Soul of a Crow (23 page)

I strained, closing my eyes, stretching out to her with all the strength I possessed. I waited, but there was nothing, and grief stung the bridge of my nose.

“Tell me where you are,” I whispered, tears falling chill upon my face, as though my innards had frozen. “Please, darlin', please answer. I feel like I am dying and I do not know where you are.”

I ground my teeth, staring sightlessly at the heavens, seeing only my memories of her face, her precious face, the love in her beautiful eyes, which at times shown blue as chicory, at others the green of cedar boughs. I willed her to hear me.

“Lorie,” I demanded, with quiet desperation.

Punishment was perhaps all I deserved. I reflected upon this, allowing myself no quarter, as I knelt there under a moon waning to new. I thought of Gus, good, kind Angus Warfield, who I had known from my birth. Rare were men as decent as Gus. And though it nearly killed me when he intended to marry Lorie, and claim his unborn child along with her, I forced myself to acknowledge that he would care for her with tender concern, love her to his final days, and would protect her with his life. And he had, to the very last.

I knew even without Lorie speaking the words that guilt over his death remained in her soul; I knew, as there was also the stinging backlash of guilt within me, for not being there when Gus was shot and Lorie was taken, and for the brutal harm that had come to her. And yet had Gus lived, Lorie would be his wife at this very moment. I would be a liar of the lowest rank, utterly dishonorable, if I did not recognize in the blackest part of my soul that if Gus had to die so that Lorie and I could be together, I would pay that price every time.

If I'm bound for hell, at least allow me a life with Lorie first. Dear God, you see into my heart, and know my sins, and what I have done to survive. Twice now I have not been present when she has disappeared from me, and I cannot bear it. If hell is where I shall spend eternity, I accept this. Please, before I die, restore my wife to me. Oh dear God, please…

And I was heartened beyond all relief to feel a sudden sense of her. Just the faintest flicker, but it was there.

She was there
.

I rose swiftly and turned in a circle, struggling to retain the connection.

“Lorie!” I shouted. “
Lorie!
”

Though I could not discern a word from her, even an edge of a word, I knew without a doubt that she was no longer in Iowa City, instead miles distant from my current position.

But which direction?

“Sawyer!” called Boyd, standing on the edge of the street, where it met the grasses of the prairie. He yelled, “Get over here!” and I got, at a run.

“I felt her,” I said, short of breath, and Boyd clapped my back, not questioning how I came to this certainty. “I felt her, just now.”

I noticed for the first time that another person stood beyond Boyd, recognizing the smug weasel of a man with whom we'd discoursed briefly and unpleasantly upon arrival to this town. Parmley, who had been so eager to inform us that a former Confederate soldier was to be hung today, swayed forward just slightly, as though drunk. Lantern light fell in slanted rectangles on the street at his feet.

Piano music tinkled from the nearby saloon, “Beautiful Dreamer,” a song I disliked, as it was so sorrowful. I tried not to interpret this as an ominous sign. A field doc in Georgia had been fond of bowing this particular tune, sitting outside his medic's tent after a day's work. As dusk descended he would play. I spent a week recovering from a musket ball to the leg, and had listened to the fiddle weep over this same melody—the darkening air concealed the pile alongside the doc's tent, resembling nothing as much as slop intended for pigs, that of severed limbs that no one had yet buried or burned—though nothing could lessen their smell on the sticky Georgia air—

Stop
.

Boyd wasted no time explaining, “Parmley, here, got a word for you.”

I was in this man Parmley's space a second later, perhaps unduly threatening, as he retreated a step and lifted both palms in instinctive preparation to defend against an assault. I restrained the urge to clamp my fists about him and shake forth answers. I demanded, “Tell me.”

“I saw your wife at the hanging,” he said, his tone less composed than it had been earlier today. Drink discernibly slurred his speech.

“If you are lying to me, you cannot imagine how sorry I will make you,” I promised, and he gulped, I could see even in the partial darkness.

“I am not lying,” he insisted. “This fellow,” and he nodded at Boyd, flanking me to the left, “says your wife is missing from town.”

“What happened? What did you see?”

Parmley hesitated; anvils weighted my heart. He finally said, “The crowd was thick as beeswax, but I saw your wife across the square. She was…” and he seemed to be searching for an appropriate word, settling upon, “Detained. Two men spoke to her, one quite close to her ear. They led her away.”

“What men?” I raged, this time unable to stop from grabbing his upper arms, tugging him nearly off his feet.

