“The arm has to come off,” Butler told him. “It’s dead, Paw.”
“No.” Paw licked his lips, his chest rising and falling.
“What are you doing here? What happened at Shiloh?”
Paw glanced at him, worked his mouth, and looked away. “Shiloh? Can’t … bear it. Death all around. The sounds … screaming, shrieking bullets … they sing … sing of death…”
Butler nodded, a pain in his heart. “I need you to chew on something for me.”
“What?”
“It’s called toyatawura.”
Paw blinked, throat working as he swallowed. “You a puhagan, son?”
“No. Water Ghost Woman just said—”
“Jesus, Butler, what happened to you?”
“I had to bring the men home. The ones who were killed at Chickamauga. Philip threw me out. Said I was crazy. So the men and I marched here; because you always talked about it when I was a boy. And Water Ghost Woman said she had a gift, the Silver Eagle.”
“That’s what they call me now.” Paw glanced at him, his thoughts seeming to scatter. “Ain’t never been nothing but a failure. Tell Maw…”
When no more was forthcoming, Butler said, “She’s dead and buried behind the farmhouse. Everyone’s gone but me and Philip. And now you.”
He took the toyatawura and slipped it into his father’s mouth, ordering, “Chew that, Paw. Chew it hard.”
For whatever reason, his father’s jaws began to work as he ground the bitter plant between his remaining teeth.
“What next?” Puhagan asked as he settled beside Butler.
“We have to cut this arm off. Can you smell that? It’s rotten, what’s left of it.”
Puhagan glanced at him. “You can do this? Pa’waip showed you?”
“No. But Philip did.”
Butler glanced at the men where they crowded around, faces hard and skeptical. Butler waved them away. “Sergeant, set up a perimeter. We don’t want to be caught by surprise if enemy vedettes are in the area.”
“Yes, sir.”
To Mountain Flicker he said, “I’ll need that thread and the iron needle I asked you to bring. I’m going to have to sew arteries closed.”
She nodded and went to retrieve her pouch.
Paw’s eyes had gone glassy and vacant. Butler wondered what he was seeing in his vision.
“You know,” Corporal Pettigrew told him from where he stood with arms crossed, “you’re gonna kill him.”
Then, with the men slowly shaking their heads, Butler reached for the knife he’d spent the last two days sharpening.
110
May 3, 1868
The light blue taffeta day dress Sarah wore had a high collar to hide the bruises at her throat: they’d turned that hideous yellow-green and were still sore to the touch. She had added a hat, which though a couple of years out of style, matched the dress’s color. She’d had Agatha cinch her curved corset a bit too tight, but then this wasn’t just an ordinary meeting.
She was through with having choices made for her, of suddenly and traumatically finding the course of her life irrevocably changed. One way or another, her days of being a victim were over.
She’d come to that conclusion the night George Nichols had tried to force her. She’d let her rage get the best of her. Some unfettered insanity had goaded her to write a note on a scrap of foolscap stating: I will never marry you. Do not come back!
When no one was looking, she’d unbuttoned his fly, used a bit of string to tie it around his limp penis, and buttoned him back up before he’d been carried to his brougham. The rest of that day she’d waited with her five-shot pocket revolver. George hadn’t come.
But he would. And the tension was killing her.
She made her way across Lawrence Street to the office on the northeast corner of Fifteenth.
Opening the door to the law offices of Hughes & Welbor, she found Doc already waiting. She stopped short, really seeing him in the light of day. His features were sallow, the flesh of his face sunken, his eyes bloodshot and set back in their sockets. His hair hadn’t been washed in days, and his clothes were rumpled, food stains on his coat.
I haven’t been seeing to him as I should.
Fact was, she’d been avoiding him since the funeral. Some part of her was made uncomfortable by the hideous depth of his grief. Another part of her justified her abandonment of him with the self-serving platitude that just being around him was a reminder of Aggie—and only served to pick the scab from a poorly healing wound.
“Philip,” she greeted him warmly, stepping forward. “Thank you for coming.”
He glanced to where the legal secretary sat behind a desk, pointedly pretending to ignore them. “Want to tell me why you called me here?”
“I need you. I’m a woman, Philip. A condition which the laws of men insist make me both incompetent, unreliable, and impotent. You, however, were born a man, and therefore wise, temperate, and in remarkable control of your faculties. Should I succeed in my endeavor today, you shall become the senior partner whose lawful signature will guarantee the legal validity of any silly actions my flighty female mind might have led me into.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Business, Philip.” She placed a hand behind his shoulder, directing him to the desk. “I think Hancock and Hancock shall do nicely.”
Now the secretary looked up, a nice young man, moderately well dressed, a trimmed beard on his cheeks. “May I help you?”
“Dr. Philip Hancock and Mrs. Sarah Anderson to see Bela, please. We have a two o’clock appointment.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he told her, rising. “If you’d follow me, I believe the other parties have already arrived.”
Sarah gave Doc a suspicious smile, and lowered her voice. “Whatever on earth could they have been discussing prior to our arrival?”
Doc shrugged his bony shoulders, looking even more mystified. She noted how her brother’s coat hung on his rack of a body. What was the man doing, starving himself to death?
Perhaps he was. She remembered how little she herself had been interested in food after Bret’s death.
Well, brother, if today works out, I promise I’ll take better care of you.
They were led
