Woe to Live On: A Novel (10 page)

“We should face south,” he said. “We all know that. But the horses should be nearest the door.”

“Whatever you think, Jack Bull,” Clyde said. “I just can’t get
enough
of this sweaty work, so you go on and feature it out right.”

Holt and Clyde laughed. Laughs were the only sounds Holt had made in two days. He kept his tongue well rested.

“We will be in it for weeks,” Jack Bull said, a little bit testy. “Might as well do it right. I don’t see the sense in not doing it right.”

“Ain’t no one going to fight you on that,” Clyde said. “I don’t want to spend the winter sleeping in mud no more than you do.”

“Good, good,” Jack Bull said, his fingers at his chin again. “We can have a double door, or even two doors.” He began to pace off a whole new bunch of lines, and said, “Then put in mud bunks along the walls and lay the chimney…”

All we diggers laughed and listened, and Jack Bull went on and on until we thought he made sense.

Then we built it.

It was right.

Just after sundown of the seventh day Holt came huffing into the hole, his pistol pulled. He spoke his first sentence in a week.

“Rider comin’ this way. One minute off.”

The dugout was finished and awful cozy. The chimney was about the best piece of work I’ve ever done, and the house in general was as sweet as you’d find underground anywhere. I think it raised some proud up in all of us. We were slow to leave it.

“Aw, let’s go see to our visitor,” Clyde said.

Once outside it was clear the rider was coming on bold. There was no slinking involved in the way it came straight at us. Moonlight shone down bright over the cold bare landscape. The soft clopclop of hooves yawned out across the valley. The horse snuffled and whinnied once, and if this rider was a Federal it had to be a general to be so open and silly in this country by night.

“It’s just me,” a feminine voice spoke. “Don’t shoot or some dumb damn thing like that.”

It was Sue Lee, the widow girl.

“Why, how do?” Jack Bull said and swept his hat off and swooped it around. “You talk nice, Mrs. Evans.”

Sue Lee dropped down from her mount. She was bundled up thick in several pieces of clothes. They were all kinds of colors. She smelled good, or else the clothes smelled good, ’cause of a sudden something nearby smelled
real
good.

“I’ve brung you some dinner,” she said. “Mr. Evans wishes me to apologize for not having sent you food sooner. The Federals have been on the move and he thought it safest not to. And don’t you call me Mrs. Evans. My name is Sue Lee Shelley. It’s a good one and I’m a widow now, you know, so I reckon I’ll go on back to it and use it.”

“Please pardon me,” Jack Bull said in his most riverboat manner. I never liked this particular quality of his. “And come on in, won’t you, Sue Lee?”

George Clyde held open the dirty plank door that opened over the dugout. Sue Lee stepped down into our place and Clyde said, “Evenin’, ma’am.”

Holt and I stood solid and watched as Clyde and Jack Bull did a terrific series of winks at each other, accompanied by the sneaky slinging of elbows. All it took was a girlish widow with a bucket of grub to drop by and those boys commenced to preening like there would be some huggy waltzes to be danced.

“I’ll look to the horse,” Holt said to me.

I still did not move. I was not much used to women except for mothers. Everything I did, they did different. I always felt that in their presence I was expected to swim a river of mud just so they could watch and giggle, then tell me I was
too filthy to be seen with once I clambered up the bank. It didn’t seem like anything I had to do.

“Roedel, I’ll look to the horse,” Holt said again. “You’d better get on in there. Let the woman see your face and know it, too.”

The nigger was grinning. He’d gotten to where he acted awful familiar even if he didn’t say much. I could see that he was starting to look on me like he might look on himself. That’s just what happens with close living.

“I believe I know best how to handle my personal affairs, Holt.” He kept his grin lit up and he didn’t move back. “Why don’t you see to the lady’s horse. I reckon I’ll go on in and check what she brung to eat.”

Hold nodded, back to his mute ways, and I went on in.

I had a feeling.

