The Chisholms: A novel of the journey West Page 3

  “I would say so, Squire.”

  “In which case, good day, Chisholm.” Hadley stepped into the squire’s path, his choices multiplying like the fishes and the loaves. He could punch the squire in the nose and cause him to bleed all over his cream-colored waistcoat and fancy white tie. Or he could drag the man squealing and bawling down to the Clinch, where he would baptize him proper. Or he could...

  “A contract is a contract,” he said simply.

  “Go to law if you like,” the squire said, and Hadley stepped aside and allowed them both to pass.

  The law he went to was the Bible.

  And in the Bible, in Galatians, he found the words: “Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.” The way Hadley looked at it, he’d made a covenant with Horace Bailey, and now the squire was trying to annul it. Not only was that unlawful in the manner of men, it was also in direct conflict with what was written in the Bible, which was the law of God Almighty.

  The Bailey plantation was laid out so that the main house was on high ground overlooking the fields and the slave quarters to the north, the barns and stables to the south, more fields to the east. Behind the house, the ground sloped sharply to the river below; the land here was rock-strewn and scrubby, unfit for planting. But fish could be seined from the river for yet another crop, and in the wintertime ice could be cut from it and stored in one of the plantation’s three icehouses. The cotton hadn’t yet been planted; it was still a bit early. Next week sometime, or perhaps the week after, the slaves would begin putting in seeds mixed with ashes to soften the hulls and help in the growing. Everyone in these parts knew when the squire was planting his cotton. The voices of the slaves singing could be heard all up and down the valley. The fields to the east were left to wild rye for pasture; the squire owned forty-one mules and horses, three hundred sheep, and seventy-four cows. He also owned one hundred twenty-two hogs and more chickens than anyone had ever bothered to count.

  At the main house, Hadley and Will peeked through guillotine windows into the room beyond, lighted with fourteen blazing tapers in a hanging brass chandelier. The squire was dining. The Chisholms had taken their supper before sundown, but neither did they have a pair of house niggers to serve them. A wainscot of what appeared to be pine stained a darker hue ran around the entire room to a height of some four feet from the pegged wooden floor. Across the room were two windows identical to the one through which they spied goggle-eyed upon the squire, each window hung with what was either calico or printed linen, they could not tell.

  The walls were covered with wallpaper the color of brick, a complicated design of birds and boughs and leaves upon it, red against a deeper red. There was a fireplace of intricately carved marble, and the chairs around the table were the finest Hadley had ever seen. In the corner, on a cherrywood lowboy, he recognized a napkin press. The squire was dining on what looked to be plates of real London pewter, not the newfangled lead stuff, and there was a sparkling white linen napkin tucked under his jowly chin. As they watched, a slender black woman poured wine from a decanter into the squire’s long-stemmed glass goblet.

  The clouds shifted, the moon broke through. Hadley and Will moved swiftly away from the house, heading below and to the south where Gideon was waiting with mules and horses, close by the Squire’s stable. A man named Alexander Buchanan was sitting on a puncheon bench in front of the unlocked stable door, his rifle resting against the wall. He was whistling a tune Will had first heard in Texas, when he was riding with Lamar against the Mexicans. The tune had been sung by a lanky Texan astride a horse without a saddle, said he’d learned to ride that way from the Kiowa. Fellow said the tune was called “Zip Coon,” but Will had heard it again a year or two later, same tune called “Turkey in the Straw” this time around. He sometimes wondered about things like that; like if a fellow made up a tune, could just anybody go around singing it and changing the name of it however he liked? Seemed akin to horse-stealing somehow.

  Alexander Buchanan was whistling “Zip Coon” or “Turkey in the Straw,” or whatever a body chose to call it, as Will came around the side of the stable, his father behind him. He had seen Buchanan often enough in town, had once bloodied his nose for him when the man boasted in the tavern (and in his cups) about having been abed with Rachel Lowery; Will hated livery-stable talk, specially when it moved from the stable to the tavern. It was no doubt true about Rachel; Will in fact knew that his own brother Gideon had sampled her quim. But talking about her that way was another thing. You enjoyed yourself with a woman, why then you shut up about it; you savored the pleasure, you anticipated it again, you didn’t go spoiling it by sullying it.

