Telegraph Days: A Novel

by Larry McMurtry

  “Yes—in the house with the hedges around it.”

  It was the first mention I had had of Mrs. Karoo’s first name.

  General Sherman looked around, spotted the house with the hedges, and surveyed the rest of the town without much interest. One of his worn-out soldiers was asleep in the saddle, a fact that the general didn’t miss.

  “Shake that fool, we can’t have a slumbering cavalry,” he said, though without much heat.

  “I seem to remember there was a shoot-out here,” he mentioned. “The Yazee gang, wasn’t it?”

  “Correct—my brother, Jackson, shot all six of them,” I said.

  “That’s mostly luck, I expect,” the general remarked.

  Then he gave me a long look.

  “I’ve met a few Courtrights,” he said. “I suppose you’re the prize of the lot, or this town wouldn’t have made you mayor.”

  “They made me mayor because I’m organized,” I told him.

  “Uh-oh,” he said, with a trace of a smile. “If I didn’t have seventeen forts to inspect I’d sit under a tree and watch you be mayor for a day or two.”

  “You might if you could find a tree,” I observed.

  General Sherman looked startled.

  “There is that,” he admitted. “I keep thinking I’m in Tennessee, but I’m not, am I?”

  Brisk as he was—at least, that was his reputation—he seemed reluctant to go.

  “An organized woman is a fright to the mind,” he said, and then he tipped his hat to me and rode up to Mrs. Karoo’s, where he stayed about an hour. The soldiers were allowed to dismount—in a blink all three sat down and went fast asleep.

  In my family—some of whom lived in Atlanta—General Sherman was regarded as the blackest monster on the planet. He didn’t seem a monster to me, but then I was not at war with him.

  On his way back down the street General Sherman gave my office a wide berth, but he did stop at the jail. Pretty soon Jackson and Ted Bunsen and Hungry Billy were walking over the shoot-out site with him. His sleepy soldiers even perked up and took an interest. Hungry Billy even managed to get the general to pose with Jackson and Ted for a photo or two, after which the general and his three sleepy soldiers and his pack mule rode off in the direction of the seventeen forts he meant to inspect.

  About a week after General Sherman paid us a visit, Sheriff Ted Bunsen showed up at my office and proposed to me one last time. Of course I was scribbling on The Good Deputy. It looked as though my heroine, Marcie, might be pregnant by that blacksmith’s boy, whom I pictured as a large youth with sturdy thighs.

  I myself had yet to be pregnant, which I understand to involve some discomfort such as early vomits and the like. Very few pregnant women turned up in the fiction of the day—particularly not pregnant women who had not bothered to get married—so I knew I was writing a daring passage (daring enough that the preachers would preach against my book) and I wanted to concentrate and push my narrative all the way to the birth of the babe; but I looked up and there was Teddy. He hadn’t rapped on the glass, as General Sherman had, but there he stood, good old Ted, a beau of sorts, if rather a dull one.

  The life of women is mostly interruption—at least that’s how I experienced it. Father used to interrupt me freely, asking me the meaning of a word, or how much water had accumulated in the rain gauge, or if I thought the milk cow was going dry.

  Zenas Clark, when I first knew him, thought nothing of interrupting me for no better reason than that he wanted to poke his stiffie in me. If I had known how sparse such attentions would get to be I would have opened my arms to Zenas every time—in later years, I mostly did.

  “What is it now, Sheriff?” I asked brusquely.

  “It’s our engagement—is it still on?” he asked, in his normal nasal voice.

  “Well, you’ll have to let me think, Theodore,” I said firmly. “The last time it was mentioned was before the Yazee shoot-out, which occurred way back in eighteen seventy-six, as I recall. Then I worked for Bill Cody nearly four years, which brings us well into the eighteen eighties. That’s how I figure it.”

  Ted did some hasty mental calculations but didn’t say anything.

  “That’s a good long engagement,” I pointed out. “I suppose the main question is whether we still want to attempt marriage with one another.”

  “If that’s the question, then what’s your answer?” he asked.

