The Big Sky (54 page)

Instead, she climbed the rail fence and sat facing into the moon.

"You traveled nigh everywhere, your ma says," she said while he leaned against the fence.

"A right smart."

"My pa has seen a sight of things. Been to Indiany twice. He says it's mostly hoss thieves and such in Indiany."

"I stoled a horse there, at Paoli."

"Stoled it!"

"To get even, was all."

"Oh." After a little silence she said, "I can't stay long. Ma or Pa'll skin me."

The moon was growing smaller as it climbed, smaller and brighter so that her hair caught a gleam from it and he could see her lips moving when she talked. Off a piece old Blue snuffled among the bushes, and crickets set up their thin crying. It wouldn't be so long until the katydids joined in, grieving because summer was going. What Boone heard most, though, was the mockingbird, singing as if it couldn't stop. "You ain't bothered with them mockingbirds in the mountains," he said while he studied her face.

"They don't bother me. It's nice to my ears, and brave, singing away all night."

"I'll take a painter, or a wolf."

"Sometimes I come awake at night, and there's the mockingbird singing, and it's like it was saying all was right."

"A bird don't know about that."

She might have been speaking to the moon instead of him. "Those times, I think I'll go to far places one day and wear a boughten dress and eat off plates with flowers painted on."

"West is better, where there ain't such a passel of people." He let himself down in the spot he had cleared. "Best set here."

"Chiggers torment me terrible. Salt and lard don't help me, or anything but to let them die and hold back from scratchin'."

"Too early for chiggers," he answered, but she still sat there on the fence with her face seeming to dream at the moon.

This was how it was with a white woman. She put talk in the way and made up piddling dodges, pretending all the time not to know the prime thing that brought a man and woman together. A squaw, now, would own to what was in a man's mind. It would be yes or no right off, and no play-acting about it.

"Why'n't you get down?"

She climbed from the fence then, as if his words pulled her slow, and let herself walk over and sit down a little way from him. She turned her head to his turned face and drew back a little and smiled a quick, unsure smile, and he saw the white teeth and the little flare of the nostrils. "You're a solemn man," she said on her breath. "Can't tell what to make of you." She leaned back, holding her arms straight behind her, the heels of her hands braced to hold her up. That way, the moon shone full on her face, on the delicate nose and on the lips and on the wheat-straw hair combed back from her forehead. "You reckon folks live up there, Boone?" she asked.

His hand reached for one of hers and felt it small and hard and braced against the grass. She didn't draw it away but didn't give it to him, either. It might have been that the hands touched by accident, and nothing meant by it. He took his own away and sat wondering, with an edge of anger in him, how a man went about making up to a white woman. He moved closer to her, crowding her a little, and she turned and said "Mister Caudill!" in a put-on voice and turned away again. "Can't tell what to think of you."

"Ain't any different from other men, I reckon, not in what I want."

He heard the quick catch of her breath, but when she spoke it was still in make-believe. "Mister Caudill wants the whole hill to set on, him with his eye dark and set as the hole in a rifle bar'l and his mouth never smilin'. Reckon it would hurt him to smile." She brought her face around and turned her own smile on him.

His arm bore her back, the arm that had gone out of itself squeezed her to him and bore her back while his mouth hunted on her face.

"No! Boone!" The make-believe was gone. "No! No!" Her breath panted the words. Against his mouth her cheek was hot. "No!" Her back stiffened against his pull, stiffened and gave to him, little by little, while the panting grew and the hands that had made out to push him away lay weak on his shoulders. "No, Boone." His mouth found her lips and the lips came alive and her back settled to the ground. There was the hot, fast breathing of her in his ear and the arms tightening and the body answering, and, far off, the fool mockingbird singing, until the blood in his head shut it out.

He got up afterward and straightened himself, looking down while she lowered her skirt and curled on her side and lay in the grass, her mouth still a little broken from the feeling in her and her shoulders bucking to her catchy breath.

Her voice was small and jerky but still it spoke as if of something sure. "When'1l we be married, Boone?"

He had wanted this woman and now he had had her and never wanted her again. In him there was only a deadness, the numb deadness of a man sure enough about dead. He sank down in the grass.

