The Son (3 page)

Your German had no allergy to work, which was conspicuous when you looked at his possessions. If, upon passing some field, you noticed the soil was level and the rows straight, the land belonged to a German. If the field was full of rocks, if the rows appeared to have been laid by a blind Indian, if it was December and the cotton had not been picked, you knew the land was owned by one of the local whites, who had drifted over from Tennessee and hoped that the bounties of Dame Nature would, by some witchery, yield him up a slave.

But I am ahead of myself. The problem facing my father that morning was the theft of two scrawny horses and a conspicuous trail of unshod pony tracks leading into the hills. Common sense suggested the perpetrators might still be about—no self-respecting horse thief would have been satisfied with Poe’s mangy swaybacked mares—but the law of the frontier demanded pursuit, and so my father and the other men rode off, leaving my brother and me with a rifle apiece and two silver-mounted pistols taken off a general at San Jacinto. This was considered plenty to defend a sturdy house, as the army had come to the frontier and the big Indian raids of the early ’40s were thought to be over.

The men rode out just before noon, and my brother and I, both between hay and grass but feeling full grown, were not worried. We had no fear of the aborigine; there were dozens of Tonkawas and other strays living nearby, waiting for the government to open a reservation. They might rob lost Yankees, but they knew better than to molest the locals: we all wanted an Indian pelt and would have collected one at the slightest excuse.

B
Y THE TIME
I was twelve, I had killed the biggest panther ever seen in Blanco County. I could trail a deer across hard ground and my sense of direction was as good as our father’s. Even my brother, though he had a weakness for books and poetry, could outshoot any man from the Old States.

As for my brother, I was embarrassed for him. I would point out tracks he could not see, telling him which way the buck’s head had been turned and whether its belly had been full or empty and what had made it nervous. I saw farther, ran faster, heard things he thought I imagined.

But my brother did not mind. He thought himself superior for reasons I could not fathom. Whereas I hated every fresh wagon track, every sign of a new settler, my brother had always known that he would head east. He talked incessantly about the superiority of cities and it would not be long until he got his wish—our crops were heavy, our herds increasing—our parents would be able to hire a man to replace him.

Thanks to the Germans in Fredericksburg, where more books were stockpiled than in the rest of Texas combined, people like my brother were considered normal. He understood German because our neighbors spoke it, French because it was superior, and Spanish because you could not live in Texas without it. He had finished
The Sorrows of Young Werther
in the original language and claimed to be working on his own superior version, though he would not let anyone read it.

Outside of Goethe and Byron, my sister was the object of most of my brother’s thoughts. She was a beautiful girl who played the piano nearly as well as my brother read and wrote, and it was widely considered a shame that they were related. For my part, I had a bit of a hatchet face. The Germans thought I looked French.

As for my brother and sister, if there was anything improper I never knew it, though when she spoke to him her words were made of cotton, or a sweet that dissolves on your tongue, whereas I was addressed as a cur dog. My brother was always writing plays for her to act in, the two of them playing a doomed couple while I was cast as the Indian or badman who caused their ruination. My father pretended interest while shooting me knowing looks. So far as he was concerned, my brother was only acceptable because I’d turned out so close to perfect. But my mother was proud. She had high hopes for my siblings.

T
HE CABIN WAS
two rooms linked by a covered dogtrot. It sat on a bluff where a spring came out of the rock and flowed over a ledge to the Pedernales. The woods were thick as first creation and my father said if we ever got to where the trees didn’t rub the house, we would move. Of course my mother felt different.

We fenced and gated a yard and stock pen, built a smokehouse, a corncrib, and a stable where my father did blacksmithing. We had a wood floor and glass windows with shutters and a German-built stove that would burn all night on just a few sticks. The furniture had the look of store-bought; it was whitewashed and turned by the Mormons at Burnet.

In the main room my mother and father kept a canopy bed to themselves and my sister had a cot; my brother and I shared a bed in the unheated room on the other side of the dogtrot, though I often slept outside in a rawhide I’d slung thirty feet or so in the air, in the branches of an old oak. My brother often lit a candle to read (a luxury my mother indulged), which disturbed my sleep.

