The Chisholms (27 page)

“You can stay, you want to,” Will said. Catherine looked at him. “Tell her she can stay. Makes no difference,” he said, and shrugged again.

The women held a conference, Catherine explaining with her hands, the squaw listening and then turning in surprise to Will. He nodded. She took off the blanket then, and went to the robe near the fire. Kneeling on it, she began unbraiding her hair, preparing for sleep.

“Take off the paint, too,” he said.

The squaw turned to Catherine for translation. Catherine’s hands moved. The squaw nodded and went silently to rub the paint from her face. She undressed without embarrassment, and then came back to the robe naked, and lay down on it, and pulled a second robe over her. In a little while, Catherine and Will got under the robe with her, Will between the two women. The squaw was almost asleep. Her hand found his pecker. She let it rest there lightly, fell asleep that way. Snored gently. Catherine made sounds. Little frightened sounds. All night long. He lay wake between them.

He kept thinking about Lester Hackett.

Kept thinking he could’ve stopped the hanging if he’d moved an instant sooner. Should’ve jumped right up when Bonnie Sue told him she was pregnant. Never mind Lester was a horse thief
deserved
hanging. This was his sister here telling him the man’s child was inside her, and there he was with a noose around his neck. Should’ve done what Schwarzenbacher’d already done once, run on down there and cut the man loose. Shake his hand. Congratulations, Lester, you stole a horse and got away with it. Now about this other matter, Lester, this matter of having
also
stole my sister’s honor. I reckon we had best start discussing a wedding, wouldn’t you say, before my pa shoots you dead? Sat there looking at her instead. Didn’t know
what
to say or do, his little sister telling him all at once she’d behaved like any whore...

Catherine stirred beside him on the robe.

“You awake?” he asked.

She grunted and rolled over, her back to him. The squaw still had her hand on his pecker. Pair of whores, he thought. I’m here with a pair of whores, one looks like a cow and can’t talk English, the other mute as any stone. Was a time... hell, he couldn’t
remember
a time he hadn’t loved Elizabeth. Four years old when he first spied her in her cradle. Fell in love right that minute. Asked his ma who the young’un was there in the cradle by the fire. Minerva said it was Mrs. Donnely’s new daughter as lived down the ridge. Was minding her while they were in town. “She’s a real
sun
flower,” Will said. He was four. Loved her to death first time he saw her. He was thirty-one now — no, thirty-two already, layin here between two whores, gettin hard in spite of himself, the squaw’s hand twitching in her sleep.

Thirty-two, he thought.

Don’t know where I am or what I’m about.

Figured if we left Virginia...

Should’ve
saved Lester, damn it! Cause when you thought about it... well, he got killed for a
horse
, wasn’t that the long and the short of it? Man stole a fuckin horse, you strung him up. Them Indians who’d killed Annabel... oh, Lord, he thought, oh, dearest God, and lay motionless, eyes wide open. He could see stars above, through the hole in the top of the tent Smoke rose from the smoldering fire. Way Bobbo described it, they’d come in there ready to kill. Maybe not
wanting
to, but ready to. Must’ve been following the wagon, saw the womenfolk, saw just Bobbo and Pa all alone, thought to have taken the women and the mules. Kill Bobbo and Pa, take the women and mules. Thirteen years old, saw Annabel as a woman, same as Ma and Bonnie Sue. Came in there ready to kill for what they wanted, ready to kill even the very
thing
they wanted. Made no fuckin sense. None of it. Not the Indians killing Annabel, and not the white men today killing Lester. Cause that’s what they’d done, they’d killed him, hanged him by law, but killed him dead however you looked at it. Wasn’t what Bonnie Sue wanted, wasn’t even what
Will
wanted when you got right down to it. What he would’ve rathered was for Lester to still be alive and kicking and marrying his damn dumb sister who’d let a horse thief...

He was losing the thought, he was letting it slip from his grasp.

It had to do with horses.

The horse Lester stole, and the horses Bobbo and Pa took from them Indians, two fine mares and a stallion. If you hanged a white man who’d stolen from you, and if you killed Indians were
trying
to steal from you...

And...

