The Widow's War (36 page)

Near sunset, two men approach the slave pens and dump mush into a wooden trough. As Carrie watches Jane’s little girls dip their hands into it, she feels sick with despair. She has wasted a whole day spying on the plantation. She needs to do something soon, but what? She’s desperate to know what fate Clark has in store for his captives, but Clark knows she’s still following him—or at least he must suspect she is. If she goes down there, she’s likely to get everyone killed including herself. She’s one woman against who knows how many armed men. Her only weapons are a knife blade, an ice pick, and a glorified pea shooter that has to be aimed ten times more slowly and carefully than a gun.

She sits in the tree until night falls and mist rises up off the river. The lights in the main house go out one by one. Overhead, a full moon rides through the sky, veiled and ominous.

Shutting her eyes against the moonlight, she leans her forehead against the trunk of the tree and looks into the dark places inside herself. She is afraid she has come to the end of her ability to do anything useful. She can’t attack the plantation single-handed. Clark’s men will kill her long before she gets to the slave pens, and her death won’t save William and Teddy and the people from Two Rivers.

Mae Seja,
she whispers,
come to me. Tell me what to do.
But Mae Seja doesn’t come.
Jesus,
she prays,
come to me, help me.
But the mist settles in, the tree grows slippery, and Jesus doesn’t come either.

Around midnight, she climbs down from her perch, walks back to the thicket where she tethered her horse, and makes him lie down. Curling up against him for warmth, she buries her face in his mane. Around her, the forest has come alive. She hears the sound of frogs croaking, the hum of cicadas, the hoot of an owl. Restless, she turns over and the horse stirs, perhaps wondering why she’s so agitated.

She turns again and feels the
buzios
in her pocket. The pointed end of one of the shells presses into her side.
Hellfire and damnation,
she thinks.
It’s hard enough to sleep without being stabbed by a cowry shell
. Sitting up, she pulls the bag out of her pocket and prepares to toss it aside.

What causes her to hesitate? Why does she dump the
buzios
out into the palm of her hand, lean forward, and throw them into a patch of moonlight? Does she make the cast because she hopes magic will work where prayer has failed? Or does she do it because she has run out of hope so completely that only habit remains?

Later she is never able to understand what prompts her to impulsively cast the
buzios
that night instead of tossing them aside and going back to sleep, but in any event, she does and they come to rest on the ground: sixteen shiny, pearl-white half-moons, five upright, eleven upside down.

Do the shells speak to her? No, she doesn’t think they do. But somehow they allow her to speak to herself, not to her frightened self, but to the self that saw her through the death of Willa, her marriage to Deacon, the long trip to Kansas, the blizzard, the birth of Teddy, the sacking of Lawrence, and the pillaging of Two Rivers. It is her old self, her real self, the one that has been with her as long as she can remember.

What shall I do?
she asks it. And to her surprise, it tells her.

H
enry Clark sits on a bale of hay smoking a cigarette and carefully tapping the ashes into the palm of his hand. He enjoys setting fires, but burning down his cousin’s stable is not on his agenda this morning. Besides killing Jed’s horses, it might get out of control and kill Saylor before they can hang him.

“So, Doctor,” Clark says, blowing a smoke ring and admiring its climb toward the rafters, “as I was saying: I get these headaches every so often.” He pauses and blows another smoke ring. “When I get them, I see odd things: flashes of light, colors. Sometimes I see a wall built out of one-inch-square blocks. The blocks pile up around me when I close my eyes, and then as soon as I try to look at them, they go away.”

He stares at William as if expecting an answer, but William does not supply one. Leaning forward, Clark jerks the bandanna out of his mouth. “Care to hazard a diagnosis?”

“You bastard! What have you done with my son?”

“Wrong answer.” Clark stuffs the bandanna back into William’s mouth. “In the first place, he’s not your son. And in the second place—”

Clark sighs and sits back. This is becoming tedious. It’s convenient to have a doctor around, particularly when you have a tendency to suspect there are all sorts of things wrong with you. So far he has managed to get William to reassure him that he doesn’t have consumption, a diseased liver, or the French pox; but there are other symptoms he would like to discuss, and time is running out.

