The Big Sky (2 page)

"A body kin tell when it's rainin' just by the sound of your feet," she said, while her gaze followed him.

"You said that aplenty of times." He stood facing the window, as if he could see out of the oiled paper that did for glass. "You'd sing different if you had a ball in your leg,"

"I ain't belittlin' it," she said, and tried the hen with a fork. In her mind's eye she was seeing him, that day when he got back from Tippecanoe with a ball in his thigh and the bloody hide of an Indian in his knapsack. He had kept the scalp and tanned the skin and made himself a razor strop out of it. It was a time ago, a right smart time, for a man still to have misery from a wound.

   He swung around. "I said, where's Boone?"

   She could keep her mouth shut, but her head bobbed as if he had pushed it, pointing in the direction of the dog trot that led to the cabin they slept in.

   His voice filled the room. "Boone! You Boone!"

   Steps sounded on the dog trot, above the busy whisper of the rain. The door swung open. Boone stood just outside, letting the rain fall on him. "What you want?"

"Come in!"

"What you want, Pap?" Boone sidled in, leaving the door open.

"You been to the store ag'in, drinkin' liquor and raisin' sand, just like you was growed up."

Serena tried to keep the quaver out of her voice. "If he did, he come by it honest."

"It ain't for the calf to beller like the bull. You keep your long nose out of this, old woman."

His eyes went back to the boy. "You prit' near killed Mose Napier."

"He deviled me."

"He'll devil ye more. Ambrose Napier's swore to a warrant."

"Ambrose went to the law?" Serena asked.

"Goddam it, will you keep your mouth shut! Yes, he taken out a warrant." To Boone he said, "Git on out."

"You ain't goin' to whale me ag'in, Pap." "I come seventeen last month, and I don't figger to take no more."

"You can figger for your own self when the law says you be old enough."

"I ain't takin' no more, I said. I'll stand up to you."

Pap caught Boone's arm and pushed him toward the door. "You ain't man enough for your pap yit."

"I'll leave this here place. For good, too. I ain't held here."

Serena said, "He means it, Pap. Can't you tell? And us standin' in need of him like we do."

"I told you onc't to hush, but no, by God, you got to have your say! I ain't just tellin' you ag'in." Pap gave Boone a shove. "If'n you leave, the law'll draw you back. Git outside!"

Serena watched them go out. For height they were almost of a size, but Pap's heft made Boone look skinny. She turned back to the fireplace and with the fork she had forgotten in her hand stabbed again at the hen.

Boone heard Pap following close on his heels as he stepped beyond the door. He caught the strong whiff of whisky that had staled in the stomach. He heard the door pull to and felt the beat of the small rain on his hair.

Pap's voice surprised him, sounding changed now and friendly. "Boone. Oh, Boone."

Boone turned his head, and then Pap struck. His fist caught Boone high on the cheek. Boone staggered ahead and fell in the mud. Above the pounding in his head he heard Pap's voice. "Goddam you! Think you can match me!" Pap's boot swung back for a kick. Boone rolled away from it, got his knees under him and scuttled ahead, until at last he found his feet and began to run. Pap came after him, his boots slapping against the wet earth like those of a man with two good legs. The woodpile lay ahead. A stick stuck up from it as if waiting to be grabbed. It pulled out easy. Turning with the swing of it, Boone had one glimpse of Pap's scared face. The smack of the stick against it was like a lick on a punkin. Pap took a couple of crazy steps and fell full length and lay still.

Boone said "There!" and let the stick fall. Now he had quit running he could feel the blood pumping in his ears.

Out of the shadows around the Caudill's old barn Dan came slipping. "Godamighty, Boone!" he said, bending clown to look at Pap. "I been hidin' out, knowin' Pap was on the warpath. He'll kill you now, if he ain't dead hisself."

"Not me, he won't."

"Won't?"

"I'm leavin'."

"Leavin'?"

"You want to come with me?"

"I reckon not, Boone. Anyways, Pap ain't mad at me."

"I knew you wouldn't."

"Where you goin' to?"

"Ain't sayin'." Boone turned and made for the cabin, from which came the gleam of a new-lit candle. Before he got to the door, Dan came running up and pushed ahead of him into the kitchen.

Ma was taking the bird from its spit.

"Boone done for Pap, most likely," Dan told her.

She had started for the table with the bird. The words stopped her. Her eyes turned to Boone.

