Coon Creek: A Novel of the Mississippi River Bottoms

By James M. Vesely

The Mississippi Valley in western Illinois thirty years after the Civil War.

Japheth Bunt, a veteran of that war, is a man who lives to hunt and drink at the expense of honest work. No ones ideal of a husband or a father.

Hannah Bunt, of pioneer stock, is the strong-willed woman who fell in love with him years before, and content with her hard, but simple life on Coon Creek.

Elias Bunt their son. An adventurous boy who watches in fear as his life and the lives of those he loves are threatened by a bitter family feud that rages in the woods and on the roads of Hancock County, Illinois.

And, as the 19th century rolls into the 20th, a grown Elias is torn between his love for two women, and his misplaced loyalty to the notorious outlaw, Charlie Birger as the Bunts are caught up in a struggle to survive the violence and bootleg whiskey war that sweeps across the Mississippi River Valley.

A story filled with drama and turmoil, love and hate, heartbreak and humor with a cast of unforgettable characters as vivid and colorfully drawn as the turbulent times that produced them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 24, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462078448

James M. Vesely

James M. Vesely has written "Seasons of Harvest," "The Awakening Land," "Shadows on the Land," (THE CORRALES VALLEY TRILOGY) "Journey," "Unlike Any Land You Know," (NON-FICTION) "Coon Creek," "Lonesome Whistle Blow," "Cadet Gray," and "Creature." Jim was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He and his wife now live in the small, rural village of Corrales, New Mexico, just outside Albuquerque. Jim is a member of the Western Writers of America.

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All Rights Reserved © 2001 by James M. Vesely

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Coon Creek is a work of fiction. Aside from actual historic figures and historically factual events, all other names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 0-595-19680-2

ISBN: 978-1-4620-7844-8 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Part One

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

 7

 8

 9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Part Two

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

Part Three

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

Epilogue

To Brian and Dan Donnelly, who have family resting under that good earth, and to all the fine times the three of us have shared through the years.

The author is grateful to Bill Lionberger of Colusa, Illinois, for his kind and generous assistance in researching much of the history of Hancock County and Dallas City for this novel.

Coon Creek

A Novel of the Mississippi River Bottoms

Part One

Japheth & Hannah

A woman is a branchy tree

And man a singing wind;

And from her branches carelessly

He takes what he can find.

James Stephens (1882-1950)

A Woman is a Branchy Tree

 1

More than two years after little Elias was born, Japheth Bunt still watched his infant son with a half-cocked, suspicious eye. To Japheth, the child seemed slow, perhaps peculiar.

Too soon, his wife assured him. Too soon to tell.

Yet, Hannah Bunt was concerned as well. Not so much for the little boy’s slowness-for there were some others who lived along Coon Creek that might be considered slow-but rather for her husband’s edgy temper and lack of patience.

"I’ll not abide an idjit child in the house," Japheth had told her more than once. And she feared that in a whiskey fit of anger, he just might stuff the little boy in a sack and drown him as if he were nothing more than an unwanted batch of kittens.

For weeks after every threat, Hannah Bunt would watch her child carefully, searching for any outward sign of peculiarity. To her, the boy just seemed quiet-rather than slow in the head. Many a mother, Hannah was certain, would be thankful for such a quiet and well-mannered little toddler around the house.

It wasn’t long after she was wed that Hannah realized her husband was what her dead father would have called no account. Japheth Bunt went to Methodist services every Sunday, and took the Lord to heart with fervor, but he just as easily turned a blind eye to much that was written in the Good Book. Hannah once received a sound thump to her head when Japheth came home drunk one afternoon, only to hear his wife indignantly quote from Isaiah-Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink.

Japheth Bunt seemed to turn a blind eye to work as well. As a new bride, Hannah quickly learned that rather than farm a living from his modest piece of bottomland, her husband preferred to just rent out his quarter section to an industrious neighbor to farm. Japheth made a few extra dollars shoeing horses and sharpening knives, but more than anything else he’d just as leave call up his dogs and roam the woods to hunt.

