Grace of a Hawk Page 6

The prairie provided good grazing for our animals and I patted Fortune’s solid neck, in pure affection. I’d purchased her upon returning from War, one of Piney Chapman’s stock and kin to Whistler, and a better horse I’d never had, saving Arthur, the blood-bay gelding I’d ridden to War. Malcolm and I had entered into the state of Minnesota a day past, as we’d learned from a rider we met, a man whose homestead was just north of the Iowa border. Friendly folks thus far, even after hearing our Tennessee drawl; I felt the Northerners were the ones that spoke with a strange rhythm, their words that clipped along like spooked mules, near foreign to my ears, though they seemed ready enough to poke a bit of fun at our speech, if not outright misunderstand what we attempted to say.

  You are saying ‘guard,’ as I recently came to realize, I recalled a Yankee prisoner telling me, sometime in the autumn of ’sixty-four. I thought you were attempting to say ‘god’ until just this very moment’s time.

  “You ain’t no fun without Sawyer an’ Lorie-Lorie,” Malcolm griped, wiping his right hand on his thigh. He’d polished off the last of the penny candy Rebecca packed for him, tucked into a kerchief and stowed in his haversack. The boy was armed with Gus’s Winchester, secure in its saddle scabbard, which he’d used to fire after Yancy that terrible night, and with which he was a good shot; before we’d left, I considered allowing him a pistol, but was still hesitant – pistols were a gamble, at best, a chance for a misfire or injury, and spoke of close-range shooting. And if it came to close quarters, I intended to be the one doing the shooting, not the boy. Besides, we were goddamn lucky to have the rifles still in our possession; the twister had stolen my pistol.

  I tried not to let his words needle me; I was eldest, after all, not a young’un who could be provoked to bickering. Diverting his attention like I would a crayfish I intended to snag, I said, “Maybe there’ll be a chance for a hot bath, once we reach St. Paul.” Never mind that I couldn’t afford it unless our fortune changed markedly before then.

  Malcolm sighed, perhaps seeing through my trick. “I’m just tired, is all. But I like being on the trail, I truly do, Boyd. I like seein’ what’s beyond the next rise.”

  “I do, as well,” I allowed, feeling a small lifting of spirits; the boy was a good one for that, whether he knew it or not. I said truthfully enough, “I like riding over the prairie, looking to the next horizon. I aim to settle, I do, but I know just what you mean.”

  “What if I can’t remember Tennessee?” he asked then, on a winsome note. “Sometimes I feel like it’s been years since I lived there. Do you s’pose we’ll ever get back that-a-way?”

  I took great care with my response. “I’d like to believe someday, boy. I do. But it ain’t gonna be for a long time.”

  After a spell, “Boyd?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you wish you weren’t never a soldier?”

  My brother knew how to throw out a question to catch me smack in the gut. This one was even tougher to answer than the last. I tried for evasion. “There ain’t nothing can be done about it, either way. Whether I wish it, or not.”

  “But do you?” he pressed, shifting on Aces. His chestnut gave an impatient whicker; Aces High was a good horse, greatly in tune with his master.

  “I wish a great deal of things was the way they used to be.” Damn, I was acting like a sidewinder with these sorts of answers. “I wish I ain’t seen half of what I did as a soldier. But I believed in defending our home state, our homeland. I thought I was brave, boy, an’ leavin’ the holler to be a hero. Back then I thought – shit, we all thought – we’d be home by New Year, don’t you recall? Beau aimed to marry Sara Lynn LeMoyne by that next spring, in ’sixty-three. He said at dinner, only the night before we done left, that he planned to make her a happy woman.” And I could not help but smile a little, at the memory of my brother’s boldness.

  Malcolm murmured, “I recall.”

  I held in my mind a picture of my eldest brother, Beaumont Anson Carter, whose brimming confidence aggravated me to no end when we were children, but in which I’d later found comfort, as a soldier alongside him. He died in a charge only arm’s length from my left flank, taking a musket ball to the forehead. The force of the impact unseated him from Charley Bean, his horse; from the corner of my vision, through the gathering smoke of cannon fire, I’d watched him fly back as though dragged by an unseen fist, head arched at an unnatural angle, arms pinwheeling. He’d been dead before hitting the ground.

