A forgotten evil, p.3
A Forgotten Evil, page 3
The dawn light fell across Joshua’s face. Sitting up, he squinted into its glare.
“Lordy, but what it’s cold,” he said.
Caleb was perched on the side of his bed. “Well, build a fire, unless it’s a inconvenience. There’s firewood cut out there on the porch.”
Hopping on one foot and then the other, Joshua started the fire, backing up to it in the hope of a little heat. A downdraft puffed smoke from the chimney, filling the cabin with its pungent smell, but soon flames were licking high.
“Oh, that does feel good,” Joshua said, holding his palms to the flames. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Biscuits,” Caleb said.
“Biscuits?”
“Yes, biscuits.”
“I still got a biscuit,” Joshua said, pointing to his stomach. “It ain’t moved one iota all night.”
Caleb poured two coffees and took his place by the window. It was his favorite breakfast spot, because from there he could see the river, as well as the stable, and when the leaves fell, his father’s grave would be visible at the top of the hill.
“Just dunk it in that coffee,” he said. “Loosens it up.” Taking a sip from his cup, he checked to see if Ben and Sophie were waiting for their feed yet. “Guess you’ll be moving on to Louisville on the next steamer, then?”
Joshua dunked his biscuit and chewed in earnest before speaking.
“Fact is, those colored boys took my money before they escorted me into the river. Guess I’d have to walk to Louisville, providing something don’t come up.”
“You could swim,” Caleb said. “It’s downstream all the way.”
Chewing, Joshua looked over at him. “It ain’t easy swimming with a belly full of rocks,” he said.
“I been thinking,” Caleb said, “given you’re here, and given I’m shorthanded, that maybe you could help me cut wood, least through the winter. Since it’s my team and wagon, and my cabin, poor as it may be, I’d take two-thirds and you one-third of every load cut. Come spring, you’d have enough to move on.”
Joshua walked to the window and looked down on the river.
“It’s a fine offer, Caleb, but I figured to be in Fort Leavenworth by winter earning my sergeant’s stripes.”
“Well, suit yourself,” he said.
Outside, the wind howled, and a blast of chilled air swept under the cabin door. Steam from Joshua’s cup fogged on the glass pane, shrinking away against the cold.
“Course, spring would be soon enough, I suppose, though I ain’t had much experience cutting wood.”
“I need a loader,” Caleb said, dropping his empty cup into the dishpan. “Bending over to pick up wood don’t take all that much experience or brains either one.”
Sipping on his coffee, Joshua thought it over. “Reckon it’s better than swimming to Louisville,” he said.
“Good then. Now, there’s dry clothes in that trunk, and we’ll fix up a bunk there next to the fireplace. The work’s one-third to two-thirds right down the line. When you’re finished dressing, come help me catch up the belly bands on these blame mules.”
As the season deepened into autumn, they worked their wood, rising at dawn, falling weary into their bunks as the sunsets gave way to night. Soon, leaves cascaded from the treetops and covered the forest floor, whispering and crunching underfoot as the wood was cut and loaded. The smell of earth was about them, the quiet and promise of autumn.
The work was hard, but Joshua kept pace. Considering his frail build, he was tough and could put in a day’s work. Of course, there was his endless talk of the army, his annoying swagger, and his bent for stretching the truth, but for the most part it was harmless, and they soon were fast friends. In the main, Caleb was glad for the company and the end of his loneliness.
Their stash of money grew with each trip to the dock. They bought supplies and hid the remaining cash away for safekeeping under Ben’s feed trough. Still, Caleb’s discontent mounted with the passing days and with the promise of winter. Sometimes at night he dreamed of the girl on the Belle, her fleur-de-lis against the whiteness of her skin, her hair as black as a raven’s plume. His heart pounding, he would sit upright in his bed, a fire smoldering deep and unquenchable within him.
Climbing into the wagon, Caleb leaned back against the freshly cut wood. Reaching into his coat pocket, he retrieved the late-season pears he’d picked that morning and tossed one to Joshua.
