The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “She’s my Ute wife,” he said. “My only one. Her sister was the other one, but she died.”

  Tasmin started to press forward, determined to kiss her husband, when what he said struck home.

  “Your wife? That young girl is your wife?” she asked.

  “Yes, Little Onion,” Jim said again, calmly. It seemed he considered it no news at all, that he should show up with an Indian wife.

  “I thought you’d be down at the tent—the mice have about et it up,” Jim said; in his tone was a mild hint of censure, just enough that Tasmin heard it and felt annoyed.

  “I left to be closer to Cook,” Tasmin said. “Did you really expect me to walk a mile once my labor starts?”

  There it was already—Tasmin’s contentiousness. And meanwhile, there was no telling where Little Onion was getting to.

  “Boisdeffre could have stored the tent,” Jim said mildly—now a good enough tent had been virtually ruined by neglect.

  “You left rather abruptly, Jim,” Tasmin reminded him. “I received no instructions about the tent. Am I supposed to read your mind? If so, I fear this whole adventure is a failure. I can’t read your mind, especially not when you take it hundreds of miles away.

  “And now, without a word of warning, you just show up with another wife!” Tasmin said with some vehemence; but just as she said it, the room began to swirl. The walls seemed to be turning and turning around her, like a carousel. Tasmin swirled with the walls for a moment and then fell forward, in a dead faint. Jim Snow and Pierre Boisdeffre just managed to catch her.

  “Oh dear, more smelling salts needed, and we have none,” said George Catlin. “I’ll go ask Cook for a wet rag.”

  Jim left Tasmin with Catlin, Cook, and Boisdeffre— he wanted to run Little Onion down before she got too far away. To his annoyance not a soul had seen her leave the fort—both Kit Carson and Toussaint Charbonneau were mystified when told that she had left. Kit ran down toward the Yellowstone, Jim toward the Missouri, but Charbonneau soon waved them both back—Little Onion had been sitting quietly behind the stables.

  Jim hurried back inside the trading post to see about Tasmin—he felt that he might have been too stern about the matter of the tent. But when he got inside Tasmin was gone.

  “Now, where’d she go?” Jim asked, exasperated by his wives’ tendency to disappear.

  “Just into her quarters, with Cook,” George said. “It seems her labor has begun. I guess you’ll soon be a father, Mr. Snow.”

  28

  Jim Snow crept in shyly…

  TA SMIN’S labor was no easier than Coal’s had been. Jim Snow crept in shyly and received one kiss before he was firmly banished by Cook, who needed all her skills and didn’t propose to tolerate any husbands underfoot.

  More than thirty hours passed—Tasmin had long since screamed herself hoarse; the screams left Venetia Kennet atremble, well aware that the same agonies soon awaited her.

  Little Onion felt sure she knew what to do—the old Shoshone women had who delivered Coal’s child had taught her a few things—but at first she could get no one to understand her. She spoke no Hidatsa, Coal no Ute. So when Little Onion first showed up with a rattlesnake rattle, Cook was baffled. Tasmin was weak, half uncaring; she had come to doubt that she was going to live. But Little Onion was insistent that the rattlesnake rattle could resolve the situation, and Tousssaint Charbonneau finally understood. He remembered that that very substance, ground-up rattlesnake rattle, had been given to Sacagawea when she was being delivered of Pomp.

  “Won’t hurt to try it,” he told Cook. She put no faith in such remedies, but, aware that Tasmin was slowly losing ground, agreed to grind up a little and give it to Tasmin in water.

  “It isn’t poison, is it?” Tasmin asked, too weak to care very much. To her astonishment and Cook’s, only a few minutes later, Tasmin’s pains sharpened again and then ended. The child was a boy—in only a few minutes Little Onion herself had cleaned him up, wrapped him in a soft bit of flannel, and laid him on Tasmin’s breast.

  Tasmin, exhausted but triumphant, thought it passing strange that she should be receiving her newborn son from her husband’s other wife—the babyitself gave out a cry scarcely louder than the squeakings of a mouse.

  “I saved just a wee bit of that rattle,” Cook said. “It might be that Miss Vicky will need it, rather soon.”

