Wildwood Boys (12 page)

 

The others chuckled at this notion—and at the moony gaze he
seemed unaware of repeatedly fixing on Josephine across the campfire as she studied the night sky. Now she saw his look too and
turned her face to the shadows to hide her angry blush.

 

“Could be the fella on that star’s saying to his sweetie that for all
they know there’s some rascal sitting here next to
his
sweetheart and
looking at
their
star and wondering if there’s any life on it,” Jim
Anderson said.

 

“Like two mirrors facing each other,” Jenny said. “Showing
each other back and forth and back and forth and on and on forever.” She was hugely taken with this conceit. The others grinned at
Butch Berry’s face reddening more deeply than the firelight could
account for.

 

Only in the past few days had they become aware of his eye for
Josephine. Those of them in the second wagon would smile and
nudge each other and jut their chins at him gawking on her as he
trotted his horse on the off side of Bill’s wagon and a few feet back of
it, the better to look on her without her knowing it. Sometimes she
turned and caught him at it, and then he was always quick to tug
down his hat to shade his embarrassment and rein back to the rear of
the party. After a time he would ease up close to her wagon once
again.

 

At first Mary had not been sure how to feel about this turn. At
one of their stops to water the animals, she took Bill aside and asked
what he thought of it. “She’s
fourteen,
” she said. “Hardly more than
a little girl.”

 

“Josephine’s never been a little girl,” Bill said, “and Butch ain’t
barely four years older than her. Let it go how it goes.” In truth the
circumstance unsettled him, but he would not question himself too
closely as to why.

 

The last to ken to Butch’s smitten condition had been Josephine
herself. At the evening camp two nights ago she was puzzled by his
offer to skin the rabbits for her. She thanked him but said she could
tend to them just fine. He stood there and looked around as if in
search of something else he might offer to do for her but Mary
shooed him away so they could get on with fixing supper. And then
last night when Josie was chopping kindling for the cookfire he
offered to relieve her of the chore. This time she took a good look at
his face and realized what was happening. She felt her own face go
hot and said, “I know how to use a damn hatchet!” The sharpness of
her tone drew everybody’s grinning attention and Butch hastily
retreated to the far side of the campsite to make a show of checking
his horse’s shoes.

 

Next morning as they rattled along the trail Bill said to her,
“Looks like somebody’s set his cap for you.”

 

“Well he best set it for somebody else,” she said. She glanced
back to see if he was riding near enough to hear her and almost
hoped he was, but he was farther back at the moment and talking
with his brother.

 

“He’s capable,” Bill said. “That off eye’s never hindered him a
bit that I know of.”

 

“It’s got nothing to do with his eye,” Josie said. She hugged to his
arm and put her head on his shoulder. He thought she might say
something more about the matter but she didn’t. He had told himself
she would soon enough show interest in other men, yet couldn’t help
smiling with the knowledge that so far she did not—and then chided
himself for a selfishly confused man.

 

Now the party had had enough of astral speculations and of japing at Butch. Bill took the Jew’s harp from his pocket and began to
twang upon it. Jim unwrapped his harmonica from its bandanna and
blew a few quick trills to clear it and they set into a rendition of
“Oh! Suzannah.”

 

Ike Berry offered his arm to Mary and she curtsied and took it
and they stepped away from the fire and began to swing around and
kick their heels, their hair tossing. Butch was hesitant to ask
Josephine to dance, unsure if she knew his feeling toward her and certain that if she did she must be displeased by it, to judge from her tight
face and recent aloofness. But Josie would not deny herself a dancing
turn just because of the cow eyes this silly boy kept making at her. She
put out her hand to him and said—loudly, that no one might mistake
the gesture—“Well come on, boy—it ain’t but
dancing
!”

 

Now Mary let Jenny take a turn with Ike and after a time the
Berry boys switched partners. Unlike his younger brother, Ike was
not a good dancer but was an immensely enthusiastic one. Mary
once said that dancing with him was like holding tight to a real
drunk man trying to find his way out of a burning house. Josie
couldn’t help laughing the whole time she swung round with him.
Butch at times took over from Jim on the harmonica and Ike would
spell Bill on the Jew’s harp, and in this way did every man have a
turn with each of the sisters. Josie beamed when it came her turn
with Bill, and she would not surrender him for the rest of the
evening.

