The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  But Call could not help her guard against Joey, for he was too weak and in too much pain. If Joey came while she was helping Negra in her labor, Joey would probably finish off the Captain—with a knife, with a rifle butt, with anything handy.

  “Maria, she is screaming—I’m scared,” Jorge said.

  Maria got ready to go. Negra was only one year older than Teresa, and she was small in the hips. It would not be an easy birth, and if Maria was not skillful, both Negra and her child might die. Maria felt a deep uneasiness: she could not refuse to help a child have a child, just because she was worried about Joey. Negra’s baby was there, and Joey was not. She had to go, but she was very worried. She took her sharp knife with her when she went, and she made Rafael and Teresa go with her. Rafael drove his goats the short distance to the shoemaker’s little house.

  Teresa was very reluctant to leave Call.

  “I want to stay with the old man,” she said to her mother. She had taken a great liking to Captain Call, and he to her. Teresa was the only one who could get him to eat in his few moments of lucidity. Teresa would sit by him for hours, whispering stories in his ear and bathing his face with a wet rag to cool his fever.

  “You can’t stay with him, not now,” Maria said. “You have to stay near me. We will be back this afternoon, I hope. Then you can be with the old man.”

  “But he might die if I leave,” Teresa said. “I am his nurse.”

  “But I’m Negra’s nurse, and we have to go now,” Maria said. “Bring your chickens. Don’t worry about the old man. He will be here when we get back.”

  Before she left, Maria took a cowbell. Their cow had died, and she had not been able to afford to replace her. When they all got to the shoemaker’s house, Maria put the bell around Rafael’s neck. It was a little awkward; the bell was for a cow, not for a boy. But Maria didn’t know what else to do.

  “Stay where I can hear the bell,” she told them both. “If your brother Joey comes, ring the bell and run to me. Do not let him catch you, whatever you do.”

  Rafael took a few steps amid the goats, and the bell tinkled. He began to moan. Rafael was easily frightened, for anything out of the ordinary upset him. A bell around his neck was out of the ordinary, and it made him feel anxious.

  “I don’t want you to be too long,” Teresa told her mother. “I want to go back to see Señor Call. He is my friend.”

  “He was not your grandfather’s friend,” Maria told her, but right away she regretted saying it. Teresa knew nothing of those troubles, and besides, bringing Call into the house had been Maria’s decision. She had not expected Teresa or anyone to make friends with him, but Teresa often did things Maria would not have expected her to do. Teresa found a little storybook of Joey’s and pretended to read it, although she could not see. She made up her own story while holding the book.

  “I like Señor Call—do not talk bad about him,” Teresa warned.

  “I’m not talking about him, I’m talking about Joey,” Maria said. She caught her daughter’s face in her hands and brought it close to hers. Often that was the only way to get Teresa’s attention when she was being willful. Only when she felt her mother’s breath on her face would Teresa heed her.

  “I have to help Negra have her baby,” Maria said. “I want you to be careful and if Joey comes, you run. Your brother doesn’t make jokes. I’m afraid he will hurt you if he comes.”

  “I will run away from him if he comes,” Teresa told her mother casually, as if she could not imagine such a thing happening to her.

  “Run, but make Rafael ring the bell,” Maria told her daughter. “Make it ring loud, and I will come. Don’t forget.”

  But she was afraid that Teresa would forget. Teresa wasn’t afraid of her big brother. Rafael was afraid, but Rafael might not be able to remember to ring the bell if he became frightened. Some days, Rafael could not remember anything at all.

  While Maria was talking to Teresa, Negra screamed. The scream poured out of the little hut into the empty streets of the quiet town. Gordo the butcher heard it; he had just butchered a pig and was hauling it up so he could gut it. The pig had screamed too, when he hit it in the head to kill it. The butcher had been drunk the night before, for with his wife dead he was lonely. He drank often, and in the mornings his work was not always precise. Gordo had not struck well, and the pig screamed when he hit it and when he cut its throat. He had not noticed before that the wild scream of a dying pig was so much like that of a woman in labor.

