The Widow's War

As Carrie walks beside the wagon, the night smell of the prairie rises up around her, sweet and dry, perfumed with the scent of grass and flowers. To her right, the oxen plod along with a muffled clopping sound that reminds her of coconut shells being softly clapped together. On his perch, the teamster is asleep and snoring. In the grass, crickets hum and fireflies give off bursts of light. Everything else is lost in the silence of wilderness, sleep, or exhaustion.

At noon it was over one hundred degrees, so they are taking advantage of what relief night has brought to push on toward Lawrence. To amuse herself, Carrie is silently reciting the names of the wildflowers she has identified so far. Clover, blue-eyed grass, mullein, milkweed, black-eyed Susan, oxalis, ironweed, asters of all kinds, lespedeza, goldenrod, poppy, sunflower, coreopsis coneflower . . .

She comes to the end of the list and goes back to the beginning, turning the names into a chant that moves in time to her footsteps. Most of the plants are not in bloom this time of year, so she has had to identify them by their leaves. This has not been particularly difficult. They all grow in Indiana and Kentucky as well as in Kansas, so their names have come back to her like a foreign language she has not spoken since childhood.

Waking up with a start, the teamster jerks on the reins to restrain the oxen who have suddenly taken it into their heads to gallop, or at least to do what an ox might consider a gallop, although it strikes Carrie as more of a disorganized lumbering.

“Whoa!” he yells. All the oxen in the train are now hurrying forward as if wolves are at their heels. Carrie runs to catch up and arrives just in time to see the teamster jerk the beasts back to a slow walk. Whitehorn snorts and Brock looks sideways at Carrie as if hoping she’ll intervene.

The teamster guffaws and spits a mouthful of tobacco juice between the traces. “No, miss. Oxen don’t eat nothin’ but hay and corn and such, but there’s a place up ahead run by a Mr. Everett Trout. Trout has what some calls a travelers’ hotel, although I’d call it more of a saloon. Not that Trout himself touches a drop of whiskey. The man’s as sober as a Methodist preacher. Farms about a hundred acres of corn, has a store where he sells kegs of nails and salt and calico and such, buys skins and hides if they’re in good condition. Everyone who travels the California Road has got to pass by Trout’s Hotel. Why, it’s a famous landmark.”

The teamster nods and spits another mouthful of tobacco juice between the traces. “I reckon that would be a good bet. Like I said, if you take the California Road, you purty much got to stop at Trout’s. He’s even hired hisself a Yankee widow lady to do the cooking. The woman makes biscuits so light you got to hold ’em down to butter ’em, but the oxen don’t care none about cookin’, Yankee or Southern. All they want is to git unyoked and shove their muzzles in a pile of hay. They ain’t like horses. Your horse eats slow, but your ox is a gobbler and a glutton. These know we’re gittin’ close to Trout’s place, so they’ve decided to run for it.”

Sure enough, not more than fifteen minutes later they see a large, two-story wooden building. In this treeless land, it stands out like a lighthouse, but on the prairie things are much farther away than they seem, so it takes another quarter of an hour before they pull up in front. As the teamsters unhitch the oxen, Carrie and the others go inside where they are welcomed by Mr. Trout, a tall, lean man with a weathered face who wears a black hat with an unusually broad brim, a wool jacket, and elaborately tooled boots with pointed toes. In his belt he has thrust a large knife and two Colt revolvers. For a moment he stares at them without speaking. Apparently he decides they are no threat, because he takes his hands off his guns and says: “Welcome to Trout’s folks. Make yourselves at home.”

Gesturing in a way that indicates that there is luxury to be found at every turn, he sits down on a rush-bottomed chair, pulls out a small cigar and a match, strikes the match with his thumbnail, and commences to smoke. Carrie looks where he has pointed and sees she is standing in a single large room with loosely boarded walls. A long table runs down the center. Everything is dimly lit with tallow candles. Beneath her feet she can feel a soft planked floor that gives as she steps on it.

To Carrie’s surprise, none of the abolitionists complain about these accommodations. Retrieving blankets and pillows from the wagons, they climb a steep flight of stairs and settle in for the night: women on one side of the curtain, men on the other. There are two beds in the women’s section. Mrs. Hulett gets one; Mrs. Crane the other. Everyone else sleeps on the floor. All in all, Carrie thinks, Mr. Trout’s hotel is very much like a hotel in the Amazon minus the hammocks.

It is still punishingly hot. Unable to sleep, she goes back downstairs hoping to find Mr. Trout alone so she can draw him aside and ask him about William, but once again privacy is in short supply. As she steps out on the porch, she hears Mrs. Newberry and Mrs. Crane’s voices. They, too, have come downstairs to get out of the heat.

