The Homesman (7 page)

Buster Shaver set up shop in Loup before there was a Loup. The town attached itself to him the way a litter attaches itself to a sow. He had two trades, transportation and information, and both were basic, transportation to the economy and information to the curiosity. He could shoe a horse and inform you who was ill and reinforce an axle and inform you who was close to foreclosure and make a singletree and inform you who was pregnant and hub a wheel and inform you who was to blame.

“Hullo, Mar' Bee. Hey, you heard about the jumper?” He had the hind leg of a spavined old sorrel tucked up and was trimming a hoof.

“Hello, Buster. Which one?”

They might not have seen each other since November, but there was no need to get gushy. Mary Bee and Buster were members of their own mutual-admiration society.

“One over to Andy's. Name of Briggs.”

“Oh. No, I haven't.”

“They lynched 'im last night.”

“They what!”

“Blew 'im outa the dugout with gunpowder, hung 'im, buried 'im. That's all she wrote.”

“Mercy! Who?”

Buster grinned. “They didn't leave no callin' card.” He let down the hind leg. “Say, wanta see yer mules?”

“Mules!”

“That's right.”

If there'd been something to sit down on, she would have. “Damn them! Mules? Oh, no. I asked for a good team. They promised—”

“Petzke and Svendsen.”

“Yes.”

“But they got you a span of mules—bought 'em cheap, I hear. Well, c'mon, time the three of you got acquainted.”

Buster walked her out of the smithy. A man in his fifties, he was short in the legs and long in the arms and thick in the shoulders, causing some to liken his appearance to that of an ape, though never in his presence. He walked her into his stable and there were the mules. Mary Bee looked at them hopelessly. “I don't know a thing about mules!”

“Who does?”

“Are they sound?”

“Sound enough.”

“Are they kickers?”

A straight face. “I asked 'em. They said no.”

“Why does that one twitch his ears?”

Buster was up a tree. To gain time, he reached down and flicked dried mud from his leather apron. “I expect,” he theorized, “because he's thinking. It must hurt a mule to think, and as his mind is between his ears, he twitches 'em to relieve the hurt.” He sighed. “Anything else?”

“Damn them.”

“The mules?”

“Otto Petzke and Thor Svendsen. How do you harness mules?”

“Same as horses. How else?”

“Show me.”

Buster started, she helping him with bridles and collars until she said, “Wait a minute. This is shaft harness, not tongue. I asked them for a good strong wagon, not a buckboard. What have they—”

“Hold on. Let's finish up and hitch 'em up, then you can have a fit.”

They finished, Buster backed the span out of the stable, and using the traces as reins walked them around behind the plank shed, Mary Bee following.

“My Lord, what's that!”

She was as bowled over as she had been by the mules. The vehicle resembled a big box on wheels. Away from everything, on flat land, it would stick out like a sore thumb. From a distance, it might have been a hearse. Closer up, there was something ominous about it, even fateful. It was the kind of rig in which criminals would be carried, or soldiers being slow-marched and drum-rolled to a firing squad. Just to look at it lowered your spirits.

“Called a ‘frame wagon,' ” said Buster. “I swapped a Moline for it last year, then didn't know what to do with it. Just set here in the snow. So them two clodhoppers come along, Petzke and Svendsen, lookin' for a wagon, an' I thought, just the ticket for them wimmen. Sold it to 'em cheap. Set some new spokes, coupla new felloes, put on one new tire, cut the windies bigger so's the passagers can take notice, greased 'er up, an' she's ready t'go, round the world.”

Mary Bee wasn't having a fit, she was moving slowly round the wagon in search of a reason to refuse it. The box was perhaps twelve feet long and five wide and eight high off the ground, its top, bottom, and sides framed entirely of three-quarter-inch hardwood plank which had weathered dark gray and smooth. Up front was a footboard and a seat with a storage compartment beneath. The top was set up for storage of bedrolls, provisions, and such, with a folded canvas tarp and a coil of rope and tie rings. Into each side of the box two windows a foot square had been cut. At the rear were double doors and a step, on one side of which was lashed a six-gallon water keg. There were tie rings at the rear, too, in case other animals had to be trailed. And this whole rig rolled on sixteen-spoke, iron-tired wheels as high as carriage wheels. When Mary Bee had circumnavigated it once, she opened the doors at the rear and stepped up into the box.