“Christ almighty,” Parmley uttered, struggling to free himself. He shoved at me, ineffectually, but Boyd's grunt forced me to release the smaller man, who at once brushed at the arms of his clothing, as though my touch had soiled him. He said stiffly, “I did not recognize them as locals. I admit I'd not given it another thought…until this moment.”

Blood beat at my temples.

Boyd asked for me, “What'd they look like? What do you recall?”

Parmley released a tense breath and replied, “I'm doubtful I could pick either from a crowd. One was of a decent height, and wore a marshal's star. The other was a scrawny, disheveled fellow.” He gathered himself and insisted pompously, “I'll not be manhandled. I've told you what I know, and I'll return to my evening.”

Though his attitude earlier repulsed me, he had helped me perhaps incalculably now, and I said with all sincerity, “Thank you.”

Parmley retreated to the saloon without another word, bumping into the hinged doors and nearly falling, but Boyd and I had not a moment to spare for him.

“Let us find Billings,” Boyd said.

- 16 -

It was fully
dark and Lorie had been missing for more than eight hours. Desperation lanced its beak into my flesh but I held the worst of my dread at bay, instead concentrating on the two pieces of information I'd received in the last half hour—that Lorie was alive, and that she had been led away by two men. I could not dwell upon why she was unable to respond. If I did, I would lose control. Given the slightest opportunity, I would destroy any barrier in my path to reach her side.

“I do believe I despise the moon when it is waning,” Boyd muttered, his chin lifted to glare in the direction of the sullen-looking orb, misshapen now as it was pared back to new. When I did not respond, as we skirted men and horses on our return from speaking to Parmley, Boyd wondered aloud for the third time, “A marshal? I know we ain't got a reason under the sun to trust Parmley, but I believe he told us true. He ain't got a thing to gain from lyin' to us. What could a marshal want with Lorie-girl?”

“Rawley,” I said, intending to mention that contacting him was an idea with merit. Though our acquaintance had been thus far brief, Charley Rawley seemed a trustworthy man. He may possess knowledge that could help us—I longed to believe this, but my thoughts were at present choked with panicked notions, as deadfall in a logjam…images flowed in succession across my mind, almost without my intending. I recalled sitting at the Rawleys' fire the night of the full moon...singing in celebration of the Fourth, whiskey jug making the rounds, Lorie in my arms, Malcolm curled near us…

Think, Sawyer
, I commanded. There was something I hadn't considered, just at the periphery of my thoughts. I felt this as tangibly as a damp towel draped over my forehead.

Think, goddammit
.

A marshal would cover a greater territory than a local lawman, and would possess a longer-reaching jurisdiction than either Billings or Clemens, who were county-appointed sheriffs; surely Billings and Clemens, and Charley Rawley, would know of any marshals assigned to this area. Lamps were lit upon street corners, creating pockets of light amongst the night, fully gathered by now, its black cloak draped over the town as Boyd and I ventured south and east. We were scarce a block from Tilson's office; I could see lantern glowing against the canvas-covered window, though the hitching rail before it was empty; Whistler and Fortune, along with all of our horses and the wagon, were stabled just behind Tilson's.

Sudden as a spirit, Malcolm ran from across the street. The boy was alone, and out of breath, and my footsteps faltered; I allowed myself to believe that he was approaching so quickly because he bore good news. But I should have known otherwise.

“Sawyer,” the boy gasped. “We gotta go. Quick, before Billings gets here.”

“What in the name of Christ are you talkin' about?” Boyd asked, catching his little brother's upper arms; Boyd had walked two or three paces ahead, not realizing that I'd halted.

Malcolm twitched free of Boyd and galloped to my side, gripping my shirtfront to further impress upon me his sincerity. He choked out, desperation tinging his plea, “Sawyer, there's a marshal come for you! He's at the doc's office with Mrs. Rebecca
just now
…we got to
go
…”

A marshal—perhaps the same man who had taken Lorie, earlier today. Perhaps she was as near as Tilson's. It was at best a wild hope, but I hoped keenly nonetheless, unaware that I was speaking these thoughts aloud, in great, disjointed chunks. I meant to run that direction as quickly as I was capable, but Boyd caught my arm in his iron grip and insisted, “Hold up.” His voice cut in twain my lack of sense as would the blow of a well-placed ax and he hastily drew the three of us to the side, out of sight between two buildings, and asked, low, “How'd you come to this information, boy?”

It was then that I realized something, and it served to insert a hook into my soul.

Wait. There was a marshal present at the fire that night, at the Rawleys' place.

