The Chisholms (14 page)

“Then, Hadley, darlin...”

“I think we’ve got to make this journey, Min, or else learn how to die on land won’t support us.”

“Won’t we learn to die out there as well?” Minerva asked, and turned again toward the empty prairie.

The wind was blowing in from the west; it set the low bushes to rattling. They both squinted against a sudden gust, and turned their backs to it. The wagon covers were flapping, sparks were dancing in the air above the fire. Hadley put his arm around her, and they walked to the fire together. From the open-topped Oates wagon, they could hear the Indian woman murmuring in her sleep.

Hadley took off his boots, and watched as Minerva delicately pulled back the hem of her skirt and began unlacing her shoes. Her legs were still as splendid as they’d been when first he viewed them on their wedding night, Minerva standing tall and still and radiantly expectant. Her slender ankles were revealed now as she dropped one shoe and then the other to the ground, and lowered her skirt again, raising her eyes to catch his glance. A thin, knowledgeable smile crossed her mouth. She unbuttoned the bodice over her bosom, still firm and ample. There were things on a woman never changed, Hadley thought: legs and hips and bosom; that was a fact. Well, maybe they changed just a mite.

Beneath the blanket together, she rested her head on his shoulder and her hand on his chest, the way she’d done for as long as he could remember. They were silent for a bit. Then she whispered, “What do you think of the carpenter’s wife?”

“What about her?”

“She does go on nursin that child of hers,” Minerva said. “Yankin out a teat ten, twelve times a day, never mind who’s lookin.”

“Ain’t nobody lookin,” Hadley said.

“Bobbo’s looking. You ought to tell him to quit, Hadley.”

“Hell, Min, she’s just sucklin the babe, is all.”

“Ain’t a baby alive can take that much milk ’thout turnin into a calf,” Minerva said, and Hadley burst out laughing.

She tried to shush him, but she was laughing herself now. In the night, they clung to each other and quaked with laughter while the wind howled in over the prairie. And at last, when they had both quieted down again, Minerva telling him to hush now before he waked the entire party, Hadley claiming it was
her
cackling like a hen, she whispered again to him about Bobbo, and he promised to warn the boy against spying on Mrs. Comyns. “Though she has got a fine pair of pumpkins there,” Hadley said, and Minerva got to laughing again till someone from one of the wagons — they thought it was the Indian woman, but hushing sounded just the same in any language — shhed at them to keep still.

They were adept at making love with others sleeping not a stone’s throw away. Silently, they went about it. And as always, Hadley had to clap his hand over Minerva’s mouth to stifle the scream that would have wakened living and dead alike and caused St. Peter at the pearlies to think for sure that sinners had taken over the earth and were reveling in the joys of the flesh.

In a little while, it began raining gently.

By two in the morning, the camp was a quagmire. What had started as the mildest of rainfalls became a blustery fearsome storm that woke the entire party and sent them scurrying for cover inside or under the wagons. Bobbo, standing guard with Timothy, walked from position to position around the perimeter, peering through the heavy rain, listening for sounds other than those he could readily recognize, not knowing what on earth an Indian might sound like in the dark. Probably wouldn’t sound like nothing at all, wouldn’t even make a whisper, just zzzzzzzt, and your throat’d be cut, and zzzzzzzt, your scalp’d be taken.

He passed the Comyns wagon, and thought of Sarah Comyns inside there, and wondered was she naked. Seemed to Bobbo she nursed her infant daughter far too often for the comfort of the men in the party, though suckling wasn’t no sin and a breast nothing to hide. He’d caught himself stealing a glance at her more than once today, and was fearful the carpenter might have noticed. Had enormous hands, Comyns did, could just see them gripping a hammer and driving a nail home. Bobbo’d witnessed enough women suckling their babes back home; wasn’t right to stare that way each time Sarah yanked herself out of her bodice and began squeezing. Blondy-haired she was, same as Rachel Lowery, who his brother Gideon had fucked. Freckles on the full sloping tops of her breasts. Bobbo guessed she was twenty-four or — five, the carpenter’s second wife.

The rain kept falling.

Bobbo walked the perimeter with his pants bulging, thinking of Sarah Comyns, thinking of Rachel Lowery, even thinking of the Indian woman who was Timothy’s wife, wondering what her quim might be like under that long elkskin skirt, Indian black and Indian tangled, he supposed, thick as the hair on her—

He heard something.

