68
STRUGGLING IN THE WEB
In a short time, Mrs. Clay’s little house was crowded. The sheriff, a stocky gray-haired man named Jesse Moore, suffered from morning dyspepsia, and he frowned occasionally and belched often. He was accompanied by two deputies, and his message to the army had quickly summoned five soldiers: a first lieutenant, two sergeants, and a pair of privates. Within half an hour Major Oliver P. Poole arrived, a swarthy bespectacled officer with thin black mustaches. Everyone deferred to him—clearly he was in charge.
At first the soldiers and civilians spent their time viewing the body, going in and out of the house, clumping up and down the stairs in their heavy boots, and conversing privately, with their heads close together. They wasted whatever heat was in the house and tracked in snow and ice that made a disaster of Mrs. Clay’s waxed wooden floors.
The sheriff and his men were watchful, the military men were very serious, and the major was coldly polite.
Upstairs in the bedroom, Major Poole examined the bullet holes in the floor, the wall, the bureau drawer, and the body of the soldier.
“You can’t identify him, Dr. Cole?”
“I never saw him before.”
“Do you suppose he wanted to rob you?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. All I know is, I threw that boot at the wall in a dark room, and he shot at the sound, and I shot at him.”
“Have you looked in his pockets?”
“No, sir.”
The major proceeded to do so, placing the contents of the fat soldier’s pockets on the blanket at the foot of the bed. There wasn’t much: a can of Clock-Time snuff; a bunched-up and snot-encrusted handkerchief; seventeen dollars and thirty-eight cents; and an army furlough that Poole read and then passed to Shaman. “Does the name mean anything to you?”
The furlough had been made out to Sergeant Major Henry Bowman Korff, Headquarters, U.S. Army Eastern Quartermaster Command, Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Shaman read it and shook his head. “I never saw or heard that name before,” he could say honestly.
But a few minutes later, as he started to descend the stairway, he realized that the name had produced troublesome echoes in his mind. Halfway down the stairs, he knew why.
Never again would he have to speculate, as his father had until he died, regarding the whereabouts of the third man who had fled Holden’s Crossing the morning Makwa-ikwa was raped and killed. He no longer had to search for a fat man named “Hank Cough.” Hank Cough had found him.
Presently the coroner came to declare the deceased legally dead. His greeting to Shaman was cool. All the men in the house displayed open or reserved antagonism, and Shaman understood its source. Alex was their enemy; he’d fought against them, probably killed Northerners, and until lately had been their prisoner of war. And now Alex’s brother had killed a Union soldier in uniform.
Shaman was relieved when they loaded the ponderous dead man onto a litter and laboriously carried him down the stairs and out of the house.
That was when the serious questioning began. The major sat in the bedroom in which the shooting had taken place. Near him, on another kitchen chair, one of the sergeants sat and took notes of the interrogation. Shaman sat on the edge of the bed.
Major Poole asked about his affiliations, and Shaman told him the only two organizations he’d ever joined were the Society for the Abolition of Slavery while he was in college, and the Rock Island County Medical Society.
“Are you a Copperhead, Dr. Cole?”
“I am not.”
“You don’t have even the slightest sympathy for the South?”
“I don’t believe in slavery. I want the war to end without additional general suffering, but I’m not a supporter of the Southern cause.”
“Why did Sergeant Major Korff come to this house?”
“I’ve no idea.” He had decided almost immediately not to mention the long-ago murder of an Indian woman in Illinois, and the fact that three men and a covert political society had been implicated in her violation and death. It was all too remote, too arcane. He understood that to open it up would be to invite the incredulity of this unpleasant army officer, and a myriad of dangers.
“You’re asking us to accept that a sergeant major in the United States Army was killed attempting an armed robbery.”
“No, I’m not asking you to accept anything. Major Poole, do you believe that I issued an invitation to this man to break a window in my rented house, enter it illegally at two o’clock in the morning, and come upstairs and into my brother’s sickroom, firing a gun?”
“Then why did he do it?”
“I don’t know,” Shaman said, and the major frowned at him.
While Poole questioned Shaman, in the parlor the lieutenant questioned Alex. At the same time, the two privates and the sheriff’s deputies were conducting a search of the barn and the house, inspecting Shaman’s luggage, emptying bureau drawers and closets.
From time to time there was a break in the questioning while the two officers conferred.
“Why didn’t you tell me your mother is a Southerner?” Major Poole asked Shaman after one such pause.
“My mother was born in Virginia but has lived in Illinois more than half her life. I didn’t tell you because you didn’t ask me.”
“These were found in your medicine bag. What are they, Dr. Cole?” Poole laid out on the bed four pieces of paper. “Each has a person’s name and address. A Southern person.”
“They’re the addresses of kinfolk of my brother’s tentmates in the Elmira prison camp. Those men cared for my brother and kept him alive. When the war is over, I’ll write to determine whether each of them made it through. And, if so, thank them.”
The questioning droned on and on. Often Poole duplicated questions he’d asked before, and Shaman repeated his former answers.