I could see a rim of white around each of Malcolm's eyes, as they were wide with fear. I demanded, “Is it Yancy? Is the marshal who came for me Yancy?”

“No. His name is Quade,” Malcolm said, still gripping my shirt. “We met him not a quarter-hour past, comin' to find Clemens. He said to Mrs. Rebecca would she be kind enough to put on the coffee for him, as he's ridden hard to get here.” His voice took on a confessional tone as he said breathlessly, “Boyd, Mrs. Rebecca asked Quade what he was after in such an all-fired hurry, an' he says, ‘A former Reb named Davis, all's I know. Killed two fellas near the Missouri border, not a month past,' he says.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Boyd uttered.

This could not be, and yet it was.

I felt again the dead weight of my brothers in my arms, stumbling, lurching over rocks slick with rain and dark blood. With a single-minded sort of madness, I had not wanted their bodies to touch the battlefield upon which they'd been slain. Not their lolling heads or splayed hands, not even their boots. Utterly helpless, just as I had been that January day at Murfreesboro. Vulnerable as a young boy from the holler in the midst of ferocious fighting, possessing nothing but flesh with which to stop a bullet's killing flight.

I saw again the man named Sam Rainey, the man who hurt Lorie in every way he believed himself capable, who would have taken her life without a moment's pause, if just for the satisfaction of wiping from the Earth another enemy, a woman from the Rebel state of Tennessee. I found him thrashing on the ground in his camp that night, howling, though in that moment of terror I heard nothing more than the sound of Lorie, screaming for me, screaming my name. In the light of that dying fire I witnessed my shot take out Rainey, silencing him forever after.

I saw again, knew I would never fully wipe clean from my memory, the man called Dixon kneeling over Lorie, intending to strangle her—her legs beneath him had been struggling, her feet bare, so hideously vulnerable to him that I could not kill him swiftly enough—I only wished that I could have caused him to suffer before dispatching him straight to whatever lay beyond. As had occurred countless times during the War, I was moving too quickly to take a shot, and had instead swung my rifle's stock against his skull, effectively cutting short his attempt to strangle Lorie.

“What's this-all mean?” Malcolm whimpered, and I drew him against me and bent my face to his hatless hair, as I had no answer that would offer comfort. He began quietly crying, doubtless perceiving the lack of choices left to us now.

Boyd's mind moved at a clip, at the pace of a cantering horse. He understood, “One of them survived, that's what. Which?”

“They killed Gus. They woulda killed Lorie,” Malcolm said, his voice high-pitched with weeping.

Jack. It had to be that sawed-off runt, the little piece of horseshit who came into our camp back on the trail in Missouri, long before riding with Rainey and Dixon, acting on the orders of the woman who owned the saloon where Lorie had been a prisoner. This woman, this Ginny Hossiter, paid Jack to follow us from St. Louis, and he had, with dutiful obedience, sneaking into Lorie's tent with the intent of stealing her away. I wanted to kill Jack that very first night, and should have trusted my instinct then.

And given the opportunity to kill him a second time, I had tried, and failed miserably. Never mind that it had been nightfall, and that I acted in a stupor of agonized panic; despite the fact that I fired a rifle into his belly, Jack was no doubt still alive, and there was reason to believe that Lorie was in his company this very night. Jack had certainly spoken to the law, and now a marshal was upon my trail, no doubt ready to apprehend me for a crime I would justify to my deathbed.

“It's Jack,” I said, with certainty.

“I reckon you's right,” Boyd said, already comprehending the truth of this. “He'd be the scrawny fella Parmley described. But what about the marshal, with Jack? That was hours past, an' this Quade just arrived…”

“Yancy,” I whispered, and Boyd's dark eyes burned through the darkness. He nodded without a word and I felt a sudden and terrible shifting in my bones.

You'll be hung
, I thought.
They have Lorie, and you'll be hung. You'll be dead and she'll be alone…

I hissed through my teeth and set Malcolm gently aside; unable to remain still, I paced and then felt blood surge into my skull, pulsing heatedly there. I raged, “It will never let us free, goddammit,
it will never fucking let us free!
”

Boyd was on me in the next instant, clenching my shoulders in his grasp. He meant to shush my anger, and I threw off his grip.

