Smoke Jensen, the Beginning Read online

  “Because they are evil,” Janey said. “Some people are just meaner than snakes.”

  “My doll got all burned up.”

  Janey put her arms around the little girl and pulled her close for a moment. “Wait here. I have a surprise for you.”

  “What?”

  “Well, if I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?”

  Janey walked back to their wagon where blankets, quilts, cooking utensils, and extra clothing were piled, just in case the Gimlins would have need of them. Thinking of Mollie, Janey had included the doll that had been hers when she was much younger.

  She took it to the little girl. “You can have my doll,” Janey said, handing a China doll to the little girl.

  Mollie’s eyes grew big. “I can have it?”

  “Yes, I don’t play with her anymore, and I think she misses having someone to play with.”

  “I’ll play with her.” Mollie held the doll in a close embrace.

  “That was real nice, what you done,” Kirby said when Janey joined the rest of her family in front of the smoldering house.

  She shrugged. “It’s just an old doll. I was goin’ to throw it away some day, anyway.”

  “Still, he’s right. It was good of you to give your doll to the little Gimlin girl.” Emmett walked over to Gimlin, and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m real sorry about this, Dewey.”

  “At least we all got out without any of us gettin’ hurt,” Gimlin replied. “But we ain’t got a thing left to our name. No furniture, no clothes, no dishes, nothin’. And no house to put it in, if we did have them things.”

  “You will, and soon.” Emmett turned to the friends and neighbors who had gathered and held up both arms. “Folks!” he called. “Let me tell you what we’re goin’ to do.”

  He pointed to what was left of the house which was nothing but glowing embers and fire-blackened wood. Though the flames were mostly gone, a great deal of smoke was still pouring from it and its heat could still be felt.

  “As soon as that pile of burnt wood is cool enough for us to work with it, we’re goin’ to clear it all out. Then we’re goin’ to build another house for the Gimlins just like the house that the Jayhawkers burnt down. No, we’ll build it even better.”

  “Yeah!” one of the other men shouted. “By damn, that’s exactly what we’re goin’ to do.”

  “And ladies?” Pearl called out, stepping up beside her husband. “While our men folk are rebuilding the house, we’re goin’ to refurnish it. I know that between us, we can come up with furniture, clothes, blankets, quilts, and whatever it takes to get the kitchen put together again.”

  “Looks like we won’t need a cookin’ stove,” one of the women said, pointing to the rubble of the house. “The one they had come through just fine. All we got to do is clean it up a bit.”

  By mid-afternoon, a large gathering of wagons was parked at the Gimlin farm. At least fifteen families had come to help. The men were constructing a new house. Three sides of framework were already up, and they were about to put the final side into place. Kirby, doing the work of a man, scurried up one of the ladders, then got into position. Half a dozen ropes were thrown to the men on top of the frame, and Kirby grabbed one of them, pulling with the others as the end frame was raised into position.

  With so many men working, the framework of the house was in place with amazing speed. After the siding and roofing was completed, everyone grabbed a brush and bucket of paint and, before supper, the house had been erected and painted, and all the furniture moved in.

  The stove had been cleaned but not moved, and even before the house was completed, some of the women had started cooking. A temporary table, long enough to feed forty people, had been put together using boards and sawhorses. By the time construction clutter had all been picked up, the meal was ready and the Gimlins, Jensens, and neighbors sat on make-do benches for supper.

  Kirby was watching his sister. Merlin Lewis, who had left school three years earlier, was sitting beside Janey, and it was obvious that she not only welcomed Merlin’s attention, she was inviting it. Kirby couldn’t help but marvel at how easy it was for her to control Lewis.

  The twelve-year-old glanced over at his brother to see if he saw what was going on, but Luke was lost in his own world. Lettie Margrabe was doing the same thing to him that Janey was doing to Merlin Lewis. Kirby laughed.

  “What are you laughin’ at?” Emmett asked.

  “Nothin’, Pa. I was just laughin’ is all,” Kirby said as he reached for another piece of fried chicken.

