Wildwood Boys (46 page)

their
sweeties,
and then what kind of camp would this be?” He showed an enormous grin. “I’d say he’s gonna be
real
surprised about this.”

 

“I’d like him to be at the celebration,” Bill said. “Tell him when
you see him.”

 

“Oh, I will,” Todd said.

 

They drank several healths all around and then Bill said he had
to go, he had a matter to tend to. The remark drew laughter and
whistles and joking comments about the matter’s name being Bush
Smith. He made an obscene hand gesture at the jokesters and
remounted Edgar Allan and called for them to listen up, he had a
couple of other things to say. Because he would be living with his
wife, he was putting his brother Jim in command of his bunch here
in camp and naming Arch Clement as Jim’s lieutenant. The other
thing was that two of them wouldn’t be at the celebration tomorrow
for sure because he needed them to go up to Missouri and find Andy
Blunt’s company and bring back his bride’s brother, a boy named
Ned Smith.

 

Ike Berry and Valentine Baker were the quickest to volunteer and
Bill gave them the mission. They both had personal reason for going
and he knew it. Valentine Baker’s wife was living with her family in
Johnson County and not far from Warrensburg, where Blunt’s sweetheart lived, and this was a chance for Baker to have a quick visit with
her. As for Ike, he had not quit mooning over the blonde girl in the
photograph he’d taken off the dead Yank, and Bill had no doubt he
intended to go to the Harrisonville studio where it had been made
and see if he could find out who she was. As Bill hupped Edgar Allan
out of the camp, Ike and Val were already making ready to ride.
***

 

When he got back to the cabin the sky was firestreaked above the
fled sun and a chill tide of evening shadow was rising out of the woods.
The trees shrilled with roosting crows. He delighted in the sight of
the smoking chimney, the front window pale with lamplight. He put
Edgar Allan in the stable and came back around to the dooryard gate
and saw her waiting for him on the porch, smiling, her hands out to
receive him.

 

They stood on the little porch with their arms around each other
in the dying light of day. After a time he said, “Got something for
you,” and took an envelope from his coat and gave it to her.

 

It was the deed to the property, paid in full. She stared and stared
at it in the twilight and then carefully refolded it and replaced it in
the envelope. When she looked at him again her eyes were bright and
brimming.

 

“You would’ve got it yourself, anyway, sooner or later, “ he said.
“Turned out sooner. It’s your house now, girl.”

 

“
Our
house,” she said. She took his hand and pulled him to the
door. “Now let’s just go in here and seal the bargain, mister.”

They drove to the JP’s office in her buggy and arrived just before
noon. There was little traffic on the street this cold gray day, few
pedestrians on the sidewalks. Icicles were dripping from the eaves of
the gallery where Jim and Butch stood waiting for them. Quantrill
too. Bill helped Bush alight from the buggy and introduced her first
to Jim and Butch, and they both touched their hatbrims. It was
Butch’s first sight of her and he was staring hard with his good eye.
When she smiled at him he reddened and cut his gaze away.

Bill turned her toward Quantrill and said, “Darlin, this is Bill
Quantrill—

Colonel
William Clarke Quantrill. Bill, this is Bush.”

 

Quantrill took off his hat and bowed to her in the grand manner
of a cavalier, the effect enhanced by the Confederate greatcoat he
wore. “Dear lady,” he said, replacing his hat, taking her hand and
kissing it. “An honor.” His eyes were bright and redstreaked, and
Bill suspected he’d been drinking at this early hour, something he’d
not known him to do before.

 

“The honor is mine, Colonel,” Bush said. She was redcheeked
from the cold and wore a lovely yellow dress of her own making
under her partly open woolen coat.

 

Quantrill showed her his best smile and dipped his head modestly. Then asked if she would mind terribly if he took a quick
minute of Captain Anderson’s time for a private word.

 

Of course not. She turned to Bill, whose gaze on Quantrill had
gone thin, and said she would wait for him in the office, out of the
cold breeze. Jim Anderson gave her his arm and they went inside,
and Butch followed after.

 

Quantrill gestured for Bill to come away from the JP’s door, then
stood with his hands behind his back. “Tell me, William T.,” he said,
“what are you doing?”