  “I’ll be frank, Theodore,” I said. “I am loath to commit myself to the married state until I’ve sampled the quality of our copulation, which is an act we’ve accomplished only once and that was a while ago.

  “We could hike off to some private spot and have another go at copulating,” I suggested.

  Teddy was still beet red.

  “I fear I’ve forgotten how to go about it,” he admitted.

  “Oh, honey,” I said. He was so hopeless I found I almost loved him.

  Teddy stood as if planted.

  “Ted, if it was that hard to do, the human race would have died off long ago,” I reminded him.

  “What about the sin part?” he asked, his blush fading a little.

  “That’s just preacher’s talk,” I told him. “A couple that’s been engaged as long as we have deserves a modicum of copulation, I suppose.”

  “How do we start up?” he asked.

  There’s such a thing as too hopeless, but I was in a tolerant mood that day.

  “First we find a private place,” I said. “Then we lock the doors, so my nieces won’t surprise us—you never can tell where those rambling tykes are apt to pop up. Then maybe we’ll start by kissing again.”

  He had not, as I recalled, been a bad kisser.

  “Then when you get a nice big stiffie we’ll commence in earnest,” I answered him.

  “The jail’s pretty private,” Ted told me. “I’ve turned loose all the drunks, and Jackson’s gone off with Aurel to try and locate that bunch of mules that ran off two nights ago.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  Actually, the scarcity of copulation was encouraging me to describe it pretty frankly in The Good Deputy. The preachers would be beside themselves when they read what I had Marcie do with a cowboy who couldn’t wait.

  “You run along to the jail and I’ll be right behind you,” I told him. “Here come the McClendon sisters—as soon as I’ve dealt with them I’ll come to the jail and slip in.”

  Off the man went, and I did deal with the McClendon sisters, who merely wanted to wire some money to a derelict brother. For some reason their hens decided to follow me instead of the sisters, but I discreetly gave one of them a firm kick, which outraged them of course but prompted them to leave me alone.

  In no time I was in the jail, where, remembering that I was mayor, I decided to throw caution to the winds—I suppose I rather rushed Ted Bunsen, my old sock of a beau. He was right to admit that he was still a virtual stranger to even the rudiments of copulation. I can’t abide clothes at such a time and soon had mine scattered hither and yon over the office, which shocked the sheriff a good deal, I fear. He himself was reluctant even to take down his pants—he thought unbuttoning a button or two would suffice but I disregarded propriety and yanked his pants down myself. Even then copulating with Teddy was no sure thing—he seemed to have no inkling as to how to find the entrance to the cave of joy. Tired of waiting—why can’t the fool find it?—I put him in with my hand, and then later, after an eruption and a nap, I put him in again and had some fun myself.

  Somehow we forgot to lock the back door. While we were sprawled about, wondering what came next—I saw nothing wrong with thirds, myself—the back door suddenly opened and a small, friendly-looking Mexican man stepped in. He wore a big yellow hat and he was carrying an old broom.

  “Sorry, Señor Ted, I forgot I borrowed this,” he said. He sat the broom down, bestowed a nice smile on me, and left.

  Teddy was so shocked at being caught with his pants down that I feared he might have a stroke.
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br />   “That was Mexican Joe,” he informed me.

  “Theodore, I would never have guessed,” I said.

  11

  THE VERY NEXT day Ted Bunsen showed up at my office and broke off our long engagement, an action which did not particularly surprise me.

  “All right, Teddy, you’re off the hook as far as matrimony is concerned, but where does that leave copulation?” I asked him.

  “We can’t be doing it in the jail,” he informed me. “Too many interruptions.”

  “How about Joe Schwartz’s hayloft?” I proposed.

  That possibility seemed not to have occurred to Teddy—like I said, there’s such a thing as too hopeless.

  “Or we could find a nice spot out on the prairie somewhere and enjoy ourselves on a blanket—would that suit you?” I asked.

  Teddy was silent for a long time. I don’t think it had occurred to him that copulation might be possible pretty much anywhere, if both partners were willing and able.

  “I need to think about it all,” he said.

  “Okay—you wander on off and leave me to get on with the town’s business,” I told him. “I didn’t really want to marry you anyway!”