  “Careful, boy. Someone’s goin’ to see you laughin’ at nothin’ someday ’n they’re goin’ to think you’ve gone crazy.”

  Kirby turned his attention to another conversation going on near him.

  “What I plan to do, ’n what I’m invitin’ the rest of you to do, most especially the ones of you that ain’t got a family to look after, is to join up with George Clark.” The speaker was Lee Willoughby, a man who was the same age as Luke.

  “Clark ain’t nothin’ but a murderer and an outlaw,” someone said.

  “That may be so, but he don’t do none of his out-lawin’ in Missouri,” Willoughby replied. “He does all of it over in Kansas. Luke, what do you say? Me ’n you was talkin’ ’bout this the other day.”

  “We was talkin’ about Asa Briggs, not George Clark.”

  “Briggs is an old woman compared to Clark. You want to come with me?”

  Luke glanced over toward Emmett for just a moment before he replied. “I reckon not.”

  “Why not? You gone scared on me, have you?”

  Luke stood up and glared. “Would you like to put that proposition to a test, Willoughby?”

  A bit startled by Luke’s response, Willoughby blinked his eyes and licked his lips for a few seconds before he responded. “No, no, I didn’t mean nothin’ by what I said. I don’t want to fight you. I don’t want to fight nobody from Missouri. All I’m lookin’ to do is make things right. You folks has seen what kind of men the Jayhawkers are. They attacked the school, they come in the middle of the night to burn Mr. Gimlin and his whole family out of his house. Like I said, all I’m lookin’ to do is set things right.”

  “I don’t hardly see it as right, ridin’ into Kansas and burnin’ some farmer and his family out, like was done to me,” Gimlin said. “I expect most folks over there are just like us. No line drawed on a map, especially one that you cain’t even see, would make it right to go over there ’n start burnin’ and shootin’ and such.”

  “Yeah, well, a war’s acomin’, ’n I don’t plan on missin’ out on it,” Willoughby said.

  “If war comes, I expect a lot of us will get caught up in it,” Emmett said. “And, in this state, I expect some, even some of us here, will choose up different sides.”

  “Which side would you choose, Jensen?” Willoughby asked.

  “Well, sir, I don’t have any slaves, ’n I don’t hold with the idea of keepin’ any. Besides which, I got a brother who lives up in Iowa, and he’ll for sure be fightin’ for the North. But the truth is, I can’t see as the federal government’s got ’ny right to tell a state what it can or can’t do. I figure if it comes to it, I’ll be pitchin’ in with the South.”

  Emmett was normally a man of few words, and Kirby believed that may well have been the longest speech he had ever heard his father make.

  Willoughby smiled. “Well now, that’s good to know. I’ve always looked up to you, Mr. Jensen, ’n I’ve always figured Luke to be my friend. I’m for sure goin’ to fight for the South and I wouldn’t want us to wind up bein’ enemies.”

  “I don’t consider anybody here my enemy,” Emmett said, “whether they wind up fightin’ for the North or the South.”

  One month after Gimlin’s house was burned and rebuilt, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. As a result, South Carolina seceded from the Union, claiming independence. Six Southern states soon followed, eventually creating t
he Confederate States of America.

  April 1861

  A garrison of Union troops occupied Ft. Sumter in Charleston Harbor. South Carolina demanded that the troops be withdrawn, but the federal government refused to do so.

  On April 10, Brigadier General Beauregard, in command of the provisional Confederate forces at Charleston, demanded the surrender of the Union garrison. Major Robert Anderson, the Union commander of Ft. Sumter, refused.

  On April 12, Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort. Designed to repel invaders from the sea, Ft. Sumter was unable to withstand an effective defense against an attack from the land side.

  At 2:30 PM the next day, Major Anderson surrendered and was allowed to evacuate the garrison on the following day. Not until then were there any casualties, as a Union artillerist was killed and three wounded when a cannon exploded prematurely when firing a salute during the evacuation.