Every night of this journey the Anderson girls had slept in the wagons—Mary and Jenny in the covered one, Josephine in the open bed.
The Berry boys would unfurl their bedrolls under the covered wagon
and the Anderson brothers would put down under the other and the
men took turns of two hours each at keeping watch through the
night. At their first nightcamp, Josephine had sidled up to Bill and
asked in low voice if she might make her bed next to his under the
wagon and he had refused, saying he didn’t want the Berry boys to
draw any wrong conclusions. She said the Berry boys were their
friends and friends wouldn’t draw any such conclusions, and if they
did then they weren’t true friends. He said he wasn’t going to argue
with her about it and that the matter was at an end. She had not
broached the subject since.

They had so far been fortunate in the weather, but on this
evening, shortly after Jim relieved Bill on the night watch, a wind
rose up from the south and carried on it a cool sweet scent of rain.
The trees began to toss. The stars dimmed by portions and then
faded completely behind a gathering of clouds. The campfire coals
flared redly under the gusting wind and sparks leapt and swirled and
streaked away crimson into the night. Jim put on his slicker and sat
upwind of the fire to avoid the sparks. Now the southern sky came
alight in a shimmering white cast of lightning and fell dark again and
there followed a low roll of thunder.

Under the open-bed wagon Bill Anderson had been asleep but a
few minutes when he woke to a soft pressure against his back, a
warm breath at his neck. He rolled over and raised on his elbow and
looked at the shadowed shape huddled to him. “Don’t even try to
tell me you’re still afraid of storms.”

“It’s even worse out in the open like this,” she said. She hugged
his neck and pulled closer against him with her face to his chest.
“There’s not even a roof or a wall to keep it off.” They spoke in
whispers.

“Joey . . .”

of rain. That storm’s a ways off and might not even touch us.”

 

“
Biilll
. Just let me stay till it’s done with.”

 

“You’re no more scared than I am. It hasn’t fallen the first drop

Another show of sheet lightning quivered in the southward sky
and a moment later came the resonant rumble. Though the lightning
was no brighter and the thunder no louder than before, Josephine’s
clutch on his neck tightened and she made a tiny whimper.

“You little faker,” he hissed.

 

“Billy, be nice. Even if I wasn’t scared—and I truly am—but even
if I wasn’t, I don’t want to get all
rained
on. Do you want me to get
all rained on?”

 

“
Rained
on? I got a notion to drown you in yonder creek.”

 

“Shhh!”
She put her fingers to his lips. “You’ll wake everybody.”
She gave quick kisses to his ear, his cheek.

 

“Jim’ll anyway be off watch before too long.”

 

“He can fit on the other side of you. I’ll just scootch way over
here”—she squirmed backward with a wriggling of her hips but kept
her tight hug on his neck so that he moved over with her before he
was even aware he’d done so. “See? He’s got lots of room there.”

 

She found his hand and put it on her hip. She stroked his face
lightly.

 

“Joey . . .”

 

“Shhh.” She slid her hand to his chest.
“Josie
...
”

“Oh Bill,

stop
. Everybody knows I come and hold to you when
it’s bad storming.”

 

His hand was insubordinate to his protest and pleasurably roamed
the swells and slopes of her. “The Berry boys . . . they don’t—”

 

“Oh hush about them.”

 

She kissed his neck and worked his buttons and then had him in
hand and he ceased all remonstration. Pulsing in her gentle grasp.
Both of them caressing now, stroking with a familiar pleasure, kissing lightly. He finds her shirt already unlaced to admit his hand. Her
breath hisses as he fingers the tightened nipple—and then a deeper
gasp as his hand seeks under her skirt. Her hips arch upward in a
response as ancient as the race itself, her breath swiftening, her
excitement fervoring his own. He tenses and puts his face in her hair
and moans softly, and she smiles as she kisses him. They put a hand
to each other’s mouths and taste their own pungent selves on the
other’s fingers. So practiced are they in such frisking that no one
hears them at it. They fall asleep embraced.