At first, she shrugged and accepted what the Good Lord had seen fit to provide. Japheth’s old army Springfield could knock down an occasional deer, she reasoned, and hunting the bottoms with his smoothbore would bring game home to the table as well-a sack of plump squirrels, a possum or a turkey, enough cottontails to feed them for a few nights. As long as Japheth’s credit held, and he could keep himself in powder and shot, she expected they wouldn’t be starved out.

Then she thought of a better plan. If you favor hunting so much, she asked him. Why not shoot for the markets?

These were modern times, Hannah knew. Western Illinois was no longer the harsh frontier it once had been, and these days fewer and fewer people hunted for themselves. In Dallas City, and other surrounding towns, the markets were eager to have a steady supply of game, and the woods of Hancock County were rich with it.

Along with a healthy population of whitetail deer, the country held wild turkey and prairie chickens; quail in the fields, cottontail rabbits and golden plover in the thickets, mallards and other puddle ducks in the river bottoms. In the small towns, woodcock fed in the yards and coveys of quail could often be seen in the streets. More than once, Hannah had used her broom to chase wandering grouse out of the cabin.

Might I’ll just do that, Japheth told her. But he never did. As far as he could see, market hunting was too much like ordinary work. If he took his gun and dogs into the woods, it would be for the pleasure of it, with a jug along, and not for the profit of some pasty-faced butcher in town.

But even at that, Hannah soon learned that often as not, when Japheth went hunting, he might just decide to tie up his dogs out front of Sud’s Store on the outskirts of Dallas City, and spend the better part of the day sitting by the woodstove, drinking Euley Sud’s popskull whiskey.

I still make her the old way, by God, Euley told anyone who’d listen. Bark juice, tar-water, a little bit of turpentine, brown sugar, lamp oil, and alky.

Hannah Bunt occasionally wondered if she might be happier in a proper house in town, rather than in their own poor cabin on Coon Creek. But whether or not this might be true, Hannah knew that such expense was far beyond their reach.

Although many of its buildings were much older, she’d once been told by her father-in-law that Dallas City was given a charter only thirty-three years earlier.

By special act, the Illinois Legislature separated the settlement from nearby Pontoosuc Township, and its residents named the little city after Vice President George Mifflin Dallas-a Philadelphia lawyer who’d served under President Polk.

We was right here on Coon Creek when it all happened, old Simon Bunt told her. But then they up and named the place after a goddamned Democrat.

Aside from cuts, scrapes, fevers, and other assorted childhood ailments, young Elias managed to turn a healthy six years old before his father finally pronounced the boy fit to live under their roof. Although it was a great load off Hannah’s mind, knowing finally that her only child’s fate was at least not to be drowned, she still had a shiftless husband with whom to deal.

Feeling his thirst one morning, Japheth mounted their old dun and rode over to Sud’s. While there, he bought a jug on credit. When he returned home, Hannah told him: There’s a note on the table from that fallen-away rascal, Hesketh Ballard.

Japheth grunted. Hesk Ballard was widely known throughout Hancock County as a deeply fallen man. Once, he’d been the county judge and a devout Baptist. At meeting, no one could raise their voice louder in singing the hymns, and after those were sung, Hesk Ballard would often gird himself with a towel, and carrying a tin wash basin full of water, go around and wash the feet of the brethren and the sisters.

Yet one hot July day, Hesk got roaring drunk and out of a clear blue sky, pronounced himself an infidel-letting it be known to all within earshot that he no longer believed in God, Heaven, or Hell.

Japheth and Hesk had run together as boys, and since his fall, it was widely known that Hesk had become not only overly fond of the jug, but also a fervent gambler and card-player. And as far as anyone knew, since severing his faith in both the Lord and the Devil, the only things on earth Hesk feared were what he called his fractious bowels, and his wife, Althea.

Althea Crawford Ballard was a stout woman, steely-eyed and big-boned, with a faint trace of black hair covering her upper lip. Growing up a rock-ribbed Baptist, she brooked no nonsense and had little patience with her husband and his fallen ways.

Along with a milk cow, a few hens and a rooster, Althea’s pa had brought the family up from Obion County, Tennessee, soon after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Hobe Crawford had lost a leg at Chancellorsville, dozing near the side of the road as a heavy gun caisson rolled over it. Once the short-tempered, overworked surgeon was finished with him, Hobe mustered out and made his way home on crutches.

