The Widow's War

Three days after the election, the first great winter storm sweeps across the prairie. As the wind howls and the snow piles up, all emigration comes to a halt, and peace descends on the Kansas Territory. In St. Louis, the steamboats are locked in ice until spring. Blizzards block the California Road, and Mr. Trout, seeing no prospect of business for some months, sends his Yankee cook, Mrs. Witherspoon, off to Lawrence for the season. Retreating to a small room, he burrows down under a pile of buffalo robes and sleeps away the short days, only waking to feed the stock, shovel off the roof, and stoke the fire.

Despite the weather, Lawrence prospers. The Emigrant Aid Company Sawmill continues to spit out boards, and with them the New Englanders build schools, houses, and churches. The empty lots on Massachusetts Street fill up, and the town spreads well beyond the edges of the map Bennett Presgrove showed to the slave owners of Savannah.

Cold weather builds character, the citizens of Lawrence tell their children; and when the unseasoned wood of their new homes warps and the wind blows almost as strongly inside as out, they stuff rags in the chinks and stumble off to church through the snow, stopping occasionally to marvel at sunsets laced with mother-of-pearl and vast skies filled with churning clouds.

In February as the grip of winter slackens, three men who have been wintering in Illinois round up their livestock and head west, crossing the Missouri River and staking out a claim on North Middle Creek about ten miles northwest of Osawatomie. Their names are Owen, Salmon, and Frederick Brown. They call their settlement Brown’s Station.

Back in North Elba, New York, their father, John, receives letters describing the “curses” of slavery his sons have seen en route to Kansas. They ask him to send them Colt revolvers, rifles, and Bowie knives; and John Brown—who believes he holds a commission directly from God to end slavery—not only agrees, he promises to join them sometime in late summer or early fall to win Kansas for God and abolition by any means necessary.

On the same morning John Brown goes out to buy the hat he will still be wearing four years later when he is hanged for treason, William carries a straight-backed chair into the front yard so Carrie can sit in the sunshine and sketch. The snow has melted, and the long grasses have turned twenty different shades of red and brown. Bent and flattened by winter storms, they form beautiful shapes that she hopes to capture on her sketch pad and send to Professor Gray at Harvard.

Clutching William’s arm, Carrie lets him help her to the chair. They walk slowly past the rain barrel, the big iron kettle they use for boiling laundry, the woodshed, and the sod hut that serves as a stable. The baby is two weeks overdue, and Carrie feels large and awkward, like an egg that might crack unexpectedly. Settling her on the chair, William wraps her legs in a buffalo robe and drapes a shawl around her shoulders. Then he goes to the woodshed and gets an empty nail keg. Placing the keg beside her to serve as a table, he brings out her sketching materials and a pot of hot tea wrapped in the muffler she gave him for Christmas. It’s a rather strange muffler since knitting is not her strong point: about twice as long as necessary, made of bright red wool and uneven as a buffalo track.

“Don’t worry.” William grins wickedly. “Immediately after you give birth, I expect you to rise from bed, go outside, split logs, lug them into the house, stoke up the fire, and cook me dinner. Fried ham and beaten biscuits will be acceptable. A pie would not be out of place. After I’ve eaten my fill, and you’ve done the dishes, you’ll be free to take a bucket down to the river. The water barrel needs topping off, and the floor needs scrubbing—” She interrupts him with a kiss, and they both laugh.

After he leaves, she pours herself a cup of tea and sits for a while, sipping it and enjoying the sunshine. The sky is a clear, deep blue, and there’s not a cloud in sight. After she finishes off the tea, she opens her pad, picks up her chalk, and begins to sketch a patch of grass that has not been bent by snow. The blades are soft pink, speckled with brown. Plumed and ethereal-looking, they resemble the tail feathers of some tropical bird.

For half an hour she thinks about nothing but color, form, and composition. When she finally looks up, she notices the sun is about to disappear behind a cloud. Deciding the best of the day is over, she prepares to put away her sketch pad, but before she can close it, a strong wind rises up and rips it out of her hand.

She watches as the pad is thrown into the air and the individual sheets torn off and tossed in all directions. Within seconds the wind triples in force. With it comes snow—not the first few flakes of impending snowstorms that she remembers from her childhood, but a curtain of the stuff mixed with sleet. For a few minutes, she sits there watching the world turn white around her. The effect is extraordinarily beautiful.

When she finally turns her attention back to herself, she realizes she’s shivering. It’s time to go back in the house. Picking up the teapot, she stands and begins to walk slowly across the yard, careful not to trip. As she does so, she heads into a wind so cold it takes her breath away. The snow is falling even faster now. The patch of grass she just sketched is already beginning to bend a little under it, and the sheets on the clothesline look as if they are starting to freeze.

She considers taking the sheets down and carrying them inside, but decides to leave them for William. Grabbing onto the railing, she pulls herself up the front steps. As she pushes open the front door, she feels the first cramping pain.

The sudden onslaught of the storm takes everyone by surprise. Sweeping down from the Arctic, a Kansas blizzard can lower the temperature forty degrees in an hour, blot out all traces of roads, and make it impossible to hear human voices at a distance of six feet. In Lawrence everyone makes it safely to shelter, but in other parts of the territory, people freeze to death trying to walk less than a hundred yards, while others suffocate on the snow.

“Carrie,” he calls as he steps onto the front porch. She doesn’t answer. Worried, he enters the house and discovers the fire has gone out. Carrie is lying on the bed under a pile of blankets and buffalo robes. The water in the basin beside her is frozen solid.

Scooping her up in his arms, William kisses her and reassures her that everything will be fine. He holds her through the next two pains, then lays her back down, tucks her in, relights the fire, and sets a kettle of water on to boil. By the time he goes outside to get more wood and check on his horse, the snow is coming down so hard he has to duck his head to breathe.

