Free Wildwood Boys by James Carlos Blake

hands on her breast. The
brothers took turns digging the grave in the shade of a sycamore
while Will constructed a coffin in the barn.
     
The only ones to join the family at the wake that evening were
the Berry boys. Jim Anderson had carried the news to Arthur Baker,
who sent his condolences and an explanation that he did not wish to
intrude on the family’s private grief and so would for a time refrain
from visiting. Mary thought he was being overly solicitous, but Will
told her the man was just being considerate and not to trouble herself about it.
     
At daybreak they placed Martha in the coffin and the men carried her out to the grave and settled her in it. Will deferred
to Bill in the reading from the Psalms. He then spaded earth over the
coffin until it was covered and then Bill and Jim took over and finished filling the grave. At the head of the gravemound they
implanted a simple wooden cross which Will Anderson would
replace in another week with a gravestone bearing an inscription he
himself chiseled into it:
    Martha Anderson
1823–1862
     
Beloved Wife and Mother
    Following the burial the Anderson girls wept and comforted each
other, but by sundown they had quit their tears and were busy with
preparing supper for their father and brothers and the visiting Berry
boys. The men passed the afternoon sitting on the porch and pouring
cups from first one jug and then another and they now and then
spoke in low voices of the war news from the border. When they
came to the table all of them were slackfaced with drink. The Berrys
were not such practiced imbibers as the Andersons and Ike periodically and abruptly would sway in his chair. Butch had difficulty finding his mouth with his fork and portions of his supper streaked his
shirtfront. Despite themselves the Anderson men grinned at the
Berrys’ bewhiskeyment. Even the girls had to bite their tongues
against smiling and all three blushed at their own failure to hold to a
proper solemnity.
    Midway through the meal Will refilled the men’s cups and doled
a splash of whiskey to each of the girls, even a wee one for Jenny, and
then raised a toast to the memory of Martha Anderson and they all
drank to her. By the time they were done with supper Will was telling
affectionately funny stories about his twenty-three years of marriage
to Martha and they all laughed at every tale. He was in the middle of
another when he suddenly fell silent and looked all about as if thinking to catch sight of her somewhere in the room. Then stood and
took his jug outside and told no more tales of her that night or ever
again. The others traded looks over the table. Bill raised his brow in
question at Mary. She leaned over the table and whispered, “We
ought just let him be for now.” They all nodded. Soon the girls were
chatting in low voices about Mary’s upcoming wedding and the pairs
of brothers talking of the latest rumors of Quantrill.
    And so their lives went on. Mary Anderson wrote a brief letter to
their Aunt Sally in Missouri informing her of Martha’s death. But in
the following days widower Will became less inclined to conversation. He turned laconic, was distant at the family meals, detached
even from talk of Mary’s impending marriage. He had always
enjoyed his jug at the end of a day’s work but he now nipped from it
the day long. They had sold all the horses from their last raid and Bill
and Jim were keen to rustle up some more, but when they asked if
they should get the Berry boys and go on a foray, Will Anderson said
no, they’d wait a while yet, and he gave no explanation. The brothers grew disheartened at his seeming lack of interest in everything
but his jug and his own morose company. Mary said he was still
grieving. She said that whenever she watched him sitting in his porch
rocker and staring out at nothing, she could just about see the sorrow holding to him like a chilly mist. They just had to wait a while
longer, she