"When, Boone?" It was her hand now that hunted for his and cuddled it in the warm palm as if it was hers for good and all.

"I ain't thought about that."

"We got to be married," she said, and he thought he heard the quick sound of scare in her tone. "We just got to be married."

Not even the stirring was in him but only the dead emptiness and, slowly, the feeling he had to go. He couldn't abide Kentucky longer, couldn't abide the little boresome life, couldn't abide Ma or Dan or this girl that thought she owned him. Things began to flash in his mind, out of the dark he'd kept them buried in. He had had this Nancy, and now he couldn't think of her for the dark, slender face and the big eyes of another that he had sworn to put away from all remembering.

"You ain't said when, Boone."

He had to go. His feet straightened and lifted him up. "I got a woman."

He left her sobbing in the grass. Once he heard her cry after him and took a glance back and saw her sitting and bowed over. It was too bad she took it so hard, but he had to go. Under him his feet quickened.

No light showed from the cabin. He opened the door and felt for his buckskins and rifle behind it and closed the door and put on his hunting shirt and leggings. Old Blue sniffed at the leather and at the rifle and raised his head, thinking these tame days were gone. In the moonlight Boone could see the slow switch of the nubbin that was left of his tail.

Things kept coming at Boone, up from his deep guts into his mind, out of no-feeling into hurt. He couldn't hold them back, couldn't keep folks and places and remembered doings out of his head, goddam it! Goddam it! Dark eyes and blind eyes and bright blue eyes. Black hair, red hair. "Reckon this'n just stoled into the fambly." Goddam it! Brown plains, west wind, wide sky, pistol sounding big inside the tepee.

He had to go. West again. Somewhere west, as in that far-off time. Maybe to see Dick Summers on the way. Maybe to tell old Dick.

He didn't realize he was running until he saw Blue trotting to keep up.
 

A woman yellow with fever and heavy with the young one in her paddled to the door and stood there puffing a little, looking at Boone out of eyes that had a sick shine in them.

"No got food," she said in a high flat voice while sheshook her head.

"I ain't an Injun. Dick Summers here?"

"You look like one, enough to fool a body."

"Dick Summers here?"

"He is and he ain't. If it's the house you mean, he ain't. He's yonder in the field somewhere."

"I kin wait, or look for him, one."

"Set on the step then. He'll be in directly."

Boone leaned his rifle against the cabin and sat down. The woman eyed him a little longer and then went back into the cabin, walking splayed out like a duck.

The cabin was like what Boone thought it would be, knowing Summers, neat-built and strong, with the cracks chinked tight and real glass in the windows. It made a shadow, standing against the low sun, that reached out from him as far as a man might flip a pebble. Blue lounged into the shade, turned around twice and lay down, his old head pointed toward Boone. Down from the cabin, to Boone's right, there was a barn and farther on a field that was hiphigh in corn. In the pen next to the barn a pig was grunting. A dog that was all hair and bark ran from behind the house and yipped at Blue. Blue winked one eye and let a low growl out of his phlegmy throat, and the small dog backed up, still yipping. Then he lifted his leg against a bush and scratched the ground afterwards and trotted away with his head held high as if he had made a good out of it.

After a while Boone saw a man coming out of the field, driving a mule. The man had an old black hat on and a faded blue shirt and a pair of jeans that seemed about to drop off of him; he walked stooped, dragging his feet a little, but Boone knew it was Summers.

Boone sat watching and waiting while Summers went inside the barn. The mule came out and lay down and rolled up a dust, and Summers appeared and started walking toward the cabin, wiping his forehead with his shirt sleeve.

"How, Dick."

Summers stopped and squinted from under his dusty hat and then walked forward, still squinting. "I be dogged!" His hand slapped his jeans and sent out a puff of dirt. "If it ain't Boone Caudill! How be ye, boy?"

"So's to git here, anyways." Boone took the outstretched hand. The smile felt strange on his face, as if the face almost had forgotten how to smile. "The heat like to put me under."

Summers wiped his forehead again. "A man gits used to it. Wise-lookin' hound you got, but old and wore out like me. Come in and set. Where you pointin', Boone?" His voice rose. "Woman, bring that there jug."

