The Book of Lost Friends(118)

I cling to my brothers and sisters, night after night, eight, then seven, then six…three, two, one, and finally just my cousin, little Mary Angel. And then only me, curled in a ball underneath that ragged blanket, trying to hide.

From this man, Jep Loach. Older, scarred and melted so that I didn’t know his face. Right here is the man who took my people away. The man Old Mister had tracked down all them years ago and had dragged off to the Confederate army. Not killed on a battlefield someplace back then. Right here standing.

Once I know that much, I know I’ll stop him this time, or die in the trying. Jep Loach can’t steal one more thing from me. I can’t stand for it. I can’t live past it.

“You take me instead of her,” I say. I’ll be stronger without Missy and Juneau Jane to look after. “Just me alone.” I’ll find a way to do what needs to be done to this man. “You take me and leave these two girls and these soldier men be. I’m a good woman. Good as my mama was.” The words rise up my throat and burn. I taste hardtack and coffee, soured now. I swallow it down, and add, “Strong as my mama was, too.”

“None of you are in a position to bargain,” Jep Loach says, and laughs.

The other men, the two behind us, laugh along as they circle on opposite sides. I know the one to the left, soon’s he comes into view, but I can’t make my eyes believe it even after all I heard about him throwing in with bad men. Lyle Gossett. Back from the dead, too. Not turned in for a bounty as Elam Salter thought, but here with his uncle, two men cut of the same cloth. The black cloth of Old Missus’s people.

Lyle and the other rider, a skinny boy on a spotted horse, stop behind Jep Loach, turn their mounts to face us.

Missy growls louder, bites the air and bobs her chin and hisses like a cat.

“Shut…shut her up,” the boy on the paint horse says. “She’s givin’ me the botheration. Got a demon. She’s tryin’ to…to witch us or somethin’. Let’s just shoot ’em and go on.”

Lyle lifts his rifle. Raises it up and points it at his own sister. Kin against kin. “She’s gone in the head, anyhow.” His words come cold and flat, but there’s pleasure in his face when he rests his thumb on the hammer and pulls it back. “Good time to put her out of her misery.”

Missy’s neck tucks, her chin swaying against the collar of her dress. Her eyes stay pinned to Lyle, bright blue circles rolled up half under the lids, white underneath.

“She’s pregnant!” I holler, and try to pull Missy back, but she rips herself out of my hand. “She carryin’ a child!”

“Do it!” the other boy hollers. “She’s witchin’ us! Do it!”

“Stand down, Corporal,” Jep Loach yells. He looks from one boy to the other. “Whose command is this?”

“Yours, Lieutenant,” Lyle answers, like they’re soldiers in a war. Soldiers for Marston. Just like Elam talked about.

“Do you serve the cause?”

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant,” all three of the boy soldiers say.

“Then you will obey your superiors. I give the orders, here.”

“Marston’s been caught by deputy federal marshals.” One of the cavalrymen on the ground tries to speak up. “Caught and jail—”

Jep Loach puts a bullet through the man’s hand, then takes three quick steps and stomps a boot on his head, shoving him face-first into the mud. He can’t breathe like that. He tries to fight, but it’s no use.

Lyle laughs. “He ain’t backtalkin’ now, is he?”

“Sir?” the boy on the paint says, his jaw slackening. He backs the horse a step, shaking his head, his face doughy pale. “What…what’s he sayin’ about Gen’ral Marston? He…he been caught?”

“Lies!” Jep Loach swivels his way, crushes the cavalryman’s head into the soil. “The cause! The cause is bigger than any one man. Insubordination is punishable by death.” He draws his pistol and swings round, but the boy is a runnin’ mark now, spurring for the brush, then gone, bullets following after.

The soldier on the ground groans, getting his face up and sucking a breath while Jep Loach paces away and back, wagging his pistol and shouldering the rifle. His skin goes fire red against the wax melt of scars. He talks to hisself as he paces. “It’s handy. Handy, that’s what it is. All of my uncle’s heirs, here in one place. My poor auntie will need my help with Goswood Grove, of course. Until the grief and her ill health overcome her, which won’t take long….”

“Uncle Jep?” Lyle ain’t laughing now. He chokes on his own voice. Gathering the reins, he looks toward the brush, but he’s barely put the spurs to his horse before Jep Loach lifts the rifle, and a shot meets its mark, and young Lyle tumbles hard toward the ground.

The air explodes, bullets whining past, kicking up dirt and knocking branches off trees. Juneau Jane pulls me backward onto the ground. I hear yelling, groans. Cavalrymen gain their feet. Bullets hit flesh. A scream. A groan. A howl like a animal. Powder smoke chokes the air.

It’s quiet then. Quiet as the dawn, just a moment or two. I cough on the sulfur, listen, but lie still. “Don’t move,” I whisper into Juneau Jane’s hair.

We stay there till the soldiers get up off the ground. Jep Loach is sprawled out dead, shot through the chest, and Lyle lies where he fell from the horse. There in a spill of blue cotton is Missy. Not moving. Blood seeps over the cloth like a rose blooming against a patch of sky. The wagon driver drags hisself to us and rolls her over to check her, but she’s gone.