“Ain’t a biscuit, is it?” Joshua asked, pushing back his hat.
“It’s a pear, your majesty,” Caleb said, taking a bite.
Sitting down on the wagon bed, Joshua polished the pear against his shirt.
“Lordy, I wished I was in Leavenworth,” he said, looking up into the trees. “I’d be a sergeant by now, what with stripes up my arm like a spring rainbow. Most likely be a hero, too, a mean son of a bitch, just like ole Sheridan, parading up and down main street for everybody to see.”
“And maybe you’d have a arrow up your bum, from hiding your head in the sand.”
“Maybe you’d kiss it then,” Joshua said, grinning.
“Maybe I’d say a prayer and bury it for pity’s sake,” Caleb said, flipping the core of his pear into the leaves.
“I’d look fine in them blue uniforms, Caleb. Ain’t a woman made what can resist a army uniform. Take a hero like myself, built like ole Ben here, if you know what I mean, just makes a man damn tempting to the opposite sex.”
Caleb pulled his knees into his arms and rubbed at the ache in his foot.
“It’s your power of reasoning that’s in common with Ben, Joshua, and your smell, maybe the lilt of your ears, too, come to think on it.”
“Well, when I get in the army, you’ll see.”
Taking off his hat, Caleb ran his fingers through his hair. Even under the autumn sun, woodcutting was hot work. “There’s something I been wondering, Joshua.”
“What’s that?”
Reaching for his honing stone, Caleb worked at the burr that had developed on the axe blade from the morning’s work. “Why you ain’t wrote home? Won’t your kin be wondering if you’re dead or alive?”
Shrugging, Joshua studied the half-eaten pear. “It’s different for me, Caleb, and ain’t likely you’d understand.”
“Understand what?” he asked, tossing away the core.
“My pa’s a son of a bitch,” he said, “not a Sheridan son of a bitch, but a selfish, no-good son of a bitch. Oh, it weren’t the whippings, though there were plenty of those, but the other no-good stuff that made you hate him and hope him dead.”
“Sometimes everyone feels that way, Joshua. It’s just part of growing up, I’m thinking.”
“It ain’t a sometime hate with my pa,” he said, tucking his hands into his pockets and kicking at a stone, “but a full-time hate, for a full-time son of a bitch, and I don’t know I’ll ever go back, not alive at least.”
“What could he have done so bad?”
“Like none of us kids could eat until he was finished, until he put down his napkin and pushed back his chair. Course, by then there wasn’t but gristle and bitter greens left, or cold gravy, or bits of meat he’d done stacked with his fork on the side of his plate. ‘Eat your food, boy,’ he’d say. ‘I earned that food hard, and it ain’t to be wasted. Eat it all or, by God, come tomorrow you’ll do without.’ Sometimes I sat in that chair just looking, just looking for the longest while at that food until both my legs gone dead as stumps hanging off that chair.”
“It’s a tough thing for a young’un,” Caleb said.
“The next day I’d go without food just like he said. Go to bed with my belly growling like a trapped coon, but at least I didn’t have to eat gristle and greens or listen about how hard a living he made.”
“What about your ma?”
“My ma never raised a hand to me,” he said, pausing, turning his back as if to listen for a steamer coming downriver, “but she never raised one to protect me either. It’s a wonder to live like that.”
“Guess I had no right asking,” Caleb said, resting the axe on his shoulder.
“It got worse later on,” Joshua said, shrugging.
“It did?”
“Yup. I got throwed in the Ohio River and left to eat copper biscuits with a wild man.”
“Come on,” Caleb said, grinning, “if we don’t get this wood cut, neither one of us will be eating anything.”
The days grew short and colder as they worked away the weeks into winter, but even with less daylight, they cut and stacked a load a day, their skills more polished, their confidence more certain. At night they sat about the fire and talked of the army, of wood, and of their savings under the trough, but most of what they talked about was their own virility and the glory and mystery of women.
