Zeke and Ned

by Larry McMurtry

  But now he had shamed her. She could not forget it, and the happiness was lost to her. He was her husband, and she felt it her duty to cook for him, care for his house and his livestock, and see that he stayed well, so far as that was in her power. But from now on, she would make her sleeping place in the room under the roof, with her younger daughter. Christian or not—that was the way it had to be.

  Once she had arranged her few possessions, Becca went downstairs, inspected the larder, which was close to empty, and visited her garden. The garden was so choked with weeds that she felt she must immediately give a week’s effort to it, or else lose the whole growing season and face a bleak winter with nothing but potatoes and pork to feed her family.

  The triplets—all three of them had piled on with Zeke for the ride home—were running wild down in the livestock lots, shrieking as they tried to catch the two spotted shoats and the thin calf. The old milk cow’s milk was drying up from lack of milking, and the calf was only skin and bones.

  Yet, the state of the place did not worry Becca. It was only suffering neglect, and she could alter that. She could even get adequate work out of Sully Eagle, if Zeke would only hold off sending him on useless errands. Even now, the place looked better than it had looked years before, when she had come home with Zeke as his new bride. She and Sully and Liza would just have to get to work—Zeke, too, if he was of a mind to stay home.

  That evening, Becca made a potato soup, with a little of the corn in it, after she had carefully picked out the weevils. There was a full moon that night. The moonlight that came through the open door and the windows was so bright, they scarcely needed candles. Zeke sat by the fireplace, telling yarns to the triplets, until one by one, they went to sleep in his lap or at his feet.

  Becca went quietly up after a time, leaving Zeke to sit late by the fire. Sully had walked off to his little shed, to sleep amid the corn-husks. Zeke had gotten up and arranged the triplets in a big chair by the fire, and covered them all with a little blue blanket.

  She went to her pallet under the roof and took her Bible, not bothering to light her candle. She merely held the Bible in her hands. It was late when she heard Zeke on the stairs. She heard his footsteps go into the room that had been theirs, and saw the flicker of the lamp he lit by the big bed.

  Then there was silence. Becca could imagine his puzzlement. Again, she felt the sadness: it was hard that things had changed, and yet, they had.

  In a minute, Zeke came and tapped on the door to the little room under the roof.

  “Bec?” he said, quietly.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  Zeke pushed the door open. She saw his puzzlement in the light of the lamp.

  “Bec, what’s this?” he asked. “Why ain’t you in the bedroom?”

  “This is where I’m sleeping now, Zeke,” she said. She looked at him, but did not raise her voice.

  “What?” he asked, as if he had misheard, his puzzlement increasing.

  “I’m sleeping in Liza’s room now,” Becca said, in the same even tone.

  “For how long?” Zeke asked.

  Becca did not respond—she did not know the answer to that. She saw him flush with anger.

  “I’ll be goddamned if you are, Bec!” he said. The next moment, he grabbed her thick hair with both hands, and proceeded to drag her over Liza’s bed and down the two steps to their big bedroom. Then he pulled her across the floor and hauled her up on their bed, letting go of her hair when he was finished. As soon as he let go of her hair, Becca got up and without even looking at him, went quickly out the room, up the two steps and back into the little room under the roof, shutting the door behind her. She had splinters in both knees from being pulled across the rough floor.

  As she was settling back on her pallet, Zeke came to the door again. He was panting heavily, but he had left the lantern and she could not see his face.

  “If you drag me again, I’ll leave you, Zeke,” Becca said. “I’ll leave, and I’ll stay gone.”

  In a moment, Zeke was crashing down the stairs. She heard him stomp off toward the springhouse, where he kept his whiskey.

  All night she waited, her scalp hurting from the pulling Zeke had given her hair. She wanted to get the splinters out of her knees, but she was afraid to light the candle for fear he might be watching. The light might provoke him again.

  At dawn, Becca heard a horse loping away. She ran down the stairs in her gown, to find Sully by the woodpile. He had caught a grey field mouse by the tail, and was holding it up high enough so that Pete could not get at it. Pete was jumping as high as he could, but Sully held the field mouse out of reach.

