Redeye (6 page)

 

As we prepare for our exciting journey onto the mesa you will notice that all our equipment is authentic, and our three guides are “the real thing”: Pete Moody, cook and guide; Jose Hombre Mendez, song leader and guide; and Durant “Brother” Copeland, general lecturer and guide.

The chuck wagon for our trip is the very same one used in '92. It was built by P.J. Copeland. Please feel free to examine it. You will find clear straight-grained stock, with gnarled
bois d'arc
for the hubs; all seasoned for seven years and kiln-dried to stand up in the dry air. High-quality iron and steel make up the fittings. The highest-quality springs were ordered from St. Louis. The wagon was framed and paneled for lightness without a nail or screw anywhere. It is held together by mortise, tenon, dowel, and dovetail and housed joints, all locked in place by bolts, and you will see a step at the front wheel displaying intricate designs carved in the casing. The “automobile” hardly stands a chance against such a trustworthy product!

Pete, our trusty cook, will call on you to join him in his traditional chuck wagon loading chant. The words to the chant are here for you to follow. If it only rhymed it would be pure poetry!!!

Bacon, fry pans, knives, spoons, and forks—that's the bacon.

Flour, cornmeal, water, salt, baking powder, lard, Dutch ovens—that's the bread.

That's the bacon, that's the bread.

Beans—that's the beans.

Coffee—that's the coffee.

That's the bacon, that's the bread, that's the beans, that's the coffee. Hooks, canned truck, spuds, salt, pepper, sugar—that's extries.

That's the bacon, the bread, the beans, the coffee, the extries.

Shotgun and shells—that's quail and rabbits.

Rifle and cartridges—that's venison.

And hot damn! I near forgot the skunk eggs.

How's that? you old tenderfoot wranglers from the East Coast say. Skunk eggs?

Skunk eggs? Oh, that's onions. The humor of the Old West takes forms both benign and bawdy. (For
THE MESA LARGO TOURIST EXPEDITION,
expect the benign!)

And our erstwhile songster, Jose Hombre Mendez will be leading you in cowboy songs around the campfire before bedtime. You cowboys and cowgirls belt it out and then when you hit the hay, sleep tight. Our first day on the trail will be the beginning of
a trip you will never forget!!! . . .

We were at supper. That's me, Mr. Copeland, Mrs. Copeland, Sister, Brother, Grandma Copeland, and Star. Star just got here
and is more or less pretty. She got sent out here after her mama, who was some kin to Mr. Copeland, died, and she'll be living in the knoll cabin between here and the Merriwether Ranch if she decides to stay. Mrs. Copeland and her is fixing it up. I'm going up there one night and see can I see her undress.

We was sitting at the big round table eating chicken and dumplings and peas and sallet and drinking coffee, except for Brother, Sister, and Star, who was all drinking buttermilk.

About Grandma Copeland. I call her Grandma, too. In the daytime she stays in the rolling chair Mr. Copeland made because they cost so much where you order them from. He made her a real pretty one out of hickory and black birch, and then he made another one for Mr. Clark, who used to run the newspaper, but he died, and they give it to a woman that lived next to him.

Mr. Copeland says Grandma Copeland don't talk since she got sick from the fevers on the trip when they come out here a long time ago. They come by wagon before Brother and Sister was born because by train costed too much.

Grandma Copeland's got three bonnets. A red, a white, and a blue with white dots, and she was way back down there in the blue one, and way down in her rolling chair that was rolled up to the supper table. She's so little Mrs. Copeland puts a tray in front of her and they put her food on that. She eats a lot of stuff with her hands. Mr. Copeland said she's got so little that if she's in a stiff-ironed dress she can lean back or forward in her chair and the dress don't move.

Sometimes she gets to laughing and can't stop, especially
when Mr. Copeland picks her up and puts her in the bed, or sometimes when she's just sitting by herself, she'll start up. She ain't got no teeth, so if we're eating tough meat, Mr. Copeland chews it up for her.

Then too, Mr. Copeland made this frame for her what looks like a little fence that fits in holes in the floor in the summer kitchen in front of the cookstove. When the garden starts coming in, Mr. Copeland or Mrs. Copeland gets her up in that frame and ties her in it and she stands right there and cooks away like nobody's business. She cans stuff, too. “That woman's a cooking fool,” Mr. Copeland says. “And eats like a horse.”

So, at supper, Mr. Copeland told us about planning to move Grandma Copeland's room because of the mortuary science room out there in the kitchen. “I'm gone add a room onto the south side the house and put a little porch on it for Grandma. Wouldn't you like that, Grandma? Then we wouldn't have to roll you back and forth so much.”

Grandma just looks at him, chewing—or gumming—which swings around a couple of mole hairs on her chin, like cat's whiskers. Then she takes a drink of her jelly water.

“Blankenship thinks it'll be a good business in about two year,” Mr. Copeland says. “Real good in five.”

