The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “Do hush, Papa, you’ll disturb Father Geoffrin’s concentration,” Tasmin said. “Don’t you see that these clothes are all that’s going to save us from the savages?”

  “Humbug, don’t believe it . . . Give it all away if you want . . . ruin me entirely,” Lord B. said, clutching his one consolation, Gorska’s excellent Belgian gun. He had already fired it off at a Mandan dog, killing the cur where it stood.

  “Of course, one of the great attractions of Paris is the sewing shops,” Father Geoffrin said. “I admit I could never stay out of them—it’s the patterns that ravish one, you know. I’d much rather spend an afternoon in the sewing shops than worrying with my rosary or attempting to redeem prostitutes.”

  “What about this, Father Geoff?” Tasmin asked, holding up a vivid yellow blouse.

  “Awful. How I do despise yellow,” Father Geoffrin said, flinging the bright blouse on the take-away pile.

  44

  . . . and yet there had been an élévation, impossible to conceal . . .

  MADEMOISELLE Pellenc in no way intended the thing to happen, but the fact was, Lord Berrybender’s voluminous vomiting quite drenched Monsieur Le Page’s best trousers. It was Mademoiselle’s view that the trousers were beyond cleaning: they must be thrown away and others secured. Mr. Catlin gallantly offered to lend Monsieur a pair, and in fact handed them over, his cabin being only two doors from Made-moiselle’s.

  “Should fit well enough,” George said; he saw that the young Frenchman was deeply shocked by what had occurred. Though he must have seen some sights in his life as a trader, he had certainly not expected his noble host to vomit in his lap. His embarrassment was intense.

  It was Mademoiselle’s impatience that provoked the incident. She couldn’t wait to get the reeking garment off the young Monsieur. Shy about finding himself in a lady’s cabin, he was even more shy about undoing his buttons—in fact he proved so clumsy that Mademoiselle knelt down and assisted him. He wore his trousers tight—it was the fashion in Quebec. Mademoiselle had to peel them down his fine muscular legs. In an instant, once his legs were free, Mademoiselle rushed out and flung the smelly garment into the river; les poissons could nibble them if they liked.

  It was when she returned to her room that the thing happened. Young Monsieur Le Page, blushing deeply, was struggling into the trousers Mr. Catlin had lent him; and yet there had been an élévation, impossible to conceal. The trousers quite refused to contain the young Monsieur’s imposing staff. Moreover, he was gazing at Mademoiselle with a look of shocked tenderness, as he did his best to conceal this awkward sign of budding affection. In an instant Mademoiselle decided: she would marry Monsieur Le Page! Though the foul attentions of her captors had made her feel she would be unlikely ever to want a man again, she had not supposed her rescuer would be someone so sweet, so young, so blushing, so agréable, and yet at once so firmly made as this young Québecois who now stood in her bedroom, struggling to stretch his trousers over his prick.

  “No, no, monsieur . . . let me,” Mademoiselle said. He was but a boy—she herself was thirty-five, tied to a bunch of worthless English, beset by the garlicky Italian and the lustful Spaniard. Monsieur Simon Le Page was her hope. She hastily shut the door, went back to the trembling boy, and took him in hand—the conclusion, almost immediate, was quite copious—but for her skillful handling Monsieur would have messed another pair of pants.

  “Monsieur, it is decided—I am yours,” Mademoiselle said. “Where you go, I go too.”

  Simon Le Page was not quite sure what had been decided; but his heart swelled in his breast. Thoughts of the company he hoped to rise in were for the moment put aside. He would deny Mademoiselle nothing, they would have a snug log house in Three Rivers, children would come.

  The next day—with ten of the engagés, who would be dropped off to trap the northern streams; with six thousand pelts, every one of which had survived Monsieur Le Page’s exacting inspection; and Mademoiselle Pellenc, by this time busily bossing all the French, including the surly Malboeuf—the French party left the Mandan villages, themselves much brightened by many pairs of Lady Berrybender’s colorful pantaloons—red, pink, blue, green, and lavender. The pantaloons had been a great hit with the Mandans, Rees, Hidatsas, Gros Ventres, and a sprinkling of wild Sioux. The Bad Eye had been given Lord Berrybender’s great plaid cape, the one he usually wore when hunting stags in Scotland; and the lesser chiefs had been mollified with very proper umbrellas, a score of which Lord Berrybender had laid in before leaving Portsmouth.

