The Widow's War

Carrie hits the door from one side as Deacon hits it from the other. Seizing a broom, she jams the handle into the nearest bracket and throws her weight against it. The broom handle bends under the force of his assault, but for the moment it holds. It’s a poor substitute for the wooden bar that goes all the way across the door, but the bar and rifle are both out of reach. If she tries to get to either one, she’ll have to let go, and Deacon is hitting the door like a battering ram, commanding her to open up, yelling that he’s come to take her back to Washington.

She’d yell back, but it would be a waste of breath, and she needs every bit she has. He hits the door again and begins to pound on it like a madman. He’s saying crazy things about how he intends to run for the Senate and how she’s getting in his way. She can feel his blows through the planks. The door shudders, and the broom handle smashes against her fingers and creaks as if it’s about to snap. How long can she hold him off? Maybe a neighbor will hear the noise and come to her rescue or maybe William will show up.

All at once, the pounding stops. Exhausted, she leans against the door, shaking and terrified. Has he given up? Suddenly, she hears him running across the front porch. She braces herself, but he hits the door with such force that the broom handle splinters and the door springs open, throwing her to the floor. Rolling onto her hands and knees, she scrambles toward her rifle, but before she can get to it, he kicks her arms out from under her and slams his boot down on her back pinning her in place.

She looks up at him and sees those familiar, catlike green eyes staring down at her. And then she sees the revolver. He has the barrel pointed at her head, and at this range, not even he can miss.

“Get the hell up,” he commands, removing his boot from her back. Carrie rises to her feet. Her arms don’t appear to be broken, but her hands are full of splinters, her hair has come down around her shoulders, and the left sleeve of her dress is ripped.

“Teddy’s not yours. He’s William’s.” She fights an urge to look over her shoulder and make sure Teddy is still hidden under the quilt. She can’t let Deacon see how afraid she is. He’s a coward and a bully, and if he thinks he’s succeeded in terrorizing her, things will only get worse.

“Liar. My stepmother told me you were breeding when you ran off.” He readjusts the revolver so it points at her chest. Will he shoot her? He’s dressed like a bushwhacker. What’s he been doing since she left him? What’s he capable of?

She sets her jaw stubbornly and stares at him until he lowers his eyes, but he doesn’t lower the gun, which continues to waver between her chest and head. Maybe she intimidates him, or maybe he decides it’s time to change tactics. Whatever the reason, his voice grows slick, and wheedling. “Be reasonable, Carrie. Tell me where the boy is. What harm can it do for me to see him?”

How “reasonable” does he think she’s likely to be at the wrong end of a gun? Could she wrest it out of his hand if she charged straight at him? No, with Teddy hiding nearby, the risk of stray bullets is too great.

Deacon’s voice becomes oily enough to gag on. “If the boy—Teddy?—really is William’s, then this is your chance to take him to see his grandmother. Matilda asks after him constantly. Poor woman. So ill, and at her age, well one never knows how long—”

“Liar!” She tosses the word back at him and watches with satisfaction as it hits. “Matilda’s dead. She’s been dead for nearly a year. We get newspapers out here in Kansas. We read obituaries. How did she die? Did you and your porcaria of a father poison her? William wanted to go back east and force you to confess, but I persuaded him the satisfaction wasn’t worth—”

“I won’t shut up! I know a lot of things about you that you wouldn’t want made public. I even know about that slave-smuggling operation you and Bennett are running out of Brazil. What are you going to say to the custom agents when I tell them what kind of cargo Presgrove Sugar has been off-loading on the Sea Islands of South Carolina? If you take that gun out of my face and get out of here, maybe I won’t tell them, maybe—”

Carrie whirls around, but it’s too late. Teddy has thrown off the quilt and is sitting up. As Deacon starts toward him, she steps between them, grabs the barrel of the revolver, and leans against it.

“Get out of my way, you crazy bitch!” Ramming the barrel into her chest so hard it knocks the wind out of her lungs, he gives her another shove that sends her stumbling backward. She clutches at the air and falls, hitting her head on the stove on the way down. The blow stuns her, and she lies on her back unable to move as the room turns around her in a sickening circle.

Deacon picks up her rifle and throws it of reach. Grabbing Teddy, he stuffs him under his arm like a parcel, walks over to where Carrie is lying, and stands over her. By now Teddy is terrified and screaming, but Deacon ignores him.

“I’ll give you one more chance. Come back to Washington with me. Be my wife. I won’t force you into my bed, if that’s what you’re worried about, but if you don’t leave with me right now, you’re never going to see the little brat again.”

Her head throbs, she’s bitten her tongue, and she can taste blood in her mouth. If there’s anything more she can do to make him put Teddy down and go away, she’s not capable of thinking of it. “I’ll—” she gasps.

Rising to her knees, she slowly struggles to her feet. As she stands, the wind catches the door and rattles it. Looking toward the sound, she sees William standing in the doorway holding his pistol in one hand and an iron skillet in the other.

Deacon doesn’t turn around. He’s too busy doing his victory dance. You miserable safado, she thinks. She looks at him standing there like a pompous fool, and feels a mixture of relief and anger that makes her glad she didn’t try to grab his gun. They’re going to get Teddy away from him without a shot being fired.