  “Maria, can’t you come?” Jorge begged. “Negra is dying.” He came out of the little house shaking. His face was tortured with worry. Maria had seen many husbands in such pain. They did not know that their wives were not really dying; though sometimes the husbands were right—the wives did die, and their babies too.

  Maria knew she could not delay any longer. She had to do her work, but she could not make her worry go away.

  It was six hours before the baby came. Negra had been in labor a long time, and Maria’s fear was that the young girl would become too weak to help. The girl’s small, unprepared body would have to force the baby out without help from the mother’s will. Already, Negra’s will was almost exhausted. Maria had to sit with her patiently, soothing her and coaxing her to rest between pains. Negra was terrified of the pain; she thought she must be dying. Maria soothed her and explained to her that it was the necessary pain of childbirth.

  “Soon you will have a fine baby,” Maria told her. The water finally broke, and Maria became hopeful. The baby was turned properly and did not seem to be too large. She had sent Jorge away. She did the work with two women, old sisters who had made their lives together. They were crafty old women, and greedy. Each wanted to outlive the other so as to get the other’s possessions. They had seen many children born and were indifferent to Negra’s pain. From time to time they smoked tobacco, in little cigarettes they rolled themselves. Soon the floor of the little room was littered with cigarette papers the old women had dropped. But they knew the business of birth and helped efficiently when the pains came. Their names were Juana and Josia. Some people thought they were twins, for they looked very much alike. But each denied being the other’s twin, and each claimed to be the younger sister.

  “She was two when I was born,” Juana claimed.

  “She is a liar, she will go to hell,” Josia said. “She was already three when I was born.”

  Maria didn’t particularly like the old sisters. They were rude to one another, often having loud, harsh arguments just when the young mothers needed quiet. But they were the only ones she could find who knew what to do during difficult births, and so she called them in. They looked at life with skeptical eyes, which sometimes irritated Maria. She felt she knew as well as any woman that life was a thing of sadness; but it was not all sadness, and there were times for hope. And one time for hope was when a baby was being born.

  Maria herself always began to have hopes for the babies she birthed, as soon as she saw them. Perhaps as they grew they would be lucky, have health, find good women or men to marry, rise above poverty, and be spared disease and loss. Few were spared. But each time when the baby was in her arms and the moment of peace came, Maria let her hopes rise. She smiled at the little child and bathed it in warm water. She wanted to welcome it to life; perhaps it would be one of the lucky ones.

  So it was when Negra’s baby finally came—it was a boy. Maria was tired, but she liked the look of the little male child. He cried with spirit, the spirit of life. Maria smiled at him and whispered to him. He was to be named Jorge, too, after his father. He was a fine boy, and Maria could not help smiling at him. The mother was asleep, too tired to need her smiles. The little boy wiggled and cried, and Maria took him outside to show him to his father. The tortured look left Jorge’s face and he looked at his son with surprise, the surprise men so often showed when they saw that a living human had been created from the actions of love—actions they had taken long before and perhaps had forgotten.


  “This is a good boy, I like the way he wiggles. He will give you lots of trouble when he grows up and can walk,” Maria told him.

  Then, as she was about to take the baby back inside so the old women could cleanse him of the birthing blood, Maria looked around for her children. Several times during lulls in the labor, she had gone out to speak to them briefly. They sat with the goats between the shoemaker’s house and the butcher’s shed. While the butcher was butchering the pig, Maria’s children were just sitting.

  “It’s cold. I want to go back to Señor Call,” Teresa said, each time. She was sullen, as she often was if her mother denied her her way.

  “You can come in where I am, only sit in the kitchen,” Maria told her.

  “No, I don’t want to sit in that kitchen. I would rather be cold,” Teresa replied.

  Then the crisis arrived, and Maria forgot about the children. Once when Negra was screaming, she heard the cowbell and was reassured. She had to concentrate on what she was doing, and she could not listen every moment for a cowbell when the little room rang with the full screams that came with a birth.