And if you claimed as your own the horses had belonged to the Indians, then what was to stop the one who’d run off from coming back to claim
all
the fuckin horses — the ones had belonged to him and his, and the ones rightfully belonging to you and yours, earmarked and branded? What was to stop anybody in this whole fuckin
world
from taking anything he wanted from anybody else? Take it or try to take it. Kill for it or be killed for it. White man or Indian, what difference did it make? There were only so many horses, only so many buffalo, only so much land...

Trembling in the night, troubled, he moved closer to the squaw for warmth, and finally fell asleep.

By morning, he’d forgotten what he’d almost understood.

Will was sitting there with his two women, one on either side of him. Fire in the middle of the tent. Place smelled awful, made Gideon want to retch. Some kind of food cooking there in the pot. Some kind of animal. Lots of Indians ate dog meat. He looked at his brother and wondered if he’d taken to eating dog meat now that he was sleeping with Indians. The squaw looked like the hog Gideon’d carried in the house that time. The other one was supposed to be white. She was wearing an old calico Will had bought from a trapper coming through. Hem had been let out cause she was so tall; you could see plain as day where the faded dress’d been made longer. Wore it with black cotton stockings to her shins. Moccasins, too.
Still
looked like an Indian; Gideon couldn’t believe she was white.

“Will,” he said, “you remember we were talkin about Fort Hall...”

“I remember,” Will said.

“If we’re to go,” Gideon said, “we’d best do it soon. This is now the middle of August. We—”

“I’m thinkin of waitin till spring,” Will said.

“We could still make it before—”

“No, I’m thinkin we’re late. The snow’d catch us. Anyway, Orliac’s prob’ly right about the Indians out there. I don’t want to chance it, Gideon.”

Had nothing to
do
with snow. Nor Indians, neither, except for the two Indians right here — if she was white, then Gideon was Chinee. The fat one leaned over, said something to the other one. Her hands began moving. Will watched like he understood. Gideon said, “Well then...” and shrugged, and left the tent. Outside, he could still smell whatever was cooking in the pot. Up above the fort, he saw his father and Bobbo working on the cabin. The trees were already losing their leaves. He thought:
I’m trapped here for sure,
and then sighed and went on up to help them.

It took them less than two weeks to raise the cabin. Beginning of September, they moved into it lock, stock, and barrel, made it a twin to the one back home. Minerva’s cherrywood dresser there against the wall, split-bottomed chairs on the same wall and the one opposite, benches either side the table. On shelves in all the corners, the family’s pewter plates and utensils, tin cups and water pails, wooden bowls. Hanging on pegs all over the room was clothing and guns, cotton cards, handsaws and bridles. Same as back home. Even to the clock on the mantel. Its crystal had been smashed that time the mules bolted with Bonnie Sue, but otherwise it ticked off minutes just the same. Ticked. And ticked.

He sat by the fire and puffed on his pipe. He’d taken to smoking a pipe; kept him from getting too fidgety. There was an Indian at the fort always had tobacco to trade. Gideon figured he’d buried a cache of it in the hills someplace. Whenever he saw Gideon, he made a pipe bowl of his fist and pretended to be filling it with tobacco.

“Tabac?”
he asked, grinning like he was selling a woman.
“Voulez?”

“Tabac,
aye,” Gideon said.

He sat before the fireplace, rocking. Bonnie Sue was just the other side of it, a shawl on her lap. Gideon puffed on his pipe and looked into the flames. On the mantel, the clock ticked.

And ticked.

“Yep,” Gideon said.

Across the room, behind the blanket, Minerva was preparing for bed. He could hear her bustling about.

“Yep,” he said again.

Bonnie Sue looked at him, annoyed, and then went back to writing in her diary, or whatever it was she called it. Her pencil scratched into the stillness. The fire crackled. The clock ticked. Gideon sighed.

“Person could get fat and lazy around here,” he said.

Bonnie Sue jumped up out of her chair. His jaw fell open. The pipe slipped from his mouth and spilled glowing little tobacco cinders onto the front of his shirt. He caught for the pipe and missed it, and it went crashing to the floor. Brushing at his shirt, he jumped up and started stamping at cinders on the floor, wondering what had got into her.

“You mind your own damn business,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“You heard me! It ain’t none of your business how fat I am or how lazy neither. You just keep your nose—”

“What?” Gideon said.
“What?”

“You just — you just shut up!” Bonnie Sue said, and burst into tears.

