The Widow's War

Prairie violets, Chickasaw plums, wild strawberries, purple anemones, and everywhere the tall grass sprouting new growth under a sky so huge Carrie feels as if she has swum out of winter into an ocean of spring. Usually on such a day she would have brought her sketch pad, but this afternoon she is riding from Lawrence to Osawatomie with her medical kit, a rifle, and Teddy strapped to her back in a Kaw cradleboard. The cradleboard is decorated with fine beadwork and has a deerskin shade that protects his head from the sun. It was a gift from one of her patients. Teddy is getting a little big for it, but he loves it, there’s no more secure way to carry a child on a horse, and she wouldn’t trade it for the finest perambulator money can buy.

Three armed men are riding with her. All have the same long, straight noses and deeply set eyes, and all share the last name Brown. The Browns are brothers. For about a year now, they have been living on North Middle Creek not far from Osawatomie. Frederick Brown is the handsomest of the three: round-faced and innocent-looking as a baby although he must be at least twenty-five. Red-haired Owen Brown, whose beard reminds Carrie of a spade, has a crippled right arm. Salmon Brown, the youngest, has the air of a preacher who has been dragged out on Sunday for an excursion he doesn’t approve of.

Carrie knows almost nothing about the Browns, but she’s glad to have them with her. These days she never ventures out unarmed and unaccompanied. Only a few months ago, the bushwhackers surrounded Lawrence again. This time there were fifteen hundred of them, and they came with cannons, guns, and a hatred so intense you could almost smell it. During the second siege she dreamed terrible dreams. Even now when she thinks about them, they make her shudder. The worst is, she can’t remember what they were. All she can recall is waking up shaking and sweating. At the last minute, a peace was negotiated, but she isn’t taking any chances. Even though things have quieted down considerably, only a fool would ride to Osawatomie alone.

On the other hand, if she believed they were in any real danger of being attacked, she wouldn’t have brought Teddy with her. Leaving him at home isn’t easy since he’s still nursing, but she would have found a way. Mrs. Crane’s niece might have agreed to nurse him along with her own newborn, but whenever possible Carrie prefers to take him with her. I’ll never lose you, she promised him when he was only a few days old, and not losing him means keeping him close.

Up ahead, a cloud of dust appears. That should be Mr. Trout. He agreed to meet them and accompany them to Osawatomie, and he’s right on time. But just in case it isn’t him—

Carrie pulls out her rifle and the Browns follow suit. She wonders how bushwhackers would react to the sight of an armed woman with a baby on her back. She hopes she never has occasion to find out. So far they haven’t killed women and children. In fact, April is proving to be a relatively peaceful month. Over in Lecompton, a Congressional investigation into charges of election fraud is in process, and while the committee is hearing testimony, neither side wants to rock the boat.

Mr. Trout comes into view riding on a mule. Catching sight of their party, he takes off his hat and waves. Carrie and the Browns lower their guns, and Carrie waves back. When he gets within shouting distance, Trout yells, “Howdy!”

“Humph. Well, you’re the doctor’s lady, so I suppose you’d know.” He points at Carrie’s rifle. “Can you shoot that thing as well as you can shoot a pistol, Miz Vinton?”

“Well then if the Browns here don’t have any objection, I reckon I’ll ride beside you. As you know, I don’t fancy turning my back on an armed woman. I believe I told you the story of my gun-toting former fiancée when we first became acquainted, but in case it’s done slipped your mind . . .”

For the next five hours, as the Browns ride in silence, Mr. Trout talks incessantly. Just before sunset, they reach the outskirts of Osawatomie. Carrie thanks the Browns for seeing her safely to her destination. After they depart for their homes, she presses a pouch of chewing tobacco into Mr. Trout’s hand and gives him a packet of pills for his lung congestion. She’d like to give the Brown brothers something, too, but so far she has seen no sign that they chew tobacco or drink or indulge in any other vices known to mankind. The only thing she could reliably give the Browns are Bibles, and she suspects they already have a sufficient supply.

Dismounting, she walks to Elizabeth’s cabin. It’s one of three set in a semicircle not far from the place where Pottawatomie Creek flows into the Marais des Cygnes River. The other two cabins are occupied by Prosser and Toussaint and their families. Carrie knocks on Elizabeth’s door, and to her surprise, Elizabeth herself answers.

