The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  The night grew colder, and the stars shone even more sharply in the deep, inky sky. Lorena drank most of the bottle of whiskey. She knew that she would feel like her head was cracking in the morning, but she didn’t care. The restlessness she felt had to be conquered; the deep fear inside her had to be dulled. She needed the fire of the whiskey and the numbness that finally came.

  Even with the whiskey in her, Lorena could not stop thinking of Maria. She wished she’d had more time with her, time not so filled with violence and pain. There had been no time for the talk of women when there had been so many injured to attend to. Then Maria had become one of the injured herself. She’d had to save her strength for her final request.

  Maria’s eyes, at the end, haunted Lorena. She wanted to forget Maria’s eyes, but she also wanted to know what Maria knew and what she had felt. She wished the two of them could have had even one talk about their lives. She wished it very much, but that wish could not be granted.

  The white line of dawn began to show in the east, across the river. Soon, Lorena knew, she would have to go in, drunk or not, rested or not, and start tending to the injured and the children. It was too late for the knowledge she craved; she would never know much about Maria. That chance—an important one—had been lost forever.

  The line of white to the east widened, and the lower stars began to fade. In that direction, only a few steps beyond where the goats were sleeping, Maria Sanchez lay buried, not far from the Rio Grande, in a narrow grave.

  Epilogue

  1.

  CALL’S GREATEST EMBARRASSMENT was that he could not stand up and walk outside to relieve himself. For a time he had no crutch and would have been too weak to use one, even if one had been available. He had to make water in a jug, and often was too weak even to do that properly. He had only his right hand, and his finger joints were still swollen so badly with arthritis that he couldn’t work his own buttons. Mostly, Pea Eye helped him. But if Pea Eye was sleeping or had hobbled outside with Maria’s children, Lorena came and assisted him matter-of-factly, ignoring his embarrassment and shame. She did it quickly, as she might have dipped water out of a bucket.

  “We don’t have the bedding to spare, Captain,” she said once; it was her only comment on the matter.

  At such times, Call wanted to take out his pocketknife and cut his own throat. But someone had taken his pocketknife, and even if he had had it, he doubted he could have made a clean job of it with only his right hand to use.

  2.

  CALL SPOKE ONLY to the little blind girl, Teresa. She insisted on caring for him and he accepted her help, although sometimes her girlish chatter tired him. She was very helpful to him; also, she was a young child, and blind. She could not see his stumps, or the black bruise that covered most of his chest, where the bullet was that the doctor had not been bold enough to remove. Call wished the man had made an attempt; perhaps then he would have died.

  At least Teresa couldn’t see him, and she hadn’t known him as he had been. She sat by him and fed him, and while she fed him, told him little stories about spiders and rabbits. Her speech was like a birdsong, quick and light. Hearing her voice was Call’s only pleasure. He never reproached Teresa or sent her away, even when he was weary or hot with pain. In the mornings he waited patiently for her; as soon as she awoke, Teresa would come over and put her cool hand on Call’s forehead to see how bad his fever was.

  3.

  FROM THE MOMENT Joey Garza’s three bullets struck, Call’s only escape from pain had been unconsciousness. He clung to sleep, but his dozings became shorter and shorter. On the day he was wounded he had wanted to live; he wanted to finish the job he had been hired to do. He had never left a job unfinished in his life. Remaining himself, remaining who he was, meant finishing the job he had undertaken.

  But as Captain Call floated in and out of fever and hallucination, the first thought that filtered into his consciousness each time he awoke was a sense of irrevocable failure—a failure that could never be redeemed. He could not finish the job; would never finish or even undertake such a job again. He had failed and was beyond making the failure good. He deeply regretted not doing exactly what Gus McCrae had done: letting the wounds finish him. His wounds had finished him as the man he had been. He clung to a form of life; but a worthless form. He had never enjoyed letting people wait on him; he had always saddled his own horse, and unsaddled it too.

  But now people waited on him all day. Teresa brought him food and spooned it into his mouth. Lorena changed his bandages. Pea Eye, crippled himself, nonetheless had two hands and helped him into a clean shirt and fresh pants when the time came to change.

  Call could not clear his mind sufficiently to bring what had happened into a clear sequence, or even to remember it all. He inquired about Brookshire and was told that his body had been taken to the undertaker’s in Presidio, the day Lorena and Billy had gone to procure the coffins for Maria Sanchez and her son. It was still there, awaiting instructions. No one had had time to inform Colonel Terry of all that had occurred.

  Some days, Call understood that he had killed Mox Mox; at other times, he thought Charles Goodnight had killed him—at least, Goodnight had been mentioned in connection with the death. He could not get the facts of Deputy Plunkert’s demise straight in his mind, nor was it quite clear to him how Brookshire had died. The confusion only made his sense of failure worse: two men who should never have been with him in the first place, who had been cajoled into coming by Call’s own misjudgments, were now dead. It was a sorry thing.

