May, 2011

Issue #20

Screaming Woman, Part 1 of 3
By Jason Stuart

Ackley Finch was bad to whore his wife to pay his debts 'til she finally died that winter of '66 of consumption. About that time his girl, Bree, was just past seventeen and not a bad looker herself, though a sight bigger than her ma was. She'd been the only one to work the mule during the planting seasons and ate her fair share pretty much all her life, so when she hit that growth spurt and shot up to near six feet, folks were impressed but not terrible shocked.

Bree was mean as a bag of snakes and had done laid out most of the eligible bachelors in Culloden County at one time or another to the tune that at this point no man who'd heard of her wanted much truck with her. That and seeing she'd split his lip the one and only time he'd come after her — it was right after her ma died — Ackley decided he'd broker up a deal to pay off his last big debt outstanding which he owed to Old Jack Creed.

Creed was a gumsucker of about sixty made famous during the war for ripping out Yankees' intestines and force-feeding 'em back to 'em. Ackley was into him for over eighty dollars from a bad game of stud last August and had little intention of eating any pan-links made of his own innards. So, he offered him Bree at a cut rate which left him only ten dollars still in the hole. Of course, breaking the news to Bree was a whole other affair.

First she bit a hunk out his face and spat that in his good eye. Whilst he was fingering that out, she give him a reasonably hard shot to the loins and then laid into him with fisticuffs — which had she been born a man and eligible to compete, she'd've taken the county bareknuckle prize in a walk any year she pleased. Ackley finally got hold of himself and shot her a good one to her left titty. That got her breathing a little harder at least. He would've liked to push his advantage a little more but she picked him up over her head and threw him against the opposite wall which cleared the fight for the time.

Bree snatched up a kneckerchief and threw in some biscuits, planning to high-tail just in time to have Ackley pop a sack over her head from behind. Served her right for leaving him be without seeing the job done, she told herself as Ackley clocked her with a fire poker. That sent her to bed a bit and gave Ackley the time to drag her heavy ass to the cellar and lock her in.

Ideally, Ackley would have left her down there to get hungry and weaken up a few days so she'd be more docile for Old Creed. But, as things will go, Ackley instead folded over and died from the beating Bree had give him.

She wore herself out the first day or so slamming her shoulder against that rock-hard cellar door despite knowing full well it was no useful endeavor. Wasn't her first stint locked in this cellar, neither. Not far back her mama had kept her locked away down there with a sack of cracklins and a jar of cane syrup and two or three jugs of water and bade her keep hushed for fear them dern Yankee soldiers looking for holdouts decided they needed a turn with her. Bree's mama had made right sure none got turns with her girl, no matter the cost to her own self.

Bree sat and sung to herself after she was too tired and hungry to slam at the door any longer. She'd hum along the same songs she had before, when she needed to keep out the bad sounds from above. She'd learned a few old tricks growing up, ways to keep out the bad things from her head. Her Oldma, her mama's mama's mama, had even told her some songs for other things. Songs for catching a fish, or a rabbit or even a man when she needed one. Songs for making a man leave off her if such was her need. She had songs for getting better from a snakebite and the bad fever. And, she even had songs for dying. She'd sung songs for her mama all the while the bad sounds came. But, in the end, her mama had sung the song for dying.

Bree started to resign herself she may well starve right there. Leave it to Ackley Finch not to keep one decent tool in an entire cellar. Hocked the lot of 'em to settle a night's drinking and gambling. Living or dying wasn't of much concern to Bree anyhow. In fact, the more she thought on it, the more she looked forward to setting an eye on that next world. She wanted to know if what that preacherman had told that time about that crystal water was true and whether it would be fit to drink or even if she could drink being dead. Her Oldma had told her not to hear bible men because they didn't know any good songs. Still, she wanted to test that crystal water and see if wasn't good to drink. But, that only reminded her she was stuck here with nothing to drink but a few jugs of old wine.