At midday the men departed to get food at Barnard’s store, leaving the two privates and one of the sergeants in the house. Shaman went into the kitchen and cooked a gruel, bringing a bowl to Alex, who looked dangerously exhausted.
“You must eat, it’s your way of continuing to fight!” Shaman told him fiercely, and Alex nodded and began to spoon the pasty stuff into his mouth.
After lunch, the interrogators exchanged places, the major questioning Alex, the lieutenant directing his queries at Shaman. Midafternoon, to the irritation of the officers, Shaman called a halt in the proceedings and took his time changing the dressing on Alex’s stump, before an audience.
To Shaman’s amazement, Major Poole asked him to accompany three of the soldiers to the place in the woods where he had burned the amputated section of Alex’s leg. When he had pointed out the place, they dug away the snow and grubbed in the charcoal remains of the fire until they had recovered some bits of whitened tibia and fibula that they placed into a kerchief and took away. The men departed by late afternoon. The house felt blessedly uncrowded, but insecure and violated. A blanket had been tacked over the broken window. The floors were muddy, and the air retained the odor of their pipes and their bodies.
Shaman heated the meat soup. To his pleasure, Alex suddenly displayed real hunger, and he gave his brother ample portions of beef and vegetables as well as broth. It stimulated his own hunger as well, and following the soup they ate bread and butter with jam, and applesauce, and he brewed fresh coffee.
Shaman carried Alex upstairs and placed him in Mrs. Clay’s bed. He tended to his brother’s needs and sat by his side until late, but finally he went back into the guest room and fell exhausted into the bed, trying to forget that there were bloodstains on the floor. That night, they slept little.
Next morning, neither the sheriff nor his men appeared, but the soldiers were there before Shaman had cleaned up after breakfast.
At first it appeared that the day was to be a repeat of the preceding one, but the morning was still early when a man knocked at the door and announced himself to be George Hamilton Crockett, an assistant United States commissioner for Indian affairs, stationed in Albany. He sat with Major Poole and conferred at length, transferring to the officer a sheaf of papers to which they referred several times in the course of their conversation.
Presently the soldiers gathered up their things and put on their coats. Led by the sullen Major Poole, they went away.
Mr. Crockett remained for some time, talking with the Cole brothers. He told them they had been the subject of a large number of telegraph messages from Washington to his office.
“The incident is unfortunate. The army finds it hard to swallow the fact that it has lost one of its own, in a Confederate soldier’s house. They are accustomed to killing Confederates who kill them.”
“They’ve made that clear, with their questions and their persistence,” Shaman said.
“You have nothing to fear. The evidence is too obvious. Sergeant Major Korff’s horse was tied up in the woods where it was hidden. The sergeant major’s footprints in the snow went from the horse to the window at the rear of the house. The glass was broken, the window left open. When they examined his body, he was still holding the gun, which had been fired twice.
“In the heat of wartime passions, an unscrupulous investigation might overlook the strong evidence in such a case, but not when powerful interested parties are scrutinizing it closely.”
Crockett smiled, and extended the warm greetings of the Honorable Nicholas Holden. “The commissioner has asked me to assure you he’ll come to Elmira himself if he’s needed. I’m happy to be able to assure him that such a journey won’t be necessary.”
The next morning Major Poole sent one of the sergeants with word that the Cole brothers were requested not to leave Elmira until the investigation was formally closed. When the sergeant was asked when that might be, he said, politely enough, that he didn’t know.
So they stayed on in the small house. Mrs. Clay had heard at once what had happened, and she paid a white-faced visit, peering wordlessly at the broken window and in horror at the bullet holes and the bloodstained floor. Her eyes filled when she saw the ruined bureau drawer. “That was my mother’s.”
“I’ll see it’s repaired, and the house set to rights,” Shaman said. “Can you recommend a carpenter?”
She sent someone over that afternoon, a lanky, aging man named Bert Clay, a cousin of her late husband’s. He tut-tutted, but went right to work. He brought glass in the proper dimension and repaired the window straightaway. The shambles in the bedroom was more complicated. The splintered floorboards had to be replaced, and the bloodstained section sanded and refinished. Bert said he’d fill the holes in the wall with plaster and paint the room. But he looked at the bureau drawer and shook his head. “I dunno. That’s bird’s-eye maple. I might be able to find a piece of that someplace, but it’ll be dear”
“Get it,” Shaman said grimly.
It took a week for the repairs to be made. When Bert was finished, Mrs. Clay came and inspected everything closely. She nodded and thanked Bert and said it would do, even the bureau drawer. But she was cool to Shaman and he understood that her home would never be the same to her.
Everyone he met was cold. Mr. Barnard no longer smiled and chatted when Shaman came into the store, and he saw people look at him in the street and say things to one another. The general animosity got on his nerves. Major Poole had confiscated the Colt when he came to the house, and both Shaman and Alex felt unprotected. Shaman went to bed at night with the fireplace poker and a kitchen knife on the floor next to the bed, and he lay awake as the house shook in the wind, and tried to detect the vibrations of intruders.
