The Way West (4 page)

    "Tadlock's a good-enough man," Evans said. "Got more learning than most. Spills over with feelin' for America. He sure-God wants to be captain of the company."
   "Where'd you say he's from?"
   "Illinois. Illinois-river country, but I don't figure him for a farmer. Officeholder, more likely. I seen him in town this morning. Told him not to come out, but it could be he will. He's a mule-headed man."
   Summers didn't let himself answer, not being sure what to make of Tadlock. Right off, though, he didn't take to him.
   After a silence Evans asked, "You want to take a look?" He bent his head toward the cabin. "The women want you should have a look."
   Summers said, "Sure enough," but he didn't get up. He didn't want to get up just yet.
   He felt sad and, in a way, at home with sadness. It was only the young who took on over death and disappointment, maybe because they expected more than God Almighty would ever give. In time a man took losses as they came, a man going on to fifty did, anyway, remembering old goodbyes.
   That was how he was saying goodbye to his woman. She hadn't been a well woman, not ever since he'd known her, but yellow and drawn out by fever and sick to death once before, when she'd slipped the young one he had planted in her. But for all that, she had been a good woman, not smart-looking or playful or gentle on the outside, but hard-working and wishful of good things for him. Was she alive now, she would follow the cow out in the morning to find where the young wild greens were growing, and so boil him a kettle of them along with a piece of fat meat. It wasn't exactly the fever that killed her; it was just as if her strength had run out. She had taken to bed and died in two days, knowing all the time she had to die and looking at him with fever-shiny eyes and neither of them able to say anything to each other but little, piddling things like never seen a nicer spring or wonder if Lije Evans sold his place yet so's to go to Oregon. He had seen old horses die like that. He had seen them go and lie down and give up and look at you with slow eyes while life leaked away.
   A plain-looking, goodhearted woman. He thought maybe he ought to feel worse at losing her, as if the way he felt wasn't fitting to her. He oughtn't to be thinking of young squaws and old days in the mountains. But he had always thought about them some, even while she was alive. Her being dead didn't make the thinking worse.
   Like everything else, feelings got mixed up, so that you could be sad and know you ought to be sad, and still be kind of light-spirited, too, as he was himself. Down in him, if he didn't watch against it, he felt free again. It was as if the world had opened up. He felt free, and it was spring, and the mountains stood sharp in his mind, and he could pilot a wagon train to Oregon as well as anybody. He took himself for an old fool, but maybe it didn't hurt to think he could begin fresh, or get back what had made the young years good. He was sad, sure rnough, but set up, too. Already he could feel the west wind in his face and see the cactus flowering. He was glad he didn't have to explain to anyone -to God, for instance- the way it was with him.
   It had grown so dark he couldn't see the people at the cabin, except when a head moved across the lighted window. He could hear their voices, though, the throaty talk of men holding themselves in while they sat around outside the cabin with a bottle and the higher voices of women coming from inside. Down toward the barn the hogs were uneasy, making a noise like growling, which some folks would say was a sign of storm.
   "'Nother thing," Evans said. "There's a preacher takin' the night at the Tuckers'. Tucker wanted I should ask you do you want him to preach the funeral."
   "I left it all to him."
   "But he didn't know about this preacher. The preacher just drifted in. A Methodist, Tucker said he was."
   "One's as good as another, I reckon. She would want a preacher."
   "Funeral in the morning," Evans said, not asking a question but telling what he knew. Summers nodded.
   "Be best."
   Summers kept on nodding.
   "Preacher might want a piece of money, Dick. 'Course, we could sing a song and Harry Barlow could read Scripture and say a prayer, and we could let it go at that?"
  "Let the preacher come, Lije. I figured Tucker would get one out of Independence, a Campbellite if he could, for that's the way his mind runs."
   "I'll tell Tucker. This here preacher's bound for Oregon, or so I hear."
   "That so?" Summers got off the stump. "I better see how the women done." He walked with Evans to the cabin.
   The men fell silent as he passed through the sitting circle, and the women hushed and stepped aside when he entered. They looked flushed and livelier than usual. He thought, without faulting them, that there was nothing like a death to bring women to life. They spoke low or just nodded to him -all except Mrs. Evans- and he knew they were uneasy with him around, remembering maybe how full of chatter they had been or wondering what he would say. There was a joint of meat on the kitchen table, and greens, and a white-flour pie and a pan of corn bread and a pile of other stuff. Through the door to the bedroom he could make out the body in the box Lije Evans had built. The box rested on two trestles that Summers had used in his carpenter work.