  He was glad it was Alexander Buchanan sitting here in front of the squire’s unlocked stable door. No need for a lock on it, Will surmised, since anybody all up and down the Clinch’d have to be clear out of his mind to even attempt stealing a blade of grass from the Bailey plantation, what with Stokes and his armed patrol roaming the night. Alexander Buchanan was the squire’s lock, sitting here on a puncheon bench and whistling a tune to the night. Will smiled, and put his knife to Buchanan’s throat. The whistling stopped abruptly. Buchanan knew what the blade of a knife felt like, though he’d never had one pressed up against his throat before. The blade was laying flat just below his Adam’s apple, but all a person had to do was turn the knife and there’d be a nice sharp cutting edge against his skin. He swallowed his whistling and sat there very still on the bench, backing away from the knife, trying to melt right into the silvered pine siding on the wall of the stable.

  “That’s a good boy,” Will said, and stepped around Buchanan, turning the knife so that now the tip of the blade was against his throat. Buchanan peered at him in the darkness, moving only his eyes, his head still, his hands still, even his heart seemingly stopped.

  “Is that you, Will Chisholm?” he asked.

  “That’s me, friend,” Will said.

  “What you want here?”

  “We come for our wagon.”

  “You ain’t got no wagon here.”

  “Don’t argue with the man,” Hadley said, coming around the side of the stable. “Just slit his throat and toss him over there in the bushes.”

  Buchanan’s heart lurched, causing his Adam’s apple to bob, scaring him half witless when he realized he might easily have been the cause of his own death, allowing it to bob up that way against the tip of the knife blade. Were they really here to take a wagon they somehow thought was theirs? Were they really going to slit his throat and toss him in the bushes?

  “Your pa’s kiddin, now ain’t he?” Buchanan said.

  “That’s right. I ain’t going to slit your throat,” Will said. He paused and then said. “What I’m going to do is cut off your balls.”

  “Now come on, Will,” Buchanan said, and swallowed, and again his Adam’s apple bobbed up against the tip of the knife blade.

  “Toss your balls over in the bushes,” Will said. “Squire’s hogs’ll find them in the morning. Big balls like these have got to be Buchanan balls, the hogs’ll say. Must be this Buchanan’s a real lover-man. Must be he boasts around town bout lifting a girl’s skirts.”

  “Now come on, Will,” Buchanan said.

  Hadley had opened the stable doors and was hauling out the squire’s blue wagon. He glanced at Buchanan and said, “Ain’t you slit his throat yet?” and Will said, “I was thinkin of cuttin off his balls, Pa,” and Hadley said, “He ain’t got none, Will.”

  He hung something on the door hasp then, little leather pouch with leather drawstrings, and came back to where Buchanan was sitting motionless, the knife still at his throat.

  “I thought I told you t’slit the man’s throat,” he said to Will.

  Buchanan was sure they were joking now.

  He guessed.

  But he was enormously relieved when they tied him hand and foot and stuck a piece of tow cloth in his mouth and wrapped a rag around that, and left him propped against the stable wall then hauled the wagon downhill.

  Sean Cassada had crept through the cornfield and lay hidden now in the staghorn bushes east of the Chisholm cabin, watching the family pack the wagon. They had unhitched the mules the moment they rode into the front yard; mules were cantankerous and unpredictable, as likely to bolt as bray, and Sean surmised they wished no mishap while they were loading. They moved in and out of the cabin like a line of ants, male and female alike carrying what appeared to be all their worldly possessions and putting them into the wagon willy-nilly; or at least if there was rhyme or reason to how they loaded it, Sean could fathom none. Tinware platters, plates and mugs, candle molds and chamber pots, rifles and hunting knives all went into the wagon, each Chisholm carrying something out of the cabin, and going back into it empty-handed to return a moment later with yet another load. Wool sack coats and cotton dresses, pantaloons and buckskin pants, butcher knife and — Ah, Bonnie Sue, carrying tight against her sweet bosom a mantel clock; how often had he unfastened her bodice and reached inside to touch those tender breasts?