Buster backed the mules into place, hooked up the shafts, ran the traces from the collar hames through the fills back to the doubletree, pulled the reins from the bits through the rings and tossed them over the footboard, then went to the rear of the wagon and climbed in to join Mary Bee. A plank bench with hinged top and storage space underneath was built into each side of the wagon. He slid along beside her while she inspected the grub box, essential to travel. She found most of what she would need: tin cups and plates, forks and spoons, matches, salt and pepper, saleratus, butter and grease in closed cans. She missed a spider, pots and pans, a coffee pot. Buster said she was sitting on them, under the bench. Oven? Up top, he said. Toward the front, between the benches, was an assortment of sacks and one large closed can. In them, he said, were cornmeal, beans, potatoes, salt pork, and in the can, molasses. He pointed at the open doors. “I put a slide-bolt on them doors.”

“Why?”

“To lock the ladies in.”

“Why would I have to?”

“Stop an' think.”

She thought a moment. “Oh,” she said. Then she thought of something else. “Picket pins.”

“Four of 'em. Under the seat up front.”

She leaned back against plank and looked around the interior of the wagon. The gray wood walls seemed to imprison her. “Oh, my,” she said.

“Oh, my what?”

“It's time. So suddenly. To start. I'm not sure I'm ready.”

Buster leaned forward and looked out the window opposite at the sunny morning. “You scairt?”

“A little.”

“Mar' Bee, listen,” he said. “You've got a passable rig an' mules an' you yourself. You're as good a man as any man hereabouts. An' you're doin' a hell of a fine thing. So do it.”

“I will.” She looked out the window opposite her at the sweet sunny morning. “Does everybody know?”

“Yup.”

“What do they say?”

“They don't. People'll talk about death an' taxes, but when it comes to crazy, they hesh up.”

Both reflected. Buster stuck a finger in his mouth and moved it around as though tallying how many teeth he had left and calculating how long they were good for. Then he slapped hands on leather knees, got up, and backed out of the box and down the step. She did likewise. He closed and locked the doors. He went up front and took the nigh mule by the bridle and led the span and wagon out from behind the shed, tied her mare to a ring at the rear, came round front, gave Mary Bee a boost up to the seat, and handed her the reins.

“Goodbye, Mar' Bee,” said Buster Shaver. “Folks ask me why I never did marry. Well, I never did marry due to I never met one like you.”

He turned abruptly and headed into the smithy as though he didn't trust himself to say more or stay longer.

Mary Bee tightened the reins and clucked and waited and clucked again and this time the mules put shoulders to collars and moved.

On the way out of Loup she met and passed two town women walking in, hoisting their skirts above the mud. She might have nodded, or spoken, but they took one long look at the frame wagon and, knowing where it was going and what it would carry, their own kind, turned their faces from it.

•   •   •

She stopped at the Linens place. Charley and Harriet knew what she was up to, everyone did. She told Charley she would start the gather in the morning, she expected to be gone four or five weeks, and would he please tend her stock? He said he'd be glad to, he'd look after her place like it was his own, and by the way, he wanted her to know how much he admired her sand. He'd never set eyes on a frame wagon. He looked inside and asked if he couldn't stow the provision sacks on top for her, and she said she'd be grateful. While he was busy Harriet came out to say goodbye, and when Charley finished loading and covering with canvas and tying down, Harriet suddenly put her arms around Mary Bee and hugged her hard and retreated into their sod house in tears.

Mary Bee drove on, and within a mile of home it struck her that this was her last day to be free for a long time. She changed direction. She thought she'd have a look at the gunpowder damage done to Andy Giffen's dugout. It was only three miles out of her way, and the spring day still sparkled.

She took an immediate liking to the mules. The off mule, the thinker, who twitched his ears often, was the more interesting, but the nigh mule was the worker. His nose was always an inch ahead of the other's. He'd be the one she could depend on.

