect is extraordinarily beautiful.

When she finally turns her attention back to herself, she realizes she’s shivering. It’s time to go back in the house. Picking up the teapot, she stands and begins to walk slowly across the yard, careful not to trip. As she does so, she heads into a wind so cold it takes her breath away. The snow is falling even faster now. The patch of grass she just sketched is already beginning to bend a little under it, and the sheets on the clothesline look as if they are starting to freeze.

She considers taking the sheets down and carrying them inside, but decides to leave them for William. Grabbing onto the railing, she pulls herself up the front steps. As she pushes open the front door, she feels the first cramping pain.

 

 

 

 

 

T
he sudden onslaught of the storm takes everyone by surprise. Sweeping down from the Arctic, a Kansas blizzard can lower the temperature forty degrees in an hour, blot out all traces of roads, and make it impossible to hear human voices at a distance of six feet. In Lawrence everyone makes it safely to shelter, but in other parts of the territory, people freeze to death trying to walk less than a hundred yards, while others suffocate on the snow.

By the time William gets home, there is half a foot on the roof, the wash on the clothesline has frozen, and the water barrel is rimmed with ice.

“Carrie,” he calls as he steps onto the front porch. She doesn’t answer. Worried, he enters the house and discovers the fire has gone out. Carrie is lying on the bed under a pile of blankets and buffalo robes. The water in the basin beside her is frozen solid.

“Carrie!”

She looks up at him, moans, and grips his hand. “The baby’s coming, and it hurts! Damn it, why couldn’t God have given women buttons!”

Scooping her up in his arms, William kisses her and reassures her that everything will be fine. He holds her through the next two pains, then lays her back down, tucks her in, relights the fire, and sets a kettle of water on to boil. By the time he goes outside to get more wood and check on his horse, the snow is coming down so hard he has to duck his head to breathe.

Probably no man in Lawrence has as much experience with blizzards as he has. Five years ago, he strapped on snowshoes and walked out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to get help. An entire wagon train depended on him. True, that blizzard was over by the time he began the trek, but he knows the treachery of snow, the seductiveness of cold so intense that it makes a man want to lie down, close his eyes, and give up. Carrie is safe inside the house, but they are going to need fuel to keep the fire going, and in ten minutes or so he isn’t going to be able to find his way to the woodshed.

Staggering to the stable, he checks on the mare, feeds her a carrot, and piles up enough fresh hay to last her a week. Pleased by the unexpected treats, the mare nuzzles him and whinnies. The sod walls are thick and the roof is solid. Even if the entire stable is buried, she should be fine.

When he goes back outside, he can’t see the house. He walks in a straight line, heel to toe, until he runs into the clothesline. Cutting it off the posts, he continues until he reaches the house. After that things become easier. He ties the line to the porch rail and then walks in the general direction of the woodshed. The first three times he comes to the end of the line before he locates it, but the fourth time he sees it looming up out of the whiteness. Tying the loose end of the line to the shed, he grabs as much wood as he can carry and follows the line back to the house.

Before he opens the front door, he stops and says a quick prayer. He’s never been a religious man, but he doesn’t want Carrie to see how frightened he is, and she’s always been able to read his face.