  Will Chisholm, who had threatened to strangle him one morning outside church, was loading into the jockey box at the front of the wagon all the family’s smaller tools — axes and mallets, jack plane and adze, gimlet and augur, level and square. Gideon was lashing the family plow to one side of the wagon, Bobbo carrying shovel and spade to the opposite side. There now came Bonnie Sue from the cabin again, this time carrying three, nay, four grubbing hoes, which she handed to her brother Bobbo. She looked directly into the bushes then, and Sean was certain she’d seen him, and yet the night was so dark; had she heard the pounding of his heart? Were the Chisholms truly leaving? Sean could not believe this, and yet
the evidence was there before his eyes to see: tonight he was losing his Bonnie Sue, whose breasts he had kissed, and once tickled the nipples of with a blade of grass, her skirt and petticoats up around her knees, naked beneath she was but would not let him higher than where her drawers might have reached had she been wearing any.

  She did not come out of the cabin again for the longest time. Sean lay there crouched in the bushes, wondering what she could be doing inside there, and then realizing when he saw her in the door with a broom that she was sweeping the place out before they left it. He recognized with a sickening lurch that the time of departure was nigh; they were truly leaving this place behind, and with it Sean Cassada’s broken heart. He could smell the choking dust from where he lay in the bushes. It rose from the wooden cabin floor in a smothering cloud; a lot of good a proper floor did except to keep out snakes, and even that not so well. Bonnie Sue stood in the doorway with the broom in her hands, and looked again into the bushes, and this time Sean opened his eyes wide to show the whites, and she nodded briefly, and he knew for certain she had seen him.

  Gideon, the biggest of the lot, was leading the mules toward the wagon now. The wagon was painted a blue the color of chicory in bloom. Sean had never seen such a wagon before, a good four feet wide and half again as long, or maybe more, ten or twelve feet, he guessed, with iron tires on the wheels, and wooden bows above for a cover, but none in place now. A grease bucket was hanging from the rear axle, and Bobbo was filling it now with pine tar and pork fat; he could smell the tar clear over here in the bushes. Annabel Chisholm, who looked so much like Bonnie Sue that Sean could hardly wait for her to grow up, was climbing up into the wagon over the lowered tailgate and plopping down on the pile of quilts and pillows stacked inside near the butter churn. Old Hadley Chisholm came out of the cabin and tested the lashing on the plow and the other tools, and lifted the lid on the jockey box and looked on in there, and then tested the harness on the mules. Sean heard Gideon ask, “All right, Pa?” and Hadley nodded and went back in the cabin. When he came out again he was carrying four gallons of whiskey hugged against his chest, and he went in the cabin three more times and came out with another dozen gallons that he packed in the wagon.

  Sean knew she was behind him there in the sumac even before she rested her hand on his shoulder. “Shhh,” she said, and lay down beside him, and moved into his open arms. His hands went at once to the cotton bodice she wore, his fingers unbuttoned it, he reached inside and cupped her right breast in his hand, and kissed her on the lips. His heart was beating wildly, he frantically clutched her to him and kissed her entire face, her cheeks, her nose, her closed eyes, fearful he was making too much noise, terrified Will would come thrashing into the bushes to separate them, but knowing she was leaving, and wanting to kiss her, to touch her, to hold her. He released her breast and then grabbed for it again and released it at once and lowered his hand to where the hem of her cotton skirt had climbed to her shin, and lifted skirt and petticoat both and slid his hand up over her legs. She would stop him at any minute, her brother would find them any minute, God would strike him dead with a lightning bolt, something would happen before he touched the silken softness of — he could not believe his hand was, he could not believe she had allowed, he felt a wild excitement he had never before known, and he rolled, he tried to roll her over onto her back, but she sat up instead, abruptly and swiftly, her hand clamping onto his wrist. Moving his hand from between her legs, she lowered skirt and petticoat, and then leaned into him to kiss him on the mouth. He brought his hand to the back of her head, and felt her long hair cascading over his fingers, and then her lips were on his for what he knew was the last time, she was rising, she was standing, she was smoothing her dress, she whispered, “Never forget me, Sean,” and was gone.