But after a cold, hard winter and a poor crop, he decided that storekeeping up north might be a far easier way for a one-legged man to earn his living.

As far as Japheth was concerned, even though Hesk Ballard’s faith had been that of a different denomination, his untimely break from religion was serious enough, and certainly nothing to ignore. But Japheth also believed in Judge not, lest ye be judged, and had long ago accepted his friend’s shortcomings.

He read the note that told him to come south to Niota on the river, where there were two fellows from Iowa looking to play some poker. Hesk Ballard wrote that he thought these two might be ripe for skinning.

Going down to Niota, Japheth told Hannah matter-of-fact. Might be gone a day or more.

Fearing he might get dry before skinning the Iowans, Japheth took his jug along. Just north of the lively and growing settlement of Pontoosuc, riding easily along the river bottoms he decided that he’d best hide the whiskey. Like as not, he suspected Hesk and the two Iowa men would drink it up right off, and he’d be left with nothing.

In a thick tangle of deadfalls near a place called Turkey Fork, Japheth dismounted, took a long pull, and then hid his jug under a soft, rotting log.

The town of Niota didn’t amount to much-a small dry goods store, a blacksmith, and two or three riverfront taverns.

In the back room of one of these, a shabby little place called the White Goose, Japheth Bunt, Hesk Ballard, and the two Iowans played poker for two days and two nights. The Iowa men were generous, more than once buying jugs of whiskey for the entire table. One of them, a fellow named Tarley Shurtleff, stated that during the late War Between the States, he’d been a corporal in the 10th Iowa Infantry, and fought under Colonel Perczel at the siege of Corinth.

A rebel ball went clean through my hat, he bragged. But I never did suffer even a durned scratch.

Japheth never heard of Colonel Perczel, and suspected that not many others had, but he surely knew of Corinth and the terrible fighting there, and if Tarley Shurtleff came through it without a wound, it spoke well for either the man’s ability or his great good fortune.

The other gambler was a thin, pasty-faced looking fellow with a raspy, hollow cough. He told them his name was Clement Jakes and he maintained to all who’d listen that he was far from being a well man.

Clement had a shake of the ague, Tarley announced. Just before we left Keokuk to come up here.

Clement Jakes was certain there was more to come. "I believe I’m still in for a smart grip of the agy," he maintained, telling them that he and Tarley Shurtleff crossed the river by ferry, and then stayed over at a settlement on the Illinois side called Montebello, so that he could have another shake.

He did, too, Tarley offered. And after he was quit of it, we rode on some further-but old Clem come to feeling poorly again, so we holed up in a empty farmer’s shed and waited so’s he could have another of his shakes.

And I did, Clement Jakes said.

He did right enough, Tarley agreed with a grin. Beat all the shakes I ever seen. Shuck the whole damned shed.

Japheth didn’t feel he needed to witness the man shake again, and he hoped that Clement Jakes was through with his unfortunate ailment for awhile.

Out front, in a corner off the bar, the White Goose boasted a toothless fiddler whose repertoire seemed to encompass just two tunes-Old Dan Tucker and Sweet Betsy from Pike. In the back, along with draw poker, the men played two-card monte or blackjack, and by the morning of the third day, Hesk Ballard had lost twenty dollars, while Japheth was shy fifteen.

After the Iowans left to go back across the river, Hesk seemed nervous. Japh, we’ll have to go to your house for supper. I swore to Althea that I wouldn’t gamble no more, and if I come home too late she’ll know I broke my word.

Well, I expect that would be all right, Japheth answered, his own big hands stuck in empty pockets. My Hannah can rustle up something for us to eat.

Riding back east along the river, they were in mid-afternoon when Hesk Ballard reined up his horse and slumped in the saddle with a great heave and sigh. Durn, I’ve gone about as far as I can go without a drink, Japh, he said. I’m so damned thirsty I’d give five dollars for a pull of whiskey-was I still to have five dollars.

Well, we ain’t far from Pontoosuc, Japheth said. I believe the town’s got a number of taverns.

Don’t neither of us have credit there, Hesk pointed out.

Japheth suddenly thought of the jug he’d earlier hidden, not a half-mile distant from where they stood. A plan formed itself in his head-a clever little scheme that just might save his old friend’s soul from the eternal hellfire of perdition.