  The baby—Tasmin had decided to call him Montague, or Monty for short—was for a time reluctant to take the nipple, and again, it was little Little Onion who proved most helpful, teasing the baby with a tiny bit of milk squeezed on a rag. At last he took hold of the nipple and they were all rewarded with the sight of some greedy suckling. Jim Snow was allowed—and seemed to want—only the briefest of peeks.

  Cook, of course, still had the company to feed; it at once developed that Tasmin’s main helper, as she slowly got back on her feet, was Little Onion. Shocked as she had been that Jim would show up with another wife just as she was about to deliver their child, Tasmin soon found that she could not regard Little Onion with the hard eye that she would normally have turned on a rival. Partly it was the girl’s youth, but even more, it was the gentle and loyal attention that she paid to Monty that deflected any jealousy that Tasmin might feel. Tasmin could not get enough of her baby, nor could she be unkindly disposed to a girl who paid him attentions that were as keen as—and, perhaps, a little more expert than—her own. Though the two women had no language in common, they muddled through together, as Monty surmounted his first small crises. He had not an easy stomach, and would sometimes spit up almost as much milk as he took in; also he had a tendency to colic in the night.

  Jim had had to go away on a hunt—Tasmin did not quite understand why—and there were nights when Tasmin still felt so weak from her labor that she could scarcely deal with the crying baby. At these times Little Onion walked the baby for her, and cleaned him when he fouled himself. Jim’s Ute wife became Tasmin’s nursemaid—and, for Little Onion’s part, it was only when she was with Tasmin and the baby that she felt at all relaxed. She slept in a corner of Tasmin’s room, ate little, and did her best to avoid everyone else in the fort. She could not for the life of her understand why people chose to live crowded up in such a place, when it would have been so much healthier to be outside, on the airy plains.

  Jim had been gone for almost a week when Mary revealed to Tasmin that he had been sent on a moose hunt by Monsieur Boisdeffre. The horns of the moose were thought to contain broad medicinal properties, when ground up; Monsieur Boisdeffre foresaw immense profits if only he could obtain a few good racks.

  “You mean Jimmy left me for a moose?” Tasmin exclaimed, her mood alternating between anger and amusement. In fact she and Little Onion had all they could do to keep young Monty on an even keel—at this particular time the absence of a husband was not of much concern. Cook even expressed the opinion that it was best thus.

  “The menfolk, they’ve no interest in bairns,” Cook told Tasmin cheerfully. “Once the little one is big enough to work I expect Master Snow will find a use for him.”

  This attitude was shared by Lord Berrybender, who had bestowed upon his grandson only the most casual glance.

  “Bring him to me when he’s ready to get on with his Latin,” Lord B. said. “Can’t be much use until then, that I can see.”

  If the males in the family were more or less indifferent to Monty’s arrival, the females were anything but. Buffum was intensely jealous—now Tasmin had acquired a tiny plaything, while she herself had neither infant nor lover.

  “How like you to have produced such a greedy brat, Tasmin,” Mary said, watching Monty attack a nipple. “No doubt he will become a great criminal and be hung at Tyburn. People will pelt him with ordure.”

  “That’s rather stretching things, even for you, Mary,” Tasmin replied. “I should think you yourself are the main criminal in the Berrybender family. In a wiser age you would have been burnt as a witch for your habit of talking with serpent
s, if nothing else.”

  George Catlin, at Tasmin’s request, came and did a few hasty sketches of Monty at the breast, but the nursery was so thick with females that he felt rather smothered, what with the two Indian women and Mary and Buffum and Cook and the immensely pregnant Vicky Kennet: the place smelled of milk and baby shit and so much femaleness that he could scarcely draw a clean masculine breath.

  When, a little later, he attempted to describe the scene to Bobbety and Father Geoffrin, they both rolled their eyes at the thought.

  “Why, it’s a regular gynocracy,” Bobbety exclaimed.

  “Females—so fecund,” Father Geoffrin complained. “They exude—they drip!”

  “Yes, excessively fecund it sounds,” Bobbety went on. “A moderate fecundity must be maintained to secure the continuance of the race, but trust my good sister Tasmin to take things rather too far.”

