Moontrap - Don Berry (25 page)

"
At a time like that?"

"I had some relaxin' medicine, an' it
over-relaxed me."

Pratt suppressed a smile. "How much did the baby
weigh?"

"I don't know," Monday said. "You need
that?"

"Tell you the truth, I don't know what I need,"
Pratt said. "What do you say we call it eight pounds? That's
about average."

"Let's call it nine," Monday said. "He's
a pretty big boy."

"I imagine he is," Pratt said. "I
imagine he is." He wrote down:

"9 lbs. 61/2 oz." Monday, reading upside
down, nodded with approval.

"And your wife is Nez Percé?"

"
Shoshone," Monday said. "Virginia's
Nez Percé."

"And what's her name?"

"
Mary," Monday said. "You know that."

"I meant her last name."

"
Monday, naturally."

Pratt hesitated, then looked up. "What was her
Shoshone name?" he asked quietly.

"Deer Walking," Monday said, "but
listen, Judge——"

Pratt wrote: "Mother: Mary Deer Walking.
Shoshone Indian."

"Now wait a minute," Monday said. "Her
name's Mary Monday, now."

Pratt carefully wrote: "Father: Johnson Monday.
White."

He put the pen down beside the paper and looked up
without expression. "Where were you married, Monday? "

"Hell, I haven't got any papers or anythin', if
that's what you mean. But she's my wife. What the hell difference do
papers make?"
 
Pratt looked
down and picked up the pen again. He brushed the feathers across the
back of his hand, watching the tips bend back.

"
Perhaps none," he said quietly, after a
moment. He dipped the pen again, and while Monday watched unbelieving
filled in another line.

"Child: Webster, son of Mary Deer Walking.
Shoshone Indian. Bastard."

Monday reached across the table and snatched the
paper. Crumpling it in his fist he leaned forward and said, "You
make that out again, Judge. And you make it out right."

Pratt looked squarely at the hulking mountain man
looming over him. Quietly he said, "It was right, Monday, I'm
sorry. But it was right."

"
Whoa back, Jaybird," Meek said, taking him
by the arm and pulling him away from the table.

"He can't do that!" Monday said. "Are
your kids bastards? Are they Nez Percé?"

Meek looked at the floor. "Virginia an' me took
out papers," he said. "Near seven years ago."

"
You can't do this," Monday said, whirling
back to the judge. "I'll take out papers, I don't give a damn.
Mary's my wife, it never even occurred to me."

Pratt looked down at the bare wood top of the old
table. "It's too late for that now."

"Listen, Jaybird," Meek said. "Ca'm
y'rself down. In the long run it ain't going to make any difference."

"
No difference—christ, no difference!
"

Webb moved up on the other side of Monday, saying
nothing.

Monday tore his arm loose from Meek and lunged across
the table, grabbing the front of Judge Pratt's coat, pulling him half
out of the chair. "You put it down," he said viciously.
"Webster Monday. You put it down like that. Webster Monday."'

Pratt said nothing, and did not raise his hand to
free himself. He looked up at Monday without expression, waiting.

Meek slammed his fist on Monday's wrist, breaking his
grip. Monday straightened up, looking from one of the men to the
other. Pratt straightened his lapels calmly. "I could do that,
Monday" he said quietly, looking at his hands folded on the
table. "But it would just be changed. Legally speaking the child
is son of Mary Deer Walking. I'm sorry."

"
You're sorry? You think you're sorry? "

"
C'mon Jaybird," Meek said. "We best
go now. We c'n come back after while."

Monday closed his eyes, his fists clenched at his
sides. Finally he opened them and looked at Pratt.

"
Come back? Why come back?" His voice was
cold and even now. "Fi1l it out."

"
Monday," Pratt said, "if I had the
power to change—"

"
Fill it out," Monday said. "You ain't
got any power. You nor any o' the rest of us. There's nothin' human
got any power, just the law."

"
The law is made by men, Monday. And in the long
run—"

Monday snorted. "In the long run, in the long
run. Son of Mary Deer Walking. That's a death certificate an' you
know it. But what the hell. It don't matter who you kill as long as
this shitheap of Oregon City got law. All right. Fill it out."

"Please try to understand—"

"FILL IT OUT!" Monday shouted. His body
shuddered once and he shook off the hands of the men on either side
angrily. The three of them stood and waited while judge Pratt took up
the pen again and began to fill it out.
 

Chapter Eleven

1

He stopped at the top of the cliff across from his
field and looked long. In the evening glow the river was coppery and
molten, like a flow of liquid fire. The sun was almost behind the
little cabin that crouched like a tiny frightened animal in the midst
of the cleared fields. Below him, in the eddy of the river's turning,
driftwood swung in long circles, sometimes brushing against the bank
with a crisp, crackling sound. The sandy beach of the point, where he
had given Webb his swimming lesson, was in shadow now, deserted and
peaceful.

He had cleared it all, perhaps fifty acres. He had
seen it happen, bit by bit, first in his mind, then in reality. With
the aching muscles of his back and arms, he had known what it was to
fall the trees, to change the face of the land. The great piles of
slash burning like beacons in the night, lighting the whole field,
the ashes scattered in the fall wind, and soaked into the earth by
the rains of winter.

Seven years.

Seven springs, bursting up out of the ground with the
incredible beauty that astonished him as a miracle each time it
happened. Seven summers of sweetness, lush with green, and the
forests lying still under pale skies.

