Butcher's Crossing (4 page)

“Mr. McDonald—”

“This paper work is what gets me down.” He ran his fingers through the thin black strands of hair that fell about his ears.

“I’m grateful, sir,” Andrews said. “But I’m not sure—”

“Hell, it’s only a start. Look.” With a thin hand like a claw he grasped Andrews’s arm above the elbow and pushed him toward the doorway. “Look out there.” They went into the hot sunlight; Andrews squinted and winced against the brightness. McDonald, still clutching at his arm, pointed toward the town. “A year ago when I came here there were three tents and a dugout over there—a saloon, a whorehouse, a dry goods store, and a blacksmith. Look at it now.” He pushed his face up to Andrews and said in a hoarse whisper, his breath sweet-sour from tobacco: “Keep this to yourself—but this town’s going to be something two, three years from now. I’ve got a half dozen lots staked out already, and the next time I get to Kansas City, I’m going to stake out that many more. It’s wide open!” He shook Andrews’s arm as if it were a stick; he lowered his voice, which had grown strident. “Look, boy. It’s the railroad. Don’t go talking this around; but when the railroad comes through here, this is going to be a
town
. You come in with me; I’ll steer you right. Anybody can stake out a claim for the land around here; all you have to do is sign your name to a piece of paper at the State Land Office. Then you sit back and wait. That’s all.”

“Thank you, sir,” Andrews said. “I’ll consider it.”

“
Consider
it!” McDonald released his arm and stepped back from him in astonishment. He threw up his hands and they fluttered as he walked around once in a tight, angry little circle. “Consider it? Why, boy, it’s an opportunity. Listen. What were you doing back in Boston before you came out here?”

“I was in my third year at Harvard College.”

“You see?” McDonald said triumphantly. “And what would you have done after your fourth year? You’d have gone to work for somebody, or you’d have been a schoolteacher, like old Mr. Andrews, or—Listen. There ain’t many like us out here. Men with vision. Men who can think to tomorrow.” He pointed a shaking hand toward the town. “Did you see those people back there? Did you talk to any of them?”

“No, sir,” Andrews said. “I only got in from Ellsworth yesterday afternoon.”

“Hunters,” McDonald said. His dry thin lips went loose and open as if he had tasted something rotten. “All hunters and hard cases. That’s what this country would be if it wasn’t for men like us. People just living off the land, not knowing what to do with it.”

“Are they mostly hunters in town?”

“Hunters, hard cases, a few eastern loafers. This is a hide town, boy. It’ll change. Wait till the railroad comes through.”

“I think I’d like to talk to some of them,” Andrews said.

“Who?” McDonald shouted. “Hunters? Oh, my God! Don’t tell me you’re like the other younguns that come in here. Three years at Harvard College, and you want to use it that way. I ought to have known it. I ought to have known it when you first came.”

“I just want to talk to some of them,” Andrews said.

“Sure,” McDonald said bitterly. “And the first thing you know, you’ll be wanting to go out.” His voice became earnest. “Listen, boy. Listen to me. You start going out with those men, it’ll ruin you. Oh, I’ve seen it. It gets in you like buffalo lice. You won’t care any more. Those men—” Andrews clawed in the air, as if for a word.

“Mr. McDonald,” Andrews said quietly, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me. But I want to try to explain something to you. I came out here—” He paused and let his gaze go past McDonald, away from the town, beyond the ridge of earth that he imagined was the river bank, to the flat yellowish green land that faded into the horizon westward. He tried to shape in his mind what he had to say to McDonald. It was a feeling; it was an urge that he had to speak. But whatever he spoke he knew would be but another name for the wildness that he sought. It was a freedom and a goodness, a hope and a vigor that he perceived to underlie all the familiar things of his life, which were not free or good or hopeful or vigorous. What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world which seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source, rather than search it out, as the prairie grass around him sent down its fibered roots into the rich dark dampness, the Wildness, and thereby renewed itself, year after year. Suddenly, in the midst of the great flat prairie, unpeopled and mysterious, there came into his mind the image of a Boston street, crowded with carriages and walking men who toiled sluggishly beneath the arches of evenly spaced elms that had been made to grow, it seemed, out of the flat stone of sidewalk and roadway; there came into his mind the image of tall buildings, packed side by side, the ornately cut stone of which was grimed by smoke and city filth; there came into his mind the image of the river Charles winding among plotted fields and villages and towns, carrying the refuse of man and city out to the great bay.

