Huck Out West

by Robert Coover

  Tom seen he was overnumbered and raised his paw in a peace reply, glaring at me. His posse’d shrunk together, and they all lowered their weapons because Tom told them to.

  Eeteh took off his derby and went to talk with the chiefs. They all laughed and pointed at the clothes he was wearing. He turned round and showed them the bullet holes in the back, and they laughed again. I heard them ask about Ne Tongo, and Eeteh pointed off towards the woods. They nodded and muttered betwixt theirselves. Eeteh’s brother signaled to one of the braves, and the brave led out a handsome speckled sorrel. Eeteh took the thong and thanked his brother in a formal way, then led the horse over to me. He was a gift, Eeteh says. He belonged to a very great warrior who was killed at the Greasy Grass River. The horse was very brave.

  It was a beautiful gift. I says so in sign language with both hands, and told them in Lakota, best I could, the same thing.

  General Long Hair also lost his curls there, Eeteh whispers to me. “They show you bluecoat scalps.” My jaw gapped. Who I most feared in the world warn’t IN it no more! My ducking and running was over! I couldn’t hardly believe it! But I was sorry for him, too. He probably warn’t planning to leave it so sudden.

  “Thank your brother, Eeteh,” I says, “but ask him please to don’t show no scalps.”

  Eeteh returned to the chief, they jawed a bit more, Eeteh pointed at the posse, and his brother nodded. When Eeteh come back, he says his brother told him we should go now.

  “Why’re they helping us?”

  “Ne Tongo spirit horse. God dog. Help win Long Hair war. You Tongo friend. All night they follow you here.”

  The sorrel was already wearing a cinched pelt, so I kicked off my boots and swung up. I walked him around in a circle, feeling mighty comfortable. He moved easy and proud and already felt like part a me. Eeteh says the horse’s name is Waktay, but I could change it. “Tell him I am calling him Rain,” I says, stroking his neck. “For him.”

  “Maghazhu,” Eeteh says, and his brother looked quietly pleased and nodded.

  Tom handled his rifle to Bear and come sauntering over on Storm, cocksure as ever. There was the click of weapons getting ready. Some was raised and pointed at him. I held up my hand to stop anybody shooting, but Tom didn’t seem to pay no mind. “It don’t have to end like this, Hucky,” he says. He warn’t staring down on me no more. It felt more natural.

  “We’re pards, Tom. There warn’t no call to try and get me hung.”

  “I know it. I shouldn’t a done it that way. You know it don’t mean nothing, Hucky. I wouldn’t a never done you no harm. I only needed for you to stay, and I was trying to make that happen anyhow I could. Keeping you penned up in jail a week seemed like one good way.”

  “Like your lie about the general. General Hard Ass ain’t sending out messages, Tom. He got killed yesterday.”

  Tom probably don’t know that, but he didn’t even blink. “Then you got no reason to leave, Huck. You and me can get up that circus you sejested. Your injun friend can be in it. We can try it out on the sinteenery, and then take it all through the Territory and the States. The sinteenery’s just a week away. You can leastways stay that long. It’ll be the bulliest thing ever, and you and me can ride in it together!”

  “You’re my pard, Tom, always was. But it ain’t tolerable here for me no more. If you want to ride together again, come along with us now.”

  Tom smiled like he might be tempted. “I think I read a story about that,” he says. “It was about two brothers.”

  “Great, Tom. Let’s live it.”

  “I think one a the brothers got killed by t’other one. An accident. You’d best stay here with me, Hucky.”

  I seen it warn’t no use. I smiled back at him and says, “Good-bye, Tom.”

  “Aw shucks, Hucky.” He set back on Storm, looking low-downer’n I ever seen him. Even his moustaches seemed to droop. “Well, all right, we can save the gallows for your next crime, you damn muggins! Soon enough you’ll be back here making a fool a yourself again!”

  I turned my back on him and walked Rain over to Eeteh, now setting on Heyokha, his rumpled derby back on over his headband.

  “HUCKY!” Tom called out. I reached for my rifle and looked back over my shoulder. He’d found his old face again. He’d took his hat off. There was a twinkle in his eyes and an easy grin on his moustachioed face. “It ain’t going to be much fun here without you, pard,” he says. “But if Becky takes that house away, I’ll build another one. Come back and live in it whenever you want. Bring your injun pal if you like.” He raised his hand to me and I raised mine. “And be careful, Hucky! I’ll miss you!” Then he turned back to his posse to lead them away towards their camp, his bald spot gleaming like it was polished, big wart-nosed Bear riding at the rear to make sure nobody got out a line.

