When My Wedding Ended, the Dead Still Spoke

I heard the first shot before the church bell finished ringing. Caleb's hand tightened around mine as the bicycle lurched beneath us. I sat on the rear seat with my wedding skirt gathered over my knees, one arm around his waist and the other gripping a bouquet of asters that had already begun to wilt in the heat. We had been riding through Ash Creek for less than ten minutes. The town had cheered us from the church steps to the feed store. Children had run alongside the bicycle until the road turned east toward Alder Run. Then the shot cracked across the hills. Caleb stopped pedaling. "That came from home," I said. He was already turning the bicycle around. "Get down." I slid off before he could help me. He pushed the bicycle into motion again, riding hard enough that the chain clicked with every turn. I ran beside him, my wedding shoes slipping on the road's loose stones. The next shot came from farther away. We rounded the last rise, and I saw smoke rising behind the house. At first, I thought it was the cookhouse chimney. Then I saw the wagon beside the well. Two horses stood hitched to it, their tails flicking in the heat. Men sat on the wagon bench with rifles across their knees. A third man was leading our sorrel mare out of the barn. Caleb dropped the bicycle. I caught his sleeve. "Wait." He was watching the front yard. The men there wore dust-colored coats and red kerchiefs tied at their throats. I recognized one from the town: Amos Flint, who had once spent a week in the county jail for stealing a freight horse. The man beside him was larger, with a pale scar running from his ear to his jaw. I had seen him once in a saloon window, reflected behind the bottles. People called him Danner. A woman's voice rose from the wagon. "Nora!" My mother. I started toward her. Caleb caught me around the waist. "Not like this," he whispered. "My mother is in that wagon." "And there are six rifles between us and her." He was right. I hated him for being right, and I hated myself more for stopping. A man came out of the house, wiping his hands on a rag. He had my father's silver watch in his palm. Behind him, the front door hung open. My father's chair lay overturned on the porch. Danner took the watch from the man and tucked it into his vest. "Did you find the book?" "Not yet." "Then keep looking." The man went back inside. My gaze searched the yard. I found my brother Ben by the well, face turned toward the ground. My older brother, Thomas, lay near the barn doors. I knew his boots. I knew the hole in the toe of his left one. The sight of it closed my throat. Caleb made a sound beside me. A second later, he staggered. I caught his shoulder. Blood spread across the front of his vest. "Caleb." "I'm all right." "You're shot." "Just grazed." He was lying, and we both knew it. He gripped my wrist with a hand gone slick and warm. Danner glanced toward the rise. "You see something?" I dragged Caleb down behind a stand of scrub oak. A bullet struck the dirt where his head had been. I held my palm over his wound. "Stay here." "Don't go to them." "I won't." "You have to promise." I looked at the wagon. My mother's face had disappeared behind the wooden slats. I could hear the women shifting inside, their voices smothered by cloth or fear. "I promise I won't run into the yard," I said. Caleb pressed a folded sheet of paper into my hand. "The field book is not in the house. Your father moved it." "What?" "He told me last night. He said if anything happened, I was to take you to the north culvert." My father had told Caleb, not me. The knowledge stung even as the gunmen started toward the wagon. "Why didn't you tell me?" "I didn't want our wedding day to become about this." "It already is." His fingers closed around mine. "Go. The north culvert. Find the book. Get to town and bring help." "And you?" "I'll find a way to distract them." "No." "Nora, go." His voice broke on the last word. It was the first time I had heard fear in it. I kissed him quickly, tasting blood, dust, and the sweet wine we had shared at the church. Then I crawled through the brush as bullets chipped the stones behind me. I looked back once. Caleb had risen onto one knee. He threw a rock toward the barn. The clatter drew two men away from the wagon. I ran. At the north culvert, I found the iron cover half buried under weeds. The field book sat beneath it in an oilcloth bundle, just as my father must have left it. I had no time to read the label. I tucked the bundle beneath my dress and turned toward town. A gunshot sounded behind me. I kept running.