The Way West (19 page)

IT WOULD be a dry, raw day, windy-warm, and a man would go along licking his roughening lips while the juices in him parched away. Already, with the sun no more than a hand above the eastern sky line, Evans felt the touch of it on his back. It would burn later and hurt the eye with its glitter, and the wind out of the west would draw up the skin of the face. The thought dodged into his head that Byrd's cracked lip wouldn't get any better today.
   He stood with the rest, waiting on Brother Weatherby to start. Weatherby had his coat on and his hat off and his Bible under his arm. By him was the dirt piled on canvas and the hole left from it and the walnut box that held Tod Fairman. Evans didn't know what Weatherby was waiting for, unless for a goahead from above.
   When, finally, the rusty voice sounded, Evans was back in yesterday, making the box again out of the chest that Rebecca swore she wouldn't need anyhow. It was a good coffin, better even than most made in Missouri, and he had found rest for his mind in the building of it. For the time, he almost had forgotten sadness in measuring and sawing and hammering. He had eased it by the movements of his hands and the sight of the box taking shape under them, its joints tight and smooth and its lid close-fitting. He reckoned it was the same with Dick, who had gone with Patch and Fairman and picked a spot for a grave and, so Patch said, cut the sod and peeled it back as if skinning a fine fur. He and Patch had dug the grave, deep so as to be beyond wolves, and had pitched every grain of dirt on a cover.
   Evans lifted his head, for Brother Weatherby was done with praying for the time being and was saying that God worked in mysterious ways -which was the plain truth. He tried to stay on the track of Weatherby's words, but his mind kept straying off,
   Asking itself questions, bringing back the pictures of things seen. Rebecca and Mrs. Brewer had washed the little body and laid it out and wrapped it in its winding sheet and put it in the box along with the leg that fouled it and afterwards had sat most of the night through, kept company and later spelled by Evans and Patch and men and women who came and went, bringing meat and bread and sweetening, stammering old comforts for the Fairmans, who sat up, too, quiet for the most part and dulled by grief. Rebecca finally had talked Judith into going off for a nap, but Judith didn't stay long and Evans doubted that she'd slept.
   It was a long, hard night. Outside, things were quiet except for wolf howls far off and now and then a breeze that found the tent and whispered death and slid away, but the breath of time seemed to sound, of time and distance and things that had been and things to come. Hearing Judith sob as her loss came alive in her, feeling the press of misery on him, Evans was struck by the littleness of grief here. It had to be walled in, it had to be kept close in a tent, else it would blow like dust and be gone and never a sign of it remain in the high sky or on the long land.
   "'Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions ...' "
   Mansions! What would a little boy care about a mansion? His mother was the best mansion he had. But God worked in mysterious ways. Leave it to God! There wasn't any choice anyhow. Leave it to God!
   Evans felt the tired sadness and the strength of Rebecca, who stood by him, her arms crossed loose under her breasts, her eyes big with misery and too-little sleep, and he guessed her thoughts wcre on their second-born, who had sickened and died in a year And so left all their hopes on Brownie, for Rebecca couldn't catch again.
   Brownie stood on his other side, in his face a boy's wonder at the hard way of things. How could a man explain it to his young one, who expected goodness and fun not just all the days of his life but all the days of his life forever and ever? He could say it was the will of God, which probably it was, but that was like saying he didn't understand, which he didn't. So saying, he felt ignorant and poor-suited as a father and had to catch what comfort he could in knowing that death was an accident in the minds of the young. It came and was done with and wouldn't come again except maybe far off, at a time too distant to worry about.
   Bring comfort to the bereaved, Brother Weatherby was praying. Let them accept Thy will. Let them find comfort in Thee and be strengthened by Thy loving strength.
   Ahead of Evans, closer to the box, the Fairmans bowed to the prayer. They were a little apart from the rest, for people had drawn back to leave them with their grief. While Evans watched, Judith's shoulders hunched to a choked crying.
   The prayer would be the end of it, except for a song and ashes-to-ashes, Evans thought, and then Weatherby lifted his head and pointed his bony arm and put power in his voice as if of a sudden his feelings had got the best of him. "God created everything and it was good; save thou, alone, snake, are cursed; cursed shalt thou be and thy poison."