“There is no redemption for us,
don't you see?
” I demanded, overwhelmed by hopeless rage; the world seemed to tilt and pitch. “There is no redemption for what we've seen, and what we've done…”

“
Sawyer!
” Boyd yelled, not about to be deterred by my outburst, gripping my shirtfront and shaking me. He was one of few men strong enough to manage this, and did so forcefully; I was reminded of Bainbridge Carter, who had countless times administered such disciplinary shakings to all of us boys. Boyd ordered, “Catch hold of yourself!”

Malcolm clung to my elbow, his pleading voice echoing in my ear, “Sawyer, we got to
go
. I'll fetch the horses.”

“Boy, you return to Doc Tilson's an' say not a word that you's seen us,” Boyd said, his breathing uneven. Because I had calmed to his satisfaction, Boyd released my shirt. Malcolm hesitated, but Boyd seemed to have formed a plan, as he said, “Go now, boy, I'll be there directly to fetch you.”

Malcolm hugged me tightly around the waist, his cheek against my ribs; then he disappeared into the night.

“I'll fetch Whistler, you stay put here. I'll be no more'n a minute,” Boyd said, low and emphatically, before departing.

Left alone, the sounds of evening revelry in a busy town reaching my ears from the near-distance, I let my back touch the wooden boards of one of the buildings that bordered this alley, sliding to a crouch and burying my face in both hands. Stalked like an animal, cornered here in this place. Lorie taken by Jack and Yancy—God knew what their intent with her, and I released a heaving breath, unable to prevent the sudden surge of bile from rising. I rolled to the side and vomited. I despised this helplessness, and the fury in the face of it. Jack once intended to return Lorie to Ginny Hossiter back in St. Louis, and I had to assume this was still his plan. He alone would not have authority to take Lorie from town in broad daylight, and though there was no rationale other than a suspicion, I was sure that we were correct in our assumption that the marshal accompanying Jack was indeed Thomas Yancy.

Detained
, Parmley said.

“Why?” I whispered, not addressing anyone in particular, not expecting an answer. Hunkered there, I was inundated with a sudden memory of a summer from my youth; perhaps seven or eight I had been, and sore because Mama scolded me for hitting Ethan in the eye, and because I knew a greater punishment was coming. I could not recall the exact offense for which I'd struck my brother; only that it had seemed the proper course of action at the time. Ethan and I were the ones to cause trouble on any given day, far too similar in temperament, behaving often in the manner of cats in a burlap sack.

Jeremiah was the soft-hearted one, the last born; behind the pressure of both hands against my face, I saw my youngest brother as a little boy, ruddy and freckled, leaning his cheek against Mama's upper arm and resting there as she stroked his curls, with tender affection. Jere never gave Mama a moment's trouble, whereas Ethan and I felt the lash of the strap meted out by Daddy on a regular basis, always deserved; we'd run wild as foxes, along with Beau, Boyd, and Grafton, amidst all the sunny days of our youths. It seemed illogical, even insane, to believe that the six of us would one day ride out from the holler as volunteer soldiers, as cavalrymen for the newly-minted Confederacy. So prideful we had been, with no more than a smoke wisp of an inkling of the horrors we would shortly behold.

My father was as fair-minded a man as any I had ever known, and always calmly explained to us his justification for any disciplinary action. I recalled twitching with nervous anticipation in the barn, where we were routinely punished, usually fidgeting side-by-side with Eth, unable to process more than a few words of Daddy's earnest speeches, my eyes roving repeatedly to the strap. Strappings hurt for days on end; the first night, it was often impossible to sit for longer than a few minutes. But this particular instance, Daddy had not yet returned home from town, and the livery stable; I knew as soon as he did I would have to accept my punishment with no excuses. Lying there in our hayfield, which was a good two months from harvest and smelled as sweet as heaven, I imagined remaining hidden until the morning.

It had been a lovely evening; even flat upon my back in the hay, the view was familiar—the topmost branches of the oaks that grew strong and sturdy on the north side of the house visible above the stalks of grain surrounding me; the oak limbs curled and twisted in the fashion of an old man's fingers, thick with summer leaves; the scent of supper wafted from our home. The swath of early-evening sky above lit my face with a rosy tint, smooth as the soft breast feathers of a hen, and I reached up as though to pet it, bringing together my hands and shaping my fingers to form an oval, through which I peered at the lace made by the thin, fair-weather clouds drifting lazily along in whatever gentle breeze was stirring the air in that summer of 1850, or perhaps 'fifty-one.

And across that sky, into the frame I created of my hands, a crow winged past, a blot of ink against a pale-smooth page, the death specter forcing an acknowledgment of its presence upon me, long before I'd killed another man. Perhaps even then it had a claim upon my soul.