Woe to Live On: A Novel (12 page)

Sue Lee’s hair had been reined in a bit. She went right at the brandy and poured herself a dollop. Allowances were made for women as well as men in such times.

“I have it in me to sing,” she said. “Shall we have a sing-along?”

This Honeybee creature was a seedling version of her mother, destined to grow wide and strong and pleasing.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I like those the best.”

“My voice is not all it should be these days,” Jack Bull said, “but once it was rumored I could carry a tune.”

This was all too much for me. Sing-alongs were the main attraction at socials my whole life, and I never did like them. It could be that I sang without tone or spirit or joy. My voice had an ability to hit and founder at several odd depths in any one chorus.

“I believe I won’t sing,” I said. “Young ears are present.”

The widow girl sliced a look at me that was meant to drag me along into song.

“I’ll bet you sing lovely,” she said.

“You would lose.”

“He really does sing very poorly,” Jack Bull said. “He imitates the turkey first-rate, though.”

He was peddling his social graces hard at my expense. I didn’t even want the widow.

Honeybee took my hand, as is the forward style of lonely country tykes.

“Would you do a gobble for me, sir?” she asked.

I rubbed Honeybee’s soft little head, then grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her ’til she faced in another direction.

“It is too cold, Honeybee,” I told her. “When I call turkeys—they come. They would come all a-gobble and crash right through those windows and we would freeze.”

“Oh,” she said, pouty, and I shoved her off toward her mother. “I want to hear it. I want you to gobble, sir.”

“Catch me in better weather.”

I guess I amused the widow, as she smiled at me in a tiny lip-curl fashion that I supposed indicated minute mirth.

Mrs. Evans put her arms around Honeybee and held her to her tummy.

“Don’t pester the man so,” she said. “We’re going to sing, Honeybee. You like to sing, don’t you?”

“If he won’t gobble, I’ll sing.” The wide-woman seedling smoldered a look at me. “He don’t care for me.”

This banter with a child was tightening me up. The social whirl was not my form of tumult. All my stabs at it missed the mark.

“I like you fine,” I said. “It’s just gobbling right now is not for me.”

Soon the crowd got over my not gobbling and started singing. They beat through “Dixie” and “Barbry Allen,” then worked over “Kiss Me Katie Oh.” Old Evans honked out the
low parts and Jack Bull stretched up after notes that he fumbled gamely and the women sang in the soothing center range.

Brandy was sloshed around.

I leaned against a wall and smiled constantly, like an addlebrain.

It pretty well made me jumpy, hooting out songs in a secesh house in a Federal district. I had not the same capacity for convincing myself that I was elsewhere from where I was. I knew exactly where I was and it wasn’t a place for songs.

Aw, pretty quick I said the devil with it all and went outside. I tried to keep a watch and the moon helped some by throwing that weak light down on the road. I could sort of see a good distance and that relaxed me.

The night chill had routed any ragtag pockets of heat. My nose burned. Water beaded in my eyes. A granny thing happened to my hands and they could barely clinch. I hopped about inside a blanket and crashed my hat down around my ears.

Inside the house the sing-along went on. Jack Bull Chiles would have us killed for a widow squeeze and a chance to mangle high notes in company. The voices were muffled by the walls and wind and reached my ears all souped together.

In every way, and for as many reasons, I wanted to return to the mud dugout and my rock chimney.

But if Jack Bull Chiles ever was hurt because I left him, there would be no recovery for me. I knew that. I had always known that. It was something that I knew from toenail to cowlick.

So I watched the road and blew on my hands and stamped my feet and damn near froze, but no bad luck gained on us.

It was as pleasant a night as I’d had in a while.

I
N THE COMING
days the widow found daily missions that required her presence in our dugout. George Clyde was often at Juanita Willard’s and sometimes Holt was at his side. Sometimes he was left in the dugout. Sue Lee got friendlier and more sisterly to Holt and me. Jack Bull would not be mistaken for her relative by any but the most backward sort of person.

Really, she quit seeming like a widow. She seemed like a seventeen-year-old girl from Carthage, Missouri, which is what she was. When Jack Bull started putting her paw in his, she fell for the ploy. She liked that gambit. It had worked on her before, I think.

One day when the snow had fallen, she hustled into the dugout and bellowed a howdy, which had become her greeting. Two balls of snow were in her hands. She hurled one at me but missed and splattered Holt. The other she walked over and rubbed in Jack Bull’s face. He never even moved to avoid it, but held his face up and open to her fingers and the cold they mashed all about his features.

“You splattered poor Holt,” I said to her. “Your aim is wild.”

“It surely is,” she answered. The snow was melting on my near brother’s face. He looked like the boy who has been scolded only to discover that the right scolding can be a pleasant business. She turned from him and looked on Holt. “Did I whop you good?”

As was his wont, Holt merely nodded.

The whole long fence of her teeth went on display. She was frisky and happy and wallowing in her mood, as only someone who does not often feel it will. She went over and shoved Holt.

“Holt,” she said, giggling. “I’ll make you speak up one of these days.”

He looked up at her and laid his head off to one side.

“Don’t hold your breath, missy.”

This one sentence delighted her. She busted up harder with mirth than you would at several Shakespeares.

“I have done it!” she cried. “I have made old Holt talk!”

Love must be what it was. This mood just crashed right out of her and slammed around the dugout. I thought, It must be akin to a terrible fever, only it races happy through you and not heat. Maybe there is some heat, too. It is a sight to watch if you ain’t got it yourself.

Jack Bull stared at her kind of sheepish, and she kept giddying about ’til he said, “Whoa, mule! Settle down, there.”

