These Honored Dead Page 2

  I stared out the window again. Acres of sage-green hemp stalks swayed in the afternoon breeze. I could make out in the distance the moss-covered rock enclosure marking the fountainhead of a small, clear stream. I had spent many afternoons in my youth scrambling down and up the stream’s steep banks, amid the aromatic mint and tender, pungent cress. But I realized I had never explored where the stream led when it left our land.

  Early one morning the following month, finally freed from my sickroom, I walked along the stream’s banks and found it flowed into the mighty Ohio River and from there westward into our bountiful Nation. I broke the news to my father that instead of returning to St. Joseph’s, I had secured a clerkship in the large wholesale store of William H. Pope in central Louisville. I learned the business from Pope, finding more pleasure in the hurly-burly of commerce than I ever could have hoped to secure from even the most elegantly crafted pleading.

  After several years with Pope, I seized the idea to follow the stream still further west. The Red Man was receding, making increasing room for the inevitable spread of white civilization and enterprise. With the defeat of Black Hawk in the war of 1833, a wide new swath of central Illinois—long the preferred destination of impatient, adventurous young men from Kentucky—suddenly became habitable. Late one evening at a large family gathering at Farmington, an obscure second uncle mentioned that my cousin James Bell was in need of a junior partner for his mercantile business in Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois.

  Thus it was that on an auspiciously warm day in September 1834, I climbed aboard my loyal horse, Hickory, to set off for Springfield. Slung over the horse’s back were several saddlebags my mother had stuffed full of fine clothes, though I doubted these would be of much use on the frontier. I was just shy of twenty years of age and six feet of height, with long, curly black locks resting on my shoulders. As she gave me a parting kiss on the cheek, my older sister Lucy teased me that I looked like the poet Byron, heading off to exile.

  My younger sister and confidante Martha, at fourteen as gangly as a newborn colt, loped alongside as we trotted toward the main road. “Why must you leave, Joshua?” she called up at me.

  “There’s a whole continent to discover,” I called back.

  “Take me with you, won’t you?”

  Martha threw up her hands toward me, but I merely shook my head and laughed. “You can come visit,” I said, “once I’ve found whatever there is to find.” With that, I spurred Hickory on and we left Farmington behind.

  Springfield stood on the edge of a vast prairie whose wild grasses rose as high as the late summer wheat in Kentucky. As I rode through the prairie, the grass waved back and forth in the breeze like the billows of the ocean while the shadows of fleeting overhead clouds raced ahead of us. In the distance, a prairie fire burned, and the ribbons of fire along the horizon made it appear as if the clouds themselves were aflame.

  My first years in Springfield confirmed the wisdom of my momentous decision to follow that little stream away from my birthplace. My cousin Bell soon tired of the day-to-day affairs of the store and became an absentee owner, and I reveled in the autonomy produced by his long absences.

  Better still, Springfield brimmed with unmarried young men, and my nights never lacked for company. There was Billy Herndon, who’d grown up in Springfield and, after a brief and unsuccessful term at Illinois College, had returned to work as a part-time clerk for me at my store; ambitious Matheny, the son of the court clerk and from age fifteen the deputy clerk himself; young, pale Hay, hoping to latch on to an attorney as an office boy for hire; stolid Hurst, a clerk in a rival dry goods store; and many other choice spirits too. It was a sort of social club without organization. We spent our evenings milling about the storeroom fireplace or dangling from the rafters of the stables behind the Globe Tavern, bottles in hand and vying to top one another with callow good humor. Lincoln, I assured him, would fit in famously.

  ***

  Despite my boldness in questioning him, I withheld from Lincoln that night one important aspect of my biography. She’d sworn me to silence. Besides, the chapter had so recently closed that I was unwilling yet to reopen it to examination.

  CHAPTER 3

  It had sparked one sultry summer afternoon two years previous, when I’d walked across the Springfield green to the storefront of the Post Office Department, cater-cornered from my store, to see if the Department’s thrice-weekly delivery stagecoach had yet arrived.