There was red throughout her cheeks. One tooth was chipped in a showy part of her smile. Her hair was this big camp of black stuff falling out all around her face. Little winter drips beaded at her nose, which was a fine, thin instrument. A pale scar went an inch or so straight down her forehead and cleaved through her brow almost over the nose. Her eyes were of this endless dark hue you’ve never seen before.

“My,” she said, “aren’t you bushwhackers the gentlemen.”

We all had our hats in our hands watching her. My head felt cold. An insensible bit of manners, that hat business in winter.

“We try to make the effort when possible,” Jack Bull said. There was a brightness to his eyes viewing this woman. Our
social life had been for a good while restricted to men, and the novelty of this widow girl being in our dugout had him glowing. “Do you think manners should be dropped in times like these, Sue Lee?”

I answered that question in my own mind right quick and hung my hat back on my head, the only spot where it did me any good.

“No,” she said. Sue Lee sat on a blanket with her legs folded beneath her. She did this thing where her hand went raking soft through her hair. To me it had the aspect of a cat clawing after fleas, though I reckon it was meant to come off as coy. “But I don’t think horse sense ought to be dropped either. It’s cold.”

Hats were slapped back on heads.

“Hmmm,” went Jack Bull, a smile creeping slowly into his face. If he’d had a moustache, he would have given it a dashing tug or two. I don’t know where he picked up this paddlewheel rogue approach but he seemed to think it a devastating one. “You are so kind to think of us, ma’am.”

She displayed her chipped tooth then and gawked downward, and by that gesture you knew she was yet a girl in some ways despite being a widow.

“You men think of us more,” she said sincerely. “You do the good work. I know it’s dirty and dangerous.”

I crouched back in my corner of the dugout and used the satchel of captured mail as a stool. I had carried the letters all summer long, as no good reason to dump them had hit me. It was the only gift my comrades had ever done to me and I suppose that is why I hoarded them.

“Those are good words to hear,” George Clyde said. His sturdy person was squatted just to the right of the girl. “It’s not always we hear them.”

The bucket of grub had not been touched. It was boiled potatoes with wet bacon and corn bread for variety. I didn’t feel like going through the test of eating in front of a widow who might find my table manners unique. I used to eat right, and dab my lips with a cloth after every grease dribble and hardly ever shove a potato into my mouth whole. But I had got shed of that style and did not want to hear any bad appraisals of the one I had adopted.

“Well, now,” Sue Lee said, “I should be going. Mr. Evans will worry if I don’t.”

“Oh, ma’am,” said Jack Bull. “I am awful sorry about Jackson, Junior, getting killed.”

“We all suffer,” she said. “But he suffers no more.”

“I once met him and he was a fine boy.”

“Yes,” she said wistfully. She pushed up from the ground in a strong, springy way. “He was a good husband to me. For six weeks he was a good husband to me, but he didn’t last.”

While Jack Bull did this consoling sort of stare into her face, the door creaked open and in came Holt. He was slapping away at himself to warm up.

“What is
he
doing here?” Sue Lee asked.

“Oh, ma’am,” George Clyde said, “this nigger’s with me. His name is Holt. He just about don’t talk at all.”

A severe expression was on her face. There were not too many nigger rebels, although I had seen two others. It was a new one on her.

“He ought to be off in a field plowing with a team of other niggers,” she said. “This is
our
revolution.”

Clyde hooted and said, “Oh, I would reckon not, ma’am. No, ma’am. That’s one nigger I wouldn’t try to hitch behind a plow.” He snorted and slapped standing Holt on the knee. “Holt’s one nigger I wouldn’t try that on.”

Holt just stood there and so did the widow.

“He comes in right handy,” Jack Bull said.

“Well, now,” Sue Lee said dazedly. “It looks like we’re going to win the fight and lose the war.”

The corner of the dugout nearest the horses was Holt’s, and he went over there and sat down. He sat with his legs split before him and piled his five or six pistols in between them and got real interested in how the guns looked and felt.