  “Where did Zeke go so early?” Becca asked.

  “Zeke? He went on the scout,” Sully said. He tossed the field mouse away, and Pete went dashing after it.

  Becca sighed. She wished Zeke had stayed, but he had left. Her knees were aching from the splinters. She needed to get a needle and ease them out, before they festered.

  “Come and eat breakfast, Sully,” she said. “We’ve got to get to work on that garden today.”

  The field mouse had got in a hole. Pete was barking at it frantically, as Sully followed Becca back to the house.

  11

  WILLY BECK WAS ON HIS WAY TO TAHLEQUAH WHEN HE SPOTTED the two marshals, who seemed to be proceeding in the same direction. Willy had never met either man, but he deduced they were marshals from the fact that they carried heavy sidearms and two impressive rifles apiece. Few people not financed by the government could afford that much expensive weaponry. Also, the two men, both dressed in dark coats, were riding at a high trot—a sign that they were on official business.

  Willy himself was on his way to Tahlequah to resume a courtship that had been brutally interrupted by the courthouse massacre. He was in love with a young woman named Roberta Kunkel. Except for a harelip, Roberta was a perfect specimen of womanhood, in Willy’s view. An added advantage was that being the daughter of a blacksmith, she was handy with tools. Willy was pursuing the courtship with his brothers’ encouragement. What farm equipment the Becks owned was prone to frequent breakage, and having a woman handy who could fix a harrow or put a new handle on a spade would be a useful thing.

  The only drawback to the arrangement was that so far, Roberta had shown no interest in marrying Willy. He had his horse shod seven or eight times in the last few months, just to have an excuse to be around Roberta. Roberta was stout, and could shoe a horse as quick as her father, but she rarely indulged in conversation while she was working. As yet, Willy had no idea what she thought of him, or whether she would consider being his wife.

  “I’ll marry you,” he had said several times, lounging by the forge.

  “Hand me that horseshoe, Willy,” Roberta replied—and that was all she said.

  Still, Willy took it as a good sign that she would let him help her a little with her work. He cheerfully rode the sixteen miles from the Beck mill to Tahlequah once a week to get his horse shod and pursue his courtship. Since T. Spade’s death, the surviving Becks had made the mill their home—all, that is, except White Sut, who still preferred to live in the wilds. The old man had gotten so strange that Willy was nervous around him—Frank, too. Davie did not mind the white-haired brute, but then Davie was just as scary as White Sut, or almost. White Sut had taken to following his pet buzzard around. He would even steal food from it, if the buzzard located a dead varmint that White Sut liked the looks of. His bear had got loose from him, but would still show up at the mill from time to time, looking for his master, who sometimes slept on the back porch if it was rainy.

  When Willy saw the two marshals, he jumped off his horse and lifted one of its front feet, pretending to be studying the horseshoe for signs of damage. Of course, this was just a ruse, since Roberta, his beloved, had put the shoe on the horse not a week before. Willy’s thinking was that the marshals would be less likely to bother with him if they thought he was burdened with a lame horse. He had decided, in any case,
to lie about being a Beck, but he had not been able in the brief moments since he spotted the marshals to think what his new name should be. He thought he might use Robert for one of the names, but was mulling over a second name when the two marshals clopped right up to him and stopped.

  Neither of them looked friendly, and Willy already regretted that he had not made a run for it. The older marshal, particularly, had cold eyes.

  “Hand up your weapon, sir,” Dan Maples said.

  “Say, is there a whore in Tahlequah?” the younger marshal asked, before Willy could think what to do.

  “Buck, let me do the talking,” Dan Maples said, annoyed with his colleague. Buck Massey’s incessant preoccupation with whores had already become wearisome to Dan.

  “I’m the senior man,” Dan reminded Buck. He wanted there to be no doubt in the younger marshal’s mind as to who was running the Tahlequah operation.

  “Hand up that gun,” he repeated. “You can answer Marshal Massey once you’re disarmed.”

  “I need my gun, I’m scared of bears,” Willy pointed out.

