Streets of Laredo

by Larry McMurtry

  Call was composed by this time. He wanted to get started, and not waste an afternoon. The men were all subdued, all except Famous Shoes, who was already half a mile ahead of them, proceeding at his customary rapid pace.

  Brookshire felt so weak that he could barely mount. The shock of seeing Captain Call suddenly hit the sheriff with the rifle, and then continue to hit him, had been almost too much for his system. He felt very tired, and once more thought wi/lly of how nice it would be to spend the night in a decent hotel. That was not to be, though, not for a while. They had already left Presidio behind them.

  The thing that troubled Brookshire most was that his memory of the incident was incomplete. He had been watching the Captain carefully, hoping Call was not misjudging the sheriff's temper; yet, somehow, his eyes had failed him. He didn't see the Captain walk from the cells, past the sheriff, to the rack of rifles. Whatever happened had happened too fast, or else his brain had cut off for a moment, or something. One minute the Captain was releasing Famous Shoes; the next, there was the sound of the rifle barrel hitting the sheriff. Brookshire considered it spooky. He couldn't explain it.

  He had no doubt about one thing, though: Colonel Terry, in his wisdom, and he did seem to have wisdom, had clearly chosen the right man for the job at hand. The Garza boy would need more than a German rifle with a telescope sight when the Captain caught up with him. If the boy was smart, he would just surrender, and not let himself in for the kind of punishment that had just befallen the unfortunate Sheriff Doniphan.

  It took the one-eared deputy, Tom Johnson, and such townspeople as gathered to help, over three hours to fish the jail keys out of the cistern. Fortunately, the hardware store had a big magnet that was used to sort nails, and with the aid of the magnet, tied to three lariat ropes, the keys were finally brought up.

  Sheriff Joe Doniphan was still unconscious when they opened the cell. He was conscious only fitfully for the next several days. His right jawbone was broken in seven places, and his palate damaged. He lost all his teeth on that side of his mouth, and eventually had to have his other teeth pulled in order to bring his bite into balance.

  Also, three ribs were broken, and one leg. The leg was set improperly. The local doctor was so worried about the jaw that he made a hurried job of the leg, the result being that Sheriff Doniphan limped for the rest of his life. He resigned as sheriff a month after the beating. No one, including his wife, could stand to see his mashed-in face. He retired to his house and sat in the bedroom most of the day, with the shades pulled, whittling sticks. He didn't whittle them into any shape, he just whittled them away. The memory of his own inaction, at the fatal moment, was what haunted the ex-sheriff most. He had been holding a pistol, cocked and pointed right at the old man. He could have shot him at any moment, and justified it on the grounds that Call was helping a known criminal escape. Of course, the telegram from the governor was awkward; Deputy Johnson had preserved it, for the townspeople to see. But Doniphan could have argued that he never saw it, and had reason to suspect its authenticity.

  The point was, he hadn't shot. He had let an old man whip him nearly to the point of death, with one of his own guns, in his own jail, in front of five people. He hadn't shot; he had just stood there.

  It was a failure the former sheriff, Joe Doniphan, couldn't live with. The next time he lifted a gun to shoot, a little less than a year after the beating, but long after the pursuit of Joey Garza had ended, it was to put a .45 caliber bullet into his own brain. His wife, Martha, was in the kitchen, rolling biscuit dough. When she heard the gun go off in the bedroom, Martha was glad.

  Doobie Plunkert had only gone by the jail to see if there was any news of Ted; after all, Sheriff Bob Jekyll was known to be lazy.

  He didn't care whether Doobie had any news of Ted, or whether Ted was alive or dead, for that matter. He wouldn't walk up the street to her house to bring her news, even if he had any.

  Doobie knew there probably wasn't any news, though; there hadn't been a word, since the day Ted left. It seemed to Doobie that he had now been gone most of the time since they married.

  She had even begun to forget bits and pieces of her early married life, though her early married life had happened less than a year ago. It was just that the terrible loneliness she felt, now that Ted was gone, had cut her off from her own good memories.