  The postmaster Clark handed me a thin envelope, covered in the distinctive scrawl of my old employer Pope. I pulled out a single sheet of paper and began reading. As I walked out the door, head down and mind engaged, I nearly collided with someone coming from the opposite direction.

  “Excuse me,” I mumbled, as I inhaled a fleeting scent of wildflowers in August.

  A minute later, while I stood on the green and continued to read Pope’s exceptionally smutty and no doubt fictional tale, the scent returned. This time I looked up and met a pair of beautiful blue-gray eyes. My breath caught.

  The woman standing before me appeared to be a few years past thirty. She was wearing a fitted calico dress that accented her figure, while a small black lace bonnet rested on her tightly bound hair.

  “Good afternoon,” I managed. “Sorry for nearly knocking you over.”

  “It takes more than a little bump to knock me over,” she returned in a clear feminine voice. Her face lighted with a small smile, and I saw soft lines radiating from the outside of each of her sparkling eyes. They only enhanced the beauty of her face.

  “I’m glad of it. Did your letter arrive?”

  She held out her empty hands, palms up.

  “Perhaps on the next stage,” I said.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’ve about given up checking. Perhaps it was never written in the first place.”

  “I can’t believe someone would have failed to write you,” I said before I could think about my words.

  She smiled broadly and said, “I do appreciate your confidence. And your enthusiasm, Mr. . . .”

  “Speed. Joshua Fry Speed. The new sole proprietor of A. Y. Ellis & Co.,” I added hastily and not altogether truthfully, but I was eager to continue the conversation any way I could. “Right over there, with the navy-blue facade. The finest general store in Springfield, if you have got any needs.”

  She laughed out loud. “I’m sure it is. I’ll keep it in mind. Well, it was nice to meet you, Mr. Speed.” She turned to leave.

  “And you as well, Mrs. . . .”

  “Harriman. The ‘Widow Harriman,’ more properly,” she said, adjusting the pin holding her mourning bonnet in place. She opened her mouth again and paused for a moment before adding, “As it happens, I too run a general store, out in Menard.”

  When I shouted in surprise, she continued: “You say you’re new to the trade. I’ve been in the business for a few years now. If you ever find yourself in Menard, knock on my door and perhaps we can exchange a story or two.”

  As I stared after her receding form, I wondered how long decency required me to wait before making the trip to Menard, a small frontier settlement that was several hours’ ride north of Springfield. I had settled on three weeks when I went to meet up with the fellows.

  We gathered that evening in the stables, tossing horseshoes at the stake. Usually my focus held until the hour was late and my bottle almost drained, but I was off my mark from the start.

  “I wish you’d had such poor aim last week when I was opposing you,” complained Matheny, who was playing on my side that evening.

  “Guess I’m preoccupied,” I said. The image of the Widow Harriman’s figure kept floating in front of my eyes where the stake was supposed to be.

  “Whatever’s on your mind, it can’t be as important as beating these two vagrants.” He gestured bitterly at Herndon and Hurst, who’d already amassed a nearly insurmountable lead.

  “I wouldn’t be sure of that.”

  Two days later, I set off for Men
ard at dawn. Hickory and I trotted directly away from the rising sun, the supple, muscular horse resolutely pursuing her own elongated shadow. After a few blocks, the street grid of Springfield petered out and we passed through a number of the farms that ringed the village proper. Then the farms gave way and we were alone on the warming prairie.

  The sun was nearing its apex and Hickory was breathing heavily when the plateau on which Menard was set came into view. I had ridden by it before without stopping on the way to Peoria. I now saw the heart of the settlement comprised two dozen structures arranged in a semicircle and facing the village commons. These included a blacksmith, stable, and two public houses, along with a one-story building with a bold-lettered sign perched on the roof proclaiming “Harriman & Co., Public Provisioners.” I tied Hickory to the post and walked in.