   "After you take a look, you come and eat," Mrs. Evans said in her strong voice. "Everybody's et, and you got to eat, regardless." She walked into the bedroom with him, a hefty, bigbosomed woman who stepped light for all her weight. In one hand she carried a slut. The weak light of it made moving shadows in the room. She held it close to the box so that he could see.
   They had scrubbed Mattie and combed her hair and laid her out with her arms crossed on her chest, and she looked like death-by-fever, as Summers had known she would. For a long minute he looked down at her, hearing Mrs. Evans breathe by his side and feeling the women waiting for his words. He saw the new dress they'd bought and saw the hands worn and ingrained with dirt in spite of scrubbing and the color of old fever on the brow and cheeks. The hair, now that he came to look at it, was whiter than he remembered. He wouldn't see her any more, dyeing homespun with bark or copperas or indigo, or sewing, or making candles, or mashing flint corn for starch, or looking at the sun mark on the kitchen floor to tell what time it was. All that was left was the still, shrunk body, and come morning it would be gone, too, and it would be like Mattie never lived except as he remembered her.
   She had been his woman. She had shared his bed and kept his house and done her full share and more of the work and been a good if not exciting wife in all ways, and he ought not to be wanting to get away from what was left of her, from the yellowed skin and sunken eyes and the sober-sided look she always wore.
  He waited another minute, not touching her and not wanting to, and then he turned around, nodding slow. "I'm obliged, a heap obliged," he said to the women as he stepped back into the kitchen. "Don't see how anyone could do it nicer."
   "She does look natural, don't she?" Mrs. Evans said. "We been saying how natural she looks. You come and eat now."
   Lije Evans poked his head inside. "That there preacher dropped by, Dick, and Tadlock, too. You want to talk to the preacher?"
   "No need for talk, I reckon," Summers said, but while he was saying it the preacher stepped in. He was tall and old and lean-looking, and hollow at the temples, and his face showed weather and worry over sinning. He had slicked himself up and put on a black coat that didn't go with the faded jeans cloth of his breeches. He held his hand out. His voice was old, too, and cracked -cracked maybe, Summers thought, from calling on sinners to come to Jesus.
   "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."
   Summers took the hand without speaking.
   "My name is Weatherby, Joseph Weatherby, Brother Summers. I come from Indiany."
   "That's all right."
   The cracked voice said, "I feel that the Lord has guided me here, to this house of grief."
   The words rolled out of his mouth, full-shaped and extra-ripe, as if being offered to the Lord. "Do not grieve. God works in mysterious ways."
   At another time, Summers would have had to smile to himself. Preachers and medicine men -they were cut from the same cloth. They made out to know what nobody could. Companyeros to the Great Spirit. But he didn't smile now. He just looked into the faded blue eyes and the old face, and knew it for a fact that Weatherby believed what he said.
   "Brother Tucker tells me you would like for me to conduct the service."
   "That's neighborly."
   "Do you have a favorite psalm or text? Or did she?"
   "Not as I remember."
   "I will read from Ephesians then."
   "You pick it out."
   The bony head bobbed, then lifted to say, "They tell me you may pilot a party to Oregon?"
   "Might be."
   "I want to go. I feel the Lord is calling me to the new land, perhaps to bring His blessings to the heathen."
   "It's a long piece, for them as ain't young or used to it."
   "I put my faith in Him."
   "You won't have any trouble findin' a company. There's plenty aim to go, from Independence and St. Joe."
   "What about yours?"
   "It ain't mine, even if I go. Companies make their own rules. I reckon they'd be glad to have you."
   Mrs. Evans tugged at Summers' arm. "Come and eat."
   "Maybe I better see Tadlock," he answered. "I'll be back in a shake."
   Tadlock was standing just outside the door. "We'd like to talk to you a minute, if you'll forgive us for coming at this time."
   "Who is it?" Summers asked, as if he didn't know. "Several of us, representing the society."
   Mrs. Evans' voice floated out the door. "I declare! You ought to give a man time to eat."
   Tadlock led the way over to the big oak that shaded the cabin at noon, or that would shade it when it got its leaves out. There were four other men there, counting Lije Evans, who spoke up to say, "This ain't my idea, Dick."
   Tadlock said, "Someone has to take responsibility." He stood solid on his feet. His face turned from Evans to Summers. "This isn't pleasant, let me tell you. But it was a month ago, almost, that we asked you, and you didn't quite say yes or no, and now, as we see it, you have no particular reason to stay on here. Time is running short. We have to have an answer. We want to be first on the way. Are you going to pilot us or not? If not, we must find another man."
   "Maybe you better be lookin' around."