  Immediately after that incident, Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to be drawn from every state that had not seceded. That action caused four more states to secede. The Confederate government matched Lincoln’s move by calling for 75,000 troops of its own.

  Lee Willoughby came by the Jensen farm not long after that, wearing the gray uniform of a Confederate lieutenant. “Iffen you had come with me when I asked last fall, more ’n likely you’d be an officer, too,” he said to Luke. “Now, if you come in, you’ll have to come in as a private. There ain’t nothin’ I can do for you, ’cause it’s too late.”

  “Privates’ll be fightin’ the war same as officers, won’t they?” Luke asked.

  “Well, yes. Of course they will.”

  “Then the way I look at it, it don’t really matter all that much whether I’m a private or an officer. Fightin’ is fightin’, ’n now that the war has started, I reckon I’ll get into it so’s I can do my part.”

  “When you plannin’ on comin’ in?” Willoughby asked.

  “Right away,” Luke answered. “No, wait. Give me till tomorrow. I want to tell Lettie good-bye.”

  “We’re gettin’ up a wagon to carry men to the recruitin’ office in Springfield. It’ll be leavin’ Galena long about noon tomorrow. If you’re comin’ with us, be to the courthouse before the wagon leaves.” Willoughby slapped his legs against the sides of his horse and rode off.

  Luke looked at his father. “What about you, Pa? What are you goin’ to do?”

  “I don’t plan to rush into anything,” Emmett said. “I plan to take the night thinkin’ on it. I don’t like the idea of the people in Washington sendin’ seventy-five thousand troops into various states to tell the folks what they can and can’t do. So, if I’m bein’ truthful with you, I’d say I’m leanin’ hard on goin’ with you.” As fate would have it, he did just that.

  Lettie Margrabe lay naked in bed, staring at the leaf patterns the sun was projecting onto her bedroom wall. She had slept that way for the very first time. It was also the first time she had ever slept with a man.

  Lying beside her, breathing the soft, rhythmic breath of sleep, was Luke Jensen. He was also nude.

  Lettie had lost her virginity.

  She was in love with Luke, and what they had done was no different from what lovers had been doing since the beginning of time. He had come to tell her good-bye, to tell her that he would be leaving for the war. It was Lettie who had asked him to stay, and not until he was sure that it was truly something that she wanted, did he agree.

  As she lay in bed that morning she could still feel the exquisite pleasure of the night of passion they had shared. That sensual gratification, however, was tempered by the fact that she knew that if anyone ever found out about it she would lose her teaching position. Such exposure would mean she would leave the county, and maybe even the state, in disgrace. Despite that possibility, she had no regrets about what they had done.

  They had made love several times during the night, and Lettie intended to do so at least once more before she let him leave.

  Emmett did not own a horse, so he hooked the team of mules up to the wagon. The entire family rode into town with him to say good-bye. When they reached the courthouse, they were surprised to see so many men were going to Springfield to join up with the Confederate army, that it took three wagons. Like the Jensen family, other families were there as well to say good-bye to their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers.

  “Pa, I don’t see why I can’t go with you,” Kirby complained. “I’ve read that both armies is takin’ folks my age and some even younger. Drummer boys they’ll be.”

  “Both armies, Kirby? Are you tellin’ me that if I don’t approve of you joinin’ with the Gray, that you’d be willin’ to join the Blue? You’d fight against me ’n your brother?” Emmett was not amused.

  “No, sir. I ain’t atellin’ you that. I’m just sayin’, I don’t think I’m too young to go. You said yourself that I can do a man’s work.”

  “That is exactly what I said, and that is exactly why you need to stay here. You’ll be runnin’ the farm, Kirby. The responsibility of the whole thing is goin’ to be on your shoulders. You’re goin’ to have to get the crops put in and tend to ’em. Then you’re goin’ to have to get ’em out and get ’em to market. I don’t want to come back home to a farm that’s gone and a family that’s most starved ’cause nobody was takin’ care of ’em. I’m countin’ on you, boy. So is you ma and your sister.”