“Thank God you’re here!” Elizabeth says. Her voice is steady, but when Carrie looks at her face, she has a sense of staring into unknown territory. Enfolding Carrie in her arms, Elizabeth embraces her, baby, cradleboard, and all. Her hair gives off a strange scent Carrie doesn’t recognize. Perhaps it’s the odor of infection.

“Neither.” Elizabeth releases her and steps back. “I’ve brought you here on false pretenses. I have calluses you couldn’t drive a nail through with a hammer, but I had to get you to Osawatomie. I’ll tell you the details later. Right now, we have to go over to the Adairs’ cabin before it’s too late.”

“No, they’re both in good health, but last night we found a man draped over a fence rail. I think the bushwhackers left him as a warning, or maybe they just left him to die in the first convenient place that presented itself. In any event, he’s horribly burned. What takes tar off skin?”

“Spartacus!” Elizabeth cries. Carrie notices Elizabeth’s youngest son standing in the shadows. He looks terrified. How old is he now: fourteen, fifteen? She can’t remember. He’s a foot taller than the last time she saw him, skinny but strong-looking. Starting to become a man, but not one yet by a long shot.

“Spartacus, draw a jug of kerosene from the barrel. Then run over to Mrs. Gate’s and ask her if we can borrow some of her husband’s whiskey for medicinal purposes. Bring the kerosene and whiskey over to Reverend Adair’s as fast as your legs will carry you.”

The Adair’s cabin is a two-room fortress made out of logs chinked with mud. The chimney is short and squat, the windows small. When Carrie and Elizabeth arrive, they find Reverend Adair and his wife standing in the doorway peering down the road anxiously. Reverend Adair appears to have aged since Carrie last saw him.

When Mrs. Adair catches sight of Carrie, she steps forward. She’s a determined-looking woman with deeply set eyes, a slightly pointed nose, and a face that forms such a perfect oval that it looks as if it had been drawn with a compass.

“Miss Vinton,” she says, “you are welcome. We have no doctors in Osawatomie. I understand you have apprenticed yourself to Dr. Saylor and have a reputation for healing. I cannot tell you how happy we are to see you. My husband and I have been desperate with worry. We fear the poor man will not survive the night. Please come in.”

The cabin is large as frontier cabins go, with whitewashed walls, a rag rug on the floor, and little luxuries like a walnut-framed mirror mounted above the washstand. A small fire is burning in the fireplace, taking off the spring chill. Sitting in front of it in a cane-bottomed rocking chair is an old man dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and black leather tie. His hair is cropped short and combed straight back to reveal a high brow. His nose is long and aquiline, his eyes deep-set like Mrs. Adair’s. It’s a weathered, weary face set on a head that seems too small for his lanky body.

“Miss Vinton,” says Mrs. Adair, “may I present my brother, Mr. Brown.” Mrs. Adair does not offer Carrie her brother’s first name. Later Carrie will realize this is John, the radical brother-in-law Reverend Adair spoke about over dinner in the Gilliss House, the one who believes he is the right hand of God, but at the moment her mind is on other things.

“Indeed I am. They are my sons.” As he speaks, he leans forward, the light catches his face, and Carrie sees the most startling eyes she has ever encountered. There is nothing unusual about their color—they are an ordinary shade of gray—but they are fierce, determined, and absolutely steady. For a moment she has the sense of having walked into the presence of a judging god. Then the old man catches sight of Teddy, and his gaze softens.

Carrie looks at Elizabeth, and Elizabeth nods. Reassured, Carrie hands the old man Teddy. He takes the cradleboard with sure hands, bends over it, and kisses Teddy on the forehead. “Cootchie-cootchie coo,” he croons. Teddy laughs and begins to babble happily. Mr. Brown looks up and smiles at Carrie. “I think Teddy and I are going to get along just fine.”

“Twenty,” he says. Later Carrie learns that nine of John Brown’s twenty children are dead, and that he mourns them so much he can hardly speak of them without weeping.

Brown brushes a strand of hair off Teddy’s forehead and looks at him fondly. “I’ll unbind him from the cradleboard and amuse him while you’re in the smokehouse.”

“Yes, two. One’s only slightly wounded. The other is suffering quite horribly. The wounded man is a fugitive. We’ve hidden him in the smokehouse. We’ve put the man who is dying in our own bed.”