He stopped dead, raised the rifle.

There. Again.

The sound was coming from within the circle. He whirled, his finger on the trigger.

Timothy Oates was huddled under his wagon, a blanket tented over his head, his rifle in his lap. He was guzzling whiskey from a bottle. Bobbo stared at him in disbelief. Timothy had traveled with the military; he certainly knew better than to leave his post, rain or not! A man standing guard did not run under a wagon when a few raindrops fell. He did not cradle his rifle in his lap. He especially did not swill booze from a bottle.

Bobbo sprinted across the circle. Rain drilled the enclosure, sending up wet puffs of mud wherever it struck the ground. It rattled on twill covers, soaked the open wagon under which Timothy Oates crouched, with his wife beside him. Bobbo knelt and peered under the wagon.

“I know,” Timothy said. “I drink too much.”

“We’ve a watch to stand here,” Bobbo said. “Come out from under the cart.”

“It’s raining,” Timothy said.

“I know it’s raining,” Bobbo said. “Rain is what I’m standing in here. Now come on out of there before we’re scalped in our sleep.”

“We’ll neither of us be scalped in our sleep,” Timothy said, “since neither of us
is
asleep, you’ll notice.”

“I’m talking of the others. Come on now — get out from under that wagon.”

“I prefer it here, I think, to there.”

“Are you drunk, man?”

“Yes, I’m drunk,” Timothy said, and nodded.

“Then a cold bath’ll sober you,” Bobbo said, and yanked him out from under the wagon while the Indian woman shrieked and howled to the night as though her husband were being dragged to a hanging tree. It was the most Bobbo had heard from her since they’d left Independence, but he was in no mood for her yelling, especially since he understood not a word of it. He told her to shut up, and was surprised when she obeyed. From inside the Comyns wagon, Sarah asked, “Is it Indians? Is it an attack?” and Timothy replied in his drunken stupor, “It is an Indian, madam, but not an attack,” and Sarah said, “What? What did he say, Jonah?” and Comyns said, “Hush.”

In the rain, Bobbo walked Timothy around the perimeter from wagon to wagon, supporting him with one arm around his waist, his hand clutching the leather belt there, his other hand holding his rifle upside down so that rain wouldn’t enter the barrel. Timothy began singing.

“Quiet,” Bobbo said. “How’d you
get
so drunk, man?”

“By drinking,” Timothy said, interrupting his song for just an instant and then bellowing into the rain again. He was singing in gibberish, it seemed at first, till Bobbo realized he was using an Indian tongue, more’n likely his wife’s.
“An-pe tu wi,”
he sang,
“tan-yan hi-na pa nun...”

“Shut up, man,” Bobbo said. “You’ll wake the camp.”

“It’s a fair-weather song,” Timothy said, reeling, almost knocking Bobbo into the mud, and then bellowing again,
“We he a he, an-pe-tu...”

“Be still.”

“Shhh, shh.”

“Learned it from the Sioux,” Timothy said, and suddenly began singing it in English, bellowing it as before, but at least making sense now. “May the sun rise well,” he sang, “may the earth appear, brightly shone upon,” and was suddenly silent while the rain poured down as before. A lot of good his fair-weather song had done. Bobbo walked him around in the storm, hardly looking for Indians at all now, though half convinced that Timothy’s song would have drawn raiding parties of whatever tribes were currently warring with the Sioux. Bobbo had no idea who those might be, nor even any idea whether this was Sioux country or Cheyenne or whatever; only Indians he’d ever seen were the handful of Cherokee, Creek, or Chickasaw in Virginia. Them and the woman silent now under Timothy’s cart.

“Do you know why I drink?” Timothy asked.

“Why?”

“I drink, that’s right, Bobbo.”

“I can see that.”

“You know why?”

“Why?”

“Catlin,” Timothy said.

“Cattle?”

“Catlin, Catlin.”

“What’s catlin?”

“It’s
who
,” Timothy said.

“Make sense, man.”

“George Catlin.”

“Who’s George Catlin?”

“An artist.”

“What’s he got to do with your drinking?”

“Never mind,” Timothy said. “Let’s go back under the wagon. It’s wet out here, Bobbo.”