“Mrs. Newberry and I were just about to walk out to look at the stars,” Mrs. Crane says. “Do come with us, Miss Vinton.” Linking her arm in Carrie’s, Mrs. Crane draws her down the steps and they walk away from the hotel, following a trail that leads toward the creek. When they stop to look up, Carrie sees the Milky Way dividing the night sky in a wide, glittering band.

“They’re the glory of God,” Mrs. Newberry says. They fall silent. After a while, Mrs. Newberry speaks again. “Trout saw us,” she says. “And he didn’t see us.”

“Well, he could have said: ‘Sleep outside with the stock,’ or ‘Get out of this hotel before I shoot you.’ There are numerous possibilities, Mrs. Crane, but Mr. Trout pursued none of them.” Mrs. Newberry looks up at the stars and then stares across the open prairie. “I think I’m going to like Kansas if the pro-slavers don’t get hold of me.”

They fall silent again. Everything is so still it seems to be encased in black glass. After a while, Mrs. Crane clears her throat. “I regret to move from the sublime to the mundane, but I need to pay a visit to the necessary. What if I encounter a bear?”

“I doubt you will be eaten by a bear in the necessary,” Mrs. Newberry says, “but on the off chance one has decided to hibernate there, I will accompany you.”

Mrs. Crane and Mrs. Newberry walk off, leaving Carrie alone to stare at the stars. She picks out Pegasus and Cassiopeia before she hears the sound of men’s voices. Somewhere, not far off, a horse whinnies.

Startled, she turns around and almost collides with Mr. Trout, who has come up silently behind her. “Hiram says you’re lookin’ fer someone. He thought it might be yer brother or maybe yer father or perhaps some fellah who done run off and left you.”

“The teamster who drove yer wagon. Good man, but he has a hard time keepin’ his tongue in his head. Given to imagin’ things. A romantic, Hiram is. Reads them Penny Dreadfuls the way other men drink. If you ain’t lookin’ fer no one, just say the word, and I’ll ske daddle.”

“No, Mr. Trout. Please don’t go. Hiram was right. I am looking for someone. His name’s William Saylor. He’s about six feet tall, black eyes, brown hair.”

“That don’t surprise me none.” Trout inhales again, and the tip of his cigar glows in the darkness. “Womenfolk are in short supply in these parts. There’s many a wife who runs off from the old and finds the new. So is this fellah you’re lookin’ for the husband you done run from or the one yer runnin’ to?”

“Do tell. But I take it you ain’t now, you being a runaway wife and all. So let me ask you again, what makes you think this fellah wants you trackin’ him down, particularly given there’s a price on his head?”

“Lot can happen in a year. Man with a price on his head can just disappear. Get himself a new name, cross the border into Mexico, court himself a señorita, get married, and start a new life. But that hundred-and-fifty-dollar reward makes him worth lookin’ for, don’t it?”

Carrie starts to speak, but Trout holds up his hand. “Whoa, there. Before you start tellin’ me how you wouldn’t take money for turnin’ him in if you wuz starvin’, I got to know yer tellin’ me the truth. Let’s start with yer name.”

“Carolyn Vinton. Or rather that was my name before I married. It’s Carolyn Vinton Presgrove now. Mr. Trout, if you know anything about William, please . . .”

“Well that makes sense. Yer travelin’ with a whole passel of ‘em. What if I was to tell you that I was a dyed-in-the-wool slaver, would that change yer tune?”

“I’m likin’ you better already. I ain’t no slaver.” Trout taps the ash off his cigar and stares at her. “But I still ain’t sure about you, so let’s jest suppose sumpthin. Let’s suppose some fellah once came into my place, ordered hisself up one drink too many, and ended up telling me a story about a girl he’d been engaged to who’d died tragically in a furrin land. Now where do you reckon that poor girl might have passed away?”

“Well, well. I’m not sayin’ that’s the right answer, but I’m not sayin’ it’s not neither. Now let’s suppose this same fellah, in his cups and thus unreliable, claimed that besides bein’ sweet and kind-hearted, his greatly mourned beloved weren’t like other girls due to the fact that she could shoot a gun better than Kit Carson, Daniel Boone, and Davy Crockett combined. What would you say to that?”

“But how good? That’s the question, ain’t it? You got the name, but I still ain’t sure you got the game.” Trout drops his cigar, grinds it out with the toe of his boot, and lights himself another.