His mother poked her head around the blanket. There was a peculiar look on her face. She walked past Gideon to where Bonnie Sue was sitting at the table, her head on her arms, bawling. Gideon stood there feeling like a dummy. He picked up his pipe. His mother was stroking Bonnie Sue’s hair.

“I didn’t say nothin, Ma,” he said.

“You go take a walk outside.”

“Ma, I really didn’t...”

“I know, son. Go on take a walk.”

There were times he didn’t know
what
in hell was going on.

Next day, she sent him down to where the Indian tents were, told him to go fetch his brother Will. Wasn’t but a handful of tents down there now. Most of the Indians who’d come to trade had already moved on again in search of more buffalo. Will came out in a buckskin shirt and leggings, moccasins, beaded band across his forehead. He’d started growing a beard, and it was coming in scraggly and patchy. He asked Gideon what Ma wanted. Gideon said he didn’t rightly know.

It was a bright windy day. Leaves darted on the air, rattled underfoot. She was sitting on the porch with a shawl around her, seemed lost in thought as they came up. She motioned for Will to take a chair, and then told Gideon to go on inside. He went in the cabin, but he could hear every word they said.

“Had a long talk with Bonnie Sue last night,” his mother said. “Told me she’s carrying Hackett’s child, said you’ve known about it since the day he was hanged.”

“That’s right,” Will said.

“Whyn’t you tell somebody?”

“I figured you’d have noticed by now, Ma.”

“She ain’t but in her fourth month, and carryin small as a walnut.”

“Anyway, Ma, it’s Bonnie Sue’s own business, ain’t it?”

There was a note of warning in his voice. Gideon heard it and supposed his mother had, too. She was quiet for a minute, maybe trying to figure whether or not to let the challenge pass. Instead, she said, “Seems everybody in this family got his own business anymore.”

“Meanin what?” Will said.

“Meanin you go figure it out, son,” she said. Gideon heard her chair scraping back. Next thing he knew, she was in the cabin, walking straight to the fire. She picked up the poker, seemed not to know what she’d intended doing with it, and set it right down again. Will came in, stood just beside the door.

“You got somethin to say to me, Ma, I’d appreciate your—”

“I got nothing more to say to you,” she said. “Go on back to your squaws down there, go on.”

Will looked at her. “Ma...” he said.

“Just go on,” she said.

“I’m a grown man.”

“I know you are.”

“If I choose to care for—”

“Your sister was killed by an Indian,” she said flatly.

“Catherine ain’t no Indian.”

“She’s as Indian as the other one; I see scant difference.”

“Anyway, that ain’t even the point. They’d die without me to care for them. There’s just the two of them alone...”

“They seemed to be doin fine before you got here.”

“Ma, they’re people same as you and me.”

“They’re people same as who killed your sister! Will,” she said, “you’d best go, fore we say things there’s no turnin back from.”

“Let’s get them said then.”

“I said all I got to say. Your sister was killed by an Indian, and you’re livin with a pair of them.”

“One thing’s got nothin to do with the other,” Will said. “My grandpa was killed by an Indian, too. What’s—”

“Yes!”

“What the hell’s one thing—”

“You cuss in this house!”

“
Shit,
Ma!”

“Go cuss with your squaws!” Minerva said. “Go cuss with them...” She clamped her mouth shut, folded her arms across her waist, turned her back to him.

Will stood inside the door just a moment longer.

“I miss Annabel as much as you do,” he said. “I loved her, too,” he said, and went out of the house.

She was still standing at the fireplace, her back to the door. Gideon went swiftly to the window. His brother was walking down toward the tents again. His hands were in his pockets. His shoulders were hunched against the wind. Winter was coming.

The first snow fell early in November.

The woods were still and white. Gideon worked in them silently all morning, and by noon had chopped enough wood to last through Christmas anyway. He was bone weary when he finished. Slung his ax over his shoulder, started down through the cleared field toward the cabin. His father was there in the middle of the field, talking to Schwarzenbacher, the snow falling all around them. Schwarzenbacher was swathed in fur from head to toe, a fur hat and a fur coat and fur boots and fur mittens. He looked more like an animal of the forest than the living animals the hides had been taken from. He waved, and Gideon waved back, and walked to where they were standing.