Zeke and Ned

by Larry McMurtry

  Chilly talked for an hour about what had happened, how he had wandered hopelessly through the hills for a week, following one twisty little track and then another, hoping all the while that one of the little cow paths would somehow bring him to the road to Fort Smith. He had asked directions of several travelers, all of whom must have been as lost as he was. The harder he tried to follow their directions, the more lost he became, the deeper the woods, the deeper the hills. He had five shells in his pistol when he walked out of Tahlequah, and by the exercise of careful marksmanship managed to kill one rabbit and two possums—otherwise, he would have starved on the trail.

  “Possums are easier to hit than rabbits, they’re slower,” he informed Judge Parker and his wife, Mart. By the time Chilly got that far along in his recital, the Judge had closed the courthouse for the day and walked Chilly home with him so Mart could clean him up and give him a good meal. He was also hoping Mart would mend the rip in Chilly’s new suit, though she could do nothing about the shoes, which were lost forever in a creek somewhere between Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Tahlequah.

  “I know the difference between a possum and a rabbit, and Mart does, too, Chilly,” the Judge said. “We’ve all had hardships to bear. What I need from you now that you’re back is a good account of what went on in that courtroom, and I need it soon.”

  “Now you wait, Ike,” Mart said. “Chilly’s walked a far piece. Let him finish his supper before you go worrying him about all that shooting.”

  Mart did not exactly have her dander up, but she looked as if she could get it up quickly if handled wrong.

  Chilly was Mart’s pet. Over the years, the Judge had found that it was best to do whatever correcting was needed—and a lot had been needed—out of earshot of his wife Mart. That way, he only had one problem to deal with: Chilly himself. If Mart got it in her head that her pet bailiff was being dealt with too severely, her temper might flare up like a prairie fire. The Judge had been scorched by Mart’s temper many times in the years of their marriage, and he saw no reason to risk it on a day when he had already borne the unnecessary loss of a costly pair of shoes.

  Chilly remembered that there had been a big shootout in the courtroom in Tahlequah, but the truth was he had been so terrified on his eight-day walk through the mountains that he no longer remembered the circumstances of the shootout very clearly. What he remembered all too clearly was huddling under bushes when it rained; losing his shoes in a boggy creek full of water moccasins; and trying to find a place to sleep at night where scorpions would not be crawling underneath him and snakes would not be crawling over him. He disliked creatures with fangs and stingers. Twice on the walk, he had been badly stung by yellow jackets. One had stung him in his sleep and left its stinger in his eyelid, the result being that he had to bumble along with one eye puffed shut for two days. By that time, Chilly was carrying with him a sense of doom so heavy that he could barely lift his bare feet. All the mountains looked alike; all the trails; all the trees.

  Probably a good, safe road that would lead him quickly to Fort Smith was not more than five miles away. He dreamed about the road at night, and daydreamed about it during the day, but he could never find it. He was down to his last bullet when an old man with one arm came down the trail, leading a brown ox to market. The old man was named George Nails. When Chilly asked him what the nearest town might be, old George Nails looked at him as if he were daft.

  “Why, Tahlequah, it ain’t but a half mile off,” old Nails informed him. “See that there smoke?” he said, pointing with a shaky hand. “That’s from the chimney of the hardware store.”

  At the time of his encounter with George Nails and his brown ox, Chilly had been walking for five days. He was not ready to confess, to old Nails or anyone else, that he had walked for five days and was only half a mile from his starting point. By discreet inquiry—George Nails was by now wary of him, convinced that the young man was crazy— Chilly managed to discover that Mr. Nails was taking the ox to Fort

  Smith to be sold. Chilly considered that he was saved, though old Nails did not offer to travel with him, or even to show him the way. Chilly followed the brown ox over the hill and down to the Fort Smith road that he had longed for so intensely.

  Under the stern gaze of Judge Parker, a gaze that had sought out the truth and found in it many a hardened criminal, Chilly discovered that he had powers of invention whose existence he had not even suspected. He told the Judge that he had hitched a wagon ride with an experienced drover who was on his way to Fort Smith. But then, due to drunkenness, the drover took a wrong turn and was forty miles to the west of Fort Smith before he discovered his mistake. Trying to cross an especially rocky ravine, the drover broke the rear axle on his wagon.