She stood up once and looked behind the wagon at poor Dorothy being hauled along willy-nilly by the bit in her mouth, a new experience for her and surely a mortifying one. Then it struck her she was in the same fix, being hauled along by a wagon and women gone mad and a husband who wouldn't do his duty and her own foolish heart rushing in where angels feared to tread. A new experience, yes, but scarcely mortifying. Terrifying was the apter word.

She reached Andy's stovepipe and held the mules under tight rein down into the ravine, along it past the stable, and pulled the span up before the wreckage of the dugout. She was appalled. To save Andy's claim from the jumper they had had to destroy his dwelling. Lynching was too good for the man—she thought Buster had called him Briggs. From a coat pocket she took out the dime's worth of cheese and crackers bought in town and ate her lunch. Somehow, sitting on the high wagon seat, eating, reminded her of the night last September she had given Andy dinner at her place, inviting him especially, gussying up in her maroon taffeta, putting together a sumptuous repast, and afterward, daring to get out her muslin keyboard and play and sing for him. Rocking in the Boston rocker, drawing now and again from the jug of whiskey he had brought, her guest seemed to enjoy himself. She could have loved Andy Giffen. He had beautiful black eyes. He was tall and strapping. He was twenty-nine, he'd said so, and the difference between that and thirty-one was nil. Then she ceased to sing and made him a proposition. Why not marry her? Why not throw in together—land, animals, implements, lives—the whole ball of wax? Why not use her capital and know-how to improve his claim as she had hers? As partners, they must prosper. If there were children, so much the better. Looked at from any angle, it made sense, so why not marry? She waited, breath held. Andy had a long pull from his jug. He said he intended to go back east for a wife. She would not take no for an answer. She pressed on, pleading a case, biting her lips, humbling herself. Andy stood up, unsteadily, and put jug down on table hard. He was a little drunk. “Miss Cuddy,” he said, “I 'preciate the offer. And supper. And concert. And all. But I can't marry you. Will not. Won't. I ain't perfect. But you are too bossy. And too plumb damn plain.”

The sound of ripping startled her. It came from down by the Kettle. It was like the sound of a length of fabric, silk or taffeta, being torn end to end. Or the sound of river ice splitting bank to bank. On impulse, mouth full of cheese and crackers, she took up the reins and wheeled the mules and started down the widening ravine for the river. For one thing, she wanted to put Andy's house and bride behind her, and the shame of that evening. She had been heartsore for weeks. For another, she wanted to see the ice split, a sure sign of spring. For still another, she longed to see trees, many trees, miraculous trees.

The wagon reached the river bottom and the stand of sycamores and cottonwoods. Suddenly, nearing a great sycamore, the mules dug forefeet in and stopped, ears forward. They wouldn't budge. They alarmed her. She jumped down from the seat, slipped back to Dorothy, got her rifle, and walked, rifle ready, step by cautious step around the tree. Then she stopped, rooted to the snow. A puppet on a string on a horse.

•   •   •

It seemed to take her forever to comprehend—the man, the horse, the rope.

The man sat shoulders slumped but head unnaturally erect, held so by the noose, with bare blackamoor face and hands and feet, hands bound behind him, feet tied under the animal's belly. Face, hands, and feet had been blackened by smoke.

The horse was plug-ugly, a roan with a rat tail, its face and four stockings speckled white. It looked Indian. Head down, fore- and hindquarters sagging, it seemed about to founder, as though all that held it up was the loop of its rider's tied legs.

Finally the rope, taut up to a limb and through the fork down to the trunk and around the trunk thrice to a slipknot. Now she understood. This must be the jumper, and the men last night, whoever they were, had not in the end lynched him. They had determined he would hang himself, or the horse would. When the horse moved out from under him, he would hang. Or the horse would die and fall, and the man would fall and die. Last night! It must be noon now, or later. Hours! He should be dead now. He might be.

“You,” she said.

His eyes opened, then his lips.

“Help me.”

“You're not dead.”

“Help me,” he rasped.

“Why should I? You tried to jump Andy Giffen's claim. You deserve to hang.”

He closed his eyes.