  I watched him go. I was going to miss him, too. But I warn’t noway ever coming back to the Gulch.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  HE TRIBE SAYS they wanted to walk a mile or two with us to be sure there warn’t no trouble. First, I stopped down by the crick shore, and says to Shadrack that my Mexican friend was homesick, so me and him was lighting out for his old Mexico home. We’d sell him our claim for whatever whisky he had left. He still ain’t found no glitter down at the shore, but he was a good fellow and he give us the mostly empty whisky bottle and some jerky as well, and says, “Adios, amigos.”

  The tribe was relaxed now and laughing amongst theirselves, and when we’d got a hill or two between us and the camp, they seen their job was done and begun peeling off. Eeteh says something that made everybody snort and laugh in their deadpan way, and when they said good-bye, Eeteh’s brother give him a little money pouch, so’s we could buy some food and tobacco and maybe a skillet and blankets and shoes for the horses.

  We headed south towards the old wore-down emigrants’ trail, which I reckoned might be more safer for Eeteh, though it warn’t easy to hide there. Maybe we could see if Nookie’s little sod cabin was still there and nobody in it, and rest up for a few days.

  Whilst we was poking along under the sun, Eeteh says that when Snake thronged Coyote’s sliced-up carcass into the sky, he missed one part. His talking member.

  “Yay!” I says, and I laughed. Coyote was back! “It could still talk without the rest of him? Don’t it need a brain to think with?”

  Eeteh says Coyote never really had a separate brain. He thought with ALL his body parts, most SPECIALLY his member. That was what made it possible for him to change into so many different creturs. When he changed into a lark, he didn’t even HAVE a member, not so’s a body could see, so before he got chopped up, he was lucky Snake Woman made him change into a snake who has TWO. That is, he WAS lucky, till both of them begun fighting with each other.

  I asked him, laughing, how Coyote moved around now he ain’t got no feet. Like a worm? Eeteh sighed and says I ain’t never understood proper how stories work, but if I had to know, he borrowed his cousin Fox who was happy to sport a couple extras. They didn’t give Fox no pleasure, but they made him popular with the ladies, and give him some new ideas. I says I was glad I asked because I felt more comfortable now with Coyote’s talking member, or members, but how did Snake miss them when he was filling up the sky? When Coyote was still a snake, Eeteh says, he was worried about Snake’s tricks, so he hid his members in the end of his tail. He was a pisonous snake, and Snake judged the pison was low down in the tail and warn’t the right thing for making new worlds, so he throwed it away.

  “He should a burnt it,” I says, and Eeteh sighed again and shook his head and says, if he done that, how could he be telling this story about what happened next?

  I says I’m sorry and won’t bust in on him again, and I asked him what DID happen next?

  He says that Coyote’s talking members warn’t having much fun living on Fox’s body because Fox always favored his own member when it come to the main part. They sometimes felt like nothing more’n advertisings for it. So they decided to coll
ect some limbs and organs and other bits from their friends and make a new body out a them. Fox didn’t care because the novelness was wore off and Coyote’s members had took to shouting out rude sejestions to the ladies, most ruining Fox’s fun. So they made a new cretur out a parts borrowed from Whooping Crane, Prairie Dog, Mountain Goat, Rainbow Trout, Turkey Vulture, Jack Rabbit, and Porkypine.

  “That must a been something to see!” I says. “A cretur with two members, joined up from a crane, prairie dog, goat and trout, plain stops me cold in my tracks, never mind the rest!”

  Eeteh says he thought I warn’t going to bust in no more. I says again I was sorry, and I promised to keep my mouth shut, but I only wanted to know which parts come from which creturs so’s I could picture it, and whether or not they missed them when Coyote borrowed them. Eeteh says he’s really glad he didn’t try to tell me about Coyote in the Land of the Dead.

  “Ain’t that a story about afterlife soul creturs? I thought you don’t take no stock in souls.”

  Eeteh sighed and says that’s just what he means.

