The Widow's War (34 page)

T
he sky above Two Rivers is the color of fire. For the rest of her life Carrie remembers the intensity of that sunset, how it tinted the hemp, turned the unpainted boards of the main house and the cabins rose-colored, and spread crimson ripples along the banks of the Marais des Cygnes.

She is in the clinic with Jane, removing a thorn from Jane’s knuckle. William, who is rolling pills, has his back to them. Carrie and Jane have become close in the time Carrie has lived on the plantation. Their children play together, and they both like to read the books Mrs. Hulett has arranged on the mantel in the parlor. It’s a small library, but well-chosen. So far Jane and Carrie have discussed
David Copperfield, Paradise Lost,
and
The Stones of Venice
. This week they are taking turns reading Mrs. Gaskell’s latest novel out loud to each other.

Jane is a tall, quiet woman with blue-black skin and long, graceful fingers calloused by years of sewing. She’s not one to complain, so as Carrie probes around with the needle trying to get under the tip of the thorn, she knows it must hurt when Jane winces.

“Sorry,” Carrie says.

“Y’all going to soap this up afterwards?”

“We soap up everything,” William says without looking up.

“Indeed we do,” Carrie agrees.

“Remind me not to get a speck in my eye then. I don’t fancy having my eyes washed out with Mrs. Hulett’s soap. She always puts in enough lye to take the skin off a mule.”

In front of the main house, Jane’s daughters and Teddy are playing together. On the veranda, the old men are sitting in their rocking chairs watching the sun set. Mrs. Hulett is sitting beside them in a straight-backed chair, plucking a chicken. The rest of the women are in the shed milking the cows, in the garden picking beans and digging up potatoes, or in the springhouse skimming cream so they can churn butter. One woman is in the woodshed splitting kindling. Another is down at the river getting water.

“There,” Carrie says, as she extracts the thorn from Jane’s knuckle. She is about to say more when she is interrupted by a high-pitched scream. Jumping to their feet, she and Jane hurry to the window. William comes up behind them. They look, but can’t see anything out of the ordinary. The children are still playing in the front yard; the old men are still sitting in their rocking chairs.

Suddenly they hear the sound of approaching horses.

“Teddy!” Carrie cries.

“Lara! Franny!” Jane yells. “Run! run!”

C
lark’s Raiders gallop out of the hemp fields howling like demons, ride up to the main house, and throw lighted torches onto the roof. When Mrs. Hulett tries to escape the flames, they shoot her and leave her dead on the veranda. They capture the old men—not worth much, but worth taking alive. They ride down Jane’s daughters, throw them to the ground, and tie their hands behind their backs.

As Teddy stands in the middle of the yard screaming in terror, they break into two groups and ride around him. He’s too little to go anywhere, and they have their orders.
You’re not to harm a hair on the little brat’s head,
Clark has told them.
He comes up with one scratch, and—
Clark rarely needs to finish his sentences these days.

Clark rides past the main house, stops, pulls back on the reins, and forces his horse to rear up on its hind legs. The red light of the sunset turns his hair to bronze and for an instant he looks like a monument to the violence that is tearing Kansas apart. “There’s the clinic,” he tells Deacon, pointing to the last unpainted cabin in the row. “There’s where you’ll find your wife.”

Deacon opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Are you deaf? I just said that’s the clinic.” Clark grabs a lighted torch from one of his men and thrusts it into Deacon’s hand. “Burn it down. Smoke them out.” Deacon takes the torch, holds it for a few seconds, then drops it.

“You’re a pitiable excuse for a man.” Clark grabs another torch. With a high, yipping yell, he gallops up to the clinic and tosses it onto the thatched roof. “Come out, you abolitionist bastards!” he yells. He rides back to Deacon. “Take aim, man. This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Reassured, Deacon recovers his senses, pulls out his pistols, and points them at the door of the clinic. Smoke is billowing from the windows and flames are consuming the thatch. Deacon inhales burning grass and wood and coughs on the ashes.

Come out, you stubborn bitch!
he thinks.
Don’t burn to death in there!

But it is Jane, not Carrie, who runs out of the door screaming for her children. William runs after her, throws himself on her, and tries to shield her body with his. Jane trips and falls to the ground, and William falls with her.

Perfect targets
, Deacon thinks, and discharges one of the pistols. He has never been an especially good shot, but this time luck is with him. He hears William yell, and sees him grab at his leg. Only lamed. Not dead. Too bad. But Deacon has shot him. He looks around for Clark, wants him to see this moment and approve it, but Clark has gone off somewhere.

A few seconds ago, Deacon would have been terrified to discover he was alone, but his stepbrother is wounded and unarmed, and what can a wounded, unarmed man do against a man with loaded pistols and a knife?

The female slave William has been shielding gets up and begins to run toward the main house. Deacon lets her go. Clark’s men will catch her. Kicking his horse into a slow walk, he rides toward William to finish him off.

He is just taking aim when Carrie charges out of the burning clinic holding a double-barreled shotgun. Deacon sees her point the gun at him.

“Don’t!” he yells, but his plea is drowned out by the sound of the shotgun going off. The next thing he knows he is flying through the air, knocked off his horse with his chest on fire. The pain is terrible and the fall to the ground seems to take an extraordinarily long time. When he finally hits the dirt, he screams and thrashes like a beached fish.

Looking up, he sees Carrie bending over him. She puts the shotgun to his head.

“Don’t kill me,” he begs.

“Why not?” she says.

W
ould she have killed Deacon as he lay there helpless, and if she had, would it have been murder or an act of war? John Brown could have told her, but he is twenty miles away riding for his life after his defeat at Osawatomie.

Carrie is so full of rage that all she can think is that Deacon has brought death to Two Rivers and she wants him to pay for it. Still, she pauses. Perhaps that means she would not have pulled the trigger after all. In any event, she never has a chance to find out, because before she can decide whether to let Deacon live or send him to hell, a shadow falls over both of them, and she hears a voice say: “Drop the gun.”

When she looks up, she sees a young man mounted on a brown stallion. She sees his hair—curly and blond—his cold blue eyes, his nickel-plated revolver, the red bandanna around his neck. He is not pointing his revolver at her. He doesn’t need to because in his right hand he holds something more powerful than any weapon, holds it upside down by the ankles like a dead rabbit.

Clark gives Teddy a shake and lifts him higher so Carrie can get the full benefit of the sight of her little boy screaming for his mama to come rescue him. “Drop the gun now.”

“Teddy!” William yells. Clark ignores him. Deacon’s wife’s lover can only crawl now and not very fast at that. So let him yell, threaten, curse, command. It’s all just noise. He grabs Teddy’s head with his free hand.

“Drop the gun. I’m going to start counting. If it isn’t on the ground by the time I reach three, I’ll snap his spine. One . . .”

“For God’s sake!” Carrie begs. “Please, don’t hurt my boy!”

“Two . . .”

Carrie throws down the shotgun, steps back, and lifts her hands over her head. “Don’t hurt Teddy! I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt him!”

Clark ignores her. “Rab!” he yells.

The raider who goes by the name of Rabbit trots over. He’s a big, bucktoothed man, the kind who kills for sport. The only human being Rabbit has ever feared is Henry Clark. Reining in his horse, Rab touches the brim of his hat respectfully.

“Yes, sir, Capt’n?”

“Hold this,” Clark says, handing him Teddy. Rab takes Teddy by one arm, and Teddy begins to scream with redoubled fury.

“Don’t dislocate the little brat’s shoulder, you idiot! Hold him like you were his mama, but if this one,” Clark points to Carrie, “or that one,” he points to William, “give me any trouble, dash his brains out on that chopping block over there.”

“Yes, sir, Capt’n.”

“My God!” Carrie says. “Teddy’s just a baby—”

“Shut up.”

Carrie closes her mouth and bites her lips to keep from screaming at him.

The evil-looking raider with the buckteeth has ridden off a few paces. He’s holding Teddy under the arms now, shaking him to make him shut up. Everything in Carrie urges her to run to Teddy and pull him out of the bushwhacker’s grip, but she’s afraid if she does, Clark will carry out his threat.

Clark dismounts and inspects Deacon. “Looks like you’re fixing to die,” he says.

Deacon has clasped his hands over his chest. His fingers are stained with blood, and those green eyes Carrie saw for the first time in her parlor in Brazil are growing cloudy.

“I’ll make it,” Deacon gasps. He grits his teeth, spits in Carrie’s direction. “Bitch shot me.”

“You’ve always had a talent for the obvious,” Clark says. He steps over Deacon and walks to where William lies. “Good evening, Doctor Saylor. I’m Henry Clark.”

“I don’t care who you are, you evil bastard.”

“I don’t fancy being cursed at,” Clark says. “If you were a whole man, I’d have to call you out, but since you’re crippled, I’ll just warn you: Keep quiet, or you’re going to see that child’s brains scattered all over creation.” Clark turns his back on William and cups his hands to his mouth.

“Zeb!” he yells. Another raider gallops up to join the group in front of the clinic. This one is burly and short with a barrel chest and powerful arms.

“Drag the doctor over to Mr. Presgrove,” Clark orders. “The doctor can’t walk, and I don’t want to soil my hands on him.”

Zeb grabs William under the arms and lugs him to where Deacon lies. It must hurt, but although William turns pale, he doesn’t make a sound. Carrie also remains silent, afraid of what will happen if she speaks. She wants to go to William, tend to his leg, stop the bleeding, and wash out the wound before it festers. Tears fill her eyes, but she chokes them back. She won’t give Clark the satisfaction of seeing how terrified she is. If he hurts Teddy or hurts William any more than William is already hurt, he had better kill her, because she will never rest until she has hunted him down.

“Turn Mr. Presgrove on his side so he can see the doctor.”

Zeb shambles over to Deacon, grabs his left shoulder, and starts to turn him on his side. As he does so, Deacon shrieks.

“Hurt?” Clark says. “I’m afraid that’s something you must endure. Turn him, Zeb.”

Zeb turns Deacon so Deacon is facing William. A small pool of blood begins to form on the ground between the two, most of it Deacon’s. Clark puts his hands on his hips, looks down at Deacon, and shakes his head. He looks disappointed. Not horrified, not upset, not even angry. Just disappointed.

“You didn’t kill your wife’s lover, Deacon. You botched things as usual, and honor hasn’t been satisfied. So what do you want me to do with him? Shoot him dead where he lies? Torture him for a while? Hang him? I’m offering—”

“No!” Carrie cries. Clark turns and looks at her. Clapping her hands over her mouth, she falls silent.

He turns back to Deacon. “I’m offering you a choice of revenge. How would you like this man who has sullied your name to die? It’s a free lunch. Pick your dish.”

Deacon spits out a mouthful of blood. “Hang the abolitionist son of a bitch,” he gasps.

“Excellent choice. I’m always happy to oblige a friend. How are you doing? Still in pain?”

Deacon nods and groans.

“Bad, is it?”

Again Deacon nods.

“Well, I wouldn’t let a dog suffer like you’re suffering. I think it’s time to put you out of your misery.” Clark draws his pistols and approaches Deacon.

“No!” Deacon screams.

“Hush now,” Clark says, and putting one of the pistols to Deacon’s temple, he fires.

I
ce pick, knife blade, sewing scissors, twine: Carrie is sitting on a rock making a weapon no one in Kansas has ever seen, although anyone living on the upper Amazon would recognize it immediately. The weapon consists of a straight tube four feet long and about two inches in diameter. If she were in Brazil, she would construct the tube from bamboo, but she has been forced to make do with a stick, and finding a piece that fits her needs has been difficult.

She holds the stick at arm’s length and sights down it to make sure it’s perfectly straight. Satisfied that it is, she slices it in half lengthwise and begins to dig out the center. She works mostly with the knife blade, but for the final hollowing she uses the tip of the ice pick. She was lucky to find the pick in the ruins of the main house at Two Rivers and even more lucky that Mrs. Hulett brought it with her from New England. They never had ice in their drinks at the plantation, never even saw it—although presumably the Marais des Cygnes froze in winter. Perhaps Mrs. Hulett kept the pick around to remind herself that someday, when Kansas came into the Union as a free state, there would be icehouses in every town and cold lemonade in August.

Poor Mrs. Hulett. Every time Carrie thinks of her, she begins to cry. Shot down in cold blood: a gentle, intelligent woman who had dedicated her life to abolishing slavery. Despite the way she died, hers was a life to be proud of; but still, what a sad, terrible waste.