They rode through Pontoosuc, nodding to folks they saw in the street. Before it was a town, Japheth remembered his father telling him, the area had been settled by Hezekiah Spillman, who built a small fort there during the Blackhawk War in 1832.

They called it Spillman’s Landing then, Simon Bunt told his son. Hez Spillman had him a woodyard where all the riverboats stopped to refuel.

During the fighting with the Sac and Fox tribes, Spillman met a young Sangamon County militia captain named Abe Lincoln, and after Lincoln was elected president, Hez never could stop bragging about it. Why, tall as a young tree the fellow was, he told anyone who’d listen. And homely as a cow pie, too.

Pontoosuc had grown some since Blackhawk’s time-with a good share of thriving business. Along with its lively taverns stood two or three grocery stores, hardware stores, a flourmill, dry goods stores, a cooperage and blacksmith shop, brick yard, saw mill and a brewery.

With Hesk still grumbling about his great thirst, they made their way a bit farther, passing through Pontoosuc to Turkey Fork, where Japheth suddenly reined up the dun. Wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, he slid down from the saddle and sat himself down on the rotten log.

Well, I reckon your thirst just slipped up on me, too, he told Hesk Ballard, who was confused as to why they’d stopped. I don’t believe I can go any further without a drink of whiskey.

Well, goddamn. What’ll we do? Hesk asked.

Japheth made it a point to look as if he were studying hard on the matter. Then he looked up and shook his head. Hesk, if you was still a God-fearing man, and if you still believed in the power of prayer-I’d just fall down on my knees and ask the Good Lord to send us something to drink.

Are you gone crazy? Hesk asked. Why, even did I believe, I surely wouldn’t ask for airy such thing.

Japheth reached down and felt the jug, still hidden beneath the log. Don’t never doubt the Lord’s generous nature, he told his friend, falling to his knees and beginning to pray in his best Methodist manner.

Oh Master, the protector of the weak and the stay of widows and orphans, thou hast told your children in thy Holy Writ that when two or more are gathered together in thy name, that thou will surely be in their midst.

Japheth took a deep breath and went on. Thou hast promised that whosoever knocketh at the door it shall be opened to him, and whosoever seeketh he shall find. Let thy abounding mercy rest on us, oh Lord, and send us something to quench our thirst. This we ask in the name of thy crucified son. Amen.

Japheth then gave a yelp and threw himself backward over the log, as if he’d suddenly been touched by the Almighty. Standing up again, he produced the jug. Why lookee here-praise God.

Jesus of Nazareth, Hesk Ballard gasped. King of the Jews! Is it whiskey, Japh?

It rightly is, I reckon.

Sweet Lord, Hesk said excitedly, taking two long pulls on the jug before handing it back. Why, I’ll be scrubbed clean as a whistle and back to meeting this Sunday for sure-and we’ll take supper at my house, Japh, for the Good Lord has touched me and I ain’t feared of airy woman that ever lived.

 2

As Japheth and Hesk rode back north along the River Road, their bellies still feeling the warmth of the whiskey, Tarley Shurtleff’s story of being shot through the hat took Japheth back to his own years as a soldier.

Most of the men his age-an entire generation that fought in the War and survived-still remembered those days as if they had been an extended furlough from their real lives.

More than thirty years after Appomattox, men still gathered at Euley’s store and other places like it all around the country, with the War still the prime topic of conversation. Outside events were of little interest. Time passed-the world went by.

But the War, oh yes-it was fought and re-fought many times over around Euley Sud’s woodstove. Aside from weather, crops, and dogs, they rarely talked of anything else.

Hannah Bunt often suspected that if the men had not had the Civil War to go off to, they might have died of boredom.

Even as a little girl in Kentucky, she remembered the urge that people had to move, to see new sights, to better themselves. Let’s get away, they’d say, staring out windows at dull villages and poor, hardscrabble farms. Go someplace else. Go west. Go anywhere.

When the War finally came, young men on both sides joined up, becoming privates to flee the little towns and farms. Even more than most, it was the younger men who were restless.

They’d heard about life somewhere else, and wanted to see it for themselves.

And see it they did. During the War, life was dangerous but never dull. They got around, and most of those who weren’t killed in the fighting enjoyed it.