  The store was laid out similarly to A. Y. Ellis & Co., with a small public reception area in front and neatly ordered rows of goods resting on wooden shelves behind a polished counter. The Widow Harriman was standing at the counter and attending to a customer, an old woman in a faded ruffled skirt that fell to the rough-planked floor. When I entered, the widow glanced up, and a look of surprise flickered across her face. But her attention remained focused on her customer until the transaction had been completed and the woman bustled past me, carrying several folds of coarse-woven fabric.

  “Good day, Widow Harriman—” I began when we were alone.

  “Call me Rebecca,” she said, and my heart raced.

  “Am I in time for the lessons in frontier shopkeeping?”

  “You’re a little early, actually,” she said with a smile, “but I think I can make an exception in your case.”

  The following hours passed too quickly. Rebecca patiently explained her merchandise and business methods, stopping only to banter and bargain with the customers who entered periodically. My ardor grew steadily as I watched her mind and figure at work. Before I knew it, the sun was low and I found myself unwilling to leave.

  “Your lessons were all most illuminating,” I said sincerely, “and most impressive. I think I owe you dinner, at the least.”

  “You don’t owe me a thing,” she said, “but the ale Johnson brews next door isn’t half bad. And Mrs. Johnson’s beef stew is usually passable.”

  Johnson’s public room was dim and dank and reeked of spilled beer. A browbeaten man with thinning hair and a dirty leather apron nodded to Rebecca as we entered, and she led me to a table in the corner that seemed her usual perch. Johnson dropped two foaming tankards on our table and I raised one up.

  “To frontier shopkeeping,” I offered.

  “May the customers pay their credit and the competitors stay clear.” And we knocked our tankards together.

  During the course of the evening and more draughts than I could keep track of, I told her my history and she told me hers: how she and her late husband had never been blessed by children who survived birth, how he’d been ripped away by a raging river current in front of her eyes some four years prior, how she’d buried his clothes in an otherwise empty coffin. After a few days of mourning, she had gathered herself and taken over operation of his general store. From what I’d seen, it was a fair guess she had more aptitude for commerce than her late husband ever possessed.

  “I should be back on the trail to Springfield,” I said reluctantly at last. Other patrons had come and gone as we’d talked, some of them sneaking glances in our direction, but now the hour was late and we were the only persons left inside the tavern. Johnson himself had called out a farewell and shuffled off to his lodgings upstairs some time earlier.

  “I can’t let you,” Rebecca said. “For your horse’s sake, I mean. One false step on the dark prairie and she’ll crack a foreleg. My house is just over the ridge a ways. I can arrange a berth for you and the horse both, in my barn.”

  I did not protest and we made it outside, a little unsteadily, and found Hickory whinnying impatiently at her post. The moon was three-quarters full and luminous.

  “We’ll give you a ride,” I said. “Though it’s not a sidesaddle, so you’ll have to balance.” I looked left and right, but there was no mounting block in sight. So I turned back to Rebecca and said, “Will you permit me?”

  “If you please.” The edges of her face were tinged with red, though whether from the drink or some other emotion I could not fathom.

  I reached my arms out on either side of her waist. My hands felt her dress and petticoat compress over her firm hips and my blood surged. Rebecca gave a little hop and I lifted her up high and onto Hickory’s back. She arranged her skirts and crossed her legs with her hands on her lap and faced forward, composed, erect, and proud, like a figurehead bound for new shores. I led Hickory by her reins and we walked in silence—except for my own breathing, which sounded to me as loud as a great steam engine.

  After a few minutes, we came upon a one-story cabin, sheltered by a small stand of birches that straddled a brook. The house was constructed of tightly interlocking logs lined with black tar. No other dwellings were in sight.

  I reached up to help Rebecca down, and she put her hands on my shoulders as she slid off the back of the beast and rested them there for a second longer than necessary. My hands remained on her waist. Then I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. I pulled her toward me and my lips tasted hers, firm and a little salty, while my hands caressed the soft skin of her face. I picked her up and carried her through the doorway.