 

“Getting married, Bill,” Bill Anderson said, making no effort to
hide his irritation, “as if you didn’t know. Now you tell me: what’s
so important we have to talk about it this minute?”

 

“I was told you were getting married,” Quantrill said. “But I
refused to believe it unless I heard it from you.”

 

“Well, now you have,” Bill Anderson said, vexed the more by
Quantrill’s tone of condescension. “What do you want, Bill? I’ve got
a bride waiting.”

 

“All right, then, to the point,” Quantrill said. “A married man
wants to be with his wife. He wants to have children, he wants to
settle
. It’s
why
he gets married. There aren’t many bushwhackers
with wives, as you well know, and those few are the most miserable
among us. There’s not a minute they don’t miss home, not a day they
don’t fret about their women. If they have children, their torment is
all the greater. You know the ones I speak of, you’ve seen them.
Mopers to a man. Every bushwhacker I’ve known to quit the war
was a married man. So, what I’m wondering is, are you thinking to
quit the war, William T.?”

 

He was surprised by the question—and by his realization that it
had come to him yesterday but he had not recognized it. It had come
as a vague and shadowy distraction at the edge of his mind the
moment he’d asked Bush to marry him and she’d said yes. It had held
itself just beyond the shaping reach of thought, but now he realized
it had
felt
like a question, and the feeling had lingered with him
since. And here Quantrill had set it in front of him as obvious as a
wall.

 

“If you’re thinking to quit,” Quantrill said, “I hope you’ll think
about it real well. The whole Yank army this side of the Mississippi
knows you and it’s not about to forget you just because you leave off
fighting and get married and take up raising kids and hogs. They’ll
hunt you down and kill you whether you’re holding a Colt or a plow
handle, and they won’t give a damn if you got ten children and a wife
expecting another. A graveyard parole’s the only kind you and me
are ever going to get from the Federals, William T. The only way
around it is to fight them till we win or lose. That’s why no man of us
should marry till this war’s done with. ‘He who hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.’ Sir Bacon said it well.”

 

“Whether I marry or not, whether I quit the war or don’t,” Bill
Anderson said, “it’s none of your goddam business or Sir Bacon’s
either.”

 

His anger was with himself as much as with Quantrill’s effrontery, and he knew it. It angered him that he had avoided the question
until now, that he had kept from it because he was unsure how he
might answer it—or worse, be unable to answer it—and the mere
possibility of a lack of resolution enraged him.

 

“Every bunch at the camp has its captain with them but yours,”
Quantrill said. “You belong with your men, William T. I can’t see
you behind a plow.”

 

“Go tell it to somebody who cares a damn what you can see,”
Bill said.

 

He turned and stalked back to the JP’s office, paused at the door
to compose himself, then smiled and went inside, saying, “Here
comes the groom!”

Following the ceremony, the newlyweds went across the street to a
photographist’s studio and posed for a marriage picture, Bush seated
and smiling prettily, holding a bouquet of paper flowers, Bill standing behind her with his hands proprietary on her shoulders, his
aspect seriously matrimonial. Then each sat for an individual portrait for the other to carry. Hers shows a beautiful bright-eyed
woman with shining hair and a smile indented by the scar on her
mouth. His would be the likeness of him most widely reproduced in
all the years to come. By all accounts, he was the handsomest of the
Missouri guerrillas, and this picture stands in clear evidence of the
claim. He has a hand to his coat lapel in the popular and affected
pose of the day, his high-cheekboned face unmarked by blemish or
concern, eyes cool with self-possession, beard trimmed close but
black mane rampant, dark longcoat buttoned but leaving visible the
laced lapels of his guerrilla shirt, hatbrim rakishly upturned and with
a pale star stitched to it, a gleaming buckle on a wide belt holding a
cartridge case and a holstered revolver on either hip. The only photographs of him that will ever be as widely seen as this one are the
pictures that show him dead.

Then to the Purple Moon, where they were greeted by cheers and
applause, and the celebration that ensued was a raucous affair.
Despite the short notice for the occasion, the girls of the Moon were
all present and in their finery, and the guerrillas took turns dancing
with them to the lively strains of a string band and the Moon’s
pianist. There were barrels of whiskey and beer. Sides of beef roasted
on spits behind the building. Bill and Bush had the first dance and
then his comrades began taking turns with her on the floor. He was
congratulated again and again, until his arms ached from comradely
punches and his back was sore from glad poundings.

