The Widow's War

The prairie that surrounds them seems peaceful, but the calm is deceptive. Kansas is about to explode into a violence that will shock the world. In Chicago and Albany, abolitionists are holding mass rallies urging free-soilers to arm themselves, go to Kansas, and vote in the plebiscite. In Missouri, a group that calls itself the Platte County Self-Defensive Association has recruited five hundred men to repel the coming army of “Yankee slave-stealers,” and the slave owners who grow the hemp that binds up bales of Southern cotton are wearing hangmen’s nooses in their lapels.

In Salt Creek, a man making a speech in favor of a free Kansas has been attacked and stabbed through the lung; while in Atchison, Senator David Atchison—after whom the town is named—has recently given a speech advising Missourians to hang “negro thieves and abolitionists without judge or jury.” But in the bluestem grass near Trout’s Hotel, the coming war is still only a smudge on the horizon.

Carrie stirs in her sleep and her eyes flutter. She’s dreaming of Brazil. In her dream, the tall trees of the jungle are dancing around the mud huts of the quilombo, and Mae Seja is drinking the black drink, calling for the drummers to drum, and letting the Axé flow through her again.

As the drummers beat out the sacred rhythms and the men and women of the quilombo rise to their feet and begin the whirling dance of the orixás, Carrie dreams of Africa and Brazil mixed in one cauldron, of human beings transformed into gods. Zé becomes Changó, who calls down thunder. Ynaie becomes Yemaja, Great Mother and protector of children.

The humans-turned-gods surround Mae Seja and place their hands on her. At their touch, Mae Seja’s spirit breaks away from her body and rises over the jungle like smoke. Down below, the humans-turned-gods clap their hands and send her from Brazil to the Great Plains of the United States.

Mae Seja hovers over Carrie. You’ve found your man, menina, she whispers. Love him well. Taking a small gourd out of her apron pocket, she pours seven drops of a powerful love potion on Carrie’s lips and seven on William’s. You’ll love each other forever. You’ll never be parted.

The rose-colored liquid smells of pineapple, mango, cupuaçu, umbú, papaya, açai, and oranges. Kissing Carrie and William, Mae Seja blesses them and sends her spirit back to Brazil. As she leaves, Carrie’s dream ends, and a great silence envelops everything. Clouds stream out of the west, cushioning the sky. Voles, mice, and shrews return to their dens. Moths close their wings. Owls land in trees so silently not a leaf stirs. In the creek, the fish sleep motionless as stones.

An hour passes. At last a cock crows, and Carrie wakes to the sound. She has had a beautiful dream, which she cannot remember. She yawns and curls closer to William, feeling the warmth of his body. The prairie is so quiet, she can hear every breath he takes.

They have made love three times since they found each other: once with the hungry passion of long separation; once slowly; and finally, just before moonrise, tenderly, mouth to mouth and breast to breast in the waxing light. Each time she read his body with her fingertips, she found it leaner and more muscular than she remembered. His right arm is creased by a long scar that she suspects comes from a bullet wound. On his leg is the unmistakable V of a snakebite.

She has swept her hair over his chest and between his thighs and made love to him with the first real, uninhibited passion she’s felt since they lay together in her bed on the Ladeira da Glória behind closed shutters as church bells tolled and people fled in panic from the plague. He has clasped her to him, and together they have traveled to a place where words weren’t necessary. While they were making love, she forgot everything, but now, as she lies beside him listening to him breathe, she wonders if he’s noticed that her waist is thicker, her belly fuller, her breasts rounder than they were in Rio. She has so many things to tell him, things she should have said before they lay down together; but the news she brings is bad, and there’s so much of it. How do you tell the man you love that you’re with child by his stepbrother? How do you bring the news of a lost daughter to someone who never knew he was a father?

William stirs, reaches toward her, and for a while they lie there quietly, holding each other. “My love,” she says. She knows she needs to start telling him what’s happened since they last met, but she can’t bring herself to. Maybe it would be easier if she started with the present and worked backwards.

She sits up abruptly. The buffalo robe falls off her shoulders. Shivering, she draws it back up around her. “Missouri! Do you know that in Westport the slavers are offering a hundred-and-fifty-dollar reward for you, dead or alive?”

“I’m afraid for myself. I wasn’t until a few hours ago. Without you, I couldn’t feel much of anything. But now—” He sits up. “It’s complicated. A lot of people depend on me. I’m not all that important, but I’m one link in a chain that can’t be broken. I can’t stop doing what I’m doing.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.” She has something else to say, and to say it, she needs to see his eyes. “Come closer.” He comes closer. Leaning forward, she puts her hands on his shoulders and looks into his face. “I need to tell you something. I should have told you last night, but I couldn’t bear to. Things have happened that you need to know about.”