  “That’s when I decided it would be quicker just to get off and walk home,” Chilly said, keeping his eyes on his plate, which was heaped with Mrs. Parker’s tasty grub.

  “I see,” Judge Parker said, a skeptical expression on his face.

  “I ripped my suit helping the man fix his axle,” Chilly said, when in fact, he had snagged it on a thornbush high in the hills.

  “I see,” the Judge said, again. “That’s when you began to wade them cricks.”

  “Yes, sir—they was boggy,” Chilly said meekly. “That sucky mud got my shoes.”

  He knew he had better not try to push his lies any further. The Judge had got out a whittling stick and was sharpening his old knife on a whetstone. The Judge had sharpened the knife so much that the blade on it was thin as a fingernail. He considered the stick he had chosen, and began to whittle thoughtfully. Chilly knew it was when the Judge seemed most absorbed in his whittling, that criminals were apt to make their greatest mistakes.

  “I’ll pay you back for the shoes, Judge,” Chilly said.

  “If you can give a clear account of what happened in Tahlequah, I’ll forgive the loss of the shoes,” Judge Parker informed him. “I need a clear account of that gunfight before I go sending marshals off into Cherokee country.”

  “Let it wait till morning, Ike,” Mart suggested bluntly.

  The Judge was taken aback. Mostly, he was tolerant of Mart and her ways. But at this point in time, which was a late point in time so far as he was concerned, he saw no reason to let her interfere in matters that were within the province of the court, such as questioning witnesses to the Tahlequah gunfight. He had a major witness sitting right at his dinner table, eating free grub, and saw no reason to delay his questioning.

  “It can’t wait till morning,” the Judge informed his crisp spouse. “I intend to have a federal marshal on the road by morning, and I need to tell him who to catch.

  “That’s what I say,” he added, noting that Mart was edging closer to having her dander up.

  “Chilly’s tuckered out. You ought to let him get a good night’s sleep before you start questioning him about that mess,” Mart insisted.

  The Judge felt his own dander begin to gain altitude. Mart was too prone to interfere in matters that were none of her business—she always had been. He had been waiting eight long days for Chilly’s account of the trouble in Tahlequah. Why in the devil would his own wife insist on having him wait through another night?

  “Mart, you ought to go knit a rug,” he suggested. “I’m the Judge. I know when I need to question a witness.”

  “No, you don’t,” Mart told him. “You may have the job of judge, but if you can’t see that Chilly’s too exhausted to be answering a bunch of questions, then I wouldn’t want you judging me, I guess.”

  Chilly began to get the nervous feeling he always got when he happened to find himself in a cross-fire between the Judge and his wife. In some ways, it was worse than being in the cross-fire in Tahlequah. In that situation, things happened so fast that there was not much time to be scared—you ducked, and hoped for the best. But here at Judge Parker’s dinner table, there was no place to duck. He had to sit and pretend not to notice that the Judge and his wife Mart were glaring at one anothe
r—and the glaring was because of him.

  He thought maybe the best thing would be to give a quick recital of events in Tahlequah. Maybe that would satisfy the Judge for a few hours, long enough for him to catch some sleep.

  “I’ll just tell it quick,” he said, avoiding Mrs. Martha Parker’s eye when he said it. “I was nearly late because the mule bogged in a creek. Then a fellow named Ned Christie came along and gave me a ride into town. We got there just in time for me to collect the guns. Judge Sixkiller didn’t want no guns in the courtroom. I offered to put out spittoons, but he didn’t have but one, so that was an easy job. Then they brought Zeke Proctor in, and he barely got sat down good before somebody put a gun through the window and started shooting at him. Ned Christie shot that fellow, but another fellow pitched some guns in to the Becks, and they started shooting, too. I think one of them kilt the Judge. Then the Becks shot some of the people in the courtroom, and Ned Christie shot some of the Becks. I even shot one of them myself—I think his name was T. Spade.”