He became aware that his hands were tightly clenched; the tips of his fingers slipped in the moisture of his palms. He loosened his fists and wiped his palms on his trousers.

“I came out here to see as much of the country as I can,” he said quietly. “I want to get to know it. It’s something that I have to do.”

“Young folks,” said McDonald. He spoke softly. Flat lines of sweat ran through the glinting beads of moisture that stood out on his forehead, and ran into his tangled eyebrows, which were lowered over the eyes that regarded Andrews steadily. “They don’t know what to do with themselves. My God, if you’d start now—if you had the sense to start now, by the time you’re forty, you could be—” He shrugged. “Ahhh. Let’s get back out of the sun.”

They re-entered the dim little shack. Andrews discovered that he was breathing heavily; his shirt was soaked with perspiration, and it clung to his skin and slid unpleasantly over it as he moved. He removed his coat and sank into the chair before McDonald’s table; he felt a curious weakness and lassitude descend from his chest and shoulders to his fingertips. A long silence fell upon the room. McDonald’s hand rested on his ledger; one finger moved aimlessly above the page but did not touch it. At last he sighed deeply and said:

“All right. Go and talk to them. But I’ll warn you: Most of the men around here hunt for me; you’re not going to have an easy time getting into a party without my help. Don’t try to hook up with any of the men I send out. You leave my men alone. I won’t be responsible. I won’t have you on my conscience.”

“I’m not even sure I want to go on a hunt,” Andrews said sleepily. “I just want to talk to the men that do.”

“Trash,” McDonald muttered. “You come out here all the way from Boston, Massachusetts, just to get mixed up with trash.”

“Who should I talk to, Mr. McDonald?” Andrews asked.

“What?”

“Who should I talk to?” Andrews repeated. “I ought to talk to someone who knows his business, and you told me to keep away from your men.”

McDonald shook his head. “You don’t listen to a word a man says, do you? You got it all figured out.”

“No, sir,” Andrews said. “I don’t have anything figured out. I just want to know more about this country.”

“All right,” McDonald said tiredly. He closed the ledger that he had been fingering and tossed it on a pile of papers. “You talk to Miller. He’s a hunter, but he ain’t as bad as the rest of them. He’s been out here most of his life; at least he ain’t as bad as the rebels and the hard Yankees. Maybe he’ll talk to you, maybe he won’t. You’ll have to find out for yourself.”

“Miller?” Andrews asked.

“Miller,” McDonald said. “He lives in a dugout down by the river, but you’ll more likely find him in Jackson’s. That’s where they all hang out, day and night. Ask anybody; everybody knows Miller.”

“Thank you, Mr. McDonald,” Andrews said. “I appreciate your help.”

“Don’t thank me,” McDonald said. “I’m doing nothing for you. I’m giving you a man’s name.”

Andrews rose. The weakness had gone into his legs. It is the heat, he thought, and the strangeness. He stood still for a moment, gathering his strength.

“One thing,” McDonald said. “Just one thing I ask you.” He appeared to Andrews to recede into the dimness.

“Of course, Mr. McDonald. What is it?”

“Let me know before you go out, if you decide to go. Just come back here and let me know.”

“Of course,” Andrews said. “I’ll be seeing you often, I hope. It’s just that I want to have a little more time before I decide anything.”

“Sure,” McDonald said bitterly. “Take all the time you can. You got plenty.”

“Goodbye, Mr. McDonald.”

McDonald waved his hand, angrily, and turned his attention abruptly to the papers on his desk. Andrews walked slowly out of the shack, into the yard, and turned on the wagon trail that led to the main road. At the main road, he paused. Across from him and some yards to his left was the clump of cottonwoods; beyond that, intersecting the road, must be the river; he could not see the water, but he could see the humped banks clustered with low-growing shrub and weed winding off into the distance. He turned and went back toward the town.

It was near noon when he arrived at the hotel; the tiredness that had come upon him in McDonald’s shack remained. In the hotel dining room he ate lightly of tough fried meat and boiled beans, and sipped bitter hot coffee. The hotel clerk, who limped in and out of the dining room, asked him if he had found McDonald; he replied that he had; the clerk nodded and said nothing more. Soon Andrews left the dining room, went up to his room, and lay on his bed. He watched the cloth screen at his window billow softly inward until he was asleep.