The War had surely been the biggest event in Japheth’s life, and it never took much to bring him back to it. He hadn’t been at Corinth, but he’d seen his share of fighting at Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge.

In fact, it was the War that changed him from a boy to a man, most folks around Coon Creek said-while others maintained the change hadn’t been for the better.

In early April of ‘65, after Lee surrendered his ragged but still proud Army of the Potomac at Appomattox Courthouse, Japheth finally mustered out and returned home to Hancock County.

When he came back he was no longer much interested in his family’s small farm, and instead seemed taken to whiskey and the deep, quiet woods of the river bottoms.

Until late October of 1862, Japheth Bunt had been too young to enlist. But when he’d come eighteen, he’d already made up his mind. Other boys his age had already left Hancock County to fight, and he would, too. It just wouldn’t do to stay home. He carried no grudge against Southerners, but there was a stigma attached to any lad, strong and healthy, who would shirk his duty to help put down the southern rebellion.

I have decided to go to the army, Japheth announced one evening, breaking the news to his parents and sisters over a supper of thin squirrel stew.

His mother was upset and wept. Children will bring you pain, she thought, both when they come to you and when they leave.

His father sat silent, staring at his own food, suspecting the War would be a long one and already calculating the wages of the hired man who’d be necessary to take his son’s place in the fields.

Early the following morning, Japheth took an old, quilted valise, packing into it a clean extra shirt, a pocketknife, a bible, and assorted good luck trinkets.

He said his farewells quickly and self-consciously. Shaking his father’s hand and kissing both his mother and his two younger sisters goodbye, Japheth trudged off on foot, making his slow way south to the recruiting station at Quincy.

There, he was issued equipment and an ill-fitting uniform, and given a few weeks of drill and manual of arms training before he was deemed suitable as a replacement. A day later, Japheth and a number of other young men that he knew were shipped by railroad car to the 78th Illinois Infantry, encamped near Shephardsville, Kentucky, with orders to guard the railroad bridges on the Lebanon Branch of the L&N Railroad.

By the middle of November 1862, only two weeks before the bleak and cheerless Thanksgiving of that gloomy year, Japheth received word by letter that his oldest sister, Ann, had been taken by the consumption.

Pa and me and Sarah kept her with us for ten days, Japheth’s mother wrote in her fine, delicate hand. Until our dear Annie began to mortify, and only then did we give her body over to the cold, hard ground. Japheth’s mother, like many of their neighbors, suffered from exceedingly strong terrors of being interred alive.

His mother’s great fear stemmed, he’d once been told, from her experience as a young girl in the small Ohio town of Grover Hill. Laura Bunt’s maiden name was Laura Killian then, and her father succumbed to what the attending physician diagnosed as brain fever-suspiciously brought on, the slightly intoxicated doctor offered, by noxious miasmas.

Hours later, as Laura’s mother was tearfully washing her husband’s body, her Uncle Aaron was busy in the barn out back, driving nails into a newly carpentered coffin.

As the sound of the hammer echoed over the small Killian farm, Laura’s father suddenly jerked himself upright, blinked a few times, confused at finding himself shut of his long drawers, and inquired into the reason for his nakedness. Then, with a groan, old Corman Killian fell back again to live out another poor week before finally breathing his last.

My mother might have buried the wretched old soul alive, Laura Bunt often impressed upon her own children. It don’t do to trust doctors all that much. It’s better to keep a keen eye on the deceased until he or she is deemed sufficiently dead to plant.

Japheth spent three years in the army, soldiering with the 78th from its first taste of battle at a dismal place called Muldraugh’s Hill, through all the brief skirmishes and harder fighting at Fort Donelson, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga, Resaca, Peach Tree Creek, and General Sherman’s bitter March to the Sea.

Japheth’s company first saw heavy fighting at Chickamauga, where the 78th Illinois was ordered to make a charge against the approaching Confederate force of Gen. James Longstreet. It was in the midst of that battle that Japheth first saw a man killed close-up.

Quick on his feet and singled out as a swift runner, he’d been chosen to deliver a hastily written dispatch from their company commander to Maj. Tobias E. Broddus whose own company was standing fast against Longstreet’s Corps on the Federal right.

