Woe To Live On

FICTION WOE TO LIVE ON / Daniel Woodrell I. Coleman Younger, the Last is Gone—1916 The river takes it from almost anywhere, trims branches with floating logs, smooths edges on miles of rocky bottom and sandy bank, distorts the shape of the former tree by sucking it down at a hundred eddies of swirling murk, then spewing it back to the polishing touches of the everlasting current. Sometimes the river leaves the driftwood on a sandbar's lip, or jabbed into a dike—a present for me. I transport such gifts to my workshop. There I take my Barlow and ease it against the wood, scraping gently at the layers, taking substance away to reduce the piece to the design I see in it. I labor on it for days, and I have been laboring thusly for years, but humility commands an admission—many times the river's hand carved more truly, and I bring no improvement. On the day that I learned Coleman Younger had passed on to his stoked reward I searched for a special piece, and the river, now an occasional ally, sharing with me both muddy history and uncertain age, obliged. I enlisted a hang-dog grandson to assist me. His name was probably Karl, although he looked a lot like Kurt, especially as regards his subdued aspect. They are all like their father; blond-headed Dutch boys with that sort of Germanness that tape measures all it meets, and argues the logic of all that is not numbers. Not what Td ever wanted to be, or been, or even tolerated. The rarity of that clean-shaven oak length being so handy was not lost on me. Luck is a goddess, but if you bet on her she will desert you faster than a Frenchman. But that day I did not hope for luck, so there it was, a four foot section of river planed oak. There is never much oak, and this oak was on the first sandspit below the bend in the Missouri River. Karl or Kurt, and I, never had to wet a boot. We dragged a trail through the packed sand, he being too young to lift it alone and me too close to being young again, I fear. We lugged it along the path through the trees, up the glistening mudbank by the railroad tracks, then across the rails and back to town. We pulled the wood onto our shoulders when we came to Main Street, me in the lead, my hunched form not much taller than the boy's. Our boots slipped on the cobblestones, from brick-to-brick, not slickly enough to trip us, but enough to lend a whoosh to our passing. There were louts on horseback, the shod animals sparking with each step, to avoid. Hemsath the egg man left his wagon in our path with one of his girlish brood sitting on the seat, using a switch to tease the mule about The Missouri Review · 81 the eyes. A mule wül not tolerate such levity long so we stepped quick and put the pair behind us. As we passed the Fremont Room of the Saint Bruno Hotel, nearly home, a voice called out to me. "Old Roedel," he said. "You must be sad that Younger has gone. You may be all that is left now." I turned to see who spoke. It was Harvey Ball, a man of two-shot killing size, as death would have to scream its presence a while to make it known to the ends of his form. "Let me buy you a drink." "I am not a drinking man," I said. "You know this." Ball had that confidence that horsey size gives a man. He reached out to grasp my shoulder. "Naw. Come on now, Roedel. You must've split a jug with Black John Ambrose of an evening." I shook his hand off but he took no hints. "William C. Quantrill, the James's and Youngers, and Arch Clements and Pitt Mackeson—you tellin' me they were Baptist men? True Vine Pentecostal, and would not drink?" "I am telling you this—in many a jug there is a trigger...