Comanche Moon (30 page)

"There's worse things than cramped toes, Pearl," he answered, a biscuit in one hand and an unhappy look on his face.

He said no more than that, but Pearl Coleman felt exasperation growing. For the first time in her marriage she felt herself in opposition to her husband, and not casual opposition either. About the need for him to quit the rangers immediately she was right and he was wrong, and if she couldn't get Bill to accept her view then she didn't know what to think about their future as husband and wife.

"I'd be the one to know what's bad better than you," she told him. "I was here. I had four arrows shot into me, and I lost our baby from being so scared. I got so scared our baby died inside me." Long Bill's own view was that the raping Pearl had endured had probably killed the baby, but he didn't say so; he ate another biscuit and held his peace. The overwhelming relief he felt when he saw that Pearl was alive had subsided, drained away by the new problem of adjusting to what had happened to her.

One thing Long Bill had to face immediately was that Pearl had been raped by several Comanches. On his anguished long, nervous ride home he had half expected to have to cope with the knowledge of rape; but once he got home and discovered that Pearl actually had been raped he was so shocked that, so far, he had not even attempted the conjugal act that in normal circumstances he looked forward to so much.

Not only that, Pearl didn't want him to attempt it.

"They done it and you wasn't here to help me," she told him, weeping, the first night he was back. "I can't be a wife to you no more, Bill." All that night, and every night since, Pearl lay beside her husband, her legs squeezed together, so desperately unhappy that she wished one of the Comanche arrows had killed her.

Long Bill, beside her, was no less unhappy. He and the rangers had buried thirteen people on the ride back to Austin. Now, lying beside his unhappy wife, he thought of all the battles he had been in and reflected that a single well-placed bullet could have spared him such a painful dilemna.

"How many done you?" he asked Pearl, finally.

"Seven," Pearl admitted. "It was over quick." Long Bill said no more, then or ever, but if seven Comanches had violated his wife then it didn't seem to him that it could have been over very quick.

Since his return, day by day, life had gotten harder. Pearl cooked him lavish, delicious meals, but, in bed, lay beside him with her legs squeezed shut, and he himself had no desire to persuade her to open them.

Through the long, anxious nights on the trail he had wanted nothing more than to be home and in bed with his wife. Now, though, he left the house the minute supper was over, to sit late in the saloon every night, drinking with Augustus McCrae. Gus drank to ease his broken heart, Long Bill to blur his own vivid and uneasy thoughts. Sometimes they were even joined by Woodrow Call, who had his own worries but wouldn't voice them--the most he would do was take a whiskey or two. By this time everybody in Austin knew that Maggie Tilton was pregnant, and many people assumed the baby was Woodrow Call's, a fact not of much importance to anyone except the young couple themselves.

Austin had the great raid to recover from. Most of the townspeople had homes or businesses to repair; they also had griefs to grieve. The fact that a young Texan Ranger had got a whore pregnant was in the normal order of things, and no one thought the worse of Woodrow or of Maggie, because of it. Few had the leisure to give the matter more than an occasional thought.

Night after night the three of them, Long Bill, Gus, and Call, sat at a table in the back of the saloon, all three troubled in mind because of difficulties with women. Augustus had lost the love of his life, Long Bill's wife had been shamed by the red Comanches, and Woodrow's girl was carrying a child she insisted was his, a child he could not find it in him to want, or even to acknowledge.

"How would a whore know if a child is one man's or another's?" he asked one night. Long Bill was no.ing, so the question was mainly directed at Gus, but Long Bill snapped to an attention and answered.

"Oh, women know," he said. "They got ways." To Call's annoyance, Augustus casually agreed, though he was so drunk at the time that he could scarcely lift his glass.

"If she says it's yours, it's yours," Gus said. "Now don't you be fidgeting about it." Call had asked Gus because Gus had made a study of women, more or less, while he himself had devoted more attention to the practicalities of ranger life on the frontier. Since Maggie had immediately claimed the baby was his, and had remained firm in her opinion, he thought there might be some medical or scientific basis for her conviction, and if there was he was prepared to do his duty. But he wanted to know the science of it, not merely be told that women knew about such things.