  Several of the party waved at them as they left.

  Only Lord Berrybender sulked.

  “Never cared for losing servants—can’t have too many servants,” he said, as he sat with his claret and his fine Belgian gun.

  45

  “She does look disagreeable,” Bobbety observed.

  THE steamer Rocky Mount steamed north, beyond the Mandan encampments, on a bright, cold day when the plains shone white with frost. Tasmin, Bobbety, George Catlin, and Holger Sten stood and watched—Lady Constance Berrybender’s bright pantaloons were on flagrant display among the Mandan women. The Indians lined up to stare at the Thunder Boat—even the Bad Eye had dragged his great bulk, some of which was covered now by Lord Berrybender’s great plaid cape, to the door of the skull lodge to listen as the great water beast belched. Draga stood beside him. She scorned the English clothes; what she wanted was English scalps.

  “She does look disagreeable,” Bobbety observed.

  “Not disagreeable, evil,” Tasmin said. “I fear she’s ruined our sister Bess. I can hardly get her to say a word.”

  “Yes, it’s annoying,” Bobbety said. “She does not even care to hear my theories about the Mesozoic Age.”

  “Don’t care to hear them myself,” Tasmin warned. “You’re lucky I brought you Father Geoff, who is interested in everything.”

  “Count on a Jesuit for a nimble mind,” George said.

  “He’s only a faux Jesuit,” Tasmin said. “Not much of a credit to his stern order. He seems to be one of those gentlemen who take a great interest in clothes.”

  On the deck below, Tim, the stable boy, was being flogged—the lashes firmly laid on, at Lord Berrybender’s insistence, by Captain Aitken, who approached the task with some reluctance but a strong hand. George Aitken didn’t believe the young lout was much at fault in the matter of the blankets and the muskets—the thoroughbreds, after all, were his responsibility—but he laid the cat on hard, anyway. The boy was certainly not worth much, and the captain had the remaining engagés to consider; they’d be into all sorts of mischief if they thought they could get off with a light whipping. Young Tim was hardly stoic; he was soon blubbering and wailing, but he was young and the stripes would soon heal.

  Bess Berrybender, staring at the white, chill plains, heard the blubberings, but they aroused little sympathy for her former lover, Tim. She herself had hardly been stoic when Draga beat her. She had wailed and shrieked, and Mademoiselle had done the same, but no one in the Mandan camp came to their aid.

  The liberties Bess had allowed Tim, in the time before her capture, seemed very distant memories. Though she was safe, warm, and comfortable again, she was gripped by a great passivity. Once much given to declamation, she now said nothing. When Bobbety tried to interest her in fossil fish she made no response. When Cook inquired about Fräulein Pfretzskaner, Bess only sobbed a little—she remembered the bloody hatchets.

  The sly Mary had caught a baby raccoon and made it a pet. She came along with the little creature while Tim was blubbering, but Bess was not responsive to its furry antics.

  “It is sad that you don’t like my raccoon,” Mary said. “I have named him Agamemnon.”

  “I enjoy nothing,” Bess said. “I shall soon go in a convent and become a handmaiden of the Lord.”

  “If that is your aim you should have left with Mademoiselle,” Mary said. “I have no doubt that there are convents in Quebec, since the French seem to require a g
reat many nuns.”

  “I shall attempt to find an order enjoined to silence, so I shall never have to listen to noisy brats like you,” Buffum answered.

  Mary at once flung the small raccoon over the side—after a second, a splash was heard.

  “If you don’t even like my little pet, Agamemnon, why keep him?” Mary asked.

  Bess didn’t answer.

  “You are rather a loss, good-bye,” Mary said. She ran downstairs and persuaded one of the engagés to rescue her little coon, which was swimming desperately.

  “Do you think my sister’s eagerness to take the veil is genuine?” Tasmin asked Father Geoffrin. “Or might we expect her to become her old contentious self, someday?”