The widow started for the door then, and I studied the way her legs worked. She took a stride in the same fashion a man did. There was no sort of itty-bittyness to her step at all. The Evans family were aristocrats, and she had married up the hill from her own kin. That was plain. I could not picture this girl gushing beneath a pink parasol on any kind of springtime occasion.

This did not hurt her in my eyes.

“Oh, yes,” she said and jumped her hand to her throat in a startled move. “I almost forgot. Mr. Evans asks that you come to the house tomorrow after dark. He is up on the Federal movements and could post you on them.”

“Why, we’d be honored,” Jack Bull said. “Will you be joining us?”

She squinted at him briefly, then said, “Of course. There
will be food.” She then laughed pleasantly. “I haven’t trained myself to go without food.”

“Look forward to it, then,” Jack Bull said.

All of us men joined her in standing, including Holt, who did not face her.

“I am not sure about him,” she said and nodded toward Holt. “Mr. Evans has had a number of bad things in his life these past two years. A nigger with guns at the dinner table might just break his health all the way. I don’t know.”

“You got nothing to worry about on that score,” George Clyde said. What good manners he had were beginning to be strained. “You needn’t worry about Holt.” Clyde had gone plain-faced. “I’ll be taking him with me over to the Willards tomorrow. We won’t be coming to your dinner.”

“Mr. Clyde,” she said. “I didn’t mean to speak ill of your nigger.”

“He’s not my nigger. He’s just a nigger who I trust with my life every day and night.” George Clyde was one of the devoutest killers on the border, and there couldn’t be too many sweet spots in his makeup. But Holt was one and I understood it. “I trust Holt. That’s all. And it has never been a mistake.”

The red in her cheeks turned up a shade and she did that flea grab at her hair again.

All I knew of Clyde and Holt was the rumor that Holt had been owned by the farmer next to Clyde’s place, and that they had been boys together. The way it was said to have happened is, in the early days of the war a squad of Unionists had come sneaky-style to arrest Clyde but Holt tipped him
off. When the fray commenced Holt pitched in with Clyde and afterward they were outlawed in tandem.

“That’s very high praise,” she said.

Clyde crossed his arms on his chest and bobbed his chin.

“Yes, ma’am. Yes it is. Praise don’t get no higher.”

“I see,” she said. A bashful cough gave the excuse for her head to move, and she coughed it in Holt’s direction. She couldn’t help herself. She had to take a better look at him. Holt stood so that he offered her a steady view of the back of his hat. She scanned it quickly, then coughed herself into facing forward again. “Well, gentlemen, I really must take your leave. I hope the food will please you.”

“It looks wonderful,” I said.

This got her to look at me. She had not previously found my visage too terrific and still did not, but she flung a great big smile my way that put the cats to scratching in my belly.

“You are not a complainer,” she said, and that great big smile shrunk. “This is not a time for complainers.”

“No, ma’am,” I said, as brilliant a retort as I could conjure on the instant.

“I admire you for that,” she said. Her tone of speaking was plain and right at you. Most of the giggly girl squeaking had been bleached from it. “But we’ll try for a better meal tomorrow anyhow. I hope to send out some pork in the morning.”

“You are thoughtful, Sue Lee,” Jack Bull put in. This landed him back in the window with her and her whole face straightened up at his and I could tell that the ridiculous riverboat style he had was working.

“Thank you, Jack Bull. May I call you Jack Bull?”

“I would have it no other way.”

“Good. Well, I’ll have Honeybee”—she held her palm facedown and halfway to the floor—“she’s this
little young
girl at the house—I’ll have her bring out the food if I can’t come.”

“That would do fine.”

“Good night all,” she called out, and Jack Bull jumped ahead of her to open the door. The man was fixing to be endless in his efforts to charm her down. That was clear as cow patties on a snowbank.

“Good night,” I said.