  Ted looked relieved.

  “I prayed to the Lord, Nellie,” he said.

  “And what’s the Lord’s opinion?”

  “I’m supposed to stay a bachelor, that’s the gist of it,” Ted said.

  “For once I agree with the Lord,” I told him. Then I shut my window, put out my Closed sign, and got on with The Good Deputy.

  Privately I had already concluded that Ted Bunsen wouldn’t do as a husband, even if he dared to risk it. He might come to want me enough, but I don’t think he would ever come to like me enough for it to work. Pleasure scared him, and if a man is going to be scared of pain and easy pleasure then why waste time with him?

  Fortunately for me, before I had time to get sad about my rejection—which it’s possible to do even if you have very little liking for the man who did the rejecting—a fresh possibility appeared in the person of Andy Jessup, the good old Skivvy Kid, who passed through Rita Blanca with five scruffy fellows who claimed to be geologists. Andy was guiding them down to the Cherokee country, where they planned to prospect for oil.

  “Oil?” I asked, when I got Andy off by ourselves. “What kind of oil?”

  “Do I look like a scientist?” Andy asked. He still had his sweet smile—it wasn’t backed up by very much heat but it still was a mighty appealing smile.

  “I’m just curious,” I told him. “Bill Cody always claimed there was a big future for oil, if it’s the right kind of oil. I suppose it’s useful for greasing wheels and such.”

  I found it hard to take much interest in oil, but years later, when Zenas and I were living in California, some of the biggest oil strikes in history were made on Cherokee land. Then I remembered Andy and those five scruffy men. One or two of those old Cherokees got so rich they even bought mansions in Beverly Hills and were able to parade around in fancy motorcars, all because of oil.

  I was always glad to see Andy Jessup when he showed up, which was often during my last months in Rita Blanca; with Cody retired to the stage, Andy had become the leading guide to the southern plains. He made friends with Quanah Parker and some other big Comanches and was able to take scientists and rich dudes across the reservation with no trouble from the residents.

  I had a big sweet spot for Andy and cried many tears over his death—he was shot down by an ordinary drunk in Abilene, Kansas, for no reason whatsoever except that it was Saturday night and the drunk felt like shooting off his gun. Andy was in a hotel, standing at his window admiring a lightning storm that was moving across the prairie—the drunk’s bullet hit him square in the head. They say he was dead before he hit the floor, which I hope is true because no sweeter fellow ever walked the earth.

  We never quite found the moment to become lovers, Andy and me. There was some kissing now and then, but we’d always get to laughing about some joke and let the kissing peter out. Andy traveled: I guess he was gone when I was in the mood for him, and there when I wasn’t—though that doesn’t sound right either. The fact is we were meant to be chums, not lovers, and somehow squeaked through without hurting one another’s feelings very bad.

  When I think of Andy now, from the high hill of my age, I still remember him coming up to the telegraph office in his long johns—my young darling, the Skivvy Kid.

  12

  TO HEAR ZENAS CLARK tell it, Tombstone, Arizona, was paradise on earth. I suppose Zenas believed it, because he came all the way to Rita Blanca to talk me into helping him with a newspaper he had started up called the Tombstone Turret.

  Zenas still had his old snaggle-toothed appeal, and he must have been getting in some practice with somebody because he was even better at copulation than I remembered him being. On the whole we made a lively couple, which didn’t quite remove all my doubts about that wild community.

  Rumor had it that the Earps ran the town now and the death rate from gunfire was seldom less than a man a day.

  “That’s exaggerated,” Zenas insisted. “It’s seldom more than three or four a week.”

  “Three or four a week does add up, though,” I countered. It made Zenas sulk a little; he hated to be argued with.

  “The sun shines every day out of a clear blue sky,” he tried.

  “I got plenty of freckles now—why would I want more?”

  In fact I even had freckles on the tops of my bosoms, which Zenas could see for himself, since we were naked in my bed when we had the conversation.

  “Did I mention that Tombstone has four fine hotels?” he said, grasping at straws.