  Aw Jesus, Beau, my brother…

  You should be married to Sara Lynn, with five or so young’uns by now, an’ we should be playing fiddles side-by-side of an evening in the holler, sippin’ hooch, just like Daddy an’ Uncle Malcolm.

  I figured such thoughts would never stop plaguing me – that which should have been, but never would. Grafton, some eighteen months my junior, born the year after Sawyer’s twin brothers, had died clasping my hand, not long after Beau in the sweltering summer of 1863; weather to make a pig sweat as Granny would have said, Grafton stretched on a threadbare blanket in a battlefield doc’s tent as he slipped from this life. Quiet, gentle Graf, who suffered through an amputated arm, a sawing of his bones, before passing; whose remaining hand stayed clenched around my own even after the light in his eyes faded to nothing. He died without wearing his boots, stocking-footed; I remembered a hole in the left sock, which two of his toes stuck through. I also recalled thinking that Mama would be sadder to hear about Graf than any of us, as she worried most about him – his softhearted ways earned him the dearest spot in her heart. And Mama loved all of us to pieces, a near violence of love.

  Sawyer and I were the only ones left to each other; already close, the deaths of our kin bonded us that much more. I loved Sawyer as I would a brother of my own blood – we survived the duration of the War together, rode into Georgia and witnessed hell. The hell that existed there, following Sherman’s path, overrode even the horror of seeing our brothers slaughtered before our eyes. Sawyer knew what I knew – because we had witnessed it, together. Parts of our Corps earned a bad reputation in Georgia, thanks to the actions of a negligent few, but I had long learned that folks, and history itself, tend to judge a group on the worst of its lot. Perhaps we were all to blame. God knew I partook in my share of whoring. And killing – but in battle, killing could be justified. There was no joy in it, even when I hated the men coming at me with a passion borne of dread, and pride, and raw terror.

  Malcolm said, “People here been kindly to us, so far. I was worried some. I ain’t heard anyone call us ‘Rebs’ yet.”

  “Not so far,” I agreed. “But then, we ain’t come across that many folks yet, neither.”

  IT WAS nearing dusk when Malcolm announced in a whisper, “I hear voices.”

  He had uncommon good hearing. There was little wind as evening advanced and I leaned forward, cocking an ear in the direction the boy indicated. To be sure, I heard the rise and fall of a man speaking, and a younger person, perhaps a child, responding. Within a minute’s time I also smelled smoke and roasting meat and the latter was enough to spur us ahead. We’d bagged a couple of rabbits, always plentiful on the prairie, now tied by their ears to Fortune’s saddle. Perhaps these folks would be willing to share their fire.

  I stood in the stirrups and called a greeting as we approached, not wanting to startle them; Malcolm and I watched a man stand tall and gaze our way, shading his eyes against the setting sun – two unknown riders coming his way through the gloaming. His right hand hovered near a piece strapped to his hip but he did not palm the pistol. The evening was a fine one, weather-wise, calm as a mill pond and with the sunset burning yellow-gold in a great sweep over the prairie; its beauty made my chest ache, thinking of watching the fireflies in Rebecca’s yard beneath a similar evening sky. Behind the man and child were tethered two sturdy mules, whose heads lifted before they fell again to grazing. A fire crackled and the man called, “Hallo there!”

  “Boyd Carter,” I said, drawing Fortune to a halt a goodl
y distance, perhaps ten strides, and dismounting. I tugged my hat brim, a gesture so deeply ingrained I reached for the brim even when I wasn’t wearing my hat, and said, “We’s been on the road since Iowa City. Saw your fire an’ hoped for a bit of company.”

  The man said, “Kristian Hagebak,” pronouncing his first name with a strong emphasis on the front half of it. In a deliberate way that suggested English was not the language he’d been raised speaking, he told us, “You may join our fire, if you wish. We are making our way home, just now. We have been visiting with my sister and her husband, some fifty miles from our homestead.”

  “Thank you kindly.” I led Fortune closer. Malcolm dismounted and followed a few paces behind, drawing Aces after him. “This here is my brother, Malcolm. We’s bound for the northern part of the state. Never been this far up the country, to be sure.”