It gets quiet again.

“I don't think people are going to change their ways on something like that,” says Mrs. Copeland. She spoons peas onto Grandma's plate.

“They're changing them in Denver,” says Mr. Copeland.

“Denver is such an exciting place,” says Star. She is pretty but she don't know nothing much about out here. She keeps getting surprised at everything, and going “Oh, look at that!” And she gives out of breath easy. But she's pretty in a way. She's got a slightly small chin and big eyes.

“That's in a city,” says Mrs. Copeland to Mr. Copeland, “not out here, and you know the Mormons ain't gone to do it—drying people out.”

“I don't see why not. It ain't exactly drying,” says Mr. Copeland, “but it preserves them
like
they'd been dried. Hand me that bowl. No. That one. Look, it's serious business. Chemistry, and anatomy, and surgery.”

“Is that like college?” says Sister.

“Papa sewed up Grandma's mouth,” said Brother.

“What!?” said Star.

“Not her mouth,” said Mrs. Copeland. “Her cheek. Hole in her cheek.”

“No. It's different from college,” said Mr. Copeland. “But it's the same in some ways. The studies were as hard as college.”

Sister says, “Why you need Grandma Copeland's room for it?”

“It just might get a little crowded out there in the kitchen. When we get the funeral home built in town, that'll be a little better. That'll give us more space.”

“Well, I don't like cooking in here in the summer,” says Mrs. Copeland. “Or outside.”

“If it picks up like I think it is, I'll build another summer kitchen.”

“Is the man with the dog involved with this new business?” asks Star.

“No,” says Mr. Copeland. “He's just a friend of Zack's.”

“He
looks
like he might be involved with funerals,” said Mrs. Copeland. “Zack said he used to live in Mumford Rock, but I don't remember him, and he seems to be somebody you'd remember. Do you remember him, P.J.?”

“I can't say as I do, but I tell you—about funerals—it's a very respectable business. You need to see that school in Denver—and who all is going there to learn. A lot of people in the furniture business is going into it, and the sooner we get into it the better. When somebody else starts a funeral home in Mumford Rock, and you can bet they will, we want to have a top-notch one going already, and we got to advertise to get going fast and sure. Once you get this business into a family, they'll stay with you if you don't mess up.”

“Pass the dumplings,” says Brother.

“‘Please,'” says Mrs. Copeland.

“Please,” says Brother.

“Let me show you-all something,” says Mr. Copeland. “Bumpy, go get me that grip.”

“I ain't finished eating,” says Mrs. Copeland.

After supper Mr. Copeland took off Grandma Copeland's bonnet, braked her rolling chair, and leaned her back until she was almost flat down against the footstool with her knees up. Then he put a pillow under her head and started rubbing Glo-Tex on her
face until she had some color like a person who wasn't sick. Grandma is usually pale and kind of yellow. Mainly because she's so far back in her bonnet and don't get no sun.

When he got to her mole he rubbed around it, then he said, “I wonder couldn't I take that thing off.” I thought he was just joshing. Mr. Copeland gets to joshing every once in a while.

“They bleed bad,” said Mrs. Copeland.

Then he wraps one of Grandma Copeland's mole hairs around his finger like he's pulling up grass and yanks it out. Grandma Copeland slaps his hand and looks at him like she's been shot. I thought for sure she was going to say something. She don't ever talk.

“Mama, I can't fix you up,” he says, “lessen we clean you up a little.” He starts to pull the other one, but she slaps his hand again and so he gets out his pocketknife. “Whoa, horsey, calm down. I'll do this.” He cuts it close to the mole. “We're going to get you pretty enough to go to town, Mama.”

Mr. Copeland worked hard at rubbing in Glo-Tex and it took him a pretty good while, but Grandma didn't seem to mind too much. He put a little line of red marking along under her lower lip, which he said would make her look like she was smiling, but it didn't. Then when he was doing her neck she got one of her laughing spells and didn't stop until he mixed some Remove-All with water and cleaned her up. “You don't mix in water with that stuff, it'll take paint off a wagon,” he says.

Then Sister rolled her out to her room with Star going along
to see how to do it. There's a ramp. You got half-inch hickory strips across the ramp so you can stop the chair and rest going up or down. If the weather's bad, and we can't roll her out there, she sleeps with Mrs. Copeland, and Mr. Copeland sleeps on a army cot in my room.

Mr. Copeland took him a chew of tobacco, and smoked a cigarette along with it, sitting on the porch steps. That's one of his habits. He don't like to sit in a chair except when he eats.

I have settled into my little cabin. And despite the atrocious English everyone out here speaks, I am adjusting merrily. I am inclined to think I may remain out West for a very long time because, in part, of the clean taste and feel of the air, the majestic beauty and encyclopedic range of colors of the mountain rock and soil (every shade of red, pink, orange, and brown imaginable), the availability of church services in town—and also, and perhaps in large part, because of my lovely cabin.