Juliet's Moon (2 page)

"Not asking you to promise me anything. You just be yourself. We have any trouble, we'll work it out between us. That all right with you?"

I sighed, contented, and said it was.

N
EXT THING
I knew we were at the Andersons' place. One of the prettiest farms in Jackson County, after ours.

The girls, all at different stages of attractive, came out to meet us. Martha was eighteen, Mary, sixteen, Fanny, fifteen, and Jenny, fourteen. Their older brother, Bill, twenty-four, also fought with Quantrill but hadn't come home with Seth.

The girls crowded around me and Seth, their questions about the Yankees urgent and half scared, until Martha insisted we be ushered into the house and given some vittles and hot tea.

Their mother had died a few years ago while giving birth to a baby who had died, too. Their father was shot last year by a man named Baker, who had been courting Martha, but who, at the last minute, refused to wed her. Martha's father went to the man's house with a double-barreled shotgun the day Baker was to marry his new love, a schoolteacher. That's when Baker shot him.

The wedding went on.

Martha never got around it. Her embarrassment and shame at being put aside by Baker knew no end. And Seth, with whom she'd always been friends, was there to comfort her. I think that's when she became smitten with him.

Maxine told me all about it.

"Your brother gots his wild side," she told me, "an he gots to find women to satisfy it, even while he love Martha."

I didn't understand it all, of course. I was only ten or eleven at the time. But the words stayed with me and I always looked for, and never found, this wild side in Seth. I'd watch him when he didn't know it, when he was cleaning his rifle, or strumming his fiddle, or brushing down his horse, or just leaning back in a hammock in the sun, and I'd wonder: How do men go about showing their wild side? If Martha knew about this wild side, she never complained.

"I know," she told me once, "that he loves me. And I'll wait for him."

In all of this, she'd made me her confidante. I was to tell her if Seth spoke as if he was getting serious about somebody. I promised her I would.

"They're a caution together," I'd once told Maxine. "They pick up each other's thoughts and finish each other's sentences. It's as if they're married twenty years already."

"You got that right, honey."

"So why don't they go and do it, then?"

"Bad times right now. Martha still has to work off some of her guilt"—she was counting reasons on her fingers—"an that wild side o' your brother must still be lookin' at somebody."

"Who? He sees just men in his unit."

She looked at me and I at her. And then the notion came to me. And I thought,
Oh Lord God no.
I waited for Maxine to say the name, but she didn't. So I did to myself.

Sue Mundy.

M
Y HEAD
was pounding and
I
wished the Anderson girls wouldn't cackle so. But I sat decorously on the couch in the parlor and sipped my tea and ate my meat sandwich.

Seth had pulled me close to him because I had started crying again. And I heard his words like a rumble in his chest. "Pa dead. House and barn burned. Negroes run off."

"Well, you can stay here, of course. We have room," Martha was saying in that voice of hers that always sounded as if she were telling a story to a child, so melodious and comforting.

It was Maxine who put her hand to my forehead. "She burnin' up, Master Seth."

He took the tea and sandwich from me and lifted me into his arms. "Show me where to put her," he asked Martha. And then I passed out.

W
HEN
I
AWOKE
, I was in a pleasant room with organdy curtains and a canopied bed. In spite of the fact that it was early August, a low fire burned in the grate. I was up to my chin in sheets and a light blanket, and at the foot of the bed Seth and Martha were conversing in low tones, as if they were my mother and father.

I wished they were. I wished they were wed and I was living with them.

Seth came over to the bed. "You're awake," he pronounced.

Outside the sun was setting. He'd taken off all his guns when we came in, allowed himself to be petted and fussed over by the Anderson girls, but now he had the revolvers on again. From downstairs came the whiff of food. He'd been fed and rested. He was ready to leave.

"You're going back," I said.

"I have to, Juliet."

Tears came to my eyes. He reached out a hand and wiped them away. "You stay here and mind Maxine. And Martha. They're both good people. Help out. Make yourself useful. I'll be coming home from time to time. You hear?"