“No, I’m married.” He flinches and starts to speak, but she silences him with a gesture. “Please, let me go on before you say anything or I’ll never be able to finish. I’m married to your stepbrother, Deacon Presgrove. I inherited a lot of money from Papa, but I don’t have it any longer. Deacon was—is—a fortune hunter. He wrote my obituary and had it published so you’d have no reason to return to Brazil. He told me you were dead, but even so, I never would have married him except—”

The words stick in her throat. She swallows and tries again, but she can’t even whisper them. It seems as if no time has passed since she watched the tiny bundle that contained Willa sink into the sea. She remembers the masts creaking in the wind, the waves pounding the hull, the wake spreading out behind The Frances Scott as she watched all trace of her daughter disappear. Tears burn behind her eyes, but she can’t cry. Turning away, she looks off across the empty prairie.

“She was born too early, and she died. Her name was Willa. She was beautiful. Small and perfect. She looked like both of us. I wrapped her“—her voice breaks—”in that shawl you were going to give me as a wedding present and buried her at sea. I know you’re going to blame yourself for not being with me, but it’s not your fault. Deacon told you I was dead.”

“No, you aren’t. If you go to Washington, Bennett Presgrove will see you’re arrested before you can get anywhere near Deacon. Shooting him isn’t worth getting hung for. It won’t bring back our child. If all this was anyone’s fault, it was mine. I was a fool to marry him, but I did it of my own free will, and I have no one to blame but myself. Can you ever forgive me?”

“You weren’t a fool. You were a woman with child left alone to fend for herself. As for forgiving you—hell and damnation, Carrie Vinton! There’s nothing to forgive! Here, hold up your face and let me kiss you. I won’t shoot Deacon, but only because you’re asking me not to, and if you ever change your mind, let me know.”

He kisses her, and they sit in silence as the sun rises, the tall grass takes on color, and the first shadows of morning appear, long, cool, and thin as straws. Somewhere in the direction of Mr. Trout’s hotel another cock crows.

“They’ll be hitching up the teams soon,” Carrie says. Rising to their feet, they put on their clothes. William helps her with her laces, bends down and slips on her shoes, stands and kisses her again.

“I have to stay at Trout’s for a few days. Stay with me. I’m meeting some men here, and I’m not sure when they’ll arrive. When they show up, I’m going to ride into Missouri with them. I’ll only be gone a day and a half at most, and then I’ll come back and get you, and we can travel to Lawrence together. Don’t worry about your things. You can send them on ahead, and they’ll be there waiting for us when we arrive.”

Carrie turns away from him and stares at the row of trees that borders the creek. She has more bad news to deliver. It’s not as bad as the rest, in some ways you might even call it good, but why can’t things ever be simple? Why can’t she and William just pick up where they left off?

“More than anything, but before we make any plans, there’s something else I have to tell you.” She pauses, tries to find the right words, and decides there aren’t any. “I’m carrying Deacon’s child.”

“Then let me be.” William pulls her to him, and stands for a moment looking at her. Then he smiles. “Damn it, I’ve never been good at this and I’m not improving with practice. I’m trying to find the right words to ask you to marry me. Like I said that first time when I proposed in Rio, I’ve loved you since I was eleven, and I’ll never love anyone else. Kansas is a hard place for women and children. I can protect you and the baby. If Deacon comes to the Territory, maybe I’ll get a chance to shoot him with a clear conscience. Meanwhile, I’ll start practicing medicine again. A doctor can always make a decent living, even one who insists on scrubbing his patients with soap and water. There’ll always be food on our table and love in our home, and we’ll be happy, I promise.”

“Can’t marry me? I know that. I don’t mean legally. I mean in the sight of God. What do we care about some piece of paper stuffed in a musty Brazilian archive? We’ve been married for three years in the only way that counts, so kneel down right here with me and tell me again you’ll be my wife. Say ‘yes’ just like you did in Rio. Promise me we’ll stay together until death parts us. Will you do that?”

“Being mine,” he says. “Being mine from the moment he’s born as much as if he were my own blood. Girl or boy. Part of you, part of me. Forever. So will you marry me, Carrie Vinton?”

“Yes,” Carrie says. She sinks to her knees, and William sinks down beside her. Pulling out his pocket knife, he cuts a blade of grass and twists it into a ring, and together, in love and in the sight of the gods, African, Brazilian, and Christian, they marry each other in a ceremony witnessed only by the tall grass and the sky.