  Now, though, with little Jorge safely born, she turned to look for Teresa and Rafael and didn’t see them. The goats were still there, but not her children. She ran to where the goats were, scattering them in her fear. Then she saw the cowbell lying in the dirt. Joey had taken it off Rafael—why hadn’t she known he would?

  Fear chilled Maria so, that she almost dropped the baby. She ran with him to Jorge and thrust the baby into his hands.

  “Take him to the sisters,” she said. “Did you see Joey?”

  “No—how do I hold him?” Jorge asked.

  Maria had no time to instruct the new father; he would have to figure out for himself how to hold his son. She ran to the butcher, who had taken the pig’s hooves and ears and was putting them in a sack. Most of the pig had been cut up. Parts were heaped on a bloody table, and other parts were piled on strips of sacking.

  “Did you see Joey?” Maria asked.

  “You are bloodier than I am, and I’ve butchered a pig,” Gordo told her. He was a little disgusted with the woman, for she had blood all over her arms. Still, she was shapely, and she was his neighbor. When she cleaned herself up he thought he might go visit her, perhaps taking her a little sausage. He might ask her to make him menudo or some other tasty dish.

  “No, Joey wasn’t here,” he told her.

  Maria knew better—Joey had been there. She had to have help, and there was only Gordo, the butcher.

  “He was here. He’s taken my children,” Maria said to him. “Come and bring a gun, don’t wait!”

  In the desperate hope that Teresa had disobeyed her and taken Rafael home, Maria ran to her house. She had her knife in her hand. Call was laying outside the back door when she got there. He had hobbled out, using a chair for a crutch, and he had a pistol near him. But the chair was too short to be a good crutch, and he had fallen again. He was lying on his back. His leg was bleeding, and his eyes were open.

  “Did he come?” Maria asked.

  “He came—I can’t do anything,” Call said.

  “I can’t do anything,” he said, again. He was so weak that she could barely hear him whisper, and it was surprising that he could even have hobbled the few steps he had.

  Maria felt fear shaking her, more powerful than any fear she had felt in her life. She did not have time to move Captain Call back to bed. She grabbed his pistol.

  “What did he say, señor?” Maria asked. “Did he say anything?”

  “No,” Call said. “He came in and looked at me and left. He’s wounded.”

  “Not wounded enough. I have to take your gun,” Maria told him.

  Call lay in helplessness. He had wanted to kill the boy, but he had no strength and no way. The boy had simply looked at him insolently for a moment and left. He was not a large boy, but he had a cold look. Call had rolled off the bed, pulled himself up with the chair, and found his pistol. But it was no good. He was too weak, and he soon fell. The world was swimming, and he couldn’t see well. He could not make himself rise, and even if he had risen it would have done no good. Joey Garza was gone. Call was helpless and he had failed, again.

  Maria felt helpless too, because she didn’t know where to look for her children. Joey could not have gone too far, since it had only been a short time that she last looked out and had seen Rafael sitting amid his goats. But where had he gone? If he had put the children on a horse, she would have no chance of catching them. She could not track a horse, and no one in the village could, either. Joey might take her children far away, where she could never follow or find them. She ran to the cantina. Two vaqueros were there drinking. Perhaps one of them had seen something.

  But the two vaqueros were very drunk. They looked at Maria with disgust, as Gordo the butcher had.

  “Go wash yourself, you stink!” one vaquero said.

  Maria raised the gun at him. It was the wrong moment for a man to tell her she was not clean enough. When they wanted her she was always clean enough, even if it was the time of the month when she was bleeding.

  She didn’t shoot the vaquero, though; she didn’t have time. She just pointed the gun at him and saw his eyes widen at the thought that he might be shot by a filthy, dirty woman. Then she ran outside. As she ran she heard a high, moaning bleat from the direction of the river. It was a sound like a sheep makes when it is dying. She had heard it many times when the butcher was killing sheep. But it was not a sheep she heard this time—it was Rafael, who had lived with the sheep and made the cries they made. The boys in the village often taunted him for it. They called him sheep boy, and they told him his father had been a ram. When too much fear seized Rafael, his moan became the screaming bleat that Maria now heard.