  Kirby didn’t reply. He knew that his father was correct. Someone would need to keep the farm going. With his father and brother gone to war, he was the only one who could do it. “All right, Pa. I’ll do what you say.”

  Emmett was not a demonstrative man. The closest thing to affection he showed was to reach out and take Kirby’s hand in a firm handshake. “I know you will, son. That knowledge is what I’ll keep with me the whole time I’m away.”

  “How long do you expect that to be, Pa?”

  Emmett grunted and shook his head. “Truth is, this whole war is a foolish thing, us fightin’ against each other. I expect the people in charge will come to their senses sooner than later. I’m bettin’ we’ll be back in time to help get the crops out, come fall.”

  “Emmett, you look after Luke now, you hear?” Pearl said. “He’s my firstborn. It wouldn’t sit good with me, if somethin’ was to happen to him.”

  Emmett looked around. “Where is Luke?”

  “He’s over there, Pa,” Janey said, pointing. “You didn’t expect him to leave without sayin’ good-bye to his woman, did you?”

  Luke and Lettie were standing close together, and though they weren’t touching, the expressions on both their faces all but gave away to the discerning what had gone on between them during the night.

  “I thought he told her good-bye last night,” Emmett said.

  “If they really are sweet on each other like Janey says, you’d expect ’em to tell each other good-bye again this mornin’, wouldn’t you?” Pearl said with a smile.

  “I reckon so.”

  “Recruits!” Lee Willoughby shouted then. “Load up into these here three wagons! It’s time we was leavin’!”

  “Boy,” Emmett said before starting toward the three wagons. “Remember what we talked about. You take care of your ma and sister while I’m gone.”

  “All right, Pa. I will.”

  Kirby had no idea how long it would be before he saw his father and brother again, or even if he ever would see them again. He could see tears in the eyes of his mother and sister and felt a lump in his throat.

  But he would be damned if he would cry. He had just taken on the responsibility of a full grown man.

  Two months later, Kirby had the crops planted and was watching them carefully, taking pride in what he had accomplished in such a short time. On a trip to the barn to get a new bridle for the mule called Ange, he heard a sound coming from behind a pile of hay. Not sure what it was, he looked around for a weapon of some sort, and saw an axe handle without its head. Grabbing the handle, he approached the stack.


  “No. Merlin, I said no.” That was Janey’s voice.

  “Come on, Janey. You’ve let me get this far. You can’t stop now!” Merlin Lewis’s voice was demanding and edgy.

  Kirby stepped around to the other side of the stack of hay and saw his sister lying on the ground with the top of her dress and camisole pulled down so her breasts were exposed. Merlin was pulling on the dress, trying to take it all the way off.

  “She said no!” Kirby said firmly.

  “What the hell?” Merlin gasped, jumping up quickly. “Where did you come from? Get the hell out of here!”

  Kirby drew back the axe handle. “No, Lewis. You get the hell out of here . . . before I bash your head in.”

  “You talk big with an axe handle in your hand.” Merlin sneered.

  Kirby tossed the axe handle into the hay stack, then doubled his fists and raised them. “I don’t have an axe handle now.”

  Although Merlin was three years older, Kirby was every bit as tall and a little more muscular.

  Merlin looked at him for a moment, then waved his hand dismissively. “Nah, I ain’t goin’ to fight you. Your sister’s nothin’ but a slattern anyway.” Merlin turned to leave.

  “Lewis?” Kirby called to him.

  Merlin stopped, but he didn’t turn around.

  “I don’t want to see you on my farm anymore.”

  “Your farm?”

  “Yes, my farm. I’m the one living here. I’m the one working it. Don’t come back.”

  Kirby followed Merlin out of the barn and watched to make sure that he left. He also wanted to give his sister time to cover herself up. He had never seen her like that before and was embarrassed by what he had happened on to.

  “Kirby?” Janey’s voice was small and frightened.

  “Are you decent?” Kirby called back.

  Janey was always aware that she was older and a bit more sophisticated than Kirby was, and most times she didn’t mind making him aware of that fact. Her voice sounded different from normal. “Yes.”