  “What? You shot a Beck?” the Judge asked, startled. “That’s a piece of news I hadn’t heard.”

  “Well, I shot one,” Chilly repeated. “He shot at me twice and missed. I didn’t know if he’d miss again, so I shot him.”

  “Was he kilt, or just shot up?” Judge Parker inquired.

  “Kilt,” Chilly admitted. “Zeke tried to strangle one of them Becks, but the man crawled off into the street and an old fellow with long white hair rode up and rescued him.”

  It was at this point in his recital that Chilly realized Mart Parker was right: he was too tired to be telling such a complicated story.

  His head began to droop; he had the urge just to put his cheek in his plate and snooze a little, right there at the table. He knew he better not do it, for it would probably finish him with the Judge. But he felt a powerful urge to go to sleep. Despite himself, his chin tilted down toward his chest.

  “Ike, he’s noddin’,” Mart said briskly. “Why don’t you let up?”

  Judge Parker saw that, indeed, his witness was fading. It was vexing, since very few facts had been accurately established, but there was not much he could do about it. He thought if he hurried, he might get in two more questions before Chilly was out cold.

  “Chilly, did you see for a certainty that Judge Sixkiller was dead?” the Judge asked, determined to have a solid answer to that question.

  “He was dead as a brick,” Chilly told him.

  “What was the count of the dead, then? Can you remember?” the Judge asked.

  Chilly tried to get his brain to come up with a figure—after all, he himself had helped Ned Christie line the bodies up on the floor. He remembered that all the while one of Ned’s friends had been scrunched up in the corner, bleeding from a deep wound in his leg. In his mind’s eye, he could see the bodies lined up in the courtroom; he could even see them laying by the graves that the volunteers had dug. But, though he thought hard, he could not be sure of the count.

  “It was ten, at least,” he said finally. “I think it might have been eleven. Then another fellow died while we were turning him over . . . I guess that would have made it twelve.”

  “I see,” the Judge said, soberly.

  The Judge was silent for a moment, when he heard the count. From all the accounts he had received, he had concluded that the figure would probably be as high as ten. Now, Chilly made it twelve.

  It was a sobering thing.

  “I doubt twelve people was ever killed in a courtroom before,” he said. “We’ve made a poor kind of history, I guess, up here in our hills.”

  When he looked at Chilly again, the young man’s eyes were closed. He helped Mart ease the young bailiff down on a pallet she had made for him on the back porch, and then he followed his wife upstairs to their bedroom, a little uneasy as to what her bedtime mood might be.

  Mart did not like being crossed, and yet he had crossed her to the extent of getting a hasty story out of Chilly. But Mart seemed sobered, too, by what she had heard.

  “Twelve’s a passel of people to die—and it was over a woman, too,” Mart said, when she had put on her blue gown.

  Judge Parker had a knot in one of his shoelaces. It took him a while to untie it; he could not bend as easily or reach his shoes as handily as had once been the case.

  “It was over a woman, wasn’t it?” Mart repeated.

  “A woman, or some weevily corn—take your pick,” the Judge offered.

  “I pick the woman,” Mart said.

  Later, in bed, they each read a verse of the Bible before Mart blew out the light.

  “I doubt that story about Chilly catching a ride in a wagon and ending up forty miles west,” the Judge said. “That sounded like a lie to me. What do you think?”

  “It was a lie, but don’t you pester him about it, Ike,” Mart said. “I expect he was just lost and scared, somewhere in the hills.”

  “Yes, but it’s no excuse for losing the shoes,” the Judge said. “If I had on new shoes and I came to a creek, I think I’d have sense enough to take off my shoes and hold them over my head. That way, there’d be a lot less chance of a loss.”

  “Well, but what if you stepped in a hole and got swallowed up?” Mart suggested, with mischief in her voice.

  “Dern it, Mart, why would I step in a hole and get swallowed up?” the Judge asked.

  “Because you don’t know everything, that’s why,” Mart replied tartly. Mart was slow to get to sleep. She would keep up a conversation as long as she could. The Judge, an easy sleeper, found that characteristic trying at times, and now was one of the times.