Reverend Adair looks at her grimly, and Mrs. Adair makes a muffled, gasping sound. The old man rocks with his face bent over Teddy. For a few seconds the only sound in the cabin is the creaking of the rocking chair and the ticking of the clock over the mantel. Then Elizabeth speaks.

The man who lies in the Adairs’ bed is white, but you cannot easily tell this by looking at him. The bushwhackers who attacked him smeared boiling tar on his body before they rolled him in the cotton. He’s blind and terribly burned and will no doubt die—perhaps be better off dead. The only mercy is that his burns are so deep, he can no longer feel pain. When he hears Carrie bend over him he gives her a smile so far away it seems to come from another world.

“Lie still,” she tells him, “and I’ll clean you up.” But when she starts to apply the kerosene, she realizes there’s no way to remove the tar without taking his skin along with it. Dropping the rag into the basin, she puts the basin back on the washstand and picks up the jug of whiskey. The whiskey gives off a warm scent that partially covers the singed odor that fills the sickroom, the same odor, Carrie realizes, she detected in Elizabeth’s hair.

The man opens his lips, which have mostly escaped the tar, and gulps some of the whiskey. While Carrie waits for it to take effect, she tries to pick the cotton off him, but there’s no way to remove thousands of small strands embedded in tar, and even if she gets them off, he will not be any more comfortable or any more likely to live. Usually when men are tarred and feathered, the mob uses cooler tar. This is murder, plain and simple.

“Who did this to you?” The man makes a noise that sounds like “Cork” or perhaps “Clark.” Given the condition he’s in, it’s a miracle he understood her question. Maybe he didn’t. She wonders what he did to attract the attention of the bushwhackers. The Herald of Freedom recently ran a story about a lawyer up near Fort Leavenworth who was tarred and feathered for publicly observing that the pro-slave legislature had been elected illegally. Maybe this man made the same error. Or maybe one of his neighbors found out he was a free-soiler.

The man coughs and fumbles for the jug. His hand encounters Carrie’s arm, and he draws back with a murmur of what sounds like an apology. Carrie puts the jug to his lips again, lets him finish off most of the whiskey, and watches him fall asleep. There is cotton on his cheeks, his forehead, his eyelids. He looks like a rag doll that has come unstuffed.

Elizabeth and the Adairs have not put the second man in the smokehouse proper but in a secret room under the smokehouse floor designed to conceal fugitive slaves. His skin is black, but he wears the buckskin leggings and moccasins of a Kaw warrior. He is in his early twenties, his head is partly shaved, and his right arm is in a hastily cobbled-together sling made from two knotted bandannas.

“I realize that when you’re running an Underground Railroad station, there are secrets you can’t share, but he has to speak to me or I can’t help him.” Carrie turns back to the injured man.

“It won’t do any good for you to remain silent, sir, and it may do a great deal of harm. I’ll never breathe a word that might help your owners recapture you. Besides, I can tell a lot about you just by looking at you. For example, I can tell you’ve been living with the Kaw or at least bought clothing from them. That’s Kaw beadwork on your leggings. I have a cradleboard with Kaw beadwork on it. Your moccasins are badly worn, which leads me to believe you’ve been walking for a long time. Since the Kaw have recently been driven off their land, I imagine you’ve been trying to get to Canada before the bushwhackers get hold of you and return you to your master or sell you south. Reverend Adair and his wife have already told me you’re a fugitive, and there’s no other possible explanation for your presence in this room.

“I am not a doctor, but I am as close to one as you’re likely to get, and from what little I can see of your arm, I’d say you might lose it unless you let me fix your injury. To treat you, I need to examine you, and to do that, I need you to talk to me. Please trust me.”

“Y’all sure you need me to talk?” Ni says. Carrie is surprised. She had not expected him to reply. He speaks with a Southern accent tempered by some other influence.

Carrie carefully unties the sling, exposing a bloody shirt sleeve. Selecting a pair of sharp scissors, she cuts away the sleeve to reveal a wound that could only have been made by a bullet.

“Well then, you’ll be happy to know you don’t show any signs of it. However, even though your wound is only slightly infected, most doctors would consider taking off your arm just to make sure. I’m not going to do that.”