  “Now, now … it’s only one baby,” George reminded them—he felt he must come to Tasmin’s defense.

  “For now,” Bobbety said. “But Vicky will soon bring forth, and there’s that tiny brat of Coal’s. Civilized discourse will soon have to compete with the squallings of several infants.”

  Bobbety’s prediction about the imminence of Venetia Kennet’s delivery was very soon borne out. That very night, after a labor that, to Tasmin’s envy, lasted a mere eight hours, Vicky brought forth a fine son, whose little head was already covered with fine auburn hair. He was thought, by the ladies who examined him, to have, distinctly, the Berrybender nose.

  “No necessity for resorting to the rattlesnake rattle,” Cook said. “Miss Vicky was so quick. I suppose I had best save it for the next one.”

  “Yes, whose ever that may be,” Tasmin said, with little Monty snuggled at her breast.

  29

  “Don’t you see how the light’s too thin… ?”

  DON’T you see how the light’s too thin, up here in Canada?” Kit Carson asked. “The air’s not very thick either. Makes it hard to breathe.”

  “Why’d you come, then?” Jim asked. “You knew we were headed north, to the moose country. If you don’t like north as a direction why didn’t you go south, with the boys?”

  Jim Snow liked and respected Kit Carson, but he had forgotten how picky and hypochondriacal he could be. Last night black ants had gotten into Kit’s clothes—they had had to waste half the morning applying mud poultices to Kit’s various bites.

  “I came because I don’t have any money and I need a new gun,” Kit explained. “I can’t shoot a bow and arrow, the way you can. My old musket misfires half the time. If I don’t get a better gun a grizzly bear will eat me—or else I’ll lose my scalp.”

  “You could learn to shoot a bow and arrow if you’d just practice,” Jim told him. “Thousands of Indians learn to shoot bows and arrows. I don’t know why you couldn’t learn.”

  It was a conversation the two had had before, so Kit didn’t answer. He didn’t exactly disagree. Skill with the bow would be useful. Jim had just killed three good-sized moose with arrows. But when Kit picked up a bow he just felt silly. When he shot at targets arrows flew every which way. If he had to be dependent on such a weapon, he felt sure he would starve.

  “It’s hard to see good, in light this thin,” he said, returning to his original complaint.

  Jim ignored him—if offered a sympathetic ear he might never stop complaining. They had three moose down, all bulls with good racks; except for one small catch, their commission was as good as fulfilled. The catch was that each of them had thought the other was packing a saw—now they had no saw.

  “We’ll just have to chop them out,” Jim said, picking up an axe.

  “I can’t chop, you’ll have to chop,” Kit said. Ever since his bad nosebleed at the fort he had been leery of large quantities of blood, such as would surely result if some moose racks were being chopped out.

  Jim was exasperated. First Kit failed to pack the saw, then he complained about the light, and now he refused to chop.

  “You’re a dead loss then, I guess,” he said.

  Kit, ever sensitive to criticism, wanted to remind Jim that he had looked after Tasmin pretty well while Jim was off meandering, but before Kit could speak in his own defense Jim began to chop. Within a minute or two blood seemed to cover an acre. Kit retreated, so as to stay clear of the blood and bits of flying bone.

  “Are you sure my little boy didn’t have any hair?” Jim asked, once he had the racks detached. Kit had reported that fact as the two of them were traveling north—he had caught just a glimpse of the baby as Little Onion was greasing its navel.

  “Nope, no hair—I didn’t see none,” Kit repeated.

  “That can’t be right,” Jim said. He walked over to a trickle of a creek and washed the blood off his axe.

  “I’ve seen plenty of Indian babies and they all had hair,” he said. He had had a quick look at the baby but Monty had been swaddled in flannel at the time and his head scarcely showed. Now he was disturbed by the news that he and Tasmin had somehow produced a hairless infant.

  “Oh, my Lord!” Kit said, in a tone of deep apprehension.

  Jim turned, expecting to see Indians, but instead saw two bears—grizzlies, a mother and a sizable yearling with a yellowish coat. The bears were about forty yards away.