  He lay there watching.

  Hadley Chisholm sat on the wagon seat with Minerva beside him. Both girls were inside the wagon now, Bonnie Sue looking out at the bushes behind which he was hiding. On horseback out in front of the wagon were Gideon, Will, and Bobbo.

  Sean thought: They’re going. She’s really leaving.

  He wanted to step out from the bushes and stand on Chisholm land like the man he was and yell for them to leave Bonnie Sue behind. Yell that he loved her. But if he done that, why then Will would just turn his big old gelding around and come riding up to where Sean stood like a damn fool with tears in his eyes, and he’d as soon strangle Sean as spit on him. Else Gideon would raise his old rifle and take careful steady aim in his easy slow way and blow Sean’s brains to hell and gone.

  He lay in the bushes instead and tried to get a glimpse of Bonnie Sue, but she was looking ahead, toward the front of the wagon, she was looking west. He knew he would never again see her as long as he lived, and he told himself it was important that he remember this departure, remember it as the night Bonnie Sue moved out of his life. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness now, he could see as sharply as a cat.

  Minerva Chisholm turned her head for a look at the cabin. And brought her hand to her mouth. And held it there an instant, the fingertips gently touching her parted lips.

  It was this Sean would remember.

  II

  Minerva

  “You think I’m going down that river, you’re crazy,” she said.

  They stood on the banks of the Ohio, just above the Falls, and watched the water crashing in waves ten feet high on the rocks below. It had taken them almost two weeks to get here. They had traveled through a countryside as civilized and as settled as any back home. The trail through the Gap and across Kentucky was trafficked with farmers and merchants coming and going with produce and goods to sell. The Chisholms drank fresh milk and ate fresh vegetables. At one farm along the way, they purchased a suckling pig and roasted it that night on the banks of a stream. Wherever there was a barn, they asked a farmer for permission to spend the night in it. Sometimes they were asked to pay a little something for the roof over their heads. More often than not, the people living along the road were generous and hospitable. Two weeks to get here, Minerva thought. That meant it’d take only two weeks to get right back where they belonged.

  “Person’d drown out there in a minute,” she said.

  “There’re channels go through,” Will said.

  “I don’t see no channels,” she said, and took a step back from the edge, refusing to look again at the river below, boiling with logs and stumps and broken steamboat paddles.

  “You son’s been here, he knows this damn river,” Hadley said.

  “Cussin ain’t about to get me on no vessel intendin to come down that waterfall. Wild Indians couldn’t—”

  “There’s chutes, Ma,” Will said. “You go through one of the chutes.”

  “I don’t care if there’s chutes or channels or secret underwater passages known only to the men who founded this garboiling town. I want to go home, Hadley. First thing in the mornin, I want to turn around and go home.”

  “First thing in the mornin, we’re going west,” Hadley said.

  “You’re goin west maybe,” Minerva said.

  “We’re all goin west,” Hadley said.

  “You went over these falls, Will?”

  “You don’t go over them, Ma. You go through them, sort of. I took a skiff downriver, and then got on a steamboat in Shippingport.”

  “Then let’s us get on a steamboat downriver, too,” Minerva said.

  “Cost too much,” Hadley said, and shook his head.

  “How much?”

  “Fourteen dollars apiece almost. Plus whatever they’d charge for the wagon and animals.”

  “Doubt if they’d even take those aboard, Pa,” Will said. “Weren’t none on the steamboat to N’Orleans.”

  “Hadley,” she said, “I’m goin home. If I got to hire out to a traveling circus...”

  “Min...”

  “As a trapeze artist or a bearded lady...”

  “It ain’t really dangerous,” Will said. “The current’s fast, and the river changes width a lot....”