At what point Caleb fell in love with Joshua’s dream he wasn’t certain, but what he came to know was that he, too, wanted to join the army, to wear the uniform, to be a hero and mean Sheridan son of a bitch just like Joshua. The more they talked, the more convinced Caleb was of the possibility, and the more his own world shrank about him.
Winter fell sudden, snow whipping through the trees like stinging white sand. On bad days they built a fire in the woods, pulling off their gloves to warm their fingers against the flames before returning to work. Standing hour after hour, Ben and Sophie suffered the most, snow gathering in their ears and clinging to their eyebrows like wet pearls.
At night they built their fire high and hot in the cabin and again when they left for work in the mornings, because it was firewood they could most afford. Sometimes at night, the coals would still be warm, no small luxury in the bitter cold as they returned from work.
It was on such a day that they made their way back to the cabin, a fresh-cut cord of pecan stacked and ready on the dock behind them. Come morning, they would meet the Belle and sell their wares for what the market would bear. Ben and Sophie picked up their pace in anticipation of corn and the dry of their stable. Orange streaks bolted from the horizon and into the blue of the sky as the sun dropped. Pulling up his collar against the wind, Joshua rode in silence, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his coat for warmth.
The smell of smoke from the cabin lifted their spirits as they pulled up the draw. Caleb leaned forward and snapped the reins to hurry them along. The day had been long, and his muscles ached.
“Whoa, Ben. Whoa, Sophie,” he said, pulling up.
“What’s the matter?” Joshua asked.
“There,” he said, pointing to the sky. “Looks like the whole blame woods is on fire.”
“Oh hell! It’s the cabin, Caleb. She’s burning to the ground.”
“Giddup!” Caleb yelled, popping the reins.
As they rounded the corner into the clearing, Caleb’s heart sank. Flames roared from the chimney and licked at the windowpanes. The cabin creaked, tired and defeated against the terrible heat that churned within her.
“Get the feed buckets from the stable,” Caleb yelled, jumping from the wagon. “We’ll carry water up from the creek.”
Standing on the wagon seat, Joshua just shook his head.
“It’s too late, Caleb,” he said. “It’s a chimney fire, and there ain’t no putting her out now.”
Falling to his knees in the snow, Caleb watched as the cabin groaned and a wall surrendered to the flames. Heat burned against his face and dried the tears that ran down his cheeks.
“I failed to clean that chimney, Joshua,” he said. “My pa would have tanned my hide for such a thing. Now everything I owned is gone. I don’t even have a clean shirt to put on. It’s all gone.”
The cabin gave way with a sigh, collapsing inward into the fire as it flared in a grand finale against the darkening sky.
Putting his hand on Caleb’s shoulder, Joshua comforted him.
“It ain’t all gone, Caleb. We got our stash in the stable, and you still got ole Ben and Sophie here. It’s just a cabin gone, that’s all, and a damn poor one at that.”
That night they slept in the stable. Smoke from the charred remains of the cabin hung heavy in the air as they prepared their beds. They shivered under saddle blankets and pulled hay about themselves to ward against the bitterly cold wind that swept into the stable. Ben and Sophie leaned against one another for warmth and wondered at the invasion of their privacy.
Snow fell, great white flakes that dipped from the black sky and blanketed the woods. Even as the night grew silent, Caleb lay awake. It wasn’t much of a cabin, like Joshua said, a small loss in the scheme of things, but it was all he’d had, all he’d ever known, all he’d ever been. Now there was naught but his father’s axe and team and the apprehension of an uncertain future.
Morning broke clear, the sun sparkling cold across the frozen woods. Ben’s and Sophie’s breaths rose in a cloud as they awaited their feed.
“Goddang it,” Joshua said from beneath the hay.
“What’s the matter?” Caleb asked, sitting up.
“There’s a chicken standing on my chest.”
“Well, catch her up,” Caleb said. “I can’t leave them here for the coyotes to eat, anyway.”
When Joshua grabbed her leg, the chicken squawked in alarm. “What am I supposed to do now?” he asked, gathering her into his arms.
“There’s a wire cage over there,” Caleb said. “I’ll catch up the others while they’re still roosting.”