  “I don’t care about a bunch of hotels but I do care about your worthy prick,” I told him, “so I’ll think about it and maybe join you in Tombstone in the near future.”

  “Why not now?” he wanted to know.

  “Because I’m the mayor,” I reminded him. “I promised them six months and I mean to give them six months.”

  “But you’ll come, won’t you, sweetie?” he pleaded.

  I tickled him in a sensitive place—I wanted his worthy prick to do its job again.

  Later, the job finished, I decided I might as well go to Tombstone; I told Zenas I would come as soon as my term ended, in one month. Then I shocked him by announcing my intention to travel over land. I had developed no fondness for trains.

  “Good Lord, travel over land, in this day and time!” he protested. “You’ll get lost and never be found.”

  “I suppose Jakey and Sam can guide me well enough,” I told him. My old cowboy friends were up in Dodge City, wasting their time running a livery stable.

  At mention of Jakey and Sam, Zenas boiled up and had a fit.

  “They’d only do it because they’re sweet on you,” Zenas insisted. “If I catch them I’ll pound them to a pulp.”

  I’ve seen too many male fits to take them seriously, especially Zenas’s, which usually only lasted about as long as it takes to boil water.

  “Of course, they may harbor some affection for me—I hope so,” I told Zenas.

  “But I’m not sweet on either one of them. I plan to be chaste in my travels, chaste as a nun.”

  After the tupping we’d just done, the thought of me chaste as a nun became, for Zenas, a term of amusement.

  “Chaste as a nun,” he’d say, if we were about to attempt copulation.

  “As I understand it the boom in Tombstone is based on silver,” I said. “What happens to us and our newspaper if the silver peters out?”

  “It won’t—there’s a mountain of silver,” he insisted. “And there’s copper and maybe gold. Before you know it, Tombstone will be as big as Denver.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but I was in love with Zenas by then, and agreed to move to Tombstone when my term as mayor ended in only one more month.

  I suppose my doubt about the likelihood of the boom lasting forever made Zenas a little doubtful himself.
r />   “Look at it this way, Nellie,” he said. “If the boom does fail we’ll be just that much closer to California.”

  “Smart thinking, honey,” I said.

  13

  IT WAS WITH many a pang that I took my final leave of Rita Blanca: somehow I felt that I had grown up there. Being its first telegraph lady, and then its mayor, had helped make me a responsible young woman. I had never been one to suffer fools gladly, but the main thing I learned, in the end, was not to insist on too lofty ideals. If you want to be part of a human community you have to suffer fools—patiently, if not gladly—and you must practice civility as best you can. There were normal people, like the McClendon sisters, and great driving fools like Bill Cody, but the tribe of human beings is never likely to be crowded with Aristotles.

  I served, in the end, six months and a day as mayor of Rita Blanca. Nobody was happy to see me go. Tears were shed and speeches made. A kind of band played and everybody danced, right down to my little nieces, who were short-legged but nimble. I got hugs and kisses from everybody except Ted Bunsen, who confined himself to a handshake. He had still not quite recovered from having been twice seduced in his own jail. Mexican Joe, his crime forgiven, showed up and played the trombone.

  Well, they say it takes all kinds—a dubious maxim if you ask me. My guides, Jakey and Sam, were the impatient kind, on this occasion. Some fool had convinced them that there was so much silver in Tombstone that you could pick up nuggets in the street—and if you were not content with nuggets you could wander out into the desert and find chunks of silver the size of goose eggs. Naturally my escorts were eager to get going, before someone else found all those.

  We finally departed Rita Blanca just after lunch—Aurel Imlah had hunted long and hard and secured just enough buffalo liver to make a fine repast, which Esther Karoo, old friend of General Sherman’s, cooked to perfection.

  I had purchased an excellent black pacing horse for my trip to Arizona. I waved, and the citizens of Rita Blanca waved back; soon it got a little dusty and I could just make out the hedges around Esther Karoo’s house. Then the town was behind me, though my past wasn’t, not quite. I planned to stop for the night at our old Black Mesa Ranch, which we reached in time to see a flaming sunset light our way into the vast West.