Soul of a Crow by Abbie Williams Page A

that’s so,” Boyd agreed. “Uncle Jacob was never a soldier himself. We may just be guests upon his homestead for the rest of our livin’ lives.” Winking at me, he said, “Y’all don’t mind living your golden years in a haymow, do you?”
    Sawyer assured me, “We’ll make our own home, I promise you. Even if I have to clear every acre with my bare hands.”
    I knew he would, too, if it came to that. I assured, “I will help you.”
    â€œYes, an’ gripping your sharpest saw,” Boyd snorted in retort. “You may be strong, Davis, but I’ve yet to see you uproot a tree all alone. In fact, I recall the time me an’ Beau beat you an’ Ethan in the tug o’ war competition, July the fourth, 1858. Exactly ten years ago this very day, if I don’t mistake the date.”
    Sawyer laughed and Whistler tossed her head and high-stepped at the sound, happy to hear the joy in his voice. He countered, “Not by much, if you’ll recall.”
    â€œDon’t listen to him,” Boyd warned me. “ Shee-it . Me an’ Sawyer was fourteen years old that summer, more fulla piss an’ hot air than you’s ever seen. Christ.”
    â€œWhere was I?” Malcolm demanded breathlessly, rejoining us. Sweat trickled over his temples and created fine rivulets in the dust on his face.
    â€œYou was just a babe, still on the breast,” Boyd gleefully informed him, and Malcolm’s lips went into an immediate pout.
    â€œI done missed all the fun,” the boy muttered.
    Boyd explained to me, “It was the Suttonville celebration, the one in which Ethan usually won the blue ribbon in the horse race. He rode Buck that year, did he not?” Sawyer nodded with amused agreement and Boyd continued, “You shoulda seen Ethan, strutting around with that ribbon on his shirt. Remember how we all tried to get Emily Ingram’s attention that summer? Lord, that girl. She was pretty as a starlit night, but such a nag. Not that we noticed, nor even cared. We just wanted to get her around the corner of a barn for a kiss or two.” Boyd grinned impishly. “But she had her eye on Sawyer, an’ oh was I jealous.”
    â€œEmily Ingram,” Sawyer said, laughing. He shook his head and said, “Just the thought of her voice makes me cringe, yet. She always said my name in two parts, Saw-yer , all singsong-like.”
    â€œI notice that didn’t stop you from stealing a kiss, yourself,” Boyd remarked.
    â€œShe was the first girl I’d ever tried to kiss,” Sawyer told me. “I was so nervous I was sweating buckets, and hardly had I touched her when she started giggling, and then ran away. I never knew if I had done something wrong, or what.”
    I laughed at this description, unable to imagine any girl who didn’t near die with pleasure at being kissed by him. I tried to form a picture of Sawyer at fourteen years of age. And Boyd, surely even more incorrigible than he was now, a decade later. They were each so solidly-built, strong and broad and capable, intimidatingly formidable when the need arose, and adorned by various scars from battle; I had difficulty envisioning them as slim and gangly boys, full of mischief but innocent to what they would someday be forced to know.
    â€œWell, you musta done something right, as she bragged about it to all the girls in attendance that day. I wanted to wring your gullet,” Boyd said good-naturedly, his eyes merry with remembrance. “I just knew I had to beat you at something if I wanted her attention.”
    Like my own, their memories of the idyllic days before the War were as precious as gold, though even in 1858 the conflict was already on the horizon, an all-encompassing shadow, its approach inescapable. I did not wish to dwell on that thought, and so I prompted, “What of the tug of war?”
    â€œOh yes,” Boyd said, resettling his hat.