The centerpiece of the main room was a Spanish square piano, my mother’s sole inheritance. It was a rarity, and the Germans came over on Sundays to sing and visit and be subjected to my brother’s plays. My mother was formulating plans to move into Fredericksburg, which would allow my brother and sister to resume their schooling. Me she considered a lost cause and had she not witnessed my issuance she would have denied responsibility in my creation. As soon as I was old enough I planned to join a Ranging company and ride against the Indians, Mexicans, or whomever else I could.

T
HINKING BACK, IT
is plain my mother knew what would happen. The human mind was open in those days, we felt every disturbance and ripple; even those like my brother were in tune with the natural laws. Man today lives in a coffin of flesh. Hearing and seeing nothing. The Land and Law are perverted. The Good Book says I will gather you to Jerusalem to the furnace of my wrath. It says thou art the land that is not cleansed. I concur. We need a great fire that will sweep from ocean to ocean and I offer my oath that I will soak myself in kerosene if promised the fire would be allowed to burn.

But I digress. That afternoon I was making myself useful, as children did in those days, carving an ox yoke out of dogwood. My sister came out of the house and said, “Eli, go out to the springhouse and bring Mother all the butter and grape preserves.”

At first I did not reply, for in no way did I find her superior, and as for her supposed charms, they had long since worn off. Though I will admit I was often murderous jealous of my brother, the way they sat together smiling about private matters. I was not exactly on her good side, either, having recently stolen the horse of her preferred suitor, an Alsatian named Hiebert. Despite the fact that I had returned the horse better than I found it, having taught it the pleasures of a good rider, Hiebert had not returned to call on her.

“Eli!” She had a voice like a hog caller. I decided I was sorry for whatever unfortunate wretch got roped to her.

“We’re near out of butter,” I shouted back. “And Daddy will be mad if he comes home and finds it gone.” I went back to my whittling. It was nice in the shade with nothing but the green hills and a forty-mile view. Right below me the river made a series of little waterfalls.

In addition to the yoke, I had a new handle to make for my felling ax. It was a bo’dark sapling I had found in my travels. The handle would be springier than what my father liked, with a doe foot on the end for slippage.

“Get up,” said my sister. She was standing over me. “Get the butter, Eli. I mean it.”

I looked up at her standing there in her best blue homespun and made note of a fresh boil that she was attempting to hide with paint. When I finally brought the butter and preserves, my mother had stoked the stove and opened all the windows to keep the house cool.

“Eli,” my mother said, “go down and catch us a few fish, will you? And maybe a pheasant if you see one.”

“What about the Indians?” I said.

“Well, if you catch one, don’t bring him back. There’s no sense kissing the Devil till you’ve met him.”

“Where’s Saint Martin?”

“He’s out fetching blackberries.”

I picked my way down the limestone bluff to the river, taking my fishing pole, war bag, and my father’s Jaegerbuchse. The Jaegerbuchse fired a one-ounce ball, had double-set triggers, and was one of the best rifles on the frontier, but my father found it cumbersome to reload from horseback. My brother had first claim on it, but he found its kick too ferocious for his poetical constitution. It got meat on both ends but I did not mind that. It would drive its ball through even the oldermost of the tribe of Ephraim, or, if you preferred, bark a squirrel at nearly any distance. I was happy to carry it.

The Pedernales was narrow and cut deep into the rock, and there was not much water most times, maybe a hundred yards across and a few feet deep. Along the banks were old cypresses and sycamores, and the river itself was full of swimming holes and waterfalls and shaded pools brimming with eels. Like most Texas rivers it was useless to boatmen, though I considered this an advantage, as it kept the boatmen out.

I dug some grubs from the bank, collected a few oak galls for floats, and found a shady pool under a cypress. Just above me on the hill was an enormous mulberry, so heavy with fruit that even the ringtails had not been able to eat it all. I took off my shirt and picked as many as I could, intending to bring them to my mother.

I began to fish, though it was hard relaxing because I couldn’t see the house, it being high above me on the bluff. The Indians liked to travel in the riverbeds and my father had taken the only repeating firearms. But that was not bad in its way because it made me watch everything, the water glassing over the stone, skunk tracks in the mud, a heron in a far pool. There was a bobcat ghosting through the willows, thinking no one saw him.