   Scripture? Was Adam's curse Scripture, or just a saying that some people believed would make a snake crawl off and die? Not that it mattered, and anyway the snake was dead. Brownie had chopped it up, or one just like it. In quick revengefulness he had grabbed the hoe when he heard the news about Tod and had gone off as if to square accounts and had come back with rattles in his palm. Evans had nodded at him, letting him feel that in killing the snake he had done the prime thing.
   More praying after the curse. More bowing down. More asking of comfort. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish. Even in a funeral preachment Weatherby couldn't keep from taking a lick or two at the swearers and the Sabbath breakers.
   A song then. "The Day Is Past and Gone." A kind of queer song for a burying. Weatherby lined it out and pitched it with a voice that showed its age when he tried to sing, and the other voices joined in, frail beside the rock, frail over the lost tumble of country and the wild buffalo grazing and the breeze blowing out of nowhere into nowhere.

   Evans walked up, along with Summers and Patch and Mack, and lowered the box with ropes, and Weatherby took a pinch of earth and recited ashes and dust while Judith broke down again.
   The crowd drifted off, going back to their wagons to ready for the start. Evans and Dick filled in the grave and carried what dirt was left and dumped it in the river. "If God's so goddam loving-kind," Dick said while he shook the dust out of the canvas, "He's got a queer way of showin' it."
   "I reckon you got to take God or leave Him, whole hog or none."
   "You can have Him. This child wouldn't care for none."
   Hearing Dick, Evans knew something about him he hadn't quite known before. Dick was tender and tough, both, and the one explained the other when you came to think about it.
   Dick stuffed the canvas under his arm. "You go on. Give me a little time, and I'll fix the grave so no Injun eye can spot it."
   "All right. Might as well let me take the canvas." Evans headed for camp. Halfway there, he saw Brownie coming to meet him.
   "Pa?" Brownie said while still a half a dozen steps away.
   "What is it, boy?"
   "I got the tent down and the wagons loaded and the oxen hitched and all."
   "So?"
   "And it ain't my turn with the cattle."
   "What you workin' up to?"
   "So could I stay back and chisel my name on the rock?"
   "You had all yesterday, Brownie."
   "Not all. I stood guard and killed the snake and things."
   "It ain't safe."
   "Please, Pa. It's safe enough. You'll be in sight for a long ways."
   "Why you so took of a sudden to cut your name?"
   "I just am, Pa."
   Evans noticed that Brownie's eye wouldn't quite meet his. The boy was holding something back, some foolish notion, likely, that was still his notion and his secret and not to be pried at by grownups who thought themselves so wise. He smiled into Brownie's waiting face. "You're doin' a man's work, boy. I reckon you can decide for yourself. Only hurry up, I don't care much to leave you alone."
   "Thank you, Pa," Brownie said, showing a quick and thankful gladness. "I'll wait'll you roll."
   "Watch for Injuns."
   "Sure."
   Evans walked to the Fairman tent. It was the only tent not struck yet, and Fairman's teams were the only ones not yoked. He stooped and went inside and saw Judith seated on the bed, her face in her hands, and Fairman standing motionless.
   "Ain't Becky here?"
   Fairman didn't answer.
   "Can I help, Charlie?"
   It was another minute before Fairman spoke. "She's coming back. I'll get to it."
   "I could yoke your teams now. My outfit's ready."
   In the waiting silence Evans heard Judith's held-in sobbing. "I'll get to it."
   "We got to roll, Charlie. You know we got to roll."
   "I know."
   "Not yet, please!" The words cried at Evans, coming out of the wet, torn mouth that the hands had left, coming out of a face past bearing to behold. "We can't leave him yet. Don't you see! We can't leave him."
   "And not know where he lies!" Fairman burst out. "Never again to know where he lies!"
   "Toddie," Judith said, talking to the grave. "Poor Toddie."
   Fairman's voice was rough. "Don't you see? Can't you see?"
   Evans saw all right, and wrenched with the seeing, and he saw Dick Summers, too, poking his head in the tent and coming in silently and standing stooped, his face solemn and the twinkle gone from his eyes. "I kin always find it for you, ma'am, any time," he said.