   "As I said, we want to be first out, so we don't have to eat the dirt of trains ahead of us, so that we'll have grazing for our stock."
   "Good idea," Summers said.
   Evans put in, "We'd rather have you, Dick."
   "It's just that we can't fool around," Tadlock said. There was something about him, about his stand and his talk, that put Summers a little in mind of a man daring you to spit in his face.
   "Do what you please," Summers answered.
   He turned and made for the cabin, thinking over what he had said, thinking it wouldn't have made any difference if he had told them now. It was just that Tadlock graveled him -and perhaps for no good reason at all except his outside manner. A man didn't like to be pushed.
   Summers already knew well enough what his answer was. He wished the funeral was over. He would sell out, except for the land itself, which he might have to come back to, and except for the critters he would need. He would saw open the big log where he had cached his beaver, banks being what they were. He would saw open the log that he had bored into and put his money in and sealed with a peg sawed flush. It wouldn't take him long to get ready.
   The breeze that fanned his face might have swept down out of the far mountains, across the long roll of the plains, from places realer to him still than the ground he walked on.
 

THE WAGON, backed up to the back door, was nearly full, but not so full it wouldn't take what was left in the house. The pots and pans had been boxed and loaded, the bedding rolled up, the good dishes, such as they were, buried safe in the barreled flour, the clothing packed away, the few pieces of furniture they would try to take along mostly stowed beneath the wagon cover.
   There wasn't much to do, not much before they closed the door and rolled away and left the Evans home to be somebody else's. Doing the last-minute things, finding a forgotten towel or stirring spoon, sweeping up so's to leave the cabin tidy, Rebecca Evans tried to match the cheerful hurry of the men. They had got the second wagon loaded, with bought food, plows and harness, the grinding stone and anvil, tools, the heavy stuff that Lije thought might be scarce in Oregon. Afterwards they'd tramped from the barn to start emptying out the house, Brownie asking, "What's next, Ma? What's next?" Lije saying, "It don't matter much now how we load. We'll straighten up at rendezvous."
   It was like men, she thought, to be excited and not to feel with their excitement such a sadness as a woman did at saying goodbye to home. To a woman a house long-lived-in remembered the touch of hands and the tread of feet and the sound of voices speaking low at night. It remembered deaths and bornings and the young, gay talk of people newly married.
   "You can take the walnut chest," she said and watched Lije and Brownie heave it up and saw the torn emptiness it left.
   Each stick and splinter of this place was built by Lije, each little touch of prettiness put there by her or him. Everything had something of them in it. They had come here young and sure and seen the years pass and known trouble and happiness.
   It was, she thought again as she worked her broom, as if the house had shared their times and feelings, as if, quiet in the walls, sad in the empty rooms, was the memory of their doings, was the dread of strangers coming.
   Outside, her menfolks talked, thinking out loud how to place things in the wagon. Lije's voice came to her strong, full of a sort of forward feeling she hadn't heard in years. And so it was all right, she told herself. The moving was all right, hard as it was. Oregon was all right. What Lije needed -and what Brownie would need later- was a better chance than in Missouri. What he needed was a dare. What he needed was to find out what he amounted to. A slow-going, extra-easy-tempered man, said people, not understanding it was his self -belittlement that made him so, not knowing that, without it, there wasn't much he couldn't do. That was one thing she was sure of. Except for giving up the house she could be almost glad that Lije had got one of his rare and sudden notions and signed up for Oregon.
   She swept the dirt out the door and took off her dustcloth. Everything was in the wagon. Everything. Nothing in the house but space, space and the broom and the flecks of dust she'd raised and the unspoken loneliness.
   "Old Rock's ready, Ma. How about you?" Brownie's voice cchoed in the dead rooms, in the room where he'd been born, where he'd lain as a baby in the cherry cradle Lije had built.
   Lije walked from the wagon and came in and had a look around. "Seems you got everything, 'less you want to load up the house, too."
   "Wish I could."
   "Me, too, Becky," he said and patted her shoulder and went back out, asking, "Ready?" on the way.
   "Soon's I get this poke bonnet on." She stepped outside, into the unbearable bright cheeriness of the early sun.
   "Pa says I can herd the loose critters along, and him and you'll poke the teams," Brownie told her.
   She said, "All right," and added, "Wait a shake," and turned back in, for it occurred to her, as if she had been slighting and forgetful of one who's served them well, that she hadn't taken the last long look that would be her goodbye. For a long minute or two she breathed the deserted air and in imagination put back into their places the fittings that had been torn away.
   "Hurry up, Mal"
   She lifted her head and walked out, making sure the latch they'd used so many times was closed behind her.