  Doobie knew that when Ted finally came home, they would be the happiest couple in the world.

  And she would know what to do the next time some old sheriff rode into town and tried to take her husband away. Next time, Doobie was determined to fight, and she meant to win, too. Next time, she wasn't going to let her husband go.

  But chill day after chill day passed, with no word from Ted at all, or of Ted, and Doobie had become a little desperate. Every day, she went to the little post office in the back of the hardware store, hoping there would be a letter. She knew Ted wasn't much for writing, since it was all he could do to make a sentence. But still, he might pass through a town that had a post office, and he might be tempted to write her at least a note, so she would know he was alive.

  She knew Bob Jekyll didn't really want her coming around the jail, whether Ted was on duty or not, but the jail was the place news would be most likely to show up. The hunger for at least some word of her husband gnawed at Doobie so deeply that she couldn't stop showing up at the jail, just to peek in and ask Sheriff Jekyll what he had heard. Captain Call was a famous man; surely there would be some news of the Captain and his party, sometime.

  In the nights, Doobie began to be prey to even more terrible fears. What if Ted was lost?

  What if the whole party had starved, or been killed by Indians? She knew there were still wild Indians in Mexico--what if they had killed Ted in a place where no one would ever even find his body? What if she had the baby and it grew up and neither of them ever heard another word about Ted Plunkert in the whole of their lives?

  Doobie tried to make herself stay away from the jail, but on days when she was particularly worried, or had had a particularly bad night, it was hard. Her feet just seemed to take her in the direction of the jail, the one place where there might be news.

  Doobie never supposed, not for one moment, that Sheriff Jekyll might take this wrong. She felt he must know that the one and only reason she pestered him was because she loved her husband so much, and was desperate for news. Everyone in Laredo, Texas, knew how much Doobie Plunkert loved her husband. They were the happiest young couple in the community. That was common knowledge.

  Doobie had seen Sheriff Jekyll looking at her that way once or twice, that way men looked at women. It was part of being a woman, she supposed. Men just would look at you, that way.

  Susanna Slack, her best friend, told her it was merely the way of the world. Men looked at Susanna that way too, although she was an older woman. Doobie hoped that Sheriff Jekyll and the men of Laredo in general might be a little more respectful in their manner of looking, once it became obvious that she was enceinte; they should not be casting disrespectful looks at a woman who was soon to have a baby.

  When Doobie realized that Bob Jekyll was looking at her that way more intently than usual, and was even moving toward her, she tried to dart back out the door of the jail to safety, but she was a step too slow. Bob Jekyll caught her arm and started dragging her toward a cell with a cot in it. The jail was completely empty, too; there was not a single prisoner, not a soul for Doobie to cry out to.

  "You keep coming here--now, shut up!" Bob Jekyll said, as he dragged Doobie toward the cell. When Doobie opened her mouth to scream, Bob Jekyll punched her so hard it stunned her. He had been standing right by the door, looking at her with that look, when she stepped inside the jailhouse, full of hope that there might be some news of Ted.

  Doobie didn't want to be punched again.

  She was afraid Bob Jekyll might hit her in the stomach and injure her baby. She was inside the cell, pinned to the cot, before she started fighting again. She had never hoped
to see any man on earth except her husband with his pants pulled down, but Sheriff Jekyll had his pants down, and he was pulling at her drawers. Doobie tried to claw him, but when she did, he punched her so hard again that she lost consciousness for a minute. When her head cleared a little, Sheriff Jekyll was there, doing what only her husband had the right to do.

  Doobie gave up then. A sorrow came to her as deep as the bone, for everything was lost now; even her baby was lost. Sheriff Bob Jekyll had destroyed her virtue, and her future, too. It wouldn't even matter if Ted came back now, for he would never forgive her.

  Perhaps he would not even believe her when she said she only went to the jail hoping for news of him.

  Even if he did come back, their happiness was lost.

  Doobie became so hopeless that the sheriff grew disgusted with her. As soon as he had pleased himself, he told her to get out of his jail and stay out. He went over to his desk and didn't look at Doobie again.