  Father Geoff had been reading Crébillon—he had found the volume in Mademoiselle’s stateroom, which was now his.

  “Fornication seems constantly to be on this odd fellow’s mind,” he said, closing the book. “I have no opinion about your sister’s faith, but if she does take the veil I recommend the Carmelites—they have such elegant vestments.”

  “There are times, Geoff, when you are less rewarding than even Mary’s coon,” Tasmin said. She was quite put out with the little priest—it occurred to her that if she had not encountered him and begun to babble about books, she would have cooled off, changed her mind, and gone back to her husband, Jim Snow, whom she had begun to miss quite severely.

  As evening drew on—chill and dank—Bess bestirred herself and asked Cook for a little salve; she felt it would be only Christian if she applied some to Tim’s bloody back.

  “At least you weren’t blistered by hot sticks,” she told the apathetic stable boy. Tim, taking this as encouragement, grabbed Bess’s hand and forced it against his groin—that being his usual, indeed his only, method of dalliance.

  Bess drew back a fist and gave him a solid punch—so solid that he looked shocked.

  “I came to this dank hole merely to treat your wounds, as a Christian would, Master Tim,” she said. “I will tolerate no more coarseness—I intend soon to become a bride of Christ.”

  “What? Be a nun? But we had such times afucking,” Tim said.

  “Those pleasures will be no more, not in the year of our Lord 1832,” Bess said, as she left him.

  46

  . . . even in their pleasure she was noisy . . .

  JIM Snow did not miss Tasmin much, in the first days after her departure. The truth was, her constant talk wore him out. She was forever talking, asking, interfering, insisting, opposing, suggesting. Some nights she talked on and on, when all Jim wanted to do was go to sleep. He had never known such a woman—even in their pleasure she was noisy, unlike his Indian wives. He had cracked his bow and needed to make a new one, which would be easier to do if he could give it his whole attention and not have to continually be answering questions. He didn’t suppose Tasmin would be gone long, or encounter much danger. The night she had spent in the Oto cornfield had done her no harm.

  Tasmin was scarcely out of sight before the old green parrot showed up. In the daytime the bird would vanish, but every morning, when dawn came, the old bird would return for an hour, nodding by what coals still glowed in the campfire, like an old man by a hearth.

  When two nights passed and Tasmin had not returned, Jim grew doubtful. Perhaps he had underestimated the danger—perhaps the Sioux had come upon her. He walked a few miles up the river, following her tracks, and soon discovered that she had fallen in with someone, someone with very small feet who had been wearing sandals. It could hardly have been Charbonneau, whose footprints were a laughingstock among the trappers because of their great size.

  “A buffalo could follow Sharbo,” Dan Drew claimed. “I can barely track a moose, but I can track him.”

  There were no signs of conflict, which suggested to Jim that Tasmin had merely fallen in with someone from the boat, which by now was surely at the Mandan encampments. Probably she was back with her family, safe for a time. The steamer, he knew, could not afford to linger long at the Mandans, if George Aitken hoped to get it upriver to the Yellowstone before the thick ice formed.

  Though Jim’s new bow was finished, he had no sinews with which to wrap it or string it. For sinews he needed a buffalo—even an old one would do. He decided he had better go west, kill a buffalo, finish his bow, and then swing wide around the Mandans and catch up with Tasmin and the steamer somewhere near the Knife River. Then he could ask Charbonneau or one of the hunters to tell his wife that he had come for her.

  That night he dreamed of her—in the dream he could even smell her sweet breath—and then woke, cold and disappointed, to see the old parrot, nodding by the coals.