  “You’ll have nothing to fear from bears when we put you in a sturdy jail, Mr. Beck,” Dan said. “Besides, you’ll soon have your brothers for company, if you’ve got any brothers left after that shooting.”

  “I’ve got Frank, and there’s Davie, too,” Willy said. “How’d you know I was a Beck?”

  “I have seen my share of Becks, and you look like the ones I’ve seen,” Dan informed him, though the truth was, he’d only ever laid eyes on the mild Sam Beck, once several years before. “Do you take me for such a fool as to suppose I don’t know a Beck when I see one?”

  Willy was cowed by the man’s surly tone.

  “Oh . . . all right, then,” Willy said, meekly. He surrendered his pistol to Marshal Maples.

  “Handcuff him, Buck,” Dan said. “You should have done it already. We can’t afford to be slow, not when we’re arresting Becks.”

  “He don’t look wild to me, Dan,” Buck ventured. But he dismounted, and did as he was told. As soon as Buck had Willy handcuffed, he drew back a fist and knocked him flat.

  “Speak up when I ask you about whores,” Buck told the dazed man.

  “Now, Buck, behave,” Dan admonished. “I won’t have you beating the prisoner right here on a public road.”

  Willy’s head was spinning from the blow he had been dealt, and Dan Maples was looking at him coldly. Willy began to wish he had waited a day or two before riding over to Tahlequah to continue his courtship. He hastily got mounted before the hot young marshal got a chance to knock him down again.

  On the ride into Tahlequah, Dan Maples tried to interrogate Willy about the shootout in the courtroom, but Willy’s response did not shed much light on the event in question.

  “There was such a passel of shooting that I jumped out a window and run off,” Willy told them. “My brother Frank did the same. I do know that Ned Christie shot Bill Yopps . . . that’s how it started.”

  “Bill Yopps? Why, I marshaled with Bill. I heard he took to drink,” Dan said.

  “I told the Judge that rascal Christie was an outlaw,” Buck Massey said. “The old fool wouldn’t listen.”

  “Buck, you were not consulted about this detective work,” Dan Maples said. “That’s one thing. The other thing is that if you make one more disparaging remark about Judge Parker, you’re fired.”

  “Fired? For calling a fool a fool?” Buck said, his pride affronted.

  “That’s one more. You’re fired,” Dan said. “I’ll take this prisoner to jail. You can go on home to your whore.”

  Buck Massey was not used to rebuke—Willy could see that right off. The young marshal’s face turned purple with rage. In a moment, he yanked out a big pistol, at which point, since he was directly between the two marshals, Willy thought it wise to ride a few steps ahead.

  “Put the gun away, Buck, or else suffer your death,” Dan Maples said, in a voice so cold Willy felt a shiver run down his spine.

  “Bold talk, Dan,” Buck said, cocking his pistol. “It looks to me like I’ve got the drop on you. I won’t be fired for calling that old judge what he plainly is.”

  “You’ll be fired if I say you’re fired!” Dan Maples insisted. “Put the gun away, or suffer your death!”

  “You are a sight, Dan,” Buck Massey said. Then he noticed that Dan, too, had somehow got his pistol out and up.

  Willy’s horse began to crow-hop, for some reason. By the time he got him under control and looked back at the marshals, there was only one marshal to look at—Marshal Dan Maples. Buck Massey was flat on his back on the ground, his sightless eyes wide open. He was stone dead.

  “I didn’t hear no gun go off,” Willy said, astonished.

  “You must have stoppers in your ears, then,” Dan said. “My gun went off, how else do you think Buck got dead?”

  Willy stared, dumbfounded, and more than a little afraid. This fellow was scarier than his wild brother Davie. Davie looked crazy, at least. Marshal Dan Maples’s behaviour was more unpredictable, and more frightening. Willy felt he ought to be real cautious while in the company of a man prone to such sudden, unprovoked violence.

  “I warned him, the fool,” Dan added. “You heard me.”

  “I heard you,” Willy agreed quickly.

  “What a damn nuisance the man was, and now we’ve got to bury him on top of it all,” Dan said. “I would have done better to leave the young fool to his whore.”

