Woe to Live On - By Daniel Woodrell Page 0,9

of the house. He carried a shotgun, then put it on Riley but went lackadaisical when their eyes met.

“What do you want, you secesh bastard?”

“Food, sir.”

“Eat dirt,” the stingy grouch spoke.

“Please don’t shoot me,” Riley responded. He did an excellent mimic of a pitiful waif. “I am but a boy far from home.”

The old man stared and stared, then shook his head.

“I’ll not feed you, but I’ll not shoot you either. Now get on out of here.”

“That is too kind of you,” Riley said. His pistol flushed up from his holster faster than a grouse and he pegged the old tightwad twice in the head. The old man never saw what happened to him, but went down, bloody and extinct, victimized by a dull perspective on youths.

We entered the man’s home quickly. It was but a shack; you would not have thought it worth dying over. Out the back window I observed an old granny deer-hopping across a field, her youthful bounce somehow regained. I made no mention of it.

We filled burlap bags with such provisions as we found. No coffee, but some hardtack, back bacon and pickled corn.

To linger would have been to overtest the fates, so we set fire to the dry wood of the house, and rode on to picnic in some more idyllic spot.

Hog paths became our highway. We stuck to backwoods routes and eased toward McCorkle’s. It was several miles distant. There was a shyness to our passing, for Turner was poorly and confrontations of no appeal to us.

All we sought was the safety of our comrades.

Jack Bull and I conversed as we traveled.

“This is fine land,” I said.

“It is. It is,” he answered. “When untroubled. Which it has never been.”

“It may someday be,” I said, for I was yet an immigrant in a few ways, optimism being one.

“Nah. Nah, we are not made that way. If the Lord called a barn dance, I would halt the old Fiddler and draw Him into conversation. I would ask Him what is in store for us. His answer would surely be the common one—‘Why, trouble, my son. As usual.’ ”

Bleakness had never been Jack Bull’s way, but experience was instructing him thus.

“It is not the what,” I said, “but the why that I would ask Him of.”

This set Jack Bull to chuckling, as if I were a fool or a subtle wit.

“That is asking too much,” he said. “Way too much. Of Him or anyone else.”

It was a fine region, though. The water was clear and clean and generally nearby. The hills pleased the eye but were not steep enough to daunt one. The dirt was deep and rich, with a scent you would admire in a gravy, and the meadows had a lushness that made you yearn to be a grazing beast. Game was abundant to the point of pestiness, and the forests provided all the building materials an empire could require.

It was altogether a land I was thankful to be in.

That is, but for the trouble.

Distancing ourselves from the turmoil replenished our swagger. We became more usual as the day aged. Except for Turner Rawls, whose distress was spellbinding to him.

There was little we could do to comfort him, but we kept him in the saddle and moving.

When we were yet some miles short of our destination, the day turned surly on us. A black puddle of storm rallied on the horizon. The wind picked up and on its breeze we smelled bad tidings. A storm was but a storm, but out of doors it was miserable.

We watched it charge down on us.

Babe Hudspeth spoke up with a suggestion.

“I believe, if I ain’t lost, that one mile over we’ll find Mr. Daily’s house. I’ve stopped there before. I know I ain’t lost. It’s over there. He is a southern man and generous.”

As we paused to think this over, Turner launched into some sort of speech, but his pronunciation was now so double-holed and half scabbed that only a scholar could unscramble it. By his gestures it seemed that he was saying he was entirely in favor of visiting Mr. Daily.

So there we went.

After some initial caution Daily admitted us to his home. He had a farm that might have been prosperous once but now was little more than a weeded-over hideout. Working in the fields was too dangerous when so many bad people were about.

“You are welcome,” Daily said. He was a fair chunk of man with cropped gray hair and bowed legs. He had