  Call’s one consolation was that Pea Eye had wounded Joey Garza, and had finished the job he had been hired to do. He didn’t understand about Maria or the butcher, though—what did the butcher have to do with anything? But he did grasp that Joe had killed his mother, and that the feebleminded boy and the little blind girl would be going with them to the Panhandle, when he was able to travel. When that would be, no one seemed to know. Call continued to be very weak. It was a long trip to the railroad, and the trip would have to be made in a wagon. The doctor didn’t think Call was up to it yet. Lorena didn’t, either.

  “I carried him this far and kept him alive,” Lorena said. “I want him to survive the trip back. We’ll just have to wait until he’s stronger.”

  4.

  ONE DAY, LORENA went to Presidio and came back with three crutches. One was for Pea Eye; the other two were for Call.

  Call could only look at the crutches. He was just at the point where he could sit up without growing faint. Sitting up made it easier for Teresa to feed him. He couldn’t use a crutch; not yet. Pea Eye used his immediately. He pulled himself up and crutched his way around the room.

  Pea Eye seemed to be feeling fine. It was known throughout the border country that Pea Eye had fired the shots that stopped Joey Garza. The doctor had let it be known that the shotgun wounds would have killed Joey, in time. The butcher had happened to finish him, but Pea Eye had made possible what the butcher had done. Pea Eye was a hero on both sides of the river.

  Lorena saw Captain Call looking sadly at the crutches. The old man scarcely spoke all day, except to the little blind girl. Lorena had ceased to be certain that she had done the old man any favor by working so hard to save him. She had only saved him for grief, it seemed. He was an old man with no prospects; it was clear that he would prefer to be dead. He just didn’t know how to be.

  “You’ll get stronger, Captain,” Lorena said. “You’ll be using these crutches as good as Pea Eye, one of these days.”

  “I doubt it,” Call said. He didn’t want the crutches. How could a man on crutches mount a horse?

  Later, though, Call realized that he had no need to mount a horse, and nowhere to go on one, if he did mount it. Teresa was telling him one of her spider stories, when the realization struck him.

  Sometimes, for a minute or two, Teresa would draw Call into one of her stories. He would begin to be interested in the spider or the lizard or the rabbit Teresa was talking about. It
was only a brief relief from thinking about his failure, but even a brief relief was welcome. He lived, or at least he breathed; yet he had no idea what his life would be. Listening to Teresa’s stories was better than thinking about the disgrace of his failed attempt to catch Joey Garza, or about the two pointless deaths, or about the indignity of the future. Pea Eye had said he could come and live on the farm, with himself and Lorena and their children.

  Call didn’t want it. Yet, he had to live somewhere.

  “I doubt I could be much help,” he said, when Pea Eye made the offer.

  Pea Eye doubted it too, but he didn’t voice his doubts.

  “You don’t have to be, Captain—not for a while,” Pea Eye told him.

  5.

  FAMOUS SHOES STAYED in Ojinaga for a week. He wanted the great eye, which was still tied to Joey Garza’s saddle. The saddle was in a small shed behind Maria’s house. Billy Williams kept an eye on the shed, for he was afraid that people would try to steal anything they could find that had belonged to Joey. Joey was a famous bandit; people would be looking for souvenirs.

  Famous Shoes wanted the great eye badly. He knew that such an instrument, which allowed one to study the plains on the moon, must be very valuable. Yet he had done considerable tracking for the white men, and had only been paid the five dollars that Pea Eye gave him. That came under a different account, in Famous Shoes’ reckoning. Pea Eye had given him the five dollars to show him where the big shotgun lay. The wages they owed him for tracking had not been paid. Captain Call was sick; his mind was not on the debt. No one’s mind was on the debt except his own. Billy Williams was grieving for Maria, and he drank too much whiskey. Olin Roy had left. Billy Williams’s eyesight was failing. Probably he would want to keep the great eye for himself, if it was called to his attention.

  The old Indian waited several days, trying to decide who he should approach about the great eye. He was tempted to steal it, but white men sometimes became crazy when things they weren’t using were stolen from them. They might follow him and shoot him. The saddle had belonged to Joey, Maria’s son, and both of them were dead. The great eye belonged to no one, as far as Famous Shoes could see. Taking it would not be stealing; still, he did not want to do anything that would make the white men crazy.

  Captain Call did not want to talk to anyone except the little blind girl. He had never liked Famous Shoes anyway, and would find reasons to deny him the great eye if he was asked. He would say it was worth too much, or that Famous Shoes didn’t have that much wages coming.

  One day, Famous Shoes decided to approach Pea Eye, who was outside mending a stirrup.

  “I want to go to the Madre and visit the eagles,” Famous Shoes told him. “If you don’t want to pay me my wages in money, I will take the great eye instead.”

  “The great what?” Pea Eye asked.

  “The great eye that Joey used,” Famous Shoes replied. “It is tied to his saddle.”

  “Oh, that old spyglass,” Pea Eye said. “Nobody’s using it—I sure don’t want to drag that thing around. I guess you can just have it, if that’s what you want.”

  Famous Shoes could scarcely believe his good fortune. Billy Williams was at the cantina. Lorena had gone to the river with Rafael and Teresa to wash clothes. He went at once to the little shed and took the great eye.