  Willy helped Dan Maples get the body of the dead marshal across his horse. It was decided that the best thing would be to bury him in Tahlequah, where there was a fair-sized cemetery.

  Willy grew sad, as they were riding in. A man was dead, and he himself was handcuffed. Now that he was a prisoner, there would be scant opportunity for courting.

  “I doubt I’ll ever get me a wife,” Willy said, thinking out loud.

  He had hoped for a glimpse of his beloved, but in that he was thwarted, too. Roberta did not happen to be at the forge, when they rode past.

  “Oh, now, you’re young yet, Mr. Beck,” Dan Maples said, speaking in a less indifferent tone. “I expect if you behave yourself, you’ll still have time for a wife.”

  12

  JEWEL’S GOTTEN BAD ABOUT ME LEAVING HOME, NED SAID TO Tuxie. “She dern near had a fit the other day. Is Dale bad to have fits, when you leave?”

  Tuxie’s leg had healed to the point where he felt strong enough to pay his friend Ned an occasional visit.

  “Dale used to be bad about it,” Tuxie admitted. “Since I’ve been laid up with this poison blood, I ain’t been able to leave home. I guess Dale’s tired of me now—she didn’t even look up when I said I was going to see you.”

  “Jewel ain’t tired of me. I feel like I got a log chain on,” Ned said. He could see Jewel down by the barn, milking a big, smelly nanny goat. Her ma, or somebody else, had told her goat milk was good for her, if she was expecting a child. Liza was with her, chattering away as usual. Liza was supposed to be slopping the pig, but so far, the slop was still in the slop bucket. The pig was looking at Liza impatiently, and Ned could not blame the pig.

  “Does Dale have any sisters?” he asked. Since Liza had come to stay with them, he had begun to realize what a hard thing marriage was. For one thing, it involved tedious and boresome in-laws, such as Liza.

  “Yes—Dot,” Tuxie informed him. Ned had given him some tobacco, and he was enjoying a chaw, something Dale had not permitted him during the time of his illness.

  “Does she talk much?” Ned asked.

  “Oh, no, she never talks, Dot’s dead,” Tuxie said. “I get plenty of conversation from Dale.”

  “Jewel’s not a talker,” Ned admitted. “That don’t mean she’s easy to live with, though.”

  “Why, where’d you get the notion that women are easy to live with?” Tuxie asked. “Women are a passel of trouble, though I need my Dale.”

  “I wish Jewel would let up about my leaving,” Ned said.
“I need to go to town once in a while. It’s boresome, getting drunk at home.”

  “Ned, it’s no time to be going to Tahlequah,” Tuxie reminded him. “Old Judge Ike Parker’s got marshals on the roads.”

  “I don’t have to travel the roads to get to town. I can keep to the high paths,” Ned said. “Anyway, the marshals got no case on me. All I did was shoot in self-defense.”

  Ned was not really interested in what Judge Ike Parker thought— not at the moment. What interested him was relieving the constricted feeling he got in his throat, when he was wanting to leave and could not because of his young wife. He had lived a free life all his years so far, even when he was with Lacy. He was not disposed to give it up because Jewel had a baby inside her. Sometimes, he liked to drink whiskey with the boys, any boys who happened to be available for a drinking party.

  Tuxie Miller was still weak from his illness, and needed frequent naps. There was a good cane-bottomed rocking chair on the porch that had belonged to Ned’s grandfather and had been carried all the way from the Old Place. Tuxie made himself comfortable in it, and was soon nodding. Just before he nodded off, he remembered that Dale had pointedly reminded him to ask Ned if he had made arrangements with a preacher to marry him and Jewel proper. Dale was firm in her conviction that Ned and Jewel ought to be married before a preacher, and soon, before the baby inside Jewel grew large enough for the general public to notice.

  Tuxie asked his question, and Ned said no—he had not located a preacher as of yet.

  “I don’t know what general public Dale is talking about,” Ned said. “Jewel don’t ever leave home. Nobody from the general public could see her, unless they had some good spyglasses, and then they’d mostly have to spot her through a window.”