When they were all caught and placed in the cage, they loaded it into the back of the wagon. Then they loaded the remaining sacks of corn and an old harness that Caleb’s dad had hung on a nail for repairs.
“What you going to do with all this?” Joshua asked, rubbing his hands against the cold.
“Take them over to Baud’s. Maybe he’ll stake us some blankets and grub until we get a chance to buy supplies.”
After they’d harnessed the team, they hooked them up to the wagon and built a small fire in the stable. They cooked eggs in the bottom of a feed bucket, eating them with their fingers and without the benefit of salt or grease.
“That was awful,” Caleb said, wiping at his mouth.
“Better than copper biscuits,” Joshua said, “though not much, I admit.”
Caleb wiped his hands on his pants and squared his hat.
“Better get over to Baud’s before he goes to work.”
They climbed up on the wagon seat, turned up their collars, and hunkered down against the cold. A circle of ash lay beneath the snow where the cabin had once stood, and curls of smoke still rose into the cold morning air. The stone steps his father had built for the front porch stood forlorn.
At the big maple tree, Caleb pulled up at his father’s grave for a moment, the cypress cross gray and drab against the snow.
“Where do we go from Baud’s?” Joshua asked.
“I been thinking on it,” Caleb said, reining Ben and Sophie about and into the woods.
Blowing on his hands, Joshua waited. “Well?”
“I figure to join the army, too,” he said. “If it’s mean sons of bitches they want, then who better than me?”
“It’s a rare man what sees his own nature,” Joshua said, grinning. “But I don’t figure we got enough money for both of us, Caleb. It’s a fair way to Kansas from here.”
Caleb leaned into his elbows and studied Ben’s rump as they made their way through the snow.
“We can work our way downriver,” he said. “Cut wood, sleep in the wagon, sell to the steamers at the fuel stops. Once we get to Louisville, we should have enough money for train tickets to Kansas.”
“We’ll join the army, by god,” Joshua said, clapping his hands, “mean sons of bitches that we are.”
Standing at his door, Baud buttoned his neck collar and reached for his coat.
“That’s a real shame, Caleb,” he said. “Near burned this ole nest down myself one time. Those chimneys start huffing, there ain’t no stopping them. Climbed that roof like I was sixteen, what with a bucket of water in both hands, and got her doused. It was close, though, and my back hurt for a month afterward.”
“This here’s Joshua,” Caleb said, climbing down from the wagon. “He’s my new cutting partner. We was hoping to trade out some goods, Baud, what with these chickens, my half of the raft, too. There’s a load of pecan down on the dock. I figure it’s worth a gun, if you got one to give. My pa’s burned up in the fire.”
Baud stepped out on the porch. “Won’t you be needing that raft come spring?”
“Me and Joshua here’s joining up with the cavalry, Baud. It’s heroes they looking for, and we figure to fit the bill.”
Baud reached for his makings and rolled a cigarette, touching it off with a match. He blew smoke into the cold morning air. “That a fact?”
“Yes, it is. If you’ll stake us a little grub and some blankets what we don’t freeze, we figure to cut wood down to Louisville and catch a train up to Leavenworth.”
“You boys get your peckers hung off a teepee pole, you ain’t careful,” he said, looking up through a cloud of smoke. “I hear them Indians save ’em up for souvenirs, that’s what I hear.”
“If it’s peckers they’re looking for, they could do a lot better than ole Joshua here,” Caleb said.
“Well, maybe so,” Baud said, picking a piece of tobacco off his tongue, “but a man’s pecker is a mighty dear sacrifice, no matter how humble.”
“You figure to help us, Baud?” Caleb asked.
“I guess we could scare up some flour and lard, Caleb, a little coffee, too. I got an old pistol and half a box of shells, but I ain’t got no rifle. There’s a couple of wool blankets, if you don’t mind the itch and a hole or two.”
“That will do fine, Baud, and feel free to take them timbers out our stable if you’ve a notion. I turned that ole milk cow out. She’s near dry, anyway. Catch her up if you want.”