“I tell you what, you show me you can do some fancy sharpshootin’, and if I know anything about William Saylor—and I still ain’t sayin’ I do—I might tell it to you. If it were day, I could just toss a dollar in the air and you could try to plug it, or I could set you to shooting at a playing card. I once knew a feller who could drill out the eye of a one-eyed jack from ninety paces. But it bein’ night, I reckon we’re gonna have to do with snuffing candles. So if you’ll jest excuse me a minute—”

“Whoa, Nellie!” Trout jerks his cigar out of his mouth and backs away from her so fast he nearly trips. “I don’t fancy an encounter with an armed woman. Last time I made that mistake, I had to spend most of a summer eating my grub off the mantelpiece. Of course, the circumstances was different. The lady in question was riled because I was not being properly forthcomin’ on the subject of marriage and—are you armed, miss? Do you have a gun concealed about you some-wheres? One of them little ladylike derringers?”

“No. I was going to ask to borrow one of your revolvers. I wasn’t proposing to shoot your cigar out of your mouth, Mr. Trout. I thought you might toss it up in the air and let me try to hit it.”

Trout stares at her for a minute, then removes one of his revolvers from its holster and hands it to her grip first. “On the count of three,” he says, putting his cigar back between his lips. He draws on it until the end glows. “One, two, three!”

For a few seconds Trout stares at the place where the cigar met its fate. Then he grins and tips his hat. “Miz Carolyn Vinton,” he says, “it’s a pleasure to meet up with you. For the past month, William Saylor has been livin’ in Lawrence. I reckon if you saw that wanted poster, you know what he’s been doin’. Fact is, he’s doin’ it again tonight. We expected him to pass through here earlier with his ‘freight,’ but he appears to have been delayed. On the other hand, he could have already arrived. While you was busy blowin’ my cigar to bits, I heard the sound of riders comin’ down the California Road. Of course there’s a big wagon train making up in Independence, so it might just be some fellahs headed over there to—”

Carrie doesn’t wait for him to finish. Thrusting his revolver into his hand, she turns and begins to run back toward the hotel. When she comes out into the open, she sees that while she and Trout have been talking, four men on horseback have arrived and are now preparing to leave.

She realizes she is blocking the steps. Sliding sideways, she watches two pairs of boots tramp past her. As the men walk away, she stares at their backs. One is short and heavyset; the other tall and lanky. There is something familiar about the way the taller man walks. She stands up.

When he hears her voice, he turns around and sees a woman standing on the hotel steps wearing a white dress with a muddy hem. The lantern above her is swaying and shadows are passing over her face like swift, gray birds. Her hair is wound around her head in a braid, but small strands are escaping, shining in the lamplight like a halo. The woman looks so much like Carrie that for an instant he manages to convince himself that it’s really her standing there. But of course it can’t be.

Since she died, he’s dreamed of her repeatedly, run toward her and watched her dissolve, reached for her and seen his hand pass through her body. He’s even touched her hair, but when he buried his face in it, it gave off no scent. That’s how he knew for certain he was dreaming. When the dead visit you in dreams, they never come back whole.

Awake, he has seen her at least two dozen times in the faces of women who looked almost nothing like her and heard her voice in places where there was nothing to hear but wind. A few days before he left for Kansas, he even followed a strange woman because she was swinging her parasol the way Carrie always did when she was feeling happy. He knew the woman wasn’t Carrie; but from the back, he was able to imagine she was. When the woman turned into her own gate and two small children ran out to greet her, he felt ashamed of himself.

Try to forget her, Charlie Howard had advised. Up at Fort Leavenworth, before he came down to settle in abolitionist Lawrence, the advice had been cruder and more practical. Buy yourself a whore, Saylor. Or if you’re too much a prig for that, go back east and court yourself a wife. But he doesn’t want a wife or a whore. He wants Carrie so much that sometimes he thinks he’s not quite sane.

“William,” the woman on the porch says again. He can’t risk responding to his name, not here, not under the circumstances. He needs to turn around and walk away from her, but—

Suddenly, she’s running down the steps, coming toward him with her arms outstretched, repeating his name, and as the lantern light catches her face, he sees—No. Impossible! Carrie’s face, Carrie’s eyes, Carrie’s hair. Carrie taking him in her arms, Carrie pulling him to her and kissing him, Carrie solid and alive. The familiar scent of her skin and hair, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, her body warm against his.

“My God!” he cries, “you’re real!” And all at once, she’s laughing and crying and kissing him again and telling him that, yes, she’s real, that she didn’t die, and his head is spinning and his knees are buckling; and before he knows it, he’s sitting on the hotel steps with his head between his knees the way they taught him to do in medical school; and when he lifts his head and opens his eyes, Carrie, who he loves more than anything in this life or the next, is still there: laughing and crying and very much alive.