His plan could not be missed. Creve Coeur Gap was a narrow slit between two long bluffs that flanked the Blackwater River. General Franz Sigel, alerted by the winner from my mistake, and our most hated enemy, would seek the shortest route to our destruction—through the tall bluffs, thick timber, and slender passage afforded by Creve Coeur Gap.
“Just so,” I said.
Coleman Younger and the others began to nod, then smile at me, their lips raising only on one side of their mouths.
“Jake Roedel,” Coleman Younger said. “You are brilliant with mercy.”
I had not foreseen this plan, but I was giving thanks for its arrival on more than one score. It had saved me my comrades and blessed me with an opportunity named Franz Sigel. He was called a general, and to Yankees and Dutchmen he was so. His very name herded furies into my heart. In my father’s household he had been a saint, or near enough to it to have his picture above the mantel. He drummed up Dutchmen from among those foreigners who had come to America wanting to remain so. He oppressed me, and I longed to sight in on him. I had seen him lure them on, making himself a patriarch for those who would not mix, leading them to Fit Mit Sigel. Oh, the battles my father and I had on Sigel’s account. We raged in his language, my face puffing, and his blue stubborn eyes glowing beneath his thick Prussian brows. He will keep you foreign, I said, and make you snobs about it. Is this wrong? was his reply. We never agreed; I chose to side with Americans and lost entry to the house that raised me.
I led Alf Bowden to a stew pot and fed him.
The brilliance of mercy being a thing that requires judicious use, the other Yankees died. Two shots.
When Alf Bowden could once more keep his feet beneath himself, we set him off on foot toward Sigel’s brigade. It was over twenty miles, and he could not arrive there before dawn.
Around the campfires that night we cleaned our pistols, as we carried from four to eight apiece, the many shots the handguns afforded us over rifles being our chief asset, and the ace that allowed our small group to gamble with much larger ones.
There was considerable youth still in us, as by age that is what we were, and this, we felt, would carry the field. Setbacks had come our way, but cheerful, straight-backed desire to trade shots and victories wiped those from our minds.
There was much to look forward to that night as we oiled barrels and checked powder levels.
As I finished my hickory deep-dish water ladle, I listened to the men. Idle chatter about Coleman Younger’s parole procedures dominated. Many speculated about the impulse for his actions, as he was not regularly cruel. What were his motives when he sighted that Enfield on the Union file, voices wondered, then squeezed the trigger? There were answers. Some seemed to suspect the scientific impulse, but I, I thought the priestly. He was gracing me for the Dutch boy. I could not rest with that in mind.
Before dawn we had reached Creve Coeur Gap and rendered the lush greenery and sweet earth bluffs into a slaughterhouse. We perched on the ridges, then spaced ourselves down the far slopes, making a vee that promised clear shooting for all.
The sun was not yet straight in the sky when our scouts alerted us that troops were approaching. Captain Quantrill was devilish with his logic, for the Yankee-Dutchmen galloped headlong into our surprise. I searched the blue ranks for Alf Bowden but did not see him. My position was such that General Sigel was beyond my range.
The Yankees came on. We waited for the signal from Black John or Captain Quantrill, and I knew that I was among comrades now, for they had put their lives at stake over a plan they believed to be of my design.
I had spared one man and profited with a massacre of Dutchmen.
The signal was given.
I became famous for this.
III. Only for Them
I have died more times than one—perhaps three. This is not rare, but it may serve to stump the windiest of preachers, and a wandering eulogy is suited to those whose journey is uncertain in destination. I have no need for preachers, or faith in their selected destinations, but there must be a place, and I will not be misdirected.
I carved my own passport to that place; it will be as good as any.
Through the night I whittled, lessening, lessening, ever taking away from the oak. Reduction is the design I crave. My blade was a voice with a mind all its own, and it spoke to the wood in slashes, nicks, and great gouges. Flame from the kerosene lamp dodged about with the draft from the window, casting shadows where light had been, and light about my work. The pale wood chips gathered at my feet, a tribute to the diligence of my thick-veined hands and famous fingers.
When the cock had cried, then hushed before the grim, steel light of a rainy day, Jefferson opened my door. He wore high boots of the sort that are meant for polish and not for mud, and a suit of keen correctness, right down to the stiff boiled collar and the four-in-hand knot about his throat. His mustache was pruned so thin that it could be mistaken for a bonus lip.
“There are some things, Jacob,” he said, “that I will not have in this house.”
I felt no obligation to respond. Jefferson waddled across the room a bit, wishing I’d be provocative and force him into courage, but I was mild. He played with his watch chain, looping it through his fingers, waiting. There was some part of him that feared me, that was uncertain that I knew the boundaries of blood. It made us eerie together.
“Do not raise yourself into some sort of hero with my children,” Jefferson said. “Boys tend to admire war and lengthened necks and all. I know better and someday so shall they.”
“I fought,” I said, “for my comrades, and myself, but no more bravely than others.”
“Your bravery,” he said, nearly spitting it, “is a midnight legend.” Jefferson leaned toward me, blowing his chest expansive and crossing his arms, as if I could be frightened. “So bold and brave were you that you managed to kill your father—too bad he failed to see the safety in being your traitorous comrade.”
“I did not kill him.”
“You did not pull the trigger.”
“Exactly.”
“Alf Bowden pulled the trigger,” Jefferson said. “The one man you should have killed, you let go. Did you fail to realize that an American would seek satisfaction from your kin?”
Yes, I thought, gray heads had suffered while young ones went unnoosed. Alf Bowden was yielded to life while nine of his comrades were forfeited, but this did not make a friend of him.
“Shot him in the neck,” Jefferson said. “In front of your mother, he not even having English enough to know why he was killed. Small blessing.” Jefferson kicked about in the wood curls. “What a mess you have made.” I said nothing. “Your scarlet oaf of a comrade, Younger, ruined you for me, Jacob. He should never have visited.”
It was true; I lost something when Coleman Younger happened by. It was the year of the World’s Fair in St. Louis, and he was not long out of prison. I had not seen him since I returned from Old Mex in sixty-eight, but I had read about him often. He came to the door and knocked. When I answered it he said, “Jake Roedel, it is your old comrade, Coleman Younger.” I saw that he told the truth and said so, then welcomed him in. Prison had paled him, and he had become a pinkish man, a color I had never thought him capable of. I remembered him red. I offered him wine, but he was prepared with a flask of his own. We gathered at the table. Jefferson, a young man meeting history, sat at Coleman Younger’s elbow. We drank. The freeness of my own remembrances encouraged my guest to candor, and he spoke truly of our shared activities. Jefferson questioned him, and he answered directly, not noticing that my son was of the generation that cared less for America than they did the land that earlier generations had fled. There was now pride about the awkward consonants of foreign names, and narcissism in