The storm but grazed their camp with a brief windblown drizzle as it
passed them by. Its lightplay and thunder were fading to the west
when Ike Berry sleepily relieved Jim Anderson of the camp watch.
Jim went to the open wagon and squatted to arrange his bedroll and
saw Bill sleeping spoonfashion with Josephine. In that moment they
seemed to him like children, both of them, as unsinful and unmindful. He looked back at Ike and saw him whittling on a stick by the
low light of the glowing coals. He carefully eased himself down
beside Bill so as not to wake him and for a while lay there feeling
content for reasons he had no interest in even trying to name. And
then was himself sleeping.

He woke with Bill still bedded at his side. The sky was darkly
gray but cloudless, yet beclung with a few tenacious stars. The
campfire stoked now, wet wood smoking and softly popping. The
coffeepot on a firestone, lid chittering and issuing steam. Butch
Berry sat cross-legged and watched Josephine prepare a pan of
cornbread. She neither looked his way nor spoke to him as she
worked.

Bill stirred. Yawned and stretched. Raised himself on his elbows
and peered past Jim to the campfire scene. He smiled sadly and whispered, “Poor damn Butch.”

She carefully set the pan of batter to bake on the firerocks and
put the coffeepot aside to ease its boil. Then turned and saw her
brothers watching her. And smiled widely and said, “Breakfast, you
slugabeds.”

West Missouri

They pressed ahead on abandoned tracks and weedy traces toward a
red new-risen sun. Low reefs of pink-veined purple clouds showed
on all horizons. They intercepted the Santa Fe Trail where it curved
up from the south and they kept to it as it made for the Blue River
and they encountered no other travelers. A hawk followed them for
a time, spiraling overhead. Husky crows taking respite in the trees
along the roadside chuckled low in remarking these passing pilgrims.
When the river came in sight Bill reined his team off the road and Jim
brought the covered wagon behind. The wagons jounced and yawed
over the uneven ground and then onto an old stock trail leading into
the brushland.

They were bound for the Parchman farm, which Aunt Sally in
her letters said was on Brushy Creek at a point some ten miles north
of where the Santa Fe met the Blue. In addition to these spare but
sufficient directions, they had also found in their mother’s letters a
photograph of Aunt Sally and Uncle Angus. They were posed stiffly
and in their Sunday finest before a studio backdrop of a sunny beach
fronting a whitecapped ocean. This couple who, like the kin who
owned their picture, would never in their lives behold a sea. An
inscription on the back of the photo informed that it had been made
in Westport in the year of ’58.

The region they now moved through was a patchwork of thickets and hardwoods and hollows scattered over open country with
more rise and fall to it than they had seen in Kansas. They rolled past
wooded hills and brushy swales, forded darkwater creeks overhung
with sycamores and willows. Josephine had been six years old when
the family left Missouri, and the past eight years had made vague her
recollections of it. As their wagon jostled over the rugged trail she
gaped on the passing country and told Bill she loved this rough old
Missouri that made Kansas look boring as a bare table.

They nooned at a stony creek shaded by cottonwoods and they
roasted for dinner a dozen plump quail Butch Berry had earlier taken
down with birdshot loads in Will’s old shotgun. Roasted too some
sweet potatoes and ears of corn, and their gusto in the meal was in
no wise lessened by having to pause in their chewing to spit shot like
it was seed.

That afternoon they drove through sunny meadows of grass as
high as the mules’ bellies and around narrow stony ravines and
through shadowy stands of trees so close together that they had to
perform intricate maneuverings of the wagons and the wheelhubs
did often scrape bark. Yet none of them minded the slow going. The
afternoon was warmly pleasant and the air sweet with the scent of
grass and wildflowers. Josephine hummed and sang softly and now
and then licked her finger and wriggled it into Bill’s ear and said,
“Here’s another Wet Willie for you!” He every time threatened to
break her fingers off if she didn’t quit and she every time tittered happily. At one point she jumped off the wagon and quickly gathered a
purple cluster of sweet william from a patch growing alongside the
trail. She said it was her favorite flower because it had his name. He
affected to protest but did not stop her from braiding them into his
hair.