  “Then let me welcome you to the state of Minnesota,” Kristian acknowledged, and offered a grin, exposing a prominent front tooth, brownish with rot. I felt no sense of threat from him, a stout man perhaps ten years my elder, with hair of such a pale yellow it was nearly white, and a full beard to match. He indicated the child. “The young fellow is my son, Theodore.”

  “Good evening.” The youngster bobbed his head in a nod. He was not Malcolm’s age, perhaps only five or six.

  Kristian said, “Please, do take a seat. I see you have two fine hares for your dinner.”

  In short order Malcolm and I staked Fortune and Aces by their lead lines, removed their saddles, and joined Kristian and his son. I gutted and skinned the rabbits, Kristian spitted them over the fire alongside their roasting prairie hens, and I tried, without much success, to quell a powerful surge of longing for Rebecca. It struck so forcefully that I clenched my jaw. In my mind’s eye I saw her settling at the table to my right, where she’d customarily sat, in her warm house with its sense of cheer, hundreds of miles back along the trail; she always sent a smile my way as she sat, her cheeks blooming with roses, and I’d felt so damn lucky to receive this flushed smile I could hardly sit still at her table. I pictured her unlaced apron hanging near the woodstove. I thought of Cort and little Nathaniel, who’d pestered me with endless questions and who I also found myself missing just now, fiercely. Unshed tears burned my eyelids and stung the inside of my nose, but I would as soon receive a severe beating as let them fall in front of strangers.

  You know you ain’t supposed to be thinking of her.

  Malcolm caught my gaze and his brow wrinkled. I could tell he was asking, What’s wrong?

  I’m right as rain. I narrowed my eyes and Malcolm heaved a small sigh, not believing me for an ever-loving second.

  Addressing Kristian, I said, “We was in the path of a twister, big as I ever seen, a few days back. It ruined a goodly amount of our things.”

  Kristian nodded, listening despite his busy work of dividing the small, tasty prairie hens. I was more than a little stunned at the level of what seemed like homesickness in my gut – it was akin to what I’d felt the first few weeks away from the holler, as a recruit in the Army of Tennessee. At least then I’d had my brothers, and the Davis boys, to joke and share memories of home with. This evening, even with Malcolm nearby, who I dearly loved and would defend to my last breath, the gaping loneliness threated yet again. The sense of it settled deep into the cellar pit of my belly.

  Kristian filled the boy’s tin plate first, before his own; I thought this a kind gesture. The rabbits were almost ready – Malcolm could scarce take his eyes from them. Our diet had been slim these past days and guilt swiped a paw over my heart. I straightened my shoulders, sucking a painful breath; I was the closest thing to a daddy that the boy had, and I did not mean to shirk my duties. I would get us safely to our kin and I would make a life for Malcolm. I would see him grow to adulthood – he was already a fine boy, with the makings of a good man. I would make Mama and Daddy proud, wherever it was that their souls lingered, whether they was privy to our doings here on an earthly realm, or no.

  “You said you were bound farther into Minnesota?” asked Kristian, settling with his plate, nodding to encourage a conversation.

  I turned the rabbits on the spit. “We’s got at least a month of travel yet, best I can figure. We plan to stop in St. Paul to petition for a homestead. My uncle is settled north of there. We plan to join him as soon as we’s able.”

  Kristian nodded again. “Family ties are the strongest, and the best. When did you begin this journey, if I might ask?”

  “Last April,” I said. I slipped my small boning knife from its pouch about my neck and Malcolm gladly accepted the meat I sliced for him. He tucked into his meal, watching me speak with Kristian, but not speaking himself. The boy Theodore was likewise quiet, eating and observing.

  “You are traveling light.” Kristian sounded concerned at this observation. “For a journey so far, and with winter but months away, certainly you need more supply than you have? Was it the storm?”

  I briefly explained about Sawyer and Lorie, and their plan to join us next summer. Just now, 1869 seemed a good two hundred years away, an unimaginable length of time before we would see them again. I concluded, “We brought along a winter coat each, an’ extra clothing, but much of it was lost in the twister. We’s running low on money.” This was an outright lie, as we weren’t just low; we had exactly none. I did not say how frightened I was at being unable to provide for my brother. Jacob was our blood, our uncle, but I could not arrive at his home with no means, dependent as a nursing calf.