Once again it all comes down to the fact that people aren’t grateful when you do them favors. He could have strung William up five minutes after they rode out of Two Rivers, but he has kept him alive for more than a week now and even let him supervise the cleaning of the bullet wound in his leg. Ever since they arrived, Jed’s slaves have been running back and forth between the main house and the stable with hot water and clean bandages. Result: There’s no sign of gangrene in William’s wound and thus no need for amputation. He could probably hobble around if his ankles weren’t tied together.
Saylor should be thanking me,
Clark thinks.
But instead he’s becoming increasingly stubborn.

He takes a deep breath and reminds himself to be patient. A few hours from now, he isn’t going to have a doctor to consult, and while William is still able to talk, they might as well make the most of it.

“Let me put it to you this way: I’m curious to know what’s causing my headaches. If you tell me, I might consider getting one of my cousin’s slaves to bring you something to eat. How long has it been since you had a real meal? Three days now? Four? I’ve lost track, but I imagine you’re hungry. There’s going to be a big party later this afternoon. The cook’s making fried chicken and apple pies. Tell me what’s causing my headaches, and I’ll see that you get a piece of white meat and a wedge of pie before the guests arrive.”

Clark wonders if William suspects the party Jed and Emma are throwing is a necktie party. The hanging is scheduled to take place right after the slave sale, so if William talks, this will be his last meal. Most men would hang him without feeding him fried chicken. Again, William’s luckier than he knows.

Clark blows a chain of interlinked smoke rings toward William, and a choking sound comes from beneath the gag. He considers pinching William’s nose shut and decides against it. He wants an accurate diagnosis, and when you push a man too hard, he’s liable to say anything.

“Let’s try again. What in your professional opinion is causing my headaches? Are these what are known as ‘migraines’ or are they something else? Do you think, for example, that I might have a brain tumor? I’d worry that your mistress shot me with one of her deadly little darts, but I’ve had these headaches for as long as I can remember, so for once she’s in the clear.” He leans forward and takes the gag out of William’s mouth again. “Speak.”

“Go to hell!”

Clark frowns and crams the gag back into William’s mouth. This is taking much longer than he anticipated. The problem is, the man is stubborn and doesn’t scare easily. Would telling him that he’s going to die this afternoon speed things up? Probably not. Once William knows he has nothing left to lose, he’s likely to clam up entirely. What else might shock him into cooperating? If he knew his stepfather was dead, would that do it? Senator Bennett Presgrove, felled by apoplexy on the floor of the U.S. Senate while making an impassioned speech in favor of extending slavery into every state in the Union: The news is two days old, but as far as Clark knows, no one has mentioned it to William.

He opens his mouth, then reconsiders and closes it. No, bad idea. William never liked his stepfather. Plus as soon as he hears Bennett Presgrove is dead, he will realize Teddy is the heir to his grandfather’s estate as well as Deacon’s. It will only take him a few seconds to realize that it doesn’t matter if he cooperates and diagnoses Clark’s headaches. To get at Teddy’s money, Clark is going to have to remove any suspicion that Teddy is William’s child, which means Clark is going to have to kill him.

Putting the cigarette back between his lips, Clark inhales deeply.
What would Mangas Coloradas do?
he wonders. He wishes he had Deacon here to tell him. Pity he had to shoot Deacon, but Deacon was dying anyway. Tilting his head toward the ceiling, he blows three perfect smoke rings. The circles rise and expand like the rims of wagon wheels.
It’s hard to lose a friend,
he thinks.

He closes his eyes and the little square blocks start fencing him in.
Click
, he thinks as they drop into place.
Click, click, click. If I poked my finger in my eye, could I put it through that wall they’re making?

 

 

 

 

 

A
n hour after Clark gives up on William, a boat pulls up to the Beau Rivage landing, and three men disembark. Two are local planters who are in the market for new field hands. The third is Sheridan Thompson, a middleman who buys slaves and ships them South to his associates who in turn sell them to large landowners. The slaves who labor in the Southern cane and cotton fields die every year at a steady rate, so the demand for replacements is always brisk.