"Outside's good enough, ain't it?"

Summers paused on the step. "This nigger's nigh forgot how a mountain man feels. Outside it is."

They sat cross-legged on the ground. Summers spun his hat toward the step, where it made a little cloud when it hit. With his hair cut off, a man might almost think Summers had been scalped. His head was white as any eagle's, and there were lines in his face that Boone didn't remember. He didn't remember that Summers' shoulders slumped, either, or that his feet dragged or that his belly sagged over his belt. Except for the gray eyes that were straight as ever and still had a twinkle in them, it was as if Summers never had been a mountain man. It was as if he had grown old holding a plow, looking at the hind end of a mule.

The woman came out of the door. She had a finger hooked in the handle of a gallon jug and carried two tin cups in the other hand. For all he was old and changed, Summers must be a man yet to put that swelling under his woman's apron.

"This here's Boone Caudill," Summers said to her. "Been with me on many a spree."

"I hope you ain't workin' up to a case of bottle fever," the woman said, "not with such a sight of things to do. I thought he were a Injun."

"He'll stay for supper."

"It's nigh done."

"I ain't hungry," Boone said. "Just got a terrible dry."

Summers splashed liquor into the cups. "Put 'er down, then." He looked at the woman again. "We kin eat any time. S'posin' you leave us be."

To Boone she said, "Liquor don't set good with him no more. Too old to drink is what I tell him, and tied up with rheumatics. I hope you won't be temptin' him to get hisself drunk."

Boone looked at the ground, feeling the blood stir in him. It wasn't right for a woman to plague a man, leave alone an honest-to-God man like Dick. She ought to leave him be, like a Blackfoot woman would know to do, like Teal Eye would know, looking at him with her big eyes, not saying anything, letting him have his way, not thinking he was right or wrong or drunk or sober but just that he was himself. Just that he was her man.

"You do look like a Injun." The woman paddled away, closing the door after her.

"Good woman, for all she ain't such a punkin," Summers explained. His eyes, fixed on the door as if he could still see her, were gentle.

Boone loaded his pipe and got it going and turned the stem for Summers after he had puffed to the earth and sky and the four directions. Summers blew out the smoke and lifted his cup and swished the whisky around in his mouth.

He sat quiet then, letting talk wait on the liquor. Boone drank his drink in a gulp. Summers poured the cup full.

The frogs started singing as the day turned off toward dark. The air was moist and close like a wet shirt. Boone felt a trickle of sweat on his ribs. Up on the Teton it would be cool now, and dry, and the squaws would be playing in front of the lodges, playing and laughing and squealing sometimes while the sun sank and the west wind moved along the grass. Later the stars would come out, sharp as sparks, and coyotes would sing, and wolves, and a man warm in bed beside his squaw would hear the river whispering.

"Seven year it's been, Boone," Summers said. "What about you?"

"I'm headin' back."

"Where you been?"

"In Kentucky State, visitin' kin."

"And before?"

"With the Blackfeet, mostly, on Maria's River and the Teton and all around there."

Summers asked, "Teal Eye?"

"We hooked up." After a silence Boone added, "It wasn't her as set the Blackfeet on the
Mandan
. They wasn't Blackfeet anyways, but Big Bellies."

"Same breed of cats."

"No."

"Where's Deakins?"

A man was coming along the path toward them, his high, heavy boots kicking up a wisp of dust with each step. He had his homespun pants tucked into the boots. He said hello with a little signal of the hand. "You wouldn't have a team to sell, would you, mister, ox or mule?"

Summers answered, "Reckon not."

"I got to find me a team."

"So?"

"I didn't plan too good, for Oregon."

"You ain't the only one."

"I got a woman and a whole mess of furniture and such down here to Independence. They tell me I won't ever make 'er with the outfit I got."

"You're too late anyway. Everybody's lit out."

The man nodded. "The woman got sick on me. I be et for a tater if a woman can't get sick at the damndest times. And besides, axle's busted and the mud it come over the hubs. Time I got to Independence there wasn't nobody left. I'm fixin' for next year."