  “I knew we’d get killed if we came up here where the light’s so thin,” Kit lamented.

  “We’re not killed—those bears want the moose, not us,” Jim pointed out. “Let’s pack up these horns and let them have the moose meat. These old stringy bulls ain’t fit to eat anyway.”

  The bears advanced another ten yards and stopped. Kit was trying to tie the moose horns to their pack animal, but in his haste was making a sloppy job of it.

  “Take your time with those knots,” Jim cautioned. “I don’t want to lose these horns if we have to run for it.”

  Once the horns were secure the two mounted their skittish horses and rode away. The bears didn’t follow.

  “I ain’t coming up into this thin air no more,” Kit said. “We’re lucky to be alive.”

  “You can say that any day,” Jim reminded him. “How big was that boy of mine?”

  Though happy to have escaped the grizzly bears, Kit was irked by Jim’s attitude. Why would the man question him about a matter he should have investigated for himself?

  “He wasn’t big at all,” he replied. “He just got borned. I suppose he weighed about twelve pounds.”

  “I hope he’s stout,” Jim said.

  What annoyed Kit most was that Jim showed so little concern for Tasmin, who, after all, might have died in childbirth, as many women did; nor did Jim express much gratitude for his own sacrifices in staying by Tasmin’s side. The boys had gone south; they were probably trapping beaver by the hundreds. He, Kit, by choosing to stay with Tasmin, was losing money—lots of money. But Jim Snow lived in his own world. He didn’t seem to realize that Kit had done him a whopping big favor.

  “I expect that baby of mine will grow quick,” Jim said. “Tasmin eats hearty—she’s probably got plenty of milk.”

  Jim Snow had always been the most pessimistic of mountain men. He always expected the water holes to be dry, the Indians hostile, the beavers absent. Yet here he was predicting that his baby would be fine. And when two grizzlies showed up with hungry looks on their faces he hadn’t turned a hair.

  “Do you think you’re such a good shot with the bow and arrow that you could have killed those two grizzlies, if they’d come at us?” Kit asked.

  “Why no, Kit—I don’t think nothing of the sort,” Jim said. Kit seemed in a pouty mood, not uncommon with him. Such moods were best ignored.

  “I think you might have got that young bear with an arrow—I don’t know about the mother,” Kit said.

  “The fact is, when it comes to bears, I prefer the rifle,” Jim replied.

  30

  … three fresh infants … hung from pegs…

  IT took Jim only a moment to discover
, with relief, that Kit had been wrong about Monty’s hair. The three fresh infants, each in its own pouch and cradle board, hung from pegs on the wall of the nursery— one of Boisdeffre’s half-empty storerooms had been hastily converted. His little Monty had only the lightest hair on his head, it was true, but it was hair— brown like his own, rather than black like Tasmin’s. It seemed to him that a totally hairless infant could not have been expected to last long.

  The three babies were all sound asleep, hanging from their pegs and watched closely by Little Onion, who had brought her blankets into the nursery. She considered the infants her charges, whisking them off to their respective mothers when the time came to nurse. Even Cook, a stern judge of nursemaids, approved of Little Onion, a mere girl but with an expert eye for the problems of her young charges.

  “Vicky’s has got the most hair,” Jim pointed out to Tasmin.

  “Yes, that’s Talley,” Tasmin said. “His mother’s got the most hair too.”

  Venetia Kennet had not cut her hair after all. With the birth of her child her mood of resignation passed. She sometimes brought her cello into the nursery and played Haydn for the babies.

  Tasmin, though glad that Jim appeared to take an interest in their child, found herself unaccountably awkward in his company. Partly this was because Jim could not really be at ease indoors—not even for an hour. Only under the open sky did he seem himself, the assured plainsman who had won her heart. The smell of the wild was on him, and the need for the wild in him. Indoors, he seemed diminished—seemed a shaggy awkward boy whose hair and beard had grown long since Tasmin had last had an opportunity to trim them.

  “I suppose you just aren’t meant to be inside four walls, Jimmy,” Tasmin said, noting his restlessness. “Would you prefer that we move back to the tent? Coal and Little Onion have done a good job of patching those holes.”