"Goddam him!" he said.

"What?"

"I hit him a lick with a club."

Dan added, "He's lyin' out there with the rain beatin' n him and he don't even know it."

Ma put on a bonnet and started to pull on the rag of a coat.

Boone asked, "Wait'll I git gone?"

"Gone?" She stood again without moving, as if letting thought sink into her. "You ain't really leavin', Boone? He'll put the law after you."

Boone walked across the kitchen and out the door to the dog trot and went into the other cabin and took a hickory shirt and cotton underwear and hand-knit socks from a chest. Back in the kitchen, he spread the shirt on the floor and dropped the other things on it and rolled them up.

Serena watched him. From underneath the water shelf she dug out a small sack and handed it to him without speaking.

Dan said, "You sure fotched him a dandy, Boone."

"You go see about your pap," Ma told him. "I'll be there in a shake." Dan shuffled toward the door. To Boone she said, "I do' know why you want that there strop, nor the hair, neither."

Boone held up the strop and scalp that Pap had got in the fight with the Prophet. The strop was a muddy brown and had commenced to crumble at the edges, but it was an honest-to-God Indian-skin strop all the same. The hair on the scalp had lost its shine, and the little patch of skin that held it together had shriveled and curled and lay lost in the hair like a bur in a dog's coat.

"I know," answered Dan. "He wants to make a show of 'em, like Pap always done." He snickered. "I reckon he'll favor a leg, too."

Boone said, "I don't hanker to be like Pap, and I won't take much off'n you, neither, Dan. Hear?" He unrolled the shirt and put the strop and scalp with the rest and rolled the bundle tight again, dropping it into the bag Ma had given him. He looked about the room afterward, moving to the corner by the door as his eye fell upon Pap's rifle with its powder horn and pouch.

"I don't know what your pap'll do without that there rifle gun," Ma said.

"If'n you didn't kill him with the club, you'll kill him by takin' Old Sure Shot," Dan put in.

Boone slung the horn and pouch from his shoulder and picked up his rifle and bundle. He looked at Dan and then at Ma.

"Best hurry, Boone," Dan said, looking at the door. "Can't tell when Pap'll come to hisself." Underneath his funning and his go-easy way Dan was a good-enough boy.

Serena turned from Boone and all at once seemed to see the hen lying forgotten on the table. She picked it up and rolled it in a rag and handed it to Boone. Her eyes wouldn't come level with his; they fixed themselves on his chest. Of a sudden he saw that she looked like a tired, sad rabbit, her eyes round and watery and her nose twitching. He felt his face twist suddenly and his throat knot and the tears about to come. He said, "Goodbye."

Her voice was a rusty whisper. "Good luck to ye, Boone."

Dan followed him to the door. Night had closed down outside, so wet and black a body felt almost like drawing back. Dan spoke just with his breath. "To St. Louis?"

Through the murmur of the rain there came to them the beat of a horse's hoofs. The Caudills' old dog began to bark. "You shut your mouthl" Boone said, and stepped into the dark.
 
 

All night Boone walked through the rain, feeling the steady drip of it on his head and shoulders while his eye poked for the dark trail among the trees and his mind kept going over the fight at the store and the later trouble with Pap. He reckoned he'd broke Mose Napier's face all right. He could see him, with his open jaw skewed over and his eyes rolling as he lay in the dirt. It was all right, too. It was what Mose had asked for. Mose was older than him, by two year anyway, and a sight too big for his breeches. A body could take so much and then, if he was a man, he didn't take any more, leastwise as long as he could hit back.

He figured he might have done for Pap, too. It was a keen lick he'd fotched him. And, like with Mose, it was all right. It pleasured Pap to beat on somebody, especially when he was mean with liquor. It didn't seem like liquor acted on Pap the way it did on others. It didn't make him laugh and feel big. He just got meaner and meaner and his face screwed down like a crazy man's, and, when he came home, everybody better act like he was God Almighty or Pap would whop him. Like as not he would anyway, far as that went.

Boone figured he hadn't done anything that a true man wasn't bound to do. A man couldn't look himself in the face if he let people make little of him. What if he did have some store liquor in him when he tackled Mose? It was still right, and it settled things man to man, like they ought to be settled. And still the Napiers had gone to law and put the high sheriff after him. And it would be like Pap to get the law on his side, being he couldn't do for himself. It wasn't fair, bringing in the sheriff, just because a body did what he had to. It wasn't right to set the law on a man, making him feel small and alone, making him run away. It wasn't right, all taking sides against one and the one not in the wrong.