 

SUMMERS LED OFF, and the wagons rolled into line, the Fairmans' outfit right after the lead team though it wasn't their turn to be shut of the dust. The herders behind shouted and whistled, riding among the animals to the flick of reins and rope ends, and the horses and mules started frisky, snatching for last bites of the bottom grass before they ran. The cattle got going slow, stopping to bawl and spatter the ground, and crowded into the strip between Independence Rock and the Sweetwater.
   Brownie sat his horse and watched the train file away and fell in at the tail and helped push the cow column through. He held up then and waved at the riders and reined right and came to the even-steep western face of the rock. A man could climb here, though he had to watch for a slip that might crack a bone.
   He slid off his horse and tied it to some high-growing sage, wishing while he did it that the flies weren't so bad. Already, with the sun hardly more than two hours high, they were warmed up for the day's business. There were little, yellow ones that bit like bees and gray ones with bulging eyes and shiny-black ones with white wings that drove a critter crazy. They had followed up, out of the damp of the river growth, against a wind that still must have blown some of them away. He rested his rifle against the rock and laid his hammer and chisel down and went over Nellie, especially the tender, unhaired skin of her tits. His hand came away smeared with sucked-out blood. He wiped it on his pants and picked up his chisel and hammer. He wouldn't need the rifle, he figured. It would just clutter him up. He'd leave it right here.
The climb was stiff, though more dangerous-looking than dangerous, up the slanting face of rock flecked with grays and browns. Part way up, he stopped to blow, remembering too late that Dick Summers had said the way to mount a hard rise was to step slow, one step and afterwhile another, so as not to wind yourself. He faced around and sat, holding to the chisel and hammer that might clatter down if he let go.
   The train was stretching out as it settled to the day's pull, heading for the gap to the left of Devil's Gate, which from here wasn't a gate but just a niche in a sudden pitch of mountain. Dick Summers rode in the lead, as always, trotting his horse to put a proper distance between himself and the first wagon. Dick was easy to make out. His buckskins marked him, and the rifle carried crosswise, and his way of riding, which was as if he'd been born with a saddle between his legs. The riders with him were harder to fix, but they would be Botter and Davisworth and Insko, who usually herded but were going to have fun today, scouting ahead for buffalo, finding out for the train whether to stop and kill and dry meat against the climb over the pass. Brownie saw buffalo far beyond them, a small herd that seemed to swim in the shimmer of the morning sun.
   Closer, the wagons inched away across the reach of plain, tilting right and left as the wheels hit the clumps of sage, Daugherty and his red-painted wagon cover in the lead and then the Fairmans and then Pa and Ma and then Holdridge or Gorham and Tadlock. Brownie ran his eye along the line, seeing could he make out every outfit. Some he guessed at by the dogs that trailed along, or by the children. There wasn't any way to miss Brewer and his crowd, or maybe there was. Byrd and Daugherty drew a tail of young ones, too, and McBee.
   With his eyes closed, he thought, he would know the McBee wagon, for Mercy was driving. At this distance, with her no more than a flutter of dress and a shadow that marched before, he could see her, the straight, strong little body and the face above it that didn't smile often but spoke with the eyes. He remembered the voice of her that night at Laramie, not the words so much, not the "I'll be all right, Brownie," but the tone she used, the gentle tone. He wondered if others saw her for as pretty as she was, for as touching on the heart. Davisworth? Hig? Botter? Moss? Any of the single men? Or the married ones like Mack that he felt thankful to for being nice to her family that the rest made small of? No, it was his feeling and his alone, for no one else could feel the same, and he would hold it to him while he waited for the time to speak.
   The horses and mules followed close on the wagons, driven by Hig and Willie Brewer, and after them lagged the cattle, hating to face up to distance, moving balky while Gorham and McBee and Shields and Patch worked at them. They all had crossed the river, which meandered toward the Gate, its banks sprouting bushes close-pressed by the sage.
   Last of all came the dust, streaming the other way, driven hard by the wind. It was a strange sort of country, where the wind blew with hardly so much as a cloud in the sky.