Farther up the bank was a stand of pecans where a cat squirrel was taking bites of green nuts and dropping them to the ground to rot. I wondered why they did that: a squirrel will waste half the nuts on a tree before they are ripe. I thought about teaching him a lesson. Squirrel liver is top bait; if the Creator was a fisherman it is all he would use. But it was hard to reckon a one-ounce ball against a bushytail. I wished I’d brought my brother’s .36 Kentucky. I began to graze on the mulberries and soon they were all gone. Mother preferred blackberries anyway. She viewed mulberries the same as sassafras tea, low class.

After another hour of fishing I saw a flock of turkeys on the opposite bank and shot one of the poults. It was seventy yards but the head came clean off. I was allowed to aim at the head, my brother was not—the poult flapped its wings crazily, trying to fly while the blood fountained up. A shot for the record books.

I braced my fishing pole under a rock, swabbed the barrel clean, measured out a careful charge, seated a ball and capped the nipple. Then I waded across the river to retrieve my prize.

Near where the poult lay in a fan of blood there was a purple spear point sticking out of the sand. It was four inches long and I sat examining it for a long time; it had two flutes at the base that modern man has yet to figure how to replicate. The local flint was all cream to brown, which told me something else about that spear point: it had traveled a long way.

When I got back to my fishing pole it was floating downriver and I saw a big catfish had stuck itself on my bait, another one-in-a-million chance. I set the hook, thinking I’d lose the fish, but it pulled out of the water with no trouble. I decided to think about it. While I was sitting there I saw something in the sky and when I looked through my fist I realized it was Venus, that I was seeing it during the daytime. A bad sign if there ever was one. I took the turkey and catfish and my mulberry-stained shirt and hightailed it back to the house.

“That was quick,” said my mother. “Only one fish?”

I held up the turkey.

“We were worried when we heard the shot,” said my sister.

“I don’t think it’s good being so far from the house.”

“The Indians won’t bother you,” my mother said. “The army is everywhere.”

“I’m worried about you and Lizzie, not me,” I said.

“Oh, Eli,” said my mother. “My little hero.” She appeared not to notice my ruined shirt and she smelled of the brandy that we saved for important guests. My sister smelled of brandy as well. It had gone to her head and she pinched my cheek sweetly. I was annoyed at her. I considered reminding her that Miles Wallace had been kidnapped not a month earlier. But unlike the Wallace boy, who had been taken by the Comanches only to be scalped a few miles later, I was not a walleyed cripple. I knew I would probably enjoy being kidnapped, as all they did was ride and shoot.

After double-checking our supply of patch and ball I went outside and climbed the tree into my rawhide hammock, where I could see out over the riverbed, the road, and the surrounding country. I hung the Jaegerbuchse from a nail. I had been meaning to shoot something while swinging in the hammock—that would be proper living—but had not yet been successful. Through the dogwoods near the spring I could see my brother gathering blackberries. The wind was calm and it was pleasant lying there with the smell of my mother’s cooking. My brother had his rifle with him but wandered far from it, a sloppy habit. My father was strict about those things—if a gun is worth carrying it is worth keeping within arm’s reach.

But that afternoon my brother was in luck, as we saw no Indians. Near sundown I spotted something moving in the rocks above the flood line, sneaking in and out of the cedar, which turned out to be a wolf. It was so far away it might have been a coyote, but wolves run with their tails straight and proud while coyotes tuck them under like scolded dogs. The tail was straight on this one and he was a pale gray, nearly white. The branches were in my way so I climbed down out of the tree, snuck to the edge of the bluff, and got into a good brace with the sights high over the wolf’s back. He had stopped with his nose in the air, picking up the smell of our dinner. I set the first trigger, which made the second trigger only a twelve-ounce pull, then squeezed off the shot. The wolf jumped straight up and fell over dead. My father had us patch our bullets with greased buckskin, and our balls carried farther and straighter than if we’d used cotton patches, like most everyone else on the frontier.