  Maria ran toward the sound. She remembered that long ago, Joey had sometimes tricked Rafael into playing a drowning game. He would persuade Rafael to put his head underwater to watch the fish; then Joey would jump on his head and try to drown him. Only the fact that Rafael was strong had kept Joey from succeeding. Maybe that was what he was trying to do, drown his brother and sister. Maybe he was too weak from his wounds to take them all the way to the cliff where he had said he would kill them.

  Maria fired the pistol in the air, for she wanted to make Joey think men were coming. She wanted to do anything to get him to stop, so that she could get there before he killed Rafael. She heard the bleating again and kept running toward the sound, feeling a terrible fear. Teresa was the weaker child and might already be dead, killed by her brother Joey. Joey might realize that Rafael was too strong to drown, and he might stab him or shoot him before she could find them.

  Maria had two fears: one, that she might not arrive in time to save her children; and two, that the warp of her life might have forced her to the moment when she would have to kill her evil son. Her sweetest, most beguiling dreams were dreams in which Joey was good again, as he had been when he was just a little boy. But then she would awaken to heartache and discouragement so profound that it made her limbs heavy, for Joey was no longer a little boy and he was no longer good. Even in her discouragement she had the wish that it would be someone else, not her, who met Joey in battle and defeated him.

  Now the two fears came together in her, and she carried them both as she ran. She had the gun and the knife. If only someone else would come—the butcher, Jorge, the drunken vaqueros, anyone. But Maria looked behind her as she ran, and there was no one coming.

  Guided by Rafael’s high, bleating call, Maria ran through the thin mesquite until she came to the river, near the spot where old Estela sat to listen to her dead children. Joey had pulled Rafael and Teresa into the deepest part of the river. Rafael was soaked, but he was alive. When Maria got to the river, Joey was holding Teresa’s head under in the deep water.

  But Teresa was not dead. Joey had tied her thin legs with a rawhide rope, but Teresa’s legs were still thrashing. Rafael’s head was bleeding. Joey had beaten him, try
ing to knock him out so he could drown him; but Rafael had been too strong.

  Maria shot the gun again, twice. She did not shoot at Joey, she just wanted him to stop. His back was to her when she came up, and she saw that his wounds were bad. When he turned to confront her, he looked pale. But he did not release his sister—he held her as if she were a large slick fish. Maria saw Teresa get her head up and gulp at the air and felt a moment of pride at how hard her girl was struggling for her life. Then Joey shoved her under again, but Teresa only wiggled harder. Her body looked like that of a struggling fish under the water. Maria saw old Estela, sitting on the other bank, watching. She was listening for her own children and did not seem to care that two of Maria’s children were being drowned before her eyes.

  Maria went into the water and shot again. The bullet hit a rock and whined away.

  “Let her go!” Maria yelled at her son. “Who are you to be killing your own sister?”

  Joey turned his head toward Maria briefly and gave her that cold look he had, the look that made her feel she was not there. Maria had always hated that look. She was his mother and she was there, but not to Joey’s eyes—he kept trying to get a better grip on his wiggling sister. Drowning Teresa was what interested him, not the fact that his mother was threatening him with a gun.

  Joey was glad his mother had come. He wanted her to see what he was doing. Catching Rafael and Teresa had been easy. He had tied them up and thrown them on his horse while the shoemaker’s wife was screaming. It was irritating that Rafael’s skull was so thick that even three blows with a rock had not weakened him enough that Joey could drown him. Joey had hobbled Rafael’s feet; he could finish him later. He was annoyed with his sister, too. He had not supposed that she was so strong or could struggle so hard. Despite all he could do, she kept getting her head up, gulping air. He could not get a good enough grip on her neck to keep her under. Because of his wounds, he was not strong enough for the task he was trying to do.