  He hadn't torn her dress; only her drawers had been ripped. Doobie didn't know what his punches had done to her face, but at least she could walk the few blocks home dressed respectably. One or two people even spoke to her, as she hurried up the street. Doobie managed a good morning to them, though it wasn't a good morning. What it had turned out to be, in the course of a few minutes, was the last morning of her life.

  Doobie loved Ted Plunkert with all her heart and would never have done anything to bring dishonor to him. The knowledge that she mustn't let dishonor stain their marriage helped her keep a firm resolve.

  She wanted to die as quickly as possible, before she weakened. She thought about writing Ted a note, but dismissed that notion at once. She would never be able to explain; it would be better to let Ted think she had just gone crazy from loneliness, from missing him.

  She wasn't going to burden her husband with the awful truth.

  Doobie couldn't help but cry. Now she knew how swiftly all the good things of life could be lost. Her marriage was lost, and her baby; compared to those griefs, the loss of her own physical life seemed minor. She only wanted to hurry with dying. She didn't want someone to come and interrupt her before she could do what she had to do. She ran to her kitchen and quickly dug out the rat poison.

  Laredo was overrun with giant brown pack rats that lived under houses and also under the giant piles of prickly pear. Sometimes the Mexicans stuffed the ratholes and set the piles of prickly pear afire. Once the fire burned down, they dug out the rats and ate them.

  Doobie thought that was a horrible practice. She hated the rats, and considered that one of her own duties as a housewife was to keep their little house free of them. She spread the rat poison carefully around all the places a rat might get in. Once in a while, a rat would die under the house, and she and Ted would smell it, but mainly, the rats ran off to the river to die.

  Doobie felt very calm about what she had to do, until she started trying to eat the rat poison.

  She got a big spoon and tried to eat it straight down, like the oatmeal she sometimes made Ted in the mornings. But rat poison wouldn't go down like oatmeal, and it only made her gag.

  When it got moist, it stuck to her teeth and to the roof of her mouth, and became very hard to swallow.

  Doobie stopped being calm and became frantic.

  What if she failed to die and Ted had to come home to a wife who was no longer worthy, a wife who had carelessly let her virtue be lost to the lust of Sheriff Bob Jekyll? Ted Plunkert would never get over such a thing.

  Doobie knew she mustn't let him know. It would be a terrible failure if she let Ted find out the truth. She thought about hanging herself, but that was chancy, since she had never been very good at tying knots. If she tried to hang herself, somebody might find her while she was still alive.

  Ted had explained to her that water helped the rat poison work. When the rats ate the poison, it made them thirsty and they ran off to the river to drink. Then the water made the poison work, and the rats died.

  The minute she remembered what Ted had told her, Doobie took the big can of rat poison and a cup and went out her back door. The river was only two streets away. She walked toward it swiftly, hoping no one would see her or speak to her. She made it to the river unobserved, and began to stuff poison in her mouth and then drink water. Then, it occurred to her that she could mix the poison with water. She began to scoop water into the cup and mix it with poison. After that, the whole business went more quickly. It was working, too --Doobie began to feel a pain inside, down in her belly. It was as if something with sharp claws was pulling on her guts. She cried at the thought that her baby might be feeling the clawing too. But she kept scooping poison into the cup and filling it with water. She drank and scooped poison and drank. It was her way of doing right by Ted. The worse the clawing hurt, the more sure Doobie was that she would triumph. Ted would be sad when he found out that she was dead, but he wouldn't have to try to live down the terrible thing that had happened. He would get over her death, in time, but neither of them would ever be able to put right what had happened in the jail.

  Doobie's hand got shaky. She began to spill the poison when she tried to scoop it into her cup. Some of it spilled into the river. It was yellow, and it flowed away with the brown water.

  Doobie had not been paying attention to anything but drinking the poison, but as the clawing got sharper, and it felt as if her insides were being ripped by claws and squeezed together at the same time, she happened to see a dead rat lying at the edge of the water, only a few yards away. Its mouth was open, and she could see its ugly teeth.