   Down in the shadow of the rock Nellie stomped against the flies. Up here there weren't any flies, or any dust-shot in the face, and the shadowed stone was still cool from the night, and a man could hear distance singing with the wind, from the mountains ridged far off to left and right, from the great pass and Dick's Green River and from Oregon, where Pa said wheat was growing rich and stock fattened and fish swam solid in the rivers.
   A woman, tired already but not tired enough to ride, was hanging to the tail of a wagon, letting the oxen pull her feet along. It was Mercy's wagon, and the woman would be Mrs. McBee, who couldn't be very strong and so talked about miseries and cures while weller people smiled behind their hands. Maybe they would act different if they really knew. Maybe the McBees never had had a chance and would show up good if given one. So they all got to Oregon, and he, known now as Mr. George Brown Evans, made a heap of money, being rich in land and grain and animals, and he set up his in-laws, saying, "Don't think nothin' to it," and they did just fine, and McBee shaved and tidied up, and a nicer bunch of people you'd never want to meet.
   The dream didn't come sharp or stay long, being dulled and cut off by the underthought of death, of Tod Fairman and the life gone out of him and his mother choking at the burying, and, farther back, of Martin with no one to grieve over him except a nephew in Illinois who would get the money that his little plunder earned when auctioned off at Laramie. Were they part of the sky now? Was it their voices sounding in the wind, mourning at being gone? Did they look down and see and know from under the wing of God?
   He couldn't imagine himself dying, but he could see himself (lead, lying pale and cold while Ma cried over him and Pa said, "Boy! Boy!" and Mercy sobbed open and unashamed, owning up now to the feeling she had had for him. How he came to die was that he stood off an Indian war party while the train corralled. He had stood between them, steady behind his horse, his aim true on the chief, and had brought him down; and when his own horse had fallen, he had forted up behind it and drawn the pistols at his belt -he happened to be wearing Dick's pistols and done for two more before an arrow found him. People had said, after they had got his body and pulled the arrow out, that he was the bravest thing they ever saw.
   The bravest but also the deadest! He shook the fool picture out of his head. He had to laugh at himself, making out to be so brave when like as not he'd fill his pants if ever he met up with an Indian alone. Maybe he'd turn tail and run. No telling what he would do. When he brought himself honest against the face of danger, he felt the cold turn of fear and so, except when he let dreams drift in his head, went around with doubt in him. He wasn't stout inside but weak and watery. And what he did that might seem bold, like staying here at the rock, wasn't bold at all, for there wasn't any felt risk in it.
   He was about to get up and climb some more when he saw a dog loping back from the train. It was Rock, leaping highheaded through the sage, coming to see were things all right with him. "Here, Rock!" he shouted into the wind. "Here, boy!"
   He scrambled down the slant. "Here I am, boy. I come to meet you, like you come to meet me." Rock trotted up to him, wet from the river, and wagged his tail and held his head to be scratched and touched Brownie's palm with his cold nose. "You got no business to be runnin' so, you that was lame just a shake ago. Don't you know that? But I reckon you knew I was struck with lone and so come to cheer me up." The words sounded thin against the windy distance. "Now I got to do all that climbin' over again. Kin you make it, boy?"
   He took a dozen steps up and called to Rock. Rock held his head to one side, his whitish-blue eyes full of thought, and then, as if he had done with figuring and come to an answer, he stepped up to the face of the stone, took one great bound and found his footing and bent low to the climb, traveling faster than a man could go.
   "Easy, Rock. You think I'm a bird? An' you got nothin' to carry -remember that!- no hammer or chisel or nothin' but you.
   Brownie climbed by Dick's advice, while Rock followed by little dashes, catching up and stopping, feet braced, while his face asked why so slow. After a while he went ahead, as if sure of the way now or put out by the pace.
   Toward the top Brownie met the sun, floating lazy in a sky bluer than he could find a word for. This way, he thought as the curve of it came in sight over the rock, it was as if it lay still, waiting for him to rise out of the west. He could be the sun, opening his eye on river and plain and hill while the world thought Brownie's come up, Brownie's shining, see, on yonder butte.
   By Dick's system it didn't take much time or too much wind to get to where the rock leveled off, running then in dips and bumps not to be seen from below. Here the names were fewer, cut or scratched in the stone or painted red or black, for most men chose the footings of the rock to north and south, where they could stand on the ground or on boxes or kegs while they worked.