"Maggie's honest, that's the point, Woodrow," Gus reminded him. Though drunk, he meant to see that Woodrow Call did not evade the responsibilities of fatherhood.

"I know she's honest," Call replied. "That don't mean she's right about everything. Honest people make mistakes too.

"I'm honest, and I've made plenty," he added.

"I even make mistakes," Long Bill admitted, ruefully. "And I'm as honest as the day is long." "Pshaw, you ain't!" Gus said. "I expect you told Pearl you was standing guard at night, so you lied within the hour. Ain't that true?" "It's not so much a lie as that Pearl don't need to know everything," Long Bill replied. It was true that he lied to Pearl about his evenings in the saloon, but he didn't think Pearl minded. In fact she might even prefer to have him out of the house until it was time for them to sleep. Otherwise, they would have nothing to do but sit in their chairs or lay in their bed and brood about the fact that they were no longer husband and wife as they had been.

"The point is, Maggie ain't a mistake," Gus told Call. "She's a blessing and you're dumb not to see it." "I am right fond of Maggie," Call said.

"But that don't mean the child is mine. I'd just like to know if there's a way she can be sure about the father." Gus, in a poor mood anyway, was annoyed by the very tone of Woodrow Call's voice.

"If I say it's yours and Bill says it's yours and Maggie says it's yours, then that ought to be enough for you," he said hotly. "Do you need the dern Governor to say it's yours?" "No," Call said, making an earnest effort to stay calm about the matter. "I just want to know for sure. I expect any man would want to know for sure. But you can't tell me for sure and Bill can't either. I don't know what the Governor has to do with it." Silence followed. Augustus saw no point in pursuing the matter further. He had been in many arguments with Woodrow Call but had never, so far as he could recall, succeeded in changing his mind. Long Bill must have felt the same. He stared at his whiskey glass and said nothing.

Call got up and left. He had taken to walking by the river for an hour or more at night, but, on this occasion, had left his rifle in the bunkhouse and strolled back to get it. Since the raid no one ventured out of town, day or night, without a rifle.

"Woodrow's hard to convince, ain't he?" Long Bill said, once Call left.

Augustus didn't reply. Instead he reached in his pocket and took out a letter he had received the day before, from Clara. He had already memorized the letter but could not resist looking at it again:

Dear Gus, I write in haste from St. Louis--tm a boat will take us up the Missouri River. I trust that you are safe. If you are in Austin when you get this letter you will have heard that Ma and Pa were killed in the big raid.

I only got the news two days ago. Of course it's hard, knowing that I will never see Ma and Pa again.

As you are my oldest and best friend I would like you to do this for me: go and see that they are well buried in the cemetery, there by Grandma Forsythe. I would appreciate it if you would hire someone to care for their graves. It is not likely, now that I am a married woman, that I will return that way for many years, but it would be a comfort for me to know that their graves are being cared for. Perhaps a few flowers, bluebonnets maybe, could be planted above them in the spring. My Ma was always taken with bluebonnets.

I hope you will do this for me, Gus, and not be bitter about Bob. Once we are settled in Nebraska I'll send money for the caretaker.

It's hard to write you, Gus--we've always just talked, haven't we? But I mean to practice until I get the hang of it. And you need to write me too, so that I'll know you're safe and well.

Your friend, Clara

She don't know, Augustus thought, as he carefully folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. Merely seeing her writing caused such yearning to swell up in him that he didn't think he could stand it. Despite himself tears welled in his eyes.

"I reckon we can tell about that baby of Maggie's once it's born," Long Bill said. He spoke mainly to cover his friend's embarrassment--merely getting a letter from Clara had brought tears to his eyes.

Gus, though, didn't seem to be listening.

He put the letter back in his pocket, scattered some money on the table, and left.

Long Bill sat alone for a while, drinking, though he knew it was about time he went home to Pearl. No doubt she'd be in bed with her Bible, trying to pray away troubles that just weren't willing to leave. Gus's girl had married someone else, as women would. Maggie Tilton had become pregnant, as women would. But his wife had been shamed by seven Comanche warriors, causing her to lose a baby that had been legally and pleasurably conceived.