  It lay with most of its body in the water, and its brown fur was wet. Maybe the rat had died from eating some of the very poison she was drinking down.

  In just a few minutes, Doobie hoped, she would be as dead as the rat. She might roll into the river, just as it had. She might be wet too, when people found her. But she didn't want that, she didn't want to be found all wet and messy.

  She began to crawl farther from the water. The bright sun began to affect her. She wanted to hide her eyes from the sun. She began to curl up, in order to hide her eyes. But when she curled up, the pain in her gut became unbearable. She tried to straighten up again, but the pain in her belly was now just as bad, no matter how she lay or sat, no matter whether she was curled or straight.

  For a second, Doobie wanted to give up.

  She wanted to run to a doctor and have him give her something to stop the pain. But she couldn't run, or even stand. She began to roll around and had soon rolled back down to the river's edge. One of her feet knocked over the can of rat poison, but not much spilled because there wasn't much poison left in the can. Doobie had eaten or drunk most of what had been in it. She didn't feel good at all anymore; she didn't feel anything but a clawing, needling pain. She tried to cry out, but the poison gummed in her mouth so that she could only make a weak sound, a sound no one passing would even hear.

  Doobie continued to make a weak sound, no louder than a rat's squeak, until her voice stopped and she made no sound at all.

  On the coldest night, the night of the great ice storm, Maria thought she and all the women might freeze. The fires she made sputtered and blew out. The two old Mexican women were almost dead anyway. Maria had to go back and find them.

  One of them had fallen three miles behind the group. Maria hunted wood and kept the fires going, but ice had covered everything, and her hands and feet got very cold.

  "Don't make me go no farther. I'd rather give up and die," Cherie said. Her real name wasn't Cherie, but she was so cold, and had stopped using her real name so long ago, that it didn't matter what it had been. Patrick, the saloonkeeper, had brought her to Crow Town, only to abandon her for another woman. She had been there five years, and she'd had to struggle so hard that she lost her memory of other places.

  The women were convinced that they would all die. They didn't believe they would live to reach the railroad, and several of them had ceased to care.

  Gabriela and
Marieta were numb, their feet so cold they couldn't feel them. Beulah kept trying to stop. Maria had to push her and prod her to keep her going.

  They had not even crossed the Pecos yet; Maria kept angling away from it, hoping for a warmer day before she had to try to bring the women across.

  She had fixed her mind on saving the women, though she didn't know any of them. Getting them safely to the railroad had become important to her. She had taken them out of the town, even though she hadn't wanted to at first. But she had accepted their need to go, and now she felt she must supply the will to keep them traveling, despite the bitter cold. She herself had often had to search for will, in hard times. When the men from Texas pretended to hang her, she had tried to make her will stop, so she could die. She had wanted to elude them, that way. Again, when they were degrading her, she would have liked for her will to stop. She would have rather not been alive anymore. And, as she had lost hope with her husbands, each in turn--except for Benito, she had never lost hope with Benito-- she had sometimes wished in the night that she could just stop breathing, and not be there in the morning and have to get out of the bed in hopelessness to deal with the man who was making her hopeless, week after week and year after year.

  It was in those times that Billy Williams had proven himself a true friend. He would cajole her over to the cantina, make her drink until she felt like dancing, or dance until she felt like drinking. Somehow, Billy could make her laugh.

  That was a rare thing too, for a man to be able to make her laugh. With women, Maria laughed; with her children, she laughed; but rarely did she laugh with a man. She only laughed with Billy Williams.

  The lack of laughter in her life was a thing Maria held against men. She felt she had the temperament to be a happy woman, if she was not interfered with, too much. She knew that it was her fault that she let men interfere with her; yet if she didn't, there was nothing, or at least there was not enough. She wanted a man to lay with, except if she wanted a man once, she would want him many times. She liked to take pleasure from men, and liked to give it, but when she gave men that pleasure, they came to need it and then to resent her because they needed her. When that happened, the interfering began. Maria didn't know why men resented the very women who gave them the most pleasure, and gave it generously. It was foolish, very foolish, of men to resent the good that came from women. Still, they did.