  “You think you know everything, but you don’t,” Mart added.

  “Dern it, Mart, I have never claimed to know everything,” the Judge replied.

  “You may not claim it, but you think it,” Mart answered.

  “I do think I know enough to decide when it’s time to go to sleep at night, and it’s time to go to sleep,” the Judge said.

  “Go to sleep, then. Who’s stopping you?” Mart said.

  7

  THE MOMENT BECCA CAME TO THE DOOR OF THE CABIN AND LOOKED at him, Zeke got the feeling that it was not going to be easy to persuade her to come home—at least it was not going to be as easy as he had hoped it would be.

  Becca had a kind of November look in her eyes, grey and chill. The fresh blood he had squeezed out of his rib wound just before he rode up did not fool her, or move her, either. In fact, it did not appear to interest her at all.

  “Hello, Bec,” he said, in a quiet tone. “I’m wounded in the side.”

  “If you’re wounded, you ought to have found a doc,” Becca told him. “I ain’t a doc.”

  “But you’re my wife,” Zeke ventured, still talking quietly.

  “I was your wife,” Becca corrected. “How do you know what I am now?”

  Zeke was disappointed in the comment, and perplexed as to how to proceed. He thought maybe the direct approach would be best.

  “I’m wounded, Bec,” he said. “One of the Squirrels shot me. Where else would a man go when he’s wounded but to his wife?”

  “That’s a scratch, Zeke,” Becca said, guessing. You wounded me, and I had nowhere to seek help, she thought. In the distance, she could hear the triplets shrieking down by the pond. In her discouragement of spirit, she had lost control of her three tots. They spent most of their days by the pond, in a thicket of reeds. They caught tadpoles and minnows and cooked small frogs over little campfires they made. Some days, she scarcely saw them from dawn until dark. As long as she could hear their voices, she did not worry much.

  “I rode sixty miles to find you,” Zeke pointed out. “I see your ma’s cabin has lost what little chinking it ever had.”

  It was a rough cabin Becca was living in. Her preacher father had been content to live off what game he could shoot or trap, and whatever his congregation donated to him and his family. He had promised Becca’s mother he would build her a snug frame house, but t
he promise went unredeemed for thirty years. The old man died without ever hitting a lick, or sawing a board. Zeke could see holes between the logs where the chinking had fallen out. It was a sorry place, and it made him realize what an anger Becca must be holding against him if she would leave their well-built home and come to such a poor domicile. The cabin was not the whole of it either—there was Old Ma, and her crippled brother, Lem. A wild mule had knocked an anvil over on Lem when he was still a boy, and his left leg had been bent ever since. He had weak lungs, too, and right this minute Zeke could hear him coughing from somewhere in the cabin.

  “Becca, I’d appreciate a bite of grub, if there is any to be had,” Zeke said. “I went home expecting to make a meal, but a whirlwind busted up the smokehouse and Sully let a dern bear get away with the meat. All I’ve had since the big gunfight is some weevily corncakes Sully cooked up.”

  Becca remained where she was, in the doorway of the cabin. She looked at Zeke and she listened to him, waiting without being quite sure what she was waiting for. He was dirty, distraught, and hurt. The wifely thing would be to take him in, clean him, feed him, and dress his wound. Yet, the only wifely feelings she could muster were old and cold and sluggish—thick, like the boggy mud in the creeks near her home—not sudden and liquid, as they had once been.

  Often, since coming home, Becca had dreamed of her life with Zeke, dreamed that they were together again. Sometimes, doing a chore, she would daydream about happy moments they had when they were younger people. Sometimes her own memories made her weep a little—it seemed that all such happiness was behind her, now that she was back home. Old Ma took snuff all day, and she was vague in her mind, calling her daughter Margaret instead of Becca, the name of her sister thirty years dead. Her brother, Lem, had a pet skunk that snapped at the triplets if they abused it. Even without the skunk, Lem was a trial to live with. He had long been afflicted with the bloat, and made wind constantly. Day in and day out, he hardly left his chair by the fireplace. Lem had been waited on by his mother his whole life, and now that his sister was back, he expected to be waited on by her as well.