Jed Clark greets his guests with a friendly handshake and conducts them to the slave pen. Jed is a portly, jolly-looking man. Perhaps he was once as handsome as his cousin Henry, but if so, age has melted him down like a candle, piling his cheeks on his chin and his nose on his upper lip. There is something clownlike about his face that always makes strangers smile when they first meet him, but this morning the potential buyers stop smiling as soon as they see the merchandise he’s offering. None of them have ever seen a sorrier lot of slaves.

“What is this?” Thompson asks. “An asylum for the infirm?”

“I admit they’re no great shakes,” Jed says, “but they come cheap, gentlemen. The women recently worked on a hemp plantation. Worked right hard, too, with no fussing or complaining. Why they didn’t even have to be driven out into the fields. They went on their own, nice as you please, no overseer needed. You don’t get obedience like that every day.

“As for that one,” he points to Jane, “she can cook and clean and sew like nobody’s business.”

“She has a sullen look,” one of the local planters observes. “I reckon she’s trouble.”

“No matter to me,” Thompson says. “Where I’ll send her she won’t be raising a fuss if she wants to keep skin on her back. A slave that can cook fetches a higher price.”

“She can read, too,” Jed says.

Thompson frowns. “I don’t find that an attractive quality in a slave and neither will those who bid for her. Teaching a slave to read is illegal all over the South. Fines are imposed, sir, hefty ones. Teach a slave her letters and the next thing you know, she’s reading abolitionist tracts and plotting to poison you in your sleep.”

He rests his hands on the top rail and stares at Jane, who glares back at him defiantly. “If I take this one, you’re going to have to knock down the price you’re asking considerably, plus throw in the old men for free.”

“I wouldn’t take her at any price,” says one of the planters, “but those two pretty little girls of hers—”

The men all laugh.

“You’ll have to outbid me for those two beauties,” Thompson says. “Fatten them up, wash them, pick the nits out of their hair, and ship them off to New Orleans, and—well I shouldn’t say this because I reckon Mr. Clark here will raise his price on me—but the owners of every pleasure palace in the city will be lining up to buy them.” He turns to Jed. “That’s assuming they’re virgins. They are, yes?”

“Since they look to be about five and six years old, I reckon they are.”

“I’m going to need to inspect their teeth and tongues before I bid on them, make sure they’re in good health and free of blemishes. Get one of your men in there to make the mother let go of them, Mr. Clark, and we’ll get started.”

 

 

 

 

 

A
tall bluff with muddy sides, and below it, a brown, coiled river and bottomlands white with cotton. Beau Rivage: beautiful to look at from a distance, but horrifying when examined more closely.

For four days, four nights, and the better part of a fifth day, Carrie has ridden until she was too tired to sit up in the saddle; ridden until her horse died under her; then she stole another horse and set out riding again. In that time, she has been to Osawatomie and, with Elizabeth’s help, armed the men of Keyhole Draw with the guns John Brown took from the pro-slavery militia at the Battle of Black Jack and mounted them on the horses Brown took at the same battle. With Brown’s blessing, she has led his secretly trained cavalry back to Missouri to this bend in the river where Henry Clark and his men have set up camp; and every second she has been afraid she will arrive too late, that the slaves will already have been sold, Teddy disposed of, William hanged.

She stares at the slave pen through Elizabeth’s collapsible opera glasses. The lenses make the air between what she looks at and what she sees as visible as water. Waves of moisture rise from the fields twisting like serpents. Near the main house, four men in dark suits walk toward the pen. Their faces are pinkish blanks rimmed with hair and beards, and their bodies waver like badly drawn watercol ors. They lean on the fence, stare at the slaves, and gesture. Carrie sees Jane’s daughters torn out of her embrace and led off toward the main house. She sees Jane throw herself against the fence of the slave pen and beat on it with her fists. Jane’s mouth opens in an O of rage and lamentation.