  Rebecca took off her mourning bonnet and shook out her long hair. I felt her breath on my face and my veins burned with longing. We fell into her bed together, tearing at each other’s clothing. When I entered her, I felt for the first time in my life I might be in the presence of the Divine. And when it was over I was sure of it, for I had seen in the moment of completion the face of God.

  Afterward I lay next to her, feeling her electric, naked skin against mine and wishing we could linger forever in this sliver of time.

  “We should discuss, I suppose,” I said, “when the wedding will take place.”

  Rebecca pulled away to have a better look at me. Her eyes burned with an intense expression I could not decipher. Then she burst out laughing.

  CHAPTER 4

  “There isn’t going to be any wedding.”

  “There’s not?”

  “Women in my position marry for one of two reasons,” Rebecca said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Love or money. I’ve been in love before, once. And watched it get ripped away from me. Have you ever been?”

  “Well, I rather think . . .” I gestured vaguely toward the disordered bedclothes and our naked bodies.

  She started laughing again, her breasts dancing and her eyes sparkling in merriment. “That wasn’t love, Joshua. It was true. It may have provided both of us with a moment of pleasure. But it wasn’t love.

  “As for money,” she continued, pulling a sheet up over her nakedness now, “I’ve been in the trade plenty long enough to know the junior partner in A. Y. Ellis & Co. can’t have much. Your cousin Bell would be surprised to learn, I’m sure, that he’s been dispossessed from his own store.”

  I had been caught in my fib, and as I thought about it, I realized Rebecca must have known the real facts from the moment of our first meeting. “How did you . . .” I began, but then interrupted myself with another thought: “Why did you . . .”

  Rebecca gave another cry of laughter, but this time she drew me toward her. I felt her breasts pressing against my bare chest and felt her legs intertwining with mine.

  “You think too much, Joshua Fry Speed,” she whispered into my ear, her breath hot and scented. “No more thinking.” And we let our bodies speak for the rest of the evening until I fell asleep, fully spent, pressed against her smoldering skin, feeling her heart beat out an unhurried lullaby.

  In what seemed like the next instant, Rebecca was shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes slowly, my head pounding from the aftereffects of liquor and lust. She held a lit candle close to my face, an
d as my eyes came into focus, I saw that the sky outside her narrow windows was still dark; perhaps there was a faint glow to the east.

  “You have to leave now,” she said.

  I leaned up to kiss her and she kissed me back, but I could tell at once her manner had changed.

  “What happened yesterday evening at Johnson’s,” she said, “dining together, that was unexceptional. The townsfolk here have gotten used to the notion that as an independent woman of business, I’ll interact with other men in the trade. But this”—she gestured toward me lying in her bed—“this, I assure you, is most exceptional. And it’s not something my reputation as an honest woman of business could endure. No one must know about this.”

  I was out of bed now, searching around in the candlelight for the clothes I’d thrown off the previous night. I nodded and said, “You have my word. Hickory and I will be on the prairie trail before any of your neighbors’ cocks start to stir. Only”—I gave her a smile full of desire—“I feel as if I would benefit from additional lessons. In frontier shopkeeping, of course.”

  Rebecca did not blush but rather answered with seriousness, “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Both of us would benefit from more learning, I’m certain. Same day, next month?”

  “Set your calendar by it,” I said, and we both did.

  One afternoon some months later I was lingering in her storeroom, waiting for closing time to arrive, when a stout woman bustled in with two small boys in tow. Rebecca was evidently well acquainted with the children, as they scampered over to her and she reached down and embraced them in turn. She handed each boy a sweetmeat to squeals of delight, and she watched indulgently as they scrambled under the opening in her counter and climbed up and down her shelves. It seemed a miracle neither boy was hurt and that the goods on the shelves were only mildly disordered when the whole family departed a half hour later.