“I’m going to poke around a bit to make sure there are no bone fragments in there. Then I’m going to wash that wound with soap and water until it hurts so much you’ll wish I had taken your arm off. Then I’m going to sew it up. Then we’ll see what happens. If the wound festers, you’ll need to have Elizabeth send for me immediately, and when I say immediately, I don’t mean the next day.”

“No offense taken. I am going to consider being compared to your mother a compliment.” Carrie opens her satchel and takes out a jar of liquid soap. She pours some into a basin of hot water, dips a cloth into the foaming mixture, and begins to clean Ni’s wound. The scrubbing must hurt, but he doesn’t flinch. When she has the wound as clean as soap and water can get it, she puts the basin and cloth aside.

When she returns to the Adairs’ cabin, Carrie finds Mr. Brown holding Teddy in his arms, rocking him gently and crooning a lullaby. When he sees Carrie, he stops singing. “How are they?” he asks.

The old man does not answer. Kissing Teddy on the forehead, he hands him to Carrie. “Teddy is your husband’s child,” he says, “is he not? And yet, I hear you do not live with your husband, but with another man.”

Carrie is so shocked to hear him say Mrs. Presgrove that she’s rendered speechless. Bending forward, Mr. Brown stares at her intently. She sees gray eyes, wild and deep, love and hatred mixed together, rage and peace—nothing simple or unmixed. “You are Carrie Vinton Presgrove.”

“You wonder how I know all this? I cannot tell you. I hear you left your husband despite the fact that you were with child by him because he believes in slavery and you abhor it. Is this true?”

“Marriage is sacred. I never urge wives to leave their husbands even if those husbands are slave owners, but in your case, I approve. Deacon Presgrove and his father are tools of Satan. They smuggle slaves into this country against the laws of God and man. Thus you are like unto the slave who flees an evil master: blameless and righteous.

“No matter how harshly other people judge you, Mrs. Presgrove, my sons and I will stand with you. You have the courage of Jael, who put her hand to the nail and her right hand to the workman’s hammer, drove that nail into Sisera’s head, and for this deed God gave victory to Israel. There is no sin in your abandonment of a wicked man who is an enemy of human freedom, and there is no sin in protecting an innocent child from an evil father. The sin is slavery, and all those who struggle against it are loved by the Lord.”

The old man’s eyes glitter with something bright she has no name for. “I am merely Mrs. Adair’s brother. I have been many things in my time: a farmer, a shepherd, a surveyor. When I was a child, I saw a boy my own age brutally beaten with an iron fire shovel. The boy was a slave; the man who wielded the shovel was his master. That boy’s screams still haunt me. On the day I saw him suffer, I became a determined foe of slavery. I have come to Kansas to help defeat Satan and his legions, and I have heard the thundering voice of Jehovah exhorting me to slaughter the border ruffians as He called Gideon to slay the Midianites.” He pauses and sits back. “Am I frightening you?”

“I apologize. Sometimes I speak the truth more forcefully than people are prepared to hear it. Your boy is sleeping peacefully. I am no danger to you or to him. Please go outside and ask Mrs. Newberry to come to me. I have something to tell her.”

Five minutes after Elizabeth enters the Adairs’ cabin, she comes out, folds her arms across her chest, and looks at Carrie thoughtfully. “Congratulations,” she says. “It appears you passed the test.”

Carrie peers into the cabin. Brown is still sitting by the fire. All she can see is the back of his head and his long-fingered hands spread out on the arms of the rocker. She motions to Elizabeth to follow her to a place where they can’t be overheard.

They walk out into the night and down toward the river. When they reach the riverbank, Carrie shifts Teddy to her other hip and turns to Elizabeth. “Before you show me whatever Mr. Brown gave you permission to show me, I need to ask you a question: He just said some very kind things to me, but he said them in a way I find unsettling. He knows things I thought no one but William and I knew. I’m not sure I want to share his secrets. I’m impressed by how dedicated he is to ending slavery, but he quotes the Old Testament constantly and speaks so violently that I’m not sure he’s entirely sane. Is he, Elizabeth?”

“I’ve never been sure either, particularly about John. Don’t bother asking me if I mean John the Revelator or John Brown. Both hear what the rest of us don’t hear and see what the rest of us don’t see, and both preach with the terrifying tongues of angels. One thing I’d say about Mr. Brown, though: You don’t ever want to cross him.”