Probably no man in Lawrence has as much experience with blizzards as he has. Five years ago, he strapped on snowshoes and walked out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to get help. An entire wagon train depended on him. True, that blizzard was over by the time he began the trek, but he knows the treachery of snow, the seductiveness of cold so intense that it makes a man want to lie down, close his eyes, and give up. Carrie is safe inside the house, but they are going to need fuel to keep the fire going, and in ten minutes or so he isn’t going to be able to find his way to the woodshed.

Staggering to the stable, he checks on the mare, feeds her a carrot, and piles up enough fresh hay to last her a week. Pleased by the unexpected treats, the mare nuzzles him and whinnies. The sod walls are thick and the roof is solid. Even if the entire stable is buried, she should be fine.

When he goes back outside, he can’t see the house. He walks in a straight line, heel to toe, until he runs into the clothesline. Cutting it off the posts, he continues until he reaches the house. After that things become easier. He ties the line to the porch rail and then walks in the general direction of the woodshed. The first three times he comes to the end of the line before he locates it, but the fourth time he sees it looming up out of the whiteness. Tying the loose end of the line to the shed, he grabs as much wood as he can carry and follows the line back to the house.

Before he opens the front door, he stops and says a quick prayer. He’s never been a religious man, but he doesn’t want Carrie to see how frightened he is, and she’s always been able to read his face.

Dear God, he prays, let this baby come into the world easily. Let it be healthy. Let it thrive. Let Carrie’s labor be short; let her pain be light. Let her not suffer too much . . .

The wind shrieks around him and the windows of the house disappear, glowing under the snow like buried lanterns. Out in the front yard, the chair Carrie was sitting on topples over and disappears. William thinks of the women he has seen bleed to death giving birth, women who could not deliver their babies at all, women who labored until they died of exhaustion.

Is God hearing this? Does He exist? Is that His voice in the roaring of the blizzard? For a few more seconds, he stands on the porch as the storm turns him into a white statue. Then he shakes off the snow, stomps off his boots, and goes inside to help Alice/Edward come into the world.

Sometimes, Carrie thinks, nature is merciful. Later, she remembers the warmth of the hot brick William put at her feet, the fire in the stove casting shadows on the walls, the pain coming in waves, but most of the day she gave birth to Teddy is a blank. She has a dim recollection of cursing, and crying, and screaming; of gripping William’s arm so hard she bruises it; of biting her lips and yelling that she will never have another child if she has to give up lovemaking for the rest of her life, but it all seems like a dream someone else dreamed.

The thing she remembers most clearly is Teddy actually being born, the relief of finally pushing him out into the world, the joy of hearing him cry and knowing he’s alive. She remembers taking him in her arms for the first time, feeling him wet and squirming against her, and loving him beyond reason from the first moment she holds him.

She even recalls looking up at William, saying, “Thank you,” and breaking into tears. William must have comforted her, taken the baby from her, washed him, bundled him up, given him back to her to hold. He must have told her he loved her, but she can’t remember any of this.

What comes next is the transition from ice to fire. In the midst of the fever, when she is out of her head and raving incoherently, she believes she is back in the hospital of the Casa de Misericórdia. She speaks to William in Portuguese, and when he hears this, he believes he’s going to lose her.

He does not panic, nor does he purge and bleed her as other doctors would have done. Instead, he sponges her down with alcohol, and persuades her to drink tea made from licorice root, thyme, and hyssop. Once, she swims up from the depths of the pit of fire she has been thrown into to find him bending over her.

“Yes,” he says so firmly she believes him. Then she looks into his eyes and realizes he’s lying. “If I do die, will you take care of Teddy as if he were your own son?”

What dreams does she have during the time she hovers between life and death? Does Mae Seja come to comfort her? Does she see her mother? She remembers nothing. All she knows is that one morning she wakes to find herself lying in her own bed with Teddy nursing at her breast. Sunlight is streaming in through the windows. Most of the snow has melted, and the sky is so blue it looks like the petals of a giant cornflower.

She puts her hand on Teddy’s head. My son, she thinks. He is an unusually pretty baby: dark hair as fine as silk, red cheeks, a tiny straight nose, long eyelashes that would be the envy of any girl. Everything about him is small and perfect and compact right down to his tiny fingernails. His eyes are blue, but the color often changes. Will they turn green like Deacon’s?

Perhaps they will. She can see traces of Deacon in his face, but her son’s eyes will never be catlike and sly. Already they are rounder, softer. Teddy will laugh with his eyes. She and William will love him. He will be a happy child.

When she looks in his face, she sees not only herself. She sees her mother, her father, her grandparents. What a mystery children are. How many births did it take to produce this particular baby? How many centuries was he in the making?

In Mae Seja’s quilombo, people gave their babies names like Iyabo, which means Mother Is Back; or Babatunji, Father Has Woken Up. They not only believed children were the dead returning; they believed a child who died young would be reborn from the womb of the same mother. Teddy could be Willa come back to her. No wonder every religion has some way to bless children.

She kisses him on the forehead and whispers foolish, loving words in his ear. I’ll bless him with the names of the Brazilian and African gods, she thinks, and then I’ll take him to church and have him christened.

But perhaps it’s not a good idea to mix gods, because two weeks later, she throws the buzios, and they tell her she’ll lose him. “Stupid, lying shells!” she cries. “What am I doing practicing witchcraft?” Gathering up the buzios, she carries them to the waste bucket and drops them in. They hit the bottom with a deafening rattle. She looks down to see if any have been chipped, but they all appear whole.

She tilts the bucket, fishes the buzios out, and stuffs them back into their bag. Going over to Teddy’s cradle, she picks him up and clasps him to her so tightly he begins to cry.