  In the afternoon it began to snow—a wind came up from the north and blew so hard that not much of the snow settled; instead, it whirled in clouds. One moment Jim could see far across the prairies, the next moment he could see only white. It was only by luck that he noticed the buffalo, twenty or thirty of them, their coats already carrying a thick blanket of snow. Moving with the flurries, Jim came within thirty yards of them and killed a bull and a calf; the bull he took for the sinews, the calf to eat. He found a little wood near a small frozen creek, enough to warm him through the blowy night. Not long before dawn the wind settled, the sky cleared, and the cold deepened. That morning there was no parrot by the fire. Jim drew the sinews, dried them, and finished wrapping his bow—he felt quite out of sorts with his wife, who could have been of help had she not gone storming off, for no reason. He intended to speak to her sternly about such impulsive behavior, the next time he was with her. A wife had the duty of obedience. Bow making could not be rushed. It required steadiness, a good eye, and a clear mind. Jim took his time with the wrapping.

  He was moving northeast, toward the distant river, when he heard Indians singing—not many of them, five or six at most. A minute later their dogs caught his scent and began to bark. The song, faintly heard across the cold prairies, was no war song. It was a death song, a song meant to send a just-released on to the Sky House, to the company of other spirits. An old person, an elder of the little band, tired, his spirit fluttery, must have passed on. Growing up as a captive of the Osage, Jim had heard many such songs of passing. The song he was hearing now—repetitive, keening, sad—was, he felt sure, a song for a chief. And yet if a great chief of the Mandans had died the whole tribe would normally be there, wailing out this death song—not just these few singers. The dogs still barked—the singers knew he was near. Rather than turn west into the snowfields, Jim moved toward the sound.

  The six old men who had been singing were just lifting a body onto a burial scaffold—a heavy body, too. They were struggling with it, but finally got it lodged securely on the poles of the scaffold. Three old women stood watching. Jim raised his hand in a sign of peace. The singers, out of breath from their lifting, paused for a moment and then resumed their singing. Jim recognized one of them, an old warrior named Step Toe—the old man often traded for tobacco with Dan Drew. The men with Step Toe were also old. Before many winters all of this little group would be on just such a scaffold themselves. Jim could make no sense of it. Why was this little group so far from their villages, burying an important chief?

  To Jim’s astonishment, the old Berrybender parrot came flapping over his head, out of a clear cold sky, and landed on the corpse. No sooner had the bird landed than he said the same four words that he had said to Jim, at the earlier burial service, which had been for Tasmin’s mother.

  The Mandan mourners were shocked—they stopped singing at once and fell back from the scaffold.

  For a brief moment, Jim felt his own hair rise. Was the bird some kind of harbinger, trained to speak over the dead? He expected that one of the Mandans would immediately kill it, but they didn’t. Instead, they drew farther back, watching the parrot nervously. The parrot repeated the same mysterious words: “Schweig, du blöder Trottel!”

  The Mandans retreated a few more steps, watching this strange talking bird warily. The par
rot made no further comment—it bent and picked at a button on the corpse’s coat, and when it did, Jim suddenly realized that the dead man was Big White, Charbonneau’s escaped Mandan. Big White was a great chief, worthy of much ceremony—but why was he dead, far from his village, attended only by six old warriors and three old crones?

  47

  . . . a talking bird was walking back and forth . . .

  JIM at once laid all his weapons on the snow-flecked, stubbly grass, in an attempt to reassure the Mandan mourners, who were terrified. Who could blame them? Their great chief Big White, absent for years, was now dead—and many miles from the village he was thought to be returning to. The Sin Killer had just appeared, out of a snowstorm, and a talking bird was walking back and forth on the corpse of Big White. It added up to a combination of events that might have shaken stouter hearts than this frail old bunch could muster. None of them looked capable of defending themselves from a foe of much ferocity.

  Jim approached the Mandans slowly, indicating again, in sign, to Step Toe, that he meant them no harm. He stopped and waited, allowing the Mandans a minute to settle their nerves. Finally Step Toe came over—he was short and very thin.

  “No tabac?” he asked. “We need tabac.”

  “No tabac,” Jim said.

  The old man looked disappointed.

  “We have been to the springs,” he said. “We like to go to the springs before the cold gets too bad. I am not old myself but these others are old. The warm springs are good for their bones.”

  Jim knew the springs Step Toe was talking about—there were several bubbling, foul-smelling sulfur springs in the barren country five days’ travel to the west. Many Indians used the springs, and some trappers liked them, but Jim himself found the smell so strong that he avoided them.