She was down there pushing a week drinking blackberry wine and ate two rats before Sig Freeley busted open the cellar door with a splitting axe. Old Creed had come by to collect on his debt and seen Ackley laid out dead on the floor and had he known to check the cellar for the girl he'd never have gone to report the death to the sheriff. Now the law was involved, it'd make things right complicated.

"You all right, Miss Finch?" Sig asked, offering her a hand up out of the cellar which she would normally slap away but was just weak enough this time to appreciate.

"I 'spect I need a bathtub and a piece of cornbread'd be decent," she said, near weak as a smallcat. Then she noticed Creed. "What's he doing here? And who are you anyway?"

"Well, Mr. Creed here found your daddy dead on the floor and came to fetch me. I'm Sheriff Freeley," he said with a grin and tip of his hat.

"Thought you was older," Bree said.

"That was my daddy you're thinking of. He took sick and died last spring and they decided to elect me in his place seeing as he paid for this Remington pistol with his own salary money and the county didn't want to foot the extra thirty dollars for a new one."

"Well there you have it," she said. "But I don't like him. Tell him to git."

"I ain't goan go nowhere 'til I gets my money I's owed," Creed said with a sneer.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Creed, but the party which owed the debt is deceased which by law nullifies it," the sheriff said.

"I'll take it out from her," Creed said, pointing hungrily and smiling.

Bree started in after him but was so weak she fell down before she took a step. Creed started to cackle and reached down to grab her which made it right convenient for Sig to slap him on the back of the head with his pistol and have his deputy shackle him and toss him in the wagon to take down to the lock up.

Sheriff got Bree to tell him most of what happened which was about how he had it figured up anyhow and would have normally writ it up as a clear case of self defense, but no one really liked old Creed so while he had the chance, Sig went ahead and had a jury hang him for the beating to death of Ackley Finch. Suited Bree well enough and her daddy's land passed to her.

Things settled down after that. Bree went to work on her farm — refusing any offers to come stay in town — Coldwater being the only town in Culloden County those days. Aside from old Creed's demise, there was only ever one other legal hanging in the county in 1902 and then that one didn't even work — which was fortunate as it turned out the fella, Walter Lathan, had actually been innocent all along — more innocent than Creed anyhow.

Needless to say Sig had a rather decent job. Aside from arbitrating an outbreak of violent swearing over matters of hogs and telegraph poles, Sig spent most days with his feet propped up on the desk of the combination Sheriff's Station and U.S. Post and Parcel. There was a man named Clancy Atwood who called himself a lawyer who sat in a chair on the corner and shot shit with Sig, waiting on clients who never came.

It was really Silas Olsen Boon III who started all the real trouble and ruined damn near everything. He was one of them geological speculators come down after the war to "help out with the rebuilding" and hit a powerful payload of number nine coal about forty miles northwest of Laketown, as it happened just this side of the county line which made the whole affair a part of Sig's jurisdiction and calling for his regular presence.

Such it was one particularly frigid March morning when Sig was riding up that way to have to deal with some ornery miners trying to unionize on Boon which he did not care for one tot. Sig was just hoping he could arrive in time to keep Boon from chopping them up as hog feed. He tugged his coat tighter round his shoulders and blew into his fist and wished to God the sun would slide out from behind the clouds and directly heard a loud bustling coming from the treeline along the road. Sig sat up straight in the saddle and squinted to try to see what was coming at him. Half a dozen fat shaggy heifers burst into the clearing being punched by no other than Bree Finch.

"Miss Finch?" Sig said, unsure his eyes told him the truth.

"Bree'll do well enough, Sheriff," She said, as she steered the beef straight, now she had them to the main road. "Where you apt to this wicked bitch of a morning?"

"Boon's got some miners want to file against him. I got to git that way and arbiter the whole affair if he don't murder 'em or I freeze to death first."