  I was plumb lost. I reckoned we could start over around the camp fire tonight with them two talking members fighting, which also must be something to see. Eeteh hain’t said whether they was rassling or boxing or fighting any which way like boys do.

  For now, I says how amazing it was it all turned out like it done.

  Eeteh says he was amazed, too, so he asked Coyote about it. I didn’t ask him if he meant Coyote or his talking members. Coyote puzzled it out, Eeteh says, and what he finally says was, it was a pretty good story and stories was like that.

  “It was only a story?”

  “Story never ONLY, Hahza. YOUR story.”

  “That warn’t exactly what Coyote told me.”

  “What? Coyote talk to you?”

  “Yep. It was whilst we was galloping across the plains and into the hills last night. Somehow he’d crawled up on Tongo’s croup and was riding behind me. I dasn’t turn round, fast as we was going, so I don’t know whether it was all of Coyote nor only his member, or members. Besides, it was pitch dark and I wouldn’t a seen nothing if I COULD turn round, though it most seemed like he was setting on my shoulder.”

  “Hah! Then it is COYOTE story?”

  “More his’n mine. If there’s a few stretchers in it, I ain’t to blame. I was surprised he’d talk to me who warn’t even a native, but he says don’t NOBODY own him, and I says that’s good, because don’t nobody own me nuther. He warn’t convinced a that and says him and Tongo was going to make me prove it. And that’s just what they done.”

  I was afeard Eeteh’d be angry I smouched Coyote from him, but he was laughing. What he says is, it must a been Raven who’d flew up and landed on my shoulder. I must of felt his little feet. Raven was a trickster like Coyote, he says, and a considerable fraud and liar. It was easy to mix them up. Both Coyote’s talking members was bigger’n better than his’n, so Raven offered to fly up into the sky to gather up all Coyote’s body parts in trade for one of the members. Coyote had a spare, so he done that, but when he changed himself back together again, he found he only had half a member, and no head. Maybe Raven had forgot his head behind like he said, or maybe he’d played another trick. No matter. Coyote didn’t have no head, and that considerably disadvantaged him. Raven had the other half a member and says if Coyote give him his half, he’ll fly back out and collect his head.

  I was lost again. I didn’t know if both halfs of Coyote’s member was still talking, and, if nuther of them warn’t, then who was, since Coyote himself didn’t have no head. It was like I’d left my own head somewheres and had fell backwards into the night. Eeteh had plain enough won Coyote back, and I let him. There was a crick down below us in the twilight without no prospectors on it, where we could probably fish up a supper. Best to make camp, I says to Eeteh, and muddytate on Coyote’s misfortunes over the last of Shadrack’s whisky, and my pard yayed that.

  THE END. YOURS TRULY, HUCK FINN.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Larry McCaffery, Stéphane Vanderhaeghe, Bernard Hoepffner, John Glusman, Georges Borchardt, and Pilar for good cheer and helpful reads.

  ALSO BY ROBERT COOVER

  THE BRUNIST DAY OF WRATH

  NOIR

  A CHILD AGAIN (SHORT FICTIONS)

  STEPMOTHER

  THE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY PIERRE: DIRECTORS’ CUT

  THE GRAND HOTELS (OF JOSEPH CORNELL)

  GHOST TOWN

  BRIAR ROSE

  JOHN’S WIFE

  PINOCCHIO IN VENICE

  WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOOMY GUS OF THE CHICAGO BEARS?

  A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES

  GERALD’S PARTY

  SPANKING THE MAID

  A POLITICAL FABLE

  THE PUBLIC BURNING

  A THEOLOGICAL POSITION (PLAYS)

  PRICKSONGS & DESCANTS

  THE UNIVERSAL BASEBALL ASSOCIATION, J. HENRY WAUGH, PROP.

  THE ORIGIN OF THE BRUNISTS

  Copyright © 2017 by Robert Coover

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

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  Jacket art: Allen True in 'Outing' May 1908, Page 129 / Mary Evans Picture Library

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Coover, Robert, author.

  Title: Huck out west / Robert Coover.

  Description: First edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016027492 | ISBN 9780393608441 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Finn, Huckleberry (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Sawyer,

  Tom (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | GSAFD: Adventure fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3553.O633 H83 2017 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record

  available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027492

  ISBN 978-0-393-60845-8 (e-book)

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