I took his hand in both of mine and held on to it. "Don't do anything funny," he warned.

"Like what?"

"You know what I expect from you. I gotta go now." He leaned down and kissed my forehead, then took Martha by the elbow and led her out into the hall. From my bed I could see him kissing her, long and not just once. He'd end the kiss and they'd say a few words and he'd start in again, and then they commenced to walk down the stairs.

I was proud of my brother. He sure knew how to kiss. He wasn't rough with her. He was tender.

And now he was gone. I went back to sleep.

I
SLEPT FOR
two days.

I was conscious of Martha moving about me, spooning soup into my mouth, helping me to the chamber pot, washing my face and talking to me, all the while in that storybook voice of hers, as if all of this was going to have a happy ending. I recollect her telling me that her sisters went out riding by our house and it was still smoldering. And that my horse had been wandering loose nearby, so they'd thrown a rope around him and brought him here.

He was, at this very moment, overstuffing himself with oats in the barn.

"Don't let anybody be mean to him," I said as I started to cry. I had the jimjams.

I wanted to go to the barn and see him. He must be dirty, I told Martha, but she promised me that Jenny would brush him down. That afternoon Jenny came up to my room to report on Caboose, who was doing fine. And then, she very carelessly slipped this into the conversation:

"Oh, the boys are coming home. It would be so nice if you could get up and get dressed."

"When?"

"Tonight. And you'll never guess. They're bringing Sue Mundy."

Sue Mundy!
"But I have no clothes! Everything I had, except for the dress I wore here, was burned."

Jenny, at fourteen, was the closest to me in age and size. We had sometimes traded dresses, and her brother, Bill, who was Seth's age, often said how much we looked like each other. She loaned me a calico dress sprigged with pink flowers and helped me arrange my hair. I had straight hair, brown and shiny. And with a dimple in my chin and an upturned nose and big eyes, I had been told by Seth that I was pretty, at twelve. While I knew he was proud, I also knew he felt that he had to "keep tight reins on me."

"I'm in for some fun times," I once overheard him tell Martha. "She's got the men's eyes already." But he was joking. Or was he?

At twelve I didn't even get my woman's time of the month yet. But I had bosoms. Though small, they were respectable.

I was a bit shaky on my feet as I helped Maxine and Martha and the girls prepare the supper and get it on the table.

And soon they came, riding into the yard in a cloud of dust, causing dogs to bark and chickens to scatter. I saw them dismounting, taking their Sharpe's rifles from their horses, and giving those horses over, with instructions, to the stableboys. Laughing and joking they were, backslapping and cussing, as men do.

In the middle of all of it I saw Sue Mundy, with her dark hair tumbling out of her Confederate hat. She wore a full Confederate uniform. She washed up at the outside pump with the rest of them. Martha had brought out soap and towels for all.

The men poured water over their hair. They took off their shirts; they shaved, propping mirrors up against the front fence posts. They reached for clean shirts from their saddlebags. I could not stop staring at them through the kitchen windows.

Martha gave me a small spank on my bottom. "You going to cut that bread or stand there and stare all day? Didn't you ever see your brother without his shirt?"

I had, but browned and broad as he'd been, Seth hadn't quickened me like this. He was my
Seth,
my
brother,
for heavens sake. It was the others I was looking at. I was becoming conscious of men and I felt myself blushing.

They came in through the kitchen door. Martha made them stomp the dirt off their feet and check their rifles just inside the door, but she never made them remove their revolvers. She knew better.

Seth introduced Martha and then me. "My intended," he said, and then, "my little sister."

I knew Bill Anderson, whose sisters were now hanging all over him. But Lord knows I'd never met William Clarke Quantrill. And he was nothing like I had fancied him to be. He was blond haired and wore a slight mustache. Otherwise he was clean shaven and polite. He bowed to the ladies. He kissed Martha's hand.

I bobbed a curtsy at him and he said, loudly, "You got a fine little sister here, Seth. Any time you get tired of takin' care of her, you can send her to me."