"Ought have brought a better coat," she said. "Headed there myself delivering this order of beef. Reckon we'll ride along together then?"

"Reckon so," Sig said, clicking his mare to. "When'd you turn drover?"

"Didn't really. Just had a few wander in a while back and they never did leave and instead had a mess of calves. So, I sell 'em once a while to the mine or whoever wants 'em. Gives me a chance to see the big city every now and then," she said smiling.

Bree decided right then and there that if she decided to take a man it would likely be this one. She'd wait 'til they got to Boon to really decide one way or the other, though. She was never one to be too rash. She liked the way he sat his saddle and never forgot that hanging he arranged neither.

Boon was nearly finished kicking some poor fat sow to death and seeing what new swears he couldn't invent with two skinny Chinese looking on disapprovingly, knowing that hogmeat was ruined now from the bruising.

"You can quit your goddamn gawking you goddamn chinks and get back peddling dope or slanted cunny or whatever the hell it is you do in my goddamn camp," Boon said, pulling out a kneckerchief and wiping pigblood off his boot just in time to catch sight of Sig and Bree make camp.

"Sweet old feller, ain't he?" Bree said grinning.

"Ain't he?" Sig answered, half sick at the sight of that sow. He was with the Chinese on this score. He absolutely hated the thought of wasted bacon.

"Sheriff, you're goddamn lucky I had to deal with this shit hog or I'd have done with them unioners this morning. Leave it to this batch of treasonous gray scum to give the word a bad taste. You're a slow man on the back of a horse or I don't know the color of coal. Them my beef?" he asked Bree.

"On the hoof and on time, Mr. Boon," Bree said.

"Believe it or not it's Dr." he said, spitting on the ground and coughing. "I come from Pennsylvania where there's such a thing as a fucking school. You a married woman?"

"Don't affect the price of the beef," she said.

"Suit your fucking self. Sheriff, I need to file charges against these union-talking cunnynuggets. You got papers on you for that?"

"I'm afraid you can't file charges just out of spite. A crime has to be committed first."

"They've slowed my production to near nothing. Ain't that a crime?"

"No."

"Fucking Johnny Reb pieces of shit. We ought to bring another war down here to teach you soft-headed bastards the meaning of a day's work."

"I'd be careful I's you the sentiment I produce on that score. This county was happy to sit that war out on account of its lack of interest in keeping a rich man his niggers. Didn't keep old Sherman from burning us out anyway. So, you spit that shit out the wrong place you're apt to have one of your own pickaxes growing out your back and I'm afraid I'll have missed sight of the whole affair. Savvy?"

"Yeah, I savvy you ain't gonna be no help and may as well not have come. I'll settle on that beef in the hour as I'd like to clean my hands before I deal with money. Just put 'em yonder in that corral, and we'll have dealings at my hotel lobby."

"Be fine," Bree said, and turned the cattle toward the corral next to a blacksmith and wondered was it worse to smell cowshit or a smoky forge all day.

Cailean and Earic Cameron, cousins — clansmen as they would have it — whose great grandfather lost a leg at Culloden Moor with the '45 — had themselves each charged the field at Gettysburg with their sovereign general. They both spat constantly and cursed to beat the band and claimed they'd sooner slit throats than undo the plaid sashes at their belts much to the chagrin of Silas Boon, their employer. It was to these two men that Sig had to speak concerning the sudden union sentiment growing rapidly in the camp. The family in general had a bad reputation for being naysaying troublers — never mind old Bob resting up at Dead Yankee Holler — but also what with the big hissy they'd had over voting to change the spelling of the county name — nobody nor his brother having a flat clue how to go about saying 'Claidheamh.'

Each had thick braids of rust-red hair hanging down either side of his face and beside that Cailean had a full on beard against Earc's six day stubble, the twain would have been a mirror shot of the other.

"Mornin', gents," Sig said, offering a hand as the two turned from an unsolicited inspecting of Rebecca MacDonald's buckwagon.