It was like people and things were all banded against him, the trail losing itself in the dark and the trees hunched close around him and the night dripping wet and maybe unfriendly eyes watching from it, laughing when he stumbled. It was enough to put a lonesome fright in the heart and a lump in the throat.

Pap would know where to look for him. Dan would tell, if Pap pushed him. Dan knew as well as anybody that he'd strike for St. Louis, aiming to move into Injun country from there and so, maybe, to meet up with Uncle Zeb Calloway. Uncle Zeb was Ma's brother and had lit out ten years before to trap varmints in the west. He had fought with the Injuns and killed buffalo and made many a far journey into country where you mightn't see another man for a year, unless it was an Injun and you dropped to the ground and bellied up and leveled on him. That one time when Uncle Zeb came back to Kentucky for a visit, he wore buckskins that were black from grease and blood and camp fire, and he smelled of smoke and musk and liquor, and when he told about where he had been it was almost like a speechmaking. He spoke in a big voice and waved his arms and talked about being free like it was something you could heft. Pap sat around and drank and watched Uncle Zeb when he was talking, and as the drink took hold and his face got darker, he tried to make out that the west wasn't so much, after all, but Uncle Zeb looked at him, like you'd look at something too small to take notice of. And sometimes Uncle Zeb went quiet, looking away like he didn't see, and Dan put questions to him to get him started again.
 

Daylight came slow and gloomy, but the rain had fallen off to a drizzle and the drizzle by and by dried up in the cold air. The sky was still gray, though, and low, and when Boone paused on a ridge to look back the distances were shut off by mist. He moved off the trail anyhow, now that day had come, and in a close grove of black oak unwrapped the hen and tore a leg-and-thigh off. It wasn't much more than a bite, hungry as he was, but when he had sucked the bones clean he wound the rag back around the rest of the hen and stuffed it in the sack and set about charging Old Sure Shot, the long-barreled Kentucky rifle that Pap had set such store by. Pap would hardly let a body look at it, he prided it that much. The feel of the smooth steel and dressed sugar wood was good to the hand.

The loading done, Boone settled his shoulders against the base of a tree, feeling his muscles melt. He would get up in a shake and go on, he told himself, and fell asleep at once. He woke up worried and stiff with chill. By the looks of the sunless sky he figured the time to be high noon. He got up, anxious with the feeling that he had wasted time that might go against him, and set off again.
He kept to the side of the trail now, in the cover of the wooded ridges, and scanned the back track when the view opened behind him. The going was rough, this way, but safer, and for mile after mile he climbed and dipped and wound through the timber, until dark began to settle again and he stood high above the valley of the Kentucky river, and through the thickening dusk saw below him a spread of buildings that he took for Frankfort.

He stood still, and felt tiredness on him like a weight, pulling at his muscles, trying to drag him down to earth. As he halted there on the height where the rolling Blue Grass fell away toward the river, he began to shake with cold. Even yet there was a dampness in his clothes which went chill against his skin as the wind blew up the river, driving through his homespun coat and worn jeans. Little riffles ran across the muscles of his chest and back, and, unless he kept his jaw clenched, his teeth set up a fine clicking.

There was no help for it, though. He hadn't thought to bring flint and steel, and though he had heard that a man could get himself a fire by shooting at close range into powder sprinkled over lighters he shied from the risk of both shot and blaze. He might go down into the town, of course, and ask for a place to sleep, but there was no telling what people were like, living crowded up that way. Probably there was more law there than a man could believe, and a peck of rules to go by or run into trouble. Anyhow, it was too close to home. Maybe someone there would know him. Maybe they already had heard the law was after him.

He started angling down the long slope, aiming to the right, away from the town. It was dark when he reached the river, but a light shone from a window downstream and he went toward it, walking soft, letting the noise of his steps lose itself in the sound of the heavy water by his side. He tripped and picked himself up, and then laid down his sack and groped backward until his hand closed on a rope. He followed it down, until it ended at the nose of a boat. His hand went out and explored her bottom and found it dry, and on the gunwales felt the oars shipped in their locks as if the owner had left her against a quick return. He stowed his rifle in her, and his bag, and then, following the rope back up the bank, untied it from the tree and pushed off.