When he awoke his room was dark; the cloth screen at his window let in a flickering brightness from the street below. He heard distant shouts beneath the querulous murmur of many voices, and the snorting of a horse and the clop of hooves. For a moment he could not remember where he was.

He got up abruptly and sat on the edge of his bed. The mattress rustled beneath him; he relaxed, and ran his fingers through his hair, down over the back of his head and neck, and stretched his head backward, welcoming the soreness that warmed pleasantly up between his shoulder blades. In the darkness he walked across his room to the small table, which was outlined dimly beside the window. He found a match on the table and lit the lamp beside the washbasin. In the mirror his face was a sharp contrast of yellow brightness and dark shadow. He put his hands in the lukewarm water of the basin and rinsed his face. He dried his hands and face on the same shirt he had used the day before. By the flickering light of the lamp, he put on his black string tie and brown sack coat, which was beginning to smell of his own sweat, and stared at himself in the mirror as if he were a stranger. Then he blew the lamp out, and made his way out of the room.

The street lay in long shadows cast by the yellow lights that came from the open doors and windows of the few buildings of Butcher’s Crossing. A lone light came from the dry goods store opposite the hotel; bulky figures moved about it, their sizes exaggerated by the shadows. More light, and the sound of laughter and heavily clumping feet came from the saloon next to it. A few horses were tethered to the roughly hewn hitching rail set out eight or ten feet from the sidewalk in front of Jackson’s; they were motionless, but the moving lights glinted on their eyeballs and on the smooth hair of their flanks. Up the street, beyond the dugout, two lanterns hung on logs in front of the livery stable; just beyond the livery stable, a dull red glow came from the blacksmith shop, and there could be heard the heavy clank of hammer upon iron and the angry hissing as hot metal was thrust into water. Andrews went in a slow diagonal across the street toward Jackson’s.

The room he entered was long and narrow; its length extended at a right angle from the street, and its width was such that four men could not stand with comfort shoulder to shoulder across it. Half a dozen lanterns hung from unpainted, sooty rafters; the light they gave was reflected sharply downward, so that the surface of everything in the room glinted with yellow light and everything beneath those surfaces fell into vague shadows. Andrews walked forward. To his right a long bar extended nearly the length of the room; the bar top was two thick-hewn planks placed side by side, and supported by unfinished split logs set directly on the unevenly planked floor. He breathed deeply, and the sharp mingled odor of burning kerosene, sweat, and liquor gathered in his lungs; he coughed. He went to the bar, which was only a little higher than his waist; the bartender, a short bald man with large mustaches and a yellow skin, looked at him without speaking.

“A beer,” Andrews said.

The bartender drew a heavy mug from beneath the bar and turned to one of several kegs that stood on large wooden boxes. He turned a spigot and let the beer slide in white bubbles down the side of the mug. Setting the mug before Andrews, he said:

“That’ll be two bits.”

Andrews tasted the beer; it seemed warmer than the room, and its flavor was thin. He laid a coin on the table.

“I’m looking for a Mr. Miller,” he said. “I was told I might find him here.”

“Miller?” The bartender turned indifferently and looked at the far end of the room where, in the shadows, there were two small tables about which were seated half a dozen men drinking quietly. “Don’t seem to be in here. You a friend of his?”

“I’ve never met him,” Andrews said. “I want to see him on a matter of—business. Mr. McDonald said that I would probably find him here.”

The bartender nodded. “You might find him in the big room.” He indicated with his eyes a point behind Andrews; Andrews turned and saw that there was a closed door that must lead to another room. “He’s a big man, clean shaved. Probably be sitting with Charley Hoge—little feller, gray-haired.”

Andrews thanked the bartender, finished his beer, and went through the door on the narrow side of the saloon. The room he entered was large and more dimly lighted than the one he had left. Though many lanterns hung from hooks on the smoked rafters, only a few were lighted; the room lay in pools of light and larger irregular spaces of shadow. Rudely shaped tables were arranged so that there was an empty oval space in the center of the room; at the back a straight staircase led up to the second floor. Andrews walked forward, opening his eyes wide against the dimness.