  Captain Call had his eyes shut, and he breathed hard, like a sick calf. White men had the habit of staying alive too long, in Famous Shoes’ opinion. Captain Call ought to send his spirit on, now. It was time for him to visit the other place. He might find his leg and his arm, if he went there.

  Without delay Famous Shoes left for the Madre, carrying the great eye. Now he would be able to see as well as the eagles; now he could track them through the sky.

  6.

  PEA EYE WAS through with his crutch before the Captain attempted to use his for the first time. Call was so sad that it was hard to be around him. Lorena finally cleaned out the little room that had been Maria’s, and made him a bed in there. Too much had to be done, in the other room. She had to cook and clean, tend to the two children, feed Billy and Pea and the Captain—when the Captain would eat. Having to walk around the silent, suffering old man every time she needed to do something was beginning to get on Lorena’s nerves. When they got him home to the farm, Pea would have to build him a room of some kind, away from the house. With two more children in their home, there would have to be some expansion anyway. Lorena accepted that they would have to care for Call—he had no one else—but she didn’t want him sitting in her kitchen, hour after hour every day, looking as if he hated life. It would be bad for her children, and her own nerves couldn’t take it. She ran a happy household, usually; she was not going to dampen her children’s liveliness because of Captain Call’s grief.

  Once she installed him in Maria’s bedroom, things were better. Teresa became his sole attendant: she didn’t like for anyone but herself to go into Call’s room, and Call didn’t welcome others, either. Pea Eye would come in once in a while and attempt to talk to him, but Call scarcely responded. The events of the past weeks were twisted in his mind, like a rope that had not been coiled properly. He wanted to remember things clearly, to backtrack through the pursuit of Joey Garza until he located the moment of failure. But the effort was discouraging; he had followed up the available clues and deployed his resources in what seemed like an intelligent way. Perhaps he should not have let himself be distracted by Mox Mox. If he hadn’t, though, Jasper Fant’s two children would have died, and others as well, very likely. By most reckonings, Mox Mox was worse than Joey Garza had been.

  What it came down to, Call concluded, was this: on the morning when he was injured, his eyesight had failed him. He hadn’t once suspected that the buckskin horse was hobbled. He ought to have been alert to that possibility, but all he had seen were two horses grazing. His eyes had simply failed him. Horses moved differently, when they were hobbled. Earlier in his life, his eyes would have detected the difference. As it was, they hadn’t. He should have had spectacles, but it had never occurred to him that his vision had fallen off so. He had always trusted his senses and had not expected any of them to fail him. To reflect that a cheap pair of spectacles might have prevented the loss of his arm and his leg was bitter knowledge, and he could not stop himself from brooding about it. His eyes had cost him himself: that was how he came to view it. Because of his untrustworthy eyes, he had been reduced to what he was now, a man with two crutches, a man who could not mount a horse.

  Some days, all the Captain did was wait for Teresa. When she was with him, he sometimes stopped thinking about his mistakes. Teresa would be outside with the goats and the chickens, and would come back to him with news of their activities. The old hen with the broken beak had caught a large lizard. One of the little goats had stepped in a hole and a snake had bitten it. Now, they were waiting to see if the kid would live or die. Rafael was upset, and they listened to his moaning through Call’s little window.

  “Do you think it will die?” Teresa asked him. She had brought him his coffee.

  “Probably it will, if it was small,” Call said.

  “If it dies, I hope it will see my mother,” Teresa said. “She is with the dead. My mother will take care of Rafael’s goat.”

  “I expect she will,” Call replied.

  7.

  IT WAS ALMOST another month before Captain Call became strong enough to travel the rough wagon road to Fort Stockton. Pea Eye was in a fever of impatience to get home to his children. In all his years with the Captain, he had never known him to be sick. Of course, he realized that being shot three times with a high-powered rifle would set a person back considerably; he had been shot himself and knew what it was to feel poorly. But he was so accustomed to seeing the Captain well and hardy that it was difficult for him to accept the fact that Call simply would not become hardy again.

  Pea Eye asked Lorena so often when she thought the Captain would be ready to travel that she finally lost her temper
.

  “Stop asking me that!” she snapped. “You ask me that five or six times a day and I’ve been telling you five or six times a day that I don’t know. I don’t have any idea when he can travel. All you have to do is look at him to know he’s not able, yet. When that will change I don’t know!”

  “I won’t ask no more if I can help it, honey,” Pea Eye replied, meekly.

  “You’d better help it!” Lorena told him.

  The thought of taking the old, ruined man into her household worried her more and more. Teresa cared for him almost entirely. Call made it clear that he didn’t welcome anyone else’s help. Her boys were no respecters of others’ wishes, though—they had always been curious about Captain Call, and they were not likely to be easily shut out. They would have to build Call a room of his own—but where the money would come from, Lorena didn’t know.

  Rafael had been more affected by Maria’s death than the little girl seemed to be. Lorena had taken a liking to Rafael, and he to her. Every morning he would milk his goats and bring the milk in a little pot for Lorena. Often she noticed Rafael peeking into Maria’s old room, looking for his mother; she would see him searching for her outside, amid the goats and chickens and the few sheep; sometimes he would search by the river, where Maria had gone to wash their clothes.