And seven winters; winters of misery and depression,
the sky a leaden plate that weighed on his shoulders and mind for
long months while the land outside the tiny cabin soaked up the
moisture of the air, absorbed the endless drizzle of the dark Oregon
sky. And then spring
again, and the new
miracle.

The rain, he thought. It's the rain that kills me.
While the land took nourishment a man died, for half the year or
more. The land profited and was indifferent to the parasites that
clung to its broad back. And in the end, there was no way he could
touch it, not in any sense that mattered. If the fields were left for
a year they would sprout of themselves, and the forest would creep in
from the edges. In ten years wilderness again, as though he had never
lived and passed this way never poured his anguish into that dark
earth. He was transitory he and all his kind. The land would remain.
and the cleared spaces were no more than momentary irritations of the
skin, insignificant, temporary, ephemeral. The land did not care.

Seven years, and what have I got?

A horse, a cabin, and a vague sensation that time had
passed. In the mountains he'd had three horses and he bitterly
recognized that his dismal plank cabin was a poor substitute for the
cheer and light of a skin lodge. The mountain years had been full and
rich. Each year had its share of wildness and excitement, and was
crowded with events and memories; it was a life. Here, the murky and
indistinct recollections of a long winter one year, a year there was
no snow at all, the year the chimney burned.

The year the chimney burned, he thought bitterly. An
hour and a half of the year that had been worthy of note. In '44 the
Provisional Government had passed a law prohibiting Negroes in the
country. It had seemed like a good idea at the time; the Oregon
country would be free. But they had forgotten to pass a law
prohibiting the slavery of whites. And as he thought back, that was
the thread that ran through the last seven years for him. Slavery to
the land, to the society, living with a constant sensation of being
trapped in a small dark room. He wondered if the mountain life had
been as free as he remembered it, or if his mind was tricking him.
And, in the end, was freedom important? No one here thought of it,
talked about it. How long had it been since he'd even heard the word,
except in a political speech? It was not something to be proud of.
Here they were contemptuous and embarrassed; freedom was a child's
game, something for infants and Indians. Here a man had more
important things to think about than freedom.

"
Hya!" Monday said softly, nudging his
horse into motion again. He passed behind the screen of trees and
began to descend along the trail toward Swensen's place. And now
there was the boy, little Webb. No one's fault but his own. It would
have been so simple, any time, to have a regular marriage with papers
and all. But it had never seemed important, he had never
thought.

It was typical. He had never really been willing to
accept this new world he was living in. He had never committed
himself fully, and now he had to pay for it. Or the child had to pay
for it. You couldn't have it both ways; in the end it was all or
nothing. To live, you had to play the game according to the rules,
whether you liked it or not. And his trouble was that he had never
been willing to do it that way; he'd thought he could drift along
without taking a stand either way. But it was impossible.

"Well," he said aloud, "I expect
ever'body's got to grow up sometime."

His horse flicked his ears
at the sound of Monday's voice, then let them drop again, and moved
slowly along the trail in the thickening dusk.

***

Doctor Beth's animal was tied at the front of
Monday's cabin when he reached it, and there was light from inside.

"
Sorry to just barge in," the woman said as
he entered.

"
Don't matter," Monday said.

"You don't look too chipper for a brand-new
father," Beth said.

Monday shrugged. Automatically he went to the fire
and began to poke around for a live coal, but he had been gone too
long and would have to rekindle it entirely.

"
I wanted to have a word with you," Beth
said, watching him.

"
Tell you the truth, I'd—Could it wait? I'm
feeling a little low in the mind." He took a piece of kindling
and began to shave a fuzz-stick with his knife, watching the thin
pieces curl back from the blade.

"Won't take long," Beth said. "And
it's—more or less important."

Monday shrugged again. The knife slipped, severing
one of the shavings completely, and it annoyed him. "Roll it
out, then," he said.

Beth leaned back against the table, watching the
flickering flame of the candle that stood on the mantel. "You
know," she started, "the baby came like I said it would,
head up."

"
So."

"
That kind of birthing is hard on a woman."

"I expect all birthing is," Monday said. He
put the fuzz-stick upright in the ashes and began to build a tiny
structure of kindling around it. "That kind is worse," Beth
said flatly. "Now it's over and done with, I may as well tell
you there's one hell of a lot of women don't live through it."

Monday looked up, startled. "You——"

"That's why I stayed," Beth went on,
without waiting. "I figured Mary was going to need more help to
get through it than just Virginia."

"
Oh, my god," Monday whispered. "I
didn't know—"

"
Now listen, Monday," Beth said. "It's
over now, and it's all right. There's no call to start getting scared
this late in the game. It's over, we were lucky, and that's that."

"
There's nothing wrong, I mean, Mary's not—"

"
Mary's torn up pretty severe." Beth said.
"She had a damned hard time, and it's going to be a while before
she gets over it. Thats what I wanted to talk to you about."

"I'll be good to her," Monday said. "I'm
not going to—"

"
The thing I want to say is, with a birth like
this, all the damage isn't to her body."

"
What do y' mean? Somethin' wrong——"

"
Just let me finish, Monday, just let me finish,
all right?"

Monday nodded, watching the woman's eyes.

"
I seen a lot of breech births, and they do
something strange to a woman," Beth went on. "I tell you
frankly I don't know why. I just don't know. But sometimes, for a
long time afterward they—think different. Sometimes for six months,
sometimes even a year. They're depressed. They're scared, as near as
I can tell. When you go through something like that, it scares you
bad. In other words, there's likely going to be times that Mary's
worried and upset, and you won't know just why. But there's a reason.
There's a reason for everything."