As Major Broddus smoked a cigar and studied the message, and while Japheth nervously stood waiting for a reply, a ten-pound ball from one of Longstreet’s guns hissed in over the withers of an orderly’s mount and struck the major in the face. The impact was accompanied by a soft thwap, and for one long moment, Major Broddus’s body stood stiff and erect, with its head sliced cleanly from its shoulders. Almost thirty years later, Japheth could still bring to mind the major’s headless corpse clutching the dispatch tightly in its hands before it finally went limp and toppled over to the muddy ground.

Darkness had put an end to the fighting, and the 78th was ordered to march and to take up positions at nearby Rossville. The regiment lost heavily in dead and wounded that day, and recalling the unfortunate Major Broddus, Japheth realized it was only the second time in his life he’d seen a dead person at such close quarters. The first had been years before when he was still a child.

A friend of Japheth’s-a neighbor boy named Horace Stump set a turtle trap down by the edge of Coon Creek. It had been a sharp-pointed wire affair, baited with a cheesecloth bag full of rotting catfish. When young Horace went back to check on it one morning, the trap contained two fine snapping turtles-both had torn apart the bag and gorged on the rotted fish before discovering themselves trapped.

As he pulled the trap from below the creek bank, one of the agitated turtles snaked a beaked head out from his shell as quick as lightning, and took a small piece out of Horace Stump’s thumb. At the time, the boy paid scant attention to the wound, but by the following morning his hand and forearm were swollen to twice their normal size and his fingers were grown as thick as dinner sausages.

The turtle bite mixed with the toxins of the rotted catfish had combined to poison Horace. In two days time, the boy was out of his head and delirious with fever-and two days after that he was dead. The day before the burying, Japheth was taken to see his friend, now dressed in his Sunday clothes and laid out on his folk’s straw mattress pallet. Japheth could still remember how pale and chalky white the corpse had looked. It was the first time in his life that he’d seen anyone dead.

Horace Stump, Major Broddus, and now poor dear Annie’s gone as well, Japheth thought that night as he lay wrapped in his blanket. Now me and Sarah is all the old folks has got left.

As the regiment rested, Japheth slept fitfully and dreamed of his dead sister. In the dream, he saw them both as they’d been as children, swimming and splashing in Coon Creek. In the warm summer months, finished with their daily chores, Japheth, Annie, and Sarah, with friends from nearby farms, would enjoy afternoon frolics playing and swimming in the creek’s deeper pools.

Once, Japheth had even climbed an old oak tree whose heavy branches reached out over the water. He tied a length of hemp rope to a stout limb and they would swing far out over the creek and let themselves go, plunging into the dark water feet first. Coon Creek had been a source of adventure throughout Japheth’s boyhood. He and his friends would often play pirates there, or hide and seek, and it was always a fine place to hunt and fish.

By Christ, Japheth swore to himself as he and Hesk rode east from Niota-that had surely been a damned long time ago.

 3

Elias was only nine when he was lifted up and placed in the old McClellan cavalry saddle behind his pa. As they rode up from the Bottoms, heading south, Elias squeezed his legs tightly against the dun’s flanks and hooked his fingers in his father’s belt.

You know what a circus is, boy? Japheth asked, turning in the saddle to glance back at his son.

No, Elias said weakly, more than a little nervous. In addition to traveling far from home for the first time in his life, he wasn’t all that accustomed to hearing his father speak directly to him.

Japheth grunted and lit his pipe. The smell of the tobacco was sweet-a smell that filled their small cabin, and one Elias would always associate with his pa. Well, I been to one once, Japheth said. Down near Quincy when I was just a young buck and free to ramble more. It sure were a sight to see, and you’re a lucky one to get to see it, too.

Yes sir.

Hesk Ballard says they got elephants and tigers, Japheth told his son. He swears they’s a dog-faced boy, and even a feller with three legs-why, ain’t that a thing?

Yes sir, I reckon it is, was all that Elias managed to say. He couldn’t imagine what a dog-faced boy might look like, unless the little fellow had a face on him like Biscuit or Cherry, his pa’s two favorite hounds. And as far as the three-legged man went, Elias had seen a two-headed baby goat once. The unfortunate little creature’s second head hadn’t been much bigger than a mushroom cap, but it still unnerved Elias so badly that he couldn’t sleep for three nights after.