"You're the Sheriff?" Cailean shot.

"Yeah?" Earic seconded. Each had an accent so think Sig had a rough time catching hold of their jib. They both beat him by a few inches and more than few pounds and sported a tattoo of a mallet on their left forearms. Bob Cameron's Hammer of God Gang. Late-joiners, no doubt.

"Sig Freeley, that's right. I understand you boys been working up a ruckus up this way."

"Just do'n what's right by us," one said.

"Yeah, for us and them as like us," the other added.

And so it went from there with one speaking and one repeating as they spit out the various details of what they wanted and expected to happen in order to keep from spreading more gab of a walkoff. Most of what they said seemed right fair enough by way of Sig's understanding — all except for the bit about no work on Thursdays as a holy day which apparently had something to do with the mallet on their arms and seemed a great deal of nonsense. All in all, despite the piss-rough appearances, they each seemed decent enough folk.

Sig assured each he would do everything in full accordance with county law and asked them kindly not to work up anything they'd all have to regret in the end of things. They spat and told him quick that'd be between them and their All-Mighty and slapped the mallet on their arms. Sig walked back toward the hotel shaking his head and looking to his own almighty that he'd be able to come through all this keeping his record of never firing a pistol shot in the line of duty.

Boon's camp was eat up with cow and pig shit and the endless wafting stink of it all was near enough to end Bree's negotiations far short of her desired price. The fact she and Boon had agreed on a fair price before she drove them up notwithstanding, he still felt he was owed a chance to drop her down. He didn't actually expect her to drive them in herself and that rankled him more than a bit.

As Boon sat humming and hawing over her fifth flat refusal to drop the agreed sum, Bree stared out the window at Sig Freeley making his way across the thoroughfare and cutting a fair line in the sunlight doing it. He walked like a man both sure of himself and exempt from the cares of the world at the same time.

"I like that Sheriff," she cut in on Boon. "Man's right decent."

"For one of you lot, reckon as good as one fucking can," Boon agreed. "Piss-poor shame that deal with his betrothed."

"His what?" Bree fired with a gun.

Boon, seeing her show cards, pressed in harder — told her the whole deal. Alisha Gordy was her name. She had been working for Boon as an undersecretary despite some folks' aversion to a woman cleric. "She had him coming round right regular and often while back," Boon said. "Was all I could do to keep him from slapping me in the thinker with that fat Colt of his — "

"Remington."

"Whichever," Boon went on. "I can't be held accountable for what a half-crazed mule hauling a load of coal's gonna do when some wild celestial goes to popping off paper rockets in the middle of fucking February. And no sooner do I get her preciousness off to Atlanta to the best doctor in this poor excuse for what would've posed as a nation than I get these jibberish-squawking, skirt-wearing narrow-backs screaming about work-hours and chow. Now, I'll knuckle on this beef here — for them, not you — but they ain't quitting at sundown, not with them new candle-caps I just paid twenty dollars a case for, no ma'am."

It was all quite a lot to take in and Bree was now quite convinced that Mr. Boon was a great deal interested in having other people listen to him talk. The part about the fiancée was complete news to her and not of the Christ-risen variety. Folk'd color her black in a hurry, she went after a man promised to a cripple girl and that was a fact. She'd be working nights now to spin this one her way. With any luck the old girl would kick while she was in that hospital in Georgia, but Boon hadn't described the thing quite that serious. She thought maybe to sing a song for it, but wasn't all the way sure which was the right one.

All the way home with Boon's money he finally gave over to her, she had the thought ever more on her mind. She colored her own self poorly on account of holding out such hope for another gal to die. She could have just sung her dead, but that would be terrible. The thing she couldn't figure the most was why she should be so stuck on any man nohow. She had always done just fine on her own, thus far, and the only time she'd ever lived with a man was not the most desirable situation to return to — not that she had half an inkling Sig would turn out to be a jot like Ackley Finch.

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