Calling a lovestruck girl a mule in company is not a winning comment. I learned that quick by the way Sue Lee’s face twitched straight from giddy to grumpy. She turned a look on Jack Bull that showed plain that she saw no great compliment in the comparison.

“Mule?” she said. “Whoa, mule?”

There was snowmelt trickling over his face, and he wiped at it. He looked my way as if I might relay him a good lie that would slide him out of this.

“Just calm down,” he said.

She leaned over so her face was just above him. She pinched her cheeks and said, “Do I look muley to you?”

“Well, no.”

Then she did this thing that I would have plunked down five cents to see if I hadn’t gotten it free. She spun about, put her hands on her knees and sashayed her butt practically into his surprised nose. Despite her many garments the movement showed some charms.

“That look like a mule to you?” She stood straight while he looked stupid, then she did it again. He took his punishment well. “That look like the rear end of an animal that heehaws in the night?”

Jack Bull smiled at that and dug himself in deeper.

“It looks like it might could be.”

I am afraid Holt and me laughed. We were always loitering in the midst of their carrying-ons. Romance is a sweet enough enterprise but it makes you lonely to watch it. Holt grinned at me and I sent the same back to him.

“Jack Bull Chiles,” Sue Lee said, “just because I’m a widow it don’t mean you can get that familiar with me.”

“Pardon me, ma’am, but I believe it was you that shoved your rump into my face.”

“Oh!” she went. “That was only just to make a point!”

“You made it,” he said. He could be rough at the oddest
moments. “I will always know your rump from a mule’s now. There are several differences. I don’t know how I missed them.”

Now, Sue Lee Shelley was not the sort of plantation belle that would be contented by a mere exchange of rhyming insults. She came of practical people in a practical land. She smote him a good one on the chin.

Twice in my life I had also taken swings on Jack Bull, and her blows shook him even less than mine had. She wound up to fling another at him, but he sprang to his feet and grabbed her in close to him. His arms were all around her.

My Lord, Holt and me wanted out of that dugout. Some things you ought not to ever see your best friend do up close. Love is one of them. Me and Holt went dirt-quiet and faced every way but their way.

“Don’t be mean,” she said, and this time she sounded about twelve years old and lost. “I can’t tolerate meanness.”

There was some breathy silence, then wet noises were made and several sighs accompanied them. I have a fragment of the gentleman in me, but I ditched it and looked over my shoulder at all the friendliness. Jack Bull was doing some moist mouth work on her neck and cheeks and lips. He nuzzled her all about. Pretty soon she was doing similar deeds on him.

He had a slit-lidded look on him. His arms kept her in the hug and all those noises went on.

In peacetime he might have been shot for this.

“Is that too mean?” he finally asked.

“No,” she answered in a tiny tone. “It’s not really
too
mean at all.”

I guess a woman wants a man in wartime. While there still are any. People in hell want springwater.

Holt found all kinds of fascinating aspects to the dirt between his feet. He knew he better not look anywhere else. A nigger’s path is awful narrow when white women are around.

This big huggy smooching match changed the dugout. It happened in a blink. There I was squatting on the dirt with Holt, feeling just about as useful as a Christian impulse at an ambush, while Jack Bull kept up at his new sport of mashing on widows. It seemed he found this new game to be less than heroically difficult.

I about screamed.

But finally the widow showed some sense. She crawdaddied out of his arms. A couple of satisfied humphs came from her as she patted herself back into place. Then she said, “Oh, goodness.”

“Yes,” he said, and his tone was exactly that of a faro dealer who knows the game ain’t straight. “Goodness is what it is.”

“Aw, for crying out loud!” I said. I pointed at hunkered Holt, then myself. “We’re sitting right here! Show us some mercy.”

My comments had a stunning effect. All the mushy stuff went up the chimney. I didn’t glance to see it, but I could feel Jack Bull staring hard at me. No one knew him better, or even as well.

“He is quite right,” Sue Lee said. “I must leave. I have to get. I better get to the house.”

“Cover your tracks in the snow, too,” I said. “You’ll be leading curious Federals right onto us.”

“Now, don’t be rude,” Jack Bull said. “You have no reason to be rude.”

I faced him after that.

“Is that so?” I asked. I could display some pesky qualities myself when forced to it. “There is a war going on everywhere but between your ears, you dumb ox.”

I guess I was more than pesky.

He kicked me square in the chest. I felt my innards bobble. The next few breaths I drew rattled and wheezed.

“Dumb ox, am I?”

Oh, he had that look for a moment there. It was not the look I most liked to see. But it passed as fast as it came.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” he said. I think he meant it. “My leg just did that on its own. There was no thought behind it.”

I rubbed and rubbed at the place where his boot had visited all on its own. It was a dull throbbing spot.

“I hear you,” I said. “I hear you. These things happen. But Holt and me ain’t dying just so you can be kissed.”

“Leave me out of this,” Holt bleated. “I ain’t even here, or nowhere near here.”

Jack Bull laughed. His eyes had a lantern glow.

“I don’t believe anyone is about to die from my kiss. In fact, she seems to be doing tolerably well.”

The widow excused herself swiftly. She got right out of there. I reckon widows feel okay about acts that some maidens might drown themselves over. Anyhow that’s the way I figured it.

When she was gone Jack Bull said, “Hey, looky here, boys.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Right here.”

There was a big lump in his britches square between where his pistols hung.

“My God,” I said. “Where’s your shame, Chiles?”

“Gone to Texas,” he said, and just uproared with lewd joy.

I couldn’t chime in.