Smoking his pipe, Japheth soon fell silent and father and son rode double on the dun most of the way to Nauvoo with few other words between them.

There were more than thirty circuses traveling the country in 1892, and Japheth had been hired to come to Nauvoo where one of them, the Jasper and Pendhall Great Menagerie, arrived three days earlier. The regular circus farrier, an old Negro named Hootie Lester, had died of consumption as the troupe was bringing its own railroad cars up from Quincy. Accepting the delay, the troupe held proper services and buried Hootie in the little cemetery of Warsaw, Illinois. When they’d finally arrived in Nauvoo, the Jasper and Pendhall contracting agent inquired as to the whereabouts of a skilled and dependable farrier. Japheth was recommended as one of the best in the county, and the agent soon hired him to shoe a number of the Great Menagerie’s horses.

Hannah quickly encouraged her husband to take their son along. The child only knows Coon Creek, she pointed out. Do him wonders to see a circus and a bit more of the world.

Once unloaded from the train, the Jasper and Pendhall Great Menagerie set up in a clearing east of town. When Japheth and Elias arrived, they first unsaddled and tied up the dun, and then explored the circus grounds. The great canvas performance tent was being erected, and along with the main tent, others were going up, too-much smaller ones, to house the sideshows and animals, dressing tents for the clowns and performers, and finally a dining tent called the cookhouse.

Elias marveled at the steam calliope, with its huge boiler and its polished and lacquered brass whistles. He and his father made their way toward the menagerie tent, walking slowly through a crowded lot of circus wagons. Some were painted gay and gaudy colors, while others were covered with pictures, carvings, mirrors and intricate gold leaf, along with sunburst wheels, sporting gaily colored wooden panels between their sixteen spokes.

As they walked, Elias furtively eyed the sideshow tent. It was there that the dog-faced boy could be seen, he suspected. On a tall poster, other human curiosities were being advertised as well. Elias couldn’t read, but the pictures were descriptive enough.

A fat mustached man with a cane suddenly approached them. Yessir, the big man said. Show’s not open yet, friends, but for a mere five Liberty nickels I’ll allow the lad to privately view the abnormalities inside. Why, a boy’s never too young to appreciate the capricious nature of the Good Lord’s green earth.

Well, I don’t believe so, Japheth grunted.

My good man, you must not deprive yourself or the lad of an opportunity to see the strangest sights the world has to offer.

Japheth shook his head.

Within those canvas walls, sir, we have a Burmese Rubber Girl, with skin like that of a Bloodhound dog-

Japheth grunted again. With a big hand on Elias’ shoulder, he gently pushed the boy forward and began to walk on, moving away from the barker and toward the menagerie tent.

-we got a genuine human pincushion from India, the fat man continued, waving his cane and calling out after them. We got Wano and Plutano-the wild men of Borneo. A bearded lady, and Sealo, the Seal Boy.

Still shaking his head, Japheth Bunt glanced down at his son and grinned: Five Liberties, Japheth muttered. The wonders of the world don’t come cheap, do they, boy?

No sir, Elias agreed, although he had no clear understanding as to what degree of wealth five Liberty nickels might represent.

When they entered the menagerie tent, Elias’s eyes grew big as saucers. The ground was covered with sawdust, and there before them, chained to stakes, was a wide-eared African elephant with one broken tusk and a look of sadness in its large, soft eyes. Elias also saw an ungainly seeming giraffe, and a pair of one-humped Arabian camels with thick calluses of cracked and hardened skin on their knee joints.

What’s your business, rube? A man asked Japheth. Elias looked up and was amazed to see a small monkey perched on the man’s shoulder. The chirping, jittery little creature was dressed in a blue and red sailor’s uniform.

I’m the farrier your man hired, Japheth told him.

Oh sure, the man with the monkey said. You bring along your tools?

No sir, Japheth said. Reckon I didn’t tote nothing more than my apron and my hammer. Your man said the nigger pretty much left behind everything I might need.

Sure enough. Old Hootie had it all before he coughed hisself to death-anvil, tools, bar stock, nails-the whole durned outfit. Why, there’s even some mendicaments for ailing critters.