Now he wasn't sure that there would be any more such pleasure for himself and Pearl. Her ample flesh, which had once drawn him to her night after night, now repelled him. He didn't mind that Pearl kept her legs squeezed together. Every night now he scooted farther and farther from her, in the bed. Even her sweat smelled different to him now.

He didn't know what to do, but one thing he did not intend to do was resign from the rangers, which was the very thing Pearl wanted most. That very morning, before starting in about it, Pearl had run out in the yard and grabbed up a fat hen that he wasn't even too sure was their hen; she had wrung its neck before he could even raise the question of whose hen it might be, and then started talking about the rangers.

"Pearl, I wish you'd stop talking about me quitting the rangers," he told her bluntly.

He didn't think he could survive his sorrows without the companionship of the boys in the troop; besides that, he had to make a living and had few marketable skills. How did the woman expect him to feed her if he quit the job he was best at? They'd have to poach some neighbor's chicken every day if he did that.

"But Bill, I need you to quit, I can't help it!" Pearl said.

"Don't be complaining at me today, Pearl," he said. "I've got to help Pea Eye shoe the horses, and that's tiring work." He had just come down the stairs in time to see the chicken die.

Pearl was already gutting it--she flung a handful of guts toward the woodpile where several hungry cats soon descended on them.

Pearl knew Long Bill was tired of her trying to get him to quit the rangers, but she couldn't stop herself. Sometimes at the thought of him going away again she felt such distress that she felt her head might burst, or her heart. She and Long Bill had been so happy before the raid; they hardly ever fussed, except over the crease in his pants, which she could never seem to iron well enough to suit him. They had been happy people, but a single hour of horror and torment had changed that.

Pearl didn't know how to get their happiness back but she knew it would never be possible unless Bill moved her to a place where she felt there were no Indians to threaten her. If he wouldn't move to a safer town, then the least he could do was stay home and protect her. The thought of Bill leaving made her so scared that, twice recently, just walking down the street, she had grown so nervous that she wet herself, to her great shame. She had no confidence now, and knew she had none. The Comanches had come once and done as they pleased with her. There was no reason to think they wouldn't come again.

Long Bill paid for his whiskey and walked home under a thin March moon. There had been a spurt of snow the day before, and a little of it lingered in the shaded places near the buildings. It crunched under his feet as he approached the house where he and Pearl lived.

It was late, past midnight. Long Bill had hoped to find his wife asleep, but when he tiptoed in he saw that the lamp by the bed was still lit. There lay Pearl, propped up on a pillow with the lamp lit and a Bible in her lap.

"Pearl, if you've been praying, that's enough of it, let's blow out the lamp and get to sleep," he said.

Pearl didn't want to. For hours, while Bill drank in the saloon to avoid coming home to her--Pearl knew that was what he was doing and knew that the rapes were what had driven him out--she had been praying to the Lord to show her a way to get their happiness back; finally, only a few minutes before Bill stepped in the door, a vision had come to her of what that way was --a vision so bright that it could only have come from the Lord.

"Billy, it's come to me!" she said, jumping out of bed in her excitement.

"Well, what has, Pearl?" Long Bill asked, a little taken aback by his wife's sudden fervor. He had been hoping to slip into bed and sleep off the liquor he had just drunk, but that clearly was not going to be easy.

"I know what you can do once you quit the rangers," Pearl said. "It came to me while I was praying. It's a vision from the Lordffwas "Pearl, I've learnt rangering and I don't know how to do anything else," Long Bill said. "What's your notion? Tell me and let's get to bed." Pearl was a little hurt by her husband's tone, which was brusque. Also, he was swaying on his feet, indicating a level of drunkenness that she could not approve. But she hadn't lost hope for her God-sent vision--not quite.

"Billy, you could preach to the multitudes!" she said. "Our preacher got killed in the raid and his wife too. There's a church open right here in town. I know you'd make a fine preacher, once you got the hang of it." Long Bill was so stunned by Pearl's statement that he dropped, a little too hard, into their one chair, causing a loose rung to pop out, as it often did. In his annoyance he threw the rung out the open window.