"No chance of that," Seth answered, but I could tell he was trying to figure out if Quantrill was joking or if he was serious.

I met two young brothers called Younger and another callow youth called Jesse James. He couldn't have been more than sixteen. Ail of them seemed to worship Quantrill and hung on his every word.

And then I met Sue Mundy.

"Hello." She stuck out her hand and I took it, not quite believing I was shaking hands with the woman I had admired and read about for so long now. Her grip was firm. Her eyes were friendly. She had pinned her hair back neatly and she could easily pass as a young Confederate soldier.

"I've always admired you," I said, for lack of anything intelligent to say.

Somebody gave out a whoop. "Gawd Awmighty, Seth, didn't you train her up any better than that?"

Seth blushed. "C'mon, everybody, sit down. Bill's gonna say grace."

"If'n Bill Anderson says grace, I ain't gonna eat none of the vittles," said one of the Younger brothers.

"Come sit over here next to me," Seth directed.

There was an empty chair next to Sue Mundy and I wanted to sit there. But everyone else was seated and I was holding up the meal. And all were waiting for me to make my move. I had to obey Seth or he'd never live it down.

I didn't want to. Good Lord, did the first set-to between us have to be with half the Confederate army looking on?

It lasted only a second or two. But it was written across the face of eternity. My brother, who raised his expressive eyebrows in my direction, saying nothing anybody could understand but me.

I went around the table and sat next to him. Did everybody sigh, or was it my imagination? They all started talking at once.

"Quiet now," Quantrill said, "you heathens. And let Bill say grace. It's his house, his table, his food, and his sisters who cooked it. Let's have some respect."

Quantrill had spoken. They all fell silent. Bill said grace, making it personal, saying something about my pa and adding a bit about all the boys who'd fallen at Gettysburg.

The food was scrumptious—rack of lamb, four chicken potpies, a side of beef, browned potatoes, about every vegetable known to man, roast pork, and three kinds of cake for dessert.

The men stayed a week—to rest, eat, play chess and cards, dance with us girls, play their instruments of music, groom their horses, race their horses, make cartridges, clean their guns, and sometimes just lie in the sun with their shirts off.

They helped with the chores: chopping wood, hunting for fresh game, fishing in the creek, stocking the meat house, picking the tomatoes and beans and corn and anything else that needed picking.

Even Sue Mundy worked. I saw her working, side by side, with my brother in the fields. And there was something between them, my brother and Sue, some lightning when words were exchanged. I saw Seth blush more that week than ever before. I saw him go shy in front of her, and that meant he liked her. I know Martha saw it, too.

At the end of the week the whispers started to go 'round like the night vapors that the men were planning another raid. Not even we girls were told where.

In that week, Seth asked me to take a ride with him to go and see his house. I knew something was coming, but I could count the stars in the sky before I would venture to guess what.

T
HE DAY
was a quiet blue one the second week of August when we rode to Seth's house. He got right to the point.

"School soon," he said. "What'll we do this year? Damn Yankees are all over the place. I've talked to Martha. She agrees that if you girls go, they can walk right in your schoolhouse and gather you all up in one fell swoop."

"Why would they want to do that?"

"Don't know. But any time all the kin of the enemy is gathered in one place the enemy is vulnerable. Martha is keeping her sisters home. Goin' to head up their lessons there. You want to be part of that?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No."

Martha as a teacher. There was a new thought. "Martha's my friend," I said.

"I expect you to learn nevertheless. No foolin' around. Martha can be a stern taskmaster."

"Don't you like her anymore?"

"Say what?"

I repeated my question. He frowned. "First place, it isn't any of your business. Second place, it's the dumbest question I ever heard. This is Martha we're talking about."

"I caught her crying after supper in the kitchen. She thinks you're smitten with Sue Mundy."

He stared straight ahead. "And what did you say?"

"Nothing. I didn't say anything. Because I don't know, the way you've been sweet-talking Sue all week. What's a person like me to think?"

"A person like you is to mind her own business."