   He found a spot he liked, the lip of a cup unmarked by brush or chisel, but before he sat down to his task he stood with his head up, letting the wind blow him while he looked around. Only the tops and edges of the world showed here, far off, the rest hidden, all ways, under the spread of rock. He couldn't see old Nellie fighting flies or the train crawling for the gap or last night's camping place or Tod's grave. There was just the flowing stone and the wind and himself and Rock and distance and the voice of distance.
   He ran his thumb over the edge of the chisel. He would put her name first. That was the proper thing. He would put her name and then his own and then the day of the month and the year and maybe box them all in, so as to close forever in the stone the oneness of the two of them.
   A long time from now she was teasing him. Care for her so far ago? Ah, it was a dream, Brownie, a made-up thing, and you can't josh me. And so they came back, man and wife, by stage and turnpike, and climbed the slant and were here again, and he pointed, saying, "There she is, just like I cut 'er back there in 'forty-five." She kissed him, tenderness in her eyes and laughter, and said, "I knew you did, Brownie. I always knew you did. Don't you know I just like to be told how you care for me?"
   It took longer than a man would think to cut a letter. The tap of the hammer on the chisel left just a whitish scar that had to be deepened by tapping and more tapping, until the hammer arm tired and the chisel hand cramped. By and by he found it better to hit harder, to set the chisel careful and hit harder, squinting against the bits of stone that shattered out.
    Rock loped after some little birds -ground sparrows or rock wrens or something kin to them- and came back and lay down, his head on his paws, his big mouth leaking a little at one corner.
   "Just you wait, boy. It won't be so long."
   He got her first name spelled out, and it was pretty, and set to work on the last after flexing his arm and hand to get new strength in them, thinking what would the people in the train be saying if they knew what his secret business was. They would smile at each other, probably, and make little jokes, as if his feeling was no more than a boy's notion and not to be taken serious. He couldn't let them know, he couldn't let even Ma or Pa know, not till later, not till things turned out. Then it would be different. Then they could see they would have been making fun where fun wasn't fitting.
   "Just me and you," he said to the old dog. "Just me and you's all that'll know, Rock, and you think it's all right, don't you?"
   Rock gave a slow wag of his tail for an answer.
   Just himself and Rock and the little birds and the watching sun and maybe Mercy herself, knowing with a woman's knowing as she urged the team along that he had held back to set their secret in the stone. Just them and the wind, which spoke but didn't tell.
   Should he chisel the name he went by or the full and proper name of George Brown Evans? The short one matched the length of hers better, so let it be Brownie. Mercy McBee.
   Brownie Evans. July 2, 1845- Set chisel. Swing hammer. Set chisel. Swing hammer. The sun was pretty high.
   Before he finished, Rock rose on his forelegs, facing south, and growled deep in his throat, holding back the bark while he kept sampling the wind.
   "What do you smell, boy? A b'ar or something?" There was nothing in sight except what had been there before. Whatever Rock had smelled he couldn't smell again. He let himself down as if not sure yet that his nose was right.
   Set chisel. Swing hammer. He had it now, all but the box to close it in. Set. Swing. Set. After he was through, he sat for a while, letting the wind dry up his sweat. Sweat was different here from in Missouri. It came and went. Didn't keep pouring out, sopping the clothes and dripping from the chin and smarting in the eye.
   He got up, stiff from sitting, and spoke to Rock. It was pretty chiseling, he told himself before he turned, and all the prettier because of what it stood for. "All right, boy. Let's go down."
   The chiseling had taken longer than expected. When he came to the brow of the butte, he saw that the train was somewhere out of sight beyond the Gate, maybe pulled up already for its nooning, for the sun was sailing high. He would climb on Nellie and gallop to it. He would hurry, since a kind of emptiness, like homesickness, was on him now that he had done his work and had nothing to take his thought. It wasn't fear. It wasn't the dread of anything he could put a name to. It was just emptiness. There came to mind a mole that he had pitched out of its tunnel once. Sun and space had scared it witless, and it had run crazy on the open ground, wanting the close, blind walls of home.