At the end of three weeks Alex had gained weight and looked better, but he was chafing to be away from there, and they were relieved and happy when Poole sent word that they could leave. Shaman had bought Alex civilian clothes, and he helped his brother into them, pinning up the left trouser leg so it wouldn’t get in his way. Alex tried walking with the aid of his crutch, but he had difficulty. “I feel lopsided with that much of the leg gone,” he said, and Shaman told him he would get used to it.
Shaman bought a great wheel of cheese at Barnard’s and left it on the table for Mrs. Clay, a guilt offering. He had arranged to return the horse and wagon to the stableman at the railroad station, and Alex rode to the depot lying on straw, the way he had left the prison camp. When the train arrived, Shaman carried him aboard in his arms and settled him in a window seat while other passengers stared or looked away. They talked little, but as the train lurched out of Elmira, Alex placed his hand on his brother’s arm, and the gesture spoke volumes.
They traveled home via a more northerly route than the one Shaman had used to come to Elmira. Shaman aimed for Chicago instead of Cairo, because he didn’t trust the Mississippi to be unfrozen when they reached Illinois. The journey was hard. The lurching of the train brought Alex severe and unremitting pain. There were many transfers along the route, and each time, Alex had to be carried from train to train in his brother’s arms. Trains almost never arrived or left on schedule. Numerous times, the train they rode in was shunted to a side track to allow a troop train to go through. Once, for about fifty miles, Shaman managed to get them upholstered chairs in a parlor car, but most of the time they traveled on the hard wooden seats of coaches. By the time they reached Erie, Pennsylvania, there were white patches in the corners of Alex’s mouth, and Shaman knew his brother could travel no more.
He took a room in a hotel so Alex could rest for a time in a soft bed. That evening, as he changed the dressing, he began to tell Alex some of the things he’d learned from reading his father’s journal.
He told him of the fate of the three men who had raped and murdered Makwa-ikwa. “I believe it’s my fault Henry Korff came after us. When I was at the asylum in Chicago where David Goodnow is being held, I talked too much about the murderers. I asked about the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, and about Hank Cough, and I left a definite impression that I’d cause them as much trouble as I could. Someone on the staff probably was a member of the order—perhaps everyone running the asylum is! No doubt they got word to Korff, and he decided to come after us.”
Alex was quiet for a moment, but then he looked at his brother in concern. “But, Shaman … Korff knew where to look for us. Which means somebody in Holden’s Crossing informed him you’d left for Elmira.”
Shaman nodded. “I have thought about that a great deal,” he said quietly.
They reached Chicago a week after they left Elmira. Shaman sent a telegraph message to his mother, telling her he was bringing Alex home. He disclosed that Alex had lost a leg, and asked her to meet their train.
When the train arrived in Rock Island an hour late, she was on the station platform with Doug Penfield. Shaman carried Alex down the coach steps, and Sarah threw her arms about her son and wept wordlessly.
“Let me put him down, he’s heavy,” Shaman complained at last, and he placed Alex on the seat of the buggy. Alex had been crying too. “You look good, Ma,” he said finally. His mother sat next to him and held his hand. Shaman handled the reins, while Doug rode his horse, which had been tied to the back of the buggy.
“Where’s Alden?” Shaman asked.
“He’s taken to his bed. He’s been failing, Shaman, the palsy is much worse. And he slipped and had a bad fall a few weeks ago, when they were cutting ice on the river,” Sarah said.
Alex watched the countryside hungrily as they traveled. So did Shaman; he felt strange. Just as Mrs. Clay’s house would always seem different to her, so was his life afflicted. Since his departure from here, he had killed a man. The world seemed awry.
When they reached home at dusk, they placed Alex in his own bed. He lay there with his eyes closed, sheer pleasure in his face.
Sarah cooked for her prodigal son’s return. She fed him roasted chicken and potatoes mashed with carrots. No sooner was supper done than Lillian came hurrying down the Long Path carrying a tureen of stew. “Your days of hunger are over!” she told Alex after she had kissed him and welcomed him home.
She told him Rachel had to stay with her children but would be over to see him in the morning.
Shaman left them talking, his mother and Lillian seated as close to Alex as their chairs would allow. He walked up to Alden’s cabin. When he let himself in, Alden was asleep, and the cabin smelled of raw whiskey. Shaman let himself out quietly and walked down to the Long Path. The snow on the path had been trampled and then had frozen, and it was slippery in spots. When he reached the Geiger house, through the front window he could see Rachel sitting and reading by the fire. She dropped her book at his rap on the glass.
They kissed as though one of them was dying. She took his hand and led him up the stairs to her room. The children were asleep down the hall, her brother Lionel was mending harness in the barn, and her mother could come home at any time, but they made love on Rachel’s bed with their clothes on, sweetly and determinedly, and with a desperate gratitude.
When he walked back over the path, the world was on an even plane again.