Carrie nods weakly as if she’s given up and has no more fight left in her. Weaving a little, she grabs at the edge of the stove to steady herself—the perfect picture of a woman about to swoon. If Deacon knew her better—if he had ever really known her at all—he’d realize she wasn’t the fainting type, but the only person he’s ever studied is himself.

Suddenly she plunges toward him hitting his arm, knocking the revolver out of his hand, and grabbing Teddy on the way down. Whap! William steps up behind Deacon and poleaxes him with the skillet.

When Deacon opens his eyes a few minutes later, he finds himself staring down the barrel of William’s gun. To Carrie’s surprise and amusement, his first reaction is to scream like someone is tearing out his fingernails.

Deacon stands up. His face is as white as a cotton pillowcase, and he’s shaking so violently Carrie almost pities him. For a few seconds William stares at him without speaking. Then he says: “If you ever come anywhere near Carrie and Teddy again, I’ll blow your damn head off. Do you understand?” Deacon makes a squeaking sound like a rat caught in a trap. He opens his mouth but no words come out.

After Deacon leaves, William stays with Carrie and Teddy for the rest of the day. By nightfall the sack of Lawrence is over. The next morning, Atchison marches his men through town one last time and loads them onto a boat that will take them back to Missouri. That day and the next, William and Carrie pitch in to help clean up the mess, and on Friday a band of bushwhackers comes back in the middle of the night and burns down their house.

Who dips those rags in kerosene, sets them on fire, and throws them onto the thatch? Did Deacon send them? William and Carrie never know for sure, but they wake to the smell of smoke and the sound of riders leaving at a gallop.

The men who burn their house also steal William’s horse, but even if the bushwhackers had left the mare in the stable, William and Carrie are too busy trying to put out the fire to pursue the arsonists, so their identity remains a mystery.

Scooping up Teddy, they escape unharmed. They save William’s medical instruments and books; Carrie’s art supplies, drawings, and plant presses; the quilt; two of the buffalo robes, a tin box full of dried plants, and a trunk of clothing; but the rag rug, the hand-carved butter molds, the churn, and the blue calico curtains go up in flames.

The memory that stays with Carrie longest is the sight of the newspapers she pasted to the walls. One by one, they curl and twist, blacken and fall to the ground as ash. After the ashes cool, she picks up a handful and throws them into the air. As they drift away, she silently lists all the places she’s lived: houses in Rio, huts along the upper Amazon, Mae Seja’s quilombo, Grandfather Hampton’s place in Bloomington, Grandfather Vinton’s in Mitchellville, her cabin on The Frances Scott, that mansion in Washington Bennett Presgrove rented. This house was different. This was the first real home she ever had, the first she expected to live in for the rest of her life. Months ago, the buzios warned fire would take something from her. She thought she’d be able to bear the loss, but now—Picking up another handful of ashes she stares at them and begins to cry.

He’s right. Nothing important has been lost. They still have each other and Teddy. She rests in his arms for a while. Then she steps back and gives him a kiss. Walking over to the remains of their house, she bends down and retrieves a scrap of paper that survived the flames.

That afternoon, as they are sifting through the ruins looking for their frying pans and Carrie’s sewing scissors, Mrs. Crane comes running up with a special edition of The Beacon of Freedom, an abolitionist paper that has just arrived from Westport by special courier. She stops in front of Carrie, gasping for breath.

Carrie takes the newspaper from her, William reads over her shoulder, and together they learn that two days ago, after making a speech entitled “The Crime Against Kansas,” Senator Sumner of Massachusetts was savagely attacked on the floor of the United States Senate. According to the article, his attackers beat him to the ground, hitting him so hard they ripped his desk off its bolts. When Sumner staggered up the main aisle of the Senate Chamber blinded by his own blood, his assailants pursued him and continued to batter him until they broke their canes over his body. Throwing the pieces at him, they walked out, leaving bloody footprints on the marble floor.

Infamy! the article cries. In the opinion of this publication, the canning of Senator Sumner is the most shameful event ever to take place in the United States Senate. Congressman Brook’s and Senator Presgrove’s cowardly attack on an unarmed United States senator is an act worthy of a dictatorship, not a democracy, and the fact that it is going unpunished makes it all the more reprehensible—

“They’re sending the damnable devils new canes,” Mrs. Crane says. Ordinarily Carrie would be shocked to hear the matronly Mrs. Crane use such language, but she is still stuck on those two words.

“The canes are inscribed with the motto ‘Hit Him Again.’ They’re being sent by University of Virginia students, young ladies, respectable matrons, doctors, lawyers, planters. Why canes are coming in so fast, they have to be stacked like cordwood. Brooks and Presgrove have become heroes in the South. It’s an evil day, Miss Vinton and Doctor Saylor. An evil day for America.”

“Yes,” Carrie mutters. “Yes it is.” She puts her finger on the word “Presgrove,” and as she does so, she sees Bennett as she saw him the first time they met: crooked nose, yellowed eyes, long gray hair, spotted skin; and in his hand a heavy, gold-headed walking stick.

Perhaps what comes next is the only real vision she will ever have, or perhaps it’s merely a logical extension of the troubles she’s witnessed, but as she stands there holding Bennett Presgrove in her mind’s eye, his face fades and is replaced by another face, weathered and weary with fierce gray eyes.