  “There is work in St. Paul,” Kristian said, with an earnest tone that helped stave off the aching tension in my midsection. “When we first arrived to the state last year, we worked until we had saved enough to apply for land. It is a fee of ten dollars, for the filing. The Minnesota Valley Railroad Company runs the land department. My brothers and I have acquired land, what a tremendous thing! Our family never dreamed of so much land, back home in Norway. We come from Norway. We arrived in America to the town of New York. We come to Minnesota when we were able. We do not like New York so much.”

  I had heard tales of this port city on the coast. “I would imagine not.”

  Kristian spread wide his arms; the gesture seemed to encompass the entire sprawling prairie. “Here, there is space. It is uncrowded, and clean. It is a balm to my heart. It is no small task, minding a farm, let me tell you, but you have the look of a fellow who knows hard work.”

  I allowed a small smile, aware that Malcolm watched my every move. I knew the boy’s mood was hitched directly to my own, that when I was upset, or troubled, he was as well. I agreed, “Me an’ hard work are longtime friends.”

  “You will find work in St. Paul, a few days’ steady ride from here. There is much work for able-bodied men. You will shortly save enough for the filing fee.”

  And I tried my damnedest to believe him.

  I WAS thankful we’d been blessed with clear nights since the twister. It was cold, though, and the mosquitoes were thick, but wrapped in a blanket and aligned with the banked fire, it was tolerable. I lay awake long past everyone else nodding off, as usual; Malcolm’s snores were so familiar to me I scarce heard them anymore. I rolled to my back and studied the heavens, seeking the pattern of stars I fancied was the souls of our families, the Carters and the Davises, all together in the beyond; I found a small measure of solace in the thought. Sawyer insisted this notion was the truth. I still did not know whether to believe his experience was one of an actual near-death, though he’d been mightily ill after losing his eye last summer, or a vivid dream come to comfort him; I wanted to believe that our families were safe, having found one another and henceforth continued on, together, without the pain and turmoil, or physical wounds, inflicted upon them in life. That they were happy in this place beyond, watching over us. Sawyer relayed to us the messages from each of them – Mama’s kisses and Daddy’s words of pride, even that of Ethan wanting me to know he could still whup me.

  You’s gone daft as an o
ld man, I thought, as tears again threatened. I pressed my knuckles to my eye sockets, unrelenting, until I saw swirls of bright color, thinking of Sawyer’s missing eye, thinking of my family together in the holler somewhere in the afterlife. And thinking of Rebecca; realizing I should not think of her did no good. I whispered her name to the night, Rebecca Lynn, and my breath grew shallow, my palms slick, as though I was a youth who’d never touched a girl. I thought of all the pretty, proper words she had spoken in my presence; she saw straight through my teasing every time and returned it, with relish, dished it right on back to me. I could never get away with a blessed damn thing in her kitchen. I pictured her face, alight with merriment as she slapped at my wrist for stealing a swipe of cake frosting; I remembered the fiddle-curve of her waist between the fullness of her breasts and hips, which always invited my grasp (though of course I’d never dared to be so bold). I kept my eyes closed to better glut myself on the memories.

  You’s vain as hell, I thought, of my sorry self. You love the way she looks at you, like she’s seeing an angel, or a hero. Like you’s somethin’ special.

  And there was no denying, Rebecca had a way of looking at me that seemed to suggest she believed all of these things. Her eyes, a rich green flecked with brown and gold, and with a gratifying lacking of guile, had rested upon me so adoringly. I savored her gaze, I could not pretend otherwise. Outspoken as she was, Rebecca was no good at hiding her feelings; what she felt showed upon her face. The evening the circuit judge declared he would overturn the order to hang Sawyer, I’d damned it all and taken Rebecca in my arms the moment we’d returned from town, unable to resist the temptation. She had spoken aloud my name and that she was glad I was back; she’d been so worried. Her soft voice came in urgent bursts, as though she was being struck. Her lips had been at my ear. She’d dug her hands into my hair. I’d crushed her close and had not wanted to let her go. If truth be known, I’d wanted to do a hell of a lot more than that – I wanted to carry her to the closest available bedding, feel her thighs glide around my hips and hear her cry out my name, repeatedly.