“Timothy, you’ve put the party in danger, getting drunk this way.”

“That’s right, I’m a drunk.”

“I don’t know as you’re a drunk, but you’re drunk for sure tonight.”

“It’s Catlin.”

“Sure, sure,” Bobbo said.

“Who’s better?” Timothy asked. “Catlin or me?”

“I don’t know the man. Now hear me well, cause—”

“Bobbo, let’s get out of the rain. Jt’s cold out here, Bobbo. What are we doing marching around in these puddles?”

“We’re sobering you up, is what we’re doing. Now listen to me, Timothy. If we’re to trust you to lead us west—”

“You can trust me. Do you know how many times I’ve traveled to the Rocky Mountains and back?”

“How many?”

“Ten times, that’s right. With the military,” Timothy said, and nodded. “But not a soldier, nossir. An artist!” he shouted, and raised his right hand, the forefinger extended as though proclaiming his profession to the night, and to the raging storm, and perhaps to God Almighty Himself. “
Better
than Catlin, you want to know. No matter what you may say or think, I’m the better artist. That’s a fact, Bobbo.”

They marched about in the rain from wagon to wagon, drenched to their bones now, boots and trousers thick with mud, clothes hanging sodden and limp, the normally stiff brim of Timothy’s flat black hat flopping loose around his ears and his forehead and the back of his head, his rusty beard bedraggled.

“Know this trail like my own backside,” he said, “can navigate it blindfolded, been back and forth ten times. Know Indians, too, better’n that fuckin Catlin, can draw and paint em better’n he can. But who gets all the glory, eh?”

“Catlin,” Bobbo said.

“Catlin, right.”

Catlin was his subject, his cause, and his passion. It was Catlin finally sobered him up, but it was Catlin’d no doubt cause him to drink himself drunk again. Bobbo now understood that Catlin was an artist who painted Indians, same as did Timothy. Practiced law in Philadelphia for a few years and then gave it up to study art. Became a portrait painter in New York before he headed west some twelve years back, to live with Indians and paint them. That was two years before Timothy himself got the idea of doing the very same thing.

“Too
late
,” he said. “Got back to Philadelphia, dealers said it was divitive.”

“Was what?”

“Drivitive.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“My
work!
Divitive. One publisher... Jesus! Said I’d copied Catlin’s painting of Laramie! More mistakes in it... laughable. Said I’d copied it. Hadn’t even met the man! Didn’t know he existed! Ah, shit, Bobbo,” he said, and began weeping.

His rage was exhausted before it was time to wake the next watch. Exhausted but not vanquished; it would never be that, Bobbo suspected, though drown it over and again Timothy might. He helped the man back to his wagon, where the Indian woman undressed him, and dried him, and put him to sleep. The rain had stopped, the wagon covers were sodden. The ground he and Timothy had traversed back and forth through half the night looked as though a herd of cattle had stampeded through it. Bobbo went to rouse his father and the Baltimore carpenter, and then went to sleep himself. When he wakened again at sunrise, the first thing he thought was that he’d have to look at Timothy’s pictures one day.

The Comyns lads, whose task it was, led the animals outside the circle of wagons, hobbling them where they might graze till it was time to move on. The aroma of coffee filled the morning air, setting to rumble stomachs empty since the night before. In Independence, the party had pooled its resources to purchase the stores needed for the long journey. There would be game ahead, Timothy told them, and friendly Indians wanting to barter fresh vegetables and fruit. But they stocked the wagons with staples nonetheless, and were carrying in addition such luxuries as coffee, bacon, and eggs. The bacon was packed in barrels of bran to keep it from rotting in the mid-June heat. The eggs were similarly packed in meal, which would be used for baking bread once the eggs had been eaten. Coffee was the most expensive luxury, but Timothy told them it would disguise the bitter taste of water that had alkali in it. Bacon sizzled in the skillets now, and eggs were dropped into the pan, and soon were crackling in the bubbling grease. They finished breakfast by six-fifteen on that morning of the eleventh, and were on the trail again not ten minutes later.

Minerva hadn’t realized how lonely she’d been for the companionship of another woman. They had left Independence only yesterday morning, but now with the new day stretching ahead as endlessly as the prairie itself, she turned eagerly to Sarah Comyns.