He was aware of Quantrill’s absence—and of Butch Berry’s.
Immediately following the ceremony in the JP’s office, as Jim and
Arch in turn hugged and kissed the bride, Butch had shaken Bill’s
hand listlessly and said, “I see why she’s so special.” His face
bespoke a welter of emotions, and Bill knew he was referring to
Bush’s resemblance to Josephine. “She’s special all in her own way,
Butch,” he said.

“I’m sure,” Butch said, and left. And was not here now.

Now Buster Parr was cutting in on George Todd for his turn with
Bush. Todd kissed her hand and gave her over to Buster, then came
to stand beside Bill. “That’s a darlin wife you got yourself, old hoss,”
he said. “You’re a lucky fella.”

Bill smiled. “I cannot dispute you, George.”

 

Todd relieved a passing bushwhacker of his jug, raised it high
and said, “To love and long life,” and took a deep drink. He passed
the jug to Bill, who nodded and drank to the toast.

“I don’t see the colonel anywhere,” Todd said, affecting to search
the crowd. “I guess a man with his responsibilities ain’t got the
time.” He looked at Bill and shrugged. “Course now, I can’t say he
was too awful pleased by the news.”

“I can’t say so either,” Bill said.

Texas winter

 

“When he told me he thought it was a mistake for a bushwhacker to marry,” Todd said, “I said to him, ‘You know, there’s
talk you and Kate got married not so long ago.’ And he says, ‘Hell,
that was only a lie I started myself so nobody would think she was a
damn whore—or ever had been.’ It was all I could do to keep from
saying, ‘Well, she’s maybe never been a whore, but she’s certain sure
always been a cunt.’ ”

 

He went off to dance with a laughing blonde, his words still
sounding in Bill’s head.

On an early afternoon two weeks into the new year, they heard
horses blowing out by the dooryard gate and they swiftly slipped out
of bed and into their clothes. They had rarely left the house since the
day of their wedding, and they made love whenever the inclination
moved them, no matter the hour. As Bill stamped his boots into their
proper fit, he heard hallooing. He went out on the porch in shirtsleeves, pistol in hand. A light snow was falling. Some winters here
didn’t see enough snow to whiten the ground, but the locals were
saying this year there’d be plenty of it.

His brother and Butch Berry sat their horses just beyond the
dooryard fence. They’d ridden the animals hard most of the way to
exercise them, and then walked them the last half-mile, and steam
rose off the horses’ hides. A few isolate crows trilled in the stark
branches against a sky the color of tin.

“We don’t want to interrupt nothing important,” Jim called to
him.

 

Bill laughed and beckoned them to come on. They dismounted
and Jim looped the reins around a fence post and came through the
gate and clumped up the porch steps. “Lord amighty, I’m freezing
my ass,” he said. “I thought it was supposed to be warm down
south.” His cheeks were raw and his thick mustache lightly frosted.
He sniffed the air. “Is that cinnamon cider?”

 

“Best get you some before Bush drinks it all,” Bill said.

 

Jim went inside and Bill started to follow, but Butch still stood
outside the dooryard and holding his horse’s reins. Bill turned at the
door and gave him a questioning look. Bush called for them to get in
or stay out, but shut the door. Bill stepped back out and pulled the
door closed.

 

“I only came to say I’m sorry I didn’t show at the celebration,”
Butch said softly. His good eye held steady on Bill while the off one
seemed intent on the crows calling to his left. “And I’m sorry too I
run off without congratulating your bride. I don’t know why I acted
so. It’s just, well . . . she reminds me . . .” He made a vague gesture.

 

“I know,” Bill said, and cleared his throat. Apology was not a
common exercise among these men. It was Bill Anderson’s belief that
most apologies were simply fear masquerading as honest regret. But
he knew Butch Berry for a true friend and a man afraid of nothing in
this world, and his apology had heft.

 

“It’s anyway no excuse for me to’ve acted low,” Butch said. “I
thought it over and